Facebook can be a horrible place if you are sensitive to other people's actions and perceptive about their subtle messages. It can also be fertile territory for understanding people in general and knowing your friends better. In ways both subtle and gross, you can see how others think and feel.
Recently, I have had experiences with both of the obvious and the less so. One of my friends posted a picture of three people on the beach. One woman was very thin, possibly anorexic, and she had had somewhat moderate breast implants (probably a "B", definitely no more than a C-cup). Her age was difficult to gauge but given the skin sagging, her hair color and texture, and her wrinkles, she may have been as old as her early 60's or as young as her late 40's (probably she was in her mid to late 50's). She was standing with her arm around a slightly overweight woman with a hairy, chunky guy in Speedos on the other side. My friend's comment was something like "I'm glad I kept my own (referring to her breasts)! She (thin woman with implants) makes the guy on the right look pretty good!"
I should note that my friend is very short (about 4' 11"/150 cm.) and has very large breasts. She has also rarely been thin, but not especially been fat. She has had body issues all of her life including being uncomfortable with her disproportionately large breasts and feeling she had a large behind. As she has gotten older, she has put on a little more weight and gained enough at one point to develop Type 2 diabetes, but changed her habits to take her out of the red zone and back to borderline insulin function.
The fact that my friend engaged in such body shaming upset me for several reasons. First of all, I disagree with all body shaming on principle. Second, the sort of sagging and skin wrinkling that woman had was very familiar. It was a less extreme version of what has been happening to me as I lose weight. Third, I think anyone with their own body issues should have more empathy for others with less than perfect bodies. Finally, her behavior was childish and cruel. No one should have their picture passed around and talked about in such a fashion.
Since I don't believe that outright confrontation is helpful when people do these things, I made a comment saying that we don't know anything about how this woman came to be in this state. On the heels of a few "ewwws" and "I just tossed my lunch" types of comments, I mentioned that an acquaintance recently had a double mastectomy and had breast implants as a result. Any woman could have such implants because of a medical issue, not just because she's vain. I did not say that it didn't matter if she looked as she did out of vanity or not, but I did think so. I wanted my friend to have empathy for this woman, not merely use her as a stepping stone to elevating her own low self-esteem a notch or two.
As the comment thread went on, I mentioned that I would be certain never to show up on a beach in a bathing suit of any sort because strangers would take my picture and pass it around on the internet and mock my body as was being done with that poor woman. My friend expressed incredulity that my body could look so bad and called me a "goddess" (which is weird since she knows I used to be fatter). I guess as someone who has never been severely overweight, she doesn't know that you don't spring back into shape but rather look like a stretched out sweater made of skin. At any rate, my husband, who is also her friend, went on to mention that he felt there was too much body shaming as did a few other people and she withdrew the picture under the weight of disapproval. I remain somewhat surprised that she didn't anticipate how bad what she did might make her look.
Another one of my friends recently posted that she found some dresses in the back of her closet and that she was shocked that they fit. This particular friend has always been slightly chubby and gained a little more weight as time has gone on. She's probably no less overweight than I currently am, but has been mentioning that she went down two dress sizes recently.
Note that my Facebook page does not discuss my weight or anyone else's. As far as they know, what they see is what I am. This blog is unknown to them (and shall remain so) and my struggles are not public. There is no reason for anyone to think I am trying to lose weight, though I do occasionally post recipes which I enjoy that are sugar-free or nutritious. They are there for me to keep track of, and for diabetic friends to experiment with on their own. Though I have never been diabetic, I do make sugar-free items (baked goods) to reduce the blood sugar impact and calories of such items.
Regarding my friend's situation, I commented to her that there were no dresses in the back of my closet, but if there were, they surely would not fit me. I did not state that the reason this was the case was that all of my clothes from the past are far too big and she "liked" the comment. I am not sure why she would "like" the fact that I wouldn't fit into my old clothes while she could, but I got the impression that she was concluding that I was too fat to fit in my old togs. This friend is from college and last she saw me I was at a lowish relative weight (very similar to how I am now), though she met me when I was likely in the 300-350 lb. range in my earlier college years. She had no way of knowing I'd regained and lost weight again, so she didn't know my bodily disposition over the years. From her perspective, I have remained unchanged.
This friend has had a habit of being competitive and copying people she admires or is envious of. When I lost weight in my later college years, she also lost weight shortly thereafter and had shown increasing moodiness and resentment toward me as I continued to lose weight at that time. She also dyed her hair blond to match her roommate's (who she had a serious non-sexual crush on and believed was the coolest human being on the planet) and dressed like said roommate for several years. It could also have been a coincidence, but she dyed her hair the same color as mine shortly after I connected with her on Facebook and remarked on how great she looked with that color.
Though I could be wrong, I think the reason my friend "liked" the idea that I may not be able to wear my old clothes was that she felt I'd gained weight and that made her feel better about herself. This is all not meant in any way to say that I am awesome and enviable in my beauty, but rather as a reflection on the situation in which someone is competing with me and happier to come out the "winner" in her estimation. Both of these friends are behaving competitively with other women. One of them is doing so with a picture of a woman from the internet and the other with an old friend. In both cases, they are valuing bodies such that they can value themselves more highly relative to others.
In both of these cases, I'm not angry with my friends, but I am disappointed that they assign such value to external appearances and sad that their self-estimation is such that it is based on body size and shape. I'm also increasingly uncomfortable with the feeling that I'm being drawn into a sort of "race" for relative beauty now that I'm no longer viewed as the one who absolutely will come in last. When I was super obese and near 400 lbs., women simply dismissed me entirely as "competition". Now, it's not quite so simple.
I don't want to be involved in any of this, but it does seem quite unavoidable. Though I have changed a lot inside, it seems that people only attend to the changes on the outside, and they aren't necessarily happy to see me looking pretty good if they feel they look relatively not quite as good. I don't want to play this game, but people keep dealing me hands anyway. I'm not sure what to do about it, but I guess all I can do is try to maintain empathy for them and their needs in this regard.
Showing posts with label body image. Show all posts
Showing posts with label body image. Show all posts
Saturday, February 11, 2012
Friday, January 13, 2012
No longer the fattest in the room
A lot of women who are fat or trying to lose weight talk about entering a room and comparing themselves to the other women there to determine if they are fatter than them. This is something I have not developed a habit of doing because when I was very heavy, I was always the fattest one in the room. There wasn't even a contest. At nearly 400 lbs., I didn't need to look around to know who was fattest.
Even as I have lost weight, I haven't made those comparisons for two reasons. One is that I don't like this habit in general as it is a form of assigning value to people based on body size. I don't care how open-minded a person believes her or she might be, this screening and evaluating based on weight is a way of establishing a pecking order. One is, essentially, comforting oneself by determining one is not longer "at the bottom" (i.e., the fattest) by performing this act. It's a bad habit and reflects poorly on those who do it.
The second reason I have never done this is that, even at around 175 lbs., it is simply second nature for me to believe that I'm still likely to be the heaviest woman in the room. I'm in a culture of petit women who are not only slim 98% of the time, but small-boned and short. I'm never going to be anything, but the fattest in the room as long as I live where I currently reside.
This situation has never really troubled me because I don't care how heavy others are and I don't preoccupy myself with my body size relative to them. That being said, I can't help but realize as part of internalizing a new body image that there are women around me on occasion who are proportionally fatter than me. This isn't about ranking, but about no longer seeing myself as a lumbering behemoth that elicits of stares and nasty comments.
My thinking is more along the lines of "if there are those who are fatter than me, then there is no reason for people to treat me as some freak of nature" as I am now within a range of "normal". Since I continue to view myself as incredibly huge, this is part of a process of normalizing my body image, not seeing myself as somehow "better" than fatter women. The fact is that I see bigger women as within the range of "normal" as well, which helps me feel less like the gigantic person I saw myself to be and more deserving of being seen as "human". Such has been the damage to my self-image that I must constantly work to adjust my thinking so I feel I can call myself a regular "human", a privilege I have always afforded others but has not always been given to me.
Generally, I don't think about this "fattest woman in the room" situation, but I had a recent experience which made me consider how so many women establish a pecking order of beauty and weight. Since I was always relegated to the bottom rung both by myself and others, I don't really consider this when I talk to other women. Something happened recently to make me think that this was being done to me and that perceptions of me have altered now that my physicality is quite different.
Before I get any further, let me say that I have never subscribed to the idea that there is all sorts of jealousy that results in sniping and bad behavior because of weight loss. I don't think the other woman that I'm going to mention in this post was "jealous" of me or my fabulous beauty as I don't feel I am some gorgeous babe now. I'm also pretty sure that most people would believe me to be a fairly average woman in her late 40's with some nice features and in need of some weight loss. The person I'm going to talk about in this post never knew me except at a weight marginally higher than it is now. She had nothing to be jealous of because this was our first, only, and likely last meeting.
Some time ago, I met a friend of my husband's for the first time. He has described her on many occasions as "a sweetie". She's very positive and educated and he has been quite happy with his communication with her and the progression of their friendship. One of the reasons that he wanted me to meet her is that he felt that it would facilitate more communication with her if we both could be at social interactions with her at the same time. This is especially the case now because our time has become more limited than ever. It is extremely difficult to sacrifice time for socializing as well as spend time with each other due to work and preparations to move.
This woman is much taller than average, somewhat overweight (perhaps proportionally as much as me, possibly a bit less) and somewhat mannish in appearance. She's a native of a Western culture, though not the same one as me. She's also married and participates in the same volunteer work that my husband has been doing. The bottom line is that we didn't hit it off. She came across as reserved and answered my questions in a way which was guarded and steered topics of interest from items of depth to banal superficialities. In the end, I felt as if merely asking some questions (such as why she loved the culture we both reside in, a reasonable follow-up question to her assertion that she was so fond of it) were intrusive and put her on the spot. I didn't feel my questions were too personal or invasive, but her responses seemed to indicate otherwise. My husband was also surprised at her level of reluctance to travel beyond the surface in the conversation as that had not been his experience with her to date.
When I deal with my work, I'm content to deal in superficialities, but not when I'm dealing with people from my own culture or in social situations. I get more than enough talk about the weather, food, trivial experiences, and holidays through my job. As readers of my blog are fully aware, I'm a person who likes complexity and depth. It's a genuine joy to plumb the deeper recesses of an issue and explore facets of a topic. This woman was certainly capable of such a discussion as my husband said she'd had some communication with him on that level before, but she wasn't like that with me.
I walked away distinctly feeling that she did not care for me, but not that she formed some deep-seated hate or anything. It wasn't such a greatly negative encounter. It just didn't go very well. This actually didn't bother me at all. I absolutely do not need everyone to like me. I didn't give what had happened much thought until recently when my husband invited her and her husband along with another couple to accompany us to a goodbye dinner. We're leaving the country we're in and so are she and her husband and getting a group together seemed like a pleasant and expedient way to bid farewell.
The response that we received is what has sent me into my current reflective state. She politely refused and effusively thanked my husband for the invitation, but she also mentioned just the two of them (my husband and her) getting together for a goodbye and "anyone else" he might like to invite. I may be out of the loop on social convention in Western culture, but I believe when you have met someone's wife and actually sat down at a meal and spoken with her for over an hour, it is polite to at least mention the spouse by name rather than just say "anyone else". Even my husband felt that the wording was potentially quite meaningful as a message conveying that she might tolerate my presence, but would prefer that I not be there.
This, in and of itself, is not really a big deal to me. I don't mind that she doesn't want me around. That being said, I was perfectly fine to associate with her again with the possibility that things might go better on another occasion. However, my reflection is actually about why things didn't go so well the first time. There are, of course, plenty of reasons including the very real possibility that there was simply a clash of personalities or she simply is not interested in someone with my personality. It's also possible that I seemed too negative or aggressive for her tastes. I am not a "Debbie Downer", but I do tend to see things very much through the filter of yin and yang. I see the good side, but I also see the bad, and I will talk about both equally. This woman is more of a positive type and may find whatever focus I had on the negative unappealing.
The reason why this has made me pensive is that my experiences have generally been quite positive when meeting new people. I'm socially quite adept, but I am, and I hate to say this because it sounds like bragging, quite intelligent. My intelligence has never been anything but an asset for me throughout most of my life. In fact, I have often felt that it was one of the things which persuaded people who might simply have dismissed me based on body size that I may indeed be worthwhile to know. It is this thought which occurred to me as I mulled over the snub in her letter.
It is absolutely clear to me that I am treated very, very differently now compared to before. People are nicer to me in every way. I attract far less negative attention. When I get stared at because I'm a foreigner in another land, people no longer look my body up and down and stare at my stomach, but rather look at my face. I wondered if this situation was yet another occasion in which my changed appearance was affecting a response to me, but this time, in a negative way.
I've written before about how one of my husband's former male friends looked me up and down and then ignored me. He judged me as unworthy of his attention and behaved as though my large body rendered me invisible. Dismissiveness as a result of fatness is very common. I wonder now if achieving parity in terms of the assessment of my appearance has changed some balance whereby my speaking and display of intellect is regarded as overbearing. In the past, the state of my body dipped me so low into the negative territory that my positive attributes, whatever they may be, could be digested as welcome counterbalances. Without that glaring aspect of my physicality to make the other party feel superior, is the way in which I present my mental capabilities coming across as overbearing, smug, or too much?
Obviously, I cannot know what is going on in another person's mind, particularly in what I would guess is their unconscious reasoning. It could simply be that I am unlikable to her personally even though I tend to be quite likable to the vast majority of people I meet. I can say that after announcing that I was going to leave the country I'm in and return to America, four adults over the age of 30 broke into tears at the news. Clearly, I must not be too odious an individual or they wouldn't have been so upset about my departure. At any rate, this could also be that I'm making too much of poor phrasing in a message and "anyone else" was not a snub, but an indication of careless writing or poor social skills. I don't know what the truth is and I doubt I ever will. However, I think the possibility that people may perceive my personality differently in a manner I would not have anticipated based on having a much smaller body is one worth contemplating.
Even as I have lost weight, I haven't made those comparisons for two reasons. One is that I don't like this habit in general as it is a form of assigning value to people based on body size. I don't care how open-minded a person believes her or she might be, this screening and evaluating based on weight is a way of establishing a pecking order. One is, essentially, comforting oneself by determining one is not longer "at the bottom" (i.e., the fattest) by performing this act. It's a bad habit and reflects poorly on those who do it.
The second reason I have never done this is that, even at around 175 lbs., it is simply second nature for me to believe that I'm still likely to be the heaviest woman in the room. I'm in a culture of petit women who are not only slim 98% of the time, but small-boned and short. I'm never going to be anything, but the fattest in the room as long as I live where I currently reside.
This situation has never really troubled me because I don't care how heavy others are and I don't preoccupy myself with my body size relative to them. That being said, I can't help but realize as part of internalizing a new body image that there are women around me on occasion who are proportionally fatter than me. This isn't about ranking, but about no longer seeing myself as a lumbering behemoth that elicits of stares and nasty comments.
My thinking is more along the lines of "if there are those who are fatter than me, then there is no reason for people to treat me as some freak of nature" as I am now within a range of "normal". Since I continue to view myself as incredibly huge, this is part of a process of normalizing my body image, not seeing myself as somehow "better" than fatter women. The fact is that I see bigger women as within the range of "normal" as well, which helps me feel less like the gigantic person I saw myself to be and more deserving of being seen as "human". Such has been the damage to my self-image that I must constantly work to adjust my thinking so I feel I can call myself a regular "human", a privilege I have always afforded others but has not always been given to me.
Generally, I don't think about this "fattest woman in the room" situation, but I had a recent experience which made me consider how so many women establish a pecking order of beauty and weight. Since I was always relegated to the bottom rung both by myself and others, I don't really consider this when I talk to other women. Something happened recently to make me think that this was being done to me and that perceptions of me have altered now that my physicality is quite different.
Before I get any further, let me say that I have never subscribed to the idea that there is all sorts of jealousy that results in sniping and bad behavior because of weight loss. I don't think the other woman that I'm going to mention in this post was "jealous" of me or my fabulous beauty as I don't feel I am some gorgeous babe now. I'm also pretty sure that most people would believe me to be a fairly average woman in her late 40's with some nice features and in need of some weight loss. The person I'm going to talk about in this post never knew me except at a weight marginally higher than it is now. She had nothing to be jealous of because this was our first, only, and likely last meeting.
Some time ago, I met a friend of my husband's for the first time. He has described her on many occasions as "a sweetie". She's very positive and educated and he has been quite happy with his communication with her and the progression of their friendship. One of the reasons that he wanted me to meet her is that he felt that it would facilitate more communication with her if we both could be at social interactions with her at the same time. This is especially the case now because our time has become more limited than ever. It is extremely difficult to sacrifice time for socializing as well as spend time with each other due to work and preparations to move.
This woman is much taller than average, somewhat overweight (perhaps proportionally as much as me, possibly a bit less) and somewhat mannish in appearance. She's a native of a Western culture, though not the same one as me. She's also married and participates in the same volunteer work that my husband has been doing. The bottom line is that we didn't hit it off. She came across as reserved and answered my questions in a way which was guarded and steered topics of interest from items of depth to banal superficialities. In the end, I felt as if merely asking some questions (such as why she loved the culture we both reside in, a reasonable follow-up question to her assertion that she was so fond of it) were intrusive and put her on the spot. I didn't feel my questions were too personal or invasive, but her responses seemed to indicate otherwise. My husband was also surprised at her level of reluctance to travel beyond the surface in the conversation as that had not been his experience with her to date.
When I deal with my work, I'm content to deal in superficialities, but not when I'm dealing with people from my own culture or in social situations. I get more than enough talk about the weather, food, trivial experiences, and holidays through my job. As readers of my blog are fully aware, I'm a person who likes complexity and depth. It's a genuine joy to plumb the deeper recesses of an issue and explore facets of a topic. This woman was certainly capable of such a discussion as my husband said she'd had some communication with him on that level before, but she wasn't like that with me.
I walked away distinctly feeling that she did not care for me, but not that she formed some deep-seated hate or anything. It wasn't such a greatly negative encounter. It just didn't go very well. This actually didn't bother me at all. I absolutely do not need everyone to like me. I didn't give what had happened much thought until recently when my husband invited her and her husband along with another couple to accompany us to a goodbye dinner. We're leaving the country we're in and so are she and her husband and getting a group together seemed like a pleasant and expedient way to bid farewell.
The response that we received is what has sent me into my current reflective state. She politely refused and effusively thanked my husband for the invitation, but she also mentioned just the two of them (my husband and her) getting together for a goodbye and "anyone else" he might like to invite. I may be out of the loop on social convention in Western culture, but I believe when you have met someone's wife and actually sat down at a meal and spoken with her for over an hour, it is polite to at least mention the spouse by name rather than just say "anyone else". Even my husband felt that the wording was potentially quite meaningful as a message conveying that she might tolerate my presence, but would prefer that I not be there.
This, in and of itself, is not really a big deal to me. I don't mind that she doesn't want me around. That being said, I was perfectly fine to associate with her again with the possibility that things might go better on another occasion. However, my reflection is actually about why things didn't go so well the first time. There are, of course, plenty of reasons including the very real possibility that there was simply a clash of personalities or she simply is not interested in someone with my personality. It's also possible that I seemed too negative or aggressive for her tastes. I am not a "Debbie Downer", but I do tend to see things very much through the filter of yin and yang. I see the good side, but I also see the bad, and I will talk about both equally. This woman is more of a positive type and may find whatever focus I had on the negative unappealing.
The reason why this has made me pensive is that my experiences have generally been quite positive when meeting new people. I'm socially quite adept, but I am, and I hate to say this because it sounds like bragging, quite intelligent. My intelligence has never been anything but an asset for me throughout most of my life. In fact, I have often felt that it was one of the things which persuaded people who might simply have dismissed me based on body size that I may indeed be worthwhile to know. It is this thought which occurred to me as I mulled over the snub in her letter.
It is absolutely clear to me that I am treated very, very differently now compared to before. People are nicer to me in every way. I attract far less negative attention. When I get stared at because I'm a foreigner in another land, people no longer look my body up and down and stare at my stomach, but rather look at my face. I wondered if this situation was yet another occasion in which my changed appearance was affecting a response to me, but this time, in a negative way.
I've written before about how one of my husband's former male friends looked me up and down and then ignored me. He judged me as unworthy of his attention and behaved as though my large body rendered me invisible. Dismissiveness as a result of fatness is very common. I wonder now if achieving parity in terms of the assessment of my appearance has changed some balance whereby my speaking and display of intellect is regarded as overbearing. In the past, the state of my body dipped me so low into the negative territory that my positive attributes, whatever they may be, could be digested as welcome counterbalances. Without that glaring aspect of my physicality to make the other party feel superior, is the way in which I present my mental capabilities coming across as overbearing, smug, or too much?
Obviously, I cannot know what is going on in another person's mind, particularly in what I would guess is their unconscious reasoning. It could simply be that I am unlikable to her personally even though I tend to be quite likable to the vast majority of people I meet. I can say that after announcing that I was going to leave the country I'm in and return to America, four adults over the age of 30 broke into tears at the news. Clearly, I must not be too odious an individual or they wouldn't have been so upset about my departure. At any rate, this could also be that I'm making too much of poor phrasing in a message and "anyone else" was not a snub, but an indication of careless writing or poor social skills. I don't know what the truth is and I doubt I ever will. However, I think the possibility that people may perceive my personality differently in a manner I would not have anticipated based on having a much smaller body is one worth contemplating.
Saturday, January 7, 2012
Making peace with the body
In my home, I do not have any full-length mirrors so most of the time I have been seeing my body in fragments. When I started a new job at the end of last spring, I started working in a place that has an enormous mirror across from the toilet. It is virtually impossible not to see my half-naked body without a supreme effort to look away. The mirror takes up half of an entire wall.
In clothes, you can't really see, but I'm a disaster underneath. This was in a fitting room when I tried on this shirt. It was the only way to get a picture of me in the mirror since I don't have a big one. You can see that I definitely have not lost any hair along with weight loss. I've got plenty.
When I first started using that bathroom, it was very hard for me to look at what my body had become as a result of weight loss. Little blobby side-cars of wrinkled flesh hang on my inner thighs. My stomach is still very big, and hangs down like a crinkled semi-full sack of potatoes. When I sit, it rests on my lap like a floppy, thick blanket. My breasts hang like an old grandma's. They are slack and lacking in fullness. When I cram them into my C-cup bra, it's mainly extra skin rather than breast tissue threatening to send me back to a D. Even my calves have wrinkles on them where the skin has slackened and is creasing.
My husband, bless his sweet, loving soul, sees the state of my body as a sign of success and never flinches, criticizes or shies away from touching or looking at me. I see it as a vast collection of battle scars from a war with food that I've fought for many, many years. This war has resulted, not in victory, but in a peace treaty that is better than an all-out win.
I never expected to be toned, taut and gorgeous at the end of all of this. In fact, I expected something not too dissimilar to what I have. You can't stretch out skin for that long and expect it to snap back, not even with very slow weight loss such as mine. No amount of exercise will change how I look without my clothes and I know that. There will likely always be sheets of extra skin hanging from my body, adding both weight and crepe-like wrinkles. I will never be thin, and I know that my weight will always be higher because of all that extra skin.
Despite the fact that I hardly expected to come out looking like a beauty queen, I have found it difficult to accept my body in its naked state. I feel like I've abused it physically because I suffered so much emotionally. Rather than feeling that my vanity is suffering because I lack bodily beauty, I feel sad that years of psychological difficulty have left these marks. For that, I forgive myself, and I have learned not to be sad at the state I'm in. I'm learning to see my stretched out and wrinkled body in the mirror and feel that it's okay. I'm starting to see that slack, wrinkled flesh the way my husband does - as a trophy of my success in repairing my relationship with food. I'm not there 100% yet, but I'm on my way.
Thursday, September 1, 2011
Supply and Demand
It's hard to get two paragraphs into anything written by a fat acceptance blogger without mention of how the diet industry has warped all of society's thinking about weight. They talk about how their raison d'être is to make us hate our bodies so much that we will fork over our cash to have ourselves "fixed" using their various programs. People who are comfortable with themselves aren't likely to buy as many goods and services as those who are uncomfortable, so the diet industry plays on insecurities that it manufactures according to many people who support body acceptance.
There is an assumption, and this is not only true of those who blame the diet industry for our body hatred, that "society", "government", or "business" make a decision and then indoctrinate us into their way of thinking. The feeling is that they decide how best to profit by manipulating us and then carry out a plan. As time goes by, they fine-tune that plan and play more expertly on our fears and pain to maximize their ability to cull our cash or gain power.
Here is the thing, and people don't like to accept this because a conspiracy is much more appealing than the truth, business does not create the environment of body hatred. It plays on feelings and insecurities that are already there. You are not sold something because someone tells you you should want it. You are sold it because on some level you already want it. No one can convince you of something which is absolutely not within your mind to some extent already.
The way business and government work is like building a fire. They see a spark, a flicker, or a tiny flame, and they fan it until it is bigger. If you allow them, they will create a raging bonfire, but some part of you is the origin of the inferno. They cannot make something from nothing just as you can't build a fire from nothing but a pile of twigs. This applies to government as well. If people vote for a wild political platform offered up by some crazy politician, it isn't because they are told what to do, but because it reflects what they already believed.
The grim truth is that all aspects of society are a reflection of the people who live in it. We get the government we deserve. We have a media which reflects what we want to hear. We are sold products which we want to buy. People say they feel differently, but then their behaviors and choices betray the truth. Fat women say they love their plump bodies, yet talk about how they can get thin, hot boyfriends. Why even mention this unless this is seen as a more prized condition than having a fat boyfriend? It's essentially seen as saying, "see, despite my inferior status in society, I can get someone of what is perceived to be a superior status."
So, the diet industry didn't teach us to hate being fat anymore than they taught us to hate the smell of body odor. They expertly play on our lack of love for various conditions. Despite what fat activists would like everyone to believe, being fat has been a disliked condition for centuries. Ancient Egyptians were body conscious despite having no organized diet industry or media programming. While there has been some flexibility in what is seen as an "ideal" form, that flexibility does not often extend to obese bodies.
Aside from the Venus figurines, there is very little historical evidence that grossly overweight forms were seen as beautiful even in ancient times. The Venus figurines are often held up as an example of ancient love of the rounded form, but such interpretations are wishful thinking at best. Given the emphasis on a large belly and breasts, they are much more likely to have been fertility images, not a celebration of fatness.
The bottom line is that most people don't like being fat. They've never liked being fat and the diet industry sprung up as a result of that dislike. It heard us talk. It knew how we felt about this condition and it acted to sell us something it was pretty sure we'd buy. The diet industry didn't make us hate our bodies. They simply are supplying a demand created by pre-existing hate of our condition.
There is an assumption, and this is not only true of those who blame the diet industry for our body hatred, that "society", "government", or "business" make a decision and then indoctrinate us into their way of thinking. The feeling is that they decide how best to profit by manipulating us and then carry out a plan. As time goes by, they fine-tune that plan and play more expertly on our fears and pain to maximize their ability to cull our cash or gain power.
Here is the thing, and people don't like to accept this because a conspiracy is much more appealing than the truth, business does not create the environment of body hatred. It plays on feelings and insecurities that are already there. You are not sold something because someone tells you you should want it. You are sold it because on some level you already want it. No one can convince you of something which is absolutely not within your mind to some extent already.
The way business and government work is like building a fire. They see a spark, a flicker, or a tiny flame, and they fan it until it is bigger. If you allow them, they will create a raging bonfire, but some part of you is the origin of the inferno. They cannot make something from nothing just as you can't build a fire from nothing but a pile of twigs. This applies to government as well. If people vote for a wild political platform offered up by some crazy politician, it isn't because they are told what to do, but because it reflects what they already believed.
The grim truth is that all aspects of society are a reflection of the people who live in it. We get the government we deserve. We have a media which reflects what we want to hear. We are sold products which we want to buy. People say they feel differently, but then their behaviors and choices betray the truth. Fat women say they love their plump bodies, yet talk about how they can get thin, hot boyfriends. Why even mention this unless this is seen as a more prized condition than having a fat boyfriend? It's essentially seen as saying, "see, despite my inferior status in society, I can get someone of what is perceived to be a superior status."
So, the diet industry didn't teach us to hate being fat anymore than they taught us to hate the smell of body odor. They expertly play on our lack of love for various conditions. Despite what fat activists would like everyone to believe, being fat has been a disliked condition for centuries. Ancient Egyptians were body conscious despite having no organized diet industry or media programming. While there has been some flexibility in what is seen as an "ideal" form, that flexibility does not often extend to obese bodies.
Aside from the Venus figurines, there is very little historical evidence that grossly overweight forms were seen as beautiful even in ancient times. The Venus figurines are often held up as an example of ancient love of the rounded form, but such interpretations are wishful thinking at best. Given the emphasis on a large belly and breasts, they are much more likely to have been fertility images, not a celebration of fatness.
The bottom line is that most people don't like being fat. They've never liked being fat and the diet industry sprung up as a result of that dislike. It heard us talk. It knew how we felt about this condition and it acted to sell us something it was pretty sure we'd buy. The diet industry didn't make us hate our bodies. They simply are supplying a demand created by pre-existing hate of our condition.
Thursday, August 11, 2011
Fat Friends, Skinny Friends
Thanks to the magic of FaceBook, I've been a voyeur to the crash and burn of a long-term friendship between two quasi-friends/strong acquaintances. I know both of them pretty well, but not as well as people who I'd call "true friends". One of these people is sweet, gentle, quiet, and cooperative. The other is nice, but loud, opinionated, and assertive. Both of them love animals, 80's celebrities, taking cruises and late 70's rock music.
During the time I have been friends with them on FaceBook, I've seen dozens of pictures of the two of them smiling together as they attend concerts, conventions, and take vacations together. They write about how happy they were and what a good time they had together. I know they have been friends for well over two decades, possibly more. One of them used to be "best friends" with a third friend, but they bonded and the third wheel was shut out. She was left by the side of the road while they walked hand-in-hand through mutual interests.
One day, one of these two women, the quiet and compliant one, posted a message on FaceBook seeking opinions about a certain situation. In essence, she asked if two people had a falling out and had had a shared hotel room planned for an event, was it her responsibility to make it clear that the plans were off. She capped the request with the fact that the person of whom she was speaking had ended their argument with the statement that their friendship was "over forever."
Given the history these two women have, I guessed that this elementary-school-style speaking about someone who is not named but is clearly known to everyone was the buddy she'd gone on so many entertaining sojourns with. I checked her friends list and, sure enough, they were no longer joined on the social network. I then checked the other party's feed, the aggressive and outspoken one, to see her carp about how people can't expect others to read their minds and they have to make their wishes known. I left them to their grade-school sniping and pondered some deeper issues.
In this scenario, if you were asked to guess which one is fat and which one is a former beauty pageant contestant, which would you assign to each (admittedly vague) character set? There are stereotypes of fat women as brassy, loud, and overbearing, but, in my experience, they are not necessarily like that with friends. In fact, most of the fat women I know are bubbly, compliant, and overtly happy. In my experience, they are more so this when with skinny friends than other fat ones.
One thing I've read again and again from fat women who are wanting to lose weight is how they don't want to be "the fat friend". I ponder what it means to be "the fat friend" to such people. In many cases, it means that you are the one who someone else stands next to to make them look better.
I've also read, with some disgust, that some fat women don't want to have fat friends because they hate the way a posse of big girls "looks". They're afraid of drawing even more attention. They're also ashamed to be with fat friends. This makes me wonder if, in a friendship in which there is a fat girl and a thin girl, and especially when the smaller woman is considered "hot", that the fat girl may feel that she must defer to her friend. That is, she may feel, unconsciously, that she is being granted some special dispensation for being allowed to pal around with thin people.
In my own personal experience, I did not defer to my friend's wishes and tended to be more of an "alpha" female when I was with friends. That being said, I did always care about other people being happy. I was raised to always place myself last. Being fat made this very easy since I so often believed it made everyone "better" than me and their needs were more valuable than mine. Since I lacked value due to my fatness, this was logical.
In the case of my very good friends, it wasn't that my friends necessarily followed me, but rather that they tended not to have many ideas or assert themselves in general. It is likely that most of the women (all thin) who became my friends were also dealing with other self-esteem issues or social problems and that is part of why they were friends with me despite my weight. One of my good friends went to a church-affiliated school, could only wear skirts and dresses, and had to follow relatively strict rules. Another was two years younger than me and had an alcoholic father who beat her mother and threatened his children. My guess is that both of them felt "inferior" for their own reasons and my weight was either not a factor or an equalizing one.
In terms of people who were not my friends in particular, I didn't defer to their wishes, but for those who I wanted to be friends with because they generally seemed like nice people or were interesting, I tended to completely suppress my wishes and tried to anticipate their needs in order to convince them to like me. All of my yearbooks were filled with how "nice" I was. "Nice" was a euphemism for "boring" sometimes, but in my case, it was because I was always trying to get people to like me despite my fat body.
All of this leads me back to the meltdown that occurred between my two quasi-friends. It's my guess that the former failed model/beauty pageant contestant friend is accustomed to everyone wanting her time and attention regardless of what she says or does merely because she is perceived as being quite attractive. On more than one occasion, she has gone out of her way on FaceBook to say things which she knows are offensive to a certain segment of her friends. I know this because she says, "I know this is going to offend some of my friends, but..." Almost certainly unconsciously, she acts only on her own interests and doesn't worry where the chips fall because even if some people run away, others will fall in and replace them. Everyone wants to be buddies with the good-looking girl.
The other pseudo-friend, who probably weighs in the 300 lb. area, has probably been such a "good friend" mainly because she's also "nice". That is to say, she's focused on pleasing others rather than on pleasing herself. Based on their public squabbles, I'm guessing that she finally got tired of suppressing her wishes and said something which pointed out how selfish she believed her compatriot is.
As a footnote to all of this, I noted with some interest that the third wheel who got kicked to the curb when her best friend (the fat girl) bonded with her new friend (the skinny girl) and has been sitting on the sidelines for the better part of 20 years is now back in the picture. The thin friend is now professing how much she loves the third wheel and they're talking about how good a time they had going to a tea shop together. The third wheel is also quite overweight (probably 230-260 lbs.). Perhaps the skinny friend really does need a "fat friend" to make her feel more attractive, or this is merely coincidence. It presents an interesting dynamic regardless of the reasons.
I can't say for certain that this is a "fat friend/skinny friend" dynamic going on here because regardless of weight, people have basic personalities. Many fat women have stellar esteem and will assert themselves freely. I do, now. I stopped people-pleasing the first time I lost weight and didn't go back to it after I regained because I got tired of having to "prove" something to others in order to gain acceptance. I just accepted that I'd be rejected and everyone be damned. Also, being married to a husband who is almost god-like in his perfection psychologically, I had acceptance from someone who no one could ever surpass. That being said, to this day, I still have to fight not to sublimate my needs to his. It's not because he expects it of me, but rather because I view him as superior to me and his interests as paramount. It's my issue, and I keep working on it.
Getting back to the point, I do believe based on my own feelings in my younger days as well as witnessing the characters of various other fat women, that we don't express ourselves in general because society teaches us that we are not equal. In fact, it instantly devalues us with a glance. To get any value back, we have to prove that we are somehow better than others in other ways. We do that by being super nice, cooperative, generous, fun, and kind, even when it causes us to sacrifice our own needs.
During the time I have been friends with them on FaceBook, I've seen dozens of pictures of the two of them smiling together as they attend concerts, conventions, and take vacations together. They write about how happy they were and what a good time they had together. I know they have been friends for well over two decades, possibly more. One of them used to be "best friends" with a third friend, but they bonded and the third wheel was shut out. She was left by the side of the road while they walked hand-in-hand through mutual interests.
One day, one of these two women, the quiet and compliant one, posted a message on FaceBook seeking opinions about a certain situation. In essence, she asked if two people had a falling out and had had a shared hotel room planned for an event, was it her responsibility to make it clear that the plans were off. She capped the request with the fact that the person of whom she was speaking had ended their argument with the statement that their friendship was "over forever."
Given the history these two women have, I guessed that this elementary-school-style speaking about someone who is not named but is clearly known to everyone was the buddy she'd gone on so many entertaining sojourns with. I checked her friends list and, sure enough, they were no longer joined on the social network. I then checked the other party's feed, the aggressive and outspoken one, to see her carp about how people can't expect others to read their minds and they have to make their wishes known. I left them to their grade-school sniping and pondered some deeper issues.
In this scenario, if you were asked to guess which one is fat and which one is a former beauty pageant contestant, which would you assign to each (admittedly vague) character set? There are stereotypes of fat women as brassy, loud, and overbearing, but, in my experience, they are not necessarily like that with friends. In fact, most of the fat women I know are bubbly, compliant, and overtly happy. In my experience, they are more so this when with skinny friends than other fat ones.
One thing I've read again and again from fat women who are wanting to lose weight is how they don't want to be "the fat friend". I ponder what it means to be "the fat friend" to such people. In many cases, it means that you are the one who someone else stands next to to make them look better.
I've also read, with some disgust, that some fat women don't want to have fat friends because they hate the way a posse of big girls "looks". They're afraid of drawing even more attention. They're also ashamed to be with fat friends. This makes me wonder if, in a friendship in which there is a fat girl and a thin girl, and especially when the smaller woman is considered "hot", that the fat girl may feel that she must defer to her friend. That is, she may feel, unconsciously, that she is being granted some special dispensation for being allowed to pal around with thin people.
In my own personal experience, I did not defer to my friend's wishes and tended to be more of an "alpha" female when I was with friends. That being said, I did always care about other people being happy. I was raised to always place myself last. Being fat made this very easy since I so often believed it made everyone "better" than me and their needs were more valuable than mine. Since I lacked value due to my fatness, this was logical.
In the case of my very good friends, it wasn't that my friends necessarily followed me, but rather that they tended not to have many ideas or assert themselves in general. It is likely that most of the women (all thin) who became my friends were also dealing with other self-esteem issues or social problems and that is part of why they were friends with me despite my weight. One of my good friends went to a church-affiliated school, could only wear skirts and dresses, and had to follow relatively strict rules. Another was two years younger than me and had an alcoholic father who beat her mother and threatened his children. My guess is that both of them felt "inferior" for their own reasons and my weight was either not a factor or an equalizing one.
In terms of people who were not my friends in particular, I didn't defer to their wishes, but for those who I wanted to be friends with because they generally seemed like nice people or were interesting, I tended to completely suppress my wishes and tried to anticipate their needs in order to convince them to like me. All of my yearbooks were filled with how "nice" I was. "Nice" was a euphemism for "boring" sometimes, but in my case, it was because I was always trying to get people to like me despite my fat body.
All of this leads me back to the meltdown that occurred between my two quasi-friends. It's my guess that the former failed model/beauty pageant contestant friend is accustomed to everyone wanting her time and attention regardless of what she says or does merely because she is perceived as being quite attractive. On more than one occasion, she has gone out of her way on FaceBook to say things which she knows are offensive to a certain segment of her friends. I know this because she says, "I know this is going to offend some of my friends, but..." Almost certainly unconsciously, she acts only on her own interests and doesn't worry where the chips fall because even if some people run away, others will fall in and replace them. Everyone wants to be buddies with the good-looking girl.
The other pseudo-friend, who probably weighs in the 300 lb. area, has probably been such a "good friend" mainly because she's also "nice". That is to say, she's focused on pleasing others rather than on pleasing herself. Based on their public squabbles, I'm guessing that she finally got tired of suppressing her wishes and said something which pointed out how selfish she believed her compatriot is.
As a footnote to all of this, I noted with some interest that the third wheel who got kicked to the curb when her best friend (the fat girl) bonded with her new friend (the skinny girl) and has been sitting on the sidelines for the better part of 20 years is now back in the picture. The thin friend is now professing how much she loves the third wheel and they're talking about how good a time they had going to a tea shop together. The third wheel is also quite overweight (probably 230-260 lbs.). Perhaps the skinny friend really does need a "fat friend" to make her feel more attractive, or this is merely coincidence. It presents an interesting dynamic regardless of the reasons.
I can't say for certain that this is a "fat friend/skinny friend" dynamic going on here because regardless of weight, people have basic personalities. Many fat women have stellar esteem and will assert themselves freely. I do, now. I stopped people-pleasing the first time I lost weight and didn't go back to it after I regained because I got tired of having to "prove" something to others in order to gain acceptance. I just accepted that I'd be rejected and everyone be damned. Also, being married to a husband who is almost god-like in his perfection psychologically, I had acceptance from someone who no one could ever surpass. That being said, to this day, I still have to fight not to sublimate my needs to his. It's not because he expects it of me, but rather because I view him as superior to me and his interests as paramount. It's my issue, and I keep working on it.
Getting back to the point, I do believe based on my own feelings in my younger days as well as witnessing the characters of various other fat women, that we don't express ourselves in general because society teaches us that we are not equal. In fact, it instantly devalues us with a glance. To get any value back, we have to prove that we are somehow better than others in other ways. We do that by being super nice, cooperative, generous, fun, and kind, even when it causes us to sacrifice our own needs.
Sunday, May 29, 2011
Up In Arms
There's a lovely woman out there who has been blogging about losing weight for quite some time and she recently started talking about an issue that is now also a matter of some concern for me. This woman is so well-known that once you know the topic, you'll know who she is if you're even marginally involved in weight loss blogging reading. The issue is flabby upper arms. Yes, I know, it sounds small and silly in the scheme of things, and it is definitely something I never considered until recently when I finally gave in and bought new shirts.
I bought the shirts on-line without the ability to try them on, and when they arrived, the sleeves were shorter than I expected. Since I bought them to work in during the hot summer months, the way in which I appear in them is more than trivial. I have to make a positive impression, and my upper arms, which are amply revealed in the new shirts, look like this:
Bear in mind that I've been doing modest arm toning exercises for well over a year. You can see the definition of a much thinner arm with some muscle tone within the sack of saggy, wrinkly flesh that my upper arm is. This hasn't happened because I haven't done any work on my body. It has happened because that skin is stretched out and has lost elasticity and isn't going back. I'd have to build up professional body builder level muscles to take up the slack, and that really wouldn't be any better.
While it is possible that it could retract a little bit through time, I'm not holding my breath. I've lost weight slowly over the last two years so this isn't the side effect of rapid weight loss. The soft flabby part has relatively little body fat in it. It's largely just skin with some shrunken adipose tissue. It's so flimsy that I can practically fold it around my arm like a thick blanket. No amount of effort is going to change how my upper arms look and I have to accept that.
I've written before that many people lose weight and expect to come out the other side looking toned and gorgeous, and that that is completely unrealistic no matter how hard you work unless you are young, lucky, and haven't been very heavy for very long. The picture above is the reality of weight loss for many women.
So, the question is, "what of it?" I'm not embarrassed by my arms, nor necessarily afraid to show them in public when I'm out living my usual daily life. People can gawk and stare all they like. They can whisper about my big, floppy, wrinkly upper arms. I'm not happy about this, but I am used to it. People still stare at my belly (which also has impressive hang despite being quite a bit smaller).
As much of my body as you'll probably ever see. You can see how my upper body looks pretty much to be of a normal weight, which makes those arms quite a contrasting shocker. And, yes, I intentionally blurred what was on the T-shirt as it might give too much away.
So, I've got a bunch of short-sleeved shirts that are inappropriate for my work and I'm making the best of it by buying the sort of jackets and sweaters which don't hold in much in the way of body heat but do cover my arms. Anyone who is paying attention will still see how big they are, but they won't see how stretched out and flimsy the flesh is. Considering how little of my face and upper body betray my true weight, this is all for the better.
I once made a list of good and bad reasons to lose weight, and listed "appearance" as a dual-edge sword reason. In terms of longevity of maintaining your losses, beauty is really a hard one because there are always going to be things you can't overcome which short-circuit your ability to become "beautiful", and my arms are ample illustration of that. Short of plastic surgery, they're never going to look good no matter what I do, and I can live with that because beauty was never one of my motivations.
I bought the shirts on-line without the ability to try them on, and when they arrived, the sleeves were shorter than I expected. Since I bought them to work in during the hot summer months, the way in which I appear in them is more than trivial. I have to make a positive impression, and my upper arms, which are amply revealed in the new shirts, look like this:
Bear in mind that I've been doing modest arm toning exercises for well over a year. You can see the definition of a much thinner arm with some muscle tone within the sack of saggy, wrinkly flesh that my upper arm is. This hasn't happened because I haven't done any work on my body. It has happened because that skin is stretched out and has lost elasticity and isn't going back. I'd have to build up professional body builder level muscles to take up the slack, and that really wouldn't be any better.
While it is possible that it could retract a little bit through time, I'm not holding my breath. I've lost weight slowly over the last two years so this isn't the side effect of rapid weight loss. The soft flabby part has relatively little body fat in it. It's largely just skin with some shrunken adipose tissue. It's so flimsy that I can practically fold it around my arm like a thick blanket. No amount of effort is going to change how my upper arms look and I have to accept that.
I've written before that many people lose weight and expect to come out the other side looking toned and gorgeous, and that that is completely unrealistic no matter how hard you work unless you are young, lucky, and haven't been very heavy for very long. The picture above is the reality of weight loss for many women.
So, the question is, "what of it?" I'm not embarrassed by my arms, nor necessarily afraid to show them in public when I'm out living my usual daily life. People can gawk and stare all they like. They can whisper about my big, floppy, wrinkly upper arms. I'm not happy about this, but I am used to it. People still stare at my belly (which also has impressive hang despite being quite a bit smaller).
However, in a professional setting where I have to "sell" myself and present an appearance which makes being with me appealing to people, I have to cover this up. The bottom line isn't how I feel about my arms, but rather how they do. If it makes them uncomfortable, even if their feelings are shallow and indicating a lack of maturity and tolerance, it is irrelevant to this question. I can crow bodily acceptance all I want, and maybe even decide to love my big, floppy arms (which I don't, I'm resigned and indifferent to them), but it won't change the fact that others aren't going to subscribe to my thinking and it will affect how I'm perceived at work and possibly reduce my earning potential (the "customer/client" can choose who he or she deals with without giving a reason).
As much of my body as you'll probably ever see. You can see how my upper body looks pretty much to be of a normal weight, which makes those arms quite a contrasting shocker. And, yes, I intentionally blurred what was on the T-shirt as it might give too much away.So, I've got a bunch of short-sleeved shirts that are inappropriate for my work and I'm making the best of it by buying the sort of jackets and sweaters which don't hold in much in the way of body heat but do cover my arms. Anyone who is paying attention will still see how big they are, but they won't see how stretched out and flimsy the flesh is. Considering how little of my face and upper body betray my true weight, this is all for the better.
I once made a list of good and bad reasons to lose weight, and listed "appearance" as a dual-edge sword reason. In terms of longevity of maintaining your losses, beauty is really a hard one because there are always going to be things you can't overcome which short-circuit your ability to become "beautiful", and my arms are ample illustration of that. Short of plastic surgery, they're never going to look good no matter what I do, and I can live with that because beauty was never one of my motivations.
Saturday, August 28, 2010
where you came from, where you are
Just a few days after I posted about not being able to "see" continued weight loss, something in my head clicked over and I could see changes in my lower body. It wasn't a specific change, and I hadn't even lost more weight, but suddenly I recognized an alteration in overall shape which was reminiscent of how I looked after my large weight loss in college about 25 years ago. Since I was never thin, I never experienced a flat stomach (and don't expect that I ever will), but there was a difference in how my belly looked in terms of overall shape which I suddenly started to see emerge.
Body image is a curious thing because it is almost as if your brain is stuck on a certain look and tunes out the changes that are occurring for a certain period of time. This seems to make some sense for people who look at themselves in the mirror everyday and the changes come along gradually. In such cases, changes would be understandably imperceptible.
However, even someone like me, who has no full-size mirrors and does not inspect her body closely or often, cannot see the changes even when the appraisal is spaced out over weeks or even months. You'd think I'd see the changes more clearly because bigger changes might occur if one waits longer to look. The truth is that I have never known my body very well because I avoided getting to know it.
I think for a lot of overweight people, and especially those who become very, very fat like me, we disconnect as much as possible from our physical forms. It is more often than not the case that we "imagine" what we look like more than we might be aware. When you're avoiding having your picture taken, don't walk in front of reflective surfaces and wear clothes that stretch so that size changes are harder to detect, you don't really know how "big" you are. This means that you can't easily see how much smaller you are except by numbers on the scale (which I don't measure very often) or by rather large changes in form which take months, possibly up to a year, to come along.
There are other reasons why someone who is very big may find that they cannot see the changes well which make logical sense, such as the fact that the impact of 10 lbs. lost on a nearly 400 lb. body is not going to be as noticeable as that same amount lost on a 150 lb. body. However, I think many of us find our bodies so loathsome that we simply don't really "see" who we are when we begin to lose weight. If you don't have a really good idea of where you've started from, you have difficulty knowing how far you've come.
Body image is a curious thing because it is almost as if your brain is stuck on a certain look and tunes out the changes that are occurring for a certain period of time. This seems to make some sense for people who look at themselves in the mirror everyday and the changes come along gradually. In such cases, changes would be understandably imperceptible.
However, even someone like me, who has no full-size mirrors and does not inspect her body closely or often, cannot see the changes even when the appraisal is spaced out over weeks or even months. You'd think I'd see the changes more clearly because bigger changes might occur if one waits longer to look. The truth is that I have never known my body very well because I avoided getting to know it.
I think for a lot of overweight people, and especially those who become very, very fat like me, we disconnect as much as possible from our physical forms. It is more often than not the case that we "imagine" what we look like more than we might be aware. When you're avoiding having your picture taken, don't walk in front of reflective surfaces and wear clothes that stretch so that size changes are harder to detect, you don't really know how "big" you are. This means that you can't easily see how much smaller you are except by numbers on the scale (which I don't measure very often) or by rather large changes in form which take months, possibly up to a year, to come along.
There are other reasons why someone who is very big may find that they cannot see the changes well which make logical sense, such as the fact that the impact of 10 lbs. lost on a nearly 400 lb. body is not going to be as noticeable as that same amount lost on a 150 lb. body. However, I think many of us find our bodies so loathsome that we simply don't really "see" who we are when we begin to lose weight. If you don't have a really good idea of where you've started from, you have difficulty knowing how far you've come.
Sunday, August 1, 2010
It's Not an Identity
There are no full-length mirrors in my home. The reason for this is two-fold. First of all, it's so small that there really is no place for one and I have a tendency to break mirrors or something happens beyond my control that shatters them (one once fell off my bathroom wall at my feet). Second, I have not wanted to look at my body for a very long time.
Not having a full-length mirror is both a good and bad thing. I'm sure that on the way up to 380 lbs., I might have been more aware of bodily changes if I had been looking at myself everyday. Maybe willfully ignoring your body is something fat people do so they don't have to face their self-loathing on a daily basis. Not torturing myself like that was probably a good thing. Now, I can't easily reassure myself that things are changing except by external environmental and lifestyle factors, like fitting in a chair with arms or being able to stand up more easily. Perhaps a full-length mirror would be a good thing now. Perhaps not...
Sometimes I leave my home feeling pretty good about myself, or at the very least not feeling bad about anything. I may have noticed some small change in my thinking or in my body and have my progress in mind or I may simply be in that brief, blissful state of not thinking about my weight or body at all. When you've been fat all of your life, you spend most of your time in front of other people thinking about your body because others are going to remind you of it. It's part of the way you develop your fat anger, fat PTS and defensive nature. Every time you walk out the door, it's into the war zone.
These days, it's possible for me to "forget" for brief periods of time that others define me by my body. That's when I walk out the door in a state of peace. Sometimes, I'll even walk for an entire half hour without someone drawing attention to my body. Even when others aren't there to bring me down, there are sometimes those reflective surfaces. I walk by a window or a mirrored metallic surface and all of my peace is tossed aside. At the moment that I catch a glimpse of my 240-something-pound-body, I'm no longer "me" as defined by my positive internal dialog, I'm once again this horrible fat person who still looks awful after losing the weight of an entire person.
One thing which I have realized as of late and that I'm going to start actively working on changing is that my body is not my identity. I think it is because all of my life people have focused excessively on it and judged me by it. They think they know everything about me and can define me with a glance. One of my husband's male friends when he first met me gave me a quick, vaguely-disgusted once-over and then pretended I didn't exist. He didn't even speak to me after that because my body was all he needed to "know" me.
There are two sides to this consideration of identity. The first is that I need to stop looking in reflective surfaces and feeling bad about myself when I otherwise felt good or at least neutral. "Fat" isn't an identity, no matter how hard the greater world would like to believe it is. Alternately, and this is perhaps of greater importance, "thin" also is not an identity. When I reach a state of no longer being overweight, I will not be defined by my body and I need to make certain that I don't attach value to a smaller body simply because people have been telling me all of my life that I lack value because I have a bigger body.
I have been thinking lately about people who have lost weight and continue to ruminate on their diet, exercise, and form. I have also been thinking about how they continue to write and talk about their BMIs, calorie counts, and exercise habits and how they wish to "inspire". While I am happy for people to be who they want to be and to achieve their goals, I'm not "inspired" by their continued focus on their bodies. I realize that for them "thin" is an identity, just as "fat" was an identity. They are the same people in different bodies, but their definition of self remains strongly tethered to their physicality. They have moved away from one bodily and food fixation to another.
For me, this type of body-based-identification is simply not my goal, so I cannot be inspired by the continued efforts of the super-fit out there. I don't want to be defined by my body anymore. I want to escape that place, not find another corner of that same room to live in. Essentially, moving from a socially condemned body status to a socially sanctioned one is what I see many people doing. Certainly, escaping the punishing state I find myself in as a fat woman is part of my goal, but no part of it is finding approval or praise from the same sources that have been abusing me for so long.
The thing is that people who have never been fat and have unremarkable and average-looking bodies in no way attach their identity to their form. They don't think of their average-looking body as defining themselves the same way that they don't look at their food choices as defining themselves. Their body isn't a factor in their self-image or the perceptions of others. They are who they are and their body is just a container. This is what I want to be at the end. I want to be me, not my body.
Not having a full-length mirror is both a good and bad thing. I'm sure that on the way up to 380 lbs., I might have been more aware of bodily changes if I had been looking at myself everyday. Maybe willfully ignoring your body is something fat people do so they don't have to face their self-loathing on a daily basis. Not torturing myself like that was probably a good thing. Now, I can't easily reassure myself that things are changing except by external environmental and lifestyle factors, like fitting in a chair with arms or being able to stand up more easily. Perhaps a full-length mirror would be a good thing now. Perhaps not...
Sometimes I leave my home feeling pretty good about myself, or at the very least not feeling bad about anything. I may have noticed some small change in my thinking or in my body and have my progress in mind or I may simply be in that brief, blissful state of not thinking about my weight or body at all. When you've been fat all of your life, you spend most of your time in front of other people thinking about your body because others are going to remind you of it. It's part of the way you develop your fat anger, fat PTS and defensive nature. Every time you walk out the door, it's into the war zone.
These days, it's possible for me to "forget" for brief periods of time that others define me by my body. That's when I walk out the door in a state of peace. Sometimes, I'll even walk for an entire half hour without someone drawing attention to my body. Even when others aren't there to bring me down, there are sometimes those reflective surfaces. I walk by a window or a mirrored metallic surface and all of my peace is tossed aside. At the moment that I catch a glimpse of my 240-something-pound-body, I'm no longer "me" as defined by my positive internal dialog, I'm once again this horrible fat person who still looks awful after losing the weight of an entire person.
One thing which I have realized as of late and that I'm going to start actively working on changing is that my body is not my identity. I think it is because all of my life people have focused excessively on it and judged me by it. They think they know everything about me and can define me with a glance. One of my husband's male friends when he first met me gave me a quick, vaguely-disgusted once-over and then pretended I didn't exist. He didn't even speak to me after that because my body was all he needed to "know" me.
There are two sides to this consideration of identity. The first is that I need to stop looking in reflective surfaces and feeling bad about myself when I otherwise felt good or at least neutral. "Fat" isn't an identity, no matter how hard the greater world would like to believe it is. Alternately, and this is perhaps of greater importance, "thin" also is not an identity. When I reach a state of no longer being overweight, I will not be defined by my body and I need to make certain that I don't attach value to a smaller body simply because people have been telling me all of my life that I lack value because I have a bigger body.
I have been thinking lately about people who have lost weight and continue to ruminate on their diet, exercise, and form. I have also been thinking about how they continue to write and talk about their BMIs, calorie counts, and exercise habits and how they wish to "inspire". While I am happy for people to be who they want to be and to achieve their goals, I'm not "inspired" by their continued focus on their bodies. I realize that for them "thin" is an identity, just as "fat" was an identity. They are the same people in different bodies, but their definition of self remains strongly tethered to their physicality. They have moved away from one bodily and food fixation to another.
For me, this type of body-based-identification is simply not my goal, so I cannot be inspired by the continued efforts of the super-fit out there. I don't want to be defined by my body anymore. I want to escape that place, not find another corner of that same room to live in. Essentially, moving from a socially condemned body status to a socially sanctioned one is what I see many people doing. Certainly, escaping the punishing state I find myself in as a fat woman is part of my goal, but no part of it is finding approval or praise from the same sources that have been abusing me for so long.
The thing is that people who have never been fat and have unremarkable and average-looking bodies in no way attach their identity to their form. They don't think of their average-looking body as defining themselves the same way that they don't look at their food choices as defining themselves. Their body isn't a factor in their self-image or the perceptions of others. They are who they are and their body is just a container. This is what I want to be at the end. I want to be me, not my body.
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