Living as a traditionally built woman in a town which houses shops that only sell clothes up to size 10 and where anorexia is the main problem of weight control has its drawbacks. Remaining on the outside of the main thoroughfare of one’s town is to always feel disconnected.
This brings up a question about the meanings of one’s life. Is life to be endured, and not to be participated? Not to be fully lived? The life of an American woman is fraught with expectations of attractiveness and desirability and endurance that are linked to being thin, and therefore being acceptable.
In this town, all of the shops are designed for the lithe and slim. Therapy is geared toward the nervous and anxious. So many have wounds from childhood’s journey that it is common to medicate anxiety and fear so that it slips away, falls into a crevice and is never seen or felt again. The prescription drugs given out are designed to enhance the serotonin levels of those depressed, which are apparently, two out of three.
We go to bed with mouth guards, we station armed attendants in our schools, speak against drugs found on the street, drink alcohol wildly in our homes and other secret places, and yet, and yet, we succumb to the delusion that all of the world would be happy with just organic food, tight abs and a small butt, and a choice of either running or biking on a daily basis. I am presuming gleaming white evenly placed rows of straight teeth, because surely that doesn’t need to be spelled out.
I know that there is in the works at this moment, a ground-breaking book on the latest way to not diet and yet to lose weight. Hundreds of people will subscribe to this, and will be positively radiant in their weight loses, until the next fear is tapped by yet another book in competition with some famous author, who is undoubtedly a young tanned, handsome man with a trim body, and a practical way of swaying a woman’s mind with the latest scientific test.
Has it never occurred to anyone that if it were possible to create people without a body image problem they could actually rule the modern world? How many people do you know who routinely lift, bob, peel, tuck and Botox? I know — it’s disheartening to realize that one may be the only woman on the planet- at least in America with full hips, and a thin mouth, who can wear a medium cup bra. OMG!
I ask you — where have all the girls with hips gone? Have they outlawed them — denied them the right to marry or breed? All of the children that I see in my town between the ages of fifteen to fifty seem to be narrow, really narrow.
I never knew such slim people existed in nature, and thought that the phenomenon was an artifact. Now, it seems they are the rather exotic long stemmed species for which I have no reference. None. No one in my family, my neighborhood, or my school, that I might remember, ever had that quality of lithe slimness now so common as to be ubiquitous.
I picked up a booklet at the supermarket this week, just reading randomly through the pages. On one page is an article discussing who isn’t wearing their clothes well, and what they ought to be doing to change that; on another following, is an article showing the Dachau-thin arms of several of the models we most yearn to be like. On another the discussion is about who has gained weight, and whether they are now pregnant, as they have some teeny bit of tummy. More articles herald the antics of famous people. Fame means all those whose lifestyle is followed closely, apparently in hopes that whatever they possess, their fame or fortune may rub off on me, and bestow me with superiority like those I secretly admire.
I myself am most fond of our trips to Hawaii, where among the magnificently proportioned South Pacific Island women and men, I feel dainty. I have almost never experienced that freedom to move as when I was there. It was overwhelming to think that some people feel that way all of the time. In my memory we are there swaying, with bodies all rounded and comfortable, tummies, bottoms, and fronts all graceful and acceptable, beautiful and proud. I would wish that freedom on every ten year old girl who is about to enter the world of young women.
And then it hit me. My issues with my body are yet another way for me to think obsessively, and negatively, to indulge myself in a spot of self-abusive talk. The attraction is to think of myself all the time, and berating myself for the failures of the flesh. What is that but a warped and sick sense of ego, that one could spend so much of their waking hours focused upon themselves.
I have been trying to say to my innermost self — hey you — you there! You are the only person you will ever be, there will never be another you. You are whatever and whoever you are, and nothing is going to take that away from your reality, so either give it up, change it or get on with life without apologies!
A bold and brave statement. I half listened to me, and thought- well, there is some truth in that and you have got to make some decisions about the rest of your life, and how you are going to treat yourself.
Fairy tales are often good moral warnings. While I am not making myself a halo just yet, I am thinking that a woman obsessed with herself isn’t much company, whether it is the wicked witch looking in the mirror to be the fairest in the land, or the princess looking for the pea in the stack of beds. Either way, it’s just a distraction, and I can’t afford it. Not anymore. I want to get on with life too much for that.
Today may be what I have, and how did I want to spend that precious twenty-four hour gift? Maybe today, I can just write down the insanity, try to live in peace, and do no harm. To love others. That may be the total of it. Just for today.