Actually, I'm not, but I'm thinking about it, although I ate some earlier and really would prefer not to put more padding on my hips. Or belly. Or anywhere else. Ok, my wrists could maybe stand a little.
In the picture I'm actually licking lemon juice off my pinkie. Or pretending to, I think. I was shooting myself for "smile"and ended up really liking this one. It kinda shows my new bangs. Or definitely shows my kinda-bangs. Can't decide which to say, so I said them both. The bangs are a little noncommittal, more of a short upper end of face-framing layers than anything else. I mostly like them, although I'm super-low-maintenance on hair and they tend to part themselves in the middle, and I can't decide if that's a good acceptable look for me.
This is, in case you haven't noticed, just a chatty narcissist entry. Thought you might like a heads-up, even though it's a bit late.
So, yeah, bangs. Got 'em. First time since 1994, unless you count a couple of short haircuts I had in between, but those weren't really bangs because it was all short. Right? Moving on from the bangs and back to the cookie dough on my hips...a couple of years ago I managed to exercise major self-discipline and carve some undisciplined pudge off myself right before getting pregnant with Xander. I felt really good and was on the right track to maintain it afterward, but then hit that 6-12-month post-partum slump that I get, and rediscovered my sweet tooth, and I'm right back where I started. Gah! Very frustrating, especially since I'd gotten rid of bigger clothes and developed more of my own style, but now most of it won't fit / isn't comfortable and that, of course, brings the self-loathing. EXCEPT that at the same time I've been delving back into some serious feminist thought and as a sidebar to that, have been giving a lot of thought to "fat acceptance" AKA "size acceptance" and the idea of health not necessarily being related to what size you are, and bodies having their own right sizes, and I'm wondering how much of my size is what's right / genetically normal for me and how much is habits that I can (should?) change. I've been noticing the hate we spill onto each other regarding sizes - not only finding larger people unappealing, but also saying mean things about people - especially women - thinner than ourselves. We're all "real" and suggesting that anybody who isn't thin or isn't curvy or isn't something else is a) unhealthy, b) morally bankrupt, c) unattractive, d) worthless, or e) all of the above and more is just ridiculous.
Hmm, so this isn't just a stream-of-consciousness chatty blog, it's about FAT. Which is, apparently, on my mind. So I'll go with it.
Growing up, I heard a lot of both fat-hate and skinny-hate. Pretty crazy. Tall, thin women were described as "anorexic", even though their actual appetites and personal body image issues were unknown to us. Much more bile was spewed about people - again, especially women - who were perceived to be overweight. The assumptions made about their habits, their health, their moral character were just stunning. Stores carrying larger sizes were considered sneer-worthy. I wish I were joking. I'm just now starting to understand how much Fat Fear and Loathing was drilled into me. I'm genetically predisposed to curvitude, which essentially means I was trained to hate myself. I'm not sure how much control I can - or should - take over my curves. Really, as far as health goes, I'm beginning to understand two things: 1) larger size is not necessarily unhealthy, and 2) all I can really do is pay attention to how my own body feels. I know that right around my current size and shape, I start feeling crappy. So I should listen to that. And I don't find that hard to handle. But the personal-appearance baggage is way, way heavier. I'm horribly self-conscious about my appearance. This past week, during which it became obvious that summer is totally here and that last summer's wardrobe is not quite cutting it for me (or, more to the point, cutting into me too much), I felt enormously self-conscious. Being at the upper limits of the sizes on most clothing store racks doesn't help, especially since I'm short, so I feel like I *should* be in the low-to-mid part of that range. GRRR, ARGH.
So, at the same time as I was going down the well of self-loathing, the "fat acceptance" tweets of several people I follow on Twitter were picking up. Maybe it's in the air at this time of year, I dunno. Thanks to women like Elizabeth of Spilt Milk, I started questioning my assumptions about whether or not a person can be fat (not pudgy fat, but "fat fat") and healthy, or fat and beautiful. I'll admit, the aesthetic issues are harder for me than the health angle - I'm not really ready to embrace every belly on The Fat Experience as "beautiful" and I question whether we should expect every person to define every other person as beautiful - but the thing is, I'm actively questioning it.
I'm also watching watching the Fat Rant (and its two follow-ups) from Joy, who writes the Fat Rant blog. Watch them. Seriously.
I recently read about a banned Lane Bryant commercial - evidently Victoria's Secret runway models can parade their boosted boobs on TV but a "plus-sized" woman getting ready for a date is showing too much cleavage. I call BS, folks. At any rate, I found the LB woman to be gorgeous without finding her intimidating, and ended up wondering what sizes LB carries. I checked out their site. Oh, good gracious, those models look so amazing! And the clothing! It looks like it was designed for my body instead of for the willowy, sinewy woman I've always aspired to be! I mean, it's not all necessarily my style (which tends more toward the vintagey, Etsyish, Anthropologie look with a dash of teen-girl-in-screenprint-tee thrown in), but it all looks like it was designed by somebody who understands a body with curves. I'm so, so, so tired of trying on blouses that weren't designed to have DD boobs in them.
And you know? After looking at their site, I didn't hate myself. I lusted after the clothing with consumerist greed, sure, but I didn't feel despair. Well, except for despair that I'm a "tweener" who is too small for their clothing, yet too curvy for most "regular" stores.
On Monday I walked into a store behind a woman who was wearing a dress that I own. I've never worn the dress - I picked it up on clearance because it was SO fabulous in this modern-meets-90s-meets-50s sensible-sexpot kind of way. It fit just a touch snug at the time, and I was losing weight, and I never had a place to wear it (date got cancelled, bah). I tried it on the other day and felt SO unattractive in it. TOO FAT. But you know, then I saw this woman walking into the store wearing my dress, and she looked AWESOME. And I looked hard at her butt, and it's like mine. Maybe bigger, I dunno. I got ahead of her to get another angle. She's just as curvy as I am. And she looks smokin' in that dress. And I probably do, too. So what's my problem?
Last weekend, I defended a thin woman when her friend made snarky comments about her size. Our conversation occurred during a peformance in which I saw a large, strong man dance with more grace than most people will ever dream of having.
I'm still feeling self-conscious, though. About how I look, even about people reading size-acceptance posts from me and assuming I'm fat. Although, so what if they do? Would that be so horrible? At the same time, I worry that I'm not fat enough to advocate for healthy body image. WTF is that?
Regardless of what body I'm in, who says you have to be in a certain weight class to talk about or think about this stuff? Isn't our cultural baggage due to too few people raising awareness?
