Two things

[theatokos]

Thing One:
Tuesday night Adam, fictional_emily (who's not posted once yet. Would you get on that?), the Future Governor of Alaska, and I went to see Hem in the city. I love Hem. They are unequivocally my favorite band. I love their kind of Americana-roots-whathaveyou kind of music. The lead singer, Sally, is also about 8 months pregnant. I thought it might throw off her breath control, 'cuz a full uterus just might inhibit the ol' diaphragm, but no. She sounded better than ever. I have plans to sing in a band like that. The opening band, Ollabelle, was AMAZING. I literally sat up in my seat. I liked them live better than their album (which I purchased at the show), which sounds accurate but a little compressed. I liked the raw, expansive quality of their live show.

During the show I just had such an overwhelming feeling of satisfaction. Excellent music inspiring my soul and creativity, plus good friends on all sides - people with whom I am completely in love with. Yes, in love with. What a blessing to feel that about the people in my life. It was a moment of joy.

Thing Two:
My upstairs neighbor and friend, Lauren Gard, wrote a great cover story about being fat for the Eastbay Express. Let me clarify: Lauren is not fat (far, far from it! Here I go proving the point of the last paragraph of the article.); the article was on the fat acceptance movement and how the anti-obesity craze is getting out of hand. I, for one, think there is an epidemic of unhealth in this country, however it comes in a variety of forms. One of those forms is obesity, certainly. Cheap, abundant crappy food is the norm and most people just don't get enough exersize. People are getting fatter and unhealthier. However, thanks to this, other people who are large naturally but still active and eat well get swept up into the fat hating anti-obesity campaigns. The second form of unhealth is the obsessive demand that women be thin. Thin doesn't equal healthy.

What really got me thinking in the article was the end comment that if we're not fat (and if we are we should feel shame) we're afraid of becoming fat. This is so true. Being stupid doesn't carry the same stigma as being fat. Being selfish or any other kind of character defect (save pedophilia) does not carry the stigma that being fat does. As much as I try to focus on health, I too am caught up in not being fat. Sometimes I think that I am invested in my size because I've been the same size for nearly 20 years. I haven't grown since I was 14 and I'm actually thinner than when I was 15. Yeah, I'm attached to being this size. But, there is still pressure to not get any bigger. Heaven forbid that I gain weight as my metabolism slows. Heaven forbid I get pregnant and don't lose the babyfat. Heaven forbid that I decided I want to eat even more cheese. It's really stupid when I think of it.

The article got me thinking about that whole "who am I not to be beautiful" kick I was on a few weeks ago. If truly fat women can do synchronized swimming and burlesque and feel great about themselves, then what's my excuse for being self conscious? What's yours? Who are we not to be beautiful?

Comments

[erinya.livejournal.com]

Great article, and good timing for me since I've been struggling with some vicious body-hate this past week or so.

[goddessofmercy.livejournal.com]

sounds like a lovely concert experience.

also, your friend wrote a great article. how lovely for those women at the resevoir, to have a self-affirming experience like that. your comments do touch on something that bothers me about the fat acceptance movement though, and i could feel this way because i don't know much about the fat acceptance movement (i'm going to call it "fam" from now on). but it has always seemed to me that the fam wants people to embrace their largesse, regardless of how they came to be that way. what i mean is that fat women who exercise regularly and so on are in the same category as people who don't exercise and eat tons of junk food. to me those are two separate categories. for the first i am completely behind the fam, for the second i feel like eating healther and exercising regularly would be a good thing to support, and they should be encouraged to feel great about however they look when they are being healthy. does that make sense? am i just responding to a tiny portion of the fam, and most fat acceptance people sort of have that caveat built in?

[goddessofmercy.livejournal.com]

although i suppose the health at any size movement directly addresses my thoughts.

[ewigweibliche.livejournal.com]

I completely understand and agree with your distinction between those who are fat and healthy and those who are morbidly obese. It's the same sort of double standard that thin has: thin is to be praised, whether natural and healthy or "acheived" through complete control and extremes. Once again I attribute this to our love of extremes; finding the middle way is much more of a challenge.

However, I can't really speak for what the FAM actually stands for. I know about them mostly through this article.

[goddessofmercy.livejournal.com]

I completely understand and agree with your distinction between those who are fat and healthy and those who are morbidly obese. It's the same sort of double standard that thin has: thin is to be praised, whether natural and healthy or "acheived" through complete control and extremes. Once again I attribute this to our love of extremes; finding the middle way is much more of a challenge.

absolutely, and i think the bmi is just one symptom of this. it's too hard to take muscle mass into account when weighing someone, so they just don't. it seems that fashion-wise society advocates the most difficult image to achieve, like fat being attractive in the middle ages when food was scarce for the general populace or pale skin being attractive when most people worked in the fields and then tan skin being in vogue when the workers moved indoors. why does society always seem to make it as hard as possible for people to fit in to the current accepted ideals?

i really enjoyed the article, but sometimes i had a hard time figuring out which group was advocating what. perhaps this is because there are so many little offshoots, or perhaps it was because it was hard to tell from the quotes whether the various opinions and ideas were personal or group opinions. like i agree that the diet industry is quite awful in general, but it isn't true that are are no long term proven "diets," depending on the definition of the word "diet." the word seemed to mean various things to the various people interviewed. at some points diet was used to mean a temporary regimen used by people to lose weight rapidly. at other times it meant general eating habits. those are two very different things, as i am sure you know.*g*