unreal

[rm]

While by and large society is preoccupied with thinking about female bodies, body image and body ideals, we sure do suck at discussing it.

Probably because it's not very catchy to say something like "it's good for your body to be the size it wants to be at its healthiest and good for you to enjoy the flesh you're living in to the utmost." Especially when most of us don't get to be as healthy as we want -- I'm not, and I'm one of the lucky ones.

Plus, it's much, much catchier to say stuff like "real women have curves" or "there's something wrong with you if you're attracted to fat/thin/boyish/thick/curvy/WHATEVER chicks" or to rag on people for being a size 4 or a size 24.

You know what? It all sucks. And I know men don't escape either -- on height and hair and width of shoulders, timbre of voice and god knows what else, but I can only tackle so much at once.

I will be the first to admit that I enjoy privlege by being a skinny chick. I get that. I really do. But being skinny doesn't make me less female and being boyish doesn't make me less deserving of desire and none of it, if I'm lucky, have sense, and work hard, should effect my sense of worth as a person.

This is one of those things that I want to write eloquently about, but know I probably can't without pissing someone off in same way I really don't intend.

I shouldn't have to always follow up any discussion of my size with "but I have celiac disease, it's not like I try to look like this." I also shouldn't have to deal with people, including medical professionals, assuming I have eating disorders because that's somehow easier than actually speaking to me.

I look the way I look. I happen to like it. It's probably a product of my celiac disease, other medical stuff and the fact that I danced 8-hours a day during large chunks of my childhood and work out like a maniac now because fencing owns me. I hope that I enjoy myself enough in general that I'd like the way I looked even if I were an entirely different size. I don't know. Given our society, I can't imagine I'd get away angst free. Hell, I barely, barely get away angst free now. After all, I'm making this post.

Because I believe in the fictional life, the self-created life, the multiple life, I'm not sure I know what a real anyone is. I'm certainly not going to sit here and say what a real woman or man or person is. I'm happily a bit fictional, but it isn't because I wear a size four.

We should be able to talk about our bodies without judging each other. We should be able to talk about what we desire without judging each other (who here has heard or intuited some version of "I want you so bad, but my friends wouldn't understand?" or been told that they can "do better" because the person they loved and thought was sexy beyond all sexy wasn't mainstream hot?).

I'm very happy in my very strangely fluid life. And if you don't think I'm a real woman, that's all well and good. But it's not because of my goddamn size.

Comments

[hangedwoman.livejournal.com]

You're right in that it all sucks and we suck at discussing it. Even those who are somewhat more evolved can't easily talk about some of the more negative aspects of it; it's much catchier to talk about how beautiful we are no matter what our size. And we ignore the reality of survey results that say the majority of people would rather lose a limb than be fat.

In my case the ugly truth is that when it comes to my size, I hate myself. Probably the majority of the time I think that I'm disgusting and repulsive. It's very difficult for me to look at photographs of myself without bursting into tears. Sometimes it seems the only way I can leave my apartment and go out into public is through a process of strenuous denial. But I'm not supposed to talk about that, because if that's how I feel about myself as a fat person, than how must I feel about other people who are fat? If I actually put it out there, no one cares about how hard it must be for me to feel that way about myself; they only care that I might not be entirely accepting of them. It doesn't matter that those feelings might in fact be another source of self-loathing.

I may be asking for it by making this kind of comment in a public post, but what the hell.

[rm.livejournal.com]

No, I think it's an entirely reasonable thing to talk about. I certianly didn't right this so a whole bunch of thin people can go "oh yeah, I hate that too."

the myth that as women we should all be on teh same side, about everything, all the time, drives me nuts. but when it comes to "supposed to's" we really should all be on teh same time. No tyranny of anything has ever done any woman any favours.