Accepting My Body, My Self
I have had a turbulent relationship with my body for the past forty years. Who hasn’t huh? Well actually more like thirty years, up until then I had no awareness of my body per se it was like, just there. Then one day my evil fat step-mother who I loved anyway declares to me ‘You are fat’ like fat is a really dreadful thing to be and casts a spell on me. Twiggy became my role model.
I’ve had anorexia, bulimia and every other eating disorder in the book since then. ‘Fat’ was like a dread disease, to be avoided at the price of health, happiness and even divine salvation.
When not being literally ‘whipped into shape’ my body always always takes on this size and shape that, though not fat, could best be described as voluptuous. Or plump. My tits grow, my ass grows and all those other places that boys like.
I don’t want to be voluptuous. Voluptuous sounds so sleazy you know like you are deliberately trying to sexually seduce. And then through no fault of yours, cause like hey I don’t want to seduce anyone, guys are jumping you and your girlfriend gets wary when you are around her guy.
And plump, well it rhymes with frump so go figure. I don’t want to be ‘plump’. My evil step mother was actually plump. I definitely do not want to be a frump, I may not intend to seduce but I am also not about to hide my light under no basket. It is not an offer to touch, look, comment on or for sale.
‘Big and beautiful’ sounds too much like a dressed up elephant don’t you think. I don’t even like ‘big’;
‘She’s a big girl’ what the hell does that mean? That I’m an adult or that I can whup your ass? Kinda butch, kinda dominatrix. Too aggressive wouldn’t you agree? Rubenesque, is that a puzzle?
Ok, enough already. Let’s just describe it as Lesley’s size. It ain’t that bad you know. Feminine, soft, and according to all the charts within a healthy range for my height. I got tits, I got nice ‘childbearing hips’, a bit of ass, round moon face and chubby cheeks. I look healthy. I feel strong. I feel grounded.
So why the hell am I obsessed about losing weight? Why are most of my female friends obsessed with losing weight even though I look at them and see beautiful women. For sure there is obese but not among the people I am talking about.
Well, I do worry that if I get too fat my significant other will ‘look’ at other women. That’s right he’ll look and he’ll fuck them too if he’s that type of guy, no matter my size.
I do worry about keeping up with the Joneses so to speak, measuring myself against the standards set up by a consumer society via the mass media. ‘Oh look at Pricilla Presley, she doesn’t look a day older than her grand daughter!’.
Will I be able to afford a face lift when I need it? Right now the prospects don’t look too good so I just watch ‘Extreme Makeover’ imagining that someday it could be me! Join the Forever Young Club! The sheer vanity of it all!
Are you up to date on all the latest buzz from the fitness and health world? Are you abreast of contemporary or is it conventional wisdom? Being fat could mean that you are out of the loop. Haven’t you heard it can kill you?!!
Bugger the lot of them I say! Let’s make unhealthy fashionable! Conventional! Contemporary! Hey, we are all going to die anyway! Just venting.
Beyond what I need to do to ensure that this old body of mine runs efficiently and optimally (both terms are of course highly subjective) I refuse to subject this faithful body of mine to any further abuse in the name of ‘losing weight’ or ‘dieting’ or ‘controlling my weight’ or health fad.
Instead I have decided to live with the weight that my body, reacting very sensitively and sensibly to environmental and other external and internal conditions, wants to be and start loving it anyway. And all other bits and pieces that have been featured on this blog previously.
Besides I can always get a new wardrobe, what fun! I haven’t changed my wardrobe since… seems like I
have had this same wardrobe like forever, how boring! Oh yeah it is definitely time for a change! I have entered the second half of my life I might as well reinvent ‘the look’. I can see it already…
I have broken the wicked witch’s spell!
Meanwhile, there are a million and one changes in my body every day, my skin is changing, my voice is changing, my face is changing. Change always brings on a little apprehension but I am finding the whole process fascinating.
I feel like a child that is discovering new things every day. A different texture to my skin and hair, not bad, not unpleasant, just different. A greater awareness of my menstrual cycle and my moods.
I know popular culture says that I should be fighting off all these ‘symptoms’ of old age (it’s a disease you know) with every penny that I make but I want to experience it and be able to talk about it with other women at least! And not just in a how do you prevent it way either! But in a non judgmental, positive, enhancing manner that acknowledges and appropriates the energy of this change.
Appearance is very important in this very constructed world in which we live but the fountain of youth thing is so over marketed. Whatever happened to those images of white hair as wisdom and wrinkles as character? Come to think of it they’re still around, they just seem to apply only to men! Alas, the patriarchy stands accused once again! Woman arise and reclaim your power! Love yourself.
Do not say it! I am not growing old gracefully, that’s just another one of the ideological traps; they use it to market geriatric products (they also market them as stay healthy forever products) or make you oppose and go out and buy stay young for ever products. Neither claim is true of course.
Undoubtedly the ‘things of youth’ were good but I’m sure the things of maturity will be just as good once I get off the media powered merry-go-round and start to discover and enjoy them. I am not buying that hopelessly boring picture of the retired grand parents perpetually on vacation.
I am not growing old at all! I am growing in wisdom! And I am here to stay no one is going to ‘retire’ me like I am some old farm horse past its prime. I’m going to be doing my thing whatever that is till I lie down to die which will be when my living no longer adds value to the people around me. No bedpans and stomach tubes for me folks.
How come nobody suggests we die gracefully? How come nobody likes to talk about the day they going to die? A computer program told me that I could live to be 78 despite my rather ‘unhealthy’ lifestyle. I’m actually pushing to clock 80 after that we’ll see. I need at least another 40 years to apply all the wisdom gathered in the first 40, of course I could die tomorrow and it will all become a mute point.
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