the beauty myth

I think everyone has the right to be fat but health reasons should always remain the overbearing concern of why people who are overweight should try to lose some (and that does include me). What I object to is not the fat factor of this country but the projections we make: that thin is beautiful, that beautiful people are automatically nice people etc etc. My daughter already asked me when she was 5 whether I thought if she was fat. At 6 she was looking at her butt in the mirror and now at 7 she has begun to obsess about the sugar content in food. Mind you, I only bitch about my own weight in the presence of my husband who thinks he compliments me when he says I have the classical figure (Rubens' women had classical shapes so what does that tell about me?!), and I try not to make weight judgments about other people in front of my daughter but nonetheless she has already picked up a lot, either from me or our culture which prescribes we should all try to be beautiful, eternally young...and plastic. And if all else fails there is stomach stapling and botox. How do I raise my daughter in a way that she won't have anorexia at 12? How can I undo the programming of her little brain cells that tells her that outer beauty will bring her more than inner beauty? Why can't we have inner beauty contests instead of the sexist and totally inane beauty contests? Why can't we tell our children that beauty comes in many ways, shapes and forms and has in fact nothing to do with how we should live our lives? I worry about this one for my daughter because I don't have any answers...

How we are programmed

My dear friend John Ambrose has a granddaughter Emily who is fat. My sister is fat. ...300 pounds fat. I just saw a play where one of the characters was very fat...and I reacted with superiority and disapproval.(I am, by the way, thin.)
I saw this darling little child, Emily eating with great gusto and IN MY HEAD I thought, "Someone ought to make that kid stop eating so much junk food or she will be big as a horse."
I look at my sister whom I hate because of her consistent sociopathic behavior toward me and I think IN MY HEAD (an sometimes out loud) "That fat pig! She wants everything for herself and gobbles up people just like she does food. She cannot get enough."
I looked at the fat lady dancing on the stage and I thought IN MY NOW OVERSTUFFED HEAD:"Boy she sure moves fast for such a fat horse."
Our society has programmed us to think that fat people over-indulge and over-stuff themselves with an excess of everything when in reality, each of us has a natural weight that our bodies will reach and stay if WE DON'T FUSS WITH THEM. If we were able to listen to our bodies and know when they are hungry and feed them only what they need, we would all be healthy and a lot of different, comfortable shapes. When we diet, when we intellectualize what we eat and what size our hips should be, we have robbed our physical selves of the right to find a comfortable state of being. When we project a personality trait on someone because they are skinny(over achiever, anorexic, hyper active, too intense, we have lost the delightful variety of a heterogeneous society: one that features all kinds of people and many definitions of beauty. We SAY that externals are superficial but until we stop judging others by their size, we are perpetuating the myth that size and shape ARE personality.
Hooray for Emily!!! Let her love her hot fudge sundaes and enjoy every bite. She is totally adorable and one more inch on her will only give us more of her to love.
I can no longer blame my sister's size for her disgusting personality. Our family let that happen. In reality she eats far less than I do. She is just genetically fat.
And rah rah rah for the lady on stage. Shake it Honey!!! You were great.

Letting Go

LETTING GO by Lynn Ruth
November 27, 2005

I wonder where we need to draw the line between standing up for ourselves and letting go of the abuse all of us must endure as we plod through life. To catch my readers up on the status of the appeal I lost, I applied for a re-hearing because of a miscarriage of justice and the presiding judge George Miram sent my request back to the pro-tem judge Richard Romanski who had ignored my documentation of the car sale and decided against me. And so Miriam’s injustice is added to the original affront. The lawyer who promised to help me if my appeal for a re-hearing backed out and I find myself consumed with hatred. Fury at Renee for lying and winning, driving my car without paying, lying in court and succeeding, fury at Richard Romanski who ignored written documentation proving our agreement, anger at George Miram for being so insensitive he sent my appeal to the very man who "did me in" to decide if there was basis for a re-hearing, fury at a system that says it will protect the elderly and does not respond unless the senior is dead and anger at lawyers who won't touch a case unless it means hundreds of thousands in fees to them.
This judgment goes far beyond the 1600 dollars this woman owes me in court. It proves that anyone who screams loud and long can take anything they want away from another who is weaker and more vulnerable. It proves that a man who is prejudiced against the elderly (or could it be Jews...I hate to think THAT is still an issue) has the power to act on his bias in a court that is supposed to protect its citizens.
My conclusion is this: Renee and everyone like her has won in this society. She is free to abuse others, steal from them and lie at will and no one will try to stop her because she has no scruples about manipulating truth. What haveI learned? It is a sad lesson: I need to try to live my life as carefully as I can because anyone and everyone can cheat, steal and abuse me and I have no protection whatsoever. It is a very frightening assessment of our society but it is sadly a true one. Now when someone is kind to me I recoil and refuse because I fear they will turn the favor they have offered against me. It has happened too many times before.
They say that a government is judged by how they treat the elderly and the poor. I am both.
And I will always lose.