Dear Readers:
Before I resume being an astrologer (a little later than planned today) I’ve added a new post to the current Book of Blue thread on body image. Here is a brief excerpt:
Once the photos are published, I’ve heard many comments, sometimes angry, from women about how they think the women they see in the photographs feel about themselves, and usually they are wrong in their assessment. Generally, if a woman perceives another woman as more attractive than herself, she will also assume that the �more attractive’ woman feels better about herself. In other words, if a heavier woman sees a thinner woman, she will assume that there are no body issues to go along with that thinner body. This is simply not a true generalization.
The thread continues through the week.
Oh man, do I know about that negative body stuff! As a kid in the 60’s and 70’s, I was big-boned, big-hipped, big thighed, taller than most and had a belly-dancer’s belly that would never go away; this when women were more like thin narrow tubes. Between my peers and my messed up mother, I learned to hate my body. Being molested at 6 years old by a family friend and later at 13 in a public bathroom, and my parents’ divorce when I was 7, I soon learned that being fat was a good shield. It didn’t help that I also have hyperinsulinemia and that doctors didn’t know that kids chunk out just before a growth spurt so they had me on diets since I was 2 months old. All that dieting made my body become an excellent fat packing machine. Now I am morbidly obese and I hate my body. Back in my twenties, I was only 20 lbs overweight for about two years and I felt uncomfortable even then because my lovers kept telling me to lose weight!
My current husband of 21 years keeps telling me he loves the “whole package” and that is so hard for me to understand. When I have sexual fantasies, I am thin in them. I dream myself as thin. When I was thin, I felt “vertical” but now I feel “horizontal” again. Thin people have no idea what it is like to be trapped inside a body that is three times bigger than you want it to be. I can’t have sex like everyone else because I am too fat to fit together like everyone else. So even if I started loving my body, it still would impede me in many ways from how I am perceived in public to how I can move in real spatial time. The fat also makes nerve endings less sensative so I feel touch less well than when I was thinner. It affects my libido too.
People say “just lose weight” and I have tried and tried but my own body fights that effort every time. Despite all my weight, I don’t have the medical problems of most obese people. I was 5′ 10″ tall when I was 14, though I have shrunk about an inch and a half from weight and age. I have low to normal blood pressure, normal to low blood sugar, cholesterol at about 200. Only my triglycerides can get high if I eat normally; I have to eat a low glycemic diet to keep those down.
My feet, hands, ankles and wrists are thin. I am pear shaped for the most part. My doctors say I am an anomaly they cannot figure out; by all accounts I should be diabetic according to them, but I am not. My heart is fine, too.
I was infertile for most of my young adult life so after fertility treatments for five years, I finally had twins. I remember lying on the floor a few weeks after having them and marveling that my body finally did something I wanted it to do. It made me cry and I actually loved my body for a short time.
Sorry about this book, but fat people have no voice in this country. Everyone seems to think we are fat by choice when science keeps finding more and more genetic and physiological reasons (there’s even an adeno virus that can make you fat) for fatness that have nothing to do with lifestyle or how people eat.
My body image and hatred of it is so bone deep I don’t know if I will ever feel good about it. Especially as I live in a culture that automaticaly assumes I am:
lazy, overeating, stupid, lacking will power, lacking self control, dirty, ugly, slovenly.
In public, I feel like I have to eat less than everyone else because people DO look at me differently. I have to work harder than thin people to prove I am not lazy. I have to pretend I don’t feel the stares or animosity from people. Discrimination against fat people is a prejudice that is not only allowed but too often encouraged by society, our media, and our schools. There are no accomodations for fat people; fatness is not seen as a legitimate disability even though it does prevent us from doing many things in life that thin people can do.
I KNOW I am a wonderful person, but I have to live in this world so I am treated like a second-class human because of my weight. I feel like I have to spend so much time being perfect, being exceptional as a person, to make up for being fat.
Blacks feel this too, but they have legal recource for being discriminated against….I have none. I can no more change my body than they can change their black skin.
I harm no one, help many, care about everyone, work hard, do so much, am a good citizen, good parent, good friend, good wife and good person yet I am villified for something I cannot help, something that is only the shell I live in.
This is why when people talk about women hating their bodies, I think “you are damn right, we do.” For me, I don’t know if I can ever love my body. It gets in the way too much.
Well said.
“I just barely have the focus to feed and take care of myself properly. I do it, but I’m right on the edge. How would I be able to take care of a child, and still do what I need to do as a member of society or as a creative person?”
I don’t know where to comment on this from the weekly astrology news but I thought it was as good a place as any. I couldn’t let this pass Eric – the obvious answer is something like “as well as you can”, “as well as you are meant to” or “as well as most of us”.
If you start from the proposition “there is no such thing as coincidence”, it has to be the case that we all find the parents we are meant to have for our soul’s journey. That’s not to say that it is an easy journey for some, or that negligence from parents is acceptable. But no matter what, we end up with the journey we are meant to have. So expecting perfection from any of us as parents is just unrealistic and completely pointless.
I really think that as parents we can do it all ie be the right parents to our children, be as creative as we can be in the circumstances and contribute to the world as we go. The way we do that may change if our lives and loves involve little people, but it doesn’t make sense to me to use our public lives as an excuse for not pursuing our private lives. In exactly the same way that we shouldn’t use our private lives as an excuse for not pursuing our public lives.
Whether our private lives then include children is yet another very personal question. But you have to deal with the first basic truth before you even get to that question. The important thing as conscious people is to be open to all possibilities and not to close our minds to what our journey, and those of the people we love, might involve.
I am saddened to learn that many women feel as they do about their bodies. I cannot say I am surprised taking into account the early conditioning about what is *pretty* and how that somehow automatically validates that person to being a desirable. If a woman doesn’t FEEL that desire that is innately hers she cannot in truth interact confidently or erotically or passionately in the *many* aspects of this beautiful life. Why do many men aspire to ‘get’ the woman who is the ‘model’ model? Is that a man’s way to gain acceptance or higher status by bedding a woman who’s on the A-list? (taking into account the social norms of heterosexual coupling). So, do women ever think about how they are viewed in another woman’s eyes? Would they then feel differently about themselves. If so, how so?
It is good that these women that have worked with Eric on this have felt safe and are willing to explore this territory. In summary we will learn about each other and the commonalities that we share.