Inkwell: Authors and Artists

    
There is actually a commercial that operates on that very principle--
women out fitness-walking one-upping each other on the terrible things
they had for dinner until the last one rhapsodizes over her Lean
Cuisine.
  

    
Oh, I know I wouldn't be happier if I lost that 25 lbs.  It's not the
weight, it's where I was in my life and how I still had all these
possibilities in front of me--that's what i think I'm trying to get back
to.  You know how some people cling to an old hairstyle that is out of
date, but that was the best period of their lives so they keep wearing it?

And isn't that what the adolescent girls are doing when puberty starts and
you don't want that, so you'll just stay back there where it's safe, back
at 80 lbs. or whatever.

I'm 45, I feel like I no longer have all the opportunities, adventures and
possibilities in front of me--how can I capture that?  I know, I'll try to
lose some weight and get back into some old clothes, get in shape and get
more energy and maybe I'll re-create a new future to look forward to.
  

    
When it comes to appearance, some women do tend to ritualize their
behaviors - it's like a "job" for them.  You know those women who have
regularly scheduled appointments for facials, manicures, highlights,
wax, gym class, etc.?  Weekly, monthly, daily, this many hours devoted
to that - and without fail?  I mean, think about all the time and
energy (not to mention money) spent on physical appearance
"appointments."  

If someone from another planet came here, they'd think American women
were the most compulsive species they'd ever seen.  If only women could
channel all this energy, organization, whatever it is, into something
PRODUCTIVE and FULFILLING!
  

    
Hex - losing weight to achieve a media-appropriate look at ANY age
won't create adventure, possiblities, opportunities...that's a total
myth.  Looking like that doesn't create happiness or open up a world of
fantastic possibilities.  And second, you're so YOUNG.  At whatever
weight, you're only 45.  Go follow your dreams! That has nothing to do
with how much you weigh.  
  

    
I talked about that oneupsmanship between women in one of my very
first posts in this discussion.  The whole faux self-deprecating, "My
thighs are SO fat," "No, you should see the cellulite on MINE," blah
blah blah barf.  Remember those shampoo commercials that said, "Don't
hate me because I'm beautiful"?  In our culture, there's a paradoxical
message:  Become beautiful, but don't FEEL beautiful, or don't let
anyone know if you do feel beautiful, because then you lack humility. 
It reminds me in a weird way of how, as girls, many of us who were
considered "smart" (not good for a girl) had to say, "Oh, golly gee,
me, smart?  Not really."

Molly - I saw your pic on your website.  Let me get this straight: You
want to lose 25 pounds?  25?!  Um, hello?  Are you nuts?  You mean to
tell me that the same person who sounds so rational in her posts to
this discussion paid a visit to weight watchers?  I wish I could email
you a mirror, cuz whatever mirror you're using is clearly defective.  

What's that saying?  Something like, "The image women see in the
mirror is a reflection not of their bodies, but of how they feel about
themselves."
  

    
The way women talk about food - like it's pornography - shows our
love/hate relationship with it.  We talk about lusting after certain
foods, yet we spend thousands of hours figuring out ways to avoid the
very things we're passionate about.  And this deprivation only makes
the yearning more acute.  I can't STAND talking about food with a group
of women.  Like sitting down to lunch in a restaurant and having that
discussion about what everyone's ordering and what diet everyone's on
and how fat everyone feels.  Yuck.

I wonder, if we have a limited capacity for storing information in our
brains, what would women use that space for if they erased the
enormous font of information about food and diets and the shape of
their butts?  Like erasing from a computer hard drive - would we have
just lots of blank space ready for new data?  If so, what kind of data
would we put there instead?  Wouldn't it be liberating to have that
brain space available for something INTERESTING?  
  

    

Since I've stopped caring about my weight or dieting, and I'm not obsessed
with food or eating, I've come to realize I've lost a major way of bonding
with other women. It's kind of sad. A few times when I've tried, I've been
"kicked out" of the self-deprecating bonding. "Oh, you're *thin.* You don't
have the right to talk to *us* about this stuff!" I resist the urge to
defuse the hostility by insisting that no, I'm not really thin, it's an
illusion, if you look closely, there's all this rippling and puckering and
jiggling and stuff. It's always, "You wear a size 6, you don't have the
right to complain or feel insecure about ANYthing. And besides we don't
really like you very much so butt out of our bonding."

Lori, I LOVE that image of erasing the hard drive. I often look back on my
youth and wonder what I could have accomplished in those millions of hours I
spent dieting and tanning (people who haven't done severe dieting may not
realize that it actually takes time and energy, you can't just do other
things when you're concentrating so hard on not eating). Imagine if I'd
spent those hours learning how to play a musical instrument, or how to
paint. So many better things I could have doing during my formative years,
at the same time I could have been saving my skin and nourishing my growing
body. What a tragic loss.

But as you told hex, it's not too late. I decided about four years ago I
needed to find other sources of pleasure in my life that don't involve
eating or deprivation. Against all odds (I have no innate talent) I learned
how to dance. It's one of the few ways to socialize any night of the week
that doesn't involve eating or spending money. And lord knows it's led me
down some extraordinary roads of adventure. To my utter delight, the men at
the dances (this is mainly Cajun and Zydeco, but also some swing, Latin, and
ballroom) don't seem to care how thin a woman is, as long as she's a good
dancer and friendly. Some of the most popular women at the dances are the
least thin. And if you go several nights a week, you can't help but get in
shape. For me, it's been a very healthy substitute for worrying about food &
weight, or using the body talk to bond. The women I meet who dance generally
seem pretty happy with themselves.

The other day I was looking at a woman I know who obviously spends half her
life at those ritualized "beauty appointments." She practically looks
embalmed. In fact, there's hardly a cell of her visible that hasn't been
worked over, lacquered, dyed, painted, plastered, and brutally forced into
shape. When she walked by, I turned to my friend and said, You know, what
Frankie needs is to take a year off and spend it on some desert island where
nobody at all gives a damn how she looks. A place where she can spend her
days relaxing in funky clothes, working in the garden, reading in the
hammock, taking long walks on the beach, playing with puppies and kittens,
eating whatever she likes, a place where she's surrounded by people who'll
like her and be kind to her even if she never fusses with her hair or puts
on makeup or spends a fortune on those damn scarves she's always trying to
hide her throat skin with." And my friend looked over at Frankie and said,
"Nah. She'd rather die." It's sad but probably true.
  

    
Hex, what you describe about Frankie makes me think that she's become
the beauty ritual -- she's taken it to a whole new level. How odd -- we
objectify the food, we objectify the ritual. Talk about erasing the
hard drive: wouldn't it be cool to have new rituals to take up the time
we spend on the old ones? 

And I think it's terrific, just terrific, that you went and learned
how to dance. It sounds like a good way to make friends with your body.
The fact too that at the dances you go to, people don't care about
who's the thinnest...

... and that's something I've got to wonder about. Do men really want
thin women? Do women really want thin women? (And despite the fact that
I could go lose 15 -- not 25 pounds -- do I really want to?) 

I've got a question here: who are your role models for people who have
a healthier attitude about their bodies? Are there people you look up
to? Hex, your description of the women at dances who seem happy with
themselves makes me think that we might have something to learn from
these women. Who do you all look to for a healthier standard?
  

    

That was <leroy>, not <hex>, Molly.  Just thought I'd mention.

One of my favorite fantasies is going back in time to talk to Ben
Franklin.  OK, I know that's weird, but there it is, and I really can't
remember when I first started thinking about this.

Part of it has to do with my understanding of the world.  I always thought
that if I could just explain what's going on in the world right now to
someone who was intelligent but had no experience of the way the world is
right now then I probably had a good grasp of it myself.  It's a way of
clarifying things for myself.  Again, I know it's odd.

So, when I'm making these elaborate plans about having this conversation,
I also think about what the reality of it would be like.  How would I be
received?  How would his wife feel about my coming to visit?  Would
Franklin be a chauvinist pig and make a pass at me or laugh me off because
I'm a woman?  Would my shape be typical of women of the time?  Would I
find that women of the time had the same concerns about their
appearance?  Or would I find that these concerns, or the extremeness of
the concerns are a product of the 20th and 21st centuries, or have women
always been like this?  Or even more extreme.  I so wish I could find out.
  

    
>> And isn't that what the adolescent girls are doing when puberty starts and
 you don't want that, so you'll just stay back there where it's safe, back
 at 80 lbs. or whatever.<<<

No. 

I mean, I can't speak for anybody else's experience. My experience
was outrage at having the things that made life good taken away for
the forced substitution of something with no value and many downsides.
It was of being expected to trade freedom for prison and be happy about
it. And, from the perspective of advanced age, emphatic rejection
of all that stuff was the correct perspective. Being an adult might
have its upsides; being fettered by the expectations of biological
determinism has none, and "lady"culture is simply the sugar coating on
that. Jail, pure and simple.

With the attendant conniving prisoner culture.
  

    
Whooops -- sorry <leroy> and <hex> about my mixup!

Mary, what you're describing seems to be similar to what Lori writes
about in her book as well -- it really resonates.
  

    
leroy's right - exactly what I talk about in STICK FIGURE: 

A girl or woman not interested in dieting is like an investment banker
not interested in golf.  It's a social liability when it comes to
bonding. 
  

    
And those "embalmed"-looking women have always freaked me out, like
the way mimes do.
  

    
Oh, mea culpa.  Correction: Molly said 15 not 25 lbs.  But STILL...

Molly asks, "Do men really want thin women?" 

Depends how you define thin.  I've been shocked by the mail I've
gotten from MEN who've read my book.  I mean, I expected that women
would have reactions to the diaries because most women have lived some
version of "insecure adolescent girl" - but MEN?  Most men say some
version of, "Wow. NOW I understand what's going on inside my
girlfriend's/wife's/daughter's head.  I can tell her she's 'fine' and
she freaks out.  I can tell her she's 'thin' and she asks a hundred
times, 'Are you SURE?'  Now I have some understanding of what she's
REALLY asking and what she really NEEDS - and it has nothing to do with
what I say about what she weighs."

I think men like "fit" women, but by no means are they holding women
to standards of perfection that women hold themselves to.  Not even
close.  That's the feedback I've gotten.  Any men out there want to
chime in?
  

    
Linda - I think Ben would say that you're trying to make sense of an
insane culture.

Molly - You've stumped me on the role model question if you mean
public figures as role models. Because I know some "feminist voices" -
all smart, interesting, creative - who, at the end of the day, worry A
LOT about their weight.  But maybe you just mean role models in
general, like the women who dance in the earlier post?

The role models I have in this area aren't in the public eye.  They're
"normal" people - and by that I mean both non-celebrities (I say this
because often people cite celebrity figures as role models) and people
who have "normal" (i.e., sane) feelings about their bodies.  A deep,
grounded, comfort level that I admire.  Although, maybe that makes them
"abnormal"?

Depressing to think that "normal" for women is dissatisfaction with
our bodies, and "abnormal" is comfort with them.
  

    
"It was of being expected to trade freedom for prison and be happy
about it."

Mary - That's what my ENTIRE book is about!  
  

    
I clearly must go get this book!

I just kinda stumbled in here...
  

    
Glad you stumbled in, Mary. I like your insights.

My role model question didn't have to do with people in the public eye
-- I liked what <leroy> said above about dancing and the women there.

I think that's also telling. There aren't people in the public eye who
don't have weight issues. And the whole mechanism of media, film, and
tv seems to perpetuate the whole cycle. I'm thinking of someone like
Kate Winslet, and how the media talked about her being fat. Hello, Kate
Winslet was 130 pounds. That's normal. Or the fact that Renee
Zellweger went up to what, 140 pounds for Bridget Jones's Diary? 

It seems like the reason there aren't women in the public eye who are
happy about whatever weight they are is because the public eye doesn't
look favorably on them.

Lori, what do you think about that? You worked in film and tv.
  

    
I have worked with women who were deeply into weight issues, who talked all
the time about how fat they felt that day and what diet they were on and
would only take a smidgen of birthday cake, etc.

But where I work now, the subject never comes up. (I'm a tech writer at a
computer company.) Is it because we all view ourselves as nerds rather than
contestants in the great beauty contest of life? I know a couple of us have
food / weight issues, because it's come up in specific conversations about
what's going on in our lives, and how we tried to eat differently this week
or something. But it isn't a regular topic, or something we bond over.
There's one person who I suspect has some food issues, which were
exacerbated by a recent illness, but we don't talk about it.

I similarly don't talk with friends about it much. On the Well there are a
group of people who are doing weight watchers, and I'm one of them now, and
we talk about it in specific topics. I regard this as helpful in teh same
way that topics about job issues or computers are helpful - advice on things
to try.

I guess I don't feel like I ever had that female bonding thing over weight
issues because my friends and I always bonded over other stuff, and I don't
miss it.

(I'm trying to lose 100 pounds.)
  

    
I also never had those friendships. Growing up with what I think of as
"the gospel of beauty," though, I was always aware of what having
friendships like that might entail, and I was not so interested. 

Now my friends and I talk not so much about wanting to be thin,
although many of my friends are thin, but more about the act of eating
as it becomes destructive, as in: "pick up the phone or I'm going to
eat a cheesecake, I'm so upset."
  

    

I have friends who have problems with their body image -- they talk a lot
about how fat and awful they are, and I find myself saying no you're not,
you look great, and you run marathons to boot. You're gorgeous. I've not
been one of the people who is always saying I'm so fat and so on...

It seems like a shaky foundation to a relationship.

Also -- I wanted to respond to something we were talking about a few posts
ago: the idea of ritualizing beauty. Some of these things I enjoy -- I don't
mind getting a manicure or pedicure once in a while, I don't mind getting my
eyebrows waxed (except for the pain part!), but I do appreciate the me-time.
Is there a way to also be healthy about these rituals?
  

    
Massage has long been seen as healthy.  I think hair and nails can be if
you are not in some little fume-ridden parlor.

That's what keeps me away.  The chemical warfare.
  

    
A lot of bathing, both solitary bathing and bathing in groups, like in
hot tubs, is healthy and ritualistic at the same time.
  

    
"
Molly asks, "Do men really want thin women?" 
"

So, I went and asked a few guys. My s/o put it best... "I want a woman
who is curvey and cuddly, who I can squeeze firmly and not be afraid
she's going to snap like a twig." 

Another male friend said that "thin women are scary, they look so
brittle and frail. And most of them seem to hate themselves. So do most
'fat' girls - I just want a girl who likes herself!"


-Kelly

Oh, and whomever said pale skin was another reason goth is cool...
hehe, I totally agree.  ;-)
  

    

I get regular manicures and pedicures and the occasional facial, but I
view them as sort of necessary.  The pedicures started after a vacation in
which I got terrible blisters and I learned the value of keeping my feet
callous-free and how much more comfortable it was to walk when my nails
were neatly trimmed, something I had started having trouble with when I
gained a bunch of weight, and my eyes started going.  I stand much less
chance of injury if someone does it for me.  But ain't nothing ritualistic
about it.  Or even particularly pleasurable.

To go back a second about my ramblings about Ben Franklin, etc. up there -
I think my point was, would I find women who are like women of today in
their interest in or obsession about appearance?  I just have this feeling
that woman (and men) haven't changed much and if there are any differences
between now and then, they are only to the degree that technology may have
created new avenues for obsession, and the media makes us more aware of
how others look and how, therefore, it might be possible for us to look,
too.