Why I'm Not Size One

Posts spring up in the sphere these days on that favorite issue, the need for women to control their appetites, so that they might be suited for the desires of male consumers.

Here: http://www.cosmictap.com/2006/04/the_haunting_myth_of.html

And here:

http://istherenosininit.blogspot.com/2006/04/beauty-is-about-money-not-sex.html

among other spaces.

(I love, by the way, the earnest comments from the women about how they aren't dieting because they want to please men -- no! no! They want to be Size One because it's Healthier!!!)

(And all the comments from women who seem compelled to give a lengthy CV -- I am this age, I weigh this much, I am this tall, I wear this size pants, my hips measure this -- because, obviously, if they weighed X amount, instead, and wore that size, their opinion would be of utterly no value. Fat Cows should just shut up. Only people who are Size 2 and under can speak here!)

Anyway:

This is a subject that puzzles and disturbs me, because it seems so fucking obvious -- why would any woman do this? It's like Chinese footbinding: why, why, why would women do this do their children? To themselves?

And yet they did.

Why would women in America, in the 21st century, continue to buy into such obvious nonsense -- that dieting and exercising and obsessing about your body, to the extent of all else, to the extent that you have no other life, and can think about nothing else, and do think about nothing else, at all, ever -- is healthy or sane?*

Is something anyone would want to live around?

And -- if that is someone some man might want to live around -- and I suppose there might be men around who want that woman in their lives -- why would you want that guy in your life?

I mean ick.

Yet I know women, lots of women, like that: who live that life. I grew up surrounded by them. (I was raised by one of them. Shit, I was raised by two of them. My father might as well be one of them.)

I don't diet. I don't exercise -- I hike, sometimes. I take the kid on climbs up mountains and walks about parks. Sometimes I go for a swim or ride my bike if it's a nice day. But I don't, you know, jog. I'm not skinny, I'm not fat. I sort of like my body. It's just a body, mind you. Nothing anyone would put in a magazine. But it's nice enough. It gets me around. I like hanging out with it. We're pals, me and my body. I don't wear make-up, I don't own a dress. (Really! Not a single frakking dress! Hee! Or any heels!) I wear birkenstocks and lots of dull jersey shirts and I do have this light blue woolen sweater I like a great deal but that's like the fanciest thing I own and partly that's because I was broke for so long but mostly it's because it's just a body. It's where I live.

And the more time I spend obsessing over nail-polish and hair-dos and all that, the less time I have to think about Chaucer and the History of the English Language; the less time I have to write and hang with the kid and mr. delagar and climb up mountains.

Frankly, I have stuff to do. I don't have time to put on eye-liner.




*And yes, lie to yourself all you like, if you are going to be size 1, if you are going to be the woman the White Bear mentions and Anthony speaks of with such blissful approval, that is the life you are going to have to live: diet and exercise and personal trainers and shopping for the perfect shoes and doing your hair and doing your face and dressing and dealing with your body and nothing else, forever and ever and ever until you die, amen. I'm sorry, sweetie. No Ph.D.s in geology or comp lit or rocket science for you. Get your tiny ass to the spa and don't forget to hydrate!