Too fat to twirl, III
Posted by: Pet~ on: March 2, 2009
See that middle majorette? That’s my sister. The one that was kicked off the ASU majorette line for being “too fat.” No, she’s not as skinny as the other two majorettes, but she isn’t FAT by a long shot! According to ASU, however, she was 5 lbs to fat to twirl for the university’s marching band. FIVE FREAKING POUNDS! Like that small an amount of weight would have made Jack Diddly bit of difference in how she looked.
Thanks to our former band director, I now have several pictures of my sister in her majorette uniform, but this is the only one that I felt comfortable posting here without editing her face out since her face isn’t exactly recognizable in this particular picture.
25 years ago…
Posted by: Pet~ on: February 21, 2009
That is me. 9th grade. All of 14 years old, so 25 years ago. Not too bad, right? Hubby looked at it and said “Jeez, you were cute! Why didn’t we date in high school?” I look at this picture and wonder why on EARTH I thought I was fat and needed to starve myself.
This picture is proof that anorexics don’t always LOOK anorexic. At least, *I* don’t think I looked anorexic in this picture. But I was. I was skipping breakfast and lunch, and barely eating anything at dinner while telling my parents that I had eaten a big lunch or had a big snack after school. At the point this picture was taken, I was amenorrheal, anemic, my hair was falling out in clumps but I had a fine layer of “fur”, my heart rate was scary slow and my blood pressure was ridiculously low. All physical symptoms of starvation. I wasn’t scary skinny by any means. In fact, I probably looked pretty healthy, weightwise. I know that I had friends that were thinner than I was, but much MUCH healthier. However this was probably the UNhealthiest time of my life.
People noticed that something was wrong, but nobody made the connection to anorexia because I wasn’t underweight. My friends thought I was ill. My parents and doctor thought something was wrong with my thyroid. NOBODY thought I was anorexic but me, and I didn’t want to change it. I honestly couldn’t tell you what turned my health around. I never got professional help. I was never officially diagnosed. Maybe I just didn’t have the “willpower” of most anorexics, or maybe my parents just got wise before I got so far gone that they couldn’t help me without professional intervention. I really do not know. I just know that by the time I went into 10th grade, I wasn’t starving myself anymore.
THIS is why I am so protective of my daughters and my friend’s daughters when it comes to body image. THIS is why I have a size acceptance blog and read other size acceptance blogs voraciously. THIS is why I am so ANTI-diet. And THIS is why I never assume that just because someone isn’t scary skinny, their weight-loss diet isn’t a problem.
Am I the only fat person I know NOT having WLS?
Posted by: Pet~ on: January 19, 2009
Saturday night, DH and I went over to a friend’s house for a cookout. It was just us, friend, his girlfriend, his brother, and his brother’s girlfriend: three couples.
There was TONS of food: bacon wrapped, bbq-sauced, grilled mushrooms for appetizers; chicken breasts drenched in bbq sauce, grilled kielbasa, hamburgers, chips, dips, potato salad, etc. You get the idea. Three couples, but enough food for 10 couples.
After a nice visit around the grill while everything was cooking, we went inside to eat. I notice that the other two women BARELY touch their plates. I mean BARELY: maybe 1 of the mushroom appetizers (which were HELLA GOOD) 2 bites of their hamburgers, a bite or two of potato salad, and maybe three chips each. I’m not kidding! And I’m not the only one that noticed. DH noticed. Friend noticed because he asked if something was wrong with the food.
Turns out, there was nothing wrong with the food. Friend’s Girlfriend has had the lapband surgery, and Friend’s Brother’s Girlfriend has had gastric bypass. Oy vey. I was the only woman there that hadn’t had WLS.
Later in the evening, we were playing a game, and somehow or another, the subject of weight came up (why am I not surprised?); and I said something (non-depricating) about weighing 200 lbs. INSTANTLY, everyone in the room but DH (who knows better) starts in with the “compliments.”
“Well, you sure don’t LOOK like you weigh 200 lbs!”
“Wish I had looked that good at 200!”
“Yeah, but you carry it well.”
Yada.
Yada.
Fucking yada.
Then the subject turned to how much more weight these two BEAUTIFUL (just as they were) women had to lose, and then they looked at me expectantly. Like I’m supposed to chime in with how much weight I want to lose. You should have seen the looks of shock on their faces when I said that I am actually looking for a personal trainer that understands that I don’t give a flying fig if I ever lose a stinking OUNCE, much less several dozen pounds, I just want to be strong(er than I am now), flexible, and build some endurance. After staring at me in shocked, wide-eyed silence for a moment they start in with:
“But you’re so pretty! You’d be GORGEOUS if you lost a few pounds!”
Fuck you! I’m already gorgeous, thankyouverymuch.
“As good as you look now, you probably wouldn’t have to lose MUCH.”
I don’t have to lose anything to look good. You said yourself I look good right where I am.
“I wish I had your confidence.”
Honey, I didn’t always. This level of confidence and comfort with my body has been hard-won and only come RECENTLY.
WHY do conversations with other women always seem to devolve into Weight Watcher’s meetings? Discussions about current weight, pounds lost, pounds to go, calories and how to restrict them, fat grams and how to restrict them, good foods/bad foods, yada yada boringfuckingyada. I’ve worked too long and too hard to finally accept myself as I am, where I am. I have absolutely no desire to join into a bitchfest about my body and how HORRIBLE it is. Even if we restrict ourselves to discussing things that happen in our own homes (no world or national politics, no celebitchy gossip, etc.), there are so many MORE interesting things to discuss! Shit, we could discuss SOAP OPERAs and it would have been more productive and interesting!
To their credit, it didn’t take either woman too terribly long (maybe about 15 minutes) to realize that I wasn’t going to join in on the WW meeting and that it was boring me half to death and allow me to change the subject. I don’t know that I could have taken much more.
And most of my women friends wonder why the hell I prefer to hang out in the garage with the men! At least THEIR conversations aren’t impromptu Weight Watcher’s meetings.
And she wonders why I starved myself?
Posted by: Pet~ on: January 6, 2009
This is pretty much typical of the types of jokes I get in my e-mail from my mother, and it’s typical of her attitude towards weight pretty much my entire life. The e-mail reads:
A woman goes to the doctor for her yearly physical. The nurse starts with certain basic items.
‘How much do you weigh?’ she asks.
‘115,’ she says.
The nurse puts her on the scale. It turns out her weight is 140 (I wish).
The nurse asks, ‘Your height?’
‘5 foot 8,’ she says.
The nurse checks and sees that she only measures 5 ‘ 5‘.
She then takes her blood pressure and tells the woman it is very high.
‘Of course it’s high!’ she screams, ‘When I came in here I was tall and slender! Now I’m short and fat!’
Ok, remember a while ago when I told you guys to mark your calendar because I would probably never use the BullshitMI as a voice of reason again? Well, ladies and gentlemen, aparantely hell has frozen over, because I’m doing it again! The woman in the joke “thinks” she is tall and slender at 5′8″ and 115. According to this BullshitMI calculator, that would be a BullshitMI of 17.5, or UNDERWEIGHT. Not just “slender,” but approximately 10 pounds underweight (and that’s to be at the very BOTTOM of the “normal” weight catagory). Her actual height and weight (you know, the ones that make her “short and fat” and raise her blood pressure so severely) is 5′5″ and 140. Same calculator shows her BullshitMI to be 23.3, or NORMAL.
And this is the kind of shit I’ve been fed since I was a child, by BOTH of my parents. ::::eyeroll::::
No Cease Fires in the “War on Obesity”
Posted by: Pet~ on: December 24, 2008
Saw this ad this morning and it just set me off. “Sprinkle your coffee with something better than guilt.”
Really? Seriously?
And then there’s this one. “Indulge your sweet tooth, AND your conscience.”
So, once again, the diet industry implies that consuming anything with a calorie should be guilt-inducing. ::::eyeroll::::
On another note… DAMN but the diet industry is working overtime this season! Guess they want to try to get their name FIRMLY implanted for all those New Year’s resolutions to lose weight. *sigh* I’m so sick of seeing diet ads. It’s Christmas Eve for heaven’s sake! MUST I watch at least one diet-related commercial EVERY commercial break? Within the past 20 minutes, I’ve seen ads for Truvia, Jenny, Nutrisystem, and SlimFast.
Oy. We aren’t even allowed to enjoy a “cease fire” on Christmas!
New Tattoo
Posted by: Pet~ on: December 23, 2008
- In: Beauty| Fun| Self esteem
- 3 Comments
Ok, so I’m a wannabe tattoo addict. Until Saturday, I had one tattoo and have wanted another for years. Saturday, I got tattoo number two, and already have plans for numbers three and four. =c) Don’t ask me why I love tattoos so much. I just do, on myself and on others.
So here’s my new tattoo:
House, M.D.
Posted by: Pet~ on: December 3, 2008
- In: Beauty| Fat Acceptance| Health| House| Self esteem| TV| Weight Loss
- 1 Comment
At first glance, last night’s episode of House would appear to NOT be very fat accepting. But once I had some time to think about it and look deeper, I realized that it really kind of was.
The show started out showing a “fitness guru” filming an infomercial with some of her clients. Fitness chick was talking to the camera about “being the best YOU you can be” while her clients are climbing bleacher stairs behind/around her, and one of the heavier men was having difficulty. My first thought was “Oh great. Here we go with the ‘fat kills,’ ‘all obese people are walking time bombs,’ obesity epipanic crap.” Then the twist: Instead of one of her clients falling over, it’s Fitness Guru chick! Hello?
During the differential, House’s team uncovers the fact that FG had gastric bypass surgery. Hmmmm… When confronted by the team, she reveals that she “tried everything and nothing worked.” WHOA! You mean someone on national television (even if it was a fictional character) admitted that diets and exercise alone don’t always work?!? And she even gets called on the hypocrisy of hiding her gastric bypass from her clients, while telling them that diet and exercise will work for them! She claims that she’s doing it for the health of her clients, yada, yada, yada; that she “got healthy” and then she “got happy” to which Taub replies “No, you got PRETTY, then you got happy” (Thin Myth anyone? Oh, and I really do NOT like the implication that to be pretty, one must be thin. I’m not thin and I get all kinds of people, both fat and thin, telling me that I’m pretty).
Finally, they discover that she has some extremely rare disorder that literally REQUIRES her to eat a high carb, high glucose diet. When she was fat, she was “self-medicating.” The BEST treatment for her is to have her gastric bypass reversed and start eating high carb, high sugar foods. She asks if there is any other treatment. There is, but it will only make the symptoms manageable; it will not treat the disease. She’ll still be sick, but the symptoms of her illness will be masked somewhat. She chooses the less effective treatment, refusing to have her gastric bypass reversed and gain weight. She would rather be thin and unhealthy than be fat and healthy. And the show didn’t leave you feeling like she had made a good choice. House even commented on how she would rather be “pretty” than healthy (I know, again with the thin=pretty thing, we can’t win them all though, can we?).
Overall, I felt like it was a small step forward. The patient/FG seemed to be the only one assuming that fat=unhealthy even if EVERYONE seemed to assumed that fat/=pretty. I’ll take it though. Even baby steps are still forward progress, right?
Fat chick on a bike…
Posted by: Pet~ on: November 14, 2008
About a month ago, DH and I bought a 2003 Suzuki Intruder Volusia. Yes, a stinking motorcycle! LOL He gave up his motorcycles 16 years ago when we had our oldest, and promptly regretted it. I promised him that “one of these days” when the kids were older, we’d get him another motorcycle. Over the past 16 years, his taste in bikes has changed, thank goodness, from crotch rockets to cruisers so that’s what we got.
And if I’m being TOTALLY honest, I’m enjoying the hell out of riding with him! It’s just so much fun to get on the bike and ride out to the lake for an afternoon, or find some country backroad to ride down, or just get on the highway and cruise. We aren’t going that fast, in fact we’re going slower than we would in the car, so I can’t say it’s the speed. I always braid my hair and wear a helmet, so it’s not the “wind in my hair” or whatever. I just don’t know.
The biggest side effect of riding has been in MY attitude towards MYSELF, which makes absolutely no sense to me whatsoever. Since we got the bike, I carry myself a little taller, I look people in the eye and smile more, I’m more confident. I can’t explain it. Why on earth would something like a motorcycle, that I’m not even driving, change the way I feel about myself?!?
Whatever it is, I’m liking it on a bunch of different levels. The motorcycle is here to stay, and I just might get one all to myself in the spring. Why the hell not?
Oh, and here’s the bike =c)
I feel…
Posted by: Pet~ on: November 5, 2008
I feel… HOPE. After 8 years of crap, of politics as usual, of “I’ve got mine, who gives a crap if you get yours” policies, I HOPE.
I hope that the racial divides are finally truly closing. I know that they aren’t totally behind us. I know that there will probably always be some asshat out there that believes that he is better than someone else simply because of where his ancestors came from. But today I HOPE that we are finally coming to that promised land that Rev. King spoke of where people are judged by the content of their character instead of the color of their skin.
I hope that this recession we are in will begin to turn around. For 8 years, I’ve watched my husbands net pay consistently go down, even as his hourly wage went up. I’ve watched the value of our dollar go down and down and down, swirling the bottom of the bowl, even as prices for the necessities of life skyrocketed. I’ve watched a budget surplus turn into mind-boggling debt. But today I HOPE that things will begin to improve.
I hope. Words I haven’t been able to say, honestly, about our government for 8 years.
I still find myself randomly breaking into laughter and tears. As I read Kate’s post, as I read Chrissy’s post, as I read fashionablenerd’s post, as I explained the importance of this historic election to my son who was just too tired to stay up to see the results come in, when that image in my mind of the young woman at Spellman College falling to her knees and crying pops into my brain, when I was explaining to my children why Rev. Jackson and Oprah had tears on their cheeks last night, as I explained to them the significance of President-elect Obama’s speech… I teared up.
In the words of President-elect Obama:
The road ahead will be long. Our climb will be steep. We may not get there in one year or even in one term. But, America, I have never been more hopeful than I am tonight that we will get there.
I promise you, we as a people will get there.
For the first time in a long time, I believe once again that all things are possible in America, and I am hopeful.
History!
Posted by: Pet~ on: November 4, 2008
Wow. Really, it’s the only word that comes to mind, just WOW!
I’m witnessing history tonight, and I can honestly say that I’ve never been MORE proud to be an American. The picture that will remain in my mind for the rest of my life was on MSNBC’s coverage. When they announced that projections were for Barack Obama to win the election one young African-American woman, she couldn’t have been older than 19, fell to her knees crying. That’s when it really hit me exactly what I was watching, that I was watching HISTORY in the making.
Shortly after that they showed Jesse Jackson, a man that was present the day Martin Luther King, Jr was shot, and there were tears running down his face. I couldn’t help but be glad that he had lived to see this day and wish, as I’m sure Mr. Jackson was wishing, that Rev. King could have lived to see this day as well.
Now I’m waiting to hear our President-elect speak.
Congratulations President-elect Obama! May God be with you and protect you.
