Eating Disorder ProAna Blogger Focused on Body Image and Self Esteem

WARNING: THIS POST ABOUT TRIGGER MAY BE A TRIGGER.

[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=B0-MGTaPs58]

Maybe it's because we can't even walk through Target without being bombarded with ridiculous fat fear and skinny love as seen on this hilarious garden plaque….

What kind of person places this in her garden for all to see?
What kind of friend purchases this for her ole' pals so they can yuck it up together?
Why do we perpetuate this total and complete nonsense?
Why do we cover up pain with humor?
Why in the hell is this acceptable??

Plus, it's not like some Granny is widdling these things out for the local craft fair…this is Target for god's sake, the manufacturer of this product had to be damn sure they would sell a couple million of these in order to afford mass production. Think about that- our society has become this accustomed to making fun of FAT. This accustomed to female competition on body size, that it has become a complete and  total joke.

And finally, how exactly am I to explain this statement to my 9 year old daughter without telling the damn truth?

"What does this mean mama?"

"Well honey, you must accept that our society is totally obsessed with being thin, so much so, that we pray about being a different person."

"What does that mean for me?"

"You are a loser if you are not thin, understood?"

"Can we buy a scale mama?"

Pathetic,
mV

I've been pondering the discussion about Oprah outing herself on her weight gain. My intial reaction, was similar to the rest of you;

Why does Oprah feel she needs to beat herself up in front of the world?

Does she really look so bad at 200lbs?

Or as Tracey Z put it "When one of the most powerful women in America can't feel good about herself at a weight that is still considered fairly average by today's standards, how are the rest of us supposed to feel?"

If I am honest with myself, and with you, I would be freaking out if I weighed 200lbs. I would not be happy with my body, I would be working the weight of, and I, like Oprah would be apologizing for myself.

I have never been overweight.

I likely never will be overweight due to my height and metabolism.

I will never, ever know what it is like to be fat in a society of fat haters.

I would not feel like a "fat cow" standing between Cher and Tina Turner, as Oprah admitedly did.

The fact of the matter is this; I can talk all I want about fat acceptance. I can be compassionate towards obese individuals and try to influence all of you to think twice about your feelings about fat…but deep down I am glad I am not fat. And if I was, I would do everything I could to get rid of it.

Am I a total hypocrite or what?

-mamaV

“Our all-or-nothing nation is built on foundations of fantasy. Our imagination is harnessed to America’s adolescent fantasy – how much prettier, thinner, richer, and more successful we will be one day,” states Courtney Martin in Perfect Girls, Starving Daughters (page 209).

Martin focuses in on her best friend Gareth. a Brooklyn based beauty. She is an activist and an actor – mentoring a little girl with AIDS, marching in Pro Choice rallies, writing and performing monologues in off Broadway productions.

All of her accomplishments are buried and invisible because she is fat. Obesity strips away everything.

Gareth is on the subway headed into the city, knitting as she rides. As she stuffs her yarn into her purse and stands to get off, a man sitting nearby yells “Yeah, that’s right, get off the train you fat bitch!”

Gareth stands there, staring straight ahead, humiliated and silent, unsurprised. She has suffered a lifetime of these cruel remarks, yet later she will relive this moment over and over in her head. It is a loneliness so deep, she must turn it into anger to survive.

“Sizeism remains the only truly socially acceptable form of discrimination on the planet,” Martin notes. “Today fat is the death penalty of the twenty-first century.”

When asking a group of 14 year old Manhattanites how their life would be if they were fat. They were struck silent. After a few moments, one responded “I would be dead.”

Dead.

Death over Fat

Cancer over Fat

Even Oprah is willing to humiliate herself in front of the whole damn world due to the fact that she gained 40 pounds. Shit. If Oprah can’t even get her head around the purpose of life, how are all the women that look up to her going to do it?

The story of Gareth weaves through her daily life, and ends in a tattoo parlor in St. Marks,  the punker hang out of NYC. Gareth is on the table, scared and pale, suffering for the purpose of inking forever more the message that she wants to yell to the world;

A zipper, at least two feet long, is etched into her pale skin. The top appears to be open a few inches, as if Gareth is aching to crawl out of her own skin.

-mamaV

———

Fat Acceptance Blogs:

Big Fat Deal: http://www.bfdblog.com/

FatFu: http://fatfu.wordpress.com/

Big Fat Blog: http://bigfatblog.com

Adios Barbie: http://adiosbarbie.com

Watching Caroline Rothstein got me rattled. Time for a mind dump;

Women have hated their bodies since the beginning of time. Fat is fear. Fat is grotesque. Most would choose death over fat.

Hate the fat people, they are contagious.

We chatter obsessively about food, shaming ourselves, rewarding our cravings, oblivious to the finely tuned in ears of our daughters, who see themselves our distorted mirrors.

Women suck at supporting one another.

We are fake in our sympathy because we can not escape ourselves. The green eyed monster clings on to our bloated stomachs and cellulite thighs, halting real relationships with a thinner friend. This I know, for I am a skinny bitch.

We all have a story. 

Diagnosis is individual, and sometimes flawed. Control, shame, and abuse rank high on the list of reasons for our destruction. Genes plague many, but for the growing group of others its pure and simple vanity, like it or not.

Anorexics… just eat already.

Bulimics don't purge…they vomit. Alone. In places and ways unimaginable.

Athletes…they are just following the rules. It's dedication.

EDNOS sufferers flounder somewhere in between hoping to qualify.

We are Weight-Watcher Lifers, Pro Ana Wannabes, Morbidly Obese Shut Ins, and True-Blue Anorexics. We have more in common than we care to admit. 

Parents are a saving grace or the nail in our coffin.

Mothers who would give their life for their child, wrongly blaming themselves for our condition. Others who have knowingly brainwashed since birth. 

Insurance companies fight to blame us, getting back to their paperwork as we die in silence. Mental disease doesn't count in this country you weak, pathetic soul. Just keep it hidden, hold it down, don't bother us with your nonsense. Bring back the good ole' sanitariums. Lock 'em up.

Only you can stop self hate chatter.

It is you who must seek the help you so desperately need. Only you can turn off the racket. But it is us who must unite.

I have escaped, but I still want to ride along with you. 

Absorbed in your misery to force different thoughts. Momentarily causing a pause. Hoping ideas will bring you the soul you have never known.

-mamaV

My last post Fran The Fat Lady, has generated quite a bit of discussion, so we are going to keep rolling on this topic;

Obesity. Morbid Obesity. Fat. Overweight. Whateveryouwanttocallit.

While writing about Franny on Saturday afternoon, my husband walked in the room as asked what I was up to.

"I am writing about Fran." I said. We both smiled.

My daughter Grace was sitting beside me absorbed in her book, until she heard us talking.

"I remember her!" Grace said.

"You do?" I replied, a bit surprised because Grace was like 5-6 when she did her ballerina routine for Fran a few years back at the hospice.

"What do you remember babe?"

"She had purple skin."

She had purple skin.

Grace didn't see a 400+ pound woman stuffed in her death bed, her tired lungs struggling with each breath. She didn't think about how Fran looked different than most people she knew. She just saw Fran.

Fran, the nice lady that was always happy, smiling, bringing over little, fun gifts an oxygen tank trailing behind her.

Fran, the one our neighbor helped out of her Black Chevy pickup, so she could deliver to us a box of Krispie Cremes (one missing).

Fran, the lady mama always sat by at holiday parties, and spent time engrossed in conversation or laughing her ass off at some crazy joke that was told.

——-

This reminded me of a related experience we had at the grocery store when Grace was only a toddler, and my son Sid was just an infant, cozy in his little carrier hooked on top of our steel cart. I had bought this huge load of stuff.

"Is there a bagger that can help me out to the car?" I said to the elderly cashier.

"Sure," she said flipping on her lighted, blinking sign to signal the bagger he had a customer.

Suddenly, she switched the light off, and looked to me with a serious face.

"Actually, the only bagger we have today has a birthmark on his face…it might scare your kids," she whispered, nervously glancing back over her shoulder to see if he, monster boy, was coming.

"We're good" I said with out hesitating.

Out came a nice young man, obviously self conscience as hell, covered with a large purple birthmark on his face and neck.

I didn't even blink. I slid over and let him push the cart. My little Siddy kicked his feet, happy as a clam in his baby seat facing the monster boy. I reached for Gracie's hand and started walking beside him, trying not to glare back at every person in the store who was at the poor kid.

We chit-chatted our way to the car, monster boy unloaded, and I got the kids tucked in their car seats.

"He had a different face," said my girl.

"Yep, everyone is different, that's what is cool about the world."

A different face.

Purple skin.

What a testament to the fact that we teach our children acceptance. We somewhere, somehow learned from someone to be discriminating and intolerant. Then we learned to like it.

I vote that we reprogram our prejudice, mean spirited, self righteous minds back to childhood.

-mamaV