Sunday, August 8, 2010

Part of me wants to be skinny, part of me wants to starve myself to death and part of me is a feminist who thinks it would be a meaningful and powerful social statement to be fat and to give no care to my appearance. We live in a society where a woman's appearance is esteemed so highly over her mind or her good works that many (if not most) women have become shells of human beings, so concerned with exuding femininity in all aspects of their lives rather that they concern their minds with little else. So these minds dwindle, leaving us vulnerable to those who scoff at the "feeble minds" of women. And of course our minds aren't feeble, and certainly we could be just as capable as anyone of exuding mental strength, that is, if we didn't allow our minds to dwindle. If we didn't spend more money on blow dryers than we do on books. If we didn't spend more time observing the flaws on our bodies than we do observing the flaws in the world and working on solutions. But I'm not silly enough to believe that my or anyone else's eating disorder is caused solely by misogyny or magazines; in fact I know very much from experience that they are as shallow as they are emotional, mathematical, metaphorical, intellectual, psychological, practical, spiritual, magical. They are a means to sift a life of a million different endlessly confusing and dangerous possibilities, grinding the particles until they eventually sift into piles of "FAT" and "NOT FAT" and then eventually (hopefully) into one homogeneous pile of specks labelled "THIN." Eating disorders can make sense to healthy people if only you explain their practical purposes. They make you the master of your universe, because they make your universe the size of your body, the size of a calorie, the size of a craving overcome. It's a very easy universe to control (considering its small size and considerably simplicity), and when you control it, you essentially feel god-like. They can call it euphoria, but it's something much more than that. But this deeper and frankly much more respectable aspect of the eating disorder is masked under a sea of doctors and talk show hosts who believe we are a slew of mindless teenage girls who flip through fashion magazines and seek to emulate airbrushed models because we have no minds to think for ourselves. Well, to put this frankly, FUCK society. Fuck being fat or skinny, fuck being healthy or anorexic. Be whatever you are naturally drawn to but be so for a good reason, be so because you are naturally that way, or be so because you have realized that your size, whether very small or very large, can be the biggest political and social statement you make in your whole life.

In an unrelated but more personal update, after three days of being out of town and eating way too good/way too caloric food, my body no longer desires food. In fact, I'm pretty sure that yesterday I ate the single most delicious thing I will ever have the opportunity of tasting, so all other food seems highly unappetizing. Better yet, I'm going to be out all day going college-shopping so eating will not be an issue and I can live off of ice water and be happy and too excited to eat... I'm so goddamn tired right now. Ooh, and I got out of that trip to NJ so that's like, what, four days with no parents making me eat and I'll be alone at home with my brother sooooo there won't even be any edible food in the house. I found the apartment I'll be living in and I have a long commute to school which involves a bus, train and a bit of a long walk too, so me = optimistic that while I really fucked up this summer in terms of losing weight, at least I know I'll almost definitely lose a ton at school. I'm so tired. I need to stop on here. Goodnight lovelies.

5 comments:

  1. I get what you mean about wanting to just proove that a woman doesn't need to be thin to be accepted. I find it worrisome that it seems to be an either/or thing. Why can't a woman be thin and smart, or thin and not caring about how the world percieves her? Unfortunatly that woman wouldn't be me, but others who aren't tempted by self-torture.

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  2. EXACTLY. you said it all.

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  3. I loved this post.
    It really made me think.
    Thank you.

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  4. I loved your first paragraph about EDs, because it's so true. So many people think it's just about being thin, which in no way is the only thing going on. I wish people would understand that it's impossible to just eat a cheeseburger and be "normal" again, because when I eat that cheeseburger, it haunts me for days, and I know that I have to make it up for it by eating even less because I didn't deserve to eat that burger in the first place. But with all the Oprah's of the world, regular people will only see it as a young woman's desire to look like the pictures in a magazine.

    Have fun shopping tomorrow! Getting stuff for college is so much fun :)

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