"The emotional, sexual, and psychological stereotyping of females begins when the doctor says, 'It's a girl.'"

Part 5: The Future

There are two things I can learn from my experiences. I can learn how to think healthier about eating and my body image (over time, that has definitely happened, and I think it will only get better). I can learn how to pass the wisdom from these experiences on to my future potential daughter, because maybe she'll learn from my mistakes.

How do we raise our daughters today? How do we raise them to think healthy thoughts about eating, about sex, about their gender? It seems almost impossible. I sort of understand why some fundamentalist religious people homeschool their children. There's so many people out there in the world waiting to undo all the education you've done. Of course, I want my children to be exposed to different viewpoints, and I feel confident that if I do my job right, no matter what anyone says or tells them to feel, they will feel good about who they are and what they look like no matter what. It's just a little scary.

I read an interesting article once (that I'm having serious trouble finding, else I'd post it here) written by a women who considered herself a feminist and was trying to raise her daughter with the mindset I'm describing. However, she found that to be incredibly difficult, especially when one morning she took her daughter with her while she went to get her eyebrows waxed.

"Why, mommy, what's wrong with your eyebrows?"

Dammit. It wouldn't even have occurred to me. Now the little girl is going to go home and start looking for flaws in HER eyebrows. How do you explain some of this stuff to your children? You think you're the epitome of healthy thinking and feminist attitudes, and then you're 3-year-old child, of all people, is the first to point out your inconsistencies.

Honestly, I don't have a problem with makeup, with plastic surgery, with fashion, with any of that. Despite the fact that it all thrives on women feeling bad about themselves, I don't think that's necessarily where it needs to come from. For me, I just like controlling how I look. It becomes an expression for me, an outlook of artistic energy. And yes, sometimes I like my eyebrows to look different. Not because I think they're ugly, but because I'd like them to be different.

But is that something you can teach?

My hope is that my daughter keeps herself healthy. Given the medical history she's going to have just from my side, it will do her a world of good. My hope is that she always knows she's beautiful, and never obsesses about trying to look like anyone else. I hope she enjoys her body as a palette for whatever it is she wants to do: dye her hair, get tattoos, piercings, buy fashionable (or unfashionable) clothing. I hope she doesn't do it to fit in or to please other people's desires. I hope she does it because she wants to and likes the way she looks afterwards.

I just hope she loves herself.

"Yes, some people say to me you're too skinny, but never a skinny person says that to me, only people who could lose a few pounds say that."

Part 4: Diabetes

I was at a math team competition, and I asked to see the bag of Oreo's to read the nutrition facts. This immediately started a few people on how I shouldn't worry about the calories and just enjoy myself. "I'm diabetic," I said, "I don't have a choice."

Diabetes is impossibly entangled with food. For those people who have issues with obsessing over food, a simple solution is to let it go and not pay attention to what they're eating. I can't do that. Everything I eat. Everything I put into my mouth, I have to count it. It's seems like obsession, but it's how I survive.

Doctor's appointments every three months, weighing me. Nutritionist appointments where my mother was criticized frequently for not feeding me enough or feeding me too much. It starts to feel like you're being scrutinized and poked and prodded to no end. Everybody has something to say. I'm eating too much, I'm not eating enough, I'm not eating "healthy" enough, I'm not counting what I'm eating right. This started an obsession with food, because clearly no matter what I did something would be wrong, but I was going to try.

In the past approximately 8 years (I kinda lost track) I've learned all about how starches affect my blood sugar. Basically, they're not worth it. Ignore how they're like, the base of the pyramid. It's almost impossible to eat a bagel and not feel sick later. I've learned that MSG is the food equivalent of satan. I've learned that pizza loves nothing more than laughing in my face.

It must be really nice to not have to worry about being healthy. It must be really nice to just eat what ever you want and therefore have a healthy relationship with food. I envy those that do. I would give up candy and sugary foods if it meant I didn't have to freaking count everything.

There's no stopping it, because it's all in a desperate attempt to control my blood sugar, an admirable goal. Everything I eat or don't eat affects it. Some people will insist that diabetics can eat anything, as long as they give themselves insulin. Others say it's best to limit your diet to less carby foods. I suppose if I was more obsessed about my insulin, I could focus on that instead, but that seems to work less than the food method.

Where do my feelings about my body fit into this mess? They don't really. No one seems particularly concerned about it. Where fat feminism ignores the physical affects, doctors seem to ignore the emotional. It's gotten better over the past couple of years. I've learned what to listen to and what to ignore. I can filter some of the crap from what's genuinely good advice. A lot of that comes from having found a non-judgmental doctor that gets how difficult it is to be healthy with my disease, despite the obsession over it.

I know yesterday's post became controversial because there are apparently some people for whom being healthy is not a priority. Honestly, the concept is just so foreign to me it hadn't even occurred to me. There are really people out there who don't think about what they eat? They don't let it bother them? They don't count the carbs and the calories and the protein and fat? They don't obsess over what they just ate for the next couple of hours, hoping they don't feel like shit because of it?

Sorry, yeah, I didn't get that.

Being healthy is more than a priority for me, it's a necessity, a way of life. Diabetes kills people. It kills people so much so that it's one of the leading causes of death in America. One of the only ways I have to take care of myself is to watch what I eat.

So you really want to tell me there are people out there unconcerned with their health? Well, more power to them, I guess. But maybe you can understand where I'm coming from. Why that just never registered with me as possible.

I'd really like to just tell myself I'm beautiful and let the rest of it go. But I can't let my obsession with food go. I have to deal with my issues differently from everyone else. For me, dealing with it has meant focusing solely on my health. It helps me keep my weight in a reasonable range without obsessing over whether or not I'm "pretty enough." It helps me take care of my diabetes while not spending too much time in front of the mirror, scrutinizing. Focusing on health has been my coping mechanism for my body issues. I want to be healthy, I have to be healthy, and if that keeps me from thinking about whether I'm fatter than the super models on TV, well, it's a start.

"You can’t have a plus size girl winning – it makes it a joke."

Part 3: Fat Feminism

I consider myself a feminist, though that's a scary thing to say because it always feels like there's someone in the wings waiting to jump out and say, "YOU'RE NOT." For those of you who have never really read anything about feminism, there are a whole lot of branches. Feminists that focus on racial issues, or that focus on age issues. Atheist, Christian, Cyber, Material, Radical, Sex-Positive...the variants never end. The one that I'm sure will blow your mind, however, is fat feminism.

I don't agree with a lot of feminists, on beliefs and on methods. I can usually, however, find a common ground, a mutual understanding overall. But fat feminists frustrate me with how they focus so much on the emotional affects of being overweight and obese, and not enough on real scientific data.

Their basic tenets (from my understanding, and I could certainly be wrong) seem to surround the idea of "fat acceptance."

-People treat them terribly because they're fat(I agree).

-Because it's wrong, people should not treat them differently purely based on their size (I agree). -Instead, people should accept that they are fat (I agree).

-People who are fat should accept that they themselves are fat.

Wait. Wait. Wait.

The articles I've read regarding this movement are often tearing apart research regarding weight issues. While I'm not about to claim that just because the person behind the research has a degree necessarily means they're right, at the same time the criticisms seem...hollow.

No one is saying you should feel bad because you're overweight (well, no one who is also rational). But studies show that, sadly, many young girls do feel this way. Will helping them lose weight solve the problem? The writer is right, it probably will not. That's assuming, of course, that the only problem here is the girl's self-worth and body image. Losing weight will make her feel temporarily better, but unless we convince her that people who don't look like Angelina Jolie are still beautiful, she'll only find more things to hate and criticize about herself.

But there are more problems than just the emotional affects going on here. Legitimate studies show that being overweight can lead to serious health issues and a shortened life span. I want young girls to feel beautiful no matter what they look like, but I want them to live long healthy lives as well.

My point is that by focusing solely on the psychological and emotional affects that the media and society has on us, we're ignoring the bigger picture. Being overweight and obese is not morally objectionable and no one else's concern but your own. But self-love and self-worth involve treating your body right.

I'll throw the caveat in that applying a generalization to individuals is of course invalid. While studies show that MOST people will have increased risks of pretty much almost everything if they're overweight, some people will indeed be perfectly healthy in a different bracket from everybody else.

And that's why the decision to lose weight needs to be an individual choice, which I whole-heartedly agree with fat feminists on. Don't listen to your parents, your friends, the media, or anyone else. If you're going to lose weight, make sure it's the right decision for you. Odds are, it probably is, but still.

While I'm writing about treating people the same no matter what their size, I feel the need to elaborate that that involves women on the other end too. Surprise surprise, some bodies are more comfortable on the heavier side, and some on the thinner side. Telling skinny women to eat more, or making them uncomfortable when you go clothes shopping is wrong, presumptuous, and unfair. Just because they're skinny does not mean they have an eating disorder, or that you have the right to poke fun of them for it. Unfortunately, fat feminism (from my perspective) seems to completely ignore the plight of this minority. They need a voice too, but I feel that as soon as someone starts "Skinny Feminism" we're going to have a serious battle of the blogs on our hands.

Calm down, fat feminists, and let's all try to look at the bigger picture.

"No one wants to see curvy women."

Part 2: Media Portrayal

Again, I wonder where to begin. Perhaps with this article. You can see the pictures, an obviously very pretty young woman who is apparently "too fat." One interesting fact you can find there: 25 years ago, the average model was 8% thinner than the average woman, but that difference is now 23%.

But it doesn't end with too fat, there's also too thin. Too old. Too young. Too this, too that. It doesn't matter how old you are or what you look like, you simply can't win. We put such an emphasis on what Karl Lagerfield thinks beauty should be, we forget that most people have very different ideas of what beauty is. American Apparel's largest sizes won't even fit on the mannequins. When will the media shut up and let us hear our own thoughts and opinions about what we want to look like?

It kills me, because I love fashion. I love how different it is and how it enables me to look how I want, not how others think I'm supposed to look. I love being able to express myself through my clothes. It's fun and artistic for me. I'm not trying to look like the models, I'm trying to be an expression of who I think I am. Unsurprisingly, most of the models don't look the way I want to look. Unfortunately, for most girls, that's simply not the case. They want people to think they're pretty, to reinforce to themselves that they are pretty. They don't care what they have to look like to get the compliments as long as they get them.

For skinny girls, that's fine. They've got a clear path to success: have the money to buy the clothes. For the not-so-skinny girls. Well..

"No one wants to see curvy women. You've got fat mothers with their bags of chips sitting in front of the television and saying that thin models are ugly." -Karl Lagerfeld

The media undeniably portrays fat women as disgusting, gross, a joke, embarrassing, lazy.. if you can think of a negative adjective, it's been applied to overweight women. This has gone beyond preference to an all out war of people morally objecting to the existence of fat people.

No wonder fat girls feel gross and everyone else is terrified to get fat.

"But not me!" I often think. "No, I'm completely accepting of women who look differently than I do! That is, of course, the rational response."

I forget how frequently I judge women. Any woman. Stranger, close friend. I can't freaking stop. I see her and almost my first reaction is, "Am I prettier than her? Is she fatter than me? Why is she wearing that."

I never act on these instincts, which in my opinion is the most important thing, but oh my god I still have the thoughts. And I'm immediately embarrassed after I realize what I'm doing. What do I gain by being skinnier than another girl? Do I think I'm going to get a freaking medal or something? Because I won't. And the satisfaction will wear off very quickly. Quickly enough that I'll need to find another girl to judge, fast.

I'm really no better than the media. Other people can tell what I'm doing. And I see others doing it too. We've become our own worst enemies, essentially. We deplore the photoshopping, but then turn right around and feel smug when we're skinnier than the next girl.

I pledge to work on this. To stop demonizing fat in my mind. My hope is that other girls will stop too. It's better and healthier for everybody.

"Nothing tastes as good as skinny feels."

Part 1: Body Image Issues

Ahh, body image. Where do I even start? I think with a disclaimer that my story and experiences are hardly unique. Though with all the freaking media talking about how they themselves are screwing young girls up, you should know this by now.

I think it's appropriate to begin my journey through body acceptance with the first instance that I was aware I weighed anything, and that other people would care what that was. Playground, fourth grade. There was a group of about ten to fifteen girls huddled up. I went over to go see what they were talking about. They were swapping weights. I wasn't really sure why, but I wanted to join the conversation.

"I weigh 70 pounds!"

"You weigh WHAT?" "How are you so skinny?" "That's hardly anything!"

Somehow these reactions made me feel like I won. I don't know. I was on the cross country team and in all honesty, it's possible my pancreas was starting to give out. I was really small for my age. And since high weights were garnering uncomfortable silences from the group, smaller seemed better.

My weight didn't come up again until I was in junior high, when I started obsessing over it. It was almost like a light switch went on in my head. I don't know why I started to care all of a sudden. Maybe I started noticing that other girls were starting to look less kid-like and more "pretty." Maybe I noticed some weight gain. I don't know when or how it happened, but it happened in full force.

I had a conversation with a good friend of mine who was concerned about her weight as well (honestly who wasn't). She told me that in sixth grade she vowed not to break 100 pounds until she graduated high school, and she had not been able to keep that promise to herself.

We were in eighth grade.

At the time, this comment sounded so normal to me. I even thought to myself, "Why didn't I make the same promise to myself?" I chastised myself for not setting such an unrealistic and hopelessly unhealthy goal.

Weight was all anyone talked about. Weight was all anyone thought about. I don't think I had a normal conversation with someone until freshman year. I had more guy friends who didn't care about my weight. They didn't want to hear about how fat I thought I was. They just wanted to talk about video games and how dumb their english teacher was.

It was like waking up from a trance.

I think about those years a lot. About the days I tried not to eat anything and failed. About the days I went on long runs, punishing myself for eating a bunch of cookies. I was never anorexic, I was never bulimic. I was like every other girl in junior high: mad that I wasn't anorexic or bulimic.

How have we gotten to the point that sixth graders are promising themselves to not weigh more than 100 pounds? We're talking about girls who had mothers who loved them and cared for them and told them they were beautiful. We're talking about girls who loved cartoons and Spongebob, not girls idling Britney Spears.

It's terrifying to think that after the normal childhood I had, I still obsessed about these things. It's horrifyingly...inevitable?

I think it's also important to note all the body image issues I DIDN'T have to deal with. I never had acne. I was never actually clinically obese. I never had any visible physical deformities. I don't have to deal with not being white. It's like Lindsey Lohan in Mean Girls said. "I used to think there was just fat and skinny. But apparently there's lots of things that can be wrong on your body."

But I've snapped out of it. One of the many ways logic and rationality has made me a happier person. Still, I may have escaped, but too many other girls out there are still in the competition for smallest frame. The only people who can stop them are themselves, so I guess the only thing to do is cross your fingers and hope for the best.

NomNomNoms: Food For Thought

It seems that sometimes the most basic necessities are the most complex. Money. Shelter. Food.

My relationship with food is complicated, and not in a love/hate sort of way, but in an emotional, hand-wringing sort of way. Between body image issues, growing up, and being diabetic, it really feels like food is the root of all my serious problems.

Earlier I started to write a post about this, but I couldn't consolidate all of the opinions and frustrations and perspectives I have on it. Therefore, I'm starting my first series:

Hopefully it will provide as much insight to you and your own lives as I hope it will do for me!