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Monday, Monday, Monday.
1) Fun thing for Monday! Courtesy of @filamentmag, an awesome hobby I'd never heard of before: Bunny show jumping.
2) A thinky thing. Via Kristin Cashore, an LJ post by![[livejournal.com profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/external/lj-userinfo.gif)
happiestsadist entitled Stop Telling People to Love Their Bodies. You can't shame someone into thinking they're a stone-cold fox.
I don't know that I can say I ever hated my body, exactly. My feelings have never risen to an intensity that I would quite call hatred. What I've felt toward my body has been mostly a sort of resigned dissatisfaction, since I was, I don't know... twelve? About twelve, yeah--maybe younger but certainly not much older. But I had a mom who told me I shouldn't try to change myself and I went to an all-girls high school and had friends who didn't diet or wear makeup, and anyway dieting was this horrible bogeyman of teenage tragedy, an automatic step on the road to anorexia, right? The girls who dieted were the girls who drank and smoked and dyed their hair and had sex with older boys, and I wasn't one of those girls. So I didn't ever diet.
And by the time I got to college, and the Freshman 15 was joined by the Sophomore 15 and so on, I had completely internalized the forward-thinking, woman-positive, body-positive idea that what was wrong with my body was that I didn't love it enough. Low self-esteem, I told myself. And that was true, that was absolutely true. I didn't like myself much. But I thought that if I could just will myself to think I was attractive, then I would be, and that was the only way I would be. There was no other recourse. My body was just the way my body was, and it would never change. My body--my body which was generally healthy and able and not even all that fat, objectively speaking--my body was a locus of total helplessness for me, because I hated exercise and liked food, so my body was just going to inexorably get heavier and more out of shape and all I could do about it was try to love it more.
And then I went to grad school, and then in grad school I got a job at a high-powered law firm in a high-powered city and I was surrounded by skinny, well-groomed women in pencil skirts and tailored suits, and I felt fat and horrible and miserable. I'd come a long way since college in the department of liking myself, but my body hadn't been magically changed by that. And then one day, sitting miserably at my desk at work, hating myself for not being a size 2 attorney in a pencil skirt, I read The Hacker's Diet and realized I could lose weight if I wanted to. I could change my body if I wanted to. Loving my body didn't factor into it; choosing to change my body, and following through on the work required to make those changes, meant I could make my body different. I could make my body more or less what I wanted it to be.
And then, over the course of about a year, I lost 46 pounds. And it was the most empowering fucking thing I've ever done in my life, because I finally gave myself permission to feel that my body wasn't perfect just the way it was. And then I could do something about it.[1]
So, yeah. I agree with that post above, a lot--because just telling people it's their personal responsibility to love their bodies, in the face of everything in the world, be it the rest of the media, be it their own state of health/fitness/etc., be it a sedentary lifestyle, whatever--just telling people to ignore all that and love their bodies isn't going to make them love their bodies. All it did for me was make me more ashamed.
[1] Yes, I was lucky as hell, privileged as hell, that the something I chose to do about it was as easy for me as it was. For lots of people it isn't; even for myself I haven't been able to maintain it and have had many difficulties trying to get back to that point. Still, the original experience was amazing for me.
2) A thinky thing. Via Kristin Cashore, an LJ post by
happiestsadist entitled Stop Telling People to Love Their Bodies. You can't shame someone into thinking they're a stone-cold fox.I don't know that I can say I ever hated my body, exactly. My feelings have never risen to an intensity that I would quite call hatred. What I've felt toward my body has been mostly a sort of resigned dissatisfaction, since I was, I don't know... twelve? About twelve, yeah--maybe younger but certainly not much older. But I had a mom who told me I shouldn't try to change myself and I went to an all-girls high school and had friends who didn't diet or wear makeup, and anyway dieting was this horrible bogeyman of teenage tragedy, an automatic step on the road to anorexia, right? The girls who dieted were the girls who drank and smoked and dyed their hair and had sex with older boys, and I wasn't one of those girls. So I didn't ever diet.
And by the time I got to college, and the Freshman 15 was joined by the Sophomore 15 and so on, I had completely internalized the forward-thinking, woman-positive, body-positive idea that what was wrong with my body was that I didn't love it enough. Low self-esteem, I told myself. And that was true, that was absolutely true. I didn't like myself much. But I thought that if I could just will myself to think I was attractive, then I would be, and that was the only way I would be. There was no other recourse. My body was just the way my body was, and it would never change. My body--my body which was generally healthy and able and not even all that fat, objectively speaking--my body was a locus of total helplessness for me, because I hated exercise and liked food, so my body was just going to inexorably get heavier and more out of shape and all I could do about it was try to love it more.
And then I went to grad school, and then in grad school I got a job at a high-powered law firm in a high-powered city and I was surrounded by skinny, well-groomed women in pencil skirts and tailored suits, and I felt fat and horrible and miserable. I'd come a long way since college in the department of liking myself, but my body hadn't been magically changed by that. And then one day, sitting miserably at my desk at work, hating myself for not being a size 2 attorney in a pencil skirt, I read The Hacker's Diet and realized I could lose weight if I wanted to. I could change my body if I wanted to. Loving my body didn't factor into it; choosing to change my body, and following through on the work required to make those changes, meant I could make my body different. I could make my body more or less what I wanted it to be.
And then, over the course of about a year, I lost 46 pounds. And it was the most empowering fucking thing I've ever done in my life, because I finally gave myself permission to feel that my body wasn't perfect just the way it was. And then I could do something about it.[1]
So, yeah. I agree with that post above, a lot--because just telling people it's their personal responsibility to love their bodies, in the face of everything in the world, be it the rest of the media, be it their own state of health/fitness/etc., be it a sedentary lifestyle, whatever--just telling people to ignore all that and love their bodies isn't going to make them love their bodies. All it did for me was make me more ashamed.
[1] Yes, I was lucky as hell, privileged as hell, that the something I chose to do about it was as easy for me as it was. For lots of people it isn't; even for myself I haven't been able to maintain it and have had many difficulties trying to get back to that point. Still, the original experience was amazing for me.
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I think the main problem is I moved from Texas (where I'm used to the heat and etc) to Alaska where I refuse to leave the house and there is no outdoor swimming at lakes. I'm much less active when I'm cold and I eat more. Not a great combo. Almost everyone I talked to says everyone gains ten pounds when they move up here.
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