Health

It's the first of the year and popular culture is pushing diet and exercise. Same thing every year.

I was struck by something I heard on the news the other day. Not the content really but the way it was articulated. A woman died while having Liposuction. It's not unusual. It happens. Someone said the woman wanted to appear healthy. It may have been her husband. In the article I link the distinction that she was healthy but wanted a better appearance was made. I don't remember where I heard the health/appearance bit. Lipo is always cosmetic and known to be somewhat risky.

The way we articulate heath is so flawed, especially when it comes to fat people. Health is not a steady state and does not have an appearance. The healthiest looking person may have something lethal going on internally, or may have less than healthy behaviors. Appearance is the worst metric for most things, even beauty. So often I have the experience of a person becoming beautiful to me as I get to know them. But it wasn't the quest for culturally standard beauty that hit me. It was the conflation of thinness by any means and health.

People do ridiculously unhealthy things in the quest for thinness.

So much of the current conversation is about obesity (a medicalization of weight) and healthy habits. It's just not a useful way to think. HAES (health at every size) is about finding your healthy. I think health is a moving target. If you haven't had any protein in days and someone offers you pizza or broccoli ... choose the pizza. If you haven't rested in days and you can nap or jog ... nap.

It's difficult to sort through the culture noise and your own sense of things. It might not even be possible. Maybe the only thing we can do is find a blend of external and internal voices and stumble along. But oh lord I long for some new noise.

The American People

Every time I hear the words: the American people, I cringe. Voter turn out in this midterm was higher than former midterms and was still under fifty percent of eligible voters. If any message was sent by the American people it was silence. Whether that silence is about disenfranchisement or exhaustion is not clear to me. While I was voting a fellow came in saying he thought he had registered but he couldn't find his polling place. They couldn't find his registration at my polling place. African Americans and young voters turned out in record numbers to elect Obama but were not there for the midterm. There's a lot of analysis about why. Some of it makes sense to me. In any case most of the wins were by a narrow margin. There was no mandate. There was no referendum.

Politics these days feels like a battle of rhetoric. Even when I agree with what is being said I am often frustrated with the framing and articulation. It often seems overly personal and lacking substance. It's silly season.

I am no fan of Boehner but there's been a lot of snarky chatter because he cried. Men cry. Deal with it. Out of the same mouths comes the complaint that Obama is too stoic. And why are we having that conversation and not a more problem solving, issue driven analysis?

I think we are a divided nation but I think we always have been. Jefferson and Adams could barely agree. It's not a bad thing to have tension in public policy. And I wonder what we would learn if we could really talk to all those people who didn't show up to vote.

For a long time in my life I turned away from politics. It was too frustrating and didn't feel like a way to make real change. I still often feel that way. The system is fractured and corrupted. So I cast my vote in the best faith I can summon and hope for something more real. I am an American people. And really, none of them speak for me.

Kissing

I wasn't going to write about the fat hating blogger because hate is hate. Not much more to say. Anyone who has read comments on posts about fatness knows that this kind of hatefulness is out there. Read the comments on her post. Hate and hate and more hate. Her apology is completely disingenuous. She "never wanted to be a bully" but those people are really fat. Oh, and she used to be anorexic. She doesn't hate fat people she just doesn't want to be fat.

Sigh.

The creator of the show writes that he was hurt and sad for his friends (the stars of the show) who would read such horrible things being said about them. I wonder why he isn't hurt and sad every time he listens to them do the self hating dialog in the show. He says the fat jokes were going to go away as the show evolved but it's hard to take that seriously because all of the people on the show are targeted. Clearly the writers think making fun of people is funny.

No one is making the connections that seem obvious to me. The show sets the standard for the ideas about fat people. Nothing the blogger wrote is worse than many of the jokes I heard in the two episodes I watched. I've already written about my disappointment in the show.

So why am I writing about it? Because some of the people who read me don't really get that fat hatred is real. I remember talking to a teacher about it and seeing her expression change from interest to one of wondering if I might need meds. I told her a few of the things that had been said to me and her expression changed again to one of shock. She had no idea. But I doubt she gave it much more thought.

Pattie wrote a great post about Love Your Body day. I love the affirmation.

I am so fat.

Yes.

I too am so fat.

I can count the times I've seen a serious kiss between fat people on TV or in a movie. I remember them because they were a shock to my system. I was filled with the kind of conflict a person has when what they want to be true is so rarely portrayed.

I remember people being uncomfortable seeing Gay people kiss. There was lots of chatter about the kiss on Modern Family. I remember when seeing people of color kiss freaked people out.

Representation matters.

And where is NAAFA? Was there a press release I missed? There is a protest happening. Very cool.

I feel angry. I feel like I've been angry for such a long time. The haters don't make me as angry as the very nice people who don't get it. Hate is hate.

The Fat Kids

I tense up when listening to recent discussions on bullying. The focus right now is on the suicides of Gay teens who have been bullied. I am sad and angry when I hear about anyone being bullied. But there's a part of me that wonders why there's no national out cry when fat kids commit suicide. If there is discussion about it the focus rabidly shifts to weight loss.

There have always been and continue to be people who think being Gay is a choice. My personal view is that sexuality is a spectrum. People may be on one end of the spectrum but most of us are at some point along the middle and it's not a fixed point. We all make choices. So? Pushing toward the idea that being gay is biological is a way of pathologizing choice. When a person who has been in a straight relationship begins a Gay relationship the narrative is about them finally realizing the truth. Why do we need these strict definitions? Why do we squelch variance?

I firmly believe the fat revolution is constantly subverted by the believe that all fat people can be thin if they would only eat less and exercise more. How much less? How much more? It varies. And what if someone prefers to eat what they want and move when they want and as result they are fat? Again we prefer to simplify. Being fat is biological. Everything we are is biological. But we also make choices.

My personal experience is that I can lose weight but I can never get to thin. I never made a choice to be fat but I have made the choice to not eat or exercise with the intent to be thin. I eat for nourishment and pleasure. I exercise because it feels good. And I'm fat. It begins in biology and continues with choice.

Yesterday when I was going through the blog roll I opened a formally fat revolution blog and read that the woman was going to have the surgery. For a few minutes I searched to find how she got to that choice but ultimately I deleted the link. Hope that works out. The evidence suggests that it won't but ... it's her body and her choice.

I watch the faces of people who are so sad about the bullied kids and some part of me is angry because I believe those same people will encourage fat kids to lose weight. They won't support the bully but they will make the solution be to change the fat kid.

I'm glad there is a narrative in which Gay youth are encouraged to accept themselves. I just wish it would include the fat kids.

Unemployed

The main difference between the last time I was unemployed and this time is my unemployment check. Just having some money coming in keeps the misery level down. But even if money was not an issue I can't keep living in a zone.

The last time I was unemployed I had been in school and writing. The impulse to write was powered up. I had a daily blog practice, both reading and writing. Working at EA sucked that out of me. In part because of the commute and general exhaustion but also because it never felt like people were interested in what I had to say. I had friends. But I didn't really talk. When I first got laid off I thought I'd write. But the writing muscles are weak and I've been sunk in emotionally.

I don't use Twitter very well. I don't really get it. If you see a Tweet from me it's coming from somewhere like Foursquare, or Facebook. The other day Facebook was down and I checked into Twitter to see if anyone knew why. I saw a Tweet from Blogrolling in which they were announcing the end of the service. When I switched to using Blogger for design I looked for a blogroll gadget but didn't see one. I checked again today and ... there it was. So I moved all the links and let go of a few more. I think I'll add a blog roll to the food blog. I let go of some links that I loved. I need to accept that I am not reading blogs. I'd like to think I might again but until then ...

Jane was visiting for a few days. It was nice to have someone around. Mom will be here in a few weeks.

I still feel relatively voiceless but I am trying to emerge.

Suki

Many years ago a friend sent me some tapes of the Gilmore Girls. She was convinced I would love the show. She was right. I loved the cultural hipness, the town full of characters, the mother daughter relationships and maybe most of all I loved how many fat people were in the show. There were fat people and I only remember one fat joke in all of the episodes.
I especially loved Suki. Suki was the best friend, business partner and chef extraordinaire. Her working kitchen was always charming (although unrealistic). Her enthusiasm for cooking was big fun. And she had a flirtation that became a relationship and a marriage. She had two kids and was pregnant with her third when the show ended. In other words she had a full life and there was never any mention of her weight.
I don't think the actor, Mellisa McCarthy, was particularly fat radical. I don't really follow entertainment news but I think I would have heard if she was advocating for the fat revolution and I never have. And truthfully, I don't really care. I love fat radicals but I don't think every fat person has to represent. Still, I have watched for McCarthy and was happy to hear that she had a new show. What a disappointment.
I knew the show was about two people who meet at an OE meeting, which was problematic but I hoped for some amount of rebelliousness to offset all of that. The show is filled with mean spirited jokes most of which are aimed at the two main fat characters. And really, meanness is rarely funny to me. There are exceptions, times when a mean character brings something to the whole but it's rare.
Melissa McCarthy is an actor trying to make a living. And I suspect she sees her weight as a problem. Sad. Frustrating. But it's her life. I watched the show because of her but I won't continue to watch.
I ended up loving Huge. It never seemed to me that they were shilling for weight loss. In fact I think they portrayed how problematic a focus on weight loss can be. And an exchange between the head of the fat camp and our rebel grrrl was sweet and revealing. What did the leader get out of weight loss? She hated herself a little less. Is that all there is? Yep. The show tapped into a lot of social dynamics and I liked it.
I usually try to watch any show in which fat people are represented, even the weight loss shows. I can't usually watch those for more than a few minutes. They aren't useful. I have watched a bit of Too Fat for Fifteen, which portrays a real life fat camp. Hard to bear but there was a moment that stuck with me.
One of the teens has an illness ( the name of which I don't know), which has caused her knees to grow inward. She's had a lot of surgeries and spent a lot of time in bed as a result. She loves to read. She's the largest camper and she's fierce. She wanted to participate in a race and the medical adviser said she couldn't. I suspect there were concerns about her strength and stamina. There are two exercise councilors, one male and one female. The female councilor was upset about the decision. The male councilor accused the medical adviser of trying to cover her own ass. I was struck by how unwilling they were to consider a medical condition. For them it was all about pushing the kids. However, the woman councilor seemed to believe that the girls could do the race and was sincerely frustrated. She was in tears.
So Michele Obama, Jaime Oliver, all the well meaning people who talk in terms of childhood obesity and this councilor make me so sad. They do not get it. I support kids eating better food. I support kids getting exercise. I don't think they need to become athletes. Any amount of exercise will benefit any of us. Pushing kids to be something they aren't is hurtful.
I was that kid who would rather be reading. I always loved swimming. I always loved dancing. We never had a car so walked everywhere and I loved walking. I never liked team sports. I was never any good at them and I had no interest in learning. I loved yoga from the minute I learned about it. Different people. Different weights. It's about diversity and nature and teaching kids to ind their own truth. One of the kids on that show had a gall bladder attack. Rabid weight loss is associated with gall bladder illness. Why not just teach the kids how to raise and cook great food and enjoy their bodies in motion and bag the weight loss focus? Is it really about health? Or is it about hate?
Something about seeing "Suki" as a self hating fat woman breaks my heart. I realize these are both characters on a television show. I also realize that there's a fat actor who seems to devolved. The people who write the mean jokes are the haters I've always had in my life. They're boring and not worth much energy. Representation matters and fat hatred has become so ramped up. It's exhausting.

Water

I read an epistolary interview of J.M. Coetzee in Harpers in which he talks about psychology. He accepts the notion that understanding one's past makes it possible to let go of the impact of past events, although he refers to it as a touching idea of Freud's and notes that it does not seem demonstrably true. He think it might be more useful to pay more attention to mood. I smiled when I read it. A sad, ironic smile. I am always aware of my mood. I describe it in probably overly simplistic terms. I'm in a good mood. Bad mood. I think of myself as a moody person and I think of that as a problematic characteristic. Coetzee says he is never in a non-mood.

He goes onto note that he is (at the time of the interview) in a melancholy mood. He differentiates melancholy and depression by noting that depression renders one unable to work. Melancholy, he says, is a state of being and not necessarily an affliction. He equates melancholy with water. He makes it sound almost desirable.

The next issue of Harpers, which I read soon after since I had allowed the magazines to pile up, there was an article about a new trend in psychology titled: The War on Unhappiness, subtitled: Goodbye Freud, Hello Positive thinking. Really interesting transition.

I am highly critical of ungrounded positive thinking. Obviously it's better to have a generally positive approach in life but I see so much bad framing of people's experience. We acknowledge and reward "good attitude" and blame people when they are sad, or angry. Barbara Ehrenreich writes so clearly about this in all of her books but specifically in Bright Sided. She writes about being criticized for not being positive when she had cancer. In fact she was being neither positive nor negative. She was being curious. And she writes about how this "war" on unhappiness operates as a means of social control in the job market.

I am always comforted by Ehrenreich's lucidity. But I was almost delighted by Coetzee. I think I have always been a bit melancholy. I think if you aren't a little bit depressed you aren't paying attention. I've always loved something I thought Freud said: ( a Google search says it may have been Einstein, no one seems to know for sure) happiness is for pigs. Martha Graham says that restlessness and discontent are what drive artists to create. All of that said I realize that I slip too easily from melancholy to depression.

I've been miserable. Really, truly, deeply miserable. Unable to write. Barely able to read. The pool has been closed for a month, which hasn't been good. I've tried to do some yoga. Mostly I drift though the day, have trouble sleeping and find myself crying over random things. And I'm angry a lot.

There have been some turn around moments. A friend from EA came for a visit and told me some things that comforted me. I knew my lay off wasn't exactly personal. There were so many people laid off that day. Still, It's hard to not feel rejected. Another conversation with an old friend felt like a long drink of water after years of thirst. And so I feel ... better. Still unfocused and somewhat paralyzed. But better.

James Hillman says that depression opens the door to beauty. He also says that happiness is not something that can be pursued, it is a result.

The pool reopens next week. I can take my watery, melancholy self into the deep, clear blueness.