Some of my best friends are skinny
by Cassandra, Unknown News
July 8, 2007
I've been angry about body-image prejudices for years now, since long
before supermodels started dying from anorexia. I know a couple of women
who are both medically underweight. One is trying to lose 'just another
10 pounds'. The other has always just been thin, but she worries about
her waist size -- and she’s in her 60s, when she should be worrying about
bone density.
I'm tired of listening to the obsessions of women with
pilates and calories and scales. I'm sick to death of '2 is the new 8'
or whatever the hell they're telling anorexic kids these days. Too many
women who are trying to get pregnant would do so easily if they'd just
gain 10 pounds.
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I've dated men who commented on my weight [or my 'body',
which is even more offensive] on the first or third date, so I've pretty
much stopped dating. I would never tell some guy I just met I think he’s
got a really great chin or needs to lose the facial hair, although I
might think it. I doubt most men make this particular faux pas, but some
twerps think it’s OK to comment on my build, which is usually clad in
over-sized garments so that won't happen. It probably says more about
the dating pool that it does about my looks, but it's a pretty damned
sad commentary.
I'm not immune to the national weight obsession, I just
try to not let it affect how I live. It doesn’t always work, but I ain’t
going to pilates class and I will have my chocolate.
Some of the things people say about weight are just so unbelievably
cruel that if they said something similar about people of color or of a
different religion they'd be kicked out of respectable society. And so
they should be.
I'm also sick of hearing that '40 is the new 20'. Most people do look
better than our grandparents did at 40, but that's generally because we
have better diets and less physically difficult lives. Some of us even
have decent medical care.
When I decided to stop coloring my gray hair
because it's a pain in the ass, a friend expressed surprise that I was
trying to find a decent, cheap, skin lotion. Apparently if one stops
part of the natural progression of nature, the corollary is that one has
decided to stop grooming entirely.
I’m tired of hearing middle-class
women talk about elective surgery as though it were a natural process.
Again, I’m not immune to it. I wish I still looked the way I did as a
young woman, but people always wished that. Perhaps there was a time
when age was something that was respected, when experience and wisdom
counted for more than smooth skin and a taut physique, but I bet even
then, the elders wished they looked like they did when they were 16.
© by the author.
There's much more than this at Unknown News.
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I'm not immune to the national weight obsession, I just try to not let it affect how I live.
It doesn’t always work, but I ain’t going to pilates class and I will have my chocolate.
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