(no subject)
3/2/06 18:17![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
owlectomyI hate the diet industry/mass media diet-consciousness with a burning loathing.
I am a medium-sized person, but not necessarily a very healthy one; I was never much good at exercise, and never liked it. Like most medium-sized women, every year or six months I feel like I should be healthier, and possibly lighter.
And then a couple of weeks later I get so disgusted with the whole thing that I just say, screw it, I'll live on chocolate doughnuts. Mmm, chocolate doughnuts. It's not the process itself that bothers me. I can eat healthy, and I don't try to deprive myself completely of anything; I don't even mind exercise any more. I would've been able to stick with it last year if I hadn't broken bones like I did.
What bother me so much is that it feels like buying into a mentality that conflates thinness, health, virtuousness, and self-denial. There's a bunch of theory about how food has replaced sex as the thing women must deny themselves to be properly virtuous; and it's very telling that the moral panic about obesity has focused on women, and on children most of all (of course, obese children are a sign of the mother's failure to parent properly). Grown men get much more of a pass on it. And maybe it would help if I wasn't aware of how people were trying to make money by making people feel terrible about themselves. But because I can't escape that awareness, I keep feeling like I am allying myself with everything I hate and disagree with. And I feel myself slipping into a terrible mindset; I end up judgemental of myself, and worse, of other people. And--what's the alternative? Chocolate doughnuts?
You know that there's something wrong when someone as apathetic about personal appearance as I am can hardly deal with it sanely.
I am a medium-sized person, but not necessarily a very healthy one; I was never much good at exercise, and never liked it. Like most medium-sized women, every year or six months I feel like I should be healthier, and possibly lighter.
And then a couple of weeks later I get so disgusted with the whole thing that I just say, screw it, I'll live on chocolate doughnuts. Mmm, chocolate doughnuts. It's not the process itself that bothers me. I can eat healthy, and I don't try to deprive myself completely of anything; I don't even mind exercise any more. I would've been able to stick with it last year if I hadn't broken bones like I did.
What bother me so much is that it feels like buying into a mentality that conflates thinness, health, virtuousness, and self-denial. There's a bunch of theory about how food has replaced sex as the thing women must deny themselves to be properly virtuous; and it's very telling that the moral panic about obesity has focused on women, and on children most of all (of course, obese children are a sign of the mother's failure to parent properly). Grown men get much more of a pass on it. And maybe it would help if I wasn't aware of how people were trying to make money by making people feel terrible about themselves. But because I can't escape that awareness, I keep feeling like I am allying myself with everything I hate and disagree with. And I feel myself slipping into a terrible mindset; I end up judgemental of myself, and worse, of other people. And--what's the alternative? Chocolate doughnuts?
You know that there's something wrong when someone as apathetic about personal appearance as I am can hardly deal with it sanely.