2007-03-14 2:18 a.m.
Beautiful or Not?
I promised myself I'd be better about posting. But then, I promise myself a lot of things.
BITTER FOR SWEET
Can you tell me what stopped the rain? Where is salvation?
Science, saviors, tragedy?May I lead the way into temptation?
Sirens screaming just for me and the void remains.Would you save my life if you knew why this is the last time?
I'm leaving without you.
Could you save my life had the boy that you knew not died?
This is the last time.
I'm leaving without you in silence.Can you tell me what stops the pain?
Self medication? Science, saviors, tragedy?How deep must we cut to reach sensation?
Find it. Bring it back to me where the void remains.Walk with me my one and only...
find with me the end.Walk with me my one and only silence.
If you knew would you save me?
Can you tell me what stopped the rain?
Can you tell me what stopped it?
If you knew, would you save me?
Tonight, at this late hour, I am pondering the question of beauty and self-image, and moreover WHY THE FUCK I hate myself and my body so damn much.
I'm not even sure where to start. Maybe with the International Music and Dance Festival that occurred this evening, where there were two incredible bellydancers with bodies I can never hope to achieve. Maybe with this afternoon, glancing around one of my lecture classes, and seeing an inordinate number of girls who had primped themselves into discomfort, but who were quite obviously stoically bearing with it in the interest of looking "cute" for the boys in the school. Maybe with later this afternoon, talking and laughing on a bus with a relatively attractive guy on the way up to campus, turning down an offer to share some of his candy on the grounds that it "isn't vegetarian" even though I knew perfectly well otherwise. Or maybe with midnight last night, being one of the first fifty people to hear Blaqk Audio's first song, "Bitter for Sweet" and wishing that there was a concert of there's I could go to - or better, one I could dance at - and then remembering that I don't dance in public. Nobody wants to see a 215 pound woman getting her groove on. Period.
Even I wouldn't want to see it.
Or maybe, just possibly...it began even earlier than that. Maybe it began at the beginning of last month, when my mom reported to me that my brother has a thyroid condition - one which causes abnormal weight gain as one of its symptoms - and suggested that perhaps I, too, suffer from it.
I've never had an easy time accepting myself. I was always the kid who nobody wanted to play with, the kid who made friends with trees and cats because the other kids ignored her. My childhood was lonely, with my only real company coming in the form of an older sister who didn't even want me around half the time, but who would confide in me when all other options had been exhausted.
My first real friend was a tabby cat who belonged to my neighbor.
She was the only one who I can honestly believe has ever loved me completely and entirely, regardless of anything else. After I moved away, I say away like it was far or something when it was only two blocks, the new tenants became annoyed by her continual scratching and crying at what used to be my window, so her owner had to lock her inside - not an easy adjustment for a cat. One day she escaped, and was hit by a car trying to get back to my window. Shit, I'm crying now...
I loved her so much. That cat was the only companion I had from as far back as I can remember until I turned ten. Then I didn't have anyone for a good four years. I will always love and care for stray cats in Fluffy's memory. She was a good cat...
But anyway. The point here was not to get into a long reminiscence about Fluffy, but to point out that I'm no stranger to body image problems. When your classmates are continually reinventing new ways of describing your rotundity, to the point where you can only relate to a feline, something is severely wrong.
My mom has never helped. If there's one place a girl is supposed to be reassured of her innate worth regardless of her exterior, it's supposed to be her mom.
I can remember being eight years old the first time my mom asked my doctor "What should we be doing about her weight?" I hadn't even known it was an issue until then. I'd been blissfully unaware in the way only a child can be that I was constantly being judged by my appearance, not only by my classmates, but by the one person in the world who's supposed to be on your side in such things.
Then again, my relationship with Mom is far from normal.
From the time I was ten, mom would constantly, every time she saw me, poke and prod at my stomach, tell me I needed to lose ten or fifteen pounds, and then pat my belly. Like there was something amusing about it...it was so degrading. I'm in college now. Whenever a friend so much as accidentally touches my stomach, I recoil. I can't give people hugs because I worry that I'll recoil from them if my stomach touches theirs and that they'll be somehow offended. When I do hug people, it's at arm's length.
It's not like I'm 5'4 and 215 pounds, either. I'm 5'10. Tall enough to be a model, if I could just drop 100 pounds.
So all of these things combined make for weird self-image problems.
It's one thing to know that Marilyn Monroe was a size 14 and that you are too. It's one thing to think that your grandmother was one of the most beautiful women you've ever seen when she was young (and even still) and know that you're the same size she was at your age. It's quite a different thing to live in your skin in a society where an utter lack of body fat - except in your breasts, and there we want an overabundance - is the ideal.
How the fuck are women supposed to live up to this? And surely men can't find the anorexic stick look all that appealing if Marilyn Monroe is still THE sex symbol of all womandom. So why is everybody feeding into these ideas that only cause harm to people?
I've had three anorexic friends. Two bulimic. Five cutters. I self-injure, but I use my own damn fingernails. I jump in the shower, run the water to scalding, and try to melt myself. When that doesn't work, I scratch myself. I just dig my nails in until I can't feel anything anymore because I'm shaking from the effort. The marks go away. And when they don't, I have body acne at the tops of my arms, so the marks blend in. It just looks like I've been ineffectually popping pimples, is all.
None of these are normal behaviors. Healthy people don't behave like this. There's a reason these are classified as mental disorders - these things shouldn't be happening to anyone. In populations without our media influence, they're relatively unheard of. The fact that they're all related to appearance either directly as a weight-loss mechanism or indirectly as a reflection of low self-worth is obviously important.
And yet we continue to be bombarded with images of exactly what we can never be.
What are people so afraid of, that we have to rule our own nature somehow wrong? Women weren't made to be thin - we gain fat naturally. We can't even begin menstruation until our bodies reach the level of fat needed to maintain a healthy pregnancy. Fat is intimately tied up in what it means to be mature and feminine - so why isn't it part of what it means to be beautiful?
I don't understand the so-called "health" arguments, either. Yes, it's true that obesity can't be good for us, but then neither can anorexia and malnutrition from constant dieting.
I read an article that says that young children are now jumping on the dieting craze. Dear gods...
Now matter how low I got, I never tried a real diet. I was eating little enough as it was - growing up below the poverty level in America in a family which never eats out does strange things to your eating habits. Dinner was usually spaghetti or baked chicken with rice, and it was usually the only meal available. Once I went vegetarian, I was lucky to get one square meal a day until my mom and my sister joined me down that dark path. I lived on romaine lettuce, spinach, and tomatoes for over a year, and gained over 15 pounds in that period. Don't ask me how it happened, because I don't know either.
This all just makes me so angry.
But the thing is, with me, as with many other people, I get angry so I don't have to deal with other emotions.
Can you tell me what stops the pain? Self-medication? Science, saviors, tragedy?
I wish I knew. I'd do anything to stop the pain.
