body image

I don't know about you, but I am getting sick of the media. Television in particular. But not just television. Commercials.

I recently saw two commercials in a row that deeply disturbed me. True, I was watching reruns of CSI on a channel that is geared towards older men, but still. Businesses and television stations alike need to learn when to draw the line.

Commercial One: It's advertising a summer sale at a local matress store. Rather than images of beds and lots of graphics and emphasis on prices and things like that, every time the commercial mentions the summer's "HOT" deal, the commercial flashes to a woman with huge breasts getting out of a pool, dripping wet, in a red one-piece. I was just happy she wasn't naked.

When I got out of the shower tonight I stood in front of the mirror for a good five to ten minutes just looking at myself. I was scared by what was staring back at me in the mirror.

Time to do anything but work, blog, eat and sleep these days is limited. I don't put on make up, I don't really do my hair, I never really stand in the mirror naked or half dressed. So I haven't noticed that being skinny has now become looking scary skinny. No one else has noticed either. I guess my t-shirts and baggy clothing is covering up the reality; that I have become Nicole Riche very scary skinny.

The first clue was that my bathing suit, a juniors small was kind of baggy when I put it on last weekend at a pool party. I of course covered up in gym shorts and a t-shirt so no one noticed, but I thought it was kind of odd. Clue number two was that I rubbed my back earlier today (I have my period, so I am having lots of back pain) and I didn't feel the normal layer of fat under the skin. Just my hip bone.

In the past few months since my house burned down I have lost weight. I am not sure how much since I don't own a scale, but I bought pants in size 4, 3 and 1 for work. My size 4 pants I can take off without unbuttoning, my size 3 pants keep falling down even with my belt on and I just noticed my size 1 pants are starting to be big around the waist as well. Actually, my belt isn't small enough anymore.

I'm not proud of my weight. I'm proud of the muscles I have now that I carry around heavy things at work and chasing around my toddler at home. But the skinny look, I just didn't work for it. If anything it's probably a sign that I am not healthy. I don't always eat three meals a day and I should probably be eating closer to 6 since I am still nursing my daughter. It doesn't help that the food where I work sucks and some days my dinner is an orange and a yogurt. At least some science leans towards calorie reduction as the way to live past a 100, so maybe I will live longer?

I am fat. When I say this, I'm describing one particular aspect of myself. I am not criticizing or judging, nor am I inviting other people to do so or asking for assurances that I'm pretty. In my mind fat is a descriptor like any other. It is not a judgment.

I have a very active life. I skied almost every other day this winter, and had an eight hour ski patrol shift every Saturday. I walk everywhere it is practical to do so and some places it is not. My kayaking season started today and will last until it is too cold to do anything but look forward to skiing. My fat body can do all of these things as part of my routine.

At Scarleteen I routinely hear from young women who are feeling insecure about their boyfriend's use of porn. For me, what stands out about these women is the pressure they feel to satisfy every one of their partners sexual needs. That pressure appears to be internal - their partners are described as quite comfortable with an independent sexuality, e.g. their use of porn and masturbation. I've always thought of these women as unnecessarily jealous, making a big deal out of something relatively minor. It's not like they were taking a feminist stand against porn -- they just didn't want their partners using it.

Pardon the language in this girls, but I just listened to this song for the first time in a long time, and I just felt the need to post the lyrics. It may be crude sometimes, but it certainly gets me going, makes me feel powerful and comfortable in my own skin.

Bitch and Animal: Pussy Manifesto

"Manifest this motherf****** #1:
Every living thing comes from and returns to (get it?)

Manifest this motherf****** #2:
Let Pussy speak to me through every living thing.
As all creatures move and grow,
let them bring forth the open ness and warm ness
that flows in the energy of Pussy...

It’s funny but considering how much time I’ve spent in rural and farming areas in Africa, this was the first time I had spent any time traversing rural Ohio. Of course it is easier to happen upon real rural locations in Africa, but for all I have heard and said about Ohio being a farming state I had managed to remain removed from it. Rural Ohio spoke to me only of cornfields and ignorant, racist hicks and I had had little reason to go and find out if I was wrong.

As we drove by the thousand and eleventh isolated farmhouse we noticed an older man sitting on a piece of building material. He was catching for a girl, a daughter or sister, a typical clean-cut Ohioan, clad only in a sports bra and athletic shorts.

I love Summer. I love the heat and sweat of it, I love being able to wear less clothes. What I don’t love is the fact that people think that they can comment about my body as though it’s theirs. Just because I am black and curvy and stand out in your typical small-town Ohio crowd does not give anyone permission to comment about my body or choice of clothing.

A few days ago I went to the nearby quarry with a friend to get some sun and swim. I sat on a picnic table in a blue bikini near a popular diving point. I looked around at the people spread across the 2 mile beach; families playing in the shallows, high school graduates tanning, not a single other black person. Awesome. For me that is a big cue that I am going to be treated differently from everyone else.

It was my mom's second wedding a few weeks ago. I came home to see it, and although I didn't have a formal part, I was still present for all the nitty-gritty prep. Including the chit-chat among the women as they got ready for the wedding. My new stepsister is younger than me, and she's still really insecure about her appearance and how she views herself and fuctions in the world. A lot of it stems from her appearance--she doesn't see herself as pretty, even though I think she is. My mom and my aunt were talking about it, and my aunt said something that I am still having trouble fathoming/processing.

My Mother is a good person, she loves me and has done a lot for me when I was growing up but everytime I see her there is one thing that makes me feel nervous and sick because I know that she is going to mention and point these things out. Ever since I can remember my mum has had huge issues with my physical appearance, weighing me when I go to visit, pulling my clothes, if other people are around she points out the things that she doesnt like about me to them so that I will be embarrassed, that sort of thing.

As a teenager it upset me to the point where I just wouldnt eat anything for days at a time, would obsess over my hair and clothes and how I looked even when I got up in the morning because she might see me and not like it. Now that I am out on my own, I still find that when I go and see her I have a few moments of panick before I get out of my car and walk in to see her, I wont eat or drink anything while I am there, I always wear new clothes and I always make sure my hair is in place, yet I wouldnt do this for anyone else. Im almost 21, and I am terrified of my own mother. She never hit me or was horrible to me, she just looks at me like she wishes I was somebody else, and it breaks my heart.

I was speaking with a friend a couple of days back who told me, “I really need to work on my body.”

Work on your body?

“My boobs have gotten smaller and my hips have gotten bigger. I need to fix that.”

Maybe you need to work on your Body Image.

“No, this isn’t a body image thing. There are just certain things that I don’t like on bodies in general, and now it has happened to me, so I want to change it.”

I told her that she was misunderstanding the idea of body image. But when prompted to explain, I found that I really did not have any words to voice what I meant. So I left the conversation as was, deep in thought.

I have the words now.

The Food and Drug Administration has approved the first over-the-counter weight-loss drug.

I seriously can't believe this. I mean, we spent years fighting so that women over 18 can now get EC, explaining over and over again that the drug is safe, easy to use properly, and won't promote unsafe sex, and this weight-loss drug gets approved, just like that. There's not even an age restriction to purchase it, even though the drug is "recommended" only for those 18 and over.

I've been thinking about 'pretty' and 'ugly' lately. In part, this is something I can thank my boyfriend for. The unending compliments I was showered with at first were awkward and annoying, but it's bring me to think about certain things.

I hesitate to call it 'low self esteem', because I'm confident in who I am. Those who appreciate me appreciate me for who I am, and I am a wonderful person. Perhaps negative body image is right. But it doesn't seem to fit.

I have always said that I'm ugly. This, to me, is partially because I am uncomfortably close to conventional beauty and partially because, well, my face looks awkward and strange. And I don't care.

Tonight at work we were even more dead than we normally are on a Tuesday night in the bar, so I found myself pretty bored after cleaning everything twice and decided to chill for a while and read our local newspaper. I don't often read the newspaper anymore simply because some of the things in it trigger me badly and because some of the other things, like today's event, just irritate me to no end.

Flicking through the first few pages of depressing news and junk advertisements, I found myself faced with the huge bolded title "Buck the trend, guys" which then read in larger letters underneath: "Men are being bombarded with images of the perfect physique, causing the same pressure to conform that women have long been used to, and bringing similar harm". Intrigued I read on... "Men spent 50,000 years advancing from bare skins and bearskins to the impeccably tailored suit... Twentieth century bloke had every reason to hope that personality and brains (or failing that, a fat wallet) would count for more in his sophisticated modern world than a caveman physique. But in the past 20 years civilisation has crashed into reverse gear". By this time, all I could think was boo effing hoo, guys. But I read on... "Not only has the modern girl become ludicrously intolerant of her mans flabby physique, and far more vocal about expressing her impertinent displeasure, but men also find themselves confronted at every turn by images of other men... godlike hunks. What has that done to the male self esteem, already reeling from the relentless advance of women in society?”

ARGH! It's now almost two months since I returned to Bowmore, and I'm finding it easier this year. I've found a group of people I can hang out with at lunch who aren't afraid of me, and the people who are afraid of me (most of them) don't even talk to me. So I'm not having much trouble controlling my temper.

I've done some pretty risky things for a Beaches Kid to do, which involve gothic-ness and other such things. For my halloween costume, I have a black leather skirt, fishnets, hair dye, sandals, and a revealing top. I'm going out as a gothic 'slut', or something to that effect. I don't like using that word, but it's the best for what I'm wearing.