![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
jenettExplicitly, I mean.
Last week, an article came out on Witchvox about someone's experiences as a fat priestess. On one of the online forums I read, someone started a discussion about it.
Anyway, back to that thread.
There's a lot of fat-bashing in there.
One can pretty much go down the standard responses: if you only tried harder, all fat people just stuff cake and pizza in their face, *anyone* can get skinny if they just do what I do. If someone came up with a bingo card, we'd have hit bingo on about page 3 of what is currently a 10 page thread.
I've done my bit of size-acceptance ed there - pointing out that people's bodies are different, that our past history changes how we respond to exercise and to food. And that there are ways in which we don't fully understand some of those issues yet: yet the reality of the world suggests that plans focused on improving *health* (i.e. encouraging better eating habits and exercise, without worrying about the number on the scale) tends to have a better and more reliable outcome than those focused on the scale.
I've mentioned I've got lung scarring (totally unrelated to my weight) and asthma (ditto), and that these limit the intensity I can exercise to. I've pointed out that I have a life that includes full time work (10+ hours a day including my short commute), sleep (8 hours) and a need to do other things at home (make dinner, do the dishes, do the laundry, whatever.)
I pointed out that my past experiences with extreme calorie restriction and exercise have permanently changed my body. (As have periods of being on hormonal birth control and steroids for the asthma.) And that in my experience, the last time I tried it, I need to exercise (at the intensity my lungs can handle on a moderately good day) for about 3 hours a day to drop weight.
Given that I work for a living - that's only barely possible. But if that's the case, forget staying current in my profession outside of stuff I can do during the workday. Forget being a priestess. Forget writing, or teaching, or helping on Pagan Pride. Forget having friendships or relationships that don't fit with my exercise schedule.
(And there's the minor problem that the next time I get a cold, I won't be *able* to do that 3 hours of movement that day. Or probably for a week or two. Because, see, I'll stop breathing if I do that. Stopping breathing is more immediately fatal than the potential risks of being fat, so guess which one I pick. And thus, the weight would come back. Etc. etc. etc. I refuse to get on that Endless Hamster Wheel of Doom, thanks.)
Anyway. This evening, mulling over why this thread was bugging me so much, I finally went "Oh, duh." It's the standard sexist trope about how my body is everyone else's to lay out standards for.
I don't know why it's taken me this long to hit this one. Because, dude. I'm 33. Been living with this body in this shape for a decade or two now. I can chalk up some of it to having gone to a women's college (with women of varying shapes, sizes, and comfort with same, but where the *agency* for those shapes was a lot more stable: my friends focus on what makes their bodies feel better, not on some external standard.)
But then I remember that I spend most of my social time in geek-friendly spaces (where larger women are not uncommon, and which for all their flaws, generally don't attract men who think they know more about your body than you do. Or at least, usually don't talk about it to you.) And I've had the benefit of working in a school where I'm one of the largest women in the building. (And yes, thanks, I notice that.) But *no one* has ever made even a passing comment about it. (I admit to usually avoiding eating lunch with a small number of people who spend a chunk of time in diet talk, but that's easy.)
Anyway, I wanted to call out the sexism 'you claim you know my body better than I do', so here is what I ended up posting:
I want to be really clear here. You are saying you know my body better than I do. This is not supportive. This is not a way to be helpful.
This is *directly* implying that I am out of touch with my body (and that you, someone who's never seen me, met me, seen me in action) knows more about what I can or should do than I do.
Not helpful. (Especially when for a lot of people, one of the ways weight gain happens in the first place is being disconnected from their understanding of what their body needs to be healthy. Sometimes that's through illness, but often it's by buying into the idea that other people know our bodies better than we do.)
I've already outlined what I'd find helpful: most of it is not available from people online. (Support for finding more methods of exercise that work with lung scarring and asthma when I have flares. The very real support I get from my doctor and herbalist on making changes that improve my actual health in measurable ways, not my theoretical health later in life. Etc. Etc.)
Being told I don't know my own body isn't it.
(I did not explicitly call out the sexism part because that board has some rules that make that very tricky, and I am not up for that right now. But the "Dude, hands off my life" part I could manage.)
I expect there will be nastiness following, or cluelessness, or something of the kind. And I may have to go avoid that thread for a while, because this (on top of the stuff brought up by my visit to my mother, which threw *all* my eating patterns out of whack, especially since I've been too tired to do serious proper cooking the last few weeks) is not particularly healthy for my eating patterns either. But y'know. I'll cope.
(I am enjoying, mostly, my .6 mile walk each way from my car to Elise's rehab center, and back again. But the round back has been a little iffy this week, as the allergens start creeping upwards, and the humidity's been higher. I hate having to juggle the "Exercise is good" against the "Not needing to fall over mid-walk" equation in my head, on the go. Has very little to do with how much exercise I've been getting, or what I've been eating, and a lot more to do with the state of my lungs. Also, I have serious and major protein cravings this week. Argh.)
On the topic of priestessing: I want to take good care of my body. I don't take good care of my body because I'm afraid of dying. (Got over that one at 15, thanks). I like this world, and love my friends, and want to be around for a while to come.
But I also don't see the point in misery *now* in order to have a few extra years later. (If we were talking *decades*, the equation gets a little harder, but given my current health history and my family history, we're probably talking more about 'dying at 70 something' versus 'dying at 80 something' in terms of weight-implicated conditions.)
So, I want to take care of my body, but not at the cost of the rest of my life. That means I do my best to get exercise that my body can tolerate. I do my best to feed it food that is sustaining and satisfying, and that is connected to what my body actually wants. (and becoming more aware of things like the link between lung issues and draining my reserves of vitamins A and E much faster than normal. Seriously. Learned more from my herbalist about keeping my body on an even keel than 30 years of doctors combined.)
But it also means I don't *just* tend to my body. I tend to my mind by reading, by being active in my profession, by being creative. I tend to my emotions (those friendships). I tend to my spiritual practice (more time involved there, and I'm behind on some things I want to do because of exhaustion still.)
And it also means routing around some past damage. Calorie restricted diets get me into an obsessive mindset *really* fast, and I can't even do food tracking for more than a few days at a time without getting into that place. (Solution: I do it periodically, and at times when I'm otherwise under less stress, so I continue to get a useful baseline.)
It means knowing that I almost certainly can't do the amount of exercise it takes to lose weight - because of paying too much attention to my mother (ok, and not having the financial resources to supplement my food intake, those two summers). But of looking at options that I *can* do. (I'm seriously contemplating a Y membership and swimming in the very early morning before work, but that's only a very recent option in my budget.)
And it means looking at the full spectrum of health - not just aerobic capacity but flexibility, and all the 'can I do the amount of physical activity I *want* to do in a given day?' questions that come up. (These days, I'm mostly there, when my lungs are functional.)
All of those are intimately tied up in what it means to be a priestess to me. In what it means to live in a world with many cracks and imperfections that - yes, show signs of past breaking points, but that also refract the light in brillant new ways. Perfection is not my goal. Living in my body, in this world, is. Not merely subsisting, in hopes of some greater reward yet to come.
Last week, an article came out on Witchvox about someone's experiences as a fat priestess. On one of the online forums I read, someone started a discussion about it.
Anyway, back to that thread.
There's a lot of fat-bashing in there.
One can pretty much go down the standard responses: if you only tried harder, all fat people just stuff cake and pizza in their face, *anyone* can get skinny if they just do what I do. If someone came up with a bingo card, we'd have hit bingo on about page 3 of what is currently a 10 page thread.
I've done my bit of size-acceptance ed there - pointing out that people's bodies are different, that our past history changes how we respond to exercise and to food. And that there are ways in which we don't fully understand some of those issues yet: yet the reality of the world suggests that plans focused on improving *health* (i.e. encouraging better eating habits and exercise, without worrying about the number on the scale) tends to have a better and more reliable outcome than those focused on the scale.
I've mentioned I've got lung scarring (totally unrelated to my weight) and asthma (ditto), and that these limit the intensity I can exercise to. I've pointed out that I have a life that includes full time work (10+ hours a day including my short commute), sleep (8 hours) and a need to do other things at home (make dinner, do the dishes, do the laundry, whatever.)
I pointed out that my past experiences with extreme calorie restriction and exercise have permanently changed my body. (As have periods of being on hormonal birth control and steroids for the asthma.) And that in my experience, the last time I tried it, I need to exercise (at the intensity my lungs can handle on a moderately good day) for about 3 hours a day to drop weight.
Given that I work for a living - that's only barely possible. But if that's the case, forget staying current in my profession outside of stuff I can do during the workday. Forget being a priestess. Forget writing, or teaching, or helping on Pagan Pride. Forget having friendships or relationships that don't fit with my exercise schedule.
(And there's the minor problem that the next time I get a cold, I won't be *able* to do that 3 hours of movement that day. Or probably for a week or two. Because, see, I'll stop breathing if I do that. Stopping breathing is more immediately fatal than the potential risks of being fat, so guess which one I pick. And thus, the weight would come back. Etc. etc. etc. I refuse to get on that Endless Hamster Wheel of Doom, thanks.)
Anyway. This evening, mulling over why this thread was bugging me so much, I finally went "Oh, duh." It's the standard sexist trope about how my body is everyone else's to lay out standards for.
I don't know why it's taken me this long to hit this one. Because, dude. I'm 33. Been living with this body in this shape for a decade or two now. I can chalk up some of it to having gone to a women's college (with women of varying shapes, sizes, and comfort with same, but where the *agency* for those shapes was a lot more stable: my friends focus on what makes their bodies feel better, not on some external standard.)
But then I remember that I spend most of my social time in geek-friendly spaces (where larger women are not uncommon, and which for all their flaws, generally don't attract men who think they know more about your body than you do. Or at least, usually don't talk about it to you.) And I've had the benefit of working in a school where I'm one of the largest women in the building. (And yes, thanks, I notice that.) But *no one* has ever made even a passing comment about it. (I admit to usually avoiding eating lunch with a small number of people who spend a chunk of time in diet talk, but that's easy.)
Anyway, I wanted to call out the sexism 'you claim you know my body better than I do', so here is what I ended up posting:
I want to be really clear here. You are saying you know my body better than I do. This is not supportive. This is not a way to be helpful.
This is *directly* implying that I am out of touch with my body (and that you, someone who's never seen me, met me, seen me in action) knows more about what I can or should do than I do.
Not helpful. (Especially when for a lot of people, one of the ways weight gain happens in the first place is being disconnected from their understanding of what their body needs to be healthy. Sometimes that's through illness, but often it's by buying into the idea that other people know our bodies better than we do.)
I've already outlined what I'd find helpful: most of it is not available from people online. (Support for finding more methods of exercise that work with lung scarring and asthma when I have flares. The very real support I get from my doctor and herbalist on making changes that improve my actual health in measurable ways, not my theoretical health later in life. Etc. Etc.)
Being told I don't know my own body isn't it.
(I did not explicitly call out the sexism part because that board has some rules that make that very tricky, and I am not up for that right now. But the "Dude, hands off my life" part I could manage.)
I expect there will be nastiness following, or cluelessness, or something of the kind. And I may have to go avoid that thread for a while, because this (on top of the stuff brought up by my visit to my mother, which threw *all* my eating patterns out of whack, especially since I've been too tired to do serious proper cooking the last few weeks) is not particularly healthy for my eating patterns either. But y'know. I'll cope.
(I am enjoying, mostly, my .6 mile walk each way from my car to Elise's rehab center, and back again. But the round back has been a little iffy this week, as the allergens start creeping upwards, and the humidity's been higher. I hate having to juggle the "Exercise is good" against the "Not needing to fall over mid-walk" equation in my head, on the go. Has very little to do with how much exercise I've been getting, or what I've been eating, and a lot more to do with the state of my lungs. Also, I have serious and major protein cravings this week. Argh.)
On the topic of priestessing: I want to take good care of my body. I don't take good care of my body because I'm afraid of dying. (Got over that one at 15, thanks). I like this world, and love my friends, and want to be around for a while to come.
But I also don't see the point in misery *now* in order to have a few extra years later. (If we were talking *decades*, the equation gets a little harder, but given my current health history and my family history, we're probably talking more about 'dying at 70 something' versus 'dying at 80 something' in terms of weight-implicated conditions.)
So, I want to take care of my body, but not at the cost of the rest of my life. That means I do my best to get exercise that my body can tolerate. I do my best to feed it food that is sustaining and satisfying, and that is connected to what my body actually wants. (and becoming more aware of things like the link between lung issues and draining my reserves of vitamins A and E much faster than normal. Seriously. Learned more from my herbalist about keeping my body on an even keel than 30 years of doctors combined.)
But it also means I don't *just* tend to my body. I tend to my mind by reading, by being active in my profession, by being creative. I tend to my emotions (those friendships). I tend to my spiritual practice (more time involved there, and I'm behind on some things I want to do because of exhaustion still.)
And it also means routing around some past damage. Calorie restricted diets get me into an obsessive mindset *really* fast, and I can't even do food tracking for more than a few days at a time without getting into that place. (Solution: I do it periodically, and at times when I'm otherwise under less stress, so I continue to get a useful baseline.)
It means knowing that I almost certainly can't do the amount of exercise it takes to lose weight - because of paying too much attention to my mother (ok, and not having the financial resources to supplement my food intake, those two summers). But of looking at options that I *can* do. (I'm seriously contemplating a Y membership and swimming in the very early morning before work, but that's only a very recent option in my budget.)
And it means looking at the full spectrum of health - not just aerobic capacity but flexibility, and all the 'can I do the amount of physical activity I *want* to do in a given day?' questions that come up. (These days, I'm mostly there, when my lungs are functional.)
All of those are intimately tied up in what it means to be a priestess to me. In what it means to live in a world with many cracks and imperfections that - yes, show signs of past breaking points, but that also refract the light in brillant new ways. Perfection is not my goal. Living in my body, in this world, is. Not merely subsisting, in hopes of some greater reward yet to come.
no subject
Date: 2009-07-29 03:55 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2009-07-29 04:11 am (UTC)(I like the entire blog, too, but that page is a great summary and refutation of all the standard arguments.)