Jan's Sushi Bar

I once got into an argument with my mother.  She was berating me about my weight – an all too common occurrence.  I told her that losing weight wouldn’t make me a better mother or wife or person.

“Yes, it will,” she said.

I lost weight – again; the only thing it accomplished was to  make me a better person in HER eyes (but still not good enough; never, ever quite good enough).  It was, however, one of the many nails in the coffin of my failing marriage (that the weight loss coincided with the first affair was anything but a coincidence).

I’ve lost quite a bit of weight over the course of my life.  Several times.  People who have never had a real weight problem can never understand that.

I have been told that all I needed to do was eat less and exercise more.  Wrong.  If you think that’s my problem, you are so way off base it’s not even funny.  I do not overeat; I do not stuff cream puffs down my throat.  Not by a long shot.  I have, in the past, been afraid of eating.  There was a time I was so afraid gaining weight that I threw up three times a day, every day, doing irreparable damage to my esophagus and teeth.

Nor am I some sort of instant gratification junkie.  I certainly don’t need everything and I certainly don’t need it now.  I spent nearly 20 years without a vehicle because I couldn’t afford one.  I never owned my own home until I was in my 40s.  I have gone without many of the necessities in life, including health care and decent clothing, for an extended period of time and I  didn’t go right out and start buying all I could the minute I could afford it.

I can’t turn on a television or open a magazine without being reminded that I am too short, too short-waisted, too big-busted, too “hippy” to possess any real beauty.  My talents and intelligence are completely inconsequential.  YES, THEY ARE.  Look around you – all of the “successful” women are physically beautiful by today’s standards.  The one possible exception is Oprah, and isn’t SHE raked over the coals every time she starts putting weight back on.  You know, I can’t remember the last time I read anything about how Ms. Winfrey is a self-made woman, overcoming the poverty and abuse of her childhood to become one of the wealthiest and most powerful people in the entertainment industry.  But you can’t pass a damn magazine that isn’t carrying on about her latest weight gain.

Am I far too sedentary?  Indeed I am.  I have a sedentary job and my favorite pastimes (mostly) include sitting.  There’s also the small problem that the only exercise I truly enjoy is swimming, and we no longer have a pool.  However, having said that, if you think I’m going to go join a gym or even the local Y so I can swim, you’re crazy.  I joined a gym once; a completely demoralizing experience.  The women (the pretty, in-shape women) who used the gym treated me like shit.  I stopped going not because I was lazy or unmotivated to exercise, but because I was tired of the sneers and snickers and the cold shoulders and the all-too-audible whispers of “What is SHE doing here?”

Oh, and Weight Watchers?  That place that is often stuffed with women desperate to lose 5 whole pounds?  The first time I joined Weight Watchers, I was called up to the front of the meeting to receive a ribbon for losing 60 pounds (I needed to lose another 40 or so).  Wonderful, you might think.  Recognition!  Accolades!  How about disdain when I went back to my seat by the three other women who said to me, “Boy, you must have REALLY been fat when you started.”

Would I be healthier if I were thinner (I know how my body is put together; I will never be thin unless I starve myself)?  Sure I would.   But I was given diuretics and appetite suppressants by a doctor when I was 12.  I was given speed by my mother at 16.  I became bulemic at 28.  I became damn near anorexic at 37.  I put myself on the Kimkins diet at 45, which began to lead to laxative abuse.  How healthy is any of that?

I have struggled with my weight every single day of my life.  Every. Single.  Day. I have been ridiculed.  I have been sneered at.  I have been laughed at.  I have been ignored.  I have been abused.  I have been called ugly.  Stupid.  Worthless.  Lazy.  Selfish.  People who would rather rip out their own tongues than utter a racial epithet or take another person to task over their religion or sexual orientation have absolutely no problem throwing down on the fat folk.  In a society absolutely rife with political correctness, fat bashing is truly the last acceptable prejudice.

I learned at a very young age to loathe my body and hate myself.  Too feel ugly, stupid and worthless.  And you know what?  Despite the mass collective consciousness that takes over every friend and family member of a dieter to subtly (or not so subtly) undermine and/or sabotage their efforts, I don’t want you to stop eating your cookies in front of me.  And I really don’t want your pity.  What I DO want is the acknowledgment that my worth as a human being is not defined by a number on a scale.

This week’s Spin Cycle is a free-for-all.  I am now putting away my soap box and will return to my regularly scheduled drivel tomorrow.

1. Yvette says:

   November 15, 2009 at 9:09 am

   Well said, well said.
2. Jan says:

   November 16, 2009 at 9:55 am

   Duchess, I considered asking your permission to take this to the “front page” and making it a post of its own, but I don’t want to turn this into a “fat acceptance” or, conversely, “diet” blog so I’ll respond to you here.

   Hey, don’t be too hard on the women who want to lose five pounds. In some ways they are suffering from the same thing you are — the current cultural preference for a shape that simply is unattainable for the great majority of women.

   Point taken. You and Linda both reminded me this isn’t necessarily an issue reserved for women who are overweight.

   I’ve been a member of Weight Watchers off and on, because I am always trying to lose weight. Once Weight Watchers wouldn’t let me join. I thought they were plainly insane.

   You have to be at least 5 pounds overweight by the insurance actuarial charts to join WW, which is probably why they denied you membership. In some ways, WW was a wonderful experience for me the first time around (subsequent memberships were rather futile; this recent incarnation where you can eat anything as long as you stay within your “points” allotment does little for someone like me) – I lost a lot of weight and kept it off for a very long time. For the most part the encouragement I received was wonderful, which is why I stuck with it despite the faction of women who seemed determined to make the rest of us feel so bad for “letting ourselves go like that.” My point is that I faced prejudice and ridicule for my weight in one of the few places where you’d think you wouldn’t find it – a weight loss support group. Which brings me to your next question…

   What I am trying to say is that it is possible that people don’t see you quite the way you see yourself. I don’t mean that the prejudice you report isn’t real. I just mean that you might also be hearing things that your ear is especially tuned for.

   Thank you for the compliments about the hot tub picture; I look at it and think how damn old I look. LOL Seriously, though, I think anyone who faces bigotry and prejudice on a regular basis begins to expect it after a time. Have there been times I’ve taken offense when there was no need to? Most definitely! This very post is, I’ve come to believe, the result of one of them. But, as Beloved pointed out, there have been times I’ve been slighted and I’ve not noticed it – because he has.

   And btw, do you actually eat your recipes? Because if I even read them I gain weight. (Sorry. Body dysmorphia, like I said.)

   Ethically, it would be wrong for me to post a recipe that I have not personally cooked and eaten, so yes – I do eat them. Which is not to say I overeat them; not at all. There are almost always leftovers. Beloved and I work about two miles from our home and go home for lunch every day, and any leftovers are usually eaten then. The desserts often go unfinished – we’ll eat a piece or two and the remainder would go to waste if I didn’t take them into the office for our employees (the exception is probably pecan pie, because Beloved loves it so).
3. Duchess says:

   November 20, 2009 at 10:06 pm

   What you say about “anyone who faces bigotry and prejudice on a regular basis begins to expect it” is certainly true. I see something similar for a different reason. After 30 years — well over half my life — in the UK I haven’t managed to develop a British accent. So everyone treats me like a foreigner, and the people who don’t like Americans — there are a LOT, especially in Oxford, which is inundated with tourists — are fairly unpleasant. In those cases, at best I am treated like a deeply ignorant person (people are always explaining things to me). At worst they fling abuse at me, mostly without understanding that that is what they are doing.

   Sometimes I stop and say, Let’s just consider what you said and substitute for the words “Oh you Americans always…” with the words “You blacks always…”

   That is, making extraordinarily offensive comments about Americans is acceptable to people (in fact particularly liberal people) who would cut off their tongue before saying the same thing about a black person.

   I think it is pretty much the same thing you were saying about acceptable prejudice in America. So I really do understand.

   I am very glad that you did not put my comment on a front page! I think the issue is important, but you expressed it well enough yourself. I probably would not have even made the comment if it hadn’t been enough days late that I didn’t think all that many people would read it.
   Duchess´s last blog ..A happy Halloween