Women And Weight
January 7, 2011 No Comments
Most women have an interesting relationship with weight. It is an abusive relationship riddled with denial and lies — yet only a few of us have the strength to end it.
The fact is that most of us are not happy with our bodies and feel if we were just better people, we would have the perfect figure. The penances of dieting and exercise allow us to work off the guilt of that bowl of ice cream and face the day ready for carrot sticks.
Yet it is no longer politically correct to want to be skinny, and here enters the confusion. We say we want to lose weight to be healthy, yet we go about it in the most unhealthy ways. Cleanses, which are designed to detox, are chosen for their rapid weight loss claims. Exercises regimes focus on losing weight in “those problem areas” and not on strengthening the body.
Reality star Bethenny Frankel is constantly saying that she is just naturally skinny. Yet when she was 8 years old her mother put her in fat camp for being 10 pounds overweight, and size was a big issue in her household. Sounds like her line of Skinny Girl products should be renamed Emotionally Scarred.
Playmate Kendra Wilkinson had a hard time with her changing body after she had a child because she lost her one skill — being sexy. She jokes that after she has her second child she’ll get surgery to bring her body back to normal, because she “deserve[s]” to look good.”
Happiness, healthy and looking good all get tangled up when women discuss their weight. It’s ok to want to be healthier but it’s also ok to want to look good. We should acknowledge that sometimes those goals will be at odds with one another, but also that neither goal will make us happy.
Women need to start loving the bodies that we have. These bodies propel us through life, ache when we are sick and are caressed by our partners. They are part of who we are and hating them is self-loathing.
We can treat them well by giving them good nutrients and by taking care of them — but we shouldn’t dislike them when they don’t look how we want them to. We shouldn’t dismiss the laugh lines around the eyes as signs of sun damage, or the belly that stretched to accommodate life as excess flab.
No body is perfect but yours deserves love and respect.
Contact the author here: mick@morningquickie.com
