OK, I give up

The other day I mentioned I was kind of chilled by Glen McGee's post Dying For Food. I have a lot to say about it, but I really don't want to go there, not in public. All the same, here I am. Does that ever happen to you? Where the one thing you don't want to think about is the only thing you can think about? I'm not going to think about anything else until I get this out of my system -- plus the personal is political, right? Fuck those A-list boy bloggers; I'm going to keep writing about chick stuff anyway. You're free to just close your browser window and forget about it.

If I could starve myself to death I just might do it.

I mean, there's the whole Terri Schiavo thing of course, and there was Kameron's post that I linked to the other day on Brutal Women, and a zillion commentaries about poor dear Terri, and then this at salon.com and -- oh, and just everything else.

It's suddenly everywhere, and of course, I'm sensitive. Probably even over-sensitive. I'm not even all that much bigger than average, but I'm tired of thinking about it. I'm tired of trying to change it, and I'm tired of trying to act as if it doesn't matter. Yes, I know that there are more truly important issues affecting more people's lives in vastly more negative ways. And haven't I been saying for about a million years now that if more women would just put even half the energy into -- let's say, politics or economic justice or science or engineering or literary theory or any fucking thing at all -- that they put into obsessing about their weight, wouldn't the world be a much better place? A million fucking years I've been saying this, and nobody listens. I don't even buy it myself, if you want to know the truth. The number on the scale tells me what I am worth, even if I pretend it doesn't mean anything. Women dying from the consequences of eating disorders tell me I can't fucking win, even if I succeed. Especially if I succeed.

You see, I'm a failure at having a bona fide eating disorder. If I could only succeed at it, I would be beautiful. Not just beautiful, but hot -- maybe only briefly, but still. And as an added bonus, I wouldn't really have time or energy to think about any of the million other things that cry out for my attention all the damn time.

In my better moments, I am grateful for this kind of failure. I'm not having one of those moments right now.

And I know better. I know that every thin woman does not have an eating disorder, is not obsessed, does not puke (or even apologize) every time she eats -- god forbid -- an entire meal. Some people are just like that. Inefficient metabolisms or something. They really can't help it. Some people just aren't geared to pack on weight the way I am. That I'll outlive them in a famine -- and my babies will outlive theirs should I be somehow forced to bear children during a famine -- is no comfort to me. I lack an evolutionary perspective about this.

I'm not likely to ever bear children, and I've totally aged out of being, you know, even remotely hot anyway, so why does it even matter? Plus I'm really smart and funny and I have a pretty face and a great personality. And I can beat your ass armwrestling, you skinny little motherfucker. So what the hell is my problem? Didn't I just last year lose like fifty fucking pounds without even going on some wacky diet? I have none of the dire health disorders that fatness is supposed to cause, and my fat grandmothers and their aunts and sisters all got so old that they just died of being terminally pissed off, or bored silly. Except for the ones (the thinner ones, with only one exception) who drank and smoked themselves to death before all that other shit set in. Or, who knows, maybe the boredom and rage set in sooner for them.

You've seen plenty of it out there in the world. I don't even save the links anymore, so I can't give you exact quotes of the kind of whacked out bullshit out there about how feminists obviously don't ever have eating disorders so why are they all worked up about it anyway (i.e., they're fat & therefore boyfriendless & therefore feminists & they should just leave the 'normal' girls alone with their fucked-up ideas about beauty and food), and how conservatives like Ann Coulter characterize left-leaning gals as fat as though it means something interesting. Pie wagons? Um, Ann? Meet Maggie Gallagher. I think she's one of yours.

Yes, it's mean and petty of me to single out Maggie Gallagher on account of her weight, but my point is that we're all in on this one together, I don't care how skinny Ann Coulter and Michelle Malkin are. You can just stop it about how liberal intellectual-type gals 'let themselves go' and therefore can't get husbands and are terminally bitter. There are plenty of terminally bitter conservative, non-intellectual gals, with and without husbands, who are fat. And it seems to me I've seen a skinny feminist or two. And even some feminists who are happily married. To men. Shut up already.

Am I bitter? Yeah, of course I am. Do I understand what's going on? I have one or two clues is all.

There are, truly, some serious consequences to the way most people live. Many of us are genuinely unhealthy. Too much shitty food plus not enough exercise, plus too much stress, and the sense that you are about to be revealed as a failure at everything it's important for a woman to be -- this is not a good way to live.

I shouldn't feel like I need to defend myself here, but I feel like I have to qualify everything: I don't have to shop in special fat-lady stores or buy two airplane seats, but I'm still officially fat. I eat less food -- and better food, most of the time -- than most people I know. I go to the gym most days. I walk a fair amount, and -- weather permitting -- ride my bike to work. I even enjoy running sometimes, just because it's fun, in a sick kind of way (sort of like smoking). I have successfully dieted, and lost all kinds of weight. And gained back even more. In fact, when I was 25 and officially stopped dieting, I did the math and determined that dieting had caused me to effectively double my weight over 16 years. Kind of beside the point, as I was nine and not overweight when I started, but you get the idea.

I think I'm lucky that I've never been one for 'binge eating;' I can't even imagine what that would be like. I have exercised fanatically even when I hated every second of it. I have made myself throw up every other meal. I have lived for weeks at a time on martinis and snickers bars, (the little fun-size ones, half for breakfast and half for lunch -- gin-soaked olives are plenty enough for dinner) plus an occasional salad. I hate salads. I have spontaneously thrown up entire meals from the sheer horror at having eaten to the point of being full. I've been a vegan, a vegetarian, followed strict macrobiotic regimens; you name it, I've tried it. Except for the raw food thing. I hate raw food.

And still I am a failure. If I were successful, I'd be a damn feminist martyr like Karen Carpenter, or dramatically dying in a hospice a la Terri Schiavo, may she finally rest in peace. I'd be wasting away and entering treatment for anorexia like -- was it Mary Kate or Ashley? I'd at least be dramatic and appealingly emaciated, with fabulous hipbones and prominent cheekbones and maybe even jutting shoulder blades over an exquisitely detailed spinal column. I would not be this sturdy, or strong, or for godssakes this fucking cute. I would certainly be rid of this ass forever, and these tits.

But enough about me. Why are women doing this? You know I'm not the only one. Yeah, we can blame men, or their conditioned desires for the nonthreatening, unrealistically skinny and airbrushed and contrived women in porn (let's not even mention bleached assholes -- ahem -- thanks a lot to Amanda at Pandagon for that one). We can blame other social constructs like 'the media' or 'images of women in advertising' or something. We can talk about how maybe we're control freaks or food addicts or blame our parents for being too involved in our lives or not involved enough or whatever. All that is true enough for enough of us to make a difference.

But we can stop any time, can't we? We're doing this to ourselves, right?

It was really that salon.com article I linked to above that set me off tonight. I'm a little too old and insufficiently hip to be in its target demographic but finally, there's a mainstream, trendy store that carries fashionable clothes (and even sexy underwear! and swimsuits!!) in larger sizes -- on purpose! -- and there are people worried that it might just be making the hideous problem of obesity worse for young women. Encouraging it, even. Like, somehow, the feeling that you can go out of the house wearing something moderately normal -- or even (horrors!) fun and sexy -- is going to make millions of young girls decide 'oh what the hell, I think I'll gain fifty pounds, maybe even a hundred.'

And then I read this today too, a review of the surprise hit diet book about how French women don't get fat. Never mind that sometimes they do, but generally they eat better food in France, exercise a little more, and enjoy their meals quite a bit more than we do here. They dress a lot better too, and wear sexy underwear even when they are as old as I am.

Maybe I'll just go to France.