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April Hail October 17, 2005 - 7:12pm.  Comment
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"I am TIRED," announced my aunt, in a voice that hushed the whole dinner table, "of being FAT."
My mother, a detestable woman who is in her fifties and has the body of Nicole Ritchie, had been brandishing a slice of rich chocolate torte in said aunt's face, cooing "Try it! It's deliiicious!" as if this weren't an inherently obvious point.
Surprised by my aunt's candor, we all paused for a moment, and then burst out laughing. What followed was a lively discussion on the challenges of weight loss, the perks and pitfalls of various methods, and the importance of good diet and fitness in older age.
This is all fine and dandy. It comes as little surprise that a woman in her sixties, who has borne several children, should find herself feeling a bit overweight and confronted with the challenge of slimming down. Cut to yours truly: Twenty years old, normal metabolism, average build, functioning brain yet having yearned, since mid-high school, to lose ten pounds. Ten pounds not a big deal, right? Clearly there are two constructive resolutions to this predicament: either I lose the weight by eating less and exercising more, or I accept its permanent presence and stop buying clothes one size too small. At my (supposed) peak metabolism, dropping what I (logically or otherwise) perceive as "excess weight" should be a walk in the park, a piece-a Splenda cake!
And yet, unpleasant as it is to admit, those ten pounds seem to have triumphed over both my self-image and my reasoning faculties time and time again. I diet; I fail. I try to love my curves (more like one dominating "curve," actually); I do not love. Day after day, I get dressed and judge; pass my reflection and suck in; eye food with alternating suspicion and lust. It's not that I hate myself and my body, or anything so fatalistic as that. It's just that when I see myself in the mirror, it's not, you know, perfect.
The Paradox: Smart Women, Stupid Habits
So why am I unloading my frivolous neurosis on you, darling readers? Because for better or for worse, I happen to know that I alone do not suffer this perverse preoccupation with poundage. In an article from British Elle, writer Hannah Borno discusses the widespread incidence of 'disordered eating,' or the inharmonious relationship (such as my own, described above) between many young women and their waistlines. Disordered eating is not so visible or hazardous as anorexia or obesity, but for that very reason the condition quietly persists for many. We are young, healthy, smart, ambitious women, and a shamefully large group of us are nagged, on a consistent basis, by issues of weight, diet, and image. Why does this epidemic exist, what forms does it take, and how, finally, might we break the cycle that is holding us back from being our happiest, most confident and autonomous selves?
Ladies, Let's Talk About Weight.
To borrow an expression from our ever-eloquent president, what I don't seek to do here is play the 'blame game.' Flip through any women's magazine and you will read about models and celebrities flaunting impossible physiques, trendy diets deviously engineered to fail, and the addictive, calorific foods that tempt incessantly. All of this finger-pointing creates inflates a simple issue to monstrous proportions, and seemingly justifies every young woman's dissatisfaction with her "imperfect" figure. If I had a dollar for every article, essay, and Dateline special on the topic of body image issues and dieting...well, then I could afford to hire a nutritionist, trainer, and plastic surgeon to sculpt me into a slice of trim, toned perfection to aggravate the masses with. But, that is beside the point! It is plain to see that the discourse surrounding the issues of body image, weight loss, and eating disorders is deafening and, more often than not, a redundant bore. What I do want to do is open up an honest dialogue about why girls are so darn crazy when it comes to body image, and how we might be able to knock some sense into one another!
So here we go I'm embarking on a mission to speak frankly with other young women in order to shed some light on this utterly dead-horse topic.
I would love to hear your thoughts on this, so please drop me a line at aprilhail1@gmail.com if you have something to say!
Coming Soon:
A peek at the body-image attitudes of young women abroad
*The article Are You a Disordered Eater? by Hannah Borno was consulted for this piece. It was printed in the October 5th issue of Elle UK.
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Email this pageWe shall see that both assertions are inexact, and that the decisive point of quantum mechanics consists in the fact that it gives up the 'objectifiability' of natural processes.What interests us primarily in this is the question whether quantum mechanics has, as has often been said, given up the perceptibility of the description of nature, and the causal principle.his postulate may be called "a permissive law" of the practical reason, as giving us a special title which we could not evolve out of the mere conceptions of right generally.
It is possible to have any external object of my will as mine.The answers which Kant gave to his basic questions appear in the light of modern physics neither as true nor false but as ambiguous.That is, any impulse or activity which does not conform to and have its place within the workings of society must, for the good of that society, be absolutely and categorically disallowed.
Hence the practical reason cannot contain, in reference to such an object, an absolute prohibition of its use, because this would involve a contradiction of external freedom with itself.Ultimately, as the title quote illustrates, More
Finally, we shall consider to what extent final validity can be attributed to the assertions of quantum mechanics from the point of view of physics.Sexual deviance like all other profoundly human and irrational instincts is potentially disruptive to the social mechanism; the social mechanism, therefore, must do all in its power to prevent against the existence of any such destabilising forces.The answers which Kant gave to his basic questions appear in the light of modern physics neither as true nor false but as ambiguous.
For, should anything external to him, and in no way connected with him by right, affect this object, it could not affect himself as a subject, nor do him any wrong, unless he stood in a relation of ownership to it.We shall see that both assertions are inexact, and that the decisive point of quantum mechanics consists in the fact that it gives up the 'objectifiability' of natural processes.This essay hopes to serve as preparation for an appropriate answer, by examining some already known philosophical theses which have to do with the questions of physics.