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Dear Russ,

http://dailyuw.com/2009/7/22/fashion-fetishes-real-women-can-be-thin-and-health/

Russ,

You’re right, the many of voices bemoaning images of skinny models plastered on billboards, smeared all over magazines, and flooding commercial after commercial absolutely have a  “chip on their shoulder[s].” But it’s not against thin women.

Rather, it’s the larger social norms propelling these images that’s got us so dang worked up. Social protocols that sternly women against women laughing to loud, demand she embodies passivity, tells her she’s “a bitch” for asserting herself, and above all, tell her not to take up to much space. That’s what’s making us mad: This idea you’re championing: being small, slimmed down, firmed and tightened up is inextricably ensnared in mainstream female “sexiness.”

Many of the writers and activists you imagine whining about “thin women,” are in fact, quite skinny themselves. Some of them are recovering from decade long battles with anorexia, the most under-diagnosed life threatening illnesses our country faces today.

Some of these individuals have stood in front of a bathroom mirror frantically scouring their emaciated frame for fat, telling themselves their concave thighs could really be a few inches smaller in diameter, or admiring their protruding hipbones and golf-ball sized shoulders.

Lot of the “healthy” size zero women you applaud could tell you tale or two chillingly similar to this. And such “horror stories” chronicle the life stories of more women than you might think. Considering the well-circulated advertisements showcasing rail-thin models--and that fashion designers still make sample sizes of their new collections in a size two--it’s hardly surprising about one in four women in college resort to unhealthy weight control tactics.

The problem is that these “horror stories” go untold. Women suffer in silence. Women wont tell you they’ve stayed up late at night chewing gum and drinking black coffee for hours after a grueling 90 minutes on the elliptical spent flipping through a magazine of waifs for inspiration.

They’ll tell you a jarringly different story.

As you affirmed, men prefer thin women. Thus thinness for many straight women is an achievement, a coveted prize. Something we have that fuller women don’t. That explains why thin females have recounted to you (a male) so many instances of strangers commenting on their weight. These anecdotes are coded: “I’m skinny and people are noticing my body. You should too.”

Don’t feel too flattered. A whole other mess of social norms and popular culture teachings--disseminated through the T.V., movies and magazines-- tell women they ought be the object of your (male) gaze, regardless of whether or not they want to fuck you.

It’s kind of you to refrain from “begrudg[ing] the ladies their exasperating fetish for tall, muscular men.” To be sure, some men who don’t meet the beefed-up male body ideal in the media touts, also experience self-doubt and body loathing.

Still, I doubt that society’s whisper telling to men to be big and beefy has the same power to damage lives as the cultural Loudhorn blaring the message: ““Be tiny!,” to women from every corner of our culture.

“Most of us could live our lives a little healthier — a few by gaining weight, yes, but many more by losing it,” you claim.

Fair enough. An approximate 60 percent of adults—and a growing number of video-game and fruitloop raised children—pack more than their fair share of pounds. A McDonalds lurks on every corner threatening to clog our arteries.

But couldn’t we all be healthier and happier if we accepted our bodies? Conn.-based NFO WorldGroup’s 2003 study suggests about 75 percent of Americans don’t like the one they’ve got.

And for women especially, loseing weight involves reduction. For men, losing fat is also cheered, but only when it is converted into muscle mass.  

Men are not encouraged to get smaller when they embark on a diet.   The blueprints for femininity, however, leave women to conclude female health is achieved through restriction. Undertaking a project of self policing and self-denial predicates fitness, we are told.

Your article adds to a choir of voices clamoring for more body modification. Our society--especially us women with those chips on our shoulders-- have had enough of that jabber. 

It’s time for more body affirmation.

 

 

Katie's Spot Moves!

to wordpress. adios, blogspot. it's been real. 

Goodbye, Ruby Tuesday.

If you're going to San Francisco, be sure to wear some flowers in your hair. 

But also be sure to eat sourdough bread, and run really fast down cracked cement stairs.  Genuine, raw, a little callous, "I've been here long before you born" spiraling green vine cover stairs. 

And then, don't forget!  Disappear into the mist. The mist Golden Gate bridge plunges into on a cool September afternoon. Drink a little coffee, and so what if I'm wrong about everything? she said.  At least for a little while...you'll be free. 

Don't get angry at the silly sea salt breeze and giggle when the seagulls eat $6 bread bowls of chowder peeking outta the dumpsters for free. 

And fall asleep as the stories scrawled on the bathroom wall wait patiently, wisely,  for you to come visit them on your midnight pee.

Have you ever seen a penguin dancing? You might in San Francisco.  

And don't forget, don't you ever forget. About me. 

Here We Go Again

Bugs have been dominating my life. Sometimes I think I have crabs, other nights scabies sneak into my dreams. But still, I got a feeling that tonight is going to be a good, good night. Even if its a borrowed feeling, I'll take it. I wonder if you live somewhere that has fleas, then move somewhere else, they follow you to your new abode. I wonder if using that weird black and red dusty hairbrush I found in my mother's bathroom today gave me lice. God, this is annoying. I have been thinking about bugs so much lately I am to tired to think. I think. But alas, I must give you this story, so. Whew. 

Here We Go Again

Exhausted, twitching, fat, happy and full, the little turtle swam himself into a deep, deep sleep. Miles above him, all a ceiling of thick, tangled seaweed blocked out all light. It was cool and quiet, and he closed his eye lids and began to dream about pieces of children floating by. Severed limbs and thumbs and pinky-toes drifted listlessly though his imagination, sparkling and dancing in the ocean water. What has happened to me he thought sadly, why am I sorrr dirftyy, and sorrr old all of a sudden. It felt like he was still recovering from Saturday night, when he had sat with the landthings on a chair puking yellow foam stuffing and smoked bowl after bowl of Delicious, home grown, California weed. He started to drift himself, way back to when he was a real girl. 

Margarat yawned and rolled out of bed. Fuck, she thought as her bony body crashed to the polished hardwood floor. Why did I loft this fucking piece of shit? She pulled a long t-shirt over her bra and black spandex, which itched something awful. Grabbing a banana speckled with brown Dalmatian dots, she ran out the door. Time for fucking class.

Margaret was not excited, not in the least bit, for Chemistry 101. It was going to be a bunch of anal-retentive mother-fuck chemistry major freshman for christ’s sake, little shits were sure to raise the curb on tests her and her clove-smoking photography major friends would scoff at as the drank PBR or two-buck-chuck and talked about the irony of people trying to unmask the human condition. Fuck this school for making me take this fucking lab science class”  she crowed out loud, startling the girls bathed in juicy perfume ahead of her in the coffee line. Margaret ordered a black drip, dumped half a pack of sugar into it—not splenda, real sugar, so fucking be careful not to pour ALL of it in, she carefully reminded herself, and headed to the greenhouse. It looked way to fucking cheery at eight fifty seven in the morning.

            Jacob slept soundly through his alarm. Around ten o-clock, he rubbed his eyes, and then his balls. Sauntering across the hall, he sat down at his Dan’s clean-as-whistle desk, and began to grind what was left of his dub sack from last night. He turned on the TV to hear a news anchor drone on and on about the crazy religious fucks protesting the town hall meetings. “Lets Bury Obamacare with Kennedy” read the sign of one man, cloaked in flannel, his squinty eyes tiny little slits amid an overgrown forest of curly brown public-looking hairs all over his fat-ass face. “Fucken Crazzzzies”, he said to Dan, who had since materialized in the doorway behind him. “Crazy, Crazy fucks dude. “I know, Dan replied , plopping down on his bed, staring at the T.V. 

Closing Time

Time for you to go out into the places you will be from. 

Yesterday, as I was riding down Wilshire, I was hit by a black Lexus SUV. The driver wore a blue tooth and light cashmere shrug, equally sleek, black, and stunning. Are you Okaaaay? She spoke slowly and rather absentmindedly, as if nearly turning me into a pancake was puzzling, confusing, funny even. I am soooo sorry, um here let me give you my numberrr OK? She was drawling now, i was wondering if she was drunk. i can hardly believe it actually, that I've lasted this long in Los Angeles without getting bulldozed by a car. i bike on main roads all the time. in the left lane.  rarely do i ever stop for red lights, i always start riding across streets when cross walk signs are seconds from expiring, and worst of all, i weave between lanes of traffic, darting in and out of people's side mirrors, like a blue bullet on my piece-o-shit-but-super-speedy 1970's french peugot. Karma is such a crusty old hairy asshole. 

Welcome to The Getty Center: A small, well-known and loved L.A. paradise of gardens, museums, pop-up sculptures in every color of the rainbow. Lavender and garlic caught me off guard as I slowly made my way down Robert Irwin's garden, a zigzagging stone path lined with  tiny red, yellow and light blue explosions bursting out of soft green leaf beds. The blossoms hung from overhead, keeping a watchful eye on the visitors who came--some from lands as distant as Virginia and Hong Kong!--to marvel at their spunky and spiky and silky flowered comrades. Water cried down the path next the the visitor trail, but like our senses, it too grew up, and learned the value of silence, at least a little bit by the end of the journey. The thick stream that crashed angrily through boulders at the top of the path calmed into a slow and steady trickle by the time we all reached the center. Not only  do the museums house Monet's cathedrals dressed in morning dew and (for the next few months) roomfuls of busty french noblemen cast in bronze, The Getty is also home to Van Gogh's Irises.