Awesome blog post about NOT losing weight for your wedding… I love this part about how being thin is a scam!
…I've got no plans to lose weight [for my wedding]. My reasons aren't terribly interesting; they mostly amount to "stupid WIC is stupid". Why should I look unnaturally perfect on my wedding day? Does anyone expect [my fiancé] to be preternaturally beautiful, and do up his hair, and whiten his teeth, and to have been working out seven days a week for the six months preceding his wedding? No, they do not. And I always object to societal standards which require me to do more work than dudes.
I also object to the idea that the less of me there is, the better it looks. Fat and beauty aren't mutually exclusive. Beauty shouldn't be an obligation.
Having said all that, I admit I'm not totally content with my body—who is? Body hatred almost seems like a condition of femininity. I've come out of this particular round of Society vs. Women relatively unscathed, if only because I had the good luck to more or less fall into the narrow bracket of permitted sizes in my culture. I've never been thin by that culture's standards, though—except for once, and that just reinforced the fact that it's all bullshit…
…The privilege of being thin changed the way I thought and acted, in ways that surprised me. For the first time I understood Kate Moss's inexplicable line that "nothing tastes as good as skinny feels." I mean, I still believe she said it 'cos she's probably never had chilli pan mee, but—unlike Kate Moss I hadn't made a career out of being conventionally attractive, and yet I found myself checking myself when I was eating because I didn't want to lose the ground I'd gained.
I knew it was all a scam, is the thing. The job of the patriarchy is to plant brainweasels in your head, yeah? The brainweasels are to distract you so you're too busy worrying about stupid things like your waistline to object when dudes keep hogging all the money and power. Thinness is a total con job. It's an impossible goal—you want to be thin because you want to feel beautiful, but as Meg [
And yet it made a difference. A completely fictitious, societally enforced, brainweasel-based difference—but a difference nonetheless. How freaky is that?
…I'm gonna be "fat" for my wedding. It will make no difference whatsoever.
Because it won't. Strive to lose weight if that's what floats your boat, but remind yourself, when you're being bombarded by evil brainweasels bearing body image angst: it won't make you smarter. It won't make you kinder. It won't make anyone love you more.
Read more: http://apracticalwedding.com/2012/06/being-fat-for-my-wedding
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I can't wait to read your birthday recap post!
ReplyDeleteThanks! Waiting for the pictures to get uploaded to Facebook... :)
ReplyDelete"The brainweasels are to distract you so you're too busy worrying about stupid things like your waistline to object when dudes keep hogging all the money and power. Thinness is a total con job. "
ReplyDeleteWell, if it means anything, money and power are a total con job, too ;)
Haha quite true! :)
ReplyDeleteA few days ago, I told one of my friends, "What if we could take all the time and energy and money spent towards getting thin, and use it all for something good, like ending homelessness?"
The weight loss industry is worth billions of dollars. I understand being healthy, but let's be real - many people paying hundreds of dollars a year on gym memberships and weight loss pills are doing it because of vanity. And that's a lot of money that could go towards doing some good.