Category: body
Posted: April 28, 2012 at 4:34 pm | Tags: body, Feminism, gender, gender roles, medicine, science, WTF
*Warning – the link for the article that I am quoting from below may be considered NSFW*
So what happens when you get a GP and Family Planning Specialist, and a Psychotherapist and Life Coach together to write about sex after giving birth? You end up with this train wreck of an article. Honestly I expected that two such qualified people would be able to write an article that used language that was easily understandable and didn’t read like the two authors were thinking that their 12 year old children might read it.
My first issue with the article is not the language, but instead the hetero-centrism, that the only people who give birth are women who are in relationships with men (not other women), and secondly that sometimes people who give birth don’t identify as women.
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Posted: July 30, 2011 at 8:58 pm | Tags: beauty myth, body image, gender roles, WTF
For those of you who don’t know, I’m heading off to Malaysia for a week starting tonight (yay!). The oddest thing about planning this holiday has been dealing with one of my work colleagues who has bought into the whole beauty standard ideal.
She’d had a holiday about a month and a bit ago to Thailand with her partner, and we’d been sharing holiday aspirations since before she had planned that trip, so once my husband had gotten his passport organised I told her that we’d set dates and bought tickets. She told that of course I was going to get waxed before my holidays and told me that she hadn’t been waxed since and… stuff. Then earlier this week she came up to me and asked if I had been waxed yet (I had, but only because I wanted to be, not because I should), and then asked when I was going to get my toenails done.
I was baffled, because toes are toes… and I certainly don’t see the need to paint my toenails to make my feet something other than they are – well more colourful. I do, very rarely, paint my toenails because it amuses me to have colours on my feet, but I don’t see it as some social obligation, or even something that is done (apparently I’m wrong in this regard).
I said, to end the conversation – which it sadly didn’t, that I might get mine done in Malaysia. This suggestion was met with horror… because apparently they may use inferior polish which might stain (which I thought was the point), and because the hygiene standards for their tools would probably be lower than in Australia.
Apparently feet are ugly, and painting your toenails somehow makes your feet less ugly, or your feet’s ugliness less noticeable. I actually think my feet are pretty and that my toes are cute. What you believe about feet in general is not my concern, and I’d much rather look after my own feet without interference from other people.
After the topic changed from feet, my colleague told me a story about another work place she’d been in where she’d worked with a “not-girly-girl” who was going away on a holiday with her newish boyfriend. My colleague asked her if she’d “groomed” herself (meaning waxed), or was she going to get groomed prior to leaving. When the “non-girly” colleague figured out the innuendo, she said she hadn’t yet, and my colleague and another colleague explained that is was very important to be appropriately groomed and that everything had to be in the right place. After that they then suggested to this woman that she needed to pain her toenails, and when she bought the wrong colour nailpolish (green – something I assume that she thought was attractive), they got a friend of hers to take her shopping for a better colour.
My previous (Federal Government) workplace did not have conversations in it like this. I don’t actually have the tools for these conversations other than, “uh-huh”, “yes” and “oh really?”. I don’t know how to challenge someone who believes that dictating how I should groom, especially when they’re not going to see it. I know I can lie (and not even feel remotely guilty for doing so) here to a) make her happy that I’ve done something which I may or may not have; and b) get her to go to something else.
I’d much rather gently suggest to her that what she’s doing is wrong, rude, and incredibly judgemental. This colleague is senior to me (both in time spent in the organisation and in level), so I’m not sure how I’d start such a conversation. My current responses also involve a level of “HAH” when she goes away or I come home from work and tell the husbands about it.
It’s weird.
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Posted: May 21, 2011 at 5:53 pm | Tags: body, fat, health, me, story
Before reading this post you may want to consider that it details some personal medical information about myself and my recent hospital experience. If you are someone who doesn’t deal well with TMI, you might want to stop reading here and go and play somewhere else – you can come back when the next post is written.
On Tuesday I noticed a painful discomfort in my vagina. I had previously had what I thought were called Barton Cysts – which had all been painful, but I knew that they could get infected and possibly need surgery to be repaired. So I looked it up, it was indeed a Bartholin’s Cyst and I would probably need to have it looked at. I poked at it, and it was tender and large, and so I went to bed thinking about what I was going to do about the whole thing. On Wednesday night it was sufficiently painful and uncomfortable to stop me going to the gym, and I decided to take Thursday off to go and see my GP and see what could be done. This was also on the recommendation of my sister who has previously had infected Bartholin’s cysts and had had surgery to resolve them.
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Posted: April 29, 2011 at 10:08 pm | Tags: body, body image, exclusion, fat, radical
As I was travelling home tonight on the train, I looked at my reflection in the window of the train. I saw a fat woman… and wondered, briefly, what other people thought of me. I wondered what they’d think if they knew that I am polyamorous and have multiple partners (and a queue of people interested in also playing). I wondered if they would think that there was something wrong with these people who find me quite sexy and sexual and who want me.
Because I’ve been on the receiving end of “they’re interested in YOU?” as well as sometimes thinking myself “why are they interested in them?”* And it’s not fun. Not just not fun because it clearly states that I am not a sexually attractive and overall attractive individual, but also because it suggests that the person who is attracted to me has defective taste or is broken in some way.
Or… as I have heard suggested about some other fat friends, acquaintances, or strangers, perhaps the person attracted to their fat partner has a fat fetish. Which again is quite horrible because fetishisation (outside the fetish community) is seen as a mental illness by some or an undesirable trait by others, so to fetishise something is unappealing and gross. It also dehumanises the fat individual – because fetishes are typically objects and/or parts of a person – not an entire person.
Clearly the idea that anyone who is fat is also a full human being who is interesting, attractive, sexy, sexual, lovable, and desirable, is incredibly radical. How about we stop looking at the outside of people and judging what we see, and get to know people and learn who they are. You don’t have to like them or love them, but you do have to acknowledge their humanity.
* Though that’s a whole other post because it’s not just how someone appears that makes me question someone else’s relationship choice – it’s a huge package of stuff – personality, political affiliations, choices, religion, etc
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Posted: March 20, 2011 at 1:10 pm | Tags: beauty myths, body, body image, gender roles, sexism
There was this joke I read on a website (which isn’t known for being friendly to women), and it wasn’t at all funny. Here it is (emphasis all mine):
A woman, wearing a sleeveless sun dress, walked into a Bar in Dublin.
She raised her right arm, revealing a huge, hairy armpit as she pointed to all the people sitting at the bar and asked, ‘What man here will buy a lady a drink?’
Down at the end of the bar, an old drunk slammed his hand down on the counter and bellowed ‘Give the ballerina a drink!’
The bartender poured the drink and the woman drunk it. She turned again pointed around at all of them, revealing the same hairy armpit, and asked, ‘What man here will buy a lady a drink?’
Once again, the same little drunk shouted ‘Give the ballerina another drink!’
The bartender approached the drunk and said ‘Tell me, Paddy, it’s your business if you want to buy the lady a drink, but why do you keep calling her a ballerina?’
The drunk replied, ‘Any woman who can lift her leg that high has got to be a ballerina!’
This joke relies to two things to make it funny – the confusion suffered by a drunk man about what he was looking at – armpits and pubic mounds totally the same, and the fact that women with hairy armpits (or “huge, hairy armpit[s]“) are gross and revolting and no one but a drunk man would buy such a woman a drink.
The joke isn’t funny as far as I am concerned. Hairy armpits are fine, there is nothing wrong with them, and how they’d be huge… can you have huge armpits?… I’m not sure. This joke is one in a million others which reinforces crap beauty and gender myths about what it is to be a beautiful woman. This joke is one in a million of others which reinforces gender conformity and beauty conformity.
I call bullshit.
Be beautiful. Love your body for it is beautiful. It gets you from here to there (most of the time), helps you feel good (much of the time) and is gorgeous. Be beautiful in your own way. Don’t ascribe to society’s fucked up view of what makes a woman beautiful. You are gorgeous.
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Posted: February 28, 2011 at 10:01 pm | Tags: body, body image, diet, fat, pain
So tonight my physio told me that I needed to lose weight. There is a whole lot more context that I’ll share in a moment, but to say I was disappointed is putting it simply.
My physio has returned from an 8 day conference at the AIS where he spoke to a specialist in Gluteus Medius Tendonitis about his (my physio’s) patients (me included). No doubt there were other discussions with other specialists, but one message seems to have been given to my physio by this specialist… and that is that overweight people with this condition will struggle to resolve/heal it while they remain overweight, as the extra weight will aggravate the condition.
So tonight, the first time I’ve seen my physio in 3 weeks (as I started a clinical pilates thing that I’d been doing on my own), he suggests to me that I should lose weight. In his favour, he was genuinely uncomfortable about saying everything he did, the fact that I didn’t look impressed to be told this most likely added to his discomfort (which I’m so not sorry for). He did say that being overweight leads to death (well cancers and heart attacks apparently – and why yes my blood pressure and cholesterol are fine and I don’t have a family history of cancer), very, very quickly, before moving onto the fact that extra weight puts extra stress on my tendons and so we can perform maintenance on my tendonitis, and it may heal but it will take significantly longer. He then recommended (in his favour again) that I see a dietician and discuss with them what I do and don’t eat (tonight’s dinner – stir fried vegetables and chilli marinated tofu, with satay sauce, served with rice), and perhaps have a meal plan developed – utilising my GP to get a referral so that it will be partly covered by Medicare. And that he’d be happy to talk to me more about it if I wanted him to.
He finished the whole thing off with, “There I’ve said it”.
I spent the next 5 minutes (while he was poking at my back – where a lot of the conversation had also occurred), wondering if I was going to quit this physio and given I have a basic understanding of what I need to do to deal with my back and my tendinitis and whether I should take that elsewhere and maintain myself. Then I thought about Greta Christina’s weightloss (problematic framing aside) and how she decided to lose weight to stop her knee(s?) from hurting so that she could continue the activities that she wanted to do. I then thought of another friend of mine whose medication induced weight gain has resulted in a nerve being pinched (I think) in her thigh so it waivers between almost numb tingling and painful tingling, and her medical professionals who have told her that the only solution is for her to lose weight (which is resulting in fun medication adjustments).
So I can sleep without waking up in pain (several times a night), so I can sit cross-legged on the floor/bed/couch, so I can do yoga and Body Balance properly (I can’t do any hip flexion exercises), so I don’t stand up stiff and limping until I’ve walked it out, so I can have sex without paying for it for a few days afterwards, and so I don’t sit in a chair feeling my hip/s ache, do I attempt to lose weight to possibly speed up the process of healing my hips and taking the pressure off them so I am not aggravating the condition or do I just keep doing the exercises hoping that it will get better on it’s own? (nice complex sentence, sorry).
My partners will support me in any decision I make – which is lovely of them, and they tell me that I’m gorgeous, sexy, wonderful, beautiful and lovely now (not in some potential future state). I could attempt to lose the 10kgs that being on steroids last year (briefly but oh how the weight stuck around) put on, and see where I go from there – whether the pain is less and my ability to move improves. It won’t be easy (in fact it will suck immensely), but is it the best thing for my body right now?
I currently feel a bit let down by my body, which isn’t fair on it I know. It does a lot for me, and puts up with all the things I want it to do. I spent the weekend being depressed about clothes shopping being too goddamn hard because fat people are hard to make clothes for, including spending bits of Sunday in tears because it all sucked so much. Hearing today that being fat is also aggravating a painful condition that I want treated and healed was not the news I was after.
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Posted: February 26, 2011 at 4:35 pm | Tags: body, body image, fat, gah, WTF
You suck.
You suck in so many ways it’s difficult to quantify how much you suck and the amount of despair you put me through whenever I go shopping for clothes. In an ideal world you’d all have the clothing sizes you carry listed on the outside of your store, that way I wouldn’t bother setting foot inside your store looking for something to wear because I know you don’t cater to me. This would also require clothing sizes to be standard, something that would also make me happy. Do you have any idea how frustrating it is to not quite fit into the size 18 for “thin” people, but for the size 18 for “fat” people to be too big? Does this even make sense? And why is the clothing for “fat” people so limited in variety and fashion? I walk in, look at what you have on offer and turn around and walk out again – it’s boring, uninteresting, and certainly not flattering. It’d be nice if you offer clothing for “thin” people and “fat” people that the sizes just continue up the scale – and that you sell the same type of stuff.
And those stores which do sell clothes that fit me – why is everything made from such heavy synthetic material? I prefer to wear cotton or cotton blends, I like my clothes to breathe so I don’t overheat. Also, don’t suggest that I “enjoy my curves” by completing covering them all up – that doesn’t make sense.
And if we “fat” people are to exercise to lose weight – why on earth do you not sell exercise clothing for people above a “thin” size 18 – yes I am specifically looking at you Target…. and in fact most sports stores. It’s a catch 22 situation if we’re told to exercise because we’re too fat, but can’t buy clothes to exercise in.
So thank you for making me almost cry in a shopping centre from frustration and shame. I really appreciated the public humiliation you kindly dished out to me. Please remember – the harder you make it for me to shop in your store – the less I’m likely to return if I do ever lose weight and fall into your sizing range.
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Posted: February 7, 2011 at 10:39 pm | Tags: body, body image, fat, privilege
I’ve been doing a lot of reading on being fat and living in Australia recently (given I’m fat and living in Australia) and a recent article in Yahoo! made me squee with delight. It was a, “Should you tell people that they are fat? Yes/No” article with opposing views put by two different authors (both so full of fail), but I learnt something… because I’m fat, I’m going to die. It’s a huge relief, because I was worried, that like my thin brothers and sisters, I’d live forever, and that wasn’t ideal.
Michelle Bridges (our very favourite person) was on the “yes, tell them that they’re fat” team because:
If you are obese you can look forward to diabetes, hypertension, atherosclerosis, stroke, cancer or even death.
Wow, I’m going to die… eventually… of something… whether I’m fat or not. Does every fat person get diabetes, hypertension, atherosclerosis, stroke, and/or cancer? Looking at my family history (given I don’t have asthma which my paternal grandmother died from), I’ll live to around 70 and die from a heart attack or the effects of a stroke. My regular exercising, non-smoking, and fit paternal grandfather died of a heart attack when he was a little over 70. My maternal grandfather died at about 60 of a heart attack. My not overly fit, non-smoking, disabled (short-term before she had her stroke) maternal grandmother died at about 80 from a kidney infection some years after having a stroke. 70 years… that’s a good life, and I’m half way through it. Should I go “woe is mean, I is going to die” and be depressed because of that, or should I continue loving my life and my body and the awesome things it can do?
Michelle continued with:
More than this, though, is the emotional damage, the unhappiness, the depression and poor self-esteem that comes with carrying too much weight.
Now let’s look at that some more. Why is it that fat people suffer emotional damage, unhappiness, depression and poor self-esteem? Oh yeah, that’s right because they’re literally shamed, made to second guess themselves and their body, not believed, insulted, belittled and hated by large sections of society. Fat shaming and fat abuse are all far too common, on the internets, the streets, hospitals, doctor surgeries, the workplace, you name it and fat shaming probably happens there (with the exception of Fat Acceptance and Heath At Every Size blogs where it’s moderated out. Thank you so much for doing that).
Only once in my life have I had “Fat Slut” yelled at me, which made me laugh more than anything else at the time, though it upset my husband quite a lot when I told him about it later. I am generally quite… insulated might be the right word when I am out in public. I do not listen to words but to tones, so I may have had other comments made about me that my brain has not translated for me. When I am grocery shopping I wonder what people think of the things I am buying, whether I’m buying fresh fruit and vegetables or supplies for a party. I wonder when I’m shopping for clothes what people are thinking of me and what I’m buying. Most of my preferred medical practitioners do not comment on my weight, for which I’m grateful, but again I have this lovely insulation in my head which tends to sometimes refuse to hear certain things (and I honestly don’t know why that is), so things might be said and I just don’t hear them. I do also spend a lot of time thinking to myself that it is not about me (people talking to each other is not about me for example – unless it specifically is).
Spilt Milk put it beautifully recently, when she wrote, “I am not your cautionary tale“:
Obviously, his piece was about The Biggest Loser, a particular kind of “freakshow”. Me going to the shops to buy my bread and milk? Not so freakshowish, admittedly. But I am still there, I am still visible, I still jiggle, I still have a double chin, I still look fat enough to be a folk devil.
…
A friend on Twitter, Jennifer Gearing, mentioned this afternoon that Birmingham’s article “reminds me of time stranger told his 5-6yo she didn’t want Maccas or she’d look like me.” That’s right, children, fear and pity that fatty over there, and thank your lucky stars it’s not you.
One thing that can be missed in the debate about how horrible fat people are, and how much emotional damage they’re inviting by being fat (etc), is how much emotional wear and tear is suffered by people who love those who are busy being belittled by society. How children can be hurt by being told (or having their parent feel) that their parents are worthless because they are fat. How partners can be hurt by being told that they’re wrong or fetishistic for loving a fat person. The damage spreads beyond individual fat people when society pours hate and scorn on all fat people.
So I’m fat, I’m generally happy with my body, I live, vote, shop, work, exercise, cook, eat, love, fuck, and do all the fun things that I have time and energy for. The rest of you out there that have a problem with that, including you Michelle Bridges, can fuck off and get educated somewhere else.
Other recommended reading (both by Doctor Samantha Thomas):
Fat Acceptance: What it means to me.
Weight. An emotional issue.
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Posted: January 25, 2011 at 1:04 pm | Tags: age, body, ouch, stuff, treatment
It hit me (briefly) today that I am now officially middle aged. It should have hit me at my last birthday when I was official middle aged, but these things take time because I rarely reflect on my age as anything other than a near random number. In a few weeks I turn 36, which also is relatively meaningless to me – I don’t really assign any value to my age so much as my state of mind, capabilities, capacity, fun, happiness and security.
The only reason this has become relevant now is because I have tendinitis in my hips, which makes moving sometimes stiff and difficult (especially if I’ve been sitting cross-legged), and means that most nights I’m waking up in pain from lying on my side (either one). This was finally diagnosed by a physiotherapist last night, and it can be fixed, but apparently it is a common ailment of middle aged women who have started going to the gym (all boxes I tick – as I don’t tick the ones about being pregnant or carrying young children on my hip). Emedicine has a helpful article which states:
Gluteus Medius Syndrome and Trochanteric Bursitis
The gluteus medius functions as a primary hip abductor. It originates at the external surface of the ilium and inserts onto the posterior lateral surface of the greater trochanter. This muscle is innervated by the superior gluteal nerve (L4-S1).The greater trochanteric bursa lies directly lateral to the greater trochanter. This lateral growth of the femur abuts the tensor fasciae latae and lateral quadriceps muscles. The bursa provides lubrication and cushioning to allow the muscles to flex and extend over the trochanter without damaging the muscles. It also cushions the tendon before the attachment of the gluteus medius and minimus. Bursitis in this area can be secondary to changes in activity or training, biomechanical problems lower down the leg, or from direct trauma. These conditions lead to increased pressure of the muscles against the bursa and trochanter—with resultant inflammation.
Pain will occur with hip flexion such as walking, climbing stairs, or getting out of a car or a chair. Nocturnal pain while lying on the affected side is common. A snap is occasionally felt or heard in the lateral hip with flexion or extension.
Gluteus medius syndrome involves tenderness to palpation of the gluteus medius muscle, which can be triggered by sudden falls, prolonged weight bearing on one extremity for long periods, activity overuse, or sporting injuries. Most commonly, this situation is observed in middle-aged women who have embarked upon a vigorous walking program or who have started working out at a health club. Patients may present with pain that is transient and worsening over a time period, a Trendelenburg gait, and weakness. These symptoms specifically affect runners, as there is tilting of the pelvis with running. It is important for the clinician to examine the patient for a leg-length discrepancy.
Hip-abduction strengthening should be avoided in the initial stages of gluteus medius syndrome because it only provokes tendinitis. As the acute stage resolves, hip-abductor strengthening is important and is best achieved in the aquatic environment. [emphasis added]
So, no hip flexing, stretches or other such fun things for me until I get better. Because it is getting worse at the moment, and if I do a Body Balance (my favourite gym class) class and do the hip flexing track, I suffer for it for a few days later. But at least I know (that and the flare up of an old lower back issue/injury) what is wrong with my body right now and that I can be put back together. It’s no fun waking up repeatedly during the night while my hips sing a song of agony, trying to find a position to sleep in that is not painful. So I have around 24 weeks of physio go to through (thankfully I have sufficient money to pay for that), 6 – 12 weeks for my spine and then another 6 – 12 weeks for my hips. And then… stuff!
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Posted: November 29, 2010 at 10:40 pm | Tags: body image, identity
For the past few weeks, the gym has become increasingly harder. Cardio (the rowing machine) has left me gasping for breath, and I’ve had to stop so I could breathe as I felt I wasn’t getting enough oxygen (no narrowing of vision though, just a sensation). I’ve been waking up more tired and almost falling asleep at work. I feel that no matter what I do I’m putting on extra weight. I look at the stairs at work and my body flatly tells me that climbing them is a VERY bad idea. Today when I was folding the washing and then making the bed, I was breathing heavily and sweating. I’m vague and forgetting things that normally I’d have no trouble in remembering.
I know I am actually really tired. I’ve had a very stressful month[s], I’ve not gotten all the sleep I should or need, and I worked for part of my weekend at Sexpo, as well as organising most of it, instead of resting. I hope that it’s just stress and exhaustion. I hope it’s nothing more serious, though sleep apnoea is also on the cards.
The worst thing is that right now I’m very unhappy with me, this is not how I normally feel. I know that my energy levels are up and down generally, but making the bed has never been an effort for me before. I also feel that I can’t do much about it right now because I’ve just become permanent at my lovely global multinational, and I don’t want to stuff that up.
So… I’ll make a GP appointment for Wednesday or Friday night and see what can be done. I know it might be as simple as low iron, slight asthma (worst asthma season in Melbourne for years), sleep apnoea, or stress. I’d like to know how to fix it, so I feel more like me again.
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