Thank you, Lupron

I am now about five pounds away from an overweight BMI! Oh, how things have changed.

Ever since I had my tonsils out at age six, I have been extremely picky. The shitty thing is it's not just a matter of "not liking" something -- it's a matter of involuntary gagging and heaving. And my appetite, for as long as I can remember, was inordinately small. I could eat maybe a quarter of a modest-sized meal before I was at the point where I actually could not swallow any more food, because I would start gagging once it hit my throat.

My neurologist indicated in my records that I was visibly undernourished. At the time, I was 5'8", around 115 pounds. That's a BMI of 17.5, or 1.0 past the cutoff for "underweight." And a bra size of 34notevenA. (Different brands call it different things, but the one constant is that the bra would be a bit too big for me.)

(I hated my weight, for the record. My shoulder blades hurt anytime they were pressed up against anything, even a soft bed. My hips and pelvis cried out in pain from grating up against a hard plastic chair (i.e. 2/3 of every weekday ever) or even just against a fitting pair of jeans. I always felt like my bones were ready to snap at any moment. Weak, fragile.)

Right before new year 2005 I got on the Lyrica, which has a side effect of weight gain/increased appetite. I saw both. Yay! Within six or ten months I saw my body become more and more padded. It settled down around 150. BMI 22.8. Recently re-fitted for a bra (I was still wearing my stretched-out 34As) at 36C. Took some adjusting, certainly. I had always had a bit of a roll on my upper tummy, even when I didn't have much of any fat there at all. That remains. My legs are nice and firm and muscle-y now, since I started working at a place that requires me to be standing or walking all day, but besides that I am basically composed of significantly less muscle mass than a "normal" woman, and make up for that with a bit more fatty tissue. It's how I've been whether I'm completely sedentary or whether I am active and regularly exercising.

The first of these two pictures were me around my high school graduation in 2004. The last is me as of this month (taken to earn discounts off Threadless shirts. Whee!). There's a significant difference.

I've grown to be mostly happy with my body. The fact that I have extra tummy fat -- or just that my breasts are fairly small proportionately, which has the effect of making my tummy seem bigger in my mind -- is really the only thing that gets to me sometimes; besides that, for the most part, I'm certainly comfortable walking around nekkid all day, and I can admire even the unconventional things -- like the multiple scars on my back and my side, my silly slightly-crooked nose (the Hungarian in me) and my wide, full hips and butt. I like those.

Those are fuller now, though; I weighed in at 158 at the doctor's office yesterday, and I am sure over the course of this six-month treatment I will see a little bit more gain (it is only just today one full month since my first shot).

I should get used to this, right? Of course, people only gain, bit by bit, as they get older -- and it's usually better for them to do so, in terms of health and mortality. And I do plan on going through pregnancy at least once in my life. And for as much fucking medication I'm on, I can't expect not to see some weight gain. Really, which would I rather have: another five pounds around the hips and tummy?, or debilitating neuralgia, crushing anxiety, or endometrial implants growing and spreading and scarring up my insides, creating an awful amount of pain and frustration?

And culturally, which do women often choose? Not every time, but enough times that clinical trials do often see patients dropping out early for the side effects, the most common of which in medication for women is weight gain.

This is a lot for me to get used to. Really, four years later, I still have an image of myself as the skinny minny. I still expect people to recoil when they hug me because they're afraid they'll hurt me if they squeeze too hard, and remark with a concerned tone on how little I am. I still think of my breasts as exceptionally small, rather than absolutely average -- and when I think of it that way, I think that they can't be counted that way because I have more than enough tummy to make up for it. I still expect to be able to fit into Mediums and Smalls on the dress rack...

I know I am measuring against a fictional standard. But God it's just all over, and I can't escape it. It's woven down around every thread of thought that has anything, anything at all to do with outward appearance, even in the most indirect way. And I know that even if I can somehow purge myself of it, clear my own head, it's still permeated throughout our culture in an even worse way. I can't escape it -- I can never escape it.

I try, little bit by little bit, to be positive about my body around other people, and to be positive to them about their bodies, and to remind them that it's better to live a happy, healthy life in the body you've got than to stomp all over your health and happiness to change your body. But that doesn't mean I, myself, am unafflicted, unconflicted on the matter.

I was hesitant to include this next picture with those above, because it doesn't just show me as "average" -- I immediately see that spare tire below the breasts, how it pops out over the top of my jeans so obviously, how plump my thighs are juxtaposed with those skinny little toothpick calves and arms.


But you know what? I shouldn't be tearing myself down over these things. I shouldn't.

This post was originally going to be just that first line.

I'm trying to make sense of all this. I guess none of us ever fully do, do we?

The Rebirth of Venus

I wish I had the disposable cash to buy this shirt.

this is new to me. this idea that i should love my body. not hate it.

it's funny, because i was about to say "this isn't a post about body image." but it is, isn't it?

let's cut to the point. i'm not talking about beauty standards.

i'm talking about my body. this physical thing.

i need to stop hating that physical thing.

it works differently. it doesn't work like your body.

but that doesn't make it bad.

this is hard to grasp. i don't like this idea.

but maybe it's better that i respect my body, and how it functions, than malign it, and Other it, and see myself as working against it.

maybe i need to see my body as that physical thing that is trying to help me be everything i want to be.

maybe i need to understand that i just have to interact differently with my body to accomplish that.

and that is not bad. that doesn't make me Less Than. that doesn't even make me different -- or it shouldn't, anyway.

maybe the problem is that i have been so indoctrinated into this culture that i can't even see myself as just being -- it's always how different i am from the "normal" "healthy" body.

you know what, dammit, my body is "healthy." my body is damn well fucking "normal" for me. when i understand how to work with it? i live a pretty damn nice life.

but the culture i live in doesn't allow for that view. the culture i live in says that my body is not only different, but different in a bad way, because it doesn't let me live my life like a normal person does.

fuck that.

i have a lot to work on, here.

revelation: i wouldn't have such a hard fucking time learning how to work with my body if my culture hadn't taught me to expect to be The Norm. if my culture hadn't taught me that if you look like you're fully-abled, then you must be. if my culture hadn't taught me that if it doesn't show up in the bloodwork or the ultrasound then it doesn't exist. if my culture hadn't taught me that my pain is simply pathology. if my culture hadn't taught me about welfare queens and "milking the system." if my culture hadn't taught me that disability is both scary and pathetic.

in the meantime, i need to go take my weekly shower, so my gynecologist isn't put off by my oh so gross body when i get my Lupron shot tomorrow.

...maybe i just need to understand that this is how my body works and damn it all, there shouldn't be anything wrong with that -- the fact that there is anything "wrong" is a sign of a fucked up culture -- not of a fucked up body.

AUGH

School Popularity Affects Girls Weight, NY Times

I'll let the more experienced cover the article as a whole. But I just wanted to pick out this bit:

And as part of other anti-obesity measures, school officials should consider implementing programs to help girls build social skills, they added.

.......

*faint*

Ugh. There's so much in this one little quote, I just can't think of how to address it all.

There's the fact that apparently a girl's position on the social ladder only begins to matter to adults the moment she starts showing a little chub. No mention of the social ostracization, including the emotional harm—all the way up to and including depression and suicide—and the physical harm involved (ask my friend Mike what he faced as an unpopular child in school).

There's the fact that, for goodness' sake, these are children! My husband was a very chubby child, but he grew up to be 5'9, 120lbs, and plateaued at 140 when he was weightlifting. I was a chubby little girl, and grew up to be 5'8" and 125lbs at the highest before I got on my current medication.

There's the fact that you can't just swoop in and "teach" a girl "social skills." The hierarchy that exists in elementary, middle and even high school is far, far more complicated than adults give them credit for. Girls who are perfectly "skilled" socially are still ostracized. Even if a girl is a late bloomer in the social skills department, her position on the social ladder may be cemented enough that it doesn't help her any. And popularity can be based on absolutely random shit sometimes that has not a thing to do with whether you have social skills.

There's the fact that maybe the girl is perfectly happy with the friends she has, and doesn't particularly want to be friends with the girls she perceives as "popular." I knew I wasn't high on the popularity list in high school (and I was beyond skinny, by the way), but I had no delusions that I would lead any better a life if I was. I had amazing friends and I wouldn't have traded them for all the prep cred in the world.

And finally, to state the fucking obvious, there's the fact that maybe, just maybe, these children are unpopular BECAUSE they are fat.

*head.* *desk.*

Update: Just wanted to add a slightly different perspective: Could it be that, besides popular girls being selected in part for their body type, they also feel such intense pressure to remain thin that they'll do anything to keep that status? As usual, it's a double-edged sword here.

Before and After

How many of these have you seen? A celebrity of a healthy weight seems to lose all contact with reality and goes on an insane diet/exercise/drug program and loses a ton of weight.


Typical reactions: "But she was so HAWT before! Now she looks disgusting! Why did she do that?"

Now let's take a slightly different perspective. Compare:









These are before and after shots from various retouching studios.

How many of the same men (and many women) who react with disgust at the "after" picture of Amy Winehouse will gawk or drool when presented with the "after" pictures of the second set—whether on (or in) a magazine, poster, billboard, advertisement or otherwise?

Bombarded with images like these, is it any wonder that so many women follow Amy's path?

Via Shakes.

Annaham linked to her post on the connection between disability and the fat acceptance movement a little while back, and it's a good read. What I have to say isn't a direct response so much as a riff off the connection she brings up.

Consider, again, the phenomenon of invisible illness and the response of the general public to the knowledge that some acquaintance of theirs is disabled: a good many will accept it and offer their sympathies, and a good many will reject it (or at least be doubtful) and question the diagnosis. They know better, that person has to be faking it (or it's all in their head), it can't be true. They're just lazy/freeloading/don't want to work/welfare culture/etc. Even if these criticisms don't make it off their tongues, they tumble around in their heads.

And those of us with invisible illnesses will, occasionally, have the good fortune of being able to observe these people voicing these thoughts to people they consider confidants. People who, they think, don't suffer from and/or have close connection to someone with said illness. People who they think share their way of thinking. And usually, we'll shut up and carry the knowledge with us that anybody who's offering generic sympathies to our faces could be sneering at us behind our backs.

It has been my experience, being privy to some of these conversations (including my own brother's admonitions to my fat and physically disabled mother), that the larger one's waist size, the less likely people are to trust that they really do suffer whatever condition they claim to suffer.

Folks from the fat acceptance movement will surely be familiar with the underlying attitude. It's a lack of self-control, or a reckless disregard for one's health (rather, for societal expectations, but no one will outright say that) or an overarching irresponsibility. It's a fundamental immorality that makes you fat, they say (though rarely in those words).

They see a connection here. If someone is too lazy to "just" spend an hour at the gym every day and deny themselves any and all pleasure in their diet, then—[insert forehead smack]—of course they'll be too lazy to get off their ass and get a paying job! Or maybe it's the other way around. Anyway. They take away from my viewing pleasure as I move through the world and then they take away my hard-earned tax money! Damn freeloaders!

Indeed, fat people probably experience a declining lack of trust in their own description of their experiences the less trim they are. And I'm sure this whole deal is compounded further for mental illness.

It just struck me as I was rereading Annaham's post. It's damaging and frustrating for fat folks and the disabled both, and difficult to combat at that—especially if you try to speak up, given that the original speaker just spent the first half of the conversation discrediting the opinion and experiences of you or anyone like you. It leaves one, in the end, feeling very small and helpless. Which is something both groups feel often enough already.

Correction & apology

I realized in my "Who hates to hear they look great?" post I kind of reduced eating disorders to feelings of hunger (or lack thereof). I know this is not what an eating disorder is (I'd've been more accurate, I think, to speak of body image and control issues—saying an eating disorder is about hunger might be like saying sexual assault is about attraction) and I wanted to apologize for it.

So much for those conversational landmines, eh? :)

The Shape of a Mother

I'm adding a link to my blogroll, but I wanted to bring attention to it here. I'm sure this site has made its rounds in the past, but I think it's an invaluable idea and I want as many women to see it as possible. That site is The Shape of a Mother—it shows what real mothers look like before, during and after pregnancy. It is definitely NSFW as they are not afraid to include nudity, but really, that's the beauty of the site. You get to see all the blemishes and imperfections un-re-touched, but at the same time you see just how wondrous they are and how beautiful the human body is. Pass it on.