Thin is not the same as beautiful
I've been thinking about where we get our ideals for body shape, fitness levels, and how we define attractiveness. I had my heart absolutely broken this summer, and if I'm being honest, things are still not okay with any of that. An extra sting came when a mutual friend, who thought he was being objective and analytical, said that as he saw it, everything should have worked out between me and this guy, but that it wouldn't have hurt for me to lose 30-40 pounds so he wouldn't be embarrassed to be seen with me. Yes, I know, I have appallingly awful friends.
I don't want to go on a whole diatribe about body image issues or unrealistic standards or blaming the media because there's no point. No matter how much I may wish it were otherwise, people judge me on my appearance every day, and men will continue to treat me as a substandard human as long as I fall on the heavy end of their perception of normal.
In a particular moment of outrage, I started really looking carefully at girls in New York City, especially those with adoring boyfriends in tow. It's easy, when you're beating yourself up, to say these girls are just so pretty and lovely, so what's to care if they're not smart or interesting or artistically talented etc. - they must just be that captivating. The thing is, I'm an artist, and I do have a very clear understanding of biology, facial structures, symmetry, and all the mathematical stuff that goes on in the brain in evaluating physical beauty. From years of life drawing and studying the figure, I am uniquely sensitive to appearance and can see flaws from literally miles away. I was kind of stunned to realize that most girls aren't pretty. Not even close. Most of the girls I looked at were either incredibly plain or downright unattractive, once you saw through the hair, makeup, clothing, and accessories. I started looking at their boyfriends (also not all winners) and wondering if they were really that easily duped by some general concept of "beauty" defined by all these things that are so literally on the surface.
The only thing these girls had in common was that they were thin. I don't mean to say they had good bodies because again, they usually didn't. I mean they were thin, if not skinny, and that was enough, when combined with a bunch of stuff to have the general public regard them as beautiful.
Since this summer, I've moved back to the city, and I spend a lot of time people-watching on public transit. I look at women in their 20s, 30s, and 40s, and I do, admittedly, analyze the hell out of their appearance. Girls who are thin, but not toned, grow into women who are unobtrusively shapeless, and as they start to age more, become somewhat flabby and saggy and wrinkled. If they maintain their hair and have nice skin, I think they are still treated as attractive even though, as I really can't stress enough, they're not beautiful. And yet, they are the standard for beauty, when really all they have to offer is average features and the fact that they're not fat.
I look around and wonder what kind of farce we are living in. It's like the scene from E.T. when he's dressed like a lady - is there just some shell of "thin" that wears and carries all the right stuff that actually tricks people into the illusion of a beautiful woman? Yes, evidently, and if you want proof, take a really good look at all the people around you regarded as attractive.
Now here I run into a verbal quandary because I lack accessible ways to describe myself without sounding immensely egotistical. Basically, however thin or heavy I have been, people always say that I am pretty, if not more frequently veering toward beautiful. I have symmetrical, balanced features that are harmoniously arranged on my face. I have perfectly straight, really white teeth and an infectious dimpled smile. I have natural golden blonde hair highlighted by the sun and pleasantly shaped blue eyes that light up a lot. I am overweight, but I still have an hourglass figure, with toned shapely legs and tapered ankles/wrists that betray a history of athleticism. I carry myself gracefully, and I dress like a lady. Men of older generations openly regard me as gorgeous, and just about every time I leave home, men flirt with me, check me out, or hit on me (which is not at all uncommon in NYC, but I'm not just talking about the street version).
Yet guys my own age don't seem to see anything attractive about me physically (let alone aspects of personality, intelligence, sense of humor, wit etc.). They do the up-and-down, then compare with a skinny girl next to me and deem me unfit to date because I am, by their definition "fat." And to date a fat girl is more shameful than anything they can imagine.
It makes me crazy and a little sick. I cannot count the amount of girlfriends I've been introduced to by enthusiastic male friends who turn out to be mousy, plain if not ugly, and not at all interesting, but extremely thin. I see them all dressed and made up, and they look to me like children in their mother's clothes, their limbs completely lacking shape and their torsos free of any curves save the jutting-out collarbones and hips. And yet, all of my friends would call these girls pretty, if not beautiful. When you see them dressed down, without makeup and their hair piled on their head in a bun, it's even worse. They literally remind me of nothing so much as prepubescent friends from grade school in gym class, but their boyfriends can't keep their hands off of them. I cannot, for my life, understand when a stick-thin skinny girl braless in a camisole became my generation's standard of beauty, but I don't like it.
Still, I should be thin
My motivations in losing weight have always been because I am concerned for my health and want to feel better, both physically and psychologically. I used my weight as a scapegoat through an abusive relationship, and I continue to use it to beat myself up now, but I can finally see that it's not just me who is disordered in the way I think about my body.
When I was a senior in high school, I was a size 4. I remember buying my Calvin Klein prom dress and feeling proud that the 4 was actually a little loose in places because I had an athletic, but petite build and the dress was cut straighter than me. The thing that I always enjoyed about my body was its curves: curves from muscles, hips, and breasts, that made me look feminine and womanly, while still lithe and strong. In what seems now like another lifetime, I had enviably toned arms from swimming and dance and a perfectly-toned midsection. Because I was a runner (among other sports), I didn't have a trace of cellulite on my thighs or butt, and I looked fantastic in a bathing suit.
I don't really need to trace all the ways my figure went to hell since then, but that description is probably about as far from how I would characterize myself now as possible, and it does disgust me. My goal has never been to become one of those frail, skinny, shapeless girls who I loathe in public, and if anything, I'd rather be slightly overweight and curvy than one of them. There is, however, a happy medium between unattractively thin and my current shape, and I feel like I owe it to myself to get back into that kind of shape.
I should do more research and double-check my math, but I am pretty sure that at my height and build, 120-130 is an ideal weight. The last time I weighed that, I think I wore a size 2, but a 4-6 is much more plausible. In my head, the ideal measurements for an hourglass shape are about in that 34-24-36 or 36-26-36 kind of range, but damned if I know how actually accurate or attainable that might be.
All other goals aside, I want to lose weight because I want to be considered attractive. I want to like myself, and I want other people to like me. I want men to put any kind of effort into getting to know me or discovering the things that are actually beautiful about me, but they're not going to do it if they have to look past what they see as just a fat chick. I am tired of being dismissed and disregarded. I know that at a healthier weight, I could be not just thin, but beautiful.
What I can do about it
Right now, I weigh 179. This is, believe it or not, down from the 190 I weighed at the end of the summer (heavy-duty depression having kicked in something terrible). I have been fluctuating around 180 for at least the past 3 years, and I don't think I've been below 160 since I was in my early twenties. I have plenty of excuses, including the dramatic amount of weight I gained (and never lost) when I first went on antidepressants, but that was so long ago it can't possibly matter anymore.
My previous attempts to lose weight have primarily been through dieting because that (erroneously) seemed easier to control and work into my schedule. There was a time when I was swimming regularly, and I was getting toned and fitter in terms of cardiovascular health, but not losing weight or really improving my psychological health. I want some kind of dramatic, impactful exercise that can seriously make a dent in the fat of my upper arms and midsection and make progress toward my overall weight loss goals.
Currently, I walk between 2-3 moderately-paced miles a day, at least four times a week, including stretches up and down nearly 45-degree hills in my neighborhood. I take the stairs as much as I can, with a 25-pound backpack strapped on. I may not be the picture of fitness, but I am capable of strenuous hiking for several miles at any given time, and as of this fall I could kayak for an hour straight without fatigue. Something my mother says, and with which I am inclined to agree is that "underneath all this fat, there's still an athlete."
I need, now, a way to bring her out.
I think my approach needs to be diversified and realistic. I can't, for example, say that I'm going to join a gym and do circuit training for three hours a day because that is just setting myself up to fail (I also don't have the time or money for it). I already walk a lot, which is probably the only reason I've lost 10 pounds since moving and the way I've maintained a base metabolic rate in the face of ghastly eating habits (again, no time, no money, lots of stress and emotions). I am tempted, over and over, to declare that I will start running and drag myself outside with my iPod strapped to my arm, but I do worry that I will only do it once or twice and when the soaring self-satisfaction settles down, give up and go back to doing nothing.
There is a fitness center in my apartment complex, and I have to decide if I can work it into my schedule regularly enough to make it worth the money. Usually the appeal in exercising is getting to spend some time outdoors and, ideally, go somewhere, but this might be a viable alternative during the inclement weather that is right around the corner.
I also know that the single area that makes me feel fattest and grossest, by far, is my upper arms. They are the mystery of my existence, as both my mother and I have disproportionately bulky arms that make us look much larger even than we are. I used to theorize that I must have a lot of flabby muscle from swimming, dancing, playing softball etc. (and my mother from basketball and softball), but it's more likely that that is just a part of our bodies where she and I are inclined to gain weight, for whatever reason. Some women get fat in the ass or thighs, we get fat arms. It is what it is.
So in addition to general core training and aerobic exercise to lose weight all over, I want to really tone the hell out of my arms, through a combination of the One Hundred Push-Ups program, weight-bearing exercise with 3-pound dumbbells, and triceps-focused exercises with TheraBands. I added the last two items to my Christmas list, since my last set of TheraBands have now dry-rotted in the trunk of my car and I gave away my dumbbells years ago.
This summer among my mother's birthday gifts, we also gave her a hula hoop, which was weighted for core fitness.
I had never learned how to hula hoop before, and my whole family took turns trying clumsily to learn. We joked that most of the exercise came from bending down to pick it up after you spun it around your waist a few times and dropped it. In an obsessive day that resulted in incredible bruising all over, I did finally master the art of hula hooping, and I found it was a tremendous workout with the weighted hoop. So I'm asking for a hula hoop of my own for Christmas too.
In a fit of optimism when I was moving, I did bring my exercise mat, and my entire apartment is carpeted, which should facilitate the push-ups and whatever floor-work type exercise I want to do. To prevent unnecessary wallowing about matters of heartbreak, frustration with school etc., I am probably going to institute a policy that I can't imagine is as healthy as it is punitive: if I'm going to think miserable unhappy thoughts, I will hula hoop or do crunches or arm workouts or something while I'm at it. I'll either stop being miserable or start being thin, so it's win-win.
I need to make a plan of some sort for diet, though it's challenging because I've become a sort of pseudo-vegetarian of late. Most meals are centered around eating as many vegetables as possible, and most of my protein is coming from beans, cheese, and tunafish... but there is a major amount of fat and carbs in the meals I'm making. To save money and time, I bought packages of SlimFast bars for breakfasts and lunches, but I'm not formally doing the plan as intended because I still eat whatever I want the rest of the day. The intention, I guess, was to get some kind of nutrition going in the morning and afternoon so my metabolism didn't shut down completely, and by keeping it relatively low-calorie and nutritious I hoped it could counterbalance some of the horrible food choices I made for dinners. I need to take an overall more balanced approach and come up with healthy vegetarian meals (that should be really easy, wouldn't you think??) that aren't all macaroni and cheese or pasta with vegetables or take-out Chinese or pizza (aye, there's the rub). As always, I need to drink more water and eat less sweets, and I should probably take some time to examine how I got to a place in life where junk food is one of my few joys.
I am on a truly abysmally disordered sleep schedule, if you can call it that, which seems largely due to piss-poor time management. This has been the case for as long as I can remember, but I know that if I want to succeed in anything else I want to do in life, I really do need to get my sleep problems under control. I had some success when I first moved with melatonin and a set of rituals about making my bed nicely (that's become habit), showering before bed, laying out my clothes every night, keeping my bedroom as this really clean orderly sanctuary, etc, but I started needing to pull all-nighters and sleeping at erratic hours, and that all went to hell. I It is my sincerest hope that catching up on schoolwork and starting to exercise regularly will make it easier to sleep in a sane way, but I can't expect that to happen without a massive concerted effort.
And happiness. That seems thousands of miles away, but I have to believe that it is possible to be happy whatever my circumstances. I've isolated myself from most of my friends (which is not necessarily a bad thing, since most of my friendships were really destructive), and I have almost no time to spend with the few I still like anyway. That's not good, as I recognize that for as misanthropic as I can be, socialization is an important part of mental health. I have to either make new, healthier friendships, or work the time into my schedule to see my current friends more...or at least talk with them more than once a month (I'm a very bad friend when I'm busy). I have to believe that eating better and exercising will help improve my moods, but it probably wouldn't hurt to start taking St John's Wort and some of the other herbs I was taking previously for depression. I am still leery of prescription psychiatric meds and doubtful that my student health insurance would make it in any way affordable to get counseling, but I am getting really tired of being unhappy for weeks on end. I'm accustomed to cycling moods, sometimes rapidly, but it feels like I slipped into a pretty deep depression somewhere in October and have come out of it for a day or two here and there since then. I don't like the thoughts I have, and I really don't like being this unhappy. Fortunately I am still able to remain the tiniest bit objective about the situation and recognize it's something for which I am responsible and capable of changing.
So, that was a huge amount of rambling, but I think I've caught myself up on matters of psychological and physical health. Mostly.
I need to really try to get my act together and be more forgiving of myself if my discipline falters or life intervenes.
To summarize, going forward I am going to:
- stop wallowing about that heartbreaking situation and the unchangeable things I don't like in life right now
- get caught up on schoolwork and sincerely try to manage my time better
- take up some form of more strenuous aerobic exercise like running or joining the fitness center
- change the battery in my pedometer and attempt to walk more every day and increase my pace
- start the One Hundred Push-Ups program in earnest
- start arm toning exercises
- start hula hooping and doing crunches for core fitness
- try to start drinking more water
- seriously evaluate my diet and try to come up with better meal choices for dinners
- put actual effort into getting onto a healthier sleep-wake cycle
- start taking St John's Wort and other herbs for depression again
- be nicer to myself, by doing all of the above, and taking on healthier thinking habits
Something's got to work, right?
