Cut the crap!

Cerise writes:

I have recently noticed an alarming trend in our language.  It is a specific form of negative body-talk.  So many articles, ads, and women use very violent imagery when discussing parts of their bodies.  Think about it:  banish your butt, burn fat, carve off your curves, destroy your belly, slice your flab, melt your belly, dump your gut, kill your cravings, blast your thighs.  Is this a nice way to talk about yourself?  What would you say to a product that promises to destroy women's bodies?  Doesn't sound so nice now, does it?  What about slicing, cutting, burning?  Why is it okay to use language like this?

I can't decide where this language comes from.  Does it spring from our acceptance of violence against women in popular culture?  Does it come from our habit of insulting overweight people (and, for that matter, not-so-over-weight celebrities?)  Is it just an expression of the very real loathing some women feel for parts of their bodies?  

Well, stop it!  I don't care where it comes from.  It is not okay to talk about yourself or anyone else this way.  Don't buy products that promise to act out violence on your body.  Don't accept this sort of language.

When I took a college course on propaganda (very cool course, by the way), we discussed the insidious impact of propaganda.  Even if you are a very smart, educated person, it seeps into your thinking.  Even if you know it is propaganda, if it is repeated often enough, it soaks into your head.  Even if it is clumsy, stupid propaganda, if it is not contradicted, it is hard to resist.  Advertising is perhaps the most pervasive form of propaganda in our society.  Don't say it is trivial, it is not.  Don't think you can ignore it, you cannot.  But do not accept it.  Do not let it go unchallenged.  The best way to combat propaganda is to recognize it for what it is and to actively disagree with it.

Do You Love Your Body?

When most folks think of NOW (National Organization for Women) they generally think of political actions and then a whole bunch of stereotypes that have little reality.  NOW has also maintained a few radical feminist ideas as well even though they are very much a liberal organization.  Don't know the difference between liberal and radical feminism?  I'll talk about that in a bit; I have a minor in women's studies so I've studied the differences.

Official Poster for 2013 Love Your Body

One of the more radical things they do is urge an internal change of major importance.  They urge women to love their bodies with an annual event called "Love Your Body" that I have tried to observe for a few years now even though the campaign has been going on for over a decade now. Part of this campaign this year is a new project called "Let's Talk About It" inspired by the National Eating Disorder Awareness Week.  As a radical feminist, as a survivor of eating disorder, and as a woman this event means a lot to me but as you'll discover below it is also a very huge challenge for me.

I've been losing weight and some might wonder if I can say that I love my body and still be losing as much weight as I have -- currently I'm down 50 pounds for 2013.  The fact is that I've always struggled with my weight and I don't mean that I've always been big but that I've never known what I should weigh, what is healthy.  I saw a nutritionist for several years and she told me to ignore all those charts because they never considered the individual, the ethnic background, the bone structure, and the rest of the physical and emotional health of the person. She took all of that into consideration and told me if I ever got below 145 pounds again she'd put me in the hospital.  But when I started to have troubling walking a few blocks after eating a full meal, I decided I needed to loss a bit... I've just kept going but I am consulting with my doctor and using a very stable and slow approach.

But my post isn't about weight as much as it is about how I've never been able to trust or love my body and I'm struggling to learn to do so.

You see I'm a survivor of childhood sexual abuse and emotional/psychological abuse.  My body was something that was constantly used against me by males larger than I and by females who wanted to feel more powerful themselves by sending me conflicting messages.

My mother was the number one attacker. By the time I was in high school I don't think there was a day that I didn't hear "you are getting too fat" in the morning before I left for school and then hearing "you need to eat, you are getting too thin" at dinner that same night.

Can you imagine how confused that made me?

My body was unknown to me as a positive thing, it was unknowable to me even in terms of the basic idea of what I should look like or weigh.

Instead my body betrayed me constantly.

Getting sick often; too often it seems according to letters I received with my medical records many years back. Did my mother do something to me to make me sick because she got sympathy for being my caregiver?  I know she herself got sick a lot and it is no coincidence that she went into a wheelchair right after I started therapy to recover from my childhood abuse.  I do know that tests have shown doctors and I that I have a very weak immune system not because I'm ill but probably since before I was born.  Of course my mother almost died within a few years of my birth and she (and my father) told me that her doctors had suggested an abortion for her health -- she CHOSE not to do that.  (That is why I am pro-choice so strongly.)

My body was what was molested and raped three times by the age of six.  The memories, both conscious and unconscious damaged my ability to have healthy sex for years and years.  I think that part of my being fat or having eating disorders was an attempt to conquer my body, get control over what seemed utterly out of my control.

My body simply wasn't safe so I invested far more in my mind as a student then scholar and as an author and storyteller.  In my mind I could be in control, I could be free of this shell that tormented me from my earliest memories.

I can't say that I love my body.

I can say I am trying and NOW's campaign reassures me that I am not alone.