I just read a really interesting article about weight loss that one of my Facebook friend's linked on her profile. Since I am currently in the process of eating healthy and working out to get myself into a better physical and mental shape, it gave me something to think about. I don't think that I'm trying to do these things for the wrong reason. Yes, there is the mental pressure of what society thinks you should look like, and yes, the more I've outgrown my clothes in the last year, the more I've hated just getting dressed in real pants rather than yoga pants.
But what really motivated me this time was going to the doctor and being told that, in terms of my health, I was entering the obese range for my height and weight. It kind of stunned me. Obese? I knew I'd gained weight, but I hadn't thought it was that much. What freaked me out even more was that my weight, BMI, the size of my waist, etc.--they all were apparently telling the doctor that I was at the beginning of becoming insulin resistant. Diabetes is a problem in my family. Diabetes, heart disease, high blood pressure. I've watched people in my family suffer from all of those things, and it terrified me. I could easily be in those shoes.
So even though I have been self-conscious about my physical appearance to the public, it was the idea that I could land myself in some serious poor health problems that motivated me to eat healthy and work out. Every time I've think about eating cheese fries or drinking a soda, I think about my health. I think about my knee and how I have to make my legs strong, whether or not I decided to have knee surgery on my apparently torn meniscus. If it's hard, I imagine myself where I could be on down the road if I don't do anything about this. I don't want to be unable to do anything for myself as an old lady. But before even that, I want to actually be able to physically do things with my future kid/s. I loved doing things outside with my parents as a kid.
I've lost thirteen pounds since that first visit, and, on Monday, my doctor high-fived me and congratulated me on the fact that I am no longer obese, just overweight.
I got a high-five for being overweight. That was really bizarre to me. What was worse was the idea that I had lost thirteen pounds and was just now overweight. How much weight had I gained to begin with?
Then I got my blood work back. Some of my levels were in the red. Now I take vitamins. I'm really trying to focus on my health. It's so easy to want to conform to society's idea of what's beautiful. All you hear about anymore is how important a thigh gap is. Fortunately, I'm not a teenager having to go through that whole new idea of beauty, because I personally think thigh gaps look ridiculous and sickly. You're supposed to have meat on your thighs. You're a woman. You already have to worry about the way your face looks, how big your boobs are, how flat your stomach is, if you're too tall or have too much hair on your arms. Why in the world should you also need to worry about whether or not your thighs touch? Where did this new concept come from? Who decided this? As if it wasn't bad enough.
The idea of what women should look like just becomes more ridiculous as time goes on. And it's not just weight. When I was in grade school, I dressed like a boy. I was not very feminine. I think I tried to be a tough tomboy in order to ignore what I looked like, because I did get teased about my appearance quite a bit. Particularly my unibrow and the hair on my lip and arms. I couldn't help those things. It was just how I was born, but girls are supposed to be sleek and skinny and light-haired. I remember trying to hide my mouth when I talked to people. Especially if I was talking to someone I had a crush on. I would always look down or away or trying to put my hand over my lip. People teasing me made me feel even less girly than I already had.
But finally it came to a point where I decided not to care. I decided I wanted to be tough and cool. I didn't want to be some weak little air headed girl, the type that seemed to be so popular. So I made a point not to wear frilly girl clothes. They made me uncomfortable. So I wore t-shirts I liked and tennis shoes. I liked anime and video games and didn't care if other people knew it. That might sound silly, but those are cliche boy things, so I was even teased about that. But I just thought, forget it, I'm never going to fit in, so I'm just going to like what I like and do what I want.
Older now, I'm still pretty much the same. I like to dress up from time to time, but more often than not, I prefer a slightly oversized Dragonball Z shirt and tennis shoes. And I want to be in shape, because I want to feel strong more than anything else. Now that I've started riding a bike, I want to become really good at it. I want to be really fast. I want to build my endurance. I want to rise through the ranks of the Red Hill King of the Mountain times. I've always wanted to prove that I could be just as good at anything a guy could be. Upon recently learning that I was doing squats and other things to strengthen my quads, one of my friends said, "You know you're going to get man legs, right?" And I'm just like, there's that freaking thigh gap thing again. Why would I want chicken legs? I want legs that are going to be able to hold me up as I get older. I'm not talking about body builder legs, but I think legs with muscles definition are a lot more attractive than twigs that don't touch in the middle. I want an "I could live in the zombie apocalypse" body.
That's how I set my goals. What's going to make me stronger, faster, and better than other people at sports. I am extremely competitive. I don't want to just be a girl that is just around to sit and look pretty. When I see girls like that, I'm just like, what are you doing? If you weren't trying to impress some guy, what would you be doing instead? I know some girls like that kind of thing, but not me. Say something bizarre happened, and Adam and I got into a fist fight. I would want to be able to kick his ass (Pardon my French, but this really annoys me). Sure, I like the idea of being protected, but I don't like the idea of being helpless. For instance, in sixth grade, I beat every boy in my class at arm wrestling. And I thought I was really cool for it. I didn't care what people might think about a girl arm wrestling.
Sorry, this rant kind of really jumped around, but I think what I'm trying to say is that I have always tried to do what makes me feel good, not what makes other people approve of me. I'm not saying it's always possible. I am a really self-conscious person. But if I stop to think about something, about whether or not I'm just not doing it because of what people think, I'll usually do what it is that I want to do. Like dance in public. You only live once, you know?
And I agree with Roxanne Gay, that wrote the article I linked above. People are always denying themselves what they want because of what other people will think, because in the media there is such a clear cut idea of what women should and shouldn't look like, what they should and shouldn't act like. I think that's why I like writing vulgar poetry. Yeah, I am going to talk about guys talking about each other's penis size. I am. I don't want to write frilly, girly crap. I think my favorite moment of my thesis reading was hearing the surprise afterwards, that I had written gritty stuff, that I'd said some form of the word "penis" like five different times. Men came up to me and said that they liked my poetry. A man came up to me and told me that he had never read poetry, but he would read my book. I like the idea of saying and doing the things that girls aren't supposed to say and do, even in this day and age.
Like playing video games. Nothing annoys me more about video games than the fact that they are almost always marketed to males. The commercials are always boys playing games. If there are any female characters in the games, they are almost always scantily clad and certainly always big-breasted. They have sultry, sexy voices. I think I've seen one commercial with one girl playing a game. The only other ones I've ever seen are girls playing ridiculous fashion games or makeup games or some other ridiculous crap. Because, obviously, no girl has ever thought about how cool it would be to be an assassin, pirate, zombie slayer, Roman soldier, Greek god, etc. We are just supposed to sit around all day only caring about how perfect we look when we walk out the door. I wish I could remember that commercial to prove my point. Every time I saw it run, I wanted to punch my tv. Side note: it's also annoying when people act like you're too old to play video games if you're out of your teens. Excuse me. That bubble mania crap you play is basically a video game. All those games on Facebook? VIDEO GAMES. So bite me. It's not like I'm living in my mom's basement playing games every hour of every day. I like to play them to blow off steam or take a momentary break from reality. Just like I like reading a book.
Basically, we can never be perfect enough. Too skinny, too fat, too nerdy, too pretty, too ugly, too boyish, too girly. Yada yada. Be whatever you want to be. Just recognize that I don't necessarily want to be the same. If you want to be any of those things I listed above that I don't want to be, more power to you. But only be it, because it's what you want to be.
End rant.
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