We women are funny creatures, aren't we? So much of our identities and self-worth are bound up in our weight and appearance. As Naomi Wolf observes in 'The Beauty Myth', most women would rather lose 10 - 15lbs above any other achievement in work or love. Imagine that?
It gets worse, I read somewhere (can't find it now), that in a study among women, many admitted to envying friends suffering from stomach flu since it meant certain weight loss. I don't know about you, but from my limited experience of this (iron constitution sadly), a severe flu or stomach bug is a sure-fire way to ensure maximum weight loss with minimum input, and as the bile rises so does the muted glee that you will emerge from this hell several pounds lighter.
In fact one woman I know confided that her friend - on returning from a trip around India and keen to lose some weight - licked her flip-flop in the hope of getting some sort of stomach bug. She got more than she bargained for with a nasty bout of amoebic dysentery. She did lose weight though so, you know, every cloud and all that...
When my mother's sister was dying a slow, painful death from lung cancer, my mother could scarcely contain the admiration from her voice as she whispered, 'I know she's ill, but she's lost two stone you know!'
Is there any hope for us as a gender?
Well, as Caitlin Moran asks in her brilliant feminist manifesto, 'How to be a woman', the important question is: 'Are the men doing it? Are the men worrying about this as well? Is this taking up the men's time?'
And I'm going to answer this question visually by asking another question: Would a man feel compelled to wear this highly elastic torture device under his clothing on a night out? I think we all know the answer to this.
So we're on day three and I'm concentrating on just 'being' and not obsessing about the end result. Yesterday I managed my 20-minute workout with Jillian Michaels quite effectively, despite the three-year-old's repeated attempts to ram into my head in the plastic car he got for Christmas, while I was on the floor doing the stomach crunches. I try to tell myself that his interference only adds to the challenge.
And last night we went to the town pool for a twilight swim which was lovely. At a time in the evening when I'd normally be filling my first beady glass of cold Sauvignon Blanc, I was swimming the backstroke up and down the pool, staring up at the moon, wondering if those landings really did take place, and feeling grateful for my life.
Oh god, keep me away from Facebook!
Note: And by the way, I see the hypocrisy of banging about women and diets while writing what is essentially a diet blog (although I prefer the word 'fitness') but isn't that the point? We can be intelligent, rational feminists but still struggle to extricate ourselves from the female body issue because it's part of our culture, no matter how irrational we know it is.
This sums it up nicely.
It gets worse, I read somewhere (can't find it now), that in a study among women, many admitted to envying friends suffering from stomach flu since it meant certain weight loss. I don't know about you, but from my limited experience of this (iron constitution sadly), a severe flu or stomach bug is a sure-fire way to ensure maximum weight loss with minimum input, and as the bile rises so does the muted glee that you will emerge from this hell several pounds lighter.
In fact one woman I know confided that her friend - on returning from a trip around India and keen to lose some weight - licked her flip-flop in the hope of getting some sort of stomach bug. She got more than she bargained for with a nasty bout of amoebic dysentery. She did lose weight though so, you know, every cloud and all that...
When my mother's sister was dying a slow, painful death from lung cancer, my mother could scarcely contain the admiration from her voice as she whispered, 'I know she's ill, but she's lost two stone you know!'
Is there any hope for us as a gender?
Well, as Caitlin Moran asks in her brilliant feminist manifesto, 'How to be a woman', the important question is: 'Are the men doing it? Are the men worrying about this as well? Is this taking up the men's time?'
And I'm going to answer this question visually by asking another question: Would a man feel compelled to wear this highly elastic torture device under his clothing on a night out? I think we all know the answer to this.
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| Sexy lingerie anyone? |
And last night we went to the town pool for a twilight swim which was lovely. At a time in the evening when I'd normally be filling my first beady glass of cold Sauvignon Blanc, I was swimming the backstroke up and down the pool, staring up at the moon, wondering if those landings really did take place, and feeling grateful for my life.
Oh god, keep me away from Facebook!
Note: And by the way, I see the hypocrisy of banging about women and diets while writing what is essentially a diet blog (although I prefer the word 'fitness') but isn't that the point? We can be intelligent, rational feminists but still struggle to extricate ourselves from the female body issue because it's part of our culture, no matter how irrational we know it is.
This sums it up nicely.
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