sashagoblin (![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png)
sashagoblin) wrote2009-11-23 05:06 pm
sashagoblin) wrote2009-11-23 05:06 pm
Entry tags:
feeling skinny, or clowning my sentimental way into obscurity.
There are two linked posts here, really. I'll do the more nevel-gazy of the two on filter (under a cut!) later, but for the moment I just wanted to splurge my reactions at Kate Moss' tactful repetition of the anorexic mantra 'nothing tastes as good as skinny feels' dissected by the lovely Pennyred here. (amusingly enough,if you go o the orginal interview, she follows it with saying she 'alwaysforgets' and it 'never works'. Which is ironic.)
I dunno.I *know* how skinny feels. I've been skinny all my life. I still am, really, except to myself and other ED-girls, to whom the way my thighs almost touch and my belly isn't quite parallel to the front of my hipbones is a measure of my failure and their success. My waist is,now, an inch bigger than Kate Moss's (assuming hers is still 23". Mine isn't. It's 24", 25" attwtom, unless i've eaten recently or the IBS is bad. To me this is huge. I appreciate to others it might not be.). It used to be a lot smaller. I know* how skinny feels, and how the kind of food-management you have to do o keep your body at just that pitch of near-hunger feels. I did it both consciously and unconsciously,for a long time. I Know what it feels like to be secure and confident in having a more socially-envied figure than the majority of the people on the street, to wear short skirts without for a second going 'ohgoddoesitshowmythighs', to have that 'i may not be pretty but at least i'm thin' voice in the back of my head. To know you can have a completely flat stomach simply by skipping a meal or two. I know what i's like to take your clothes of in front of someone and feel that even if they reject you, it won't be because you're not thin enough anymore, not because you're greedy or needy or godhelpmejust not as hot as you look with your clothes on, because they give the illusion of better curves and no thighs at all. I'm familiar with the reassuring (and always slightly incredible) chorus of 'oh, you're so tiny'. And Kate's right,it *does* feel good. To feel the attention paid you is deserved because you work for it, you deny yourself for it, you concentrate on it, you embrace it as part of you and here you are, people appreciate the effort you make for them, like you, value you. Think you're beautiful. Want you. Love you.
Cos you're thin,obviously. They wouldn't for anything else.
Thing is,I also know what hunger feels like. Both historically, and immediately. The last few days, I haven't been eating properly, really. Nothing in the mornings, late late dinners.Long patches of feeling nothing but hungry, having the pounding certainty in my head and my heart that i hadn't eaten enough,I was running on empty, and I was going to be ok. To go sraight through that and out the other side where hunger was irrelevant, an acknowledged but disconnected enity barely attached to your aching body. It was intially subconscious rather than conscious,partly a reaction to the knowledge that I'd been emotionally eating again and i couldn' handle the physical impact of continuing to do so, parly just because of a refound determination to work and the impact of my social life. And it was a very strange experience. I felt safe, again,i'd missed that. But I also felt physically, and emotionally, pretty awful.Minimal sleep didn' help.But I was nervy and febrile and labile and overemotional and snappy and intense - at least one layer of my recently-acquired and much-desired internal editors were gone. But more than that - i was genuinely reacting emotionally to things that i knew didn't really impact on me at all. I remember crying because somebody shouted and it reminded me of my dad: i've noticed this before with the person in q, but it's never normally a problem. I get stupid and overreacty at roughly the same rate I become inarticulate and weepy, and this is not a healthy thing. I had no energy - i spent a whole afternoon lying on the couch,because I hadn' had breakfast and had spent a couple of hours at the gym but forgotten lunch.
It wasn't much fun.
But I could do it. And, sometimes, I was flying. I've missed that. Food as anchor, life as flight. I'd *missed* the empty, and the flying, and feeling invincible. Hungry - or empty, when the hunger fades - can be *fun.*
(For the curious/worried: to put this in perspective, I'd then eat huge amounts in the evenings, so I pretty much always made 2000+ calories a day, which is hardly a starvation diet. I do a lot of exercise, and usually eat more, but ateotd i'm quite sensible. And greedy.)
Discussing Bodies on Monday, Susie Orbach mentioned that in New York she felt 'illegal', because she's in her early sixties by now, and she hasn't had any plastic surgery. And the lovely![[livejournal.com profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/external/lj-userinfo.gif)
downybearded1 said she'd felt illegal there too,because she wasn't the prescribed and expensively maintained shape and size either. Now me, I was Duck, water, go: i loved it, and it loved me,or so I felt. despite the problems with cyrus_ii , i felt right at home. I *was* skinny then, probly 10kg less than I am now, and i've always been quite a fast and frenetic and intense kind of person - i just felt comfortable, and like i fitted in. But I also knew that if I stayed, if i lived there, i couldn't cope wih the pressure to play those games - to starve, and exercise,and do too much, all the time, and the competitiveness of it all would kill me. (I hate competitive. I can't do it. I lost already, a long time ago, and i'm not interested in winning.) But the thing is, I *could*. If i wanted to, I could be that skinny, quite easily in physiological terms. I have a slightly different struggle frommy ex-ED friends who are naturally curvy, because it's not that i need to accept a bodyshape different from the precribed mainstream thinness, but dramatically beautiful in itself. Mine is in some ways pretty close to the mainstream, but now with just a little bit too much padding on it to be considered attractive in those terms. A little too much thigh, a little too much belly, a little too much waist. A little toomuch of a failure. And I know that if i didn't eat enough,for just a couple of weeks, I could get there. And so it feels like every time i put anything in my mouth, i'm choosing not to. Every mouthful I eat, I'm saying that my hunger - my wants, desires, needs, pleasures - is more important than yours, than the viewer's. My needs mean more to me than yours do. I'm prioritising the fulfillment of my own desires above the fulfillment of others'. And that, for a woman, definitely feels illegal.
I hate being this size, as in not being dramatically skinny. I miss my bones and i miss my flat tummy and imiss the hollow under my ribs in the mornings and by God i miss the long skinny legs. But not enough,any more, to deny that I *do* have needs and desires and wants and pleasures. Not enoughto put myself through hours of misery and uselessness when i'm with my friends, first because i'm too empty and ill to engage properly and then because after I eat i'm on a complete sugar high and think before I speak even less than usual. Not enough to want to have to *think* about it the whole fucking time, and hunger is distracting. But oh God, do i feel guilty about it.
c/s, obv. Sorry for length!
I dunno.I *know* how skinny feels. I've been skinny all my life. I still am, really, except to myself and other ED-girls, to whom the way my thighs almost touch and my belly isn't quite parallel to the front of my hipbones is a measure of my failure and their success. My waist is,now, an inch bigger than Kate Moss's (assuming hers is still 23". Mine isn't. It's 24", 25" attwtom, unless i've eaten recently or the IBS is bad. To me this is huge. I appreciate to others it might not be.). It used to be a lot smaller. I know* how skinny feels, and how the kind of food-management you have to do o keep your body at just that pitch of near-hunger feels. I did it both consciously and unconsciously,for a long time. I Know what it feels like to be secure and confident in having a more socially-envied figure than the majority of the people on the street, to wear short skirts without for a second going 'ohgoddoesitshowmythighs', to have that 'i may not be pretty but at least i'm thin' voice in the back of my head. To know you can have a completely flat stomach simply by skipping a meal or two. I know what i's like to take your clothes of in front of someone and feel that even if they reject you, it won't be because you're not thin enough anymore, not because you're greedy or needy or godhelpmejust not as hot as you look with your clothes on, because they give the illusion of better curves and no thighs at all. I'm familiar with the reassuring (and always slightly incredible) chorus of 'oh, you're so tiny'. And Kate's right,it *does* feel good. To feel the attention paid you is deserved because you work for it, you deny yourself for it, you concentrate on it, you embrace it as part of you and here you are, people appreciate the effort you make for them, like you, value you. Think you're beautiful. Want you. Love you.
Cos you're thin,obviously. They wouldn't for anything else.
Thing is,I also know what hunger feels like. Both historically, and immediately. The last few days, I haven't been eating properly, really. Nothing in the mornings, late late dinners.Long patches of feeling nothing but hungry, having the pounding certainty in my head and my heart that i hadn't eaten enough,I was running on empty, and I was going to be ok. To go sraight through that and out the other side where hunger was irrelevant, an acknowledged but disconnected enity barely attached to your aching body. It was intially subconscious rather than conscious,partly a reaction to the knowledge that I'd been emotionally eating again and i couldn' handle the physical impact of continuing to do so, parly just because of a refound determination to work and the impact of my social life. And it was a very strange experience. I felt safe, again,i'd missed that. But I also felt physically, and emotionally, pretty awful.Minimal sleep didn' help.But I was nervy and febrile and labile and overemotional and snappy and intense - at least one layer of my recently-acquired and much-desired internal editors were gone. But more than that - i was genuinely reacting emotionally to things that i knew didn't really impact on me at all. I remember crying because somebody shouted and it reminded me of my dad: i've noticed this before with the person in q, but it's never normally a problem. I get stupid and overreacty at roughly the same rate I become inarticulate and weepy, and this is not a healthy thing. I had no energy - i spent a whole afternoon lying on the couch,because I hadn' had breakfast and had spent a couple of hours at the gym but forgotten lunch.
It wasn't much fun.
But I could do it. And, sometimes, I was flying. I've missed that. Food as anchor, life as flight. I'd *missed* the empty, and the flying, and feeling invincible. Hungry - or empty, when the hunger fades - can be *fun.*
(For the curious/worried: to put this in perspective, I'd then eat huge amounts in the evenings, so I pretty much always made 2000+ calories a day, which is hardly a starvation diet. I do a lot of exercise, and usually eat more, but ateotd i'm quite sensible. And greedy.)
Discussing Bodies on Monday, Susie Orbach mentioned that in New York she felt 'illegal', because she's in her early sixties by now, and she hasn't had any plastic surgery. And the lovely
downybearded1 said she'd felt illegal there too,because she wasn't the prescribed and expensively maintained shape and size either. Now me, I was Duck, water, go: i loved it, and it loved me,or so I felt. despite the problems with cyrus_ii , i felt right at home. I *was* skinny then, probly 10kg less than I am now, and i've always been quite a fast and frenetic and intense kind of person - i just felt comfortable, and like i fitted in. But I also knew that if I stayed, if i lived there, i couldn't cope wih the pressure to play those games - to starve, and exercise,and do too much, all the time, and the competitiveness of it all would kill me. (I hate competitive. I can't do it. I lost already, a long time ago, and i'm not interested in winning.) But the thing is, I *could*. If i wanted to, I could be that skinny, quite easily in physiological terms. I have a slightly different struggle frommy ex-ED friends who are naturally curvy, because it's not that i need to accept a bodyshape different from the precribed mainstream thinness, but dramatically beautiful in itself. Mine is in some ways pretty close to the mainstream, but now with just a little bit too much padding on it to be considered attractive in those terms. A little too much thigh, a little too much belly, a little too much waist. A little toomuch of a failure. And I know that if i didn't eat enough,for just a couple of weeks, I could get there. And so it feels like every time i put anything in my mouth, i'm choosing not to. Every mouthful I eat, I'm saying that my hunger - my wants, desires, needs, pleasures - is more important than yours, than the viewer's. My needs mean more to me than yours do. I'm prioritising the fulfillment of my own desires above the fulfillment of others'. And that, for a woman, definitely feels illegal.I hate being this size, as in not being dramatically skinny. I miss my bones and i miss my flat tummy and imiss the hollow under my ribs in the mornings and by God i miss the long skinny legs. But not enough,any more, to deny that I *do* have needs and desires and wants and pleasures. Not enoughto put myself through hours of misery and uselessness when i'm with my friends, first because i'm too empty and ill to engage properly and then because after I eat i'm on a complete sugar high and think before I speak even less than usual. Not enough to want to have to *think* about it the whole fucking time, and hunger is distracting. But oh God, do i feel guilty about it.
c/s, obv. Sorry for length!
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I've heard this sentiment before a few times, from a few ED or former ED people. And it always strikes me as very odd. I have met only one non-ED person who thinks that variant of thinness and denial is sexy, and I find that person's tastes questionable at best.
We, the viewers, we like to see humans. Not the structure of the human, with the visibility of bone and sinew, but the human itself- with flesh and movement like a person rather than a breakable little bird. We revel in flesh, which is tactile, sensual, real, and can be worn in infinitely more ways than the basic structure. We love to see those who wear shapes and bodies entirely their own rather than the rows of identical structures that sell clouds of too-strong perfume to hide behind. If you must do things for your viewers, for those who see and judge you, consider that the viewer is far more pleased by the narrow waist contrasted by wide hips than by the narrow waist matched by painfully narrow hips.
If my sentiment is unhelpful or ignorant, please do explain why- my quite genuine lack of understanding on some things could really use a bit of education. Screen me if you need to.
(also, the pennyred link isn't working for me, though I have read the article)
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This is an amazing concept to me. I mean, I know intellectually that a lot of people feel like this, but I just can't get it emotionally. It's too alien a concept to me. I can't repress myself like that, and have never been able to. Of course, my entire life I have been told that I am loud, arrogant and very, very selfish, and all those things are true, but I can't help but feel that I'm lucky to be as selfish as I am. I'm a suggestible person. Without my selfishness, I'd be a lot more suggestible.
A thought occurs to me. Pretty much my entire life, I've never felt or identified with concepts of "woman" or "female". I've always, always felt like "me" (sometimes I've been cursed to be me, inescapably), and that's always felt much more real. I accept that as far as the rest of the world is concerned, I meet those standards a lot of the time, and usually I'm far too lazy, and/or have no other specifically preferred identity, to deny those categories, so I shrug and go "I guess, if you think I'm a woman...wevs". But I don't feel it. One thing which I'm wondering, after reading your post, is whether one of the main reason I don't feel like that category of person (woman/female), is because what I've seen around me all my life is that that category of person inevitably has and is expected to have anxieties about what others think of them, and I...don't. I care about the opinions of the people I *choose* to care about, people whose opinions are worth something to me, not the general opinions of unknown others. So maybe my learnt understanding of a "feminine" experience is that an intrinsic part of it is about that subservience to the needs of others, something I know I don't have and have maybe therefore never felt quite like "one of the girls".
That's not to say I don't have anxieties about myself. I do, but they're about what I think of me, and I'm usually pretty hard on me. And of course, other people saying nice things about me, while appreciated, doesn't really change my opinion of me if I know I am being sucky. Mind you, while I think I'm pretty wilful, I don't have anything like the force of will that an ED requires, and (I apologise if this is a triggering thing to say, I don't know if it is or not) I have always kind of admired that, while recognising it's still not a good idea.
Damn, I seem to have completely derailed your post by talking about me me me (that selfish thing again)! Sorry about that. What I'm trying to say is, thank you, because you've given me something really useful and interesting to think about in terms of how *I* read gender. I don't know if what I've written is any help to you at all, but that's what it made me think of. Conclusion: selfishness and oblivious arrogance has probably saved my life, so I don't see myself giving it up any time soon. And my idea of womanhood may be rather depressing.
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