the ramblings of an untamed shrew. feeling skinny, or clowning my sentimental way into obscurity. : comments.
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![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
(no subject)
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)
(no subject)
ED moment:i've always found the sentiment 'painfully thin' slightly ridiculous. Flesh weighs you down. Thin is freedom.
does that make any sense? i've left it unscreened for comments from the floor...
(no subject)
The Boy does show up in a lot of places... but most often for perfume and other things that don't really involve having an actual body. The Hourglass shows up as soon as you need flesh to put things on- underwear, nice footwear, full lips for a proper pout. These do seem to be the only two bodyshapes available in media.
There's a lot you can do with clothing, though, instead of avoiding food. Clothing can make you look thinner or fatter, flatter or curvier, good posture helps massively with having/not having a stomach. Are you be able to try actively spotting the times you're slipping into the foodless habits and instead deliberately change your look with clothing and posture instead?
(no subject)
you havea point, but given that a you say i only have any hope of achieving equivalent approval one way, it makes no diference. And you get some *horrendously* skinny underwear models. And the girls inmuch mainstreammusic video don't even bear thinking about...
None of this s about whether or not i'll seriously starve again. I haven't,i won't, i've been there and I can't be fucked. But i am deeply insecure about who this makes me and the body it'll give me.
(no subject)
(no subject)
[or, when you talk about flying, I almost feel for a moment that I can grok the attraction of EDs, if some people are wired to get that high off hunger. Fortunately my own experience of hunger has always been the distracted uselessness, so I've never been tempted to explore!]
As for El's point: well, obviously your feeling of social pressure is almost-but-not-quite dissociated from what any of your friends really think/say. I wonder how that applies to NY; maybe even the New Yorkers don't really want you to look a certain way.
Also, as always, struggling to follow how all your different explanations/justifications of ED combine. I can just about follow the internal logic of one at a time, but that's it.
As for 'painfully thin' -- well, it makes sense to those of us afraid to hug you in case we break something;)
unscreening is fine
(no subject)
*wry* maybe it's one of those 'been there' things?
Socialpressure:i would love to believe my friends' feelings for me are not entirely dependent on my weight. i suspect this is thecase. But it'snot my friends i'm worried about, a kot of the time (ometimes, but not universally). It's the difference betwewen getting looks on the street andfeeling admired and confident and getting *the same* looks andfeeling threatened and uly. Between *knowing* women staring at you are usually doing so from envy (I don't think they nec are,i'm saying this is how it feels) and with pity. Between feeling that your body issomething to bre proud of,because look,you have the same VS as Kate Moss ( i didn't. I was 30" 23" 31" for a bit tho. that felt good.) and because you're 27 and you can dress like a teenager and nobody notices cos you stillhae the legs. (again, no longer.)
None of it makes *sense*, Dan. It's not rational. You can't work it out. The experience of EDs, esp ED recovery,is painful and conflicted and contradictory. it is entirely possible to feel weak as akitten and uterly euphoric at the same time,because you're in freefalland nothing anchors you to the base earth any more.
NY: see sex and the city. Or Ally McWhatsit. if one of the problems is media output, NY is a city *saturated* in media. And it goesfast. The city that never sleeps, or eats. And you have thse expensively thin well-dressed women everywhere, looking busy and successful, and...i could be like that too, if i didn't eat.
any clearer??
(no subject)
***
It does make sense, which seems a little wrong to admit, if I'm honest. We, the 'considerate and right-thinking intellectual elite' are encouraged to leap on the bandwagon of declaring that 'people really see all bodies as beautiful and love to see them in all their variety', and while it may certainly be true of the individual, it is simply not true of the people as a whole.
The people as a whole follow the media. The media define our culture and, despite our protestations to the contrary, we are sheep before the shepherd's crook when it comes to media imagery.
It makes sense that you measure yourself against these presented ideals and it makes sense that, despite anything rational you might understand to be the case, you see yourself as failing to provide people with what they want; *the people themselves* are often convinced that they should uphold these images as the ideal.
I remember a pop group from several years ago (possibly a pop duo actually, and not quite mainstream pop, if I recall) with overweight members. I remember being surprised to see them 'making it' as celebrities and remember feeling scorn for them being overweight. I don't remember feeling *scorn* for any of the underweight pop stars being thin, despite thinking they *were* too thin. Rationally, I don't think thin is automatically better than fat, but as an instinctive agent of popular culture I clearly *do* react that way.
The worst part, from my perspective, is that we've been encouraged to see thinness as a product of conscious effort to achieve a goal, and thus automatically more worthy of praise on account of showing dedication, but encouraged to see fatness as a product of not caring about oneself, about one's physical wellbeing and appearance, and thus automatically more worthy of scorn. Conscious effort is certainly laudable when the goal is laudable, but we've simply *been told* that thinness is laudable, and we're happy to agree.
You put others ahead of yourself, which is an often-praised habit for people to have, so why *wouldn't* you try to give people what they appear to want, especially when you have to work for it, which is a positive thing in itself? The fact that many thin people probably have less concern for their wellbeing than overweight people, that many overweight people may be putting in more conscious effort to achieve a goal of a healthy ideal weight, is irrelevant, we are told that fat people are lazy and unhealthy and that thin people put valuable effort into their beauty. If I'm honest, I know which I would rather be.
I may react with gut-level horror that it makes sense, I may understand completely why it is wrong, but that doesn't mean I can deny that it does make sense.
(no subject)