Well, very obviously I didn't complete the A-Z challenge. I didn't even nearly complete the A-Z challenge! I guess I've been pretty busy (by my standards) so I don't blame myself too much, but I still wish I had managed.
Anyway. I'm writing something totally awesome right now as a present for two dear friends of mine who are getting married in August! Well, it might not be awesome, it might just be that I have more confidence than usual because I know that for some reason, they find me funny, and they're pretty much the only ones who will read it. Oh well! I'm enjoying it, and I'm actually writing, so that's good.
What else? Well, I've been quite sick the last week or so, Watson thinks it's because I'm stressed out and I've kind of worked myself up to a dizziness and headache inducing level of freaking out... Which is quite possible, I admit. I only have three shifts left at work, but something is going on there which is really, really bothering me. I can only suppose I'd get into serious trouble and never work in the NHS again if I put any details on here, even though nobody reads this, but... Well, let's just say that it turns out you can do Very Bad Things and get away with them, and fighting for justice and for the right thing to be done will get you nowhere, absolutely nowhere. Nobody with any power to do anything seems to care at all! How can that be?
ARGH.
Like I said, worrying about this whole thing and having to SPEND TIME with the person involved (of whom I might add I am not the victim) when other people don't know what they have done has driven me to actual physical sickness, or at least I suspect it has, and the temptation to take my last three days off as sick too and just pretend I haven't got better is almost overwhelming. I guess I'll try going in tomorrow and see if I can physically stand it - after all, if I don't go in, I don't get paid, and it's quite possible that I'm going to be a lot poorer than I am (as if it's possible to be much poorer than I am) from now on...
Tuesday, 13 May 2014
Monday, 7 April 2014
F is for Fashion!
I had already decided to post about fashion today when something unexpected and kind of relevant happened to me. I was grumping around town, being continually rained on and unable to find the things I needed, when a girl asked me if I wanted to be in the fashion pages of the local paper! I absolutely thought she was joking, but no, it turns out she was a real fashion reporter.
I'm not shallow (at least I hope not!) and I'm absolutely not fashionable (shallowness and the implications of fashionability, which is totally a word btw, are what I was going to write about, and will be mentioned later!) but I have to admit I was quite flattered, for the main reason that the whole surreal experience validates the theory of Charlie-style, as put forward by various dear friends of mine, and thereby proves that individuality and wearing what the fuck you want to wear are AWESOME.
So anyway, this girl asked me about various things I was wearing (mainly presents, super cheap, or so ridiculously old I can't remember where they're from) and then took a few photos... Wait, I think she was actually a real fashion reporter... Hmm. Well, if I don't turn up in the Echo in the next few days looking dumb and slightly rained on and clutching plastic bags, I'll know that some woman somewhere in the county just took my picture for her personal collection... Not creepy at all.
Anyway, since I took all this as a sign (no, not literally, I don't believe in signs from god, or, you know, god) that fashion should definitely be my f-word today, a few short sentences along the same lines as what I had half-planned out in my head.
For years and years I thought fashion and being fashionable were essentially Bad Things, essentially synonymous with shallowness and idiocy at worst, gullibility, suggestibility and, well, idiocy at best. I guess I still believe these things, in a way, at least in cases of people buying and wearing absolutely anything, whether they like it or not, just because it's in fashion. Ugh. Not to mention current fashions, which to me are completely bizarre and unattractive, although that's entirely different and due mostly to the fact that I am now old!
Anyway. The thing is, recently I've been thinking of fashion in different terms, and under a different and more general definition; something more along the lines of "what you wear and the implications of that, beyond simply what it looks like." I think this is related to the fat acceptance and body positivity movements that I've been really interested in for a while now, but it occurs to me these days that at the same time as fashion can be repressive, can and does encourage conformity, we can choose to use it in other ways. For example, how many things are there that you would say you "just can't wear"? Has someone you know said "I can't wear skirts/dresses/leggings", with the obvious implication that the body they would be putting the thing in question on - you know, their own - does not meet society's criteria for being allowed to wear this thing. If you haven't heard this, you haven't been listening, I'm 100% sure. So surely the very act of wearing something that society decrees you can't wear is in itself a protest? "Girls who don't shave their legs can't wear skirts without tights!" - fuck that. "Fat people can't wear swimming costumes." - fucking fuck that! "Apple-shapes can't wear high waistlines!" - double fuck that, at least! Apple shape, I ask you, as if there's only as many shapes of women as there are fruits. (If I had to give myself a shape, though, I would choose star-fruit. Yep,)
You know, I'm not wording this very well, which isn't great for someone who dreams of being a writer (you know, in a way that makes you a living) but what I mean is pretty much this. Of course what you wear in NO WAY defines you, or any aspect of you - just as no aspect of your appearance, be it size, hair cut, tattoos or whatever, tells anyone anything except that you are that size, have that haircut, etc - but in choosing what we wear, we can make a statement, or a protest, or even simply express ourselves. Here's the secret that the fashion industry probably doesn't want you to know, because if you do their control over you lessens, and this may surprise you a great deal: you can wear whatever you want! Whatever your size or shape or colouring or what bits stick out where, you can literally wear anything, and as soon as it's on you are already pulling it off!
However, I maintain the belief I have had since I was about twelve, which is this: any reason at all for choosing to wear something, or wearing something for no reason at all, is awesome, but for your own sake, don't waste your time, your money or your awesome body on something just because it's cool! Okay kids?
I'm not shallow (at least I hope not!) and I'm absolutely not fashionable (shallowness and the implications of fashionability, which is totally a word btw, are what I was going to write about, and will be mentioned later!) but I have to admit I was quite flattered, for the main reason that the whole surreal experience validates the theory of Charlie-style, as put forward by various dear friends of mine, and thereby proves that individuality and wearing what the fuck you want to wear are AWESOME.
So anyway, this girl asked me about various things I was wearing (mainly presents, super cheap, or so ridiculously old I can't remember where they're from) and then took a few photos... Wait, I think she was actually a real fashion reporter... Hmm. Well, if I don't turn up in the Echo in the next few days looking dumb and slightly rained on and clutching plastic bags, I'll know that some woman somewhere in the county just took my picture for her personal collection... Not creepy at all.
Anyway, since I took all this as a sign (no, not literally, I don't believe in signs from god, or, you know, god) that fashion should definitely be my f-word today, a few short sentences along the same lines as what I had half-planned out in my head.
For years and years I thought fashion and being fashionable were essentially Bad Things, essentially synonymous with shallowness and idiocy at worst, gullibility, suggestibility and, well, idiocy at best. I guess I still believe these things, in a way, at least in cases of people buying and wearing absolutely anything, whether they like it or not, just because it's in fashion. Ugh. Not to mention current fashions, which to me are completely bizarre and unattractive, although that's entirely different and due mostly to the fact that I am now old!
Anyway. The thing is, recently I've been thinking of fashion in different terms, and under a different and more general definition; something more along the lines of "what you wear and the implications of that, beyond simply what it looks like." I think this is related to the fat acceptance and body positivity movements that I've been really interested in for a while now, but it occurs to me these days that at the same time as fashion can be repressive, can and does encourage conformity, we can choose to use it in other ways. For example, how many things are there that you would say you "just can't wear"? Has someone you know said "I can't wear skirts/dresses/leggings", with the obvious implication that the body they would be putting the thing in question on - you know, their own - does not meet society's criteria for being allowed to wear this thing. If you haven't heard this, you haven't been listening, I'm 100% sure. So surely the very act of wearing something that society decrees you can't wear is in itself a protest? "Girls who don't shave their legs can't wear skirts without tights!" - fuck that. "Fat people can't wear swimming costumes." - fucking fuck that! "Apple-shapes can't wear high waistlines!" - double fuck that, at least! Apple shape, I ask you, as if there's only as many shapes of women as there are fruits. (If I had to give myself a shape, though, I would choose star-fruit. Yep,)
You know, I'm not wording this very well, which isn't great for someone who dreams of being a writer (you know, in a way that makes you a living) but what I mean is pretty much this. Of course what you wear in NO WAY defines you, or any aspect of you - just as no aspect of your appearance, be it size, hair cut, tattoos or whatever, tells anyone anything except that you are that size, have that haircut, etc - but in choosing what we wear, we can make a statement, or a protest, or even simply express ourselves. Here's the secret that the fashion industry probably doesn't want you to know, because if you do their control over you lessens, and this may surprise you a great deal: you can wear whatever you want! Whatever your size or shape or colouring or what bits stick out where, you can literally wear anything, and as soon as it's on you are already pulling it off!
However, I maintain the belief I have had since I was about twelve, which is this: any reason at all for choosing to wear something, or wearing something for no reason at all, is awesome, but for your own sake, don't waste your time, your money or your awesome body on something just because it's cool! Okay kids?
Sunday, 6 April 2014
E is for... Estimate
I was really struggling to think of what to write about for E, so much so that I gave up yesterday, and was pretty close to deciding to give up for today too. I kept thinking of words that STARTED with E, but I was hardly inspired to write on the topics... Not that I can honestly say this is going to be an inspired or inspiring post, but at least I'm keeping up with the challenge, right?
So I got home from work this afternoon and I was completely exhausted, so I sat on the sofa and stared at the tv for a while, and after a particularly dodgy Western, Flog It came on. I'm not really a fan, but it's a nice, safe thing to watch while your brain snoozes away inside your head, and I do like seeing the various antiques (possibly a familiar feeling of comfort from when I was a child and my parents watched Antiques Roadshow every single time it was on...) Anyway, (there is a point to this, I'm not just listing what I watched on tv today) the word "estimate" was of course used about fifteen hundred times, so many times, at least, that it eventually filtered down into my snoozing brain which recognised it as a word starting with E, and I thought I would write about my continual astonishment at the things people are happy, eager even, to get rid of.
It's the same on all these antiques shows. People will bring along their lovely collection of personal family photos from the late 1800s, or a vase that's been in the family for five generations, or a porcelain dog their little old mum really loved, and then agree to put it to auction for like, a small handful of tenners. Oh, your great grandma gave you this necklace especially because she thought you would like it and that was the last time you saw her before she sadly passed away? Yep. Hmm, well I reckon it's worth about £30 quid. Great! Let's sell it!
Ok, obviously some of the things people bring in are just an old bit of rubbish they found in a charity shop and now want rid of, and some of the people absolutely hate the stuff they've brought, in which case, well, it's kind of fair enough, but so many of them come with amazing personal stories, and I just don't know how people can want to swap them for a bit of money! Even the antiques experts used to occasionally try and persuade people to keep what they had brought in, but they seem to have become cynical in the face of the endless amounts of people who just don't value the things that have been passed down to them, and given up now.
I know that stuff is just stuff, I'd be the first to say it - but at the same time I suppose I'm also a very sentimental person, and I would never sell something that had been passed down in the family and come to me. Especially old photos, that mean nothing to anyone else anyway! Keeping things that belonged to someone doesn't bring them back, and you don't need those things to remember them, but how can the fact that it meant something to that person mean nothing to you?
I don't know, everyone's different I guess, and I tend toward sentimentalist and all out soppy things like keeping an object as a token of someone I care about anyway, but I just find something pretty distasteful in selling off something hundreds of years old that your granddad collected for a few quid toward your new kitchen worktop. I wonder if they ever see themselves on the show when it's repeated years later and regret not keeping the things they casually got rid of?
So I got home from work this afternoon and I was completely exhausted, so I sat on the sofa and stared at the tv for a while, and after a particularly dodgy Western, Flog It came on. I'm not really a fan, but it's a nice, safe thing to watch while your brain snoozes away inside your head, and I do like seeing the various antiques (possibly a familiar feeling of comfort from when I was a child and my parents watched Antiques Roadshow every single time it was on...) Anyway, (there is a point to this, I'm not just listing what I watched on tv today) the word "estimate" was of course used about fifteen hundred times, so many times, at least, that it eventually filtered down into my snoozing brain which recognised it as a word starting with E, and I thought I would write about my continual astonishment at the things people are happy, eager even, to get rid of.
It's the same on all these antiques shows. People will bring along their lovely collection of personal family photos from the late 1800s, or a vase that's been in the family for five generations, or a porcelain dog their little old mum really loved, and then agree to put it to auction for like, a small handful of tenners. Oh, your great grandma gave you this necklace especially because she thought you would like it and that was the last time you saw her before she sadly passed away? Yep. Hmm, well I reckon it's worth about £30 quid. Great! Let's sell it!
Ok, obviously some of the things people bring in are just an old bit of rubbish they found in a charity shop and now want rid of, and some of the people absolutely hate the stuff they've brought, in which case, well, it's kind of fair enough, but so many of them come with amazing personal stories, and I just don't know how people can want to swap them for a bit of money! Even the antiques experts used to occasionally try and persuade people to keep what they had brought in, but they seem to have become cynical in the face of the endless amounts of people who just don't value the things that have been passed down to them, and given up now.
I know that stuff is just stuff, I'd be the first to say it - but at the same time I suppose I'm also a very sentimental person, and I would never sell something that had been passed down in the family and come to me. Especially old photos, that mean nothing to anyone else anyway! Keeping things that belonged to someone doesn't bring them back, and you don't need those things to remember them, but how can the fact that it meant something to that person mean nothing to you?
I don't know, everyone's different I guess, and I tend toward sentimentalist and all out soppy things like keeping an object as a token of someone I care about anyway, but I just find something pretty distasteful in selling off something hundreds of years old that your granddad collected for a few quid toward your new kitchen worktop. I wonder if they ever see themselves on the show when it's repeated years later and regret not keeping the things they casually got rid of?
Friday, 4 April 2014
D is for Day Off
It's my day off! Sort of!
As I mentioned in my first post, I kind of have two jobs at the moment. I work in my local hospital here in X-Town (you could easily find out where I live, creepy internet strangers, if you wanted to, in fact I'm fairly certain it's on my profile here, but I'm still not going to out and out say it!) 30 hours a week, and I've recently started doing proofreading too. Yep, it's the dream - working from home! Not so much the dream when you have to go to an actual place of work on top of it, I guess.
So right now I spend most of my days off, well, working. I don't mind, because I really enjoy it, but I have to admit my brain hasn't turned off for about two weeks straight. Perhaps that's why I'm absolutely not sleeping at the moment.
It's not forever, anyway. Before you ask, yes I am on an official break, the kettle is boiling and I'm due a tasty and invigorating cup of tea! But, if I was being honest, I would have to admit that I don't have as good discipline yet as I will definitely need if I start working from home full-time. You know those pretentious people sipping lattes in expensive corporate coffee chains, staring at their laptops... Well, I bloody love being one of those guys, I really do - and please believe me, I actually work a lot better in that situation than I do at home! Whether I'm writing, alone or with my writing buddies, or working, I genuinely get a lot more done. You might think there would be more distractions in town, but in fact there are less. Well, technically there are more, but I have to get up and go out the door, and actively get myself distracted by them. At home, it's a few steps to the fridge, or the tv, or the bookshelf, or whatever craft project I'm working on, or my bed... Comfy, comfy warm bed... Did I mention I haven't been sleeping? Seriously though, the only distraction in a coffee shop is the temptation of a fresh hot and dangerously caffeinated beverage (accompanied sometimes by a delicious sugary cake of some kind) which is not only delicious and comforting, but also just spurs me on with my words, whether I'm changing them or writing them anew.
Honestly, I would genuinely suggest you try being one of those guys if you want to up your laptop based productivity. After a while, your brain just associates these places with writing and working, and you'll be surprised how much you get done there - and how good some of it is. Some of it, not all of it. If it's not your thing, awesome, I'm just telling you what works for me (and my bestest writing buddy of all, www.stevenchapmanwriter.com) but at least next time you raise an eyebrow at a pretentious coffee shop writer, you can think "there's a guy who I'm only eighty or so percent sure is not actually doing anything and just wants to look impressive!"
Today's post has been brought to you by the spirit of not actually writing about what you thought you were going to write about! :)
As I mentioned in my first post, I kind of have two jobs at the moment. I work in my local hospital here in X-Town (you could easily find out where I live, creepy internet strangers, if you wanted to, in fact I'm fairly certain it's on my profile here, but I'm still not going to out and out say it!) 30 hours a week, and I've recently started doing proofreading too. Yep, it's the dream - working from home! Not so much the dream when you have to go to an actual place of work on top of it, I guess.
So right now I spend most of my days off, well, working. I don't mind, because I really enjoy it, but I have to admit my brain hasn't turned off for about two weeks straight. Perhaps that's why I'm absolutely not sleeping at the moment.
It's not forever, anyway. Before you ask, yes I am on an official break, the kettle is boiling and I'm due a tasty and invigorating cup of tea! But, if I was being honest, I would have to admit that I don't have as good discipline yet as I will definitely need if I start working from home full-time. You know those pretentious people sipping lattes in expensive corporate coffee chains, staring at their laptops... Well, I bloody love being one of those guys, I really do - and please believe me, I actually work a lot better in that situation than I do at home! Whether I'm writing, alone or with my writing buddies, or working, I genuinely get a lot more done. You might think there would be more distractions in town, but in fact there are less. Well, technically there are more, but I have to get up and go out the door, and actively get myself distracted by them. At home, it's a few steps to the fridge, or the tv, or the bookshelf, or whatever craft project I'm working on, or my bed... Comfy, comfy warm bed... Did I mention I haven't been sleeping? Seriously though, the only distraction in a coffee shop is the temptation of a fresh hot and dangerously caffeinated beverage (accompanied sometimes by a delicious sugary cake of some kind) which is not only delicious and comforting, but also just spurs me on with my words, whether I'm changing them or writing them anew.
Honestly, I would genuinely suggest you try being one of those guys if you want to up your laptop based productivity. After a while, your brain just associates these places with writing and working, and you'll be surprised how much you get done there - and how good some of it is. Some of it, not all of it. If it's not your thing, awesome, I'm just telling you what works for me (and my bestest writing buddy of all, www.stevenchapmanwriter.com) but at least next time you raise an eyebrow at a pretentious coffee shop writer, you can think "there's a guy who I'm only eighty or so percent sure is not actually doing anything and just wants to look impressive!"
Today's post has been brought to you by the spirit of not actually writing about what you thought you were going to write about! :)
Thursday, 3 April 2014
C is for Children
Okay, a much shorter post for today than yesterday's, I promise!
So, C is for children, a thing that I don't currently have. At the ripe old age of nearly-30, I'm finding more and more that conversation turns to having kids fairly regularly, especially conversation with people who don't know me quite well enough to know that I am in fact an overgrown child myself and in no way fit to teach a tiny squalling and squiggling thing how to be a human. Of course, it doesn't help being surrounded at work by pregnant nurses and people with young families.
The thing about me is, as I say to people who ask me do I have/want children, I really love children, and I would also love to have a child one day, but I'm absolutely terrified of pregnancy and childbirth. And everyone, well, maybe not the guys so much, nods and says "oh yeah, it's quite painful" or something similar, and I say "no, but..." and try and explain that when I say terrified, I don't mean I don't like the idea of pain, I mean I'm completely, utterly, obsessively horrified by the thought of giving birth, and then they say "oh you'll be fine when the time comes" and then I say "yeah...yeah I guess so..." and well, that's pretty much the conversation done.
Nobody seems to get how horrified I am by the whole idea. Don't get me wrong, I know that nobody looks forward to the painful process of the tiny person actually coming out of them, however excited they are about actually having them in their life afterwards. And some people do say "ugh, yeah, horrible, I'd never want to have one!" But wanting to have a child and yet being utterly petrified about the whole thing seems to be quite rare.
It isn't pain I'm scared of, by the way. If it was just pain, I would be fine with it, I'm sure. It's the stretching and splitting, the tearing, oh god tearing, really? And it's something else, something I can't put my finger on but something to do with the loss of control, the inevitability and the inability to say "okay stop this, I've changed my mind". I dread being pregnant, because I think it would be nine months of utter terror for me, I really do. I dread it so much that I keep nearly resolving to not have any babies after all, but the fact is that I do want them. I didn't used to, but the stereotypical thing happened to me, and at a certain age, probably about my mid-20s, I found I was starting to. Curse you, reproductive biology!
Then there's the fact that I would have to come off my meds, and without my meds, my life is 24 hours a day terror anyway. Then there's the fact that people with a history of depression are way more likely to have post-natal depression... But honestly, these are things that I intellectually consider when I actively think about the subject, and completely removed from my visceral, uncontrollable, illogical horror.
I knew that even though it seemed like it, I couldn't be the only one who's experienced this kind of thing, so I did a bit of googling around, and found out that the word for it is tokophobia. (That's your little factlet for the day courtesy of me.) But honestly, there's not that much about it out there. It seems to just be expected that all women are able to and do go through the whole of pregnancy and childbirth in a serene way, expressing no negative feelings whatsoever - if you've ever watched the insanely popular One Born Every Minute, you might have noticed that even the midwives seem to feel it's okay to mock the women who have the audacity to scream, or be afraid of what they're going through.
I suppose the truth is I don't know what kind of support terrified pregnant women get. If I ever am pregnant, I guess I'll find out.
So, C is for children, a thing that I don't currently have. At the ripe old age of nearly-30, I'm finding more and more that conversation turns to having kids fairly regularly, especially conversation with people who don't know me quite well enough to know that I am in fact an overgrown child myself and in no way fit to teach a tiny squalling and squiggling thing how to be a human. Of course, it doesn't help being surrounded at work by pregnant nurses and people with young families.
The thing about me is, as I say to people who ask me do I have/want children, I really love children, and I would also love to have a child one day, but I'm absolutely terrified of pregnancy and childbirth. And everyone, well, maybe not the guys so much, nods and says "oh yeah, it's quite painful" or something similar, and I say "no, but..." and try and explain that when I say terrified, I don't mean I don't like the idea of pain, I mean I'm completely, utterly, obsessively horrified by the thought of giving birth, and then they say "oh you'll be fine when the time comes" and then I say "yeah...yeah I guess so..." and well, that's pretty much the conversation done.
Nobody seems to get how horrified I am by the whole idea. Don't get me wrong, I know that nobody looks forward to the painful process of the tiny person actually coming out of them, however excited they are about actually having them in their life afterwards. And some people do say "ugh, yeah, horrible, I'd never want to have one!" But wanting to have a child and yet being utterly petrified about the whole thing seems to be quite rare.
It isn't pain I'm scared of, by the way. If it was just pain, I would be fine with it, I'm sure. It's the stretching and splitting, the tearing, oh god tearing, really? And it's something else, something I can't put my finger on but something to do with the loss of control, the inevitability and the inability to say "okay stop this, I've changed my mind". I dread being pregnant, because I think it would be nine months of utter terror for me, I really do. I dread it so much that I keep nearly resolving to not have any babies after all, but the fact is that I do want them. I didn't used to, but the stereotypical thing happened to me, and at a certain age, probably about my mid-20s, I found I was starting to. Curse you, reproductive biology!
Then there's the fact that I would have to come off my meds, and without my meds, my life is 24 hours a day terror anyway. Then there's the fact that people with a history of depression are way more likely to have post-natal depression... But honestly, these are things that I intellectually consider when I actively think about the subject, and completely removed from my visceral, uncontrollable, illogical horror.
I knew that even though it seemed like it, I couldn't be the only one who's experienced this kind of thing, so I did a bit of googling around, and found out that the word for it is tokophobia. (That's your little factlet for the day courtesy of me.) But honestly, there's not that much about it out there. It seems to just be expected that all women are able to and do go through the whole of pregnancy and childbirth in a serene way, expressing no negative feelings whatsoever - if you've ever watched the insanely popular One Born Every Minute, you might have noticed that even the midwives seem to feel it's okay to mock the women who have the audacity to scream, or be afraid of what they're going through.
I suppose the truth is I don't know what kind of support terrified pregnant women get. If I ever am pregnant, I guess I'll find out.
Wednesday, 2 April 2014
B is for Bodies
Bodies, right? We all have them, it turns out. Yeah I know, that surprised me too.
I think if we've been hanging around on this planet for more than a couple of years we're all aware that they're all unique; different shapes and sizes, blah blah, come on, you know this.
What's always vaguely bothered me, and in the past year or so more than ever as I've started to actually read and think properly think about it from all kinds of angles, is, well actually almost everything about the attitudes that society forces us to have about our own bodies and, possibly worse, other peoples' bodies.
This is obviously a huge topic which can be and has been written about in almost endless depth from any number of specific perspectives, but please allow me, as a total non-expert, to write very briefly and a bit more generally about bodies in society, just in case I say something that hasn't occurred to you before. Some things that hadn't occurred to me at all a year or two back have since become the basis for some of the strongest beliefs I have!
So to start with, well, none of you can have failed to notice how according to our society thinner = better. I'm starting with this, even though it hardly needs to be said, because one of those things I mentioned a minute ago, things that never even occurred to me for many, many years of living as a human, and it seems unbelievable now, is that that might not actually be the case. I was tempted to say that it seems unbelievably stupid to me now, that I never questioned whether being thin actually had any merit whatsoever, but I won't say it, because we are all trained from a ridiculously young age to believe that it does; stupidity and cleverness don't come into it.
Do you want to be thin? Or thinner? Why? Actually think about it; why? What inherent, objective value does thinness have? (Pro-tip: it's none. I promise you, it's none.) "Thin" is just a factual description of a person's physical body. In the same way, "fat" tells you nothing about a person except what they look like size-wise. The only thing that makes the word thin a compliment and the word fat an insult is the truckload of connotations that come attached to each. Somehow we feel that from how a person looks alone we can draw all kinds of conclusions, about that person's lifestyle, morals, personality, even hygiene - if that sounds familiar, it'll be because that's what they call prejudice. Of course it happens all the time, based on all kinds of physical aspects that a person can have. It's always wrong. The difference is that when it's based on anything else, society knows it's wrong. When it's based on someone being fat, it's somehow socially acceptable. Tell me where the logic is in that.
Unfortunately, making a few inaccurate assumptions based on what they look like is the very least of the things that society deems acceptable to do to fat people. They are treated in ways that you wouldn't believe, by people you wouldn't believe would do it. (Yes, there are going to be links at the end of this post.) Fat bodies are considered public property, a feeling that will be well known to any women reading this, fat or thin or not really either - it's okay to judge them, to criticize them, to offer them unsolicited advice and patronise them, to bully them with the aim of forcing them to become something more to your taste.
Are you thinking that it's healthier to be thinner? Or are you thinking "Well it's okay to be fat, as long as you're healthy..."
Well firstly, NOPE, the correlation between being fat and being unhealthy is WAY WEAKER than you think. (Once again, links are going to be provided.) Unfortunately it's so incredibly ingrained in us, we are so well trained, that people will believe "common sense" (when it says fat = unhealthy) even in the face of actual, scientific evidence proving otherwise.
And secondly, NOPE, you don't get to say what's okay and what's not okay. If this is the one thing you read on my whole stupid blog that you actually take away in the form of a little thought in your brain, I will be supremely happy. You don't get to judge other people. Not even fat people, and not even REALLY UNHEALTHY fat people. Get on with your own fucking life, and if you can't interact with people like they're all equal, don't interact with them at all. Seriously.
Anyway.
The thing is, there are so very many ways in which peoples', especially womens', obsessing over their bodies, and primarily over making them thinner, hating their bodies, primarily the fat bits, benefits other people. For example the diet industry; it's worldwide and it's insanely lucrative! It is in the interest of every single person involved in it for you to keep hating your body, and keep hating other peoples'. (Incidentally, 95% of dieters don't keep off any weight they manage to lose.) I'm not going to start listing here, because I'll go on forever, and there will come a point where I sound like a conspiracy theorist. But let me just say this; people want fat people to believe their fatness makes them worth less as a person so that they can have power over them. It's basically bullying, whether on an individual level where the person doing the bullying wants it to be true too, just to feel superior, or a corporate level where the power in question is financial, or a political level where the power in the equation is literal power, and the ability to keep others down.
You know, sometimes I think we're too bound to our bodies, mentally and psychologically I mean (obviously we're all, you know, bound to our bodies) and other times I think we consider ourselves too far removed. I mean, on the one hand, the way we judge ourselves and each other for our bodies reminds me, by making me angry and sad day after day after day, that our bodies, our physical selves, are the absolute least important aspect of us as people, and it's not only heartbreakingly sad and infuriating, but also plain illogical and wrong, that it's what we are judged on, in fact what we are seen to be, rather than the things we do, the way we are, the things we say.... Rather, in fact, than literally anything else, like, you know, the things that actually make us who we are. But then on the other hand, perhaps considering yourself as a "self" that is separate from, though inextricably joined to, your body is no better. Our bodies aren't things that we should be seeking to alter and change; they aren't that part of us that, if only we could change that, we would be better, "oh she's so nice...shame she's fat!" We certainly shouldn't be torturing and harming and denying them for completely arbitrary reasons, and yet that's what we do, and what we encourage each other and our children to do... They are us, at least in this world, and as much as we like to thing we're beyond that kind of animal existence, body and mind and soul, if you believe in such a thing, as one - you know, being the cleverest species on the planet and all. And they're actually so fucking awesome! They allow us to know the world around us, and interact with it. Everything you experience that makes you feel exhilarated, moved, overwhelmed... Your body is doing that for you. We should be celebrating bodies! Especially those of us lucky enough to have properly working ones. Seriously. Big fat ones, little short ones, kind of medium ones... They're all so amazing! Not "once they've lost a few pounds" or "if I could only have slightly smaller hips", but just as they are, and however they got the way they are.
If you think at all like I do, I really recommend you to read about these things. It will change your life, and if you're anything like me, make you really angry. Are you wondering why this is so important to me? You might be, since I'm not fat. Oh yeah, by the way, for those of you who have seen me, I'm not fat. I'm not thin either, I'm pretty much right in the middle. Anyway, it would be a fair question to wonder why this matters to me so much. The answer is, I guess, that it just does! I can't decide what I feel strongly about any more than I can decide what foods I like (bread) and hate (prawns). The more I read about these and other related issues (and my god, there's so much more than I could ever write about, ignorant and under-educated in the subject as I absolutely don't deny I am, especially in a late night blog post when I'm desperately in need of sleep) the more terrible I realised the injustice, not to mention the oppression and the outright insanity, of it all is. Bear in mind that these issues don't just affect us fairly capable adults - the effect of pressure to be thin and beautiful on teenagers and young people is a whole other subject. Then there's the fact that the idea that we should all try and be attractive in the first place, the sheer importance we place on beauty and looks, is completely ludicrous and patently designed to keep women down. To make sure I don't go on for pages and pages, or stay up writing all night when I should definitely be sleeping, I'll just say that this is a fight I want to fight. If you say something horribly fat-phobic, I'm going to call you on it. If you beat yourself up for being so fat, I won't join in. Why? Because I think it matters. And come on, since, as we already established, everyone has a body, how can general body positivism and the celebration of ALL bodies possibly be a thing that anyone doesn't want to get behind?
A few links to expand on this woefully unstructured, incomplete rant:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zQucWXWXp3k
http://thisisthinprivilege.tumblr.com/
http://redefiningbodyimage.tumblr.com/post/17770763679/big-fat-list-of-myth-defying-health-resources
http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2007/04/070404162428.htm
http://junkfoodscience.blogspot.co.uk/2008/02/how-weve-came-to-believe-that.html
http://www.nearsightedowl.com/
...okay, I'm done now. Promise.
I think if we've been hanging around on this planet for more than a couple of years we're all aware that they're all unique; different shapes and sizes, blah blah, come on, you know this.
What's always vaguely bothered me, and in the past year or so more than ever as I've started to actually read and think properly think about it from all kinds of angles, is, well actually almost everything about the attitudes that society forces us to have about our own bodies and, possibly worse, other peoples' bodies.
This is obviously a huge topic which can be and has been written about in almost endless depth from any number of specific perspectives, but please allow me, as a total non-expert, to write very briefly and a bit more generally about bodies in society, just in case I say something that hasn't occurred to you before. Some things that hadn't occurred to me at all a year or two back have since become the basis for some of the strongest beliefs I have!
So to start with, well, none of you can have failed to notice how according to our society thinner = better. I'm starting with this, even though it hardly needs to be said, because one of those things I mentioned a minute ago, things that never even occurred to me for many, many years of living as a human, and it seems unbelievable now, is that that might not actually be the case. I was tempted to say that it seems unbelievably stupid to me now, that I never questioned whether being thin actually had any merit whatsoever, but I won't say it, because we are all trained from a ridiculously young age to believe that it does; stupidity and cleverness don't come into it.
Do you want to be thin? Or thinner? Why? Actually think about it; why? What inherent, objective value does thinness have? (Pro-tip: it's none. I promise you, it's none.) "Thin" is just a factual description of a person's physical body. In the same way, "fat" tells you nothing about a person except what they look like size-wise. The only thing that makes the word thin a compliment and the word fat an insult is the truckload of connotations that come attached to each. Somehow we feel that from how a person looks alone we can draw all kinds of conclusions, about that person's lifestyle, morals, personality, even hygiene - if that sounds familiar, it'll be because that's what they call prejudice. Of course it happens all the time, based on all kinds of physical aspects that a person can have. It's always wrong. The difference is that when it's based on anything else, society knows it's wrong. When it's based on someone being fat, it's somehow socially acceptable. Tell me where the logic is in that.
Unfortunately, making a few inaccurate assumptions based on what they look like is the very least of the things that society deems acceptable to do to fat people. They are treated in ways that you wouldn't believe, by people you wouldn't believe would do it. (Yes, there are going to be links at the end of this post.) Fat bodies are considered public property, a feeling that will be well known to any women reading this, fat or thin or not really either - it's okay to judge them, to criticize them, to offer them unsolicited advice and patronise them, to bully them with the aim of forcing them to become something more to your taste.
Are you thinking that it's healthier to be thinner? Or are you thinking "Well it's okay to be fat, as long as you're healthy..."
Well firstly, NOPE, the correlation between being fat and being unhealthy is WAY WEAKER than you think. (Once again, links are going to be provided.) Unfortunately it's so incredibly ingrained in us, we are so well trained, that people will believe "common sense" (when it says fat = unhealthy) even in the face of actual, scientific evidence proving otherwise.
And secondly, NOPE, you don't get to say what's okay and what's not okay. If this is the one thing you read on my whole stupid blog that you actually take away in the form of a little thought in your brain, I will be supremely happy. You don't get to judge other people. Not even fat people, and not even REALLY UNHEALTHY fat people. Get on with your own fucking life, and if you can't interact with people like they're all equal, don't interact with them at all. Seriously.
Anyway.
The thing is, there are so very many ways in which peoples', especially womens', obsessing over their bodies, and primarily over making them thinner, hating their bodies, primarily the fat bits, benefits other people. For example the diet industry; it's worldwide and it's insanely lucrative! It is in the interest of every single person involved in it for you to keep hating your body, and keep hating other peoples'. (Incidentally, 95% of dieters don't keep off any weight they manage to lose.) I'm not going to start listing here, because I'll go on forever, and there will come a point where I sound like a conspiracy theorist. But let me just say this; people want fat people to believe their fatness makes them worth less as a person so that they can have power over them. It's basically bullying, whether on an individual level where the person doing the bullying wants it to be true too, just to feel superior, or a corporate level where the power in question is financial, or a political level where the power in the equation is literal power, and the ability to keep others down.
You know, sometimes I think we're too bound to our bodies, mentally and psychologically I mean (obviously we're all, you know, bound to our bodies) and other times I think we consider ourselves too far removed. I mean, on the one hand, the way we judge ourselves and each other for our bodies reminds me, by making me angry and sad day after day after day, that our bodies, our physical selves, are the absolute least important aspect of us as people, and it's not only heartbreakingly sad and infuriating, but also plain illogical and wrong, that it's what we are judged on, in fact what we are seen to be, rather than the things we do, the way we are, the things we say.... Rather, in fact, than literally anything else, like, you know, the things that actually make us who we are. But then on the other hand, perhaps considering yourself as a "self" that is separate from, though inextricably joined to, your body is no better. Our bodies aren't things that we should be seeking to alter and change; they aren't that part of us that, if only we could change that, we would be better, "oh she's so nice...shame she's fat!" We certainly shouldn't be torturing and harming and denying them for completely arbitrary reasons, and yet that's what we do, and what we encourage each other and our children to do... They are us, at least in this world, and as much as we like to thing we're beyond that kind of animal existence, body and mind and soul, if you believe in such a thing, as one - you know, being the cleverest species on the planet and all. And they're actually so fucking awesome! They allow us to know the world around us, and interact with it. Everything you experience that makes you feel exhilarated, moved, overwhelmed... Your body is doing that for you. We should be celebrating bodies! Especially those of us lucky enough to have properly working ones. Seriously. Big fat ones, little short ones, kind of medium ones... They're all so amazing! Not "once they've lost a few pounds" or "if I could only have slightly smaller hips", but just as they are, and however they got the way they are.
If you think at all like I do, I really recommend you to read about these things. It will change your life, and if you're anything like me, make you really angry. Are you wondering why this is so important to me? You might be, since I'm not fat. Oh yeah, by the way, for those of you who have seen me, I'm not fat. I'm not thin either, I'm pretty much right in the middle. Anyway, it would be a fair question to wonder why this matters to me so much. The answer is, I guess, that it just does! I can't decide what I feel strongly about any more than I can decide what foods I like (bread) and hate (prawns). The more I read about these and other related issues (and my god, there's so much more than I could ever write about, ignorant and under-educated in the subject as I absolutely don't deny I am, especially in a late night blog post when I'm desperately in need of sleep) the more terrible I realised the injustice, not to mention the oppression and the outright insanity, of it all is. Bear in mind that these issues don't just affect us fairly capable adults - the effect of pressure to be thin and beautiful on teenagers and young people is a whole other subject. Then there's the fact that the idea that we should all try and be attractive in the first place, the sheer importance we place on beauty and looks, is completely ludicrous and patently designed to keep women down. To make sure I don't go on for pages and pages, or stay up writing all night when I should definitely be sleeping, I'll just say that this is a fight I want to fight. If you say something horribly fat-phobic, I'm going to call you on it. If you beat yourself up for being so fat, I won't join in. Why? Because I think it matters. And come on, since, as we already established, everyone has a body, how can general body positivism and the celebration of ALL bodies possibly be a thing that anyone doesn't want to get behind?
A few links to expand on this woefully unstructured, incomplete rant:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zQucWXWXp3k
http://thisisthinprivilege.tumblr.com/
http://redefiningbodyimage.tumblr.com/post/17770763679/big-fat-list-of-myth-defying-health-resources
http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2007/04/070404162428.htm
http://junkfoodscience.blogspot.co.uk/2008/02/how-weve-came-to-believe-that.html
http://www.nearsightedowl.com/
...okay, I'm done now. Promise.
Tuesday, 1 April 2014
A is for... About (Me and This Blog)
Every year or so I start up a blog, certain that now I'm suddenly going to have the ideas, the style and the personality to write about things that people want to read about. Perhaps I'll become internet-famous - it's only a matter of time, right? Perhaps I can become a real part of the movements I care about; feminism, body-positivism, defending the ailing NHS and the slowly dissolving welfare system. Yes, I can write about these things and people will care what I have to say about them! Perhaps this blog is the thing I've been waiting for, the thing that will make me important...
Unfortunately, by the time I've actually set up the thing and got a paragraph into my first insightful, clever and witty post, I've remembered that the phrases that sound amazing and original in my head rarely look so good when written down. There are people on the internet expressing every opinion I have far more beautifully than I can or will. Nobody cares what I have to say. I give up on the blog. I'm still not important.
But here I am again, starting the A-Z blogging challenge! Hopefully I'll find something interesting to write about each day, and hopefully it WON'T turn into a self-indulgent teenage diary fest! I'll definitely try and get some short fiction in there too, on the days when I have more energy...
Anyway, for today I thought I'd just write a little bio so that if, by random chance, anyone happens upon this they'll know whose unstructured ramblings they're actually reading! So here goes: I'm a 29 year old woman, and I currently have two jobs, neither of which, tragically, is as a writer. I'm perpetually tired, I drink far more tea than can possibly be healthy, get very angry when I read the news, have appalling skin that wouldn't look out of place on a teenager (which, incidentally, I am often mistaken for) and both hate and love people - en masse, I think we're pretty much worthless and disgusting, and yet on an individual basis, I have a lot of fondness for almost everyone I meet. I'm a massive nerd and a bit of a stay-at-home type. I'm currently attached to someone far too sweet and generous to deserve being stuck with me. I'm going to bake some scones later today. I think that's all you need to know about me for now!
See you tomorrow for the next thrilling episode: "B is for..."
Unfortunately, by the time I've actually set up the thing and got a paragraph into my first insightful, clever and witty post, I've remembered that the phrases that sound amazing and original in my head rarely look so good when written down. There are people on the internet expressing every opinion I have far more beautifully than I can or will. Nobody cares what I have to say. I give up on the blog. I'm still not important.
But here I am again, starting the A-Z blogging challenge! Hopefully I'll find something interesting to write about each day, and hopefully it WON'T turn into a self-indulgent teenage diary fest! I'll definitely try and get some short fiction in there too, on the days when I have more energy...
Anyway, for today I thought I'd just write a little bio so that if, by random chance, anyone happens upon this they'll know whose unstructured ramblings they're actually reading! So here goes: I'm a 29 year old woman, and I currently have two jobs, neither of which, tragically, is as a writer. I'm perpetually tired, I drink far more tea than can possibly be healthy, get very angry when I read the news, have appalling skin that wouldn't look out of place on a teenager (which, incidentally, I am often mistaken for) and both hate and love people - en masse, I think we're pretty much worthless and disgusting, and yet on an individual basis, I have a lot of fondness for almost everyone I meet. I'm a massive nerd and a bit of a stay-at-home type. I'm currently attached to someone far too sweet and generous to deserve being stuck with me. I'm going to bake some scones later today. I think that's all you need to know about me for now!
See you tomorrow for the next thrilling episode: "B is for..."
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