Some Brain Spew on Weight Loss

Urg, internet. I'm all annoyed now, and it's not even about the subject of today's rant. It's making me want to start a tangent rant about stupid people and pet ownership. And empty threats and complaints without the intent of correction. But, I should probably leave all that to the side since it's all just happening right now in my real life. This is the price of suddenly being surrounded by young adults who think they know what they're doing.

Anyway, I've been weirdly focused on food lately, and at work today I heard a radio commercial that just filled me with horror and irritation, and then I decided to write a blog post about it.

There I was, filling up egg pans before the morning rush, half listening to the classic rock station, and then this commercial came on for a weight loss center. They advertised for both "natural and chemical" weight loss methods, as well as single day visits and lifestyle/nutrition counselors to help you half-ass your way into being skinny.

At first glance, there wasn't really anything wrong with the ad, but it still infuriated me, because I hate--hate with a fiery, righteous passion-- this idea of losing weight for the sake of being skinnier. There's this disgusting focus on that, and it's everywhere. If a celebrity isn't skeletal or impossibly toned, people will comment on their figure, and it's this idiotic expectation that everyone in the entire world should look that way. There's no regard for health, body type, psychology, motivation, method, or diversity. It's all about results. Really, a singular, poisonous result.

Here's the ugly truth, boys and girls: people have different body types. They're shaped differently. Not everyone can be slim, shapely, and muscular. In fact, almost no one is all three of those because of their intrinsic contradictions in a body, and the way that we are about being thin and about eating, no one is really likely to be.

The thing is, that's not an ugly truth. Those aren't ugly bodies. Healthy bodies are not ugly. I say that as an artist with an ongoing love affair with the human shape. I love drawing the figure, but I don't love only drawing hourglass shaped women (as much as I love my sexy pin-up girls), and I don't only love drawing Superman. When I took figure drawing, my favorite models were the ones that were interesting to look at and fun to talk to, and that usually means not having a conventionally beautiful or symmetrical face.

But that's not exactly where I originally meant to go. This whole obsession with an end without regard to anything else, like whether it's healthy, or longterm, or even beneficial is one of the things that's been on my mind a lot. It shows up in Western culture a lot, but especially education, medicine, and this.

I watched Forks Over Knives the other day, along with a whole mess of Ted Talks about food and health and whatnot, and it really made me start thinking about the way that we relate to our food,
("How can anyone have a relationship to food?" Shrinking Women)
and more and more I notice how profoundly sickening it is the majority of the time. People eat the worst crap all of the time, and then complain about health problems caused directly by their laziness and gluttony.

How can you be shocked that you're overweight or diabetic when you eat garbage all the time?

Most of the stuff I was watching contended that the majority of health problems we have in Western culture are totally preventable and even the existing, chronic ailments can be mitigated by controlling what we put in our body.

But doing that requires putting in effort. We don't want to be healthier or feel better. We want to wear a bikini and eat a gallon of icecream. Why do things that benefit your body and mental health when you can just throw money and pills at it, or become a slave to self-denial?

I think this will need to explode into a few different posts. There's too much that I'm trying to say right now, and it's getting very muddled and confusing, so I'll stop now and try to sort my thoughts a little. I think it can break down into two or three separate topics. They're just all very tangled together.

Racist Comments

Let's talk about race, shall we? I have the fun experience of being a white female, which puts me in an interesting position somewhere between historically privileged and historically disenfranchised, and I'm also a noisily opinionated creature, which is unrelated to those things.

Someone on Facebook a while ago made the ignorant, painfully stupid comment that you can't be racist against white people, because apparently she understands neither the literal definition racism, or what constitutes a race, and since then I've been contemplating posting my two cents about racism and its place in the world that exists right now. Of course, I may not be the best person to talk about racism, simply because I don't get it. This has nothing to do with the fact that I am a white member of the middle class. I've experienced my share of bigotry, either firsthand or by proxy with people I'm close to. I don't get racism because I'm not a cave-dwelling douche. It makes no sense, and it has no place in a modern, global society. Hate people for something valid, guys, like something they can choose.

I've definitely had serious antipathy for several black people, and hispanic people, and asians, and lots of white people, but it had literally NOTHING to do with the color of their skin. Because that's literally the dumbest reason I can think of to hate someone. Even hating them for their clothing is more valid, because it's within their control and actually says something about their personality and preferences, even if that's still a superficial, weak reason to be prejudiced against someone.

I used to hear a lot of kids in my high school talking about slavery and Jim Crow laws with a chip on their shoulder. Does that seem stupid to anyone else? These kids were raised in a world where they didn't even experience anything remotely like that. Don't bitch at me about how your ancestors were enslaved by my ancestors, black kids. First of all, my ancestors were mostly in Sweden eating herring and not partaking in the "West Indies" slave trading (stupid Columbus, ruining terminology for the rest of time. "Look, it's not Europe! I must have gotten to India by now."). Second, Africans sold Africans to Europeans; selling prisoners of war and criminals and debtors as slaves is a time-honored tradition that every culture ever has participated in. Humans have been enslaving each other as long as they've lived in groups large enough to have enemies. Which brings me to my third point. Slavery is not a race issue anymore. If we're going to talk about slavery, why not concern yourselves with the slavery and human rights violations going on right now, you stupid people?

There is literally no reason to be racist anymore. It used to stem from the kind of fear and supremacist feelings that people have when encountering something alien to themselves. They aren't like us, therefore we immediately make this into an us and them polerization, and we have to win. But we are no longer surprised or frighted by people with different skin colors. Our maps no longer end with sea serpents and question marks. We know what's in our world, we know who lives here and what they look like. No, not every people group is intimately connected to every other, but in a time when you can talk to people on the other side of the planet instantaneously, how in the world can we still be dividing along the lines of race? That's just stupid.

So is hyphenating races, by the way. You shouldn't call yourself "African American" unless you are actually from both continents. If you immigrated, cool. The country/landmass your people come from has very little to do with your race except as Darwinian cause. White people shouldn't run around demanding to be called European Americans. And what would you call people from South America in that situation? What about the Brazilians descended from the Portuguese? Being the same color as the people of a place doesn't make you from there. If your people came from there and went somewhere else, you are not from there. It's so much absurdity.