On this day of fatness, I would like to say-
Dear grandpa,
I weigh 145 pounds. I have weighed 145 pounds for four years, aka since I reached my adult height. Hopefully, this will never change. It's a damn good weight. I am 5'10" and the recommended weight for people my height and gender is in the 135-170ish range, where I am comfortably on the lower end.
I don't want to be an underwear model, I don't want to be a swimsuit model, I don't want to be a supermodel, I don't want to be any sort of model. And I don't think anorexic chicks are hot.
If I weighed 125, I would be ten pounds underweight. To look at a perfectly normal, healthy girl and say she's twenty pounds overweight is just weird. I am judging you. you glaucoma havin, blind in one eye bein, super judgy ex wife beater you.
Also- you have a humorous pot belly. How far along are you, 8 months?
So there.
Oh yeah, I said all this to him. I say all this to him regularly. I explain to him the long term effects of being underweight vs those of being overweight, and how those of being underweight are far less reversible. Say there is a number line of weight, where an optimal healthy weight is zero, underweight negative, and overweight positive. You would not have to go as far in the overweight direction as the underweight direction to start to develop serious health problems. Loss of bone mass, weakening of the immune system so that you become more susceptible to disease and illness, anemia, and other serious problems.
You see fat people who got thin on tv, doing exercise programs and enjoying their life that they got back. You see women recovering from anorexia nervosa, and they never look quite right. Always a little faded, a little weak, perhaps missing patches of hair that never grew back.
A body mass index under 18.5 is considered underweight. My BMI if I were the "desired" 125, instead of a healthy 21.4 as now, would be 17.9, dangerously underweight. FFS I don't have twenty pounds to lose but Gpa sees me as a more petite person than I am, and compares me to his own weight, and does not connect the number with the fact that I am tall, and a woman.
It's frustrating that I've had this talk so many times with him, and he's such an incredibly intellectual man, but he refuses to take my side and acknowledge the greater danger of me being 125 over the fairly small set backs I would have if I were 165. I'd be chunky, but probably not extremely unhealthy. Still under the maximum recommendation.
I know there's something wrong with his eyes that must be like living in a fisheye lens to think that I am actually overweight, and he comes from a different time and is a fan of the impossible standards of beauty for women today. I still think it's cute that he thinks that way, and since I'm comfortable with my body I still think it's pretty good for a laugh that he's convinced I'm verging on obesity, but sometimes like tonight I just get frustrated. I want him to see my point of view because by getting him to side with me I would somehow sway everyone I never met who holds impossible standards for girls. I want everyone to realize that the bodies we idealize are unhealthy. I want to grab anorexic girls by their bony shoulders and smack sense into them of the real and permanent harm they are doing themselves.
Which reminds me of why I'm actually so annoyed about all this. I spent a few days, a few days ago, watching loads of documentaries on anorexia and reading "pro-ana" blogs and twitters, supporting the skeletal thin lifestyle.
People shouldn't aim for skinny or languish in fat, but just try to be healthy. Which is easy for me to say, since my body defaults to a perfect medium. All of this is very easy for me to say, because I've never had to struggle to lose weight and I've never had the crippling self esteem issues which might have led me down the foodless path. So from the top of a hill I look at the people climbing and say casually "They're doing it wrong."
So I try not to care what people weigh, because it doesn't matter to me. It doesn't affect me, they've got their own battles. But I do care about people's attitudes towards fatness and skinniness and health, because that is something I could change and something I should care about, because if I can convince them that being healthy is more desirable than fitting a mold then maybe they'll say something encouraging to an overweight person and give a skinny some pizza.
Damn, I want pizza.
I weigh 145 pounds. I have weighed 145 pounds for four years, aka since I reached my adult height. Hopefully, this will never change. It's a damn good weight. I am 5'10" and the recommended weight for people my height and gender is in the 135-170ish range, where I am comfortably on the lower end.
I don't want to be an underwear model, I don't want to be a swimsuit model, I don't want to be a supermodel, I don't want to be any sort of model. And I don't think anorexic chicks are hot.
If I weighed 125, I would be ten pounds underweight. To look at a perfectly normal, healthy girl and say she's twenty pounds overweight is just weird. I am judging you. you glaucoma havin, blind in one eye bein, super judgy ex wife beater you.
Also- you have a humorous pot belly. How far along are you, 8 months?
So there.
Oh yeah, I said all this to him. I say all this to him regularly. I explain to him the long term effects of being underweight vs those of being overweight, and how those of being underweight are far less reversible. Say there is a number line of weight, where an optimal healthy weight is zero, underweight negative, and overweight positive. You would not have to go as far in the overweight direction as the underweight direction to start to develop serious health problems. Loss of bone mass, weakening of the immune system so that you become more susceptible to disease and illness, anemia, and other serious problems.
You see fat people who got thin on tv, doing exercise programs and enjoying their life that they got back. You see women recovering from anorexia nervosa, and they never look quite right. Always a little faded, a little weak, perhaps missing patches of hair that never grew back.
A body mass index under 18.5 is considered underweight. My BMI if I were the "desired" 125, instead of a healthy 21.4 as now, would be 17.9, dangerously underweight. FFS I don't have twenty pounds to lose but Gpa sees me as a more petite person than I am, and compares me to his own weight, and does not connect the number with the fact that I am tall, and a woman.
It's frustrating that I've had this talk so many times with him, and he's such an incredibly intellectual man, but he refuses to take my side and acknowledge the greater danger of me being 125 over the fairly small set backs I would have if I were 165. I'd be chunky, but probably not extremely unhealthy. Still under the maximum recommendation.
I know there's something wrong with his eyes that must be like living in a fisheye lens to think that I am actually overweight, and he comes from a different time and is a fan of the impossible standards of beauty for women today. I still think it's cute that he thinks that way, and since I'm comfortable with my body I still think it's pretty good for a laugh that he's convinced I'm verging on obesity, but sometimes like tonight I just get frustrated. I want him to see my point of view because by getting him to side with me I would somehow sway everyone I never met who holds impossible standards for girls. I want everyone to realize that the bodies we idealize are unhealthy. I want to grab anorexic girls by their bony shoulders and smack sense into them of the real and permanent harm they are doing themselves.
Which reminds me of why I'm actually so annoyed about all this. I spent a few days, a few days ago, watching loads of documentaries on anorexia and reading "pro-ana" blogs and twitters, supporting the skeletal thin lifestyle.
People shouldn't aim for skinny or languish in fat, but just try to be healthy. Which is easy for me to say, since my body defaults to a perfect medium. All of this is very easy for me to say, because I've never had to struggle to lose weight and I've never had the crippling self esteem issues which might have led me down the foodless path. So from the top of a hill I look at the people climbing and say casually "They're doing it wrong."
So I try not to care what people weigh, because it doesn't matter to me. It doesn't affect me, they've got their own battles. But I do care about people's attitudes towards fatness and skinniness and health, because that is something I could change and something I should care about, because if I can convince them that being healthy is more desirable than fitting a mold then maybe they'll say something encouraging to an overweight person and give a skinny some pizza.
Damn, I want pizza.