Thoughts of LoWriter

Be Who You Is, Peeps

“The brother that gets me is going to get one hell of a fabulous woman.”--Aretha Franklin

Dieting is, by and large, a complete and utter waste of time. It is the most ridiculous occupation around with the possible exceptions of Watching Trees Grow and/or Curling. Also high on this list comes Spoon Polishing.

It’s not just that dieting is regarded as the be all, end all factor in landing a member of the opposite sex, it’s that it’s turned into a national obsession. If you’re not on a diet, then you’re not a good American, damn it. How dare you contribute to the fictional national obesity problem?
How dare you eat cheetos in such a heretical
manner and with such flagrant disregard for our new national pastime? Don’t you realize that you should long and indeed in some places ache to be skinny. And don’t you realize, like all other things in America, this weight loss has to happen fast? Tomorrow, in fact, if you can afford it by way of surgical intervention, but if not tomorrow then definitely by the end of the month. Don’t you understand that you have to be skinny in order to be happy and, above all, sexy?

Well, now that you mention it, no. I don’t.

Fad diets have been around for years. First it was the “2000 Calorie Diet.” Then there was the Fat Gram Counting Diet, which involved a substance called “Fat Burner” which you could buy in bottles at K-Mart. It tasted a little like asphalt, but you did lose weight. (Mostly because eating is less fun when you can’t taste anything but pavement every time you chew.) Somewhere in this period Weight Watchers, Jenny Craig, and a few other knock offs were born. Also came diet pills, which it turned out, could give you brain damage and other mental disorders. After awhile, the combo Calorie/Fat Gram diet took over. You had to count both factors and hope and pray that it added up to your magic number. After that came the Subway Diet (meet Jason, the token spokesman). Then it was Adkins. Then it was South Beach. Now it’s LA Weightloss.* By the time I post this, there’ll be a new one. Get over the diet fetish already, America! Not only is the hysteria ridiculous, but also we are missing out on all the important things in life that really matter. (I.E. Spaghetti-Os and Jesus and Harry Potter and happiness and Skittles and raspberry jam.)

In high school, I skipped breakfast and lunch and ate only very small suppers, which included half a piece of meat and a tablespoon full of whatever vegetable we were having, and which excluded any kind of dessert. Often, my entire food for a day would consist of a bowl of cereal. I exercised obsessively. I began drinking gallons of diet pop (which is highly addicting and damaging to your brain, and which I was finally able to quit last summer. I have been off it for a year). And I definitely lost weight. I lost about 30 lbs in about 2 ½ months. I was 15 going on mental. I screwed up my metabolism and for what? The idea that in order to be loveable, I had to look a certain way and weigh in at a certain poundage. And that’s just plainly a lie.

Nothing is more attractive than confidence. Over the last year, I’ve been asked out more than ever before, and the reason is not that I dropped several pounds and something magical happened. The reason is that I’ve been more confident in myself than ever before. I walk straight and tall and I swing my hips and I don’t take nothing off of nobody. I’m just as excellent as anybody else on the street, and I have every right to be content with my bad self. I love my big brassy hips and my bubilicious bubble of a bum and I’m fairly certain my smile can light up rooms, light bulbs, and other faces. I have a body that can move, that heals quickly (even after surgery as I discovered this summer), that can bend any old which way I want it to and that keeps me going daily. I have all my teeth and all my hair. I can still see. I have all my appendages, and I have all my senses firmly intact. Not everybody has these things to look forward to when they wake up each day. I’m intelligent, kind, funny, witty, and talented. And pretty. And yes, even sexy. And if I don’t notice these things about myself, why should anyone else bother? And if people don’t like that I like myself, they can go to hell.

I lost 20 pounds in a month once when I was sick, and do you know what happened? The bed springs poked me at night in places that were previously nicely padded, and I hurt more all over in general. Also, I didn’t much like it. In a related story, I remained surprisingly single and unspoken for.

The only way to find love is to love yourself. The thing of it is that losing weight doesn’t attract that special someone. That special person is going to turn up whether you lose weight or not. The fact that they aren’t in your life yet just means that you haven’t yet crossed paths (or that you haven’t recognized each other yet). If somebody honestly doesn’t like you now just because you weigh such and such a weight, then that person will only love you so far and no further. And what happens if you change? Will they stop loving you then? Maybe I’m naïve, but I want the love that fairy tales and old people have. I want the kind of love that holds your hand when you are too old to walk without help anymore. I want the kind of love that helps you pick out pears in the grocery store when your eyes are too dull to see. I want the kind of love that loves me no matter what I look like or act like or talk like or write like, and if I can’t love myself that way, then how can I expect anyone else to?

The truth is still that your physique fades. We are all going to get saggy and old and wrinkled. We are all going to one day wish that we could have a cheeseburger and know that we can’t because it’s too salty or too fatty or too lactose-y when we’ve grown salt, fat, and lactose intolerant. If we’re lucky, we’ll still be able to walk and talk and do what we want. If we’re lucky, we won’t get a really dreadful disease and become incapable of eating or thinking or walking or peeing. If I died tomorrow would I miss my dress size? No. I think, if I were to be honest, I would miss my family and friends and writing and right behind those things would come chocolate. (Or tortilla chips. It’s a toss up, really.) The point is that I wouldn’t look back at my life or want other people to look back at my life, and say, “Wow. She was really gorgeous” or “Wow. She lost a lot of weight over the course of her life” or “Wow. Check out how light this casket is. She looks really good in that outfit.” No, I would want people to say, “Gee, she really had life figured out. I’d like to be as happy as she was” or “Gosh, she did a lot for others; she’ll be missed” or even “Wow. She was a great writer.”

It’s not that losing weight is stupid. Losing weight can be a perfectly healthy and intelligent move. Obsessing about losing weight, on the other hand, is one of the worst things you can do to yourself. Aside from health risks, obsessions are not attractive. You’ve all had that one crazy stalker who followed you around, called your house at all hours, and just creeped you out in general really, and when you’re obsessed with losing weight, that’s what you look like. You’re the crazy stalker of the elusive “skinnier,” which makes you pretty much inaccessible. Should I lose weight? Oh, definitely. My pants could fit better at this point, but losing weight is a lifelong commitment, and I’m just not in the mood to be that committed to it right now. I’m getting my four servings of dairy a day, which was my goal for this year. Losing weight is a process of eating the right amount of things from those little groups in that one pyramid we all like to ignore because it points out that we can’t have everything we want instantaneously and exercising as often as the surgeon general recommends…for the rest of your life. Even then, you’re allowed to have sweets sometimes; you’re allowed to skip a day of exercise because the pattern of your life is healthy, so a few unhealthy instances are ok.

Be who you are. That is the best thing that you can do for yourself and the first step to being attractive. Stop obsessing and your attractiveness will multiply. As for me, I’m a big gorgeous wonder woman, and I will be happy with who I am. And you should be happy with you. You can’t help but be gorgeous when you’re content with your fabulous self.

*The diet list in no way represents any kind of comprehensive or researched list. This is just the order in which I remember these diets becoming hugely popular. You may remember the order differently. Memories are funny things; no two are quite alike. If I cared enough about fad diets, I would have researched them and provided a comprehensive list. Unfortunately, I care about fad diets only a little more than I care about sidewalk cracks, so I have relied on my memory of events instead. Feel free to complain loudly about my inaccuracy and/or insert any diets you feel more closely represent the period from 1989 until present in your head when you read this section.

Posted by LoWriter at June 24, 2004 07:32 AM