Sometimes I burn out. I've been really burned out lately; tired of being a "Professional Fattie" if you will. It takes so much energy to put yourself out there every day and attempt to speak your truth and speak up for the injustice you witness in this looks-obsessed world. I get tired of trying to find the funny in a subject that is dead-serious. Sometimes I just want to sink into a bubble bath, lock the world out and simply "be" for awhile.
But then I saw and heard two news stories yesterday that re-lit the fire underneath my size 22 butt and I feel the passion rekindling both to speak to my truth but to also encourage others to do the same and make no apologies.
First of all, in Michigan, a 20 year old woman has been given notice by her employer, Hooters, that she needs to lose weight. According to Fox Detroit, the 20 year old wears a size XS shorts and tank top and Hooters is supposed to not have any weight requirements in their policies. Nonetheless, the girl has been told that she has 30 days in which to lose weight or she and company will be parting ways. Lucky her, they said they'd pay for a gym membership. The girl has found an attorney and I had the pleasure of hearing her mother on the radio yesterday and let's just say, mom is on a righteous war path and I totally salute her. (I did find it really wierd that she also said their family was super proud that one of their own was a Hooters girl..... really?) The mom was adamant in saying that this unrealistic judgement directed at women and their bodies was wrong and needed to stop and all I can say is that I hope she can continue speaking out with the passion I witnessed from her yesterday.
Then, last night while channel surfing, I happened to catch Entertainment Tonight and a "daring expose" on celebrities bikini bodies and the horrible cellulite on some of them (note sarcasm here). The story was tasteless and pointless and it makes me so sad that once again, people are sitting in absolute judgement on something so personal and for what? What is the purpose behind this? What is their intention? It's the reason I have let go of my celebrity-watching, People Magazine reading habits. I don't care who has cellulite....like the rest of the world, most of them probably have it. And so what? The fact that my thighs probably look similar to Meryl Streep's only means that I can relate to her as a real person, not some plastic-surgeried, botoxed, dieted-into-oblivion, robotic starlet.
We have so much work to do in order to simply let people be who they are without judgement and condemnation. Maybe it's like people who are super homophobic and public about their condemnation of gays, who subsequently are found to have five boy-toys stashed away in seedy motel rooms. In other words, maybe we keep pointing the finger of judgement at other people so that we ourselves can turn the attention away from our own feelings and how we look at ourselves?
To borrow from Oprah, here are some things I know for sure:
1. Judging other people's bodies is not entertainment.
2. Unrealistic expectations towards women's bodies will keep us in our place and obsessed with things that deny us full, joyful lives that are based on who we are as opposed to what we look like in a bikini or hooters tank top.
No comments:
Post a Comment