Body Shapes

I have realised something deeply profound, and largely personal. Granted, this may make it uninteresting, but nevertheless, I feel the need to share.

I now know that I'm not, in fact, overweight.

Does that sound silly? Modern women carry around some amount of hatred of their bodies from the moment their mothers tell them that they shouldn't have that extra bar of chocolate. 'A minute on the lips, a lifetime on the hips', they say. I've always largely disliked my hips for having too much fat on them, and deep down, I tend to blame myself for it.

But not today. I looked in the mirror, and I noticed that my shoulders are actually just a little bit wider than my hips, despite the fleshiness of said body parts. And it was something of a revelation to look at myself and see (instead of an average woman with a few pounds to lose) a woman who is bigger and heavier by design because I take after my father in my body shape. So I have very broad shoulders and hips because my dad is broad; I weigh more than 180 pounds even though I look much lighter because I have very dense bones, like he does; I have huge feet for which heels are generally not an option because my grandfather had feet like that.

The point of it all, really, is that it's not my fault.

It's not my fault, if fashion designers don't care or don't know how to make clothes that look good on women with broad shoulders. It's not my fault if I can never look like a model in a magazine. And because it's not my fault, suddenly all the guilt and hatred just falls away.

Even when I know that mainstream media presents an unrealistic view of the ideal woman, and that this view is callously abused to push beauty and enhancement products on the female population, it's still viciously hard to escape the nagging feeling that by not caring about being thin, or not caring about what I eat, I am somehow letting myself down. The feeling is just another facet of the media's pervasive influence - but rationalising it isn't the same as being completely free from it. So it's a powerful thing, to tell yourself that:

• You will never reach this unrealistic ideal, but
• It's not your fault, and
• You can stop beating yourself up about it now and start concentrating on how to stay healthy and happy.

If you can truly convince yourself of this, then all the ads trying to convince you to buy makeup, or lose some weight with a new diet, or get this season's newest fashions don't matter anymore. You'll never look like Angelina Jolie, or have Reneé Zellweger's body, because you are not them and having the trappings of their lives will not change that - so trying to take on the veneer of a celebrity is pointless, and every little thing that says 'you are not worthy' because of your body becomes meaningless. Instead, it becomes a matter of difference; different genetics, different riches. You buy clothes for yourself. You exercise for your own health. You eat according to your own taste.

And in a myriad of small ways, you are suddenly free.

I read blogs

Many, many blogs. Blogs with interesting articles. Articles that point to other interesting articles, and videos, and photos, and tweets, and comics, and all kinds of stuff. This is how I get the news.

It's actually pretty efficient.

Today I was pointed at an article that made me wonder what, in fact, the staff of dating.uk.msn.com are smoking, and how I can get some at the earliest opportunity. I frequently maintain that men and women are not from different planets (shock and indeed horror!) and therefore should not be such a mystery to each other, and really, if we all just sat down and talked a bit more, I'm sure we could work out our differences and come to a equal and satisfying compromise. But, dear reader, the article above might as well be called, "Women: The Alien Spotter's Definitive Guide", and should you venture to read it, I would postulate that you will be either baffled (if you are a male with female acquaintances) or insulted (if you are an actual real-life female with a working brain, and not a figment of someone's overactive imagination).

The article is a list of 53 things that women apparently don't want men to know. The whole list... good grief, I'm trying to find just one thing that I can get behind, and really, I'm failing. I mean, some of the things I'm reading there would make me seriously question the sanity of anyone who agreed with them! Here are some of the highlights:

• "We’d happily sleep with your best mate to make you jealous."
• "If you don’t text or call within 24 hours we’ll feel so unhappy that no amount of chocolate and wine can cheer us up. Though we’ll give it a try."
• "Here’s how to make us fall for you. One day, come on to us so strong that we’re a bit weirded out by it. Then totally fail to ring us. We’ll wonder what we did wrong, and we won’t be able to stop thinking about you."
• "We want you to text us from your journey home to say how you can’t stop smiling."

Let's recap: the person or persons speaking here will prostitute themselves to get attention, will drink themselves into oblivion when they don't get that attention, can be casually manipulated because they crave attention, and are also control freaks about how that attention can be paid to them.

This does not describe your average everyday woman. This describes someone with enough mental health problems to keep a therapist in business for years! And the article seems to be somewhat semi-serious, if the opening paragraphs are anything to go by, which means that the possibility exists that some gullible menfolk will wander by and actually think that this is what women are really like.

The mind, it boggles.

I have a suggestion for men who are interested in meeting, dating, falling in love and living happily ever after with a woman. Now, I realise this is a bit radical, so brace yourselves: talk to her. Treat her like another human being, with her own preferences and opinions and habits. Respect her, and get the hell out if she doesn't respect you in return.

But most of all, and I say this for the sake of normal women everywhere, ignore dumbass lists like the one above.

How do you connect to people?

I tend to write a lot of drivel on this blog. Part of it is therapy, of a sort, in that it lets me talk about things that bother me. But really, the rest is a large chunk of drivel with a healthy dose of procrastination.

I should be writing the Novel now instead of this.

Anyway - blogs are usually used to connect with people. This got me thinking today - I follow a lot of blogs, and I enjoy reading all of them, but my participation is largely absent. I don't get involved with other bloggers.

I had to seriously think about why this is, and I can only think it must be shyness. Yes, it's an enormous cliche, but nonetheless true - I'm still struggling with self-esteem as a writer, and it's caused me to be hesitant about reaching out to other writers, agents, publishers, whatever.

Who reads this blog, anyway? I'm not even sure I'm writing it for anyone but me. How do you find out if anyone is reading or subscribed anyway?

....

I just had to look that up. I think I need to have Google Analytics or something.

....

Apparently not! But it still says I have no subscribers, so I guess I don't need to worry about who's reading my drivel just yet.