it’s hallowe’en! i’m busy being a fashion mistake – that’s my costume for this year. this picture gives you a bit of a taste of but it doesn’t show the real nice touches – the smeared rouge, the bags under the eyes, the wool socks over the leopard pyjamas under the fancy black skirt – oh well.
oh, and it’s the last of the month and therefore carnival of eating disorders time! i guess i should get serious.
okay.
(desparately trashing around trying to find a segue)
{giving up; but if you can think of a good segue, let me know, alright?}
i’ll just start now.
body image – a video that will make you cry
in this powerful post, dr. susan gregg talks about the difference between domination and dominion:
society is based on domination. the way our mind thinks is most often based on domination: black and white, right and wrong, good and evil, positive emotions and negative ones. symbolically this is represented as a line. as we deepen our connection with our spirit, with our true nature we move into dominion. symbolically dominion is represented as a sphere.
after explaining this concept a little more, she then posts a video that illustrates her thoughts in a deeply moving way. everyone who has ever had any issues with body image or any other feelings of “otherness” will know what susan is talking about. please visit her post, judgment, domination and the line.
body image – a striking difference between men and women
kelly turner presents the difference between boys and girls at grounded fitness. an excerpt:
it would futile to try and explain that if a girl asked another girl if she was going to try and lose weight to get a guy, without said girl ever mentioning a dissatisfaction with her current weight, that it would be enough to send her into a downward spiral of self hatred, body image issues and gallons and gallons of ben and jerry’s.
body image and anorexia
lola snow has a post about a mirror in a changing room:
the revelation occurred in the middle of the river island changing rooms.
i tried on nine or ten different outfits, on the final pair of jeans (which i actually had to buy because all my other clothes hang off me in various ways liable to get me arrested for exposure) i noticed. i look like a bag of bones. i look ill. my cheeks are actually sunken in. my hipbones and ribs are more obvious than my boobs. my collarbones protrude far enough to hook a coat hanger on. i actually felt a bit sick, because i feel so breakable. like one of my bones could shatter from a knock or a jar. my skin is patchy, i have an eye infection, my veins in my arms pop out like grey earthworms, my teeth are chipped and yellowed. all in all, standing under the yellow tinted fluorescent hell lighting, shivering in my too-big underwear, wasn’t a good look for me.i looked like i am pretty close to dying.
what i found really interesting about this is that it looks like she actually saw herself in real life, not as still-too-fat as so many anorexic women do. a small victory, perhaps?
read the whole article on women’s changing rooms here
food and the sound of silence
laura collins, who was so good and hosted the carnival of eating disorders last month muses on the question of what to talk about when not talking about food and eating. what would happen if these topics were taken out of the conversation anywhere and everywhere?
well, a marvellous silence would blanket the land, certainly. there’d be a lot more eye contact, i think. the TV and radio channels would be silent much of the day and night without talk shows and news spots and commercials selling dieting and the necessity of altering our appearance. parties would be odd for a while, but we’d adjust. class reunions… well, no one would go any more because the whole point was to compare notes on aging and diets.
exercise: fit and fat
carrie arnold (who, incidentally, was the person who first asked the question of what to talk about if not about food) is the owner of one of the best blogs on eating disorders. check it out. her new blog header is really cool. she points out that you can be fit and fat.
a study found that half of adults classified as “overweight” and one third of adults classified as “obese” were metabolically healthy. one in four of “normal weight” adults were not.
exercise and weight loss
pretty much a companion article to the one above is dr. martin russell’s exercise for weight loss. hold on to your seats, i won’t reveal the story. read it for yourself.
that’s it for october! i really enjoyed all these posts and encourage you to go on and read them all. do you have, or do you know, a post that would be a good addition to this carnival? if so, please submit it here or drop me a line, and we can enjoy it next month, at the carnival of eating disorders on november 30.