Weight Maven

Dances With Fat’s Ragen Chastain thinks there is no new skinny … or at least, there shouldn’t be:

At the end of the day, this is basically about giving women the message that we should all try to be “This!” which is the new “That!” which will make us worthy/good/socially acceptable whatever. It’s like climbing out of one hole, falling into another one, and then celebrating that we’re in a different hole. …

I think the message we’re looking for is “we shouldn’t measure our worth based on an arbitrary standard” not “we should measure our worth by a different arbitrary standard.”

This week, there are two different weight-related virtual seminars going on. On one of them, I listened to Amy Pershing use the term “robbery” to describe efforts, mostly by women, invested in appearance at the expense of potentially more meaningful pursuits.

Like Ragen, I don’t begrudge folks’ their choice to choose what are the priorities in their own lives (I love her underpants rule). But I also think it’s important to look at to what extent that is truly our own choice and to what extent it’s a cultural pressure.

Two words I wrote down in listening to various talks yesterday were freedom and peace. I’ve long aspired to the latter; I think that I’m going to start considering the implications of the former as well.