Weight
When I think about losing weight, I don't think about being a model. I don't think about being skinny. I don't think about hip bones jutting and collar bones you could kill someone with. I don't think about food, honestly. I think about movement. My lose of weight isn't a loss of weight, it's a loss of fat. I gain muscle quickly, and I rarely actually lose weight.
When I was 24, I was sick for a month and a half. The kind of sick I should have been hospitalized for, because I was hacking up blood and unable to drink anything but chicken broth with ginger and garlic. For, literally, at least a month. I lost a LOT of weight. I remember, the first time I had left the house in forever, I went to a female friends house to hang out. I was still deathly looking. My hair was lank, my skin was grey, and my eyes were shrunk in pockets of blackness. I looked sick. But there was a man there, a man I'd known for a little bit, and he looked at me in shocked admiration. He told me, hesitantly, that I looked amazing. I remember the sharp disgust I felt for him, staring at him from across my friends bed where I was sitting on the floor because I was too tired to move. I just couldn't believe he thought I looked amazing simply because I'd lost weight.
But for the next couple of years, before I started to put the weight back on, I was the bees knees. I was dating a man who dressed like a goth god on a regular basis, and my wardrobe grew to include every form hugging goth goddess piece of clothing I could think of. And I knew I was admired. I was in a relationship, so it didn't matter in a tangible way. But I got a lot of admiring looks and comments. A lot of attention. The kind of attention I got as a blooming young woman, 13 or so. The kind of attention my mother wanted, my friends talked about. The kind of attention I both loved and despised as a young woman who had no real way of understanding it. Approbation of men based on your appearance is a bulwark to so many young girls self esteem. Not in a "Oh, isn't that nice, men think I'm pretty so I'm more likely to get married and help continue the human race" kind of way that's probably been the norm for I don't know how long. But in a "BAM! IN YOUR FACE, BITCHES! I WIN" kind of way, that has less to do with the admiration in a mans eyes than it has to do with the fact that everyone else can SEE the admiration in the mans eyes, for you. Fucked up. Anyways.
I put the weight back on, and then some, before I was 30. I was miserable for a year, put on a lot of what this woman calls "sadness weight" (an incredibly apt description), and then I wasn't sad anymore. I was out of a relationship in the mostly healthiest way possible, I was feeling young, and I was dancing almost every night.
But I never lost the weight. I simply moved it around, shed some fat and gained some muscle. And gained a lot of sheer happy.
I started dating again, aggressively. I started going out with whoever asked me, and sometimes whoever I asked. And I started sleeping with whoever wanted me (sadly, not always with whoever I wanted at first. That was a lesson that took a little time). I discovered that I didn't have to look like a slender goth goddess to be wanted. Every man I slept with, I carry this memory of how they looked at me in my mind. And there was only one man, out of many, who I know thought I was too fat. He was slender and muscular and moved like a Brazilian god on the dance floor. We met at a club, where he danced with me a on whim, and while we were dirty dancing like Patrick and Jennifer, he got an arrested expression on his face and said "I think you could actually keep up with me", in an awed voice. He was awed because I was "fat", but I thought he was awed because I was fucking awesome, and that was the way it was supposed to be. When I went home with him that night, I carried that knowledge with me, and it let me cluelessly stumble through an incredibly awkward full night of painfully pathetic sex without ever really catching on that this guy was trying to come to grips with my body and not being turned on by it. At one point, he had his arm angled at an incredibly awkward position, and I remember thinking "He's trying to block my belly from his sight". I didn't get embarrassed, my feelings didn't get hurt. It just was what it was. And *I* had fun. He had VERY athletic hips. But he didn't, and before dawn I was leaving his house in a cab, quite content, idly debating if I wanted to see him again. I'm pretty sure he was playing his upright bass and trying to figure out why he'd gone to bed with me in the first place.
And by the next night I was with someone else, and I was being worshiped and revered. I was thankful for their attention, and they were by god absolutely awed by mine.
It is hard for most people to separate sex and weight. What that means, on a practical level, is that it is hard for most people who feel bad about their weight to believe that they are sexually attractive. It is hard for most women, in particular, to believe that they will see approbation in one persons eyes if they don't see it in almost ALL peoples eyes. Almost universal lust, or none. I think this is because admiration in a single humans eyes isn't the end goal they are taught. That pretty much takes sex out of the picture, in reality, because sex just takes one person being attracted to another. And sexual attraction comes in many and varied forms.
The end goal too many women are taught, though, is to win, and winning means being universally sought after for your looks. The shallowest, most unsatisfying win possible, when you think about it, because there is nothing else underneath that attraction. There is only a moment, a single sharp moment of desire, and then there is "I had that, *I* won, because I had what other men wanted". And then a confused, unsatisfied wandering away by both parties. I've never wanted that in my life.
So I wonder about my relationship with weight now. I haven't slept with someone since March. I haven't slept with someone ELSE since... a while. I have been sexual with people, I have flirted and sexted and watched someone come. But I haven't fallen down into the physical whole that is sex. And I have been focused on my body. I have been taking stock, looking at it, being hyper aware of it. I have noticed the changes that aging brings, and I have tried not to care. But I have also been slathering myself in coconut oil in direct response to that. There are multiple aspects of who I am right now that are keeping me away from sex. Most of them I don't worry about. Most of them are temporary, and just need time to heal and address. But I worry about my focus on weight, and worry that, if left too long, I will allow it to determine how attractive I should feel again. It makes me want to go out and fuck as many people as possible, this fear. It makes me want to drown that worry in an orgy of flesh and pleasure that will remind me once and for all that sex is separate from approbation, that sex and attraction are what make the world go round and I am very, very capable of spinning the world of anyone I meet. That knowledge is important. Not because being attractive is important, but because FLESH is important, sex and love and joy are important.
When I was 24, I was sick for a month and a half. The kind of sick I should have been hospitalized for, because I was hacking up blood and unable to drink anything but chicken broth with ginger and garlic. For, literally, at least a month. I lost a LOT of weight. I remember, the first time I had left the house in forever, I went to a female friends house to hang out. I was still deathly looking. My hair was lank, my skin was grey, and my eyes were shrunk in pockets of blackness. I looked sick. But there was a man there, a man I'd known for a little bit, and he looked at me in shocked admiration. He told me, hesitantly, that I looked amazing. I remember the sharp disgust I felt for him, staring at him from across my friends bed where I was sitting on the floor because I was too tired to move. I just couldn't believe he thought I looked amazing simply because I'd lost weight.
But for the next couple of years, before I started to put the weight back on, I was the bees knees. I was dating a man who dressed like a goth god on a regular basis, and my wardrobe grew to include every form hugging goth goddess piece of clothing I could think of. And I knew I was admired. I was in a relationship, so it didn't matter in a tangible way. But I got a lot of admiring looks and comments. A lot of attention. The kind of attention I got as a blooming young woman, 13 or so. The kind of attention my mother wanted, my friends talked about. The kind of attention I both loved and despised as a young woman who had no real way of understanding it. Approbation of men based on your appearance is a bulwark to so many young girls self esteem. Not in a "Oh, isn't that nice, men think I'm pretty so I'm more likely to get married and help continue the human race" kind of way that's probably been the norm for I don't know how long. But in a "BAM! IN YOUR FACE, BITCHES! I WIN" kind of way, that has less to do with the admiration in a mans eyes than it has to do with the fact that everyone else can SEE the admiration in the mans eyes, for you. Fucked up. Anyways.
I put the weight back on, and then some, before I was 30. I was miserable for a year, put on a lot of what this woman calls "sadness weight" (an incredibly apt description), and then I wasn't sad anymore. I was out of a relationship in the mostly healthiest way possible, I was feeling young, and I was dancing almost every night.
But I never lost the weight. I simply moved it around, shed some fat and gained some muscle. And gained a lot of sheer happy.
I started dating again, aggressively. I started going out with whoever asked me, and sometimes whoever I asked. And I started sleeping with whoever wanted me (sadly, not always with whoever I wanted at first. That was a lesson that took a little time). I discovered that I didn't have to look like a slender goth goddess to be wanted. Every man I slept with, I carry this memory of how they looked at me in my mind. And there was only one man, out of many, who I know thought I was too fat. He was slender and muscular and moved like a Brazilian god on the dance floor. We met at a club, where he danced with me a on whim, and while we were dirty dancing like Patrick and Jennifer, he got an arrested expression on his face and said "I think you could actually keep up with me", in an awed voice. He was awed because I was "fat", but I thought he was awed because I was fucking awesome, and that was the way it was supposed to be. When I went home with him that night, I carried that knowledge with me, and it let me cluelessly stumble through an incredibly awkward full night of painfully pathetic sex without ever really catching on that this guy was trying to come to grips with my body and not being turned on by it. At one point, he had his arm angled at an incredibly awkward position, and I remember thinking "He's trying to block my belly from his sight". I didn't get embarrassed, my feelings didn't get hurt. It just was what it was. And *I* had fun. He had VERY athletic hips. But he didn't, and before dawn I was leaving his house in a cab, quite content, idly debating if I wanted to see him again. I'm pretty sure he was playing his upright bass and trying to figure out why he'd gone to bed with me in the first place.
And by the next night I was with someone else, and I was being worshiped and revered. I was thankful for their attention, and they were by god absolutely awed by mine.
It is hard for most people to separate sex and weight. What that means, on a practical level, is that it is hard for most people who feel bad about their weight to believe that they are sexually attractive. It is hard for most women, in particular, to believe that they will see approbation in one persons eyes if they don't see it in almost ALL peoples eyes. Almost universal lust, or none. I think this is because admiration in a single humans eyes isn't the end goal they are taught. That pretty much takes sex out of the picture, in reality, because sex just takes one person being attracted to another. And sexual attraction comes in many and varied forms.
The end goal too many women are taught, though, is to win, and winning means being universally sought after for your looks. The shallowest, most unsatisfying win possible, when you think about it, because there is nothing else underneath that attraction. There is only a moment, a single sharp moment of desire, and then there is "I had that, *I* won, because I had what other men wanted". And then a confused, unsatisfied wandering away by both parties. I've never wanted that in my life.
So I wonder about my relationship with weight now. I haven't slept with someone since March. I haven't slept with someone ELSE since... a while. I have been sexual with people, I have flirted and sexted and watched someone come. But I haven't fallen down into the physical whole that is sex. And I have been focused on my body. I have been taking stock, looking at it, being hyper aware of it. I have noticed the changes that aging brings, and I have tried not to care. But I have also been slathering myself in coconut oil in direct response to that. There are multiple aspects of who I am right now that are keeping me away from sex. Most of them I don't worry about. Most of them are temporary, and just need time to heal and address. But I worry about my focus on weight, and worry that, if left too long, I will allow it to determine how attractive I should feel again. It makes me want to go out and fuck as many people as possible, this fear. It makes me want to drown that worry in an orgy of flesh and pleasure that will remind me once and for all that sex is separate from approbation, that sex and attraction are what make the world go round and I am very, very capable of spinning the world of anyone I meet. That knowledge is important. Not because being attractive is important, but because FLESH is important, sex and love and joy are important.
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