What is Normal?

I came across Joy through a variety of links on blogs. Her message is fresh, insightful, honest and positive. I loved her leaving message on living now, the way your wished you did 10 years from now. As she suggested, I looked back at photos of me at uni and at high school, when I thought I was dreadfully fat, ugly and unattractive. I see a blossoming beauty whose body I wish I had now. I wish I had been brave enough to get naked photos done of me then. I wish I had worn skimpier clothing, shown my legs off and gotten out of those baggy t-shirts. And yet I hesitate to go now and get saucy photos taken. I am lucky to have a handful of photos taken of me a year. I rush past mirrors and only look into them to look for grey hairs or to focus on putting make up on. Will I really look back on those few photos I have now and wish I had allowed more film to be shot of me?

Another point I have come across in a number of blogs which link to Joys is the notion of our society ‘normalising obesity’. Well, to go the other extreme, are we normalising anorexia? Are we just ignoring everyones pleas for recognition and becoming selfish altogether?

The reality is, yes there’s more and more fat people in our society. One must stop for a moment and wonder why this has come about. Certainly the access to low cost low nutrition, high calorific foods as a major contributor. Our bodies have a need for a certain amount of nutrition, minerals and vitamins in order to keep it ticking on. One reason behind overeating is not that you are hungry, but your body is starving for proper nutrition, so it keeps stuffing whatever it can into it searching for the missing elements.

My perception, especially speaking for myself, is that people don’t wake up one day and think – you know what? I am going to get as fat as I can in the next few years – you know, just for kicks. Our society rewards effortless perfectionism. The fantasy of being unaware or unable to do a certain thing or skill one day and then suddenly, being perfect at it the next. It is compounded within our education system with reading and writing, with many learners paralyzed as they cannot read or write in their first week or schooling and then deciding that they cannot do it for the next few years. It is the inability of society to allow others to make mistakes in order to learn, to only reward the winner and not to celebrate personal bests or those who ‘also ran’.

It is the perfectionism that especially women are striving for. I don’t know too many women who believe that they are too thin – and I know some very slender lasses. There are very few overweight people who are celebrating their fatness and totally at peace with what they look like. The Alter of the Anorexic is thick with offerings and prayers. One only has to pick up a copy of a stars or glam magazine to see the painfully thin adored visages of young actresses and singers, better suited to advertising the plight of an African famine campaign. It has become the expected norm for new mothers to bounce back into an incredible shape after birthing. This is where normalizing anorexia has become entrenched in our society.

Overweight people get that way because they’re striving for a beauty ideal that is virtually impossible and inaccessible. The media promotes anorexic twelve and thirteen year olds as the icons of beauty to women who are pushing thirty. These girls are idolized as they are freaks of nature, statuesque, willowy and whippet thin and over all, young. The more the media ensures that this beauty ideal is totally inaccessible, the more people are going to diet or go to drastic measures to attempt to regain, reclaim or achieve this ideal. The beauty industry is a mulit billions dollar venture and extremely unlikely to back peddle or to promote thins that would contravene these ideals. I have heard it said that ninety eight percent of people who diet, gain the weight back and more within several months of losing it. The vicious cycle begins once again. Joy also says in one of her videos that overweight and fat people are the only group who is discriminated against who truly believe that it is justified. We believe that we are due all of the hate, the discrimination, the taunts and the looks.

You know what? I might have to go and get some photos of me right now right here…. Just as Joy suggests. Wanna join me?