Personal ads. They’re … personal! Very.
♡
EDIT! A thing I want to say first.
{It occurred to me somewhat belatedly that this post might attract different eyes than some of our other weekly wishes, so I’m glowing warmth to anyone visiting. If you are drawn to comment, take a look at the section at the very end on how we do things here, because this is a pretty unique (and wonderfully safe) space, and you can help us keep it that way. Thank you!}
Weightiness.
I find the entire concept of “weight” to be problematic (ha, understatement!) in every possible way.
For one thing, it isn’t actually real. At least not in any meaningful way.
Except we live in this painfully distorted culture in which everyone has been duped into believing it is.
People walk around thinking they need to “lose” weight, or, for that matter, do anything related to weight. Somehow we’ve been brainwashed into thinking how high or low a number is on a scale or a chart is an actual thing that translates to how you look or feel or are in your body.
Otherwise wise and intelligent people pay attention to these numbers, and some even care about even more invisible and not-real things, like calories, and “burning” them, and yes, the whole world is batshit psycho crazy, as far as I’m concerned.
I keep myself as far away as possible from that entire mindset. I don’t even want to breathe the same air.
What does that look like?
When people start talking about weight loss, I exit the conversation.
If a dance instructor says ohmygod I ate a calzone and now we have to work hard, I fill my heart with love for her and wish her all the support she needs healing her disordered eating, and I never take a class from her again, because I’m not interested in sharing my space with that kind of poisonous thinking.
I don’t read magazines. I don’t step on scales or frequent places where that’s an option. I have effectively removed myself from a world where the mindset of weight lives.
You might be wondering why I go to all this effort, if I’m so clear on what I believe, and I’ll get to that. For now, all I want to say it that I keep my life beautifully peaceful through conscious choices that keep the broader culture from filtering into my life.
Something about me.
I’m a thin, lean person. That’s partly genetics, and partly because I am a person who likes body things, I’m a kinesthetic learner, happiest in gazelle state.
And it’s partly because I have PTSD. I need plenty of movement on a regular basis — ideally a combination of high impact jumping and bouncing with more steady things (yoga, dancing, long walks) — to keep me calm and stable.
I like being able to more or less pass as a functioning person on most days, so I move my body a lot.
Being thin means I have an insane amount of magic beans in the flavor of body privilege. I could easily drop a few thousand words just naming examples of how that plays out in my life, so here are just a few…
Just some of the crap I don’t deal with as a thin person:
- When I take an aerobics class, for example, no one does anything to imply that I don’t belong.
- No one condescends to me by acting as if there’s something amazing and special about me doing a physical activity, way to go!
- No one implies (or states) that I might not be able to do a particular activity.
- No one comments on my body at all in that kind of environment. The magic beans of that, my god. The buffer of sweet invisibility that this gives me.
- When the instructor thinks it would be fun to do a bunch of crunches, and I don’t think that would be fun at all so I recline on the floor and stretch instead, no one comments on this. And if they did, it wouldn’t be due to judgments based on my appearance.
- If I go into a store and try on clothing designed for working out, there will be a plentiful selection of options in my size because work-out clothing is made for people who look like me. I will not have to ask for other sizes, which may not even exist. The people who work there will look like me. No one will make assumptions about me or my “fitness level”.
- When I am involved in any situation involving physical activity, I don’t need to wonder whether or not interactions with others are negatively influenced by my size.
- I can eat whatever I want, in public, and no one feels the need to share an opinion on it.
That’s just the beginning…
I could add to this list this all day and still neglect to mention ten thousand more injustices that I don’t suffer, or might not even know about, because the magic beans of privilege blind me to the daily aggressions that I don’t encounter.
To me, in a lot of ways, the magic beans of being thin (and especially thin-but-not-skinny, since skinny people also have deal with a ton of crap, albeit without the systematic cultural oppression directed against the fat) mean one main thing:
I don’t need to brace myself against what someone might say in any moment about my body.
I mean, sure, of course as a woman I deal with the appalling (and often terrifying) street harassment that all women get.
What I don’t experience though is criticism of my body, or unsolicited opinions about what completely uninformed strangers (who know nothing about my body and don’t live in my body) think I should be doing to change it.
A story.
While my build is long and lean, if you were to weigh me, you’d discover that I happen to weigh a LOT of pounds. Many, many more than anyone has guessed from looking at me.
Last time I went to see a doctor, she walked in, looking at my chart and not at me, and said, “Hmmm things look good except your weight is pretty high for your height.”
Then she looked at me, and her jaw dropped.
And because I happen to have these magic beans of body privilege, this wasn’t a trigger for me, or yet another traumatic experience of being told I should be thinner than I am, by someone in a position of authority.
Because I am thin, I don’t have to fight with doctors who diagnose me based on my size, are unfamiliar with the principles of Health At Every Size, and prescribe weight loss as the solution to totally unrelated health concerns. I don’t have to defend myself, I don’t have to argue the subtleties of this.
So the incident ended there, with my doctor feeling embarrassed. Except….
Let’s talk about that for a minute.
An actual doctor, intelligent and well-educated, someone who should have the common sense, never mind the scientific background, to understand that BMI is absurd to the point that it would be hilarious if it weren’t so dangerous, was able to think she could tell me something relevant about my body based on some numbers.
Those numbers are misleading.
Because I’m solid muscle. And also: boobs. And also because weight is a meaningless construct that has no use, value, or relevance to appearance. I weigh a lot of pounds? Great. That doesn’t actually tell you anything about my body.
I get the surprise. I mean, everyone is surprised. You should see the face of every single person who has tried to lift me.
When I travel, people look at my driver’s license and say, “Oh wow someone lost a lot of weight!” Nope, just a thin person who has mass.
The numbers are misleading, not real, and yet we base our sense of self-worth on how high or low they are. My world is overflowing with people who think they just need to lose five or ten pounds and then everything will be better. There’s no reason that it should be increments of five either, that’s part of the built-in madness too.
I mean, I was that person for years. Except it was in Israel, so it was five kilos, which is actually more like twelve pounds. That was the first little jolt that cued me into realizing these numbers are pretty damn arbitrary.
We just glom onto them out of the misguided thought that these often completely invisible units are somehow related to our ability to be worthy of love, to belong in our bodies, to be safe in this world.
Numbers for what.
I’ve asked everyone I know who works in the medical profession, and no one has given me a straight answer for why we get measured, like cattle, when we go to a doctor. Why do they need our height and weight?
One friend suggested it could be for prescribing the correct dosage of medication, but even he seemed to think this was an exceptionally weak argument, and not relevant in most situations.
Here’s what I think. I think it’s a COMPLIANCE MANEUVER.
Have you ever called a phone company or the cable company, ready to vent your frustration at all ways they’ve messed up? The first thing they do is start asking you verification questions, the account number, the number on the back of the last bill, your mother’s maiden name, whatever.
The purpose of this is to establish that they are the askers of the questions, and your job is to comply and answer. It puts them in charge of the conversation. A pretty good power move, interrupting someone’s plans to yell at you, and getting them to respond on command. I’d do it too if I were in charge of providing customer service.
Putting us on a scale, marking down our weight and height is a compliance maneuver: We are the ones in charge of this interaction.
It isn’t about numbers at all.
This is where people who haven’t taken the red pill like to argue that some people really do need to lose or gain weight for health.
And this is where the culture of distortions wins, by convincing us that numbers matter, that gaining or losing numbers is the thing that impacts the well-being of the person involved.
When I was in university and not getting exercises, I was much larger than I am now and the clothing I wore was much larger than I wear now, but me-now weighs the same number of pounds as me-then.
How stupid and depressing would it have been to focus on making a number go down, it never would have happened!
Sure, we can imagine an extreme situation where someone’s size is preventing them from functioning, and they could find it beneficial to reduce mass for increased mobility. That still isn’t a reason to measure the before and after numbers though, because People Vary.
Or, at the other end of the spectrum, when my mother was dying, everyone was freaking out because she weighed 102 pounds, and was wasting away. They said she had to gain weight, but what they really meant was something more like, we need you well-nourished, sweetie, so you can have more strength to cope with what is happening.
The numbers are where the distortions are, where the distractions are.
I didn’t know what I weighed for ten years.
It was blissful.
I learned a great line once, I think it was from Ealasaid:
“Oh, I don’t get weighed!”
You say this at the doctor’s office, or a variation of this: “I skip the measuring part and just go in to see the doctor”. You say this with a smile and with conviction.
Except the last time I went to the doctor I was feeling anxious about a thing, and I didn’t want to come in tense, and the nurse looked like the kind of person who was going to fight me on this, and I just thought, whatever, I don’t have to look at the number, I’ll just comply.
And then the doctor said the number out loud, and it was on the printout she gave me. It was alarming, even for someone who already knew she weighs a lot of pounds, even though it shouldn’t negate my lived experience in this body.
The truth is, I like my magic beans. I enjoy the societal perks that come from the genetic luck of the draw, combined with more genetic luck which is that my body reacts speedily to exercise, something not true for many people. I like perceiving that I am slender, even as I know in my head and in my heart that THE NUMBERS AREN’T REAL.
Even as I know TRUTH: My body could look a lot of different ways in a lot of different circumstances, and it would still be an honor to care for it, treasure it, glow love for this container that houses me.
Meaningless and yet….
As Agent Annabelle and I have discussed many times, WE FEEL CRAPPY WHEN WE KNOW THE NUMBER.
Why is that, when we know that it is meaningless?
Here’s my theory. It has to do with the water we swim in, the air we breathe. How am I supposed to remember that the obsession with weight (loss or gain) is just cultural mindfuckery if I swim in the water of everyone who believes in it?
For ten years, I didn’t know the number and I didn’t give a thought to it. My body is my body, it’s the amazing place where I live, home to my beautiful lungs that breathe each thank-you in my thank-you heart.
Suddenly I knew the number and things changed.
My monsters started saying things like, “Really? Do you really want to eat another spoonful of peanut butter? You weigh ALL THOSE POUNDS, what if it starts showing on you?”
Suddenly I felt anxious when my jeans came out of the dryer a little tighter than before. All the self-critical thoughts I hadn’t been thinking came flooding back in.
I started second-guessing everything. I was buying a dress online, and there were reviews from women my height who weigh thirty pounds less than me, at least, saying the small/medium is too tight and to order up. So I did and it was enormous on me, because NUMBERS ARE NOT RELATED TO HOW BODIES ACTUALLY LOOK, because this poisonous way of being gets into your head.
The number isn’t real. The impact on how you look and feel isn’t real. None of it is real. And yet we comply. We play along. We say, oh sure put me on this scale like an object, even though you have no medical reason to require this information.
What do I want?
I’m going in for a physical (Operation Lacy Hips, best anagram ever) this week, and I want to be calm, bold and steady in my refusal to get weighed.
I want this to be simple, easy and clear. Wearing my crown. Glowing boldly.
And I want company. I want everyone I know to JOIN THE RESISTANCE, and stop agreeing to this narishkeit. I want allies everywhere so that instead of trying to build my own tiny fishbowl, we are all changing the ocean, together.
What is this wish about?
This wish, like all the wishes, is about living my life in a way that is congruent and harmonious with what I believe.
It’s a commitment to Radical Sovereignty, and staying connected to truth-love.
It is about treasuring my body, my mind, my body-mind. About creating experiences of safety for myself.
It is about subverting the larger culture, with love, and with conviction. Not alone, but in companionship.
Ways this could work.
I’m doing it. Join me. In any way you can.
I would love it if we could all warmly, sweetly, lovingly refuse to get measured. All of us, regardless of magic beans. I also recognize that this is asking more than is possible for a lot of people, and we’re all dealing with different stuff in our lives. Safety first, always.
So what I will ask instead is that we share in subversive knowing, and act on that in whatever ways we can right now.
I would love for people to share this post, share these ideas, go to the doctor knowing that this is an option, whether you use it or not. I want us to walk around with clear eyes of truth-love: my body is legitimate, my process is legitimate, these measurements do not actually tell me anything.
Let’s breathe truth-love.
Let’s join the resistance. Like a sit-in, but with tiny sparks the whole world over.
This is everyone’s issue. For the people who face size discrimination or the people who don’t, we are all harmed by the culture of distortion.
This wish is about not agreeing to a culture of distortion. It’s about everything we can do to undo those distortions, and bring in a new culture of presence, awareness and compassion.
Me: Hey, slightly-wiser me, what do you have for me?
She: This is a beautiful continuation of past wishes. For example, the wish to glow boldly. And to trust my yes and trust my no, and act on that trust immediately.
Me: Huh, I hadn’t thought of it that way.
She: Hold onto truth-love. This is about seeing yourself with eyes of truth-love, and nothing is more important than that, so do what you have to do to support that.
Me: Thank you.
Progress report on past Very Personal Ads.
So. Last week, aka 5MX…
5MX was a very good wish, both conceptually and in practice. Sometimes just remembering it was an option was helpful, even if I didn’t do it.
Attenzione! Attention, AGENTS.
I wish to whisper a whisper about the Monster Manual! It comes paired with the world’s best coloring book, which does so much monster-dissolving magic that even if you wait to try the techniques, you’ll still feel better about everything.
Self-fluency is hard enough, we need ways to to interact with the thoughts-fear-worry-criticism that shuts down creative exploring. And when people get the manual, I am able to me spend more time writing here. So if you don’t need help with monsters, get one for a friend. Or plant a wish that someone gets it for you! And bring people you like to hang out here. The more of us working on our stuff, the better for all of us. ♡
Keep me company?
Commenting culture: This is safe space for creative exploration. We are on permanent vacation from care-taking and advice-giving.
We all have our stuff. We’re all working on our stuff. We take ownership for our stuff.
This particular topic is a loaded one, for many people. We tread gently with ourselves and with each other. This isn’t a place for fighting, it’s a place for taking care of ourselves with love and with patience. I know the rest of the internet sometimes seems like it’s for playing bumper cars, this space is more like a quiet studio with candles lit where you can do some old turkish lady yoga and rest and breathe. Sometimes yoga and internal processing stirs up big stuff, and we breathe, and give it permission to be whatever it is.
You can share warmth, support, sparks sparked for you, and of course, feel free to deposit your own wishes. In any size/form you like, there’s no right way. Updates on past experiments are welcome too, as is anything sparked for you.
We are here to play and throw things in the pot! With amnesty. Leave a wish any time you want.
Here’s how we meet each other’s wishes: Oh, wow. What beautiful wishes.
xox
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<3 <3 <3 <3 <3
Guess what! I spontaneously joined the resistance this week when I skipped the obliques work in Zumba. I have never before been so sovereign in a class. I just looked at the instructor and thought No thanks! I don’t want to do that to my waist. It felt AMAZE.
Thank you for everything here, but maybe especially the calzone story. I now have a name for this class of self-caring actions: Permission to Skip The Calzone.
Here is the best straight answer I can think of for why the doctor needs to weigh and measure me every time I go in: It’s not about how tall I am and what I weigh at this particular moment. It’s about my weight over time. I go to the doctor every three months (one of my prescriptions requires frequent visits) and my height is always the same; my weight fluctuates three to five pounds from visit to visit. But what if they measured me an inch shorter? Or my weight graph started showing a more significant change, not just at one visit but over the course of a year?
When I was sick a few summers ago, I could not. stop. eating. Things that were “bad” for me, too – giant bowls of pasta salad with sausage and beans and mayonnaise, for example. And yet I lost fifteen pounds over a month of illness. That’s an important data point for me, not because of what the scale said but because it gave me an awareness of how my body wasn’t responding the way it usually does.
The number on the scale on any given day, like the number on the label of my pants, is irrelevant. I have pants labeled “size X” that fit perfectly, and also pants labeled “size X-1” and “size X+1” that fit perfectly. What matters to me is how I feel, how the clothes I already own feel on me, how well I sleep, how much energy I have, how far and how fast I can ride my bike, joyfully bounding up flights of stairs rather than plodding up… the number of pounds I weigh has no bearing on those things. 🙂
<3 I see the possibility of this theory being given by doctors as a legitimate why, but I know from my experience here in Australia that a mandatory weight and height measurement is not necessary in the provision of first class medical care. I've never been weighed at a medical appointment since I was a little kid, ever, not even when I was pregnant. If your body is changing shape over time you'll know that from how your clothes fit, it's not like it's going to go unnoticed. And anyway, measuring how you *feel* over time is going to provide much more salient data than the number on the scale which can change drastically without necessarily meaning anything in particular. <3
<3 True, that wasn't my doctor's answer, it was my own reasoning for why I weigh myself on a semi-regular basis. I don't really care what number of pounds I weigh, I care more about the drastic changes – because historically, my body doesn't do drastic changes unless there's something wrong with it.
I'm also aware that as a relatively thin person, my doctor's response to my weight is just going to be to make note of it in my chart and move on. If I weighed more, I might get a different response from her. One of my friends had a doctor who didn't want to treat any of her conditions until she lost weight. How terrible is that? 🙁
I will *absolutely* join this resistance!
I have been a resister for quite some time. It may have started the day I went in to have a deer tick bite looked at and the assistant tried to weigh me. I may have shrieked “I was bitten by a tick I don’t need to be weighed!”
When I got a new PCP, I told the assistant my weight and “declined” to be weighed (even though my chart probably says “noncomplient with weight taking”) and now I just say “my weight is still the same” and we move on to why I’m really there.
The times I was fine with being weighed are when I went to see about passage to Bolivia and it seemed relevant, and when I went to see about Operation: Operation since the scale number was part of the guidelines.
I was once at a networking event and I noticed that none of the women could take food without some sort of disclaimer about how they hadn’t eaten earlier or announcement about what they would do later to atone for the Triscuit and cheese stick. I wanted to hug them all since I remember being afraid of food.
And what I will wish for is for the office move to go smoothly, for new and old clients to hire me, and for the assistant to be the right fit.
I left my scale with my ex…………VIVA la Resistance!!!!
Honestly, my favorite part of this post, aside from “Operation Lacy Hips,” which is INDEED the best anagram every, is this:
“If a dance instructor says ohmygod I ate a calzone and now we have to work hard, I fill my heart with love for her and wish her all the support she needs healing her disordered eating, and I never take a class from her again, because I’m not interested in sharing my space with that kind of poisonous thinking.”
Amen!
I tell doctors straight up that weight loss is not part of a conversation I’m willing to have. Nowadays I mostly see alternative people that don’t weigh me anyway, which is awesome. But sometimes I still need to train my support team 🙂
The line I walk most delicately is as a leader at the gym I own. People come with the explicit intention of changing their bodies into some idea they have as “better.” I applaud people who decide to act on a desire for something to be different, but my job as a leader is to stand firm in the truth that all of my clients are already whole and worthy, and that any cosmetic changes they make do not change that truth.
What I love about seeing people transform is when they view their bodies differently. I had a client who realized quite suddenly that she was no longer having thoughts about “feeling skinny” but was instead “feeling strong” day to day. People start to release thoughts they have about achieving a particular number on the scale and start to evaluate themselves in terms of their abilities and personal records. It’s a really profound shift for people to make, and very difficult to remove all the stories we have around numbers on a scale.
Thank you, as always, for your wishes, Havi. They’re magnificent. And thank you for the reminder about who I need to be as a leader in my little community.
It probably was me – that’s pretty much exactly what I say when I go to the doctor (which is often!). I try to pitch my voice as if I’ve spoken with the doctor about this before and the doctor is on board. If I’m nervous about it, I tell myself a story about talking to the doctor about it and them okaying me not getting weighed, that often helps. 🙂 I think I’ve only had a nurse give me grief about it once – more often they say “I wish I didn’t have to get weighed at my appointments!” and I say, “so don’t!” and it’s as if I pointed out that they could fly or something.
My doctor told me that they have to include measurements like height and weight to satisfy requirements of insurance companies, and given how unbelievably ridiculous our insurance companies are, I can believe it. She even had to print out a big thing about the prescription she was giving me, even though I already knew all about it – again, because of the insurance companies. Fortunately, she understands where I’m coming from on the weight thing, so she just wrote down a reasonable-but-probably-inaccurate number.
I do allow myself to be weighed for surgery, because (as I understand it) mass affects anaesthesia and that’s pretty important. I talk to the nurse first, though, and make it clear that I don’t want to know the number, so I turn my back on the display and ask the nurse not to tell me what it says.
Our culture is so toxic about weight. I used to weigh myself every day, and kept a log in an Excel spreadsheet. The spreadsheet calculated a running seven-day average so I could see how my efforts to lose weight were going – which was usually badly because I was trying to get back to a number from when I was really ill, and my body wasn’t willing to get that skinny again once I was healthy again. Nowadays I try to listen to what my body wants, and that seems to work a lot better.
So much love for this post.
I have joined the resistance. <3
I have just realized why I have been putting off my own (overdue) Operation Lacy Hips for more than three years now. The (perceived) forced compliance. The number. The PTSD and flashbacks and voices that bombard me then and afterward, that reduce me to a quivering huddle of fear and self-hatred for weeks, months afterward.
This week I am in a state of fragile peace with myself, with this body that houses me. And I feel a new blossoming seedling of strength growing in me—the strength to resist. The knowledge that I am sovereign, and I do not have to consent.
Thank you for your wishes. Thank you for your light. Thank you, a thousand times, thank you.
I, Mary Tracy, have no idea how much I weight. Huh!
And I offer a TON of legitimacy for people telling us things we don’t want to know. What’s up with that?! It’s frustrating and painful!
And I am so happy I discovered the word “glom”. Yay for this post.
Oh, I love this. Two things I want to say.
WTF doctors get you to go on a scale even if you’re not going in because you want their assistance in losing or gaining weight?! I’m so glad I live somewhere where this doesn’t happen. My kid gets weighed 4x/yr because he’s on meds that suppress appetite (side effect) so his growth needs to be monitored. I don’t get weighed. Ever. Ever.
And, I’m doing something that’s marketed as a ‘fat loss’ program this year. Signing up for it was about 50 % fear of why my body was growing, 50 % heart desire of creating habits and systems that support me in glowing my glow to the fullest. I did a TON (tee hee) of entry before the program started to increase my chance of having a good experience, and I was still pretty worried about how I’d balance the focus on habit-building with the overarching weight loss glorification that I figured would permeate the program culture.
I have been so surprised by this program. In a very good way. It teaches dancing on the edges, interacting with the experience, play, compassion, smiling at the broken pots, gazelle state. And when I announced two weeks ago that I’m done doing measurements of any kind, the coach and the other participants were all like, yay focusing on what matters.
So, yeah. I just wanted to share that I found support for the resistance in the last place I’d expect. And a pebble of gratitude to you for teaching me about entry. I think I might have had a very different experience without it.
Love. So much love for this.
May print this out and pop it into my notebook as the yin to Henry Rollins’s yang, “The Iron.”
This reminds me of something Norman Cousins said:
“…I decided that some experts don’t really know enough to make a pronouncement of doom on a human being. And I said I hoped they would be careful about what they said to others; they might be believed and that could be the beginning of the end.”
He was talking about being diagnosed with a “terminal” illness, but it applies to pronouncements about weight.
YES!!!!
Yeeeeeesss, thank you so much. I released I haven’t been weighed *at all* since seeing my current doctor, which is probably contributing to why he’s stuck around so long.
I’m completely ready to join the resistance. I’ve been exercising to build my strength and noticed my numbers going up and up, and realised the number was stupid and obviously didn’t represent my health or value so screw it. I placed more importance to how good I felt, how much easier it’s been to lift groceries, how flexible my limbs are.
And it’s been equally important to give kindness and compassion to those who have toxic relationships with these numbers but also remove myself from their company when they start throwing shoes about other people’s numbers.
What a great idea! I’ve hated getting weighed at the doctor’s office for years, but the one time a weight loss would’ve told someone that something was seriously wrong… it was my mother-in-law who noticed and said something to me, not my doctor.
Historically, people always complimented me on my weight, even though… I think it was actually as low as it was because of an undiagnosed eating disorder. I’m tall enough that the (imaginary) number always used to surprise people too. Many people seem to assume that “a skinny person” is *always* 110-120 pounds. At 6’1″, at my skinniest, I weighed rather more than that. Slowly, carefully, I learned how to eat healthier, and by design, I gained weight. I feel better, I can do more things, I’m happier.
Even so, if/when I run across the number, it can make me feel sad.
Thank you for writing this post.
We chucked out the scales a couple of years ago as part of a general decluttering mission because we realized we only used it every once in a while to weigh baggage before heading to the airport. We have had female visitors since who could not believe a second that I could exist without scales in the house and that I only had a vague idea how much I might possibly weigh.
I usually do a 5 day fast once a year for the general “lightening” effect it has on mind and spirit and for the cleansing sensation it gives to my body. During fasts one is supposed to note down the weight at the start, at the end, every day and given that I am fairly slim anyway I was always a bit anxious to maybe lose “too much” weight, whatever that may be. The first fast in a scale-free household was the best and easiest in a long time.
I am all for the resistance!
Very, very powerful post. Only here can I admit I am too scared to defy nurses/doctors who want to weigh me. Because I am fat. And I know they will think I am avoiding a “truth” about my health and I can’t handle their disapproval.
I’m not ready. I’ve been thin most of my life, and as being fat is recent, I haven’t developed the skills to deal with all the messages. And they are awful and everywhere.
<3 <3 <3
I hear ya, babe. That makes so much sense. Safety first! I count you as a vital member of the Resistance, working on things from the inside! The messages really are awful and everywhere. Love love love to you <3
Oh heavens yes i’m in the same place. I know this post is true, but i’m still invested in the BS and i’m not ready/prepared to resist yet.
You’re exactly who I want to resist with! So much legitimacy for the pain of having to learn how to deal with awful, new-to-you messages.
Vive la resistance!
I don’t have a scale either. The last time I was weighed was when I had to get an insurance Lacy Hips two years ago. The number didn’t bother me because I felt great.
Incidentally, the doctor couldn’t believe that I wasn’t complaining of ANY of the common disorders of people my age (a few days shy of 49). “No indigestion, really?”
Really. Yoga, it’s the shit.
I don’t get weighed, for years now, I think that a lot of places are automatically decreasing this practice? Like I think dermatologists used to weigh you first? Now they never even try, even without me saying anything. I so agree it is about compliance. Sheesh. I just tell them I don’t do it, with a vibe that is super clear like, sort of like a high school principal kind of vibe. Ha! And they tend to then comply with the principal’s policy on no scales!
What I want is a study on PTSD symptoms in women after they’ve been weighed at the doctor. It’s worse for people with a PTSD or eating disorder history and in general for HSPs, but I bet a huge percentage of the population is measurably traumatized by this totally unnecessary “micro-aggression” of a pseudo medical practice.
I love this wish a lot and am wishing it with you. I have not weighed myself in 2+ years and it is delightful. And when I go for a physical in January, I am going to try Ealasaid’s magic phrase.
I love your explanation of magic beans too. I am lacking in the magic beans department, and I worry often about how my choices reflect on people of my size in general, which… is one of the problems of magic bean-less-ness. I appreciate you and this very very much.
<3 <3 <3 <3 <3 <3 <3
Clarification: I am lacking in the magic bean department regarding size/weight… I have lots of other magic beans. Just to be clear.
And also, even that is complicated because I have some kinds of body privilege like looking like I weigh less than I do, and having boobs and a waistline and a generally well proportioned body due to genetics and stuff, despite wearing a size 18 and weighing many pounds.
Oh Havi, yes. And Ealasaid’s “oh, I don’t get weighed!” brilliant. Say it as if it is, because it is. 🙂
There are so MANY things.
That Numbers Thing, so foolish. And the other numbers thing: clothes! I want to find a tailor who is HAES-wise and who never tells me the tape measure numbers, just makes clothes that make me look fabulous. I don’t want clothes that say a number in the waistband even though I understand it makes shopping easier (as if shopping is ever really easy).
AND ALSO
I feel like I would like to move more. I am uncomfortable in my body a lot these days and I would like to be more comfortable in it. In our common culture I sometimes try to express this as wanting to “lose weight” or “lose inches” although those things are nearly useless for what I’m trying to accomplish, really. What I want is to feel comfortable and energetic and joyful and runandjumpandplay. Gwishing for that for me.
And joining the resistance with a marvelous doctor who didn’t even try to weigh me. Yay!
Thanks for this. I just realized recently that I have been avoiding making an appointment for a physical for a year, primarily because I didn’t want to hear that number. And now I will make the appointment and firmly decline to be weighed.
YEAH!!!!! <3 Superpower of Firmly Declining!
What a beautiful wish!
I cannot join the resistance because numbers are part of Truth for me. My Internal Scientists run on them and use that particular measurement to calculate how much my clothes weigh, and as a musing on whether the different readings are due to the type of scale or if the gravity of the earth is different. It is also on my Driver’s License.
But, thank you for bringing this to my attention because I try not to judge others by numbers or perceived size. I will cease asking people if they have lost weight, because the truth I’m trying to say is “You look healthier than when I saw you last.” Or “You look different than when I saw you last.” And I can ask these right questions instead of using hurtful code.
I have spoken to The Dude about asking “Do you feel healthier this week?” And he said it would be hard for him to answer. Maybe saying a number was easier, although he would grimace and would not tell me unless I insisted.
I can also use the right question on my sister.
Can I apply to be an Extremely Covert Operative?
Hearts, flowers and glowing gems to throw into the gwishing gwell.
This is the first post where I felt the need for Amnesty. Today, 11/13/14, I clicked the Chicken Amnesty link and lo, and behold! a Permission Slip for Amnesty. Thank you, Havi. I have my stuff, and Amnesty, too.
thank you thank you thank you for this post. Vive la Resistance! No more compliance with the Number Ogres!
Like you, I used to be strong and muscular and weighed far more than my size suggested. When I started to get ill and go up a dress size or two because I was too fatigued to exercise, my doctor was insistant that my lack of energy was due to my ‘weight gain’. I exercised myself into a physical breakdown, losing no numbers in the process. Only then was I taken seriously and finally, four months and so many tests & consultants later, discovered I was exhausted BECAUSE I HAVE M.E.!!
You know how your body feels, and you know when it feels right for you and when it feels wrong for you. And if you’re going to the doc because it feels wrong, and they over-rule you and focus on the numbers, tell them my story and ask them to try harder….
Oooh, this is a wish I want to participate in with all my heart!
Sharing this widely. <3
A game for subverting the numbers thing:
The numbers they give you are only meaningful if you let them be, and you can assign them their meaning. For instance, using bibliomancy.
You say 138? Okay, page 138 in my book. *Randomly point at a word on the page.* It says “idealism”.
142 over 24 (I made that up, can you tell?) — Page 142, the 24th word. It’s “perfect!”
Idealism is perfect! For me, right now! Thank you for the numbers!
I was at the Clinic today and did not get to see my regular doctor, who is on vacation. I wrote down the numbers, and when the nurse left, I looked in the book I had brought to read in the waiting room, and these were my words. A secret message delivered, all unwittingly, by a minion of the numbers thing.
Awesome, count me in. I live in Southern California, home of utter body number obsession madness. I join the resistance with relief, and with love for all who participate, in whatever form honors and supports individual safety – overt, covert, external, internal, flag-waving or secret-proxy-whispering…it all counts, it all begins to shift the vibe. Thank you, thank you, thank you.
I have been letting this create ripples, coming back to it and coming back to it.
Years ago I shed a whole bunch of weight and suddenly, look! All the magic beans! I was so high on the magic beans that I became obsessed with the number and conflated all the joy and perks of the magic beans with a particular number interval.
I can’t even tell you — because it would just be comical — how unquestioningly, devotedly I believed in that correlation.
I thought, “for sure, if the number goes above X, the magic beans will disappear and life would be AWFUL and I wouldn’t even know what to do with myself.”
The number went above X. All the magic beans were still there.
And I thought, “well that’s REALLY WEIRD. something doesn’t compute. However, if I go above Y, then MOST CERTAINLY NO MAGIC BEANS WHATSOEVER and everyone will think I’m hideous and I wouldn’t know what to do with myself.”
And then the number went above Y.
Apparently the world didn’t get the memo that now I was supposed to be hideous. Still the magic beans.
(if anyone reading this thinks this is hysterical, it IS, but it also was — still is? — LIKE A RELIGIOUS BELIEF for me.)
I haven’t weighed myself in a long time (because I moved out of an apartment that had a scale and never thought to get one for myself) but, what I suspect I weigh based on the last time is not that far from the number I had “pre-magic beans,” years ago. I feel more beautiful and glow-y with the essence of myself than ever, thanks to the strong and sparkly boundaries and sovereignty I developed as a result of years of internal work. I am more tapped into gazelle-ness than ever before and only wear clothes that make my body feel at home. I would like to say I never waste seconds of my day on people who deplete me rather than fill me up but this isn’t entirely true yet but I have made truly staggering amounts of progress toward this. So all the time I enjoy the magic beans of feeling beautiful, admired, adored, strong. External starts to line up with internal.
Now I am starting to suspect the entire thing with numbers might be completely bogus.
I heard this question internally: “if not numbers, then what do you go by?” Which is an earnest question that was met with uproarious loving laughter. We go by presence. We go by energy. We go by trust. We go by taking care of Grace. We go by coziness.
Vive la resistance!