Overweight flyer calls for compassion Nov/Dec 1999 newspaper
Dear Ann Landers: I hope you will find space for one more response to the letter from "A Square from Oneonta, NY". She is the woman who complained about what a burden it is to be seated next to a fat person on a plane.
I happen to be one of those "human whales" she described in her letter. every time I leave the house, I can expect to be punished for being fat.I certainly did not wake up one morning with the intention of being mobidly obese. The truth is that most fat people are not gluttons. Many of us far less then our friends who are normal size!
I was put on my first diet when I was 8 years old. Since then, I have tried several tradtional weight-loss programs, such as Overeaters Anonymous and Weight Watchers, along with diet pills, to speed up my metabolism. I have tried many of the off-the-wall diet, such as the rice diet, the cabbage soup diet, the grapefruit diet. Just name it, and I've tried it. With each attempt and subsequent failure came another blow to my self-esteem, followed by depression.
I decided to get therapy to help me get my head on straight. I now like WHO I am the WAY I am. I know my true worth and no longer agonize about my size. There is nothing wrong with what's inside the packaging.
When I fly, the armrest stays down so I don't encroach on someone else's space. I say, "No, thank you", to meal service because it's a struggle to put the table tray down. I try to book flights that are open and have empty seats. Most flight attendents are wonderul when I tell them about my concerns of inconviencing other passengers, and they reassign my seat whenever possible.
Is "Square" could walk in my shoes for a while and experience the animosity and discrimination, not to mention the physical discomfort we endure, she would know how hard it is to be fat. - D. H. in Garland, Texas
Dear D.H.: You have written a letter for which millions of readers will bless you. People who are overweight don't need any more bashing. they need understanding and compassion. you have provided both, and I thank you. - Ann Landers
Fat Women In History - just a thought. ~August 1999
A few thousand years before the bible
times, women were revered. We were the key to other generations....
people were named after their mother (not the father), and the most important fact is
this; the very first goddess figures were large women. No man wanted a frail stick of a
woman; the bigger women could last the childbirth better, they could survive more
heartily.they could work alongside the man.
Fat women were the ultimate woman for many reasons.
(hmmph!) then the bible times came.christians somehow came up with the idea that men were
the stronger sex. Since "god" was a ruler and male, all males must be rulers!
And it was not so easy to dominate over a big strapping woman, now was it? Of course not;
and they were not going to sit and take this kind of abuse, they knew they were worth more
than that!! And so, the frail teeny women became known as more attractive to men. they
needed a thin woman who would be weaker than him, and intimidated by him, so that he could
rule over her (or them).
they plotted and schemed.... and little by little, before we knew what hit us, life as we
had known it was gone. the children were named after the father, women had to drop their
name and take the husband's name. Women had no rights, and no control of even their own
bodies or thoughts.
And there is something to contemplate. It's a great thing to study and learn how we can
change this problem. We fat women are not less valuable; we are more valuable!! And it's
time we put ourselves back on a pedestal, at least for ourselves to feel better.And at
most, to change the way the world thinks about women.
~Erisanda Dragonfriend
Joyous Body: The Wild Flesh
The body is like an earth. It is a land unto itself.
It is as vulnerable to overbuilding, being carved into
parcels, cut off, overminded, and shorn of its power as any landscape. The wilder woman
will not be
easily swayed by redevelopment schemes. For her, the questions are not how to form but how
to
feel. The breast in all its shapes has the function of feeling and feeding. Does it feed.
Does it feel? It
is a good breast.
The hips, they are wide for a reason, inside them is a satiny ivory cradle for new life. A
woman's
hips are outriggers for the body above and below; they are portals, they are a lush
cushion, the
handholds for love, a place for children to hide behind. The legs, they are meant to take
us,
sometimes to propel us; they are the pulleys that help us lift, they are the anillo, the
ring for
encircling a lover. They cannot be too this or too that. They are what they are.
There is no "supposed to be" in bodies. The question is not size of shape or
years of age, or even
having two of everything, for some do not. But the wild issue is, does this body feel,
does it have
right connection to pleasure, to heart, to soul, to the wild? Does it have happiness, joy?
Can it in its
own way move, dance, jiggle, sway, thrust? Nothing else matters.
by Clarissa Pinkola Estes, Ph.D.
Women Who Run With The Wolves