Before writing this post, I looked everywhere for my glasses and then decided to use the old and slightly too weak pair I keep stashed for just this occasion. When I put those on my face, of course, I discovered the ones I was looking for open top of my head because the two pairs got tangled behind my ears. So. That’s how I am doing lately.
1. I am mad at anti-diet culture. Like, thanks to diet culture— which exists and which all women my age were fully immersed in for our whole freaking lives— I am unhappy with the size of my current body. But then! Thanks to (NEWISH) anti-diet culture, I am unhappy that I feel I unhappy. THERE IS NO WINNING. As a middle aged women, I can’t just find solace in a huge community of other women who also hate their bodies (and maybe we would rage against the culture that makes us feel bad but then we would also swap recipes for low calorie fake desserts) because we are suddenly supposed to pretend like we love whatever size we are and eat only what makes us happy without judging what that is but a lifetime of lessons learned in diet culture doesn’t just GO AWAY only now we just aren’t supposed to talk about our body dissatisfaction. GAH. (And you know what I do when I shove my feelings deep inside and don’t let them out? I cover them up in tons of junk food!)
2.The time has come to do something about my gray again. Embrace them is an option on the table, of course, but I think I am going with another home dye job. WHY AM I THE WAY I AM?
3. Something is wrong with my menstrual cycle (AGE. AGE IS WHAT IS WRONG.), and the weird hormone fluctuations are making me feel SO anxious. It’s hard to know what’s actually a problem when everything makes me think I am dying, you know? So then I get anxious that I am going to miss THE THING that would allow me to catch some terrible rare illness only people on the internet ever get before it becomes a rare fatal terrible illness that only people on the internet ever get, and around and around and around I go. Minnie looked at me at the grocery store yesterday and said WHY YOU NERVOUS? (Also, we went to a grocery store that we have only one to ONE SINGLE TIME before in her entire life, and it was last summer. And she said as we were walking in I HOPE THEY HAVE THE BLUE CART because she remembered riding in a police car cart. Wowza.)
4. Someone changed my profile pic on our Disney+ home screen to Anger from Inside Out. (This is funny, but maybe not as funny as when the kids made me Claire Foy from The Crown on our Netflix screen, and Ben just quietly changed me to Olivia Colman one day).
5. Unbelievably, I have to go to the grocery store again today because we have nothing for dinner, and the fridge menu says “Grill something.” Thanks for the great planning and details, Sunday Sarah. IS THIS BRAIN FOG? IS IT A SIGN OF SOMETHING SERIOUS?
On my way out of the library yesterday, I grabbed a new book on extreme weather from the kid section because those were the exact books that little kid Cooper could not get enough of. He read it to Minnie when we got home and discovered a spread on making a tornado in a jar and COULD NOT RESIST. All in al, they made MANY tornados and were busy the whole time I made dinner. As you all know, that last hour of parenting before your 1950s husband comes home is the very most harrowing, but ours was a breeze thanks to mason jars, soap, and vinegar.
Okay, the sibling tornado project is TOO cute. (Also perhaps a little too metaphorically apt for the inner turmoil. I too am a whirling funnel trapped inside an enclosed space!)
ReplyDeleteBut aside from that: I empathize So Strongly with the entire rest of your post. Being a woman is full of joys and benefits, but also it can be pretty shitty sometimes. I am right there with you with the "I feel dissatisfied with my body but should not feel this way and yet DO" conundrum. While I am currently not dealing with the hormone shifts, I have in the past and SHEESH, Sarah, those are not fun and I know exactly what you mean about feeling like you are dying. I hope this is a temporary gust of hormones that settles back down into a more regular gentle breeze.
My Instagram feed has been full of videos of women Embracing Their Grey Hair, and while I am fully behind doing that (and while I acknowledge that a lot of these women look stunning with grey hair), I am not there yet. I hate the grey, thanks. (Partly because it just looks... dull? And like intermittent balding? Not the gorgeous gleaming silver or creamy white of the internet people.)
I think maybe you have to have professional help to get the pretty silver? Like, no one's gray hair actually looks like that?
DeleteI grew up with what I believe the internet calls an "Almond Mom" and it was very very hard to unlearn a lot of the things that were really ingrained in me both on an individual level from my family and more widely from our culture. Food, surely, but for me my relationship with exercise suffered a LOT. If I wasn't losing weight, why bother? If I was, GREAT, let's be super obsessive and compulsive about exercise (like, cancel plans if they interfered with getting to a spin class, etc etc). I have been able to eek out some balance with this, but it took a lot of work. It doesn't help that when my body is smaller people notice and comment in a positive way, which I internalize and it makes me feel GOOD which I guess is not what we're supposed to do.
ReplyDeleteI feel the SAME WAY about exercise-- only in the service of weight loss
DeleteWORD, SISTER.
ReplyDeleteI literally said the other day "I kind of miss the days when I could just complain about being fat"
Eve came out of junior kindergarten one day a little late and yelled before she even got to me: "Catherine just wanted to tell us one more thing! Are you okay?", which was terrible because I tried to shield her from my anxiety, but also adorable, LIKE MINNIE, why you nervous, blue cart, OH MY GOD
Yes, always dying of some weird thing, and everything is a weird thing, so what even is happening
Going down hard on the grey thing still, so keep on keepin' on, I say
My party of grown-ass adults will now be making tornadoes on Sunday, thanks for that
I am the worst when kids do instantly materialize the moment their activity ends-- so much catastrophic thinking so quickly.
Delete1) Re: "Thanks to (NEWISH) anti-diet culture, I am unhappy that I feel I unhappy." I was reading something about body positivity, and the author said that she tries to have body gratitude instead, so she can still dislike things about her appearance while also being grateful she's, I don't know, ambulatory? This is something that I liked to read.
ReplyDelete2) I am all about the home dye job, it is all I do now.
3) After years of really long cycles, my cycle is now every three and a half weeks, which feels excessive.
4) I WAS ALSO CLAIRE FOY ON OUR NETFLIX SCREEN. I don't remember what I am on Disney plus but probably a Muppet.
5) I went to the grocery store/ farmer's market four times this week, which seems like a lot for a family of four.
The tornado is a great idea, love the big brother energy.
OMG I had the 3.5 week cycles for over a year (SO BOTHERSOME), but now I am on like cycle day 45. Maybe this is the year I go a whole year and actually MENOPAUSE
Delete1) Yeah, I just quietly berate myself about losing ten pounds. Yes, I'm grateful I can walk and am strong enough to carry in the groceries, but I do not look like how I want to look and I don't think I can say that out loud. But maybe if we don't say it out loud enough, it will go away? (I mean, it CAN'T go away when we're surrounded by images of other women looking gorgeous and perfectly toned, but I tell myself that someday all of this will go away.)
ReplyDelete2. During the pandemic, I just let it all go grey. *shrug* I don't have time or money to deal with it.
3. Being a woman is hard.
4. We have never changed any of our avatars. We are just grey eggs. It sounds like your house has way more fun with this than we do.
5. You have to send someone else to the grocery store. You must delegate. This cannot continue!
IT CANNOT CONTINUE-- you are so right
DeleteI was getting highlights, but they get so light so fast-- like, there's no way she can just magically grab the same few hairs, you know? Your hair looks great!
ReplyDeleteI should figure out how to comment with a name.
ReplyDeleteI am entering the 11th year of my relationship with Miss Clairol and we will not be breaking up anytime soon. I am 10-15 Ulysses older than the floats majority of the other moms at my kid’s elementary and I see no reason to flaunt it.
Hormones, blah. I’m in the every three weeks cycle stage and it’s killing me. I am also unhappy with my body, but I am spending half my life with period related bloating and it’s hard to target real solutions.
I actually made a meal plan this week that required a midweek grocery run. Never again. We are already back to school a full week and it’s time to bring out the crockpot.
OMG the 3-week cycle! I HATE IT
DeleteI feel you on the anti diet culture stuff. I'd love to love my body but I also grew up in the 90s so I'd like to love my super-skinny body (which I don't have). Also, why are all the think celebrities photoshopped to be even thinner so that now I'm aspiring to something which doesn't even exist?
ReplyDeleteEXACTLY!!
DeleteThis whole "look your best as you age, but don't obsess about your body and what you eat as you age" is ludicrous. Seriously.
ReplyDeleteLUDICROUS!!
DeleteI also wish I could comment as something besides anonymous. I can when I use my daughter’s computer, but she is using it right now. Anyway, this is J from http://jellyjules.com, which is apparently not a valid URL for using that comment feature. Sigh.
ReplyDeleteRegarding body positivity, with the amount of fat phobia out there, I am not sure how anyone learns to love their body if it isn’t young and thin and perfectly sculpted. When I was young and 118 lbs, I wanted so very much to be 110 lbs. It’s a waste of time and brain space, to be sure. I liked what Nicole said, about trying to be grateful for what our bodies can do. That feels more realistic to me.
My great Aunt went grey in her 40s, that beautiful white/silvery grey. Mine comes in in little drabs, but since my hair is a dark mousy blonde and I dye it blonde blonde, it’s not an issue. I’ve tried to go my natural color a few times and I never like it on me, even though I’ve seen the exact same color on others (including my father) and liked it just fine. Bleaching your hair blonde at home doesn’t work as well as dark, though I did it for years. It looks much better when I go to a salon, so I do that, and it’s ridiculously expensive and I should probably do it at home but I don’t. Why am I like this?
I go to the grocery store almost every day, but I don’t mind it. I have a very un-busy life. I work full time, but from home. My daughter is an adult. I like going to the store because it means that I don’t have to plan any sort of menu (I used to be very good about that, but came to hate it. Perhaps I will change my ways again someday and be better about it.) Also, it gets me out of the house, which I like.
I’m a little older and am thankfully DONE with the periods. I stayed on the pill all through menopause because my family has a history of fibroids and the doctor said that was one way to avoid that. Then the doctor said it was time to come off, and I did, and surprise, no periods. Hm. OK. Did I make the right decision? Only time will tell. But thus far it’s been fine.
I am sooooo ready to be done with periods. DONE. And really the idea of having the time to go to the grocery store every day sounds wonderful.
DeleteI almost broke down when Minnie asked if you were nervous. How kind and mindful, and clearly something she's reflecting back from your own kindness and mindfulness. SO beautiful. And Cooper's tornado management skills are impressive!
ReplyDeleteI'm sorry about the food stuff. These things certainly run deep. I noticed that I reverted to my extreme teenage restrictiveness when I visited my parents. It's always been the one area I had control, and the more people tried to get me to eat, the more pleasurable it was to say no. Now I'm back in my regular life and kicking myself for not eating all the delicious things I could have eaten.
You have a big family and a lot of teenagers--I'm not at all surprised you need to top up food shopping. NGS's idea to delegate sounds good. Would the teens do it?
I'm sorry about too the hormonal stuff. My body surprised me with an early (and kind of instant) menopause. When I hear stories of perimenopause I feel lucky... kinda (would still have loved to have another kid).
I WANT AN INSTANT MENOPAUSE! That sounds PERFECT.
DeleteThere is so much I want to say about your first point! I have worked so, so hard to get to a space where I love my body as it is and one of the crucial aspects of that is to diversify my IG feed with fat bodies because I think one of the reasons we struggle with diet culture/fatphobia is that our feeds are still filled with the "ideal" body. And also: I need to lose weight. I just do! I am not at a healthy weight, I do not have great blood work numbers, and I eat like crap most of the time. But then wanting to lose weight and working on cleaning up my diet feels like I'm not being that perfect anti-diet crusader. AHHH. It's so hard. I feel like America Ferrera's speech in the Barbie movie was SO ON POINT about this.
ReplyDeleteI just... yes. Even when we face different specific challenges, we all run into the issues with the "body positivity" perspective. I just... well, for me, it's kind of like my inability to buy into the whole self-compassion thing. No, honestly, I'm not going to tell my body that I love it and what it can do for me. I'm going to lament what it can't do anymore. And then I'm going to feel bad for lamenting. :P
ReplyDelete(Not speaking up about grays because, um, they're not a big issue for me. *ducks*)