I’d Give My Right Rib To Be Skinny

Strong is the new sexy. Only not today.

The next time someone asks me if I’m not worried about getting too muscular, I’m going to say: “well I was aiming for morbidly obese, but it's helishly expensive.”  It’s not that I don’t appreciate people worrying that throwing some weights around is worse for my health and wellbeing than vegging on the couch with pizza, it’s just that I find comments like that … what’s the word I’m looking for … STUPID.

“Keep young and beautiful if you want to be loved”

Annie Lennox said it, but only because we all believe it. I’ve been humming the song to myself as I page my Pale Comfort Foods Cookbook. And at the same time mulling over the tragedy of living in a world where we think that skinny is better than healthy.

It doesn’t make sense. In what universe do we revere women whose chief strength is the ability to survive on 5 peeled grapes a day? Oh yes, the same one where girls hate their bodies because no matter how they try they simply don’t look like famine victims?

And yes, it’s the same universe where people cringe when you mention the weight you just PBd on because “oh, like aren’t you scared you’ll get big arms?” Which I totally get of course, because if I had a choice between a body that (a) rattled as I walked, (b) small children could use as a flotation device or (c) I can climb mountains with, I’d obviously choose a or b.

Bring me your bound, your blinded, your blubberous

It’s a trend really, this thing of celebrating bodies that are broken. Especially when it comes to women; this is the way we’ve rolled over the centuries:

• With corsets that crush your internal organs and constrict your lungs so that you faint so often you need to carry smelling salts with you.
• Using belladonna to brighten the eyes, even though you wouldn’t actually see it for long yourself, seeing as how it also causes blindness.
• Arsenic; excellent for lightening the skin; even better for corroding it.
• Breaking a child’s feet in half and folding the front half in underneath, then binding it. Men loved it; presumably because when your wife can’t walk she can’t leave you.
• Removing ribs, yes, it’s still a winner today, takes your waist down a size instantly without all that annoying dieting.
• Swallowing tapeworm eggs; because living with a parasite killing you slowly from inside is better than living with fat. And clearly better than simply eating well.

But why learn from generations of suffering women? Today we cram diet pills down our throats with enough appetite suppressing “legal speed” to have powered all the boys in Vietnam. We starve ourselves and live with the dizziness, nausea and weakness, because we need to be skinny to be beautiful and we need to be beautiful to be loved.

Skinny girls look good in clothes; fit girls look good in nothing

(Yes, I totally stole that line. Don’t you love it?)

So at which point are we going to start assigning value to our bodies based on how far we can run, how high we can jump and how energetically and unashamedly we can make love with them versus how small we can shrink them or how artificially we can manipulate them?  

Surely it’s about time! About time to love our bodies because they’re healthy and they’re fit. About time we feed our bodies with generous amounts of divine, fresh foods instead of starving them.

I know I sound evangelical, but if you’re at CrossFit then you’re one of the women who’re already judging your body by whether your arms could hoist you up into a tree to watch the sunset, not by whether your biceps are too bulky.

If I eat this pill I can eat those chocolates

In a world where we have so little control over so much of what happens to us, the basic wellbeing of our bodies is the one thing we can control. We can’t control what goes wrong and what freakishly good genes we have, but we can decide what we put into it, what we do with it and ultimately what we get out of it.

But taking control isn’t easy. It’s hard. It’s fucking hard! Especially when there’s always cake at work and you need to fit in exercise between permanent work and freelance work and kids and housework and the shit life drops in your lap.

You know what’s harder though? Being locked in a body that doesn’t work the way you need it too because it’s too weak from dieting or heavy from pigging out or just too fucked up from years of stuffing it full of garbage.

It comes down to one simple thing I guess: I want a body that gives me the freedom to squeeze all the magic I can out of life, not one that’s a prison. You’re with me, right?