Here you go, a double whammy today.
A friend invited me to check out Pinterest.com, a cool website where you and a bunch of other people post things of interest to you. I was searching for another pic I had seen a few days ago when I came across this one:
Though I'm not exactly sure which society I'm supposed to fuck, what more can I say that I haven't already?*
Food for thought.
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*Actually, I can say a lot.
I posted a link to this pic on my Facebook page and it elicited a reaction from a couple friends. One friend was disappointed I posted it and felt that society would be better served when we stopped comparing our bodies with others and just accepted our bodies for what they are.
I thought for awhile before responding to her. Yeah, I would love to stop comparing myself with others. That would be lovely. I would love to not go the beach and look at all the women in bikinis walking around, searching for flaws in their bodies, satisfied when I find them, all so that I could feel a tiny bit better about my own flawed body. I wish I could stop thinking about wishing to look fabulous in everything I wanted to wear like so many other women I see.
But it's not going to happen, at least not right now. I'm not going to stop internally judging myself. I don't have any allusions about that.
I'm getting better at accepting my body for what it is, and I'm eternally grateful that I'm healthy enough and strong enough to do everything I want to do. Maybe when I'm 40 or 50 or 80 or 90, I'll finally stop wanting a "better" body. I hope so, I truly hope so.
But here's what I finally concluded and posted as much to my friend: every single culture on this planet categorizes people into Us vs. Them. It boils down to We are better than Them. So this comparison of physical and cultural bodies, of socioeconomic status, of religious preference, of sexual preference, of political orientation, of hair color, of eye color, of skin color, is never ever going to stop. It's been from the dawn of humanity, and as an anthropologist, I know better than to ever expect it to end.
My friend replied that she thinks of me as more than the sum of anthropology.
But you see, I am an anthropologist. That defines me because it's my education, my work experience. My philosophy is based on anthropology and that defines my perspective of the world.
And I'm a woman who moved to an entirely different culture and find the issues are always the same: Us against You. Us against Them. We are better than You. You are better than Them.
And so it goes and goes and goes.
Hmm...I just realized I sound fatalistic. I don't know, maybe it is possible to change one's way of thinking. I'm not entirely sure I want to, though, because maybe then I'd have to concede that it may never be possible to have a "perfect" body. And the day I give up thinking that is the day maybe when I let it all go. And I don't want to be like this. So maybe while I constantly compare myself with others, it keeps me in line to watch how much I eat, exercise more, step on the scale once a week, and just try as little or as much as I want to always at either maintaining or losing weight. Because I never can give that up. No, never. A woman like me who gains weight so easily can never stop trying. At least that's my personal perspective, not my anthropological one.
And that's as honest as I can share with you.
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