When I had the privilege of going to the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York several summers ago, I did not think that a Picasso piece would be favourite painting of what I had time to see in the museum, where one could spend weeks. But the few perfect lines of hair, crown, eyelids, and neck, that make this woman, that make this beautiful woman, though not an exceptionally thin woman, took my breath away, one day in New York. Indeed, I realize how privileged I am, though I may not live in the highest income neighbourhood in the city doesn’t mean I’m not privileged, though some have made the swarthy connection that by stating I’m based in “East Van” means I should not have phone access, never mind have travelled, you get the idea. Well, this is not how it goes. Lies, damn lies, and statistics. “Demographics” don’t even deserve a place in the old adage.
However, the image, that I thought of immediately when ordering a bag from yimmekedesign’s store on Etsy – you are asked to name a print, and three of your favourite things, and then you get a bag! (and yes, I need a bag – the bag I’ve been using for the past two years is a hand-me down from a friend’s mom from 30 years ago – I adore it, but it is threatening to give out) like these ones -
for a ridiculously cheap price of $65. And this makes me wish I would take my now famed “first and only break from school in 23 years”, that I decided upon and announced back in August, and remember how to batik and embroider and make things that are less likely to be destroyed by angry brats (i.e. collages). Indeed, you can be sixty years old, and still be a brat. Although those in their early twenties seem to be particularly prone to brat-dom. Yes, I hope I do learn how to do some new things, aside from discovering “Project Free TV” and the like.
I digress.
The “Woman in White” immediately makes me criticize my criticism of my body image, as most paintings do, as regardless of period, they are almost always of women shown in proper proportion. That is, they have meat on their bones, unlike the starving celebrities whose photographs are forced at us so, so many times each day. I’ve always been naturally thin – thin enough so that girls in grade/middle/high-school, as they must comment on some aspect of your aesthetics, made fun of me for – being so thin! I still have issues, as I bet all women do, as I bet my mom’s constant criticism of her weight while she was alive, also caused me this – but were only echoes the complaints of other mothers in our wonderful “Western nations”.
I’ve gained enough weight since I’ve moved out of an environment that had become insane, a building where I was abused – and nothing gets one’s appetite going like that! – that my pants are starting to fit me again, and I’m stricken with panic every time I walk past a mirror. Am I going to…get fat now?!? And I think I truly must be crazy as a cuckoo, as the amount of body mass I lost was starting to have other negative consequences on my health. Do I want extra-small sized jeans to be falling off of me? Falling off of me even with a belt? Do I need to be afraid of exposing my pubic hair, as my pants are falling down and I went commando today, and I don’t have a free hand… to be happy with my body? Complain as I may have about the amount of weight I had lost, there was something sickeningly satisfying about seeing my hip bones sticking way out in the mirror, when looking at my naked frame before a shower or a bath.
I blame our disgusting culture, 100%. Women in Africa do not see their bodies this way. I watched Eve Ensler describing how a woman she met during her time touring the – ehhem continent - talked about her body and how of course she loved it, had never considered not loving it, as it was as beautiful as a tree, whose trunk and branches were a unique size and shape and gave life and wonder to the Earth. I cried in envy. I have never bought a celebrity gossip magazine, or a “women’s magazine”, or any non-literary magazine! - and I still have images that I saw while waiting in line to pay for groceries burnt forever into my memory: “so-and-so’s embarassing bikini body!” compared with “this season’s beach-ready babes”…and all that is different is a camera angle. Still, I look at my belly after dinner.
I freaking dropped jazz-dance classes after an instructor told a bunch of 9 and 10 year-old girls (me being one of them) to “suck in their supper tummies” – not because I had one, but because I knew something about this was just not right! Little feminist that I was…that I must have been…that I still am, and I’m still pretty “little”, too. So what on Earth is wrong with me?
Do I have to walk around wearing a blindfold, as not to be exposed to these unrealistic, unattainable, unhealthy images of modern femininity? That would not even be enough, would it – I would also need earplugs, and to be on some kind of hallucinogen that made me laugh at the dark, silent circus as it will always remain in my head. In all of our heads.
So, instead, I’m going to surround myself with images of beautiful – so much more beautiful - images of women in art, whose bodies have bellies and butts and thighs to be worshipped as that is now nature made woman, and women are nature – the two interchangeable. The bag is a start. I’m going to need a few “cheap prints” (i.e. photocopies from art collections) of my favourite paintings of women, next. I’ve already started to use “self check-outs” at grocery stores, not to avoid human interaction, but to avoid those damn magazine covers! I must swear never to pick up the magazines at my dentist’s office, no matter how high he’s turned up “the gas”. Luckily my doctors all seem to have done us ladies the wonderful favour of removing this crap from their waiting rooms. I’m sure the fact that they are all ladies, as well, is, to utter a double negative, “not unrelated”.
If you have any suggestions regarding how to removie these evil thoughts and images from my head (and, “but you’re so skinny!” does not count…it’s so much more than that…you know that) please, do, do share. I’m so tired of feeling guilty after every meal I eat – even though I’ve never been anorexic/bulimic – I’m just the average woman when it comes to this one.
And ain’t that sad.
