no boys allowed in the room!!!!

i try to think positively about it, but pretty much just come up with:

1. i never thought of myself as particularly "cute" "hot" etc. anyway
2. at least I have friends

i think that has happened to everyone tbh, regardless of size or attractiveness

oh E, i'm sorry you had a shitty day. don't blame your feeling-angry-about-feeling-self-conscious-about-feeling-fat for the day's shittiness though - for all you know it might have been shitty entirely without your input! so you don't have to feel like it was your fault.

I have, i think, set my facebook so that if i am tagged in a picture it just politely forgets that fact for me. because every picture taken of me just makes me feel ugly and upset and but i absolutely hate the conversation that follows when you try to get out of sight of a camera.

it is very hard to apply logic to this stuff on your own, and when you try and talk to friends about it it is easy to ignore whatever they say because as your friends they are duty bound to try and make you feel better. so i think, if it's getting in the way of your feeling like a full human, then you are right to be thinking about taking it to a therapist. surely this is the kind of thing they are for!

haha it's funny cause it's true...
I always tell people to not trust photos + their own judgment - photos are 1/1000 of a second!

I have self-image issues as well - I think most people do considering how we're constantly bombarded by images of a very narrow definition of beauty. Therapy does work if it's the compassionate kind - this is all about living yourself, not beating yourself up and limiting your life unnecessarily. It's work though! Undoing what we've learned.

Most women have tummies! And some have visible abs and some do not! If you don't love your tummy right now, at least know that it's an important part of your body and it exists - hating things away never works, but loving things into change, whatever that night be that reflects you as you, does work.

Sorry for kinda self-help talkin'... But it's true! From experience!

That part abt funny cause it's true was xp to cartoon - I am on my phone!

You're all totally otm and the self-help stuff is good for me to hear because I'm often unfairly dismissive of that sort of thing. I do also think that everyone experiences this to some extent. I'm just really angry and frustrated that I've let myself let it affect my life to the degree that I have. It's seriously incapacitating in some ways. I'm pretty aware of where it stems from and the reasons are many and complicated. It just sucks that identifying why I think this way doesn't really help stop me from doing so. Sorry, just ranting here. Thanks, guys. :)

I actually do think it's kind of a huge deal to be totally aware that your thoughts/actions/rxns about this aren't rational or realistic. I know it doesn't do much to ease the symptoms, but at least a part of you knows that you are not that fat ugly girl you see in your head.

Am seriously considering finding a therapist who deals in food/body issues.

I cannot champion this course of action enough. That shit is SO PERVASIVE and if you had any kind of food/body image inculcation as a kid (and who freaking didn't, really?) it's just way too much to untangle by yourself, I think. And if it makes you feel any better, I had a near nervous breakdown on my one year wedding anniversary because I had planned to wear my wedding dress (just a regular dress) out to dinner and it didn't fit. Totally incapacitating.

But truly: where you are feels terrible (I know, I have felt it, and if I try to talk about it with somebody else who feels that way, I will actually start crying, that is how terrible it feels) but it is surmountable and it's possible to get past it.

Also I still have days that aren't great on the body image front, but that nonstop voice in my head that takes every opportunity to blame every failing on my weight is gone ("Oh, you missed the light trying to cross the street. You probably could have made it if you weren't so fat" for example). It is so fucking liberating and wonderful to not hear that all the time. I want that for all of you!

I have had incapacitating illogical reactions to my skin breaking out, which prompted me to look into self-image issues further and get to the heart of the matter. To me, there's no 'fix' for these issues, just gradual steps to having them matter much much less so they don't fuck w life as much - kind of how yoga is a practice in consciousness not an exercise regime, this is a practice too.

Yeah Justine you're probably right.

Jenny - I've talked about this a bit with Horseshoe offboard a bit and she'd mentioned a conversation you'd had years ago so I sort of knew you had some experience with this. She also sent me a bunch of really great websites that I've gone through and read and agreed with and felt empowered by. Somehow though I still found myself sitting there today with a giant fucking purse on my lap because I felt like I was hiding something that probably nobody would have noticed to begin with and the result of which was probably people noticing me not because of my ill-fitting shirt but because I'm the weirdo with her bag on her lap all day.

Also yes, I have a long dumb history with this stuff which is why I think the therapy route might be my best option. It's just frustrating though because of the way I have to go about finding one with my insurance and stuff. The whole process is annoying and off-putting and the last time I tried I gave up after calling a bunch only to find out they weren't accepting new patients.

i have a lot to say about this topic but i am about to go into class and cannot conjure up any emotions lest they get the best of me.
glad to discuss off board at later time tho

a woman i know lived in singapore for a couple of years. it is a highly policed and restrictive society with a very low crime rate, so she didn't throw trash or chew gum or do the myriad things that will get you arrested, and she lived in total, pure freedom from the fear of being sexually or physically attacked. she said that after about a year of this freedom she was overwhelmed with rage about how her whole life she'd had to look over her shoulder, and how it had always seemed natural to live with the possibility of attack. she was borm in mexico and had lived in europe, the us, and australia and in those countries the warnings and the threats were always there, part of the wallpaper, and only their absence in singapore made her aware of how terrible ot is to always have to be on guard. i think the body/face stuff is the same, and if suddenly it truly didn't matter it would seem completely outrageous that it ever had. poor all of us, trained to waste time worrying about this shit.

I can get worked up about this stuff if I let myself, but it's not primarily my looks that I beat myself up over, so there are different subtleties to my self-abuse. But I'm listening and loving all of you and otming this conversation.

lol yes, i've mainly moved on to new self-approbation topics as well, it's a bottomless well.

Estela, I like your story and think you're probably right. It's so pervasive though. I think I've had a fairly unique experience insofar as that I've been both a lot heavier and a lot thinner than I am now and the way ppl have treated me when I was at the different ends of that weight spectrum was startling.

When I was literally starving myself I was offered modeling contracts and couldn't go a day without people - both friends and strangers - commenting on my looks. That happened when I was fat too but for the opposite reason. I was ridiculed to the point of tears and ostracized at school. The subject of that bullying was nearly always my weight. Why? Because kids know how to target what hurts. Similarly I had a boyfriend for years who would do things like pull my shirt away from my stomach if it was too clingy and call me a fat bitch when we fought. I think that a lot of the way I feel comes from that. I place a lot of importance on my weight and let it effect how I feel about myself because sadly it is very important to a large number of people out there and I've experienced that in a very real way.

I could seriously ramble about this shit all night.

I have a memory of walking down the street and being yelled at by some guys driving by. They called me a fat cow.

it just sticks with you. This sort of commentary on appearance from strangers is so incredibly common, and can be so disturbing. From a boyfriend–that's appalling, though I know it happens to people.

I had a skinny phase as well–my appetite was crappy because of health problems, and I was skeletal. I was so bony that it was physically uncomfortable. But I got a lot of compliments, which really bothered me in theory. But another part of the loved the compliments, even though I knew it was really screwed up.

When I was about 14 and chubby I was walking down the street on Fire Island eating an ice cream cone and some fucking meathead looked at me and said "I don't think you need that, sweetie". I was 14 and yet I remember that like it was yesterday. It started long before then but I'm pretty sure that incident further burned into my brain the idea of good foods v. bad foods and so on. I would kick that asshole in the nuts SO HARD if I could find him today.

I had a skinny phase as well–my appetite was crappy because of health problems, and I was skeletal. I was so bony that it was physically uncomfortable. But I got a lot of compliments, which really bothered me in theory. But another part of the loved the compliments, even though I knew it was really screwed up.

Yep. I used to sort of love it when people would comment on my hipbones or whatever. So screwed up.

i take after my mother: we are healthy enough, yet lacking in self-discipline to ever find ourselves in that situation (e.g. a skinny phase, also anorexia/bulemia).

I'm trying to figure out how I ended up not having any body image problems, given how much my mother kept banging on about my weight. I've also never had a stranger (as an adult or teenager) insult me about my weight. (The one person that did--frequently--had dementia and said a lot of awful things to me.) I place a lot of importance on my weight, too, but I happen to be 50 pounds overweight and really should get rid of it for my future health.

There's a lot of different things that other women have experienced and I've never experienced, and this is one of them. It feels very strange to me.

People have always felt OK about commenting on my looks and it's the weirdest thing. The night before I graduated from college (a "heavy" phase - btw I'm 5'10" and the largest I've ever been was a size 16 so we're not talking huge here which sort of makes it even weirder to me) dude tried to pick me up by saying I was the cutest girl in the bar but quickly followed it up by saying I was a little overweight and offering me workout tips. ._.

i think you have an assholes problem masquerading as an adipose one.

That sounds about right.

Seriously. That guy though? I was just sitting by myself while my roommate was in the bathroom and he came over and sat down. Women do it too. Don't even get me started on my mother and her friends when I was growing up. People are horrible.

I guess I was lucky that my mother nagged me about everything under the sun, not just my weight. It must have meant that the nagging on weight got lost under the rest of the negative noise.

I wasn't even skinny when I didn't eat for two months. So fuck it. I do care, I care a lot about how people perceive me, but I find it almost impossible to deal with confronting my own corporeal form. I would rather blank it all out and be a faux-dualist - *I* am solely a floating brain, *I* am not a body. Not at all. It is removed, entirely.

yeah Erica therapy can really help with what you're going through. If you feel it would be a good idea then you should give it a try. The worst thing that can happen is you get a shitty therapist and then you get to hate that therapist instead of yourself for while. (This is how I deal with shitty therapists.)

The amazing litany of undue consequences coming from the ridiculous emphasis our society puts on women's bodies is the reason I could never really be a straight up materialist.

haha xp!!

I yoyo, but these days within fairly narrow upper/lower weight limits. They feel to me like massive extremes. ENBB, since weight goes on my stomach, I sit with my purse or a cardigan on my lap most of the time and agree it feels really, really bad.

I certainly overeat sometimes and then over-react/panic/binge. For that behaviour, I recommend Gillian Riley's book Eating Less.

Lol, Abbott, I am absolutely not a dualist, it is too philosophically terrible, but phenomenologically I often feel like one.

x-post It's so funny how we perceive ourselves v how other people do. When I met you the other night I you seemed to tiny to me! I will check out the book.

"so" tiny

Also, I totally had my bag on my lap the other night too. At some point I think I moved it but then felt weird about it so put it back there. OMG this shit's ridiculous.

The amazing litany of undue consequences coming from the ridiculous emphasis our society puts on women's bodies is the reason I could never really be a straight up materialist.

???

Why is that incompatible with denying the existence of the soul or treating the mind and brain as one?

i've always mostly felt like a brain on a stick, it makes health directives seem like abstractions.

I hung out w a bunch of folk dancers and musicians last weekend, most of whom weren't Americans, though I'm not sure what difference that would make but it seems possibly relevant, and the women were healthy, beautiful, married or partnered up or at least didn't lack for dance or conversational partners, vivacious, and REAL, and all sizes, and all fit enough to make amazing music and to dance energetically. It was really beautiful, they were all beautiful, and I couldn't stop laughing for the joy of it.

i have a lot of baggy black cardigans and sweaters -- besides warmth, their purpose is to generate a visual black hole or amorphous blob in the area below boobs and above thighs.

Why can't it always be like that? xp

Hi 90% of my clothing is black for that reason.

Tiny bones, but side on, I have lost count of times I've been offered seats on trains etc. I've started loudly saying 'THAT'S JUST ME' (I.e. not babby) though people are only trying to be nice.

I'm a strict materialist because there's no scientific evidence for either the mind or the soul.

last thing I want to do is start a materialism v whateverism debate
I just thing it's healthier for me to think that the minutiae of how my body looks is really not that important and that is one way to do it

what was the aesthetic rationale behind empire waist dresses when they first were popular?

like, did women want to look pregnant?

lol I'd milk that shit. Just kidding. I'm surprised that's never actually happened to me. Pretty sure I'd cry. That's how sensitive I am about this stuff. AHHHHH IT IS SO ANNOYING.

Hi 90% of my clothing is black for that reason.

I thought wearing black tended to make people look heavier unless they were in front of a dark background.

x-post - oh! I lied. It did happen that once in the Empire waist top but we've done that topic before. Nobody knows. It is a mystery.gif.

it has happened to me a couple times, both times when wearing "one of those" garments