no boys allowed in the room!!!!

oh man Mum had a pile of Jane Fonda, Denise Austin, Jazzercise, all the hits on vinyl when we were kids. And she had this awesome aerobics video called Aerobics Oz Style and this gawky man in Australia flag jogging shorts was the instructor

I love Denise Austin!

I wish Callanetics vids weren't so boring. I own one DVD but never use it, I know the workout. The pilates videos I had were also boring.

I wanted to buy this thing:
http://www.fluidity.com/
Been looking for a good price or giveaway on Craigslist and at garage sales.

I was doing K. LaShae's vids all last year but stopped in August because we moved and the new place had no space for workouts.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_dJkiRE0ymw

They were effective...

I LOVE KEAIRA LASHAE.

Hi, girls.

Wondering if it would be OK to suggest a line of discussion I feel is pretty appropriate for this thread? It came up on another thread yesterday, and has been rattling around in my head, but the original thread seems to have just disintegrated into puns and "jokes bruv". BUT, it involves talking around issues of food-policing, body-shaming, food as control issue, food as means of boundary-setting or boundary-violating. And I recognise that this line of discussion might be upsetting or even potentially triggering to anyone struggling with body issues or disordered eating. But I also recognise that this is something that is very gender slanted, so I thought this thread was more appropriate than others.

Would anyone like to talk through this stuff with me? Or would anyone really rather not discuss this stuff here? I'd be OK with taking this stuff elsewhere.

It's talking about the stuff *behind* the jokes on the "bread shaming" thread. That this is something I know exists, in my life (and also has been confirmed that it's not just me, it happens in other people's lives, from reading around the "fat-o-sphere") that family members, acquaintances, even complete strangers all feel like they have a right to comment on or even police one's food choices, if you are a woman living life in a larger body. But also about how exercising control over one's own food choices (even food choices that may seem spurious to others, like veganism or gluten free lifestyles) can be a way of exercising control that one feels one has "lost", over one's body or one's life or other aspects of it. And about other people's boundary violations with regards to one's food choices (there was a story on that thread which pretty much horrified me, and a couple of other people called it out, but at the same time, it's brought up a whole raft of unpleasant acts of food-based aggression, and what it's like to be on the receiving end of it) being an act of control or aggression. Sometimes it feels like my life is a steady stream of trying to sort people into "safe" and "unsafe" but that's a really giant guarantee of "unsafe" status.

Anyway, please forgive me if this is an inappropriate place to raise these discussions, but I just thought I'd throw that stuff out there, and see if there were any takers here.

I think this is an awesome place to discuss it.

"even complete strangers all feel like they have a right to comment on or even police one's food choices, if you are a woman living life in a larger body"

- When I was a chubby preteen I was walking down the street during a summer on Fire Island with two friends who were also eating ice cream cones. Some 20-something brodouche walked by us, looked at me and said, "You don't need that, sweetheart".

- The night before I graduated from college I was drinking with my roommate at my favorite bar (miss you Spring Lounge) and enjoying a pint (or several) of Guinness. While my roommate went to the bathroom a man called George came over and told me that he approached me because I was the cutest girl in the place, a little chubby but definitely the cutest one there. He then proceeded to tell me I should probably drink light beer or no beer at all and gave me unsolicited exercise advice.

Of course there's the other side where when I've been very skinny and people feel the need to tell me to eat more or just have some fries or whatever. It's all fucking maddening to be honest.

I also haven't eaten meat in 20 years so I've gotten a lot of shtick for that over the years.

In any event this plus a bunch of other bullshit has led me to think of all food in terms of good or bad and ugh. I think it really is the worst when it comes from total strangers though. I'm sorry but, excuse me? Etc.

I'm interested in such a discussion. I was delighted by the endless parade of bread puns, don't get me wrong, but this is a topic that is dear to my heart.

I have no tolerance for people commenting on what I'm eating, unless we are dining together and it is along the lines of "That looks delicious/what do you think of your meal" kind of way. Before the pun train left the station in the bread thread, I was going to say something about how as a busy and important fat woman, I have dared to do things like walk down the street while eating a 7-11 hotdog, which talk about facing fears straight on. I felt like I was daring the world at large to say something to me. Nobody ever did, though, or if they did I didn't notice since if I'm in a situation where I'm eating a 7-11 hot dog while walking down the street, I have other more pressing things on my mind such as not passing out from low blood sugar or whether I'm going to make it to where ever I'm going on time. Which in the end is a good lesson for me - most people are not paying anywhere near as much attention to me as I am afraid they are.

The office is a hard place for me, especially where I work now since there is a lot of high achieving, status-consciousness there, plus the male dominated (at least at the upper management level) field of big law, plus those horrid workplace wellness initiatives and employer-sponsored Weight Watchers meetings that reinforce this culture. I eat at my desk a lot because I'm busy and I have myself convinced that the person who sits across the hall from me (our offices have one glass wall that is frosted with a striped pattern so you can see people but not super clearly) is judging me, even though he probably does not even notice/care what the hell I'm doing. Not to mention feeling like some kind of slovenly gross person if I put cream in my coffee right there in the break room where everybody can see me. There's a lot of diet talk and women bonding through hating their bodies there, too, which I refuse to participate in, but it's always there.

I admit to looking askance at people who embrace restrictive eating for non-medical reasons, at least if those people are touting their particular restrictive regiment as a cure-all or the One True Way to health or better than your average person eating a 7-11 hot dog. I don't tell those people what I think of their eating habits, because it's none of my business, but I definitely have very little patience for it and I 100% definitely in no way want to talk about it with them.

Ha, that bread shaming thread just reminded me of these two dancers I lived with at NYU who quite literally ate nothing but chicken and steamed broccoli. I was poor and stoned most of the time so I ate a lot of pasta. They couldn't handle it at all and would constantly make comments like "OMG you're eating pasta AGAIN?". I started to make a point of only eating in the common areas and saying things like "Yeah, dosn't it look amazing?". Oh they were horrible.

just to clarify, not vegetarianism or even veganism probably since I am a super conflicted meat eater (hot dogs notwithstanding) and am secretly very shamed of my own meat eating and plus aside from one college roommate who was a complete asshole anyway, I've never actually met that proselytizing straw-vegetarian that meat-eating people are always going on about. If anything, the vegetarians I know (I don't think I know any vegans?) are too apologetic about their food choices.

E that reminded of two women I knew in college who were roommates. They were both right on target as far as mainstream beauty norms were concerned - blonde with oodles of fabulous curly 90s hair, slim, buxom but not too buxom - and were both rushing different sororities and had this unacknowledged hardcore competition thing with each other. I was hanging out with one of the roommates - V - and she was telling me that the other one was always eating raisins because she thought it was a health snack and V was like, "She doesn't know that raisins have a TON of calories and I'm not going to tell her! I'm just going to watch her get fat and not know why!"

I wanted to be like, You both have the most fabulous hair I have ever seen, you need to stop caring about what the other one eats and start a gang like the Pink Ladies but centered around your hair.

http://31.media.tumblr.com/3fcc548579a3fbfe56e9532de7d0bb0a/tumblr_myrob0oAsg1qbagneo1_1280.png

Could have been so beautiful...

"I wanted to be like, You both have the most fabulous hair I have ever seen, you need to stop caring about what the other one eats and start a gang like the Pink Ladies but centered around your hair."

Ha! Yes!

There's a lot of diet talk and women bonding through hating their bodies there, too, which I refuse to participate in, but it's always there.

this this this this

But also about how exercising control over one's own food choices (even food choices that may seem spurious to others, like veganism or gluten free lifestyles) can be a way of exercising control that one feels one has "lost", over one's body or one's life or other aspects of it.

Food control is an area where I was trying to exercise my compassion, because finding a place to have quality brunch with a vegan is no walk in the park. Then I got a whole bunch of food issues dropped on me, for my sins, probably. If increasingly narrowing their food choices and patrolling their life for things they can control helps people to deal with their demons and maintain balance, bless them.

Never realized how many rings Howard wore.

She wears a lot of rings! And no mascara. God I love her.

Oh now I long for a Claudette Wyms, Anita VanBuren, Kay Howard crossover crime drama.

Sorry, getting off topic.

I was trying to think of times that people have actually shamed me for eating something and I once went out for late night drunken diner breakfast with this male friend of mine (I probably had a little crush on him at the time, too) and we sat there eating our omelets and he suggested I get egg whites next time and try exercising more because "guys like girls who glow." Which in hindsight was probably twisted dude-code for "I like you but am too much of an asshole to date a fat woman so maybe lose weight so I'm not so conflicted about my feelings."

Also there was the really strange secretary at an old job who used to poke her head into my work area and ask me detailed questions about what I was eating. She was especially curious about this crazy substance I often ate called "yogurt." She was so weird. I almost miss her.

People comment on the food I'm eating/cooking more than I would like. It's usually positive, or faux-positive (look at all of the vegetables, aren't you a healthy little one) and I don't like it at all. Can't say I need to discuss it beyond that, really. People should really stop opining about the amount/quality/nutritional value/nature of other people's food.

When I was a kid, I was a really picky eater, but I was pretty content to eat my bowl of noodles with no fanfare. My dad, however, frequently made it known (visibly and audibly) that he was exasperated with my pickiness and I always thought that was mean-spirited of him. Now he won't stop talking about my childhood eating habits and brags to strangers about my cooking, which is just as bad and embarrassing for me.

Best to just talk about other things imo.

Oh yeah I do get the faux-positive commentary a lot. I don't like it either.

I think I'm oblivious to people being faux anything about my food--I'm not sensitive about it. But macro conversations ABOUT food-shaming blame women almost immediately, which I'm with Branwell on. PS if someone put gluten into my gluten-free food I would have blood in places there shouldn't be blood, so that directly puts my health at risk and that is a violent act.

Yeah that is straight bullshit. I might roll my eyes at somebody's gluten free eating if they are doing it for bandwagon/"clean eating" purposes but I would never intentionally subvert somebody's eating restrictions, self-imposed or otherwise. That's horrible.

(TBF the person on the thread who said he did that later said he was kidding.)

Saw that. Don't care. Still not funny.

I'm really, really sick of "HAHA it was only LOLS!" being used an excuse for general douchey behaviour, whether it's racism, sexism or ~POLICING YOUR FOOD CHOICES~ crap. I just have zero tolerance for that kind of thing any more. IO is right; intentionally causing someone harm like that is a violent act, no matter what their reasoning.

Sorry, I did that thing where I ask a Really Big Question on a thread, then disappear for several hours. Went off to therapy and guess what, boundaries / control / food issues was a big, big, big sack of emotional vomit there, so, well.

I'm going to have a think and eat some pasta (LOL, ENBB, I am going to think of your "aggressive" pasta eating at dancers while I do it) and come back and respond and talk and try to explain what I was on about.

a waiter in SF actually said 'you go girl' when I ordered pork belly
I... didn't really know how to react

tbh no-one ever comments on my food and I'd find it really bizarre if I saw it happening a lot. Because it's a really weird thing to do! Says more about the commenter imo. I guess in the workplace it can be a lazy way of starting conversation? but only up to a point...

I find my stubborness really works overtime in food-shaming situations. Like if someone brings donuts into work, there's a subset of coworkers who will take a knife and cut off like an eighth of a donut and leave the rest. But they have to do it with a loud 'ooh yes I only want a little I'm being good today' and then all the other sheeple will suddenly feel bad for wanting a whole donut and then everyone's carving off stupid tiny slices so my inner 5 year old goes into a rage and deliberately reaches past them for a whole donut

They shame each other into doing it, I see them do it a lot, and it drives me crazy. Eat what you want! Don't narrate for everyone around you if you're going to have a small portion. Just have a small portion and own it. but don't make the person who wants/needs to eat a full portion feel bad. Everyone can eat however much or little they want and I will not side-eye anyone for it. But publicly announcing for purposes of shaming drives me INSANE.

idk if that's off or on-topic but it was on my mind

HIGH FIVE

I dunno what it is...Mum used to make comments like 'Oh Sharon' if I'd go back for seconds and maybe it's just my YOU'RE NOT THE BOSS OF ME gene, but that kind of stuff just enrages me so much.

It's so performative. It's preemptive self-shaming in case anybody was going to cluck their tongues at you for your donut consumption.

I dunno, I kinda find that "you go, girl" kind of responses just as patronising/bad as the "are you *sure* you want cheese with that?" responses and the "~diet~ coke?" "No, I said coke. I want a *fat* coke" interactions. Do not comment on my fucking food. Unless that comment is "excellent choice, the X is particularly tasty today."

I mean, I'm very good at eating whatever it was I wanted in the first place / taking the whole donut if I want a whole donut. And then fuming silently for hours or weeks - or even years, as in stuff I'm bringing up now - about it afterwards.

Strangers are actually easier to ignore than acquaintances/colleagues, and they are easier to ignore than family and relationships. Ugh, it's just... this stuff is embedded down real deep, and that deep level stuff really isn't easy to deal with. I dunno what's worse. The looks of barely sublimated rrrage from strangers at seeing a visibly fat woman enjoying the fuck out of an ice cream. Or the concern trolling from my Mum. No, definitely, the stuff from my Mum is worse, because that goes back so far.

And what we talked about in therapy (god, sorry for bringing up therapy. Discussing other people's therapy is like discussing other people's dreams, a mixture of boring and awkwardly private) was trying to understand the motivation of *why* people behave like that. Understanding people's motivations for why they do things which I find threatening or hurtful or deeply upsetting, as a way of trying to understand and defuse it. And I think ENBB was onto that thing. It is the response of people who have been on a diet their entire lives, who have denied themselves pleasure their entire lives, who are outraged that here is a chubby person (violating rule 1 by even existing) enjoying the fuck out of food (violating rule 2) and the amount of anger they have of, like, why am I allowed to get away with this behaviour when they're denying themselves?

With my Mother, it's way more complicated, because my Mother has been fat as long as I remember, has been on every diet known to mankind (does the whole lose 5 pounds thing, gain 7 pounds right back over, and over, and over again), has been ordered by her doctor to lose weight, and only gets fatter and fatter, has knee problems, has gout, lives on this weird low-fat but high sugar and high protein which compounds all of her health problems and makes them worse. And she has been food-shaming me since I was 9 (I started comfort eating when I moved to the States.) in the hopes that I would not turn out like her, and basically gave me a head full of food issues and body issues and weird shit that is really, really easy to clue into, if I let it.

But, basically, long story short: people who try to food shame you are usually wrestling with their own weird food and fat issues. It is their problem, not mine.

But that's not really the stuff I'm struggling with the moment. It's more like... food as control. Food as a way of "I get to define, what goes into my body". Food can be a battleground. Food as the one area of my life that I get to establish my limits and my boundaries over. I wonder if I'm still a vegetarian 25 years later because my Mum said it wouldn't last 6 months. I often wonder if being a vegetarian is a way of diverting all of my weird ~issues around food~ into a safe container so I don't develop full on weirdness about food as "controlling some aspect of my life" into an eating disorder.

And people's *reactions* to my vegetarianism really tells me a whole lot of what I need to know about them. That it's a really easy way of ascertaining whether this person is going to honour my boundaries and respect my needs (even if they don't agree with them or understand them). A person whose reaction is "OK, do you want to go to a pure vegetarian place or do you mind eating somewhere mixed?" is a good, safe person. A person who gives me grief or tries to shame me over it - or worse, yet, gets that weird, defensive "OMG vegetarians are so awful, they all think they're SO SUPERIOR and VIRTUOUS and god you lot are smug and awful and terrible I'm going to EAT MEAT AT YOU every chance I get, so that you can't ~be all vegetarian at me~" before I've even said a word, it's like... OK, not a good person to be around, goodbye.

I dunno. Everything is about boundaries for me. Everything is about sorting people into "safe" and "unsafe". (Kinda like my Mum has weird issues about sorting food into "healthy" and "not healthy" and it's fucking bizarre what ends up in each category.) I know a lot of this is about dealing with trauma, and living with Survivor status or, y'know, what comes across as ~victim mentality~. And I'm sure a lot of stuff that probably reads as "OMG, what are you, a special snowflake?" to other people is really trying to establish is this person safe or unsafe. (And my god, there is no quicker way to wind up in the "unsafe" tub than to use phrases like "special snowflake" with regards to difference.)

This is going to be really long; I'm sorry. I still haven't said half of what's in my head. This is the shit I'm wrestling with at the moment.

God I edited that to take half of it out, and it's still fucking WALL O TEXT. I'm so sorry.

It is the response of people who have been on a diet their entire lives, who have denied themselves pleasure their entire lives, who are outraged that here is a chubby person (violating rule 1 by even existing) enjoying the fuck out of food (violating rule 2) and the amount of anger they have of, like, why am I allowed to get away with this behaviour when they're denying themselves?

I am not proud of this, but when I was at my second-thinnest, I had an irrational hatred of fat people for this exact reason, as in I articulated this reason in talking about how I hate this irrational hatred, and it like never occurred to me that was something I needed to examine or reconsider or even just shut up about. Not that I was saying these things to actual fat people (IRL or on the internet), just that I have had at least one conversation out loud with someone about that. All joking aside I attribute at least part of my lack of critical thinking and empathy in that situation to severe, long-term calorie deprivation. I'm much kinder now that I'm fat and well-fed.

And also to my past self and any other thin people who hate fat people for that reason, I say "Join us. It's wonderful here. You can eat the whole donut."

Some people eat donuts and are still thin btw.

I know it's otherwise a really flawed book and a really flawed writer, but the first chapter of The Beauty Myth by Naomi Wolf, she quoted a study where they put a bunch of healthy male athletes on the kind of calorie deprivation diet that young women routinely keep themselves on, and the resulting psychological chaos, that was the first time I started to understand the mentality.

Xp Sorry, that wasn't what you were saying, and wasn't meant to be snarky!

It's okay! It's good to remember that not everybody is beset with issues around food.

BB, Gina Kolata's Rethinking Thin talks about a similar study done with soldiers, I think. Maybe it's Paul Campos's book, though. Either way, it was very enlightening to me as well.

OK, thanks, carl, I'll have a look for it.

I am actually a lot better than I've been, about "being weird about eating because: body shaming" these days.

But the whole "being weird about ~everything~ because: OMG BOUNDARIES" is still something I'm struggling a lot with at the moment.

It gets worse in times of stress; being in long-term unemployment is a definite cause of stress right now.

Thanks for listening to me, girls, and thanks for discussing this stuff. This is a great source of strength and comfort to me.

my use of "special snowflake" was mostly self-effacing, sorry if it upset anyone. It is about how people from the rest of the country perceive a certain culture where I live.

Branwell, your mom sounds like my mom in terms of size and dieting and health issues, though my mom doesn't have gout, she does have bad knees, which has made me fearful of exercise, which is totally irrational. But, my mom actually has fairly healthy attitudes towards food and didn't really instill me with any food ~issues~ apart from the genetic inevitability that I too would become a fat woman. But she also instilled in me that there were far worse things you can be than fat: you could be cruel, hateful, self-loathing, and have all sorts of other health problems.

In terms of values about food learned from my mom (so much of my childhood and youth is a blur at this point), I remember going to restaurants with my family and occasionally being mildly shamed for not being hungry enough to eat everything, but once it was established that I actually was pretty full, my mom would say things like, "Well, just eat the shrimp, that's the good part, pasta is cheap. It's the shrimp that made it expensive." And also, "don't eat unhealthy junk. if you want ice cream and cheese, get the good stuff, make it as delicious as possible."

It makes me sad reading about ladies on this thread with moms that shamed them and gave them body image issues.

seriously though, I feel like I live half my life in an episode of Portlandia.

And now I am off to band practice at my underground noise co-op space where we have arguments about whether it is worth it to not buy plastic cups when what is really needed is the elimination of the police state and class warfare.

I do kinda feel right now like Mums are getting a bit of a bad rap right now. Like, I've been talking about my Mum, but she was by far not the only person in my family to weight shame me or food shame me. My brother (who was thin) was pretty relentless - he was the one who would make "oink oink" pig noises if I was deemed to be eating too much or too avidly. (With, of course, the full consent, and lack of any kind of chastisement for cruelty from my family.) And my uncle (who was fat, but his wife and his daughter were thin) was fucking relentless in the weight shaming.

Like, I think it maybe hurts more when mothers do it because of the nature and closeness and projection involved in the mother-daughter relationship. But there was still a metric fuckton of it coming from male members of the family.

(I don't remember my father's opinion on weight, which is odd. My father's battles revolved around hair and the cutting of it.)

But OMG, that whole thing of being shamed for not finishing a meal!I got that a lot, too - on top of the "you're a disgusting pig oink oink" messages, so talk about conflicting messages. Food I wouldn't eat at lunch (including seafood, to which I have turned out to be allergic) would be returned to the plate at dinner. To this day, I cannot *not* finish a meal. This is the hardest thing for me, to stop eating when I feel full. If there is food still on my plate, I will literally keep eating until I feel sick because... guilt. It still feels dirty or shameful or wrong (and I try to tell myself it's being a responsible adult, but it doesn't feel like it) if I throw away food, or put it in the food waste bin.

Ugh, I hate being neurotic about this stuff. I'm so bored with feeling like a crazy person so much of the time.

my mom has always been really cool about food -- she taught me to eat what i want when i'm hungry. she also was never (ever!) "dieting" and whenever people would ask her how she kept her figure, she would always say "i just eat when i'm hungry and stop when i'm not hungry, i don't know" and then she would change the subject. we're both really small boned people of short stature, and she always told me i should eat for me, not for other people. now she's proud of my cooking, but never embarrasses me about it.

xp You're not crazy, you've just had a lot of people's own internal eating battles projected on to you.

I am very lucky to have a mother who is fairly decent when it comes to food issues (my dad was a serious barbecue dude, which is another story). She kind of predates the whole PAY ATTENTION TO SEASONAL FOOD trend by years and/or never varying from the idea that stuff comes from gardens at particular times of year and never got into fad diets because 'it's good to have treats' and everything is OK in moderation except for over-processed food. I was allowed to be picky when young because I reacted badly to certain foods while having chemo. After that, I was made to at least try the objectionable thing on my plate once. My mom also watched my aunt refuse the same dish of oatmeal for three days running when they were kids, a battle my aunt won in the end, and never pulled that shit on us.

Although I tried to be a vegetarian for a few months, and she did buy me tofu to go along with it, she did also wind up sabotaging the mission by buying the finest deli corned beef she could find and leaving it there in the fridge next to mustard and pumpernickel until I caved. I was a crap vegetarian and make a much better omnivore, though I enjoy the challenge of cooking for veggies (because it's not a challenge to a good cook).

I think I do need to give my Mum props for some aspects of food, despite diet weirdness and a lot of offhanded terrible comments (including pounding into my head that I was built like her and I was destined to have weight issues like her and always with the disparaging 'ugh you have boobs like your mother' 'ugh you have thighs like your mother' aaaaaaaaaaaaaaaanyway)

The thing I'm really grateful for, w/r/t food is that she welcomed all of us kids into the kitchen, taught us how to pick out ripe fruits and vegetables at the store, when she got a microwave she bought a microwave cookbook for kids for us to make cakes and weird shit in the microwave, or cut up vegetables for a stir fry, whatever. a rite of passage when you were about 5 was when Mum let you hold the butter knife and cut pieces of banana or melon for a fruit salad. She did that for all 3 of us, and now my nephews as well. Teaching us how to stir gravy by having us write the alphabet in the saucepan 3 times (standing on a chair by the stove mind you but still)

That to me is worth rubies, because I know a lot of people whose parents did not welcome them into the kitchen and/or just made food be a very alien, scary kind of thing. My niece is 16 and is afraid to use an oven. Not that you HAVE to cook, but just as a basic survival/money saving skill, it's a good tool to have in your belt and I'm grateful to Mum for giving me that.

Xp suzy. My mom worked for farmers starting when I was 8 or 9 and she would drive out to the fields and bring home food for dinner.

My mom could make a celebration out of driving 15 miles to the roadside stands that sold grocery bags full of freshly picked corn in season. In many ways she's ideal, to wit: food - 'it's awesome, eat a balanced diet so the good stuff tastes like the treat it is.' Sex: 'the most fun two people can have with their clothes off'.

As a mother (huh, that is still weird) it is very useful and lovely to read stories of what mothers did right wrt food and their daughters.

My mom did her best but she was a petite, slim woman blessed with a let's say robust child and a single mom at a time when having a fat kid was a clear sign of bad parenting (I guess that is now too) so while she had my husky ass on a constant diet starting at age nine, her heart was in the right place. Like she was never mean about it but she was prone to seeing fat people and saying things like, "If I ever get that fat, just shoot me" and that will do a number on a fat kid's psyche.