"Me want FOOOOOOOOOOOOOD."

1. Articles like this are one reason i'm proud to identify as French. And as i once Tweeted, i never feel more French than when i snack.

"They found that of the four populations surveyed (the U.S., France, Flemish Belgium and Japan). Americans associated food with health the most and pleasure the least. Asked what comes to mind upon hearing the phrase "chocolate cake", Americans were more apt to say "guilt", while the French said "celebration"; "heavy cream" elicited "unhealthy" from Americans, "whipped" from the French. The researchers found that Americans worry more about food and derive less pleasure from eating than people in any other nation they surveyed.

"Compared with the French, we're much more likely to choose foods for reasons of health, and yet the French, more apt to chose on the basis of pleasure, are the healthier (and thinner) people."

2. Speaking of food, this is shameful.


3. Hey, look! More food guilt!

The funny thing about this piece (and food guilt in general) is that one of my old roommates is a nutritionist. And she used to advocate low calorie things, like cheesecake made with low-fat Neufchatel cheese and sugar-free sweeteners, or using skim milk and SmartBalance to make alfredo sauce. And we argued about it once. I said i'd rather make the full-fat version of something and then only eat a little, and she said that she'd rather make a low-fat version and eat more.

This is stupid.

Basically, you're saying that you'd rather eat a fuckton of something mediocre than a normal amount of something delicious. It's alfredo sauce! It's butter and cream and cheese! Just eat a small serving of pasta and a large serving of veggies! And don't eat it every night! Eat one serving of chicken fettuccine alfredo tonight, and tomorrow night eat grilled salmon with steamed broccoli. Eat one giant slice of cheesecake now and don't eat any later. Enjoy your food!

"I grew up a Christian, with a pastor for a dad to boot, but my mom is Jewish. And I don't know how well you might know the Jewish stereotypes, but we are a people that have a notorious love for eating and for worrying. So, you know, the little gatherings of my mom and her best friends (Jews, too, by the way) involved bagels, and cream cheese, and lox, or Danish pastries and coffee, or Chinese food, or whatever, but it's like, here are all these women, different sizes, different shapes -- and they're enjoying their food, but at the same time, they're worrying. They're like, punishing themselves for eating. Like, "this is great, but I shouldn't be eating it, I'm fat" or "I'll take JUST A SLIVER of that cheesecake" or eating two different kinds of cake while insisting on Sweet N Low and skim milk for their coffee -- not because they like it that way, but because they're "cutting calories."

4. I can't even pick one quote from this. Just read it. So lovely.

5. Reading this was akin to a holy experience. I wanted to say "amen" when i was done (and at several points along the way).

"Strong does not necessarily mean six pack abs. It doesn't mean defined triceps, a body-fat percentage in the single digits, or butt you can bounce quarters off of (is that really a thing?). Strong is the process. It’s the journey from self-consciousness to self-awareness. Strong is thinking about what you want out of life, and realizing that your body is the vessel that has to physically carry you there. It is figuring out how exercise and nutrition fit into the puzzle of wellness that keeps you healthy and happy and sane.

Sometimes wellness means skipping a workout to drink wine with people you care about, or to finish a book that you can’t bear to put down, or to invest a few hours in your career. Sometimes it means yoga and tennis because you’re craving the pursuit of sweat-drenched mindfulness but you also want to hit a ball as hard as you can and grunt in an unladylike manner. Strong is pushing yourself to try scary new things, like hiking to Machu Picchu or your first ever jazz square. In the attempt, you will find new depths of humility (I suck at jazz squares) and new pride in knowing that you have accomplished more than you thought you could.

*****

If you go digging, you will find insurgent movements celebrating the refrain, “Real Women Have Curves” and flaunting chubby tummies and thunder thighs. If, like me, you are the possessor of a tummy that isn't flat and thighs that are not lean, these sentiments may momentarily thrill you. Your people are speaking up! And they are beautiful, which means that you are beautiful too!

But this is a shortsighted solution to a longstanding problem. The endgame here is not to place a different shape, be it a curvy “real woman” or a taut-bodied fitspo model, on the top of the pyramid and declare a new world order. The endgame is to knock down the pyramid.

You are beautiful, but it’s not because your silhouette has suddenly been declared desirable. That edict can change in an instant, my friends, and someone always loses. Wellness does not have to be a zero sum game, so let’s not throw each other under the bus of passing fads. Take care of what you've got. Be well. Be strong."

So there's a thing that exists that is bad and scary. Well. There are a lot of those things, but only one that i'm talking about right now.

That thing is "pro ana" culture. "Ana" is short for "anorexic", and "pro" means exactly what you think it does.

There are people who believe that anorexia, bulimia, and other eating disorders, are perfectly fine and valid and healthy ways to live. In fact, at the very far end of the spectrum, there are people who speak directly to "Ana". You could say they worship her. They ask her for the strength of will and body to deny themselves food. They believe that they have been chosen for something special. And they look down on those who try to emulate them, calling them "wannarexics".

In middle school, and in high school, and in college, and this week, i am and have been a wannarexic.

I lack the willpower and physical strength to deny myself food entirely. If i skip a meal and do not snack, i am shaking and nauseous and dizzy and seeing spots by the time the next meal rolls around. One meal is all it takes, and i'm falling apart at the seams.

I used to be angry with myself for this. I used to be angry that i couldn't hold out for more than one meal a day, angry that i could rarely go more than a few days in a row before i stopped skipping meals and ate regularly, angry that i couldn't just stop. Stop everything. Stop being fat, stop being ugly, stop being awkward, stop feeling uncomfortable in my skin, stop feeling uncomfortable in my head, stop saying and doing embarrassing things, stop being lonely, stop being afraid, stop being sad, stop being numb, stop being.

When i got a little older and a little wiser and learned a little more about myself and nutrition and mental health, i developed a healthy fear of that anger. I figured out better, healthier habits that would actually result in weight loss without making me physically ill. I climbed mountains, i swam oceans, i lost the "freshman 15", i gained the sophomore/junior 20ish, i lost the senior year haven't-even-been-weighed-in-years-but-all-my-pants-keep-falling-down, put on the real job with an actual paycheck and car now-i-can-afford-food-and-don't-have-to-walk-two-miles-for-it. And none of it bothered me that much. I would like, even now, to jiggle a little less. I would like to feel healthier and happier in my skin. But i would also like to eat all of the chocolate cream pie right now please, thankyouverymuch, and then you can bring me the fresh bread with butter and the beer and the buffalo chicken waffle fries with extra cheese and then maybe a bowl of whipped cream. To dip my peanut butter cups in.

Anyway. I'm mostly in a much better place, and things were going well for a while, and then i lost my gym momentum and while the ten pounds i lost in the first quarter of the year have stayed off, none of their friends have joined them.

And lately i've been depressed and anxious, what with all the uncertainty about jobs and student loans and will i even be able to afford groceries this winter and oh my God what if something happens to my car and everyone in my family keeps getting rushed to the emergency room and my boyfriend and i keep having uncomfortable conversations and i can't sleep and i really wish my thighs were a little slimmer, a little firmer. I wish my stomach was flatter. I wish i didn't have the tiniest shadow of a double chin. Because somehow, if i could magically become super hot and fit overnight, that would obviously fix all of my terrifying life problems.

And then i start to feel out of control.

And then i start to wish that i was chosen. I start to be angry at myself for my lack of control, for eating more food when i really wasn't hungry (even though the "more food" was fresh veggies, or raw almonds with dried fruit, or chicken lettuce wraps). I'm angry about my lack of motivation to go to the gym. I'm angry at my apathy. I'm angry at my depression. I'm angry at my body. I'm angry at Ana.

This week, i have honestly and legitimately had a lot of work to do, and it's been hard to go home for lunch. And every day, there's been some fresh disaster on top of the huge piles of work that i didn't get a chance to finish the day before. And ordering out is, unfortunately, not in my budget right now. So i really don't have a lot of options.

But i could still leave my desk and go eat lunch. Nothing i do at my job is so urgent, so crucial, that delaying it for an hour would spell the downfall of Western civilization. It wouldn't even spell the downfall of my job. And i could still pack myself a lunch to eat at my desk, knowing how hard it will be to get away and go home. I don't have a lot of options, but "not a lot" is more than "none".

And yet.

I keep skipping lunch. I skip lunch and i eat a spoonful of peanut butter at my desk, and then i go home and eat a snack and get busy until it's too late to eat a full meal, so then i go to sleep hungry. And then i wake up hungry and don't have anything fast and easy, so i eat a spoonful of peanut butter at my desk, or some almonds and dried cherries, and i drink a lot of water and tea and pretend that the hunger pangs are dehydration.

I don't have anything clever to say about any of this. I don't have any hope to offer. I don't have a light at the end of the tunnel. But it is two o'clock now and i am heading home for lunch.

1. I know it's become almost trendy recently to hate on denominations, to say that we shouldn't put up divisions between one another and that we are all one body in Christ, and i agree to an extent. But then i read things like this and think, "Differentiated instruction is a good thing." I still think we need to do things together, so that we can be reminded that "other" does not equal "wrong" or "lesser" or otherwise bad, but i don't think it's a bad thing to say, "I like contemplative prayer and long services with lots of space for meditation and quiet, and you like praying in tongues and energetic services with dancing and shouting and call-and-response, and it's okay for us to worship separately." Of course, most denominations aren't divided this way, but wouldn't it be cool if they were? Wouldn't it be great if we made room for differences without building fences and alienating?

"All my life, I've just assumed that everyone else had maps of the year in their head that may/may not be similar to mine. It never occurred to me that something so basic as how one sees the calendar year could vary so much in between people. Within a few seconds this morning, my entire world shifted and grew larger.

Perhaps part of the issue of continuing disagreement in human life and, more narrowly, the church isn't necessarily chalked up to the theodicy explanation of "brokenness" and "sin," but to the simple fact that some people literally see the world differently. People literally experience God in different ways."

2. This was SO interesting to read. I love how Rachel always allows for so many voices, and so many points of view. It's so refreshing to see a bunch of smart, thoughtful people tackle a problem (especially such a sticky [no pun intended] issue as masturbation), and to see that all of them have come to different perspectives and still love and respect one another.

3. If you don't spend a lot of time in churchy circles, you're probably not familiar with conversations about "biblical inerrancy", and can therefore ignore this link. But if you do, this post may help you clarify some of your thoughts.

"You see, it's ok to believe that Noah's ark was filled with all the animals on earth when you're 5 years old, and then change your mind when you realize the physical impossibility of that when you're an adult, but still have faith in that story. Why? Because the truth of Noah's ark is not found in zoological arrangements. It's found in the message of a God who watches over and cares for His creation even in the midst of a storm."

4. Okay, when i read this, i kind of felt like someone had been reading my diary and posting it on the internet. Except that i don't really keep a diary anymore; it's pretty much been replaced by this blog. But still. This is so much of what i've been thinking and feeling about God in the past few years.

"Scripture references and sound logic are dangerous when the God they paint is a monster.

Words about God are heavy. Don't sling them about carelessly."

5. I don't just read about theology and feminism, FYI. I also read hysterically funny essays about home taxidermy.

"In order to fully explain what went wrong, in stages, I would have to look up the thesaurus entry for 'inexpertly' and then deploy every word listed and that would getting boring, so let's just say: I did some crimes.
. . .
You watch how their legs fit together, how their wings don't go like how you made them go like when you got all excited while stuffing that duck. One day you might notice one of them dead on the grass. In real life . . . (We could pretend this is hypothetical but obviously that would be lying.)
. . .
I wanted to explain but I was too embarrassed. I used words like "time sensitive delivery" and "awkward" and "no really". I envisioned a pair of mouldering squirrels in a bloated parcel in the Post Office depot with my name on them. Literally with my name on them. I further envisioned myself marching back to the Post Office with the unopened package and returning to sender. 'DEAR P STAINES,' began the letter in my head. 'UMM.'"

6. I am neither gay nor Mormon but this still made me tear up big time.

"I told her that some people are taught that [being gay is] wrong and don't want to believe differently. And that this parade was to celebrate the fact that being gay is no more a mark of one's character than being straight. She nodded and then asked, "Is there going to be candy?"

7. Oh God. I had so many of these conversations with my parents. In fact, over Christmas, i had them again. I am twenty-three years old and my parents still feel like they can and should comment on my size. (NB: Let me just say that my parents are awesome and affirming in many ways, but fat shaming is so deeply ingrained into the collective consciousness that even awesome people don't think twice about saying, "You've gotten bigger and should get smaller again. Let me give you some tips.")

8. It sucks, but sometimes we are just stuck with our feelings for a while. That's just kind of how it works.

[something clever]

I love doing research. Love, love, love it. I love reading new things, encountering new ideas, watching debates unfold on paper over decades and centuries as new scholars and critics attempt to shed light on old themes and ideas. I love to see the constancy of opinion on some things, and the ever-shifting disagreements on others.

I hate citing my research. Footnotes and in-text citations are so fussy, and bibliographies are annoying, and making sure that you put the quotation marks in exactly right makes me want to die. I'd rather just hand you a list (formatted any damn way i please) of everything i read while writing this paper and let you do your own research.

So, in the tradition of many great bloggers, i feel that the time has come to provide you with a weekly bibliography. I read a lot of things online, and these things often inform and influence my thoughts, directly and indirectly. Also, a lot of the stuff i post is going to be old stuff from way back in some other blogger's archives. I'm not timely.

1. I've been learning a lot lately about fat-shaming and fat-acceptance and the pros and cons of both. Basically, it can be boiled down to this: fat-shaming is good because it encourages people to control themselves and change bad habits and become healthier. Fat-shaming is bad because standards of health and beauty are arbitrary and subjective, and being more attractive than someone else in no way makes you a better person or more deserving of good things in life. Fat-acceptance is bad because sometimes being overweight is really unhealthy and is entirely due to poor choices in your life and if you don't change your ways you will die. Fat-acceptance is good because not all fat people are that way from their own bad choices, and not all fat people are unhealthy (and not all thin people are healthy) and anyway regardless of your attractiveness to other people or your physical health you should be happy and feel comfortable in your own skin.

So i found this gallery of photos. You can watch in a slideshow, but if you look at them one by one you can see what their BMI is. It is shocking. There are rail-thin people who look seriously ill who are classified as "normal weight". There are gloriously curvy people with amazing figures classified as "a pound or two shy of obese". There are people who look happier and healthier and sexier than me who are "dangerously overweight". The point is, BMI is bullshit. (Check out the "overweight" triathlete and the "morbidly obese" Wonder Woman).

2. "Should gay marriage be legal?" Ginsburg continued. "Yes. Done. Case closed. Goodbye. Christ, were we seriously scheduled to spend the next few months debating this?" 

All over the country, states are voting to legalize gay marriage, or voting to remove bans on gay marriage, or otherwise ending bigotry. On my own tiny, conservative Christian college campus, we recently approved an LGBT organization. Some day, our children or grandchildren will be in history class and will learn about the LGBTQI fight for civil rights, and will say, "I don't understand. Why did people object to this?" I can't wait for the day that all LGBTQI organizations are dissolved, because there is no longer a need for them. I mean, think about it: how ludicrous would it be to start a heterosexual/cisgender club on a college campus? Why would anyone even need that? There's no point; the world belongs to us. Some day, LGBTQI clubs and organizations will be just as unnecessary as straight/cis ones.

3. I, too, have a debilitating fear of the phone and a job that requires me to make and answer calls pretty frequently, so this piece by Julianne "Boobs Radley" Smolinsky touched my soul like a call from the Holy Spirit. True story: once, when ordering Chinese food, i forgot my phone number and had to ask my roommate what it was. If i thought i could get away with it, i'd copy and paste the whole thing here and pretend i wrote it, and it wouldn't even technically be a lie, because it was pretty much lifted straight from my brain anyway. But instead, i'll just quote some tidbits and then order some spring rolls online.

"Nobody was more delighted by the advent of online food ordering than I was, because calling a restaurant used to fill me with a singular dread. I have a bizarre  middle child's terror of being inconvenient to other people, so asking for something like "dressing on the side" had all the magnitude of requesting, say, a kidney, even in my deferential sexy baby timbre.
 . . . I think the fact that I still fear the phone is an issue of control -- you don't have the degree of planning you do when having a conversation via email or text message. After I write something out, I have the option to edit or delete it. Even when calling was still the preferred method to get in touch with someone, I'd often write a script on a piece of paper if I was nervous enough about the subject to be discussed.
. . . I've encountered similar problems in my personal life. I had a brief non-relationship with a guy last year who kept asking if he could call me, just to talk. I was repelled. Call to talk about what? Is there something you can't say in a series of text messages that I can respond to in a way carefully calibrated to demonstrate my exceptional cleverness? You know who calls people just to talk? The Long Island Serial Killer."

4. I've been in a season of doubt recently. Well, not doubt precisely, but definitely asking questions and testing boundaries and trying to find my footing. And Rachel Held Evans, the Queen of Christian Doubters, wrote this prose-poem of a post that hit me where i live.

"Or it will pull you farther out to sea like rip tide,

Or hold your head under as you drown --"

5. Hey, look! More body-image stuff!

". . . it was so apparent to me that my looking beautiful, or sexy, or whatever, was an important component of the event. It was a feature. My appearance was part of the entertainment, and no matter what I did, if I went along with the cultural prescription by getting dolled up, I was going to be rewarded with oos and aahs."

[searching for a synonym for "fat" that doesn't sound like a synonym for "fat"]

So, yeah. I am "full figured". I am "curvy". I am "voluptuous".

I have big breasts and full hips and thick thighs and a little extra belly fat that made my preschool-aged cousin ask if i was having a baby.

For most of my life, i have fought the word "fat".

Because fat is unhealthy. Fat is unattractive. Fat is gross.

Except that it's not. And i'm not sure when or how or why we came to believe that it was, or how this belief has been sustained for so long. What about Melissa McCarthy? What about Queen Latifah? What about Oprah? What about Christina Hendricks? What about the fact that, even among these women (called "plus-size" and "curvy" and "full-figured" every time they are mentioned), there are few who are actually all that above-average in their weight? Christina Hendricks has larger breasts and smaller waist and hips than me. She's also slightly shorter, and almost certainly weighs less. (Also, i'm about as straight as it's possible for a lady to be, but Christina Hendricks makes me awfully tingly. Hubba hubba, is what i'm saying.) Queen Latifah and Oprah fluctuate in their weight all the time (because they're, you know, human beings), but Queen Latifah still got to be a CoverGirl.

For most of my life, i have been "fat".

There was a while there when i was a rail-thin little kid, but as i hit puberty and began to feel awkward and uncomfortable in my skin, and as my shape began to change and shift and expand, i put on some extra weight. And since then, i've been on a roller coaster that is familiar to pretty much every female person in the world, and plenty of male persons too. I've tried dieting. I've tried not eating. I've tried exercising. I've tried cutting out meat. I've tried counting calories. And for a while, everything is going great, and then i feel good and i relax and it all comes back and then i hate myself.

I wore hand-me-downs for a long time. When i was in high school and had my first job, i bought myself a pair of jeans. They were daring: low-slung waist, flared leg openings, and fitted smoothly to my thighs and ass (which i was just brave enough to call "butt" in my head, and nowhere near brave enough to even mention to my mom). They were a size 13.

I'm 23 now, and it should be a point of pride to me that i can still fit into a size 13 pair of jeans, except that once again, my body has changed.

There was one change, near the beginning of college, where the jeans i had owned before still fit flawlessly but the new jeans i tried on in stores were way too snug. And this was partly, i think, because fashions had changed since i'd last bought jeans, and they were designed to be tighter than ever, and also they were new and hadn't been broken in yet. But also, i had changed and hadn't noticed it, and this was the beginning of the end.

Since then, i've lost and gained weight over and over every year. And while i can fit into size 13 jeans, i have had to accept that they give me a muffin-top. Regardless of how thin or fat or straight-figured or curvy you are, no one looks good in a muffin-top.

I started noticing this change when i started buying "professional" clothes. Because "professional" clothes, you know, generally fit higher on the waist than casual ones. So when you're wearing low-rise stretch jeans that are really too small for you, you can scrunch them a little lower and button them under your pregnant-like belly and ignore everything until your little cousin starts asking awkward questions. But when you're wearing tweedy dress pants, or a stylish new pencil skirt, it's a lot harder to ignore the fact that you can't even drag the garment over your oh-so-juicy ass, let alone zip it up.

I've tried Spanx. I've tried Spanx with control-top pantyhose. I've tried Spanx with control-top pantyhose and not eating very much. The conclusion was inescapable, and yet i kept searching for a way out.

Recently, i bought a new pair of jeans. I went to Marshalls and tried on lots and lots of pairs. I finally found one by a brand i hadn't heard of (Denizen, by Levi), and was amazed at the comfort and perfection of their fit. I could easily slide into them! I could easily zip them! They didn't give me a muffin top! "It must be this new brand!" i thought. "They must use a different fabric, a more honest measurement, a more attractive cut!"

It wasn't until i got home that i saw the tag: 18. They had been hung on the wrong hanger, sorted into the wrong section. They were not 13/14. They were not even 15/16. These perfectly fitting jeans were an 18.

I almost cried. And i know how shallow and silly and vain and self-involved that is, but if you're a woman i think you understand my deep and visceral and immediate feeling of shame and disgust and disappointment. I wasn't supposed to be an 18. I'm supposed to be a 14 at the most. Buying those size 18 jeans felt like a disgusting failure, like an alcoholic or drug addict falling off of the wagon. I wasn't supposed to be like this. I was supposed to be better than this.

Luckily, this moment came in conjunction with me discovering lots of hilarious and smart and incisive and empowering blogs where all kinds of "women's issues" were discussed. Yes, i've been reading about feminism, and i'm going to start linking to some of these amazing women soon, never fear. And here's the thing: fat is not automatically bad. I know we all think it is, but it's not. You know what is bad? Hating your body. Being disgusted by yourself. Crying because you're ashamed of the size of the jeans that fit you really well and look amazing on you.

Allow me to repeat and elaborate on that point: the jeans i was wearing before made me look five months pregnant. I only had about three shirts i could wear with my old jeans that minimized and hid my protruding belly; all the other ones were too tight and only exacerbated the problem. I was wearing ill-fitting clothes, and they looked bad on me. I found clothes that fit, and nearly cried from the shame of it. It wasn't that i woke up one day and discovered that i had gone up two sizes. I had been an 18 for a few years. I had just continued to buy clothes that were too small. I was crying because i had discovered that, for at least three years now, i had been two sizes larger than i thought. Again: this situation had been going on for a long time! It wasn't sudden and shouldn't have been all that surprising! Also, it was only two sizes, not ten! I'm still pretty healthy, still have a well-defined waist and firm (if meaty) thighs, still feel pretty in jeans and dresses and even naked. I feel exactly the same as i always did. I look different, but mostly because i'm older and i got my hair cut and sometimes i wear eyeliner and i have tattoos and, yeah, my curves are more billowy than they were a few years ago.

I'm fat, basically. I have more fat on my body than i need to have to survive. I mean, i do live in New England, but i'm not a polar bear or a whale or something. I don't need insulation from the frigid temperatures. I have a space heater and a cat. I will survive. But i'm also not a marathon runner or a body builder or something else where i need to trim my body fat down to zero. I'm allowed to have full, rich curves. I'm allowed to jiggle a little when i walk.

I could be healthier than i am, and i'd like to be. I could be less jiggly than i am, and i'd like to be. I could trim myself back down to a size 13, and i'd like to do that, but mostly because i don't want to buy a whole new wardrobe, because i'm lazy and broke. I probably will lose a lot of weight this fall and winter, when i am student teaching and therefore a) can't afford lots of fancy food and snacks and will eat lots of beans and rice and tofu and drink water and tea and b) will spend lots more time walking around and lots less time sitting. I'm losing weight now, as i work out semi-regularly and am more aware of what i eat. But really, truly, in my heart-of-hearts, i don't care that much about being thin. Which is good, because i have a naturally large and full frame and want to have kids some day, so without drastic surgery including things like bone-shaving (is that really a thing? i've always been too afraid to find out), i'll never be what the world calls "thin". 

But i have curves that make women jealous and men drool, and i have to admit that i like them, too. I like the fullness of my breasts, even though they constantly get in my way. I like the curves of my ass, even though it's hard to zip into a pencil skirt. I like my heavy thighs, even though they rub together when i walk, ensuring that my jeans always wear out in the crotch. I like my roundness and fullness and ripeness. I like the way my body looks, naked or clothed. I like the way it feels to be in my skin. I like the way it feels when my boyfriend looks at my body, or runs his hands over it, or talks about how much he loves it. And if looking and feeling the way that i do means that i have to wear a size 18, then that's what i'll do. After all, there are worse things in the world than being incredibly sexy. The only thing i have to get over now is the word "fat". But i'm a writer. I'll find a way to make it work.