Pfft...ash cloud? What freakin' ash cloud?
As some of the more observant of you might have spotted, was completely and utterly drunk and really rather vicious when I posted my last entry. Probably best thought of as an aberration, that one. Not sure which is better - to post here thoughts that are couched in such nonsensical terms as to be little better than drivel, or to skip posting at all when such moods take me. Thoughts welcome, but I guess if this thing is to have any artistic merit whatsoever beyond the confines of a personal diary, self-censorship is criminally pointless, right?
Woke up this morning to blood that registered 8.2 - my first reading of over 8 since we began this experiment, 8 being something of a watershed of good diabetic control over here. Of course, there was logic in that - I'm not sure I'd recommend the 'little food, much wine' diet to anyone. But in my case there was an extra little whipped-cream dollop of logic to the reading, which...and yes, I appreciate the stupidity of this...didn't strike me till I read it. That would be the fact that I haven't taken a pill since I got here. For reasons of public health and sanitation, I tend not to take the Xenical any day I'm getting on a plane, but somehow, in this plane of wine and sunshine, that had unconsciously extended itself to "no pills of any kind, any day". Still, at this late stage in this day, I've only taken one dose of each of my pills, so 8.2 was an unmedicated, utterly pickled result...by which standards, it's not too bad.
But that's not really what I want to talk about tonight, it's just housekeeping. My real topic tonight is beauty.
You may not think that beauty has much place in a conference full of science geeks, but you'd be wrong - firstly, by virtue of rarely possessing it in any measurable quality, science geeks adore beauty - it mystifies them, and entrances them, and drags them along like Bisto Kids* any time they see it. Secondly, it's important to realise that not all science geeks are men. And every woman is a beautiful woman.
Yeah, I know, this sounds like a kind of cut-price Hallmark sentiment, peddled by a horndog liberal, but there is a point here if I can only sculpt it clear for us. I got placed at the farewell dinner of the conference next to not one, but two, impressive women - strong, dazzling, intelligent women who've had to fight through male-dominated industries to win recognition for more than their physical attractiveness to men. As perhaps will come as a surprise to no-one, they spoke the most clear and simple sense of the entire conference, and agreed with each other. I love catching moments like that, it makes me glow and want to run around the town in a patchwork coat, singing "Listen to these women! Listen, oh you owners of penises, and have your minds blown!" One of the women left shortly after that, and I couldn't help but smile. The woman who'd left - Lijliana (probably a mis-spelling - think there needs to be at least one more j in there somewhere) - had been a revelation to me, and a breath of fresh air. The other, remaining woman, was my pal and partner-in-crime, Sally-Anne. As some other conversations swelled around us - how to make a real lightsabre...the point at which human beings will become robots and live as long as they want, yadda yadda yadda...Sally-Anne told me about fashion.
It won't surprise you to learn, given the nature of this blog, that I'm not and have never been a fashion icon. Sally-Anne has worked in the business, knows the brother of a supermodel, and follows fashion quite closely.
But as we talked, a note of sadness broke through her assessment of the fashion world.
"Have you seen the kind of people who are models today?" she asked, fairly confident, I'm sure, that I hadn't.
"They're pre-pubescent girls. I'm a grown woman - how can I aspire to look like them? But if you follow fashion, that's what you're trying to look like. Sometimes I get out of the shower, and I don't even want to look at myself, cos I know what they look like, and I know what I look like, and I just feel horrible and fat..."
Now, it should be pointed out here that in any objective viewing, Sally-Anne's pretty thin. But because she's compelled to follow the frankly misogynistic dictates of fashion, she doesn't feel thin, and the point is, there's no way that, while being healthy, she's ever going to feel thin enough.
"Last time I felt skinny," she said, "I'd been seriously ill with mumps, and then had my heart broken. The only thing that really made me feel any better was that I was so miserable I didn't want to eat, so I got thinner. And you get there, and then eventually you start to feel better, and start to eat a bit more...and then before you know it, you're back to feeling fat again!"
"I don't eat some days," she said. "Sometimes for days on end. And then when I do, I feel so guilty, and miserable. What Kate Mosse said is right though Tone - nothing tastes as good as skinny feels..."
It was more or less at this point that the pointlessness of my endeavour really struck me. Not the weight loss itself - that's a medical necessity - but blogging, as I am, about the tiny successes, the progressive inching towards better health. Compared to women in our society, I don't know I'm born. The horrible pressure we put on women and girls to look a certain way, and stay looking a certain way to validate their own sense of their own identity as beautiful women, is frankly, cruelly insane. We're raising generation after generation of women who aren't allowed to enjoy food, or to enjoy being alive to some degree, and who find their self-esteem only in a state of thinness that is utterly unhealthy, and that drives so many of them to extraordinary measures and misery. I might need to be the disappearing man for a while, but it's not a life sentence! Why - seriously, someone tell me why in the 21st century, our standards of societal beauty are disappearing women? We judge previous generations for not allowing women the right to vote and the right to reproductive healthcare, and the right to equality of sexuality. Future generations will judge us as barbaric for denying women the right to the understanding of their own beauty, and for systematically making their lives a misery.
As some of the more observant of you might have spotted, was completely and utterly drunk and really rather vicious when I posted my last entry. Probably best thought of as an aberration, that one. Not sure which is better - to post here thoughts that are couched in such nonsensical terms as to be little better than drivel, or to skip posting at all when such moods take me. Thoughts welcome, but I guess if this thing is to have any artistic merit whatsoever beyond the confines of a personal diary, self-censorship is criminally pointless, right?
Woke up this morning to blood that registered 8.2 - my first reading of over 8 since we began this experiment, 8 being something of a watershed of good diabetic control over here. Of course, there was logic in that - I'm not sure I'd recommend the 'little food, much wine' diet to anyone. But in my case there was an extra little whipped-cream dollop of logic to the reading, which...and yes, I appreciate the stupidity of this...didn't strike me till I read it. That would be the fact that I haven't taken a pill since I got here. For reasons of public health and sanitation, I tend not to take the Xenical any day I'm getting on a plane, but somehow, in this plane of wine and sunshine, that had unconsciously extended itself to "no pills of any kind, any day". Still, at this late stage in this day, I've only taken one dose of each of my pills, so 8.2 was an unmedicated, utterly pickled result...by which standards, it's not too bad.
But that's not really what I want to talk about tonight, it's just housekeeping. My real topic tonight is beauty.
You may not think that beauty has much place in a conference full of science geeks, but you'd be wrong - firstly, by virtue of rarely possessing it in any measurable quality, science geeks adore beauty - it mystifies them, and entrances them, and drags them along like Bisto Kids* any time they see it. Secondly, it's important to realise that not all science geeks are men. And every woman is a beautiful woman.
Yeah, I know, this sounds like a kind of cut-price Hallmark sentiment, peddled by a horndog liberal, but there is a point here if I can only sculpt it clear for us. I got placed at the farewell dinner of the conference next to not one, but two, impressive women - strong, dazzling, intelligent women who've had to fight through male-dominated industries to win recognition for more than their physical attractiveness to men. As perhaps will come as a surprise to no-one, they spoke the most clear and simple sense of the entire conference, and agreed with each other. I love catching moments like that, it makes me glow and want to run around the town in a patchwork coat, singing "Listen to these women! Listen, oh you owners of penises, and have your minds blown!" One of the women left shortly after that, and I couldn't help but smile. The woman who'd left - Lijliana (probably a mis-spelling - think there needs to be at least one more j in there somewhere) - had been a revelation to me, and a breath of fresh air. The other, remaining woman, was my pal and partner-in-crime, Sally-Anne. As some other conversations swelled around us - how to make a real lightsabre...the point at which human beings will become robots and live as long as they want, yadda yadda yadda...Sally-Anne told me about fashion.
It won't surprise you to learn, given the nature of this blog, that I'm not and have never been a fashion icon. Sally-Anne has worked in the business, knows the brother of a supermodel, and follows fashion quite closely.
But as we talked, a note of sadness broke through her assessment of the fashion world.
"Have you seen the kind of people who are models today?" she asked, fairly confident, I'm sure, that I hadn't.
"They're pre-pubescent girls. I'm a grown woman - how can I aspire to look like them? But if you follow fashion, that's what you're trying to look like. Sometimes I get out of the shower, and I don't even want to look at myself, cos I know what they look like, and I know what I look like, and I just feel horrible and fat..."
Now, it should be pointed out here that in any objective viewing, Sally-Anne's pretty thin. But because she's compelled to follow the frankly misogynistic dictates of fashion, she doesn't feel thin, and the point is, there's no way that, while being healthy, she's ever going to feel thin enough.
"Last time I felt skinny," she said, "I'd been seriously ill with mumps, and then had my heart broken. The only thing that really made me feel any better was that I was so miserable I didn't want to eat, so I got thinner. And you get there, and then eventually you start to feel better, and start to eat a bit more...and then before you know it, you're back to feeling fat again!"
"I don't eat some days," she said. "Sometimes for days on end. And then when I do, I feel so guilty, and miserable. What Kate Mosse said is right though Tone - nothing tastes as good as skinny feels..."
It was more or less at this point that the pointlessness of my endeavour really struck me. Not the weight loss itself - that's a medical necessity - but blogging, as I am, about the tiny successes, the progressive inching towards better health. Compared to women in our society, I don't know I'm born. The horrible pressure we put on women and girls to look a certain way, and stay looking a certain way to validate their own sense of their own identity as beautiful women, is frankly, cruelly insane. We're raising generation after generation of women who aren't allowed to enjoy food, or to enjoy being alive to some degree, and who find their self-esteem only in a state of thinness that is utterly unhealthy, and that drives so many of them to extraordinary measures and misery. I might need to be the disappearing man for a while, but it's not a life sentence! Why - seriously, someone tell me why in the 21st century, our standards of societal beauty are disappearing women? We judge previous generations for not allowing women the right to vote and the right to reproductive healthcare, and the right to equality of sexuality. Future generations will judge us as barbaric for denying women the right to the understanding of their own beauty, and for systematically making their lives a misery.
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