Ugly

 

Free use image by Artjane on Pixabay

https://pixabay.com/vectors/witch-pumpkin-spirit-halloween-5649809/

Different is not good they say

And they showed me in so many ways

How wrong it is to be like me

A thing nobody wants to see

"You act so weird," the others always said

Why can't you just be normal instead

Be the same as everybody else

Instead of being your abnormal self

Everybody saw me as the other

Parents, schoolmates, and my brother

Said be like other girls, pretty and sweet

From life I started to retreat

Never have I belonged anyplace

With my odd personality and ugly face

With a physique that is much reviled

I retreated and I rarely smiled

I see now that others are unkind

Mean of spirit and small of mind

Although I am strange and ugly too

I deserve the same respect that pretty people do

The way one treats folks commonplace

The fat, the awkward, those not fair of face

No matter how attractive they are without

Their inner ugliness always comes out

Bullying and ridicule

Makes pretty people ugly fools

~cie~

the numerous not so nice notes

Inspired by an unpleasant exchange with a twit on Twitter lamenting that some large folks don't do their due diligence of hiding and hating themselves and dare to call out the appalling treatment they experience simply for being big, including commonplace psychological abuse by medical "professionals."

Said twit used phrases such as "celebrating obesity" and made a crack about "if these women even make it to forty." 

Well, this 55-year-old fat broad had something to say about that bullshit.

I am a big person. I have an extremely dysfunctional endocrine system. I generally refer to it as a trash fire. My thyroid gland was the first to go kerflooey, committing suicide when I was in my early teens. I had PCOS, and, given the state of the rest of my endocrine system, I was unsurprised when diabetes came knocking when I was forty-nine. If you think I want to hear about any cures for diabetes, save us both some precious time and spare me. Type 2 diabetes sometimes (rarely) goes into remission, like cancer. I'd like that, but I certainly don't expect it. 

I once had a person tell me that if I took cinnamon, I could stop taking insulin. I cautioned them against giving such wildly dangerous advice. If I stopped using insulin, I'd likely be dead within the space of a month. All cinnamon will do for me is give me pleasant-tasting burps.

In any case, regardless of the fact that I have an "excuse" for my size, no-one should have to apologize or explain their physique to anybody. And if you want to crow about "health," spare me. At least be honest about it. It's never about "health." 

The fact that I'm surprised when I'm treated respectfully and not abused by people in the medical profession is NOT a good thing. 

When I'm treated respectfully, I'm inspired to do the things I can to take care of my weird body, regardless of its size. I don't mentally abuse myself and tell myself that I only deserve to be treated well if I'm thin. I check my blood glucose faithfully and inject insulin accordingly. I eat relatively balanced meals and don't restrict food or binge. I am inspired to exercise as much as I can. I wish I could get an upright walker, which would help me take longer walks and would be more comfortable and supportive than a regular walker, but these devices are around $700 and that is out of my price range.

Wouldn't it be nice to live in a world where assistive devices weren't treated as a luxury item?

Anyway...

If you think you are "helping" larger people by shaming them "for their health,"

1) It doesn't work like that. If shame worked, there would be no alcoholics or drug addicts, no smokers, and no fat people. No-one would be depressed or anxious. Everyone would be working the "perfect" job, have the perfect marriage with the perfect 2.5 kids, and no-one would be gay. Shame does not work, and a person's body type is more complex than the grossly oversimplified "calories in, calories out" model that is drilled into everyone's head implies.

2) Fuck you.

Read again what I said about respectful treatment.

When I'm treated respectfully by people in the medical profession, I take better care of myself. I don't lose weight, and with my endocrine problems, I'm unlikely to lose weight unless I become terminally ill. Weight loss isn't the measure of health (or worth) that people have been indoctrinated to believe it is in any case.

When I am treated like shit for my size, I tend to starve myself. I berate myself, calling myself awful names. I think that I don't deserve to be happy or even to live.

The words we say to others have an incredible impact.

I remember when I saw the "Let There Be Rock" documentary when I was sixteen. When Angus Young (who is way on the opposite end of the size spectrum from Yours Truly) was asked what he thought of each of the other members of his band, his answers were appropriate. When asked what he thought of himself, his reply was "he's that ugly little man."

I was struck by his response and the matter-of-fact way in which he said it. Even at that age, I realized that other people's cruel words had made him believe this lie about himself. Regardless of his accomplishments, he saw himself as "that ugly little man." I thought this was an incredibly sad revelation.

Angus Young isn't conventionally attractive. He's smaller than the average man. But just because he doesn't have leading man looks doesn't mean there's anything wrong with his appearance. He seems like a decent guy. I'd kind of like to slap the living crap out of the people who filled his mind with the idea that he's ugly. 

In any case, if one doesn't find him appealing, they're not being forced to go on a date with him. 

A hot steaming cup of STFU is a drink that those who think they know best about what other people should be doing or how they should look would be advised to take a good long swig of.

Don't be a goddamn dick. Nobody owes it to you to be what you deem attractive. If you don't like what you see, look somewhere else. You have no idea what anyone else is going through, and your crap opinions and advice are likely to do more harm than good.

Fat, ornery, and done with everyone's shyyyyyt.

(Free use image by Open Clipart Vectors on Pixabay)

http://www.octpowrimo.com/2020/10/octpowrimo-day-26.html

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The Icky, Sticky, Nit-Picky Legalese If You Please (Or Don't Please)

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NaHaiWriMo 2018 #8: Monkeying Around + The Fight Against Perfectionism

Notes:

Click the image to enlarge.

"So then I artistically blurred my photo to give a sense of moving back through time."

Nah. I moved my hand while the photo was being taken.

"But why would you want to use a photo like that? Any photographer worth their salt would delete it forthwith!"

I don't really consider myself a photographer. I'm a person who takes pictures because I enjoy it. 

This blurry photo isn't without its merits. It inspired me to create this Haiga of questionable quality.

Nobody is ever going to consider this to be a high-fallutin' work of art to rival the classics. But it is fun, and it illustrates the idea that you can make your mistakes work for you.

I have been battling perfectionism all my life. Embracing my mistakes is helpful for me. Perfectionism is an extremely destructive quality. I would like to share the ways in which it has harmed me from various perspectives.
In this post, I would like to share how physical perfectionism has caused untold harm to me and many others. Some of what I share involves my own perfectionism, and some of it involves the unrealistic standards which society imposes upon people.

On a physical level, we live in a society which demands that Number Twelve Looks Just Like You. We are supposed to aspire to a certain standard of beauty and fitness, and, if we fail to achieve such, we are deemed failures not worthy of even basic decency in the way we are treated by others.
However, rather than inspiring everyone to become super duper supermen and women, this attitude has a tendency to backfire. You end up with people who do not trust doctors because doctors continually shame them for their physical appearance or failure to be compliant with regimens that it may be impossible or intolerable for them.
So, instead of engaging in a program of regular visits to the doctor for preventative care and maintenance of chronic health issues, people avoid going to the doctor until they experience a critical problem. This helps no-one.
When my current doctor addressed my slightly elevated triglycerides (a common issue for diabetics) with "have you been indulging in treats?" I snapped. I said "I make twelve thousand dollars a year and generally eat only one or two meals a day. I eat what I can afford to purchase. I do not 'indulge.'"
In spite of the fact that this doctor is by far the most effective doctor that I have ever seen, I am considering going back to the guy who was burned out and had no fucks to give, because my current doctor has given me ample reason to mistrust her. The 'indulging in treats' bit is mere sprinkles on the body-shaming cake.
This doctor presented herself as offering a 'safe space' for larger people, and, during my first visit, appeared to live up to her promise. Thereafter, she suggested weight loss surgery and blamed my abnormal endometrial thickening on "obesity."
If you want your larger patients to believe for a second that you have any respect for them, you need to ditch the "o" word. "Obesity" is "other." "Obesity" is a pariah. "Obesity" is shit. "Obesity" is always said with a sanctimonious sneer. If you use that word, I do not trust you.
Abnormal endometrial thickening is correlated with a larger body type, but correlation is not causation. It is also correlated with being over fifty (guess I need to step into an age-regression machine), white (guess I'd better start tanning), and diabetic.
A larger body type is also correlated with type 2 diabetes. Again, correlation is not causation. I am inclined to think that abnormal pancreatic function is a strong contributing factor in both the tendency to gain weight and the endometrial hyperplasia. There may be a third factor which causes all of my endocrine issues. A heavy body type is correlated with endocrine issues, but it did not cause these issues. In fact, the reverse is true. None of my endocrine system works properly. It would be highly unlikely for me to have a thin body unless I were to become deathly ill, regardless of how little I eat or how much I exercise.
So, having a bench in your waiting room rather than just chairs with arms does not constitute offering a "safe space" for people of all sizes. I don't trust you, and that makes for an ineffective doctor/patient relationship, regardless of your ability to diagnose and possibly treat health problems.
People are not inclined to take care of things they hate, and that includes their bodies. While cleaning out my storage unit, I found numerous artifacts from the many years I spent trying to hate myself thin. Looking over the awful things I wrote about myself, thinking about all the money I spent playing a game that almost nobody wins, realizing that I caused wear and tear to my body equivalent to the harm done to it by the many years I spent working long hours at physically punishing jobs, thinking back on the times when I was sometimes spending five hours at the gym when I should have been spending that time with my son, I became extremely depressed.
To top it all off, none of this shit brought me to the goal of Magical Thinness, which would have won me the Handsome Prince with the Exactly Correct Body Fat Percentage, a billion dollars for every pound I lost during my incredibly successful "weight loss journey," fame and adoration of the masses, or anything but a far thinner wallet and a soul filled with self-loathing.
Thinspo is crap. Fitspo is crap. Dieting is crap. It's all harmful. None of it will bring you happiness, and it won't even bring you health. It will bring you self-loathing and turn you into an awful person that nobody likes.

Dieting is not about health. It is about perfectionism. The pressure to be perfect is purely for profit. Stop paying into a system that doesn't give a damn about you and thrives on your failure.

"In the long term, dieting is a spectacular waste of time for everyone except statistical unicorns." --Louise Adams

~Cie~