fattypatties

I'm impressed with Master Chef, Julie Goodwin. I guess the early reports that she turned down a quarter of a million dollars from Jenny Craig was innaccurate. No figure was apparently discussed, but the person leaving the job was paid a rumored $900K, so I'm sure it was a big pile of money from which she walked away.

I especially liked why she walked away:

"I am less concerned about my weight than about the fact that one in seven people do not have enough food to eat each day and that is why I wanted to be an ambassador for Oxfam Grow" (source: Daily Telegraph)

Yeah I know that she later reassured everyone that she watches what she eats and she didn't think all weight loss was bad and all the other disclaimers about it being her life and her choices, but she's still a hero in my eyes because she walked away from the money and she is doing something more important with her life.

I want to celebrate her decision because as things developed last week regarding Jess Weiner (look it up because I'm over linking to her or providing her with search engine optimization through net attention), I became profoundly disappointed in how contrived and base it all seemed. She was a shill for Dove and now she is going to be a shill for weight loss. Too bad, so sad, and frankly, boring.

The contrast to between Jess and Julie is profound and holds important lessons about self-love and priorities. Julie is okay with being herself, so her priorities can lead her elsewhere. It is her own heart and not money that rules her decisions.

So I just want to give Julie Goodwin a great big shout out for loving her self and loveing others and keeping her priorities straight. If you're on FaceBook, you might go by her page and letting her know you appreciate her. Or better yet, support OxFam in her honor, which I'm sure she'd appreciate.

I am not healthy. I have not been healthy for years. Now you know the obvious. In 1987, I was healthy. I had beautiful metabolic numbers. I walked and jogged a lot. I played tennis regularly. I was 30 years old and most people thought I was under 21. I rarely smoked or drank. I was profoundly unhappy, however. I was in a bad marriage and I was sure I was going to die because I weighed 260 pounds.

Instead of helping me see that I could enjoy my life and my body if I uncovered my own wants, desires and happiness, I got bad advice. I was told I could only be happy if I shed the weight. I was told that my unhappiness didn't come from bad choices or from unresolved past issues or from simply not taking the time to know who I was and what I wanted to be. No, my unhappiness was because I was a thin person living in a fat body.

So a doctor gave this healthy body two prescriptions. Tenuate, which is a synthetic amphetamine and a diuretic to "jump start" my weight loss. Then I went on a 800 calorie diet that I faithfully followed for 2 years. I took my love of movement and turned it into a regimen of running 2 to 4 miles a day. I took my social life and ditched it for a fear of eating. And it turns out I took my healthy body and ruined it's metabolism.

In 1989, I was more messed up that ever emotionally, though I only weighed 130 pounds. I was divorced with no idea of what a good relationship could be. I was suicidal. Oh, and I was addicted not only to the Tenuate but to valuum that I started taking to sleep at night.

I've never been really healthy since that experience. But, hey, I was "success." My "after" picture was taken and I wrote a nice rendition of "my story" that was placed in a book for anyone walking into the bariatric clinic to see so that other's could be sold the path I had taken.

By 1993, most of the weight had come back on, though I was beginning to figure out who I was and what I wanted to be. By 1997, my health got worse and I have been disabled by my chronic conditions every since. So it is hard to say that I am healthy in the normal sense of that word.

The prevailing wisdom would say that it is the weight that created my ill health, but I know better. I know I was healthy at age 30 and that I did things to my body in the name of weight loss that led to disability. I dieted my way into disability and now I have to live with the body those behaviors and bad advice produced.

My first decision to love myself came in December 1990 while in a hospital because I had made a half-assed suicide attmept. I looked around at my surroundings and said, "I'm not crazy and I'm not going to choose to be crazy." I didn't fully understand what that journey meant, but it was definitely a first step towards loving myself because I rejected other people's definitions of me and started seeking my own.

My second decision to love myself came in November 1992 when I was fired from a job I hated and I decided I was never going to work full-time at a job I hated ever again. This decision eventually led to my getting my Ph.D. in Sociology as well as choosing to write, produce and create multi-media, rather than take a traditional academic trajectory.

My third decision to love myself came in August 1997 when I was misdiagnosed with lupus. The diagnosis was wrong but the prognosis was the same, I was facing life with chronic illness. I had to find a way to live that life fully.

The final decision to love myself came in January 2001, when I decided to give up dieting. I decided I was going to be the healthiest and happiest fat, disabled, aging person I could be. The transformation was complete. I loved my mind, I loved my talents, I loved my body.

But here's the thing. I am happier than I ever was. I do more healthy behaviors than I ever did. I love the skin I'm in. I love being me. I don't get up in the morning hoping that the day will be over. I don't dread my work. I don't hate my life.

I have aches and pains, and sometimes, I don't really recognize my aging body with its new wrinkles and new ailments. But I love my body and I care for it and treat as wonderfully as I can.

Life is struggle, but there is a difference between a struggle that feels like it is oppressing you and a struggle that holds the potential for growth and discovery. I prefer the latter.

So I'm fat. I'm disabled. I'm old. I'm not a poster girl for any particular cause. I live outside those boundaries and cannot hold myself up as a shining example of any particular success. But I'd rather be who I am today, than who I was at age 30.

That was my journey and it is one that I have to reaffirm in many ways almost daily, but it is also one that comes as naturally to me now as believing that if I just got skinny life would be okay came to me then.

I tell my journey often not because I necessarily need to do so, though it does help me to share it. I tell it often because it saddens me when I see young people falling for the same lies I fell for. It angers me to know that there are still "helpers" out there who are telling people, "you are not okay, let me sell you this to make you better." But I also tell my story for selfish reasons, because I know that if the market went away for these products, then my life would be easier. I could go through a day without being told how wrong I was. Loving myself would be respected. The more of us who love ourselves and accept ourselves and don't fall for the sales pitch, the easier it will be for all of us.

I wish you a pleasant and adventurous journey.

In the early Summer of of 1987, I took a job with Manpower at Honeywell in Clearwater, Florida. I was assigned to be a secretary for one of the program engineers in the Shuttle division. I learned a lot about aerospace engineering and how governments built space programs. By April 1, 1988, I was given a permanent job as the Project Administrator of the Space Station program. It was a very different idea then. The space station being built now is scaled down from the hopes of the late 80s. My job was to liason between all the engineers and our customer, McDonnell Douglas. By October of 1989, I was laid off in a major "down-sizing" in the company (over 5000 employees company wide, many more cuts were to follow).

In many ways I was proud of my small contribution to the space program. As a kid, I remember the moon landing vividly and I remember a 6th grade science teacher who challenged us to think about space and what it meant to our little planet.

I cried when I watched the video above. I was inspired by our space program and now it seems like it will go the way of all other great American dreams. It will be commodified and sold off to high bidders who will then fashion it as a profitable toys instead of highest aspirations. I spent the week watching old Star Trek episodes and thinking to myself how different the future is from what it was imagined. Star Trek of the 60s makes frequent references to the space program of the 1990s and early 21st century. Most of its references are laughable and seem silly in light of what really has happened.

Some of it is a good -- I mean we were supposed to have had a great World War III with a mass eugenics program and millions, if not billions, dying (check out the first appearance of Kahn in Space Seed for more details. But we also were supposed to be united as a planet and venturing out into deeper and deeper space by now. And we have not.

As a sociologist, I am aware of some of the problems with how the space program developed. The language of the "final frontier" is fraught with colonialism, ethnocentricism and xenophobic references that go unexamined. I know money is needed for more pressing problems and that many progressives fear the space program as much as they do our military industrial complex. There is a definite connection. The builders of the space station almost all have military divisions. And, of course, Reagan's star wars programs of the 1980s were both silly and frightening.

But, dammit, I miss the naivety of the early space program. I miss the feeling of pride and wonder. I miss the visions of a possible future where major human conditions could be solved and equality was the natural outcome. I watch the early Star Trek episodes and I want to live in a place where people are equal. Okay, there is a lot of sexist stuff, but for the 60s, having women in positions of power and working on ships was radical.

So this past week has been a bit emotional for me. Wednesday, July 20th, was not only the 42nd anniversary of the moon landing, but also it would have been my son's 22nd birthday. Thursday, July 21st, was the end of the Shuttle era and there isn't really a whole lot in the works as Congress spends its time posturing over the so-called debt crisis and NASA officials are all smiles about the comming "commercial era."

I feel old. It doesn't help that this coming Thursday, I will turn 54. I miss so many things and I am saddened by the world as it is because I had a vision of what it could be.

But I do know that it can be better. My favorite line from Apollo 13 comes early in the movie, when Jim Lovell (Tom Hanks) is talking to his wife Marilyn (Kathleen Quinlan) right after the moon walk:

"From now on, we live in a world where man has walked on the moon. And it's not a miracle, we just decided to go"

We could decide again. All we need is the vision.

Mother's Day is a tough holiday for me personally. There are women like me in the world who appear to the world around us as childless but who have lost one or more children at some point in the stages of becoming/being a mother.

I didn't exactly have a miscarriage. My son died while still inside me and I went through the pain of waiting for my body to figure that out. When that didn't happen, labor was induced. "No heartbeat" still rings in my ears and stings my soul over 21 years later. This is not something that one "gets over." It is something that one "lives with."

The question "Do you have any children?" is an impossible one for me. At one point in my life, I answered "yes" and offered the explanation. Now I sometimes answer "no" because it is easier and less invasive. But the answer "no" pains me nonetheless. I feel like I am betraying something or someone.

There are several times each year that make me pause: January 16, when labor was induced; mid-July when he would have been born; the Christmas season; and Mother's Day. I think today is the toughest because I feel like it's on everyone's mind. But it is also the easiest because I know there are women who feel like I do, who feel left out, who harbor some dread even if they honor their own mothers.

Today is not a happy day for everyone. Please remember on this day several things:

1. That some people do not have good mothers. Women are not instantly good mothers because they had sex and fertile wombs. Motherhood is something that one has to practice and learn. So don't assume that everyone should honor their mother. Some mothers are not worth honoring and children who know that are often better people than the mother's who bore them.

2. That the children of some mothers are no longer with us and that this day might be hard for those mothers.

3. That even women who have no children can be good mothers. We can understand how we are expressions of Mother Earth and we can care for and nurture others, ensuring that their lives are fruitful, peaceful and fulfilling.

4. That men can be good mothers too. All creatures are capable of nurturing and caring. We are all mothers and fathers. We have both natures inside us. These words we construct with masculine and feminine meanings are mere reflections of the deeper capacity all human beings have to care and frankly, right now, this world could use a lot more caring.

5. The origin of this holiday is Mother's Day for Peace. Howe encouraged women to use their experiences of motherhood in the wider social world, to think of a world that is good for all children, including all children who have grown to adulthood. Today should be a call for charity, peace and freedom.

So I write this today as a way to transform my own experience of this day into something more than an annual reminder of personal loss. Today I choose to celebrate motherhood. Yes, I will call my mom, whom I do honor. But I will remember that this is just one expression of what this day could/should mean. Knowing that today should be a call for peace among us humans makes this day easier for me to take.

The events of the last week have weighed heavily on my soul. I long for peace and freedom. So I celebrate today as a reminder of that peace and freedom. I hope others will too.

Happy Mother's Day of Peace.