“Gaining unlimited weight” isn’t the alternative to restricting and engaging in disordered eating thought processes. Intuitive eating is. And yes, some people who begin to practice intuitive eating will gain weight if they’ve been keeping themselves artificially below their set points, but you are tipping your hand here with the idea that you’ll just get fatter and fatter until you’re some unimaginable whale if you stop restricting. If you actually want to reject diet culture, just, like, do it. I promise it’s not that scary.
Also, I’d love less focus (in the comments, not so much in your post) on how larger bodies could be considered beautiful. Because it isn’t about that. We don’t need to replace one externally imposed beauty standard with a different one. “Baby Got Back” isn’t body liberation, it just expands access to privilege to a few additional bodies. I frankly do not care if people find me beautiful, I want to stop experiencing material discrimination from everyone from doctors to retailers to designers of public seating *regardless* of whether they personally want to have sex with me.
I've thought about your comments quite a bit. I'm new to this world of escaping diet culture, because until I started writing about it, I didn't know I was caught in it. I've just started working with intuitive eating, and yes, have gained weight, but seem to have plateaued out like you said. I really appreciate your calling attention to the idea that we don't want to trade one externally imposed idea of beauty for a different one. I had to look up "Baby Got Back", which dates me. I am curious, what kind of changes would you like to see so that you don't have to face material discrimination? I'm asking because I'm coming from a history of thin privilege so I can be pretty ignorant. Thanks for your comments and for helping me think in new ways.
Yes, thank you for the inspired conversation! Being "priced out of paradise" is an injustice for any people! I am part of that problem since I bought land here coming from California. I want to make a difference in that department in two ways:
(1). I want transplants to consider creating a large trust that they contribute their land back into when they die, so the Hawaiian people CAN afford to live here. The Bishop Estate Trust, which was created for this purpose long ago, has a tarnished reputation and many no longer trust it. Having been a trust attorney for decades, I think we can learn from that old trust, write a new one, and begin to return the land back to the Hawaiians.
(2). I'd like to create sovereign sustainable communities here so living in off-the grid luxury is affordable for everyone! We now have the technologies to make this possible. We can create our own clean drinking water with atomospheric water generators, and most of the Island has enough rainwater to do the rest. We can create our own off the grid energy with plenty of sunshine. We can now have internet available to anyone who can be seen from satellite. I'm in the process of developing a flushable toilet that processes the sewage using electricity before it passes to the earth in cesspool (90% of housing is cesspool on this island). We have this toilet on sailboats already (Lectrasan), but no one has brought it to the land yet. These technologies make it possible to be "sovereign" from the centralized government systems that keep us dependent on their pipes, sewers, electric grids, etc. These services are out of date and cost us billions! The land that has always been too remote for central govt. utilities is still inexpensive, and there is lots of it here. If we can get zoning that allows for condos on agricultural land, then several families could grow their own food and form communities that are self-sufficient. That's my dream for all of us!
American culture has been so good at this story that 95% of women in America do not like their bodies. This undermines our personal power tremendously in our rejection of self and feeling less valuable. Additionally, we often find ourselves in competition with other women to be the most attractive to the males around us, and for those who do not feel attractive, to resent and reject other women for being privileged as "pretty". It divides us all the time. Beauty competitions are of women only -- what does that tell us? Why don't men have handsome contests?
I've been lucky enough to land in the Islands of Hawaii where men and women are traditionally "large" in every way, and VERY powerful. One of my favorite stories is about one of the last queens. She was very large and had an extramarital lover. When her husband, the King, found them together, he started a physical fight. She won! I've never lived in a culture where the men are just as afraid of the women physically harming them as the women are. It's not peaceful, but given how lopsided the rest of the world is -- it's a refreshing change.
This culture of abundance, lots of food, love and family includes large bodies. The women wear long flowing moo moos (spacious and not binding). I haven't worn a bra since I landed.
This concept of abundance may also be of assistance to understanding our current plight. Before missionaries arrived on the islands, I am told that sexual relationships were more fluid, monogamy was not an expectation, nakedness was not a "bad" thing, and there was plenty of love-making to go around. In such a world, I imagine I would feel less pressure to conform because there were hundreds of thousands of possible partners without puritanical restraints and in flux rather than "one true love."
In contrast, I remember growing up feeling like there were only a "few good men, and they were already taken." There was a sense of scarcity and competition in the mating game. Whether we can attract a man in our culture can determine our status, our economic viability of having a family or of surviving where villages don't exist to support us during pregnancy, motherhood or our elderly years. 35% of women over 65 in America are living on less than $2,000/mo. I've known many women who marry solely for the financial security it offers. If thin and pretty is the key to survival in a patriarchal culture, I can see why so many are obsessed.
Having small nuclear families that can easily move to find work in America has undermined the ability of extended families and villages to support the support staff (women). Then we may find ourselves wondering if our husbands will "leave us" for a younger, thinner woman one day, and our survival may depend on it if we've become dependent on our spouse financially. Being thin and pretty may be a life or death conversation if we are not self-sufficient.
As an ugly duckling, I chose not to compete most of the time, rebelling against the whole idea. I chose not to "need" a man, but I still found myself conforming to male expectations eventually because I wanted in on the old-boys-club. I wanted to be where the alleged power was (law/politics/social justice).
I say alleged because as I'm now a crone, and enjoying my freedom not to wear a bra, for example, I find my greatest power has always been inside of me, but I've seldom noticed it, honored it or expressed it. Speaking our truths, finding our authenticity, waking from unconscious beliefs that maintain the patriarchy inspires me to want more freedom -- freedom from the mental shackles of thousands of years of the enslavement of women. This is one powerful conversation! Thank you!
Thank you so much for your deeply considered comment. This is such an interesting topic, and it brings different aspects to the surface for each person depending upon their life experience. I love the Hawaiian celebration of the abundant body in the midst of abundant food and that the Hawaiian experience of the body was once much more free and flowing. I did recently read that although food is abundant in Hawaii, now housing is not, and many native Hawaiians are moving to the Las Vegas area where housing as affordable.
I wonder if s as food becomes more abundant, people's size becomes more abundant as well, and that may not be a negative thing always. Of course, there are so many other factors affecting our health and size, like environmental contaminants and the quality of food, but this is interesting to consider.
And anything we can do together to shake ourselves loose from the clutches of patriarchy and racism, the better for all. At least, that is my hope.
Oh, and my failure to even mention racism shows my white privilege in this conversation. One I am grateful to be aware of and excited to read more about!
I have spent a lifetime with this same obsession.. the weight scales being the gorgon (monster) that must be passed before I start my day. I so resonate with what you have shared here to add another dimension to my inquiry around the same subject of constant focus on my weight in this lifetime. I was born with a rubenesque, curvacious body, that had I been born during the renaissance, would have been the exalted form, since round wives show cased their husbands abundant provision as food was more difficult to obtain. Cindy, for me, you provided a whole new lensing for the obsession with weight in our culture. It had never occurred to me that it was actually an aspect of dualism/hierarchy that is embedded into all of our culturally conditioned responses... to first dualize and then put in a hierarchy the other beings we run into..and so thorough and pernicious has the conditioning been, that it is mostly UNCONSCIOUS. Now I think of myself as a pretty unconditionally loving person, and when I took myself out for a "test drive" with your suggestion.. I became aware of some unconscious judgments of people.. like "that woman looks like a pear".. that might have escaped my thinking of myself as judgmental.. telling myself that i am just observing.. however, i noticed with awareness, that there WAS a subtle judgment . I have worked a long time on awareness and Self, not to make anyone less than or more than myself, but just observing her "pearness".. telepathically communicates that judgment to her. I am making a genuine agreement with myself, to keep up this practice, until it stops. I know that is a HUGE ask of my awareness, but feeling tied to my own feelings around weight, I want to affect change first in myself and hopefully because of that change, in the collective ideas about weight. Thank you Cindy for your incisive clarity and thorough research around this negative cultural issue of weight. Keep up the great work of being a "hunter/gatherer/disseminator" of the wisdom culled from your life experience.!!
I am so glad this speaks to you and that you took what was new to you for a 'test drive'! and thank you for the comment that in judging another person we are telepathically or energetically communicating that information to that other. The other person, then, will receive it unconsciously, probably and either judge themselves or someone else a bit more severely and on and on it goes. Thus, we all continue to perpetuate this dualism that few if any of us want, but we inadvertently give power to these technologies of separation that deepen the expressions of racism and patriarchy. I, with you, intend to keep watching myself and cleaning up my inner narrative to be more loving and nonjudgemental of others and their bodies. I see no reason that what was beautiful during the Greek era ,depicted in the voluptuous images of woman and Goddesses, should be anything but beautiful today. Thank you so much for sharing your experience and insights for us all.
Thank you for your self-reflection and your owning certain privileges is such a breath of fresh air in a world where so many are avoiding any responsibility and prefer to take the easy route -- blame others. Thank you for going for it with such a vulnerable topic -- so full of shame for so many. I'm going to "wonder and ponder" a little more deeply before I share what bubbles up for me in this personal experience that now has a much larger context! Adoring you, Vyana
“Gaining unlimited weight” isn’t the alternative to restricting and engaging in disordered eating thought processes. Intuitive eating is. And yes, some people who begin to practice intuitive eating will gain weight if they’ve been keeping themselves artificially below their set points, but you are tipping your hand here with the idea that you’ll just get fatter and fatter until you’re some unimaginable whale if you stop restricting. If you actually want to reject diet culture, just, like, do it. I promise it’s not that scary.
Also, I’d love less focus (in the comments, not so much in your post) on how larger bodies could be considered beautiful. Because it isn’t about that. We don’t need to replace one externally imposed beauty standard with a different one. “Baby Got Back” isn’t body liberation, it just expands access to privilege to a few additional bodies. I frankly do not care if people find me beautiful, I want to stop experiencing material discrimination from everyone from doctors to retailers to designers of public seating *regardless* of whether they personally want to have sex with me.
Dear Kate, I want you to know that your comment sent me down the road of intuitive eating and for that I am grateful. I wrote about it at the following link and thanked you in my post as well. Thank you! https://cynthiaedstrom.substack.com/p/enjoying-holiday-cookies-escaping
I've thought about your comments quite a bit. I'm new to this world of escaping diet culture, because until I started writing about it, I didn't know I was caught in it. I've just started working with intuitive eating, and yes, have gained weight, but seem to have plateaued out like you said. I really appreciate your calling attention to the idea that we don't want to trade one externally imposed idea of beauty for a different one. I had to look up "Baby Got Back", which dates me. I am curious, what kind of changes would you like to see so that you don't have to face material discrimination? I'm asking because I'm coming from a history of thin privilege so I can be pretty ignorant. Thanks for your comments and for helping me think in new ways.
Yes, thank you for the inspired conversation! Being "priced out of paradise" is an injustice for any people! I am part of that problem since I bought land here coming from California. I want to make a difference in that department in two ways:
(1). I want transplants to consider creating a large trust that they contribute their land back into when they die, so the Hawaiian people CAN afford to live here. The Bishop Estate Trust, which was created for this purpose long ago, has a tarnished reputation and many no longer trust it. Having been a trust attorney for decades, I think we can learn from that old trust, write a new one, and begin to return the land back to the Hawaiians.
(2). I'd like to create sovereign sustainable communities here so living in off-the grid luxury is affordable for everyone! We now have the technologies to make this possible. We can create our own clean drinking water with atomospheric water generators, and most of the Island has enough rainwater to do the rest. We can create our own off the grid energy with plenty of sunshine. We can now have internet available to anyone who can be seen from satellite. I'm in the process of developing a flushable toilet that processes the sewage using electricity before it passes to the earth in cesspool (90% of housing is cesspool on this island). We have this toilet on sailboats already (Lectrasan), but no one has brought it to the land yet. These technologies make it possible to be "sovereign" from the centralized government systems that keep us dependent on their pipes, sewers, electric grids, etc. These services are out of date and cost us billions! The land that has always been too remote for central govt. utilities is still inexpensive, and there is lots of it here. If we can get zoning that allows for condos on agricultural land, then several families could grow their own food and form communities that are self-sufficient. That's my dream for all of us!
American culture has been so good at this story that 95% of women in America do not like their bodies. This undermines our personal power tremendously in our rejection of self and feeling less valuable. Additionally, we often find ourselves in competition with other women to be the most attractive to the males around us, and for those who do not feel attractive, to resent and reject other women for being privileged as "pretty". It divides us all the time. Beauty competitions are of women only -- what does that tell us? Why don't men have handsome contests?
I've been lucky enough to land in the Islands of Hawaii where men and women are traditionally "large" in every way, and VERY powerful. One of my favorite stories is about one of the last queens. She was very large and had an extramarital lover. When her husband, the King, found them together, he started a physical fight. She won! I've never lived in a culture where the men are just as afraid of the women physically harming them as the women are. It's not peaceful, but given how lopsided the rest of the world is -- it's a refreshing change.
This culture of abundance, lots of food, love and family includes large bodies. The women wear long flowing moo moos (spacious and not binding). I haven't worn a bra since I landed.
This concept of abundance may also be of assistance to understanding our current plight. Before missionaries arrived on the islands, I am told that sexual relationships were more fluid, monogamy was not an expectation, nakedness was not a "bad" thing, and there was plenty of love-making to go around. In such a world, I imagine I would feel less pressure to conform because there were hundreds of thousands of possible partners without puritanical restraints and in flux rather than "one true love."
In contrast, I remember growing up feeling like there were only a "few good men, and they were already taken." There was a sense of scarcity and competition in the mating game. Whether we can attract a man in our culture can determine our status, our economic viability of having a family or of surviving where villages don't exist to support us during pregnancy, motherhood or our elderly years. 35% of women over 65 in America are living on less than $2,000/mo. I've known many women who marry solely for the financial security it offers. If thin and pretty is the key to survival in a patriarchal culture, I can see why so many are obsessed.
Having small nuclear families that can easily move to find work in America has undermined the ability of extended families and villages to support the support staff (women). Then we may find ourselves wondering if our husbands will "leave us" for a younger, thinner woman one day, and our survival may depend on it if we've become dependent on our spouse financially. Being thin and pretty may be a life or death conversation if we are not self-sufficient.
As an ugly duckling, I chose not to compete most of the time, rebelling against the whole idea. I chose not to "need" a man, but I still found myself conforming to male expectations eventually because I wanted in on the old-boys-club. I wanted to be where the alleged power was (law/politics/social justice).
I say alleged because as I'm now a crone, and enjoying my freedom not to wear a bra, for example, I find my greatest power has always been inside of me, but I've seldom noticed it, honored it or expressed it. Speaking our truths, finding our authenticity, waking from unconscious beliefs that maintain the patriarchy inspires me to want more freedom -- freedom from the mental shackles of thousands of years of the enslavement of women. This is one powerful conversation! Thank you!
Thank you so much for your deeply considered comment. This is such an interesting topic, and it brings different aspects to the surface for each person depending upon their life experience. I love the Hawaiian celebration of the abundant body in the midst of abundant food and that the Hawaiian experience of the body was once much more free and flowing. I did recently read that although food is abundant in Hawaii, now housing is not, and many native Hawaiians are moving to the Las Vegas area where housing as affordable.
I wonder if s as food becomes more abundant, people's size becomes more abundant as well, and that may not be a negative thing always. Of course, there are so many other factors affecting our health and size, like environmental contaminants and the quality of food, but this is interesting to consider.
And anything we can do together to shake ourselves loose from the clutches of patriarchy and racism, the better for all. At least, that is my hope.
Oh, and my failure to even mention racism shows my white privilege in this conversation. One I am grateful to be aware of and excited to read more about!
I have spent a lifetime with this same obsession.. the weight scales being the gorgon (monster) that must be passed before I start my day. I so resonate with what you have shared here to add another dimension to my inquiry around the same subject of constant focus on my weight in this lifetime. I was born with a rubenesque, curvacious body, that had I been born during the renaissance, would have been the exalted form, since round wives show cased their husbands abundant provision as food was more difficult to obtain. Cindy, for me, you provided a whole new lensing for the obsession with weight in our culture. It had never occurred to me that it was actually an aspect of dualism/hierarchy that is embedded into all of our culturally conditioned responses... to first dualize and then put in a hierarchy the other beings we run into..and so thorough and pernicious has the conditioning been, that it is mostly UNCONSCIOUS. Now I think of myself as a pretty unconditionally loving person, and when I took myself out for a "test drive" with your suggestion.. I became aware of some unconscious judgments of people.. like "that woman looks like a pear".. that might have escaped my thinking of myself as judgmental.. telling myself that i am just observing.. however, i noticed with awareness, that there WAS a subtle judgment . I have worked a long time on awareness and Self, not to make anyone less than or more than myself, but just observing her "pearness".. telepathically communicates that judgment to her. I am making a genuine agreement with myself, to keep up this practice, until it stops. I know that is a HUGE ask of my awareness, but feeling tied to my own feelings around weight, I want to affect change first in myself and hopefully because of that change, in the collective ideas about weight. Thank you Cindy for your incisive clarity and thorough research around this negative cultural issue of weight. Keep up the great work of being a "hunter/gatherer/disseminator" of the wisdom culled from your life experience.!!
I am so glad this speaks to you and that you took what was new to you for a 'test drive'! and thank you for the comment that in judging another person we are telepathically or energetically communicating that information to that other. The other person, then, will receive it unconsciously, probably and either judge themselves or someone else a bit more severely and on and on it goes. Thus, we all continue to perpetuate this dualism that few if any of us want, but we inadvertently give power to these technologies of separation that deepen the expressions of racism and patriarchy. I, with you, intend to keep watching myself and cleaning up my inner narrative to be more loving and nonjudgemental of others and their bodies. I see no reason that what was beautiful during the Greek era ,depicted in the voluptuous images of woman and Goddesses, should be anything but beautiful today. Thank you so much for sharing your experience and insights for us all.
Many thanks, Cynthia. Very thoughtful and insightful. I look forward to reading more from you and taking a look at those others you mentioned.
Thank you for your self-reflection and your owning certain privileges is such a breath of fresh air in a world where so many are avoiding any responsibility and prefer to take the easy route -- blame others. Thank you for going for it with such a vulnerable topic -- so full of shame for so many. I'm going to "wonder and ponder" a little more deeply before I share what bubbles up for me in this personal experience that now has a much larger context! Adoring you, Vyana