Enough with the "slippery" and "lick".
I read Mark Morford’s columns, although I don’t often get much from them. I am in the choir, and he mostly writes the things I thought but not so thoroughly. I’m totally down with his emphasis on fun sexuality, but watching him apply that lens to most analysis gets old and a little of his sexualized prose goes a long way. Still, every now and then, he completely nails it.
This column, which should have started in the sixth paragraph, far as I’m concerned, made me catch my breath and think about the times when I forsake my body to live in my mind and how unhappy I was during those periods. It made me try to understand people whose bodies are not a source of pleasant sensations like stretching and breathing and sweating and walking in rhythm with your companion and drinking cold water, but instead traitors that constantly hurt them and make them feel ugly and make other people think less of them. If their bodies have turned on them, hurt them and don’t carry them on springy legs, they’ve probably stopped looking for the subtle good things your body sends you. Maybe they still get the big sensations, like eating and sex, but they probably don’t turn to their bodies for small joys, like lying on warm rocks with a breeze on your bare feet. I bet they do their best to ignore their bodies altogether, which may be the smart decision if they’re getting more bad than good from their bodies, but makes me really sad. Maybe they know that the way it is, being obese and distracted and ashamed, is a bad way, but they don’t know what would be like to be friends with their bodies and it can’t possibly be worth experiencing the misery of being back in their neglected bodies for as long as it would take to change it. What a vicious trap.
Also, I liked today’s column, for some well done righteousness. I don’t really like birds, because I think they are creepy dinosaurs that would eat you soon as look at you, but I don’t want them falling out of the sky, dying by the thousands. I liked the flocks of crows that flew over my house at dusk three years ago, before West Nile.
This column, which should have started in the sixth paragraph, far as I’m concerned, made me catch my breath and think about the times when I forsake my body to live in my mind and how unhappy I was during those periods. It made me try to understand people whose bodies are not a source of pleasant sensations like stretching and breathing and sweating and walking in rhythm with your companion and drinking cold water, but instead traitors that constantly hurt them and make them feel ugly and make other people think less of them. If their bodies have turned on them, hurt them and don’t carry them on springy legs, they’ve probably stopped looking for the subtle good things your body sends you. Maybe they still get the big sensations, like eating and sex, but they probably don’t turn to their bodies for small joys, like lying on warm rocks with a breeze on your bare feet. I bet they do their best to ignore their bodies altogether, which may be the smart decision if they’re getting more bad than good from their bodies, but makes me really sad. Maybe they know that the way it is, being obese and distracted and ashamed, is a bad way, but they don’t know what would be like to be friends with their bodies and it can’t possibly be worth experiencing the misery of being back in their neglected bodies for as long as it would take to change it. What a vicious trap.
Also, I liked today’s column, for some well done righteousness. I don’t really like birds, because I think they are creepy dinosaurs that would eat you soon as look at you, but I don’t want them falling out of the sky, dying by the thousands. I liked the flocks of crows that flew over my house at dusk three years ago, before West Nile.
posted by Megan at 11:49 AM
40 Comments:
>>I don’t really like birds, because I think they are creepy dinosaurs that would eat you soon as look at you<<
I almost just peed in my pants.
Birds are gorgeous, precisely because they are graceful prehistoric survivals from dinosaur times. Speaking of which, I spent a wonderful half an hour with an east coast blue heron over Christmas break. Did you know they swallow fish about a quarter their own size, while the fish are still alive and struggling?
Now domestic house cats, you know they're thinking about eating you, and if they were bigger they definitely would. Instead they just deign to let you feed them.
Bodies...our bodies are our friends today, but one day they will be our enemy. They are saving up a mighty, devastating, inevitable betrayal for us. Of course, I tend to be a glass half empty kind of guy. Gotta work on that now that I'm Californian.
Marcus
On obesity...no news here, but food is used as such a drug here. America is great at producing drugs that numb the existential void. We have a kind of genius at it. While of course being hysterical about illegal drugs.
It's astounding how class-linked obesity is. You won't see a single obese person on an Ivy league college campus.
Marcus
I sometimes say very similar stuff as a joke to make fun of myself, but that happens to be my honest assessment of birds, with no humor intended. If you look deep into their little birdy eyes, you see that they have carnivorous souls, and only their size keeps them from gutting you with their beaks and eating you intestines first. They are dinosaurs, and no one should forget.
In their place, which is small and far away in trees, they are very pleasant with nice chirping and bright colors.
I am starting to understand why people can't tell when I'm joking. In this case, I am not.
It's far from clear that what the World Needs Now are more writers servicing the "We think alike, so let's be cleverly smug and superior" industry.
Whether birds are or are not descendants of dinosaurs it would be hard to overlook the grace and beauty of many of them. Is it any wonder that in religious imagery they have been associated with angelic states or with a certain freedom..or that love should be linked with the nightingale, innocence with doves?
Anyone who is familiar with Attar's 'Conference of the Birds' will know that birds are a bit more than dinosaurs! :)
"carnivorous souls"
I wonder if when they look in our eyes they have the same thoughts...
Mark:
I don't know that the world needs more of them, but there is room for a few, and Morford sometimes says what I'm thinking better and sharper than I would. A fair amount of the time, it doesn't do much for me.
I've never been to Baja, but while really obese people are maybe more common than they were a couple decades ago they're still a distinct minority. After reading the linked column, I can conclude only that (1) the writer's exaggerating a bit, or (2) there's something about the resorts in Baja that attract those of ample girth.
Peter
Iron Rails & Iron Weights
only their size keeps them from gutting you with their beaks and eating you intestines first
Funny that the world isn't full of stories of man-eating ostriches and hummingbirds but it is full of man-eating cats.
Yet you still like cats.
Justus:
Cats don't pretend. We are all well aware of their carnivorous nature, and we make whatever concessions to that suit us. Birds, however, pretend to be all harmless, with their "tra la la" and their "I only eat seeds now" and their "aren't my feathers so pretty?" and their "romance of flight". That is why birds require extra vigilance. When there were giant man-eating birds, they were called velociraptors and tyrannosaurus rex. Caution, distrust and a mutually enforced distance is the appropriate reaction to birds.
I'm a bit astounded at how offended I am by the Morland article. To write a charged piece like this without addressing what Marcus said so succinctly in his second comment re: class is totally unbelievable to me. "Laziness" and "culture where everyone claims to be a victim" and the purported "conspiracy among junk-food purveyors and major pharmcos" shouldn't even be on the top ten list of why obesity is a problem, let alone the top three.
Does Morland ever leave the Marina District or Nob Hill or Noe Valley or whatever the heck yuppie neighborhood he lives in EXCEPT to go to expensive tourist traps in Mexico? If he did, he would surely find systematic, epidemic obesity in San Francisco and environs. I suggest he come down to where I live in East Palo Alto or, if he wants to stay closer to home, maybe Hunter's Point or the Tenderloin.
Megan, I liked what you wrote much better. I do think it is a sad, sad, sad thing when your body is no longer a source of joy, or even plain old comfort, to you. But it costs real time and cash money to keep your body in tip-top shape -- especially in a society where the most lucrative paid work is of the non-physical variety, and where there is often an inverse relationship between caloric and cash values of food. What are the incentives to invest capital in our bodies, especially for those who may have never, even as a child, known comfort in their own skin?
Yeah. Morford works in hyperbole, mostly, and lays on the "love yourself and the delights of the earth" even more heavily than I do. It was careless of him to assume that his upper middle class circles in San Francisco represent the entire city. But honestly, that mistake, thinking everyone is like you and your friends is one I make ALL THE TIME and my primary cause of grief on the internets. I can't really complain that someone else does that too.
I should point out that there's no need to only include Americans in the we're-all-getting-obese point that Morford is making.
From our recent trip to India, where we saw few Americans but many Europeans, here are my impressions:
the British: suffering from the same problem, except they're even worse sun worshippers, so they're all pink and roasting fiercly on the beaches of Goa
the Irish: same thing
the Germans: split between quite fat and not fat at all... there were sort of two types - one family I saw had a daughter who was pretty but looked amazingly like Miss Piggy
the Russians and Poles: same as the Germans
the Dutch: small sample group, but from it I deduce that the Dutch are the hottest people in the world (again, n=1 family)
Israelis: rugged and not fat
the Spanish: unnervingly hot
Anyway, all I'm saying is that it's not just us so we don't have to take ALL the criticism. I think it's the whole "developed" world.
Also on a side note, Indian people are not necessarily skinny. A lot of the men are, but more women than not are a bit chubby. Do you know what goes into most Indian food? I don't mean to ruin it for you lovers of Indian cuisine, but it's all GHEE! It's GHEE! Gaaaah. I can't believe I ate all that ghee.*
*ghee = clarified butter
Quirkybook, staying in shape isn't that expensive. Go run, all it requires is shoes. Do pushups and situps at home, that doesn't require anything. How about, just walk more, like use the stairs rather than the elevators and escelators.
And, an inverse relationship between caloric and cash value of foods? Go to the grocery store, eat vegetables, they're cheap AND low in calories.
Blah, that article is horrible. Let's at least be fair to the midwesterners here, with the weather they deal with most Californians wouldn't be able to get out of bed, let alone go live an active healthy lifestyle.
Anyway, people get fat simply because they're lazy about exercise, for whatever reason. I don't know why everyone keeps making such a big deal out of it. Why care what other people do to themselves?
Justin
Justin:
People overeat and don't exercise for lots of reasons; simplifying it to laziness is an unfair accusation in very many cases. Maybe you can't imagine what it would be like to not know which foods are healthy (because your crap schools didn't tell you) and those foods aren't available in your neighborhoods (because there aren't supermarkets there, only overpriced convenience stores selling crap food), and you don't have time to cook good foods (because you are working two jobs, and an extra fifteen minutes is fifteen minutes too many) and you are accustomed to the familiar tastes of fast food, and you can't run outside(because your neighborhood isn't safe, from cars, from crime), and besides, no one you know exercises, and besides, you're fat so it feels horrible, and tonight there's something on TV and the reasons go on forever.
Maybe for us, rich, privileged, whose time is our own, who have all the information we need, eating poorly and not exercising is laziness. But to apply to everyone, to people whose circumstances combine in ways you won't acknowledge, is simply unfair.
I said they're lazy about exercising. I meant that to take into account people who put that time and energy into other things.
I was lazy about exercising when I had a 11.5hour/day shift in a factory. By the time I got home all I had energy for was sleeping. It sucked, but, I needed money, so blah.
But, let's face it, a lot of people prefer to sit at home and do nothing to going out and doing something.
And, the rest is nonsense. If your neighborhood is too scary to go outside, then how do you work, or eat at all? You have to go out sometime.
People do what they want with their lives. If they want to stay in shape, they will. But, a lot of people choose the, just enough to get by, approach to life. And serious exercise is a commitment they're just not willing to keep. The same goes for eating healthy.
Justin
I really, really do not want to have an argument over whether it is people's faults that they are fat. There are so many other places on the internets where you can do that. I wonder if I can head it off by saying all the parts.
Libertarians: Everyone knows what you have to do; eat right and exercise. That is what I would do in any circumstances, because I am master over myself. Because I would have that much willpower, even in situations that I have no understanding of or empathy for, everyone who behaves any differently isn't worthy of my respect or societal consideration. Don't make me pay for their bad decisions; I need that money for the gym, which I never skip because I am virtuous, unlike those fat slobs.
Me: Yes, but society makes them the way they are, and we are society, and besides, my heart bleeds to think of them, so it matters to me too. People respond to the pressures on them. I wouldn't be better or different in their circumstances, so I want to spend your money to fix their circumstances (and mine too, but mostly yours). I know better than the rest of you what we should do, and besides, my compassion makes me feel all smug inside.
Now can we PLEASE, PLEASE, PLEASE not have this conversation?
Crap, too slow.
I apologize for my role in the "whose fault is fatness" argument. For the record, I don't deny the individual's responsibility over his or her own health, as well as the health of his or her dependents. I guess I am bleeding heart enough, however, to have a measure of sympathy for people who (for example) started life out fat because of the ignorance and (for lack of a better word) incompetance of their caretakers, and then continue to be fat because they DON'T have the experience that you, Megan, wrote about of ever having been comfortable in their own body. They often don't know what they're missing, and in fact, have no reason to miss anything at all -- and then they undervalue health more than many other rational people would do so.
Dubin -- I totally agree with you about the America-centricism of the article. As a matter of fact, obesity-related morbidity is a sad fact the whole world over, particularly in middle-income countries. India is a good case in point: even if Indians don't look as fat as their American counterparts, they are still suffering from rapidly increasing rates overweight-related disease, specifically heart disease and diabetes. A lot of this is due to the "Americanization" of diet -- i.e., proliferation of fast food.*
Which brings me to my third point: Justin, I am not sure what metric you are using to count the cost of eating vegetables. But surely you are not including the time and labor cost of food prep. It is surely not inconceivable that for some people, the cost of a) going to the supermarket, b) buying enough vegetables to constitute a calorically sufficient meal, c) and preparing said vegetables might be more expensive than going to McDonald's, where they do your dirty work for you.
*Another factor is genetics: many people of South Asian descent simply cannot stay healthy unless they maintain a BMI of 2 or 3 points less than that of a white person of similar height and build. My father and his two brothers have never been overweight by the American standards, but all three have been diagnosed type ii diabetics since their 40s. My paternal grandmother was also a diabetic, and she never weighed over a 100 pounds in her life.
It's demoralizing to have a crappy life. Being demoralized and exhausted makes you lazy and focused on immediate pleasures so you can forget you're unhappy. Why not eat then. We've all experienced that state temporarily. Some live in it all the time.
Basically, what Megan said. We have some control over our emotional lives, but only some.
Marcus
So, exactly what action is needed to save these people described in the article as, "wonderful and kind and generous as any you can hope to meet in your life, full of warmth and humor and friendliness," from the hell of not living up to Megan's standards?
What are the limits? Exactly how intrusive should the government become to save Megan the horror of having her feelings hurt by seeing people she thinks could be living better?
I have plenty of respect for these people, certainly enough to treat them like adults, mind my own business, and leave them to do whatever makes them happy without insisting we need to intervene in their lives, because I know a better way.
You're assuming all of these people are miserable. But, there are plenty of people who would prefer to sit and watch TV to going to the gym. There are people who simply don't care if they stay in shape or not, and they're happy and completely comfortable with it. There are people who are in great shape who are still uncomfortable with how they look, and with who they are. I would also guess that apathy is common. It's a lot of work to stay in shape, get educated, find a good job, etc.... A lot of people just don't care enough about those things to pursue them.
Justin
Dubin, of course some Indians are fat! I don't know if you went to the Punjab or just Goa but in the former there are some , well, let's be polite, and say horizontally challenged people. :)
But go on, do tell us what else you ate..all this nonsense about birds is irritating me no end :)
anyway, isn't the eagle important in American symbolism? Roth has a few great pages on crows in The Human Stain btw.
Sorry Megan, I couldn't resist this, what with your heading "imaginary people" :
"The ultimate American paranoiac fantasy is that of an individual living in a small idyllic Californian city, a consumerist paradise, who suddenly starts to suspect that the world he lives in is a fake, a spectacle staged to convince him that he lives in a real world, while all people around him are effectively actors and extras in a gigantic show."
--From Zizek, The Desert of the Real.
Fatness: This really isn't such a big worry. I think we're less than 5 years away from fast food restaurants offering on their menus foods made with various substances that will prevent your digestive system from absorbing their fat and calories. This will be bizarre in the sense that you'll basically be paying for tasty sawdust, but it will definitely help cut down on obesity.
Other peoples' fatness: As far as which other countries have the fattest people, as far as Germany is concerned, they have just as fatty and sugary a diet as Americans, with the difference that German cities tend to be designed for walking. I think the end result is that there are as many overweight Germans as Americans, but the obesity itself is not as gross, in all senses of the word.
Other peoples' hotness: In my experience, Dutch women do tend to be attractive, but the hottest people in any of the countries I've been to is definitely Iceland.
Birds: The parrot that belongs to my father and stepmother frightens me and would very definitly like to take a bite out of any strangers that come in the house. When my parents have visitors the parrot must stay in its cage with a padlock on the door lest it escape and take off after its victims like Hannibal Lector. Robins and cardinals are fine, perhaps they are descended from gentle, plant-eating dinosaurs, but the parrot's lineage appears to be directly to the T. Rex.
I am not exactly fat, but according to the movie/model standards I could certainly shed 10 pounds. I do feel fat and it makes me unhappy. However, I used to be thin. I exercised more and ate less, I never had chocolate or bread, etc. I felt more miserable than I do now. The way people looked at me was great. But being hungry and weak all the time and never ever having any sweets made me feel worse than being/feeling fat. So maybe your pity is out of place.
Re other countries: Having lived in both the US and European countries for several years, I think obesity is definitely worse in the US. Maybe there are just as many overweight people in Germany, but they are less overweight. They carry a few pounds too much but not as many as a lot of Americans. In Germany, I rarely ever see anyone who is really gigantically obese, but I see plenty in places like West Philly. And it is not quite true that the German diet is as fatty and sugary as the American. People cook more and better at home, fast food isn't as widely spread, and sugary soda isn't, either. Healthy food like veggies, whole-grain bread, granola and yogurt is relatively cheaper than in the US (in comparison to snacks and burgers, etc) and widely available. Plus, portion sizes in restaurants are smaller and ingredients aren't as much chemistry as in the US (sometimes the color of American cheeses or desserts scares me). Same thing applies to most other European countries, except the UK maybe, where food is rather fat. And throughout Europe, it striking how little people use their cars and there are more stairs to climb, etc in everyday life.
So maybe your pity is out of place.
Naw, for sure I do not mean people who can move freely in their bodies, whatever their weight. If they're comfortable, I have no worries for them.
Forget the birds. You have to watch the squirrels. I went into the park to read and this squirrel came up to beg. When I ignored him, he climbed right up on my book and stared me down. You come into their turf without a bribe and they will kneecap you.
Mark saw those obese people in Baja California and I imagine they in fact enjoyed the sensation of lying on warm sand, if not rocks, with a breeze on your bare feet. I imagine with some fat as insulation lying on warm rocks is even more fun.
When I moved to Chicago I gained 5 pounds. It was too cold to go outside. I wasn’t my fault I gained weight. I could have exercised inside so it was my fault. A head of wilted cabbage cost almost as much as a pizza so it wasn’t my fault. Everything everybody said was true, you are all right.
When I came back from Chicago this cold spell in California would be nothing special,
I came back saying it’s 40 degrees like it’s time to jump in the pool while others were saying that like it was time to get the emergence blankets from the attic. Now I lost the 5 pounds and am wimpy and complaining again, and worse the avocados won’t ripen.
Bertram
Amelia, I think you're right about the UK-at least that's my impression. And I think a recent survey said that we have the worst record in Europe.
Could only find the following and it seems to back that up:
http://www.annecollins.com/obesity/worldwide-obesity.htm
Yeah squirrels are dangerous.
Justin
Justin, a report came out that the native red squirrels were being wiped out by grey (gray) ones introduced from America in 1876.
[I think I put the details down on my Dec. blog].
Er...maybe it's just the American ones that are dangerous :)
Justin, a report came out that the native red squirrels were being wiped out by grey (gray) ones introduced from America in 1876.
[I think I put the details down on my Dec. blog].
Er...maybe it's just the American ones that are dangerous :)
India is a good case in point... rapidly increasing rates of overweight-related disease, specifically heart disease and diabetes. A lot of this is due to the "Americanization" of diet -- i.e., proliferation of fast food.
Don't bet on it. I don't mean to buck the tide here, but we simply cannot blame everything on fast food and "Americanization." Don't get me wrong, I know what much of our contry is like - no options but Country Buffet and KFC... our food culture manipulates our tastes towards evil. But in India I saw plenty of people in plenty of places that had never had even a bite of it.
I thought about diabetes in India and how common it is... Ayurvedic treatments for diabetics have apparently been around for ages. I noticed that it was very difficult to get certain foods without sugar there - "orange juice" was full of sugar, and so was pineapple and watermelon juice, if you can believe it. All jams were 99% sugar, 1% fruit. Some of the traditional desserts will melt your face off with their extreme sweetness. I think a lot of this is because sugarcane is a common crop and sugar's much cheaper than other fruits. This is not a new condition. And don't get me started on saturated fats.
However, bad foods aren't the lone culprit and sole cause of obesity and its health consequences. Very much has to do with a sedentary lifestyle, as well as with certain native practices in various regions.
If we take the German example -- you could probably eat wienerschnitzel and white sausages and drink beer to your heart's content if you were working with your body during the day. In England, you could eat a full English breakfast with sausage and beans and black pudding and eggs and whatever else goes with it if you were planning a day in a factory or a field. In the U.S. you could eat a big steak at night if you worked for it during the day. I think that life has become easier for the middle and upper classes in many different countries and our lives have become physically easier for it. We simply don't deserve to eat the things we used to anymore.
Dubin, I certainly didn't mean to imply that diet is the sole (or even most important) cause of obesity in India. I would, however, disagree with the notion that the availability of sweets is the same as it has always been in South Asian countries, and that it is primarily the activity levels that have changed. For example, upper class/caste Indians were never particularly physically active people, but even that subpopulation has experienced increased rates of obesity-related morbidity. How can this be reasonably explained EXCEPT by an increase in caloric intake?
I will sheepishly allow that I used the term "Americanization" more loosely than I should have. I wasn't trying to say that specific American fast food chains are commonplace in India. Rather, I meant to say that the industrialization of the production of food more generally speaking has fundamentally changed how food is made available in India (and in the US, and all over the world). Indians may not have Burger King or McDonald's at every street corner the way we in the US do, but foods that once were known as special occasion "festival foods" (i.e., the sweets and fried appetizers and creamy curries most of us know via Indian restaurants) are now everyday meals for many middle-class Indians for the same reason "fast food" is in the US -- because they have, over the decades, become cheaper than their healthier alternatives.
Black pudding?!
Dubin:
Grilled tomatoes (you say 'tomatoes') and (now) hash browns.
"creamy curries".
One shudders on hearing such words:)
Dubin, I agree with your general point, but your perception of what Europeans eat is severely skewed. (Close to) No one really eats black pudding in the UK (except tourists maybe). Similarly, German diet isn't all meat and beer. I've always found it funny that everyone assumes Germans eat a lot of sauerkraut, while it is actually more popular in the US, at least in my perception.
Megan: "I do not mean people who can move freely in their bodies, whatever their weight. If they're comfortable, I have no worries for them."
-There are tons of people who aren't technically obese (might not even be fat) but don't feel comfortable in their bodies at all because they feel fat. No pity for them? I would think your argument calls for empathy with them, not with those who are "fat but happy with it."
billo, I definitely agree that gray squirrels are more aggressive. Plus, they always come as a whole bunch, making them a lot more threatening than the red ones (which seem to live alone or in pairs).
Marcus: You are wrong, wrong, wrong. Take it from a girl with two ivy league degrees and her own weight problem. Many of these people value their health, live an active lifestyle, and eat healthful foods. They do not drink sugary sodas, and they walk to classes and carry books and eat organic vegetables. They are also fat. Fat is often a class issue, but not always. Sometimes, it is just fat.
And I am troubled by the condescension in your post and referenced column. There are great joys in the physical pleasures of the world--in the cold shock of diving under a Pacific wave on a hot day, in a long, cat-like stretch towards the sun, in the feel of snowflakes on your skin and nose, in the exhileration of dancing, full out, heart pounding, hips swaying, to Like A Prayer (okay, maybe that last one's just me). But those joys are not limited to those who are thin. I'm obese by any measure of the word, but I hazard that I derive more of those pleasures of the body than did my anorexic college roommate. I think that what you're identifying is a mind-body connection, rather than a pathological syndrome of the obese.
Oh lady, I hear you on the dancing full out. I was extrapolating from me, because my mind doesn't hang around my body when my weight is high (which you would also recognize as high). I would love to be wrong, though.
Ok, sorry guys. I wasn't trying to imply that I knew exactly what the average person eats in Britain or Germany or wherever. I mean, I guess I have only been a tourist in those places, so of course people would try to make me eat haggis and whatnot.
I was just trying to point out that the problem is widespread. Not quite global, but widespread. And not all of the problem is caused by new food abundance/content issues, but also by the ironic decline in activity levels.
Sorry for offending Billo with the words "black pudding." What, Bill, don't you people eat that for elevenses or something? :)
No offence taken Dubin; I thought it quite funny actually.
"elevenses"?
Er..um..that's only HRM (Her Royal Majesty) and WTP (Winnie the Pooh)
> dancing, full out, heart pounding,
> hips swaying, to Like A Prayer
Hah! Not just you, that was me last night, right down to the song (which goes well with a Samba).
I weigh over 200 pounds, but I can and do toss that weight around pretty impressively (or amusingly, depending on your taste for my style)!
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