But of course it doesn't matter to me...

Trying to find a way of saying this without sounding patronising and stuck up is harder than I thought. But the trigger for this post concerned my family. So please forgive me if I seem like I know best. I know I don't. But I still want it for those I love.

We got a Wii Fit for Christmas. I've wanted one ever since they first came out.

And I'm a sensible girl. I know BMI is bullshit. I know I don't want to loose weight. I know that loosing weight is a bad goal. I know I want to exercise because I like it and I miss being more active and I can't rely on running because of my ankle... and so on.

I'm a good girl. I do it right. I know better than to be affected by being told my BMI or the little mii getting fatter and... well no. Because my BMI is 'normal', middle of normal at that. My Mii is neither skinny nor plump. I know better than that yeah but even if I didn't it wouldn't matter. I don't have to deal with a computer game shaming me.

I'm a good girl. The Wii said so. My Doctor said so. I'm ignoring compliments and I'm betting that it is much harder to ignore the insults.

But that is not true with everyone in my life. Waif like boyfriend, large Father. Each being told they are wrong (guess which one more than the other!)

Malnutrition, outdated medical care, babies, lack of sanitation: a diet that finally works.

When comparing the 1940's to today:

• ' So why are we getting taller? It's partly down to nutrition - a better and more plentiful diet'
• 'Now, with warmer homes, better medicine and improved sanitation, our energy - significantly in childhood - can be devoted to growth.'
• 'women in 1949 were slimmer because their diet centred on vegetables and complex carbohydrates' and of course rationing that 'allowed about 3,000 calories a day' if you could get that much.
• 'post-war women also expended many more calories through housework and having to walk or cycle everywhere.' Drudgery! It was good for you!
• 'There is a tendency for the Pill to stimulate breast growth,' whore.
• Hips aren't wide enough because 'if a woman's hormone levels are unbalanced she ends up storing more fat around the waist and less around the hips where we should' ie it's the pill's fault you whore.
• 'Women's feet can change a whole size in their lifetime with weight gain.'

Yes, it's a badly researched comparison that quote experts in seemingly unrelated fields but the conclusion is clear. Life was better when we had nowt to eat and fewer choices. Now who wants to give up the last 60 years of progress - in the UK at least - in modern medicine, access to food, and human rights? Anyone?

You may get thinner!

And at the end of the day longevity isn't a good thing because an ageing female population is prone to Osteoporosis which costs the NHS money.

Also, and I hated to break it to you, 'Bigger breasts alone don't necessarily mean an increased risk of breast cancer' actually translates to 'I know you weren't worrying about it and you have no reason to but perhaps you should'. So fellow Bravissimo shopper... we're doomed.

Quotes taken out of the appalling context given to it by the Daily Mail.

I guess I'm not

So I was going to use the last few hours of daylight to blog about cupcakes.

Then I got angry. Really, incredibly angry. Again at We Are The Real Deal. This time I get the message loud and clear. They are the real deal. I'm not. So I'm not going back.

So what is so anger inducing this time? MizFit posting about 'What IS average?' or, indeed, how to tell if you are better than everyone.

It's getting late and the wind is blowing and the rain is falling. I'm short of breath. So I'm just going to do a baby deconstruction here.

"In today’s world (where 75% of U.S. adults are projected to be overweight & 41% obese by 2015) what is average anymore anyway?"

Scary projections aside (mainly because it isn't 2015 and even if it was obesity isn't bad in and of itself...) it seems to me that the question is not how to tell that I'm average it's how to tell if I'm not one of those big, bad, fat chicks.

Let's go a bit further into this. Why, why oh why, do you need to know if you are average? Why do you need to know how you measure on a curve?

The basics of body acceptance tell us that it doesn't matter. It doesn't matter if you are average, above average or bellow average in anything. You are a person. Your measurements don't define you, you shouldn't be defined by your measurements.

Knowing where you are on the curve is putting people above you and bellow you. It's setting yourself in a rank. And it this case it's wanting to see how you are better than 'American average' which means sadly in MizFit's opinion 'just a little overweight'.

That type of thinking? It's the very antithesis of acceptance.

Even worse that MizFit's standard for being awesomely average is ridiculously ableist. See, this is what you should do:

"an easy way to determine whether you are in ‘fine’ or average shape is to run up two flights of stairs or walk six blocks"

Can you manage that? If not, then you aren't fine.

Now keep in mind that I have no physical disability. I'm average remember. But I have days when I can't get out of bed, my right ankle is playing up, my childhood asthma has left me with a low lung capacity, period pain, hay fever and like everyone else I'm at the mercy of bacteria, viruses and anything that wants to call my body it's home. These are only the problems a healthy person (who can walk 13 miles without flinching if the conditions are right) has with this test of averageosity.

That's the problems with this entire 'be healthy' rhetoric. It's crap. Healthy is a state. A state that can not be achieved by hard work and dedication if all the cards are stacked against you. To judge people by this standard - that many of us only hold onto by the skin of our teeth - is the very antithesis of acceptance.

It also has nice connotations about class. Now I can't speak for the States but I am told that it's sometimes a problem there to walk for six blocks. It certainly can be here in some areas and we have plenty of footpaths and pavements.

Class connotations are also rife in exercises+ awesome diet= infallible health rhetoric. If only you work at it by going to the gym and eating 'healthful' foods you deserve health. Anyone who doesn't have the same resources, funds, time and priorities (Any or all in combination) is just lazy and isn't working hard enough.

So let's answer MizFit's questions:

"Non-Americans: do you see us as the Great Surrendering to SuperSizing nation?

Have we gone so far into the notion of perfect not being important & it’s ok to be less than our best & we need to love ourselves regardless that we’ve swung too far into deconditioned is the new black! territory?"

Yes, body acceptance has gone too far. Truly if we allow people to be okay with themselves even if they aren't healthy, even if they aren't average then...

Wait no, that isn't what happens at all.

People are still discriminated against for having different bodies. Fat people are dismissed by doctors, women have sexual abuse shouted at them on the street, disabled people, people of colour, non-heterosexuals, transgendered people... Treated like crap for looking different everyday.

Acceptance hasn't gone too far. On a large societal scale it hasn't even happened. A world which MizFit describes in fearful tones sounds perfect to me.

'we need to love ourselves regardless' and to suggest anything but We Are The Real Deal has become the antithesis of acceptance.

How realising thin privilege meant realising thin...

For some reason that will go unmentioned, but from recent posts you can probably guess, I’ve been thinking of my own thin privilege lately.

When I found fat acceptance I was coming at it from the perspective of someone who thought them self fat. I’m not. I’m thin. But I’ve only come to realise I was thin recently.

Why? Well yes, I lost inches around the waist as a result of pasty deprivation but - I admit now – I was thin before that.

Probably my mental issues come into play here, making me cringe with disgust as my big flabby stomach brushed against the sheets in bed. Or how I screamed thinking of my fat cheeks turning inward to suffocate me.

Reading that back it scares me. How the hell did my body image get so far off of what I am: an average sized, average height woman who always manages to find something off the rack even if my boobs make me an inbetweenie.

And yes, some off that is anxiety and depression. I imagine I have some undiagnosed body issues thrown in. Some of it is, of course, growing up with a family that commented on my chicken legs. And I think that is why thin privilege can be so hard to grasp. Because it’s easy enough to think thin people have it easy but not so easy to say ‘like me’

I have had it easier being thin. To choose just one example when I joined the University Health Centre in my first year I had to have a physical. The guy doing it did my BMI and found me solidly (as usual) in the middle.

He asked me if I did any exercise. “No, not really. But I do walk everywhere.” He told me that it wasn’t a problem but I may want to think about joining the gym if I put on weight like a lot of people do in first year.

Yeah, spot the logic there.

So from realising I was thin I could realise my thin privilege, but how did I come to realise I was thin? It ties in with something I’ve wanted to talk about for a while. How my barely updated craft blog got political.

You see it’s hard for me to separate one from the other. Just like how we occasionally bring up the politics of food on Always Autumn politics is entwined with the way I craft.

If I where to post about how I wasn’t doing any projects or – more accurately – how I didn’t feel I had done anything good enough to post I couldn’t do that without talking about depression.

Cutting the cloth for a dress makes me think about my body. I measure it constantly, evaluating a clothing project means talking about my boobs or my hip size. And so often when I post ‘my big boobs’ so on or ‘I’ve lost weight so I’ve taken this in’ I feel like apologising for having at least some ideal (so called, although not in the sense that it causes me problems with altering in the first place!) parts of my body.

Crafting lends itself to discussion of body image, to my mental state. It makes me think about feminism and the treatment of the mentally ill. When I want to write about crafting with Guides it’s often linked up with thoughts about how young people don’t have a realistic voice.

Quite frankly if I tried to separate the political from the personal I’d never bloody post. And -of course - I didn't.

I'm hard to please

There is so much I want to rant about today that I'm just going to list them. Three things that I'm not impressed by:

1. This picture in Glamour (US)

It doesn't impress me, it doesn't placate me. One 'normal' woman in one issue of one magazine.

Not even getting into the idea of what is normal I think the ideal we are striving for here is a diverse representation of body shapes, sizes and colours. I want to see people on all parts of the spectrum not just one slightly chubby, naked, white, blond woman as a political statement.

A lot of people are saying she looks happy and healthy but come on! You can not tell how healthy someone is by a picture. You can't see inside some one's body, you can't even see the other side of her body. And happy? Chances are she was told to smile at the camera. She is a model, posing for a photograph.

2. This arsewipe Doctor who thinks loosing weight can cure depression.

I mean come on! I've heard every magic cure for depression there is. What I haven't heard is that you can cure depression by shaming your patients and treating what you perceive are their problems rather than what they are asking for.

And yet I know that there is a problem with people accessing medicine because their doctors are turning them away, or accepting them if only they did the impossible ie. maintain a low weight. And I know people don't take depression seriously even when you fit into that right weight. And I know that people have no idea how people eat but assume they do based on appearances.

Yet I'm shocked and bloody angry when one arse in a white coat can use all these things - all of their unfounded prejudices - to ruin some one's life.

3. It's the time of year again to tear young people apart.

A-level results are in and turns out people did well. This -as it turns out- is not to do with better teaching methods that engage a variety of learning styles, better understanding of learning difficulties or anything else that gives all people a chance at a decent education.

No, it is a result of the exams getting easier. And so the hand wringing starts from people who haven't looked at these exams in years know - like every older generation since time immemorial, or at least the Romans - that kids today are thickos.

And they say this with no regard to the young people. Who, lets face it, only ever get in the news over this and ASBOs. They don't care about someone who is pleased to bits about achieving their A or someone who already thinks they are crap for getting a D.

I'm angry, I'm full of hay fever and god knows the world isn't putting me in a happy place today.

No Excuses

I'm sure you heard about what happened at We Are The Real Deal. It made my blood boil, it also made me feel very stubborn so I'm reading there and commenting there despite that. What I'm trying to say is that I don't currently endorse them. I respect the ideals and hope it can get back on track but I don't endorse the current atmosphere.

Okay, that aside I'd like to talk about one of the last posts Those Stretch Marks Run Deep by new team member Yum Yuky.

She points out that to her stretch marks are a mark of her pregnancies:

"We earn our stripes daily as we grow the child, birth it with joy at 10 centimeters dilated, and sling it on our hip as we multitask and serve Husband refreshing beverages."

Now it's already been pointed out that Yum Yuky was talking from her own experiences and that she herself got some stretch marks at puberty so this isn't particularly aimed at Yum Yuky herself but...

Every time, each and every time, I see people defending their body based on the fact that they have given birth it makes me feel like a pile of crap.

My hips are wide child birthing hips, my fat didn't come off after my pregnancy, my pregnancy gave me stretch marks. And I've seen more.

See by giving a reason for a 'bad' feature - and quite often I imagine the person writing the statement in unconscious of this - you are giving an excuse. Perhaps giving is the wrong word. Providing possibly. You are providing the reader with a reason that you are virtuous and the other wide hipped, streachmarked fatties aren't.

It sets up a deserving vs. undeserving argument and as an undeserving it makes me feel like crap.

Because people have seen my stretch marks and told me it's odd that I have them. And those people, not Yum Yuky, who are really annoying me here. It pisses me off that my body is supposed to fit a script, and somebody else's script at that.

I don't need to defend my body, I don't need a reason to have stretch marks. I just am and I just have.

I commented on the original post:

I’ve often felt like a freak for this, and I’d like to admit it here.

I have stretch marks.

I have no kids, no pregnancies and –so I’ve been told, at least- no excuse.

They are about half the way down my thighs and there are some smaller patches in my stomach and breasts. When I first got them, around 13, they where bright, bloody red. Now they are white.

For me they aren’t a badge of honour, they aren’t a symbol of something gained, or lost. They just are.

Reasons to Run

I want to take up running. Two reasons here. One is that I need something to do, the other is that my Sims run and watching them do it is making me feel guilty.

So I decide to break in my new Library Card with a book about running (for every interest that I have, there is a book on it) and finding that ‘Running for Triathlons’ or ‘Running a Marathon’ are a bit more intense than what I’m after I take out ‘Running made easy’

I should have just handed in my self esteem while I’m at it. The first reason they give for why you need to run is ‘a better body’ okay, some people may be into that, my reason is listed too. No need to get bent out of shape.

Oh yes there is because in the nice green why run section: ‘50% of adults… are overweight or obese’ Okay, so? So what if people are fat, it’s not an illness, it’s not a crime, it doesn’t mean they aren’t fit, it doesn’t mean they don’t run. Luckily though the authors are 100% sure that by reducing your calorie intake and excising you (yes you!) will loose weight.

Bearing in mind that that is a magnificent oversimplification that works in real life as much as… well something that doesn’t work very often I have no interest in loosing weight. I actually, actively don’t want too. I’ve lost weight. I don’t have a job that provides me with a cooked breakfast and pasty money anymore. And oddly, when I did, I was more than happy with my (larger) shape and size.

But now I’ve stopped making beds for a living I’ve stopped getting the exercise. I’m no longer constantly lifting, dragging and carrying. I’m also getting depressed. I can’t stop that, but I can distract myself. I can give myself something to do. I can run.

Luckily there is also a chapter on how running fixes your self esteem and confidence. Considering at the moment it’s taking a prescription, volunteer work and a boyfriend to hold my hand I’m looking forward to that one. Unless it turns out that there isn't a miraculous cure that either...

Happiness is sometimes a slice of pizza

I’m having one of those moments of awareness. You know when you see something and it chimes with you. You say ‘yeah that’s a problem and it sucks’ then as the days pass you hear it more and more. Something that you always knew was a problem is shown as a massive concern.

What brought this all on is this Ask Aunty Fatty post. A woman writes in to ask how she can stop grief eating, Aunty Fatty points out that if she does have a binge eating problem she can deal with it later, right now she shouldn’t feel too guilty because she is going through some seriously crap stuff. So comfort eating. I’m not talking about people who have eating disorders here, I’m talking about something all of us do. I’m talking about having a chocolate bar when you are feeling down, eating mac and cheese when you are feeling homesick, saying it’s because I’m PMSing or a thousand other things.

 Comfort eating isn’t a problem for me. Oh I do it, I do it bloody often, but it isn’t a problem and I don’t view it as a problem because sometimes I need a little bit of comfort. Most of the time my diet is reasonable well balanced and I exercise often, even if it isn’t in a gym. I’m kind of healthy. I’m not supper healthy but I’m not ill, injured and I get my vitamins. But sometimes the balance gets upset for one reason and another.

I’m constantly upsetting my balance. Probably has something to do with the depression. While suffering from that depression and juggling with my dosage I was walking around Huddersfield on my way home from, of all things, receiving my certificate that said I was now a qualified Girl Guide Guider. I was happy, a little lonely after the long bus journey. Then some very drunk girl called me a ginger bitch.

 Then I went home, cried about it, and was miserably unhappy. I was having thoughts about not ever getting out of bed again and death and all sorts of unhappy shit. When the sane half of my brain finally managed to talk me round I got up and did three things guaranteed to make me a little cheerful. First I sent an email to Stephen (in our pre-boyfriend-girlfriend days) then I decided which disk of the Jeeves and Wooster box set would be most likely to cheer me up then I went out and bought junk food.

It would be more effective to work on my self esteem, figure out my medication, or at least dye my hair a nondescript colour but I needed a quick fix, I wanted a pizza and I like my hair. The balance can be sorted out when I don’t need to buy myself 3 hours of unhealthy Jeeves and Wooster filled happiness.

Have you ever walked a tightrope? I haven’t. I’ve done it on the Wii though, your weight slips to one side and the little guy on the screen starts panicking. What you then have to do is acknowledge that and, as soon as you can, try and get your balance to the middle again. What you can’t do is dwell on the fact that you are off balance, otherwise the little guy falls.

What I mean by that extended metaphor is to say yes, acknowledge that you are eating too much pizza but don’t dwell on that. Sometimes you need too much pizza. You can go back to pizza in moderation later, when you aren’t so sad or angry or just in need of a treat.

Or in the words of Aunty Fatty:

“And if it turns out that this doesn’t help, and you really do just need to eat nachos and ice cream for a few months, while you get through what is probably the most difficult time in your life? Then by god, you eat nachos and ice cream for a couple of months”