Wednesday, April 9, 2008

size zero

Of course the concerns are all genuine, a guy cannot and will not ever understand the genuine, real hurt that a zit on the face on an important day can cause, what a bad hair day can do to your mood. Well the point is that after many agonizing days and nights over the inches that have miraculously appeared on the hips, over lips that stay chapped despite the truck loads of creams, I have and yes I can admit it, realized that there is more to me than the way I look.
Phew, I have said it! It’s hard to believe but I actually even mean it. Call it conditioning or wiring the truth is that being a woman meant I will try and judge myself by the way I look.
Sure I resent the babe who just joined the team and gets all the attention way before she opens her mouth, I want to slap the moron who I know is normally sane but believes I don’t exist when am accompanied by a pretty pal. Yet it’s very liberating to move beyond that. To go for a long walk because I want to and not because I have to. Eat a huge slice of apple pie and actually enjoy it. Curl up with a good book and loll in bed though I need to get waxed.
Its ok, chill

2 comments:

Pratz said...

dahling....

well pretty honest you are! frankly women who draw attention much before they open their mouths are a common site aint it? they live only that long in the memories of people, plus on the wrong side of the memory.

there may be lot of such people around who can give complexes or annoy but for those who really overcome their own cpmplexities in life will always rise n shine! duh gyann... but i like ur posts muah

Riya said...

uh oh.

Here I go off on my favourite topic. At the risk of sounding like a complete party pooper in this self-liberating post.

D-uh. But I'm the irritating one remember?

But what to do? I believe in physical fitness. I also believe in everything you've said shif. About being more than the sum of your features and body parts. About a woman learning to value herself from within and not without. About dumb bimbettes eating up the precious little mindspace that the important people in our lives seem to have. I know. I know. Lipstick and lipsuction without a worldview can be terribly limiting...

Ahem. Having said that, there's nothing spectacular about letting oneself go. Be it in the realm of fitness, health, hygiene or even basic aesthetics.

We ARE born as much with a body as we are with a mind. My one-time guru Rashid, who was a trainer in organic fitness - mind and body together - used to often lament the step motherly treatment all of us 'intellectual' types give to the body. Why have we relegated it to the rubbish heap of priorities? Why is honing, toning, advancing and adding value to the mind seen as such a profitable enriching enterprise, and the same status not accorded to the body?

What makes us stake claim to our thoughts, ideas, intelligence as being what "I Truly Am" and our body as something just willy-nilly wrapped around that "Fabulous Me"? Why? Was our mind born first, and our body later?

If we inherit facial features and physical structure through genetic coding - and thereby keep saying, "Oh one can't help the way one looks", doesn't the same apply to the mind? The child of smart parents most often is smart. The child of imaginative parents may well turn out artistic. And the offspring of dull boring minds is quite often a replica.

So. We are as 'luck-by-chance' in our spirits, as we are in our bodies, I'd say.

And therefore, both deserve as much nurturing and care. Neither deserve neurosis and obsession. But then, neither deserve neglect.

To close, I remember this fabulous Richard Bach quotation, where he describes the woman he loves, in this pithy but powerful way: "What a Lovely Face that Mind Had Built".....

So you see. Its all interconnected. We certainly don't need to be Size Zero and Nose Job Neurotic. But then, do we need to hold the body in contempt either?

At the end of the day, lets face it. We are how we think. How we talk. How we behave. And also, How We Look. Its not an either-or; its an integrated, harmonious whole we present to the world....