Who am I?

Exercise 1 from Geneen Roth, Why Weight?: A Workbook for Ending Compulsive Eating (1989)

Introduction of Rachel

Please don’t call me by my full name. I don’t like that. I don’t even really like my full name. “Lee” isn’t mine, it belongs to my father and siblings, it says nothing about me except that I am not myself, not unique, just one of a set. “Fulton” I hate because my dad left us and then his sisters spent the rest of my life trying to see how much Fulton I and my sibs had in us, even though we barely saw them after we moved away. “Brown” isn’t really mine either; it’s my husband’s name, but I wanted it because it is also my son’s. Sometimes I don’t even like “Rachel” because it was really my grandmother’s name. I am just a counterfeit Rachel, not a real one at all.

I am a woman, although sometimes I’m not even sure about that. Women are beautiful and elegant and wear dresses and make-up and spend time fixing their hair. I’m just a lump, fleshy and solid.

I am forty-six years old, but I feel like I am only sixteen, like I’ve been stuck being sixteen for thirty years, stuck with a lumpy body and no self-confidence. Somehow I never turned into a woman, I just got stuck at being an overgrown girl.

I am a teacher. I should say “professor” but I often don’t feel like it. I am scared of claiming any particular authority about anything, even though I know that I teach, especially leading discussions, very well. If I were a real professor, however, I would also publish more; I would be defining my field, not just reflecting it.

I write, but I won’t say I’m a writer. Writers publish; they live by writing and they live to write. I write grammatically extremely well, but I have no courage. I don’t write about anything that anybody (read, my family) would want to read, even if colleagues often tell me how much they like my work.

I am a fencer. There, I’ve found something that I know is true. I am a fencer. I compete. Even if my name is at the very bottom of the list, I am a fencer. I have been fencing for eight years. I have won medals (plural) at the national level in my age group. I am a fencer. So there.

Comments

  1. Jim KentSeptember 7, 2011 at 12:24 PM

    Thank you for the sound advice.

    Oh...What weapon do you fence?

    Thanks again.

    Jim

    ReplyDelete
  2. Fencing BearSeptember 7, 2011 at 1:33 PM

    Hi, Jim! You are most welcome. I hope it helps! I fence mainly foil, but I also fence epee from time to time. No sabre, except at Ren Faire!

    ReplyDelete
  3. AnonymousSeptember 8, 2011 at 10:31 AM

    You are also the person who inspired me to buy the cited workbook last night. Let's see if I have any success, but thanks either way!

    Mondo

    ReplyDelete
  4. Fencing BearSeptember 8, 2011 at 11:26 AM

    Good luck! I've been reading a lot of Roth's books this past month; the workbook brings together her insights into what eating does for us and how to break free from using it for something other than nourishing our bodies, but it's hard work and has been bringing up a lot of stuff I'd really prefer to keep hidden. And yet, I've been enjoying eating in a whole new way, which gives me hope.

    ReplyDelete
  5. Fencing BearSeptember 8, 2011 at 2:49 PM

    Um, profmondo, if you're still reading, that didn't come out exactly right. What I wanted to say is, I do so hope the workbook helps. I only just started reading it myself, and I'm not sure how well it will work on its own, if you haven't read Roth's previous books. She tends to come back fairly regularly to the same insights, but she also brings up new issues to think about as well. It's hard stuff, at least, it can be, as my descent into near political incorrectness last month showed (subscribers only if they caught them, I've since deleted those posts!). But of all the not-dieting books I've read over the past few years, Roth's really hit home for me. I hope you find them helpful, too!

    ReplyDelete

Post a Comment

Thank you for taking the time to respond to my blog post. I look forward to hearing what you think!

F.B.

Popular posts from this blog

Signs & Things*

Image
Last week it was jet lag. Today, well, let’s call it semiotic overload. Consider the following manuscript folio. Imagine that you are in the British Library Manuscripts Reading Room and you have only one day to work with the manuscript—Arundel 157, if you would like the shelfmark--in which this folio (146recto) appears (click on the image if you would like to see it enlarged). Pretend, for the moment, that you can read the language (Latin) and script (an early thirteenth-century Gothic bookhand from England, probably around Oxford) in which it is written and that you are familiar with the conventions of abbreviation that the scribe has used. You cannot take photographs of the manuscript (this is, after all, the British Library; they will be very happy to make a limited number of photographs for you—at a price) and you do not know whether a microfilm is available. Assume, for the moment, that it is not; in any case, even if it were, it would not be in color. What would you inclu
Keep reading

Draco Layer Four: The Anagogic or Mystical Sense

Image
Here be dragons. And doves. Human beings long for transcendence. Such longing is, for the world, always out of fashion because, of course, it is not a longing for the world, and the world knows it. We know what the world wants. The world—by which we mean Satan, the Lord of the World—wants above all our obedience, a jewel so precious that he will do anything to get it: lie, steal, murder, bear false witness, pretend to social standing, pretend to insider knowledge to get us to consent to his influence.  “God lied to you. You will not die.” And suddenly we are anxious about having other people dislike us, about losing prestige in our social circles, about other people being more popular or influential or successful, about other people having secret knowledge, about our own influence and fame. “You shall be as gods, knowing good and evil.” And with that temptation, our first parents fell. The irony is cosmic. There they were in the Garden, privy to conversation with God face-to-face, and
Keep reading

Talking Points: Three Cheers for White Men

Image
1. When white women (see Marie de France and Eleanor of Aquitaine) invented chivalry and courtly love , white men agreed that it was better for knights to spend their time protecting women rather than raping them, and even agreed to write songs for them rather than expecting them to want to have sex with them without being forced. 2. When white men who were celibate (see the canon lawyers and theologians of the twelfth century and thereafter) argued that marriage was a sacrament valid only if both the man and the woman consented , white men exerted themselves to become good husbands rather than expecting women to live as their slaves. 3. When white women (see Christine de Pizan, Mary Wollstonecraft, and the suffragettes) invented feminism , white men supported them (see John Stuart Mill) and even went so far as to vote (because only men could vote at the time) to let them vote, not to mention hiring them as workers and supporting their education. And before you start telling me a
Keep reading

How to Signal You Are Not a White Supremacist

Image
Professor Kim READ FIRST:  Why Dorothy Kim Hates Me , The Color of the House of the Lord It’s back to class for those of us who teach in medieval studies, and my medievalist colleague Dorothy Kim , Assistant Professor of English at Vassar College ( pictured in 2014 ), wants to make sure you understand the stakes . The medieval western European Christian past is being weaponized by white supremacist/white nationalist/KKK/nazi extremist groups who also frequently happen to be college students.  That does sound bad. But, wait, it gets worse! Don’t think western European medieval studies is exceptional.... ISIS/ISIL also weaponizes the idea of the pure medieval Islamic past in their recruiting rhetoric for young male Muslims. If the medieval past (globally) is being weaponized for the aims of extreme, violent supremacist groups, what are you doing, medievalists, in your classrooms? Because you are the authorities teaching medieval subjects in the classroom, you are, in fact, ide
Keep reading

Make the Middle Ages Dark Again

Image
I miss the good old days. You remember. Back when the only thing people knew about the Middle Ages is that they were Dark and filled with evil barons wresting a living off the back of their serfs, not to mention lecherous clergy imprisoning young maidens so as to rape them and then accuse them of witchcraft. You remember, right? What it was like when the Middle Ages were Dark? The Roman Catholic Church made slaves of everyone, stripped them of their sense of dignity and independence and made social status a matter not of achievement, but birth. The Church hated science and industry and did everything in its power to keep people in chains. It guarded its authority with the sword and the stake, stifled all innovation, and fed the common people lies. And why were these Ages so Dark? There were no universities, no towns, only castles with dungeons. Monks huddled in their cells thinking dark thoughts about sin, while Vikings stormed across the countryside, raping and pillaging and ca
Keep reading