Fencing Bear at Prayer

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...

I went shopping on Thursday to buy some new summer tops.  I went to the store that I usually go to for such clothing, confident that I would be able to find clothes that fit and looked good on me.  I knew what colors to look for and knew that I would have to spend some time trying things on, as nothing ever looks quite the same on the hanger as it does on.  And yet, even prepared for a long afternoon in the dressing room, it was still painful. Painful, because I had to take my own clothes off in order to try on the new ones, every moment naked a chance to catch a glimpse of myself in the full-length mirrors under fluorescent lights. Painful, because clothes that I had taken from the racks hopeful would look good on me didn't--quite the reverse. Painful, because I had to do this over and over and over again. Until I found a line of tops in colors that looked so good on me, I didn't notice the clothes any more. When I got home, I posted this status on Facebook: "O...

(This one is especially for you, PapaFreeak , 'cause I know you have no idea what it is like to be so "astoundingly petty, envious, and self-pitying" as I am.  Enjoy!  For all my other readers: this was a post that I had been mulling over for the past several days, before I got interrupted by the News of the Week last week --as didn't we all?  It was meant, contrary to PapaFreeak's inability to read my "self-pitying" for what it actually is, as a way of working through some of the issues that I still have with my self-image, most particularly of myself as a woman.  Feel free to give me a shout-out if anything I say here sounds at all familiar from your own experience.) My sister, age 45, is expecting her first baby within the next week or two, just in time for her 46th birthday.  And, yes, I'm jealous (I told you you'd enjoy this one, PapaFreeak).  Partly because a small part of me still wishes that my husband and I had had at least one more ch...

I'm sorry, this is so great, I just have to share it with you.  In the comments for my last post , PapaFreeak has just paid me an enormous compliment.  He reads my blog, get this, even though, he says, "I find about 75% of what you post to be odious."  ODIOUS!!!!  Isn't that the best thing you've ever heard?!  But wait, there's more: "This [he explains] is why I return: I don't understand why someone with your advantages--intelligence, health, a supportive family, good income from meaningful work in a prestigious job--is so astoundingly petty, envious, and self-pitying.  I think you fascinate me because you provide access to a mentality that is genuinely foreign to me."  Gosh, what can I say?  A FAN!!!!  This is what Elizabeth Gilbert must feel like all the time ! But PapaFreeak only finds "about 75%" of what I post to be "odious".  Which makes me wonder: what 25% could he possibly like? Could it be that, having the "...

I've just spent the weekend on retreat with twenty or so women from my church (a.k.a. "St. Paul and the Redeemers," as the retreat center signs identified us).  I wish that I could gush about what a moving experience it was for me, but truth be told, I don't feel "moved," just calm (as well as tired!).  It may be in part that I managed to volunteer myself to lead one of our discussions (on "decluttering," no less; our theme was "abundance"), so more or less by default I was less likely to be surprised by what we talked about as such.  But I am not sure that this is the most important lesson here. I could have been "moved" by having to lead the discussion and, this time a year ago, most likely would have been.  But in a bad way: moved to anxiety about whether what I said was important, or stirring, or challenging enough.  Moved by my ego to worry about the impression I made.  And yet, while I do have some regrets about how I h...

According to at least two of the four women's clothing catalogs that came in the mail yesterday, I am already closer to a size 8 ( Coldwater Creek : 36"-30 1/2"-39", their size S; Simply Be : 37"-30"-38", their smallest size) than I thought I was.  Which is funny, because according to the size chart that I have been using for the past twenty years ( Tweeds ), I am still much closer to a 12 (38"-29 1/2"-40 1/2") than even a 10 (36 1/2"-28"-39").  Of course, Coldwater Creek caters primarily to women of a certain age (they also include Women's sizes), and Simply Be starts at size 8 and goes up to size 32 (61"-54"-62"), but I am still smaller (size-wise) than I thought I was even according to Athleta (8-10 36-37" 29-30" 38 1/2-39 1/2", their medium) and, lo and behold, Venus (10 37 1/2"-29"-40", their larger medium).*  Mind you, I still look more like the models in Simply Be, b...

I hate 'em.*  Always able to wear whatever they want without having to worry about showing their knees.  Going through life oblivious to the shame of not being able to fit into their jeans.  Slender, powerful, desirable, loved.  Never having to worry about what they eat because somehow their bodies simply don't accumulate excess fat.  Flashing their legs as they stride past you in their skinny boots, skinny dresses, skin-tight jeans.  Or, worse, slinking past in their flowing skirts which they wear simply because they enjoy the sensation of fabric moving over their legs, not because they are trying to hide anything, like, say, their knees. Did I say I hate 'em?  All my life, they've been there, in their seventies peasant blouses, in their eighties business suits, in their nineties mini-skirts: mocking me with their knees, their waistlines, their ability to wear shorts without shame.  Every so often, I managed to catch up with them momentarily, b...

I didn’t sleep again last night. Perhaps it was the coffee that I had at dinner in lieu of the bread pudding that everyone else shared. But I didn’t want bread pudding or margaritas or rice or any of the other carb-rich options on the menu. It’s Lent, after all. I never give up anything for Lent, but this year I have promised myself to give this carb fast a try. And now I’m terrified. Terrified of the energy that I feel coursing through every cell in my body. Terrified of the seeming clarity that has come to my thoughts. Terrified of the anger that I feel at having spent so much of my life being meek and nice rather than calling people out for the way that they behave. Terrified of the willingness that I suddenly have for speaking my mind. Not, of course, that I have ever been exactly mute. But, I recognize now, I have been afraid, holding myself back for fear of hurting other people’s feelings. Not. Any. More. Apparently. Because all I feel right now is rage. Is thi...

Why am I not thin yet?!  I've been watching my carbs, eating more meat in the past week or so than I had all told in a good five or so years, waiting for the promised Atkins Edge to kick in and the pounds to start slipping away.  I've felt the fatigue at practice when my energy dropped; I've had the low sodium headache and cured it with beef broth; I've looked yet another helping of chicken salad in the face and managed to finish it even though I didn't really want to.  Why aren't I thin?  Oh, right, well, there were all those Cravory cookies over the weekend that my husband got me for Valentine's Day, but I didn't eat all of them.  I didn't even really enjoy them, not as much as I would have in the past when nothing was so intoxicating as a sugar-starch high.  And, okay, I'm still drinking orange juice first thing in the morning, just to get myself going for the day.  And we had spaghetti for dinner one night last week.  And I had cereal for ...

I feel that I need to say a bit more about why I am so exhilarated by what I have been reading in Gary Taubes' Good Calories, Bad Calories ( not , as you know , by any means the first book that I have read on diet or the experience of being fat).  It is not strictly speaking because he is telling me something that I have never heard before.  Rather, it is more like the snowflake that starts the avalanche: I have been building up to this insight for several years now, and Taubes has put it all into perspective. Maybe, indeed, French women don't get fat because they concentrate on eating only the freshest, most appealing foods only when they are hungry--but how do you deal with needing to eat those pastries and cookies and cakes not because you're hungry, but because you have learned that eating all those yummy sugars and starches makes you feel better, at least for a little bit?  Maybe, indeed, slim people are better at paying attention to the cues that their bodies ...

"[Dichter] also understood that [American] consumers felt guilt after buying self-indulgent [ sic ] products, so marketers had to sell such things as tobacco and candy as 'rewards' for the deserving.  Much of this is taken for granted now, but when [in the 1940s] Dichter was whispering these sweet nothings in the ears of CEOs, they were revelatory." --" Retail Therapy: How Ernest Dichter, an acolyte of Sigmund Freud, revolutionised marketing ," The Economist (December 17th-30th, 2011), p. 122. Just in case you were wondering why you are so convinced that you "deserve" that cookie, even when you aren't hungry.  Or why you think eating will make you feel better when what you really need is a hug.

All those people out there are just as afraid of you as you are of them .  Unless they are saints, which means that they have been able to let go of their fear because they don't need it anymore.  That's what it means to say, "There is nothing to fear but fear itself."  Fear is what blocks you from being able to see other human beings for what they are--not enemies, but frightened children, all worried about what the other kids are going to think.  (Hat tip to my sister for helping me see this more clearly.) You're not crazy if you think that some of the kids, particularly the boys, are making faces at you and then denying it meant anything when you " overreact ."  Maybe they meant to get at you, maybe they were just being kids themselves, unable to sit with their own feelings long enough to understand why they said what they did.  But the ugly face was really an ugly face, the cutting remark was really a cutting remark, the emotional manipulation (or...

I'm still angry .  It's kind of a tenor for my life right now, as I sit, looking out at my past with the help of my therapist, over all of the emotions and thoughts that I have about who I am and who I want to be.  I'm also afraid.  The world is so beautiful, my life is so beautiful.  But I can feel it slipping away from me as I sit, still too afraid to move. No, that's not it.  I'm not that afraid anymore, not like I was.  Little by little, I've been working on my translation ; little by little, I'm starting to ask questions again, starting to see things that I would like to do with my research.  But I can still feel the panic rise when I hear about work that a colleague has been doing and I start thinking about how much time I've wasted ("wasted") trying to get my feet again.  And I still worry about not being beautiful or thin enough.  About not being loved. There, I said it.  (Did I really?  Breathe.  Say it.) ...

I eat when I'm nervous, especially when I have work that I need to do.  Eating allows me to put off for just a little longer whatever it is I am nervous about, maybe even (if I'm lucky) until it simply goes away.... I eat when I want to read, especially if what I want to read has nothing to do with work .  Eating is important ("You have to eat") unlike reading novels or (heaven forbid) self-help books.  I will, therefore, keep eating (e.g. by having dessert) in order to have more time to read; otherwise, I might have to stop and go back to work. Until very recently, I rarely, if ever, enjoyed my food, whether because I was busy counting calories in my head or because I didn't feel like I was "allowed" to eat--ever. What other people experience as occasions for fun, I have spent the greater part of my life dreading: coffee hour at church, parties with snacks, cookouts, picnics, anything that might offer an opportunity to eat something unusual or unp...

Women are broken and need fixing; men shave and drink beer.  Hat tip to my husband for the link!* *Um, because he found it, not because he thinks it's true.  Um.  Although, it's true, he is brilliant...  And I could do with something to make my hair look better...and to smooth out these wrinkles...and that other diet/not-diet book looks promising...and that winter coat....

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 ...

If I were thin... I would wear sleeveless shirts, spaghetti-strap dresses and long, flowing skirts over perfect ankles and soft feet. My hair would be long and smooth, not frizzy and impossible to style.  My face would be sweet, gentle and loving, wrinkled in smiles, not coarsened with fear and age. I would live in a big three-story house with a wrap-around porch, big windows and hardwood floors, lots of light and space, cool with breezes in the summer and warm with crackling fires in the winter. I would spend my mornings sitting in my upstairs library-office, writing exquisite prose, novels and essays and translations of great spiritual texts; the afternoons walking in the park with my dog; and the evenings entertaining friends with wine and music and sparkling conversation. I would be elegant and poised, graceful and calm, quiet and serene. I would be a real athlete, strong and self-assured, able to concentrate perfectly, move powerfully and precisely, gliding through...

Yes, I have a theory about this, too.  You know the usual argument: people (especially women) who watch American-style mass media feel bad about themselves because, as they are watching, they implicitly (or explicitly) compare themselves to the people they see projected on screen and when they don't measure up, they eat out of frustration at not being as beautiful (i.e. skinny) as they wish they were. Perhaps.  Certainly, if you listen to what the characters in the television shows, movies, and advertisements say to and about each other, you will get the impression that they all think that being thin is better.  Indeed, the thinner the better.  And yet, what are we really seeing when we watch, e.g. Dana Delaney as Dr. Megan Hunt intervening on behalf of the young woman whom her bartender boss is forcing to starve?  Two (or three, actually--Dr. Hunt's boss, even thinner, gets in on the conversation, too) incredibly thin women talking about how one of them nee...

Glamourous ! Perhaps, after all, there's hope if Glamour can publish such a celebration of female beauty . But do you notice something? These women aren't just beautiful.  They are really, truly, deeply sexy .  More so than any rail-thin "straight-size" (what a euphemism!) fashion victim could ever be.  Which may be a problem. Because, you see, our culture has a problem with sex.  Sure, we're (men and women both) supposed to want to be sexy, but it is very unclear whether we are supposed to want to have sex.  We are also extremely uncomfortable with being naked. Thus, I argue, our cultural obsession with thinness: thin people can never actually be naked--not even in the tiniest bikini or thong--because they do not have bodies as such.  Sure, they can move and breathe, but they don't have any actual flesh to uncover when they take off their clothes.  Nothing to be embarrassed about, sure, but nothing to show, either.  Thus it is, pa...