Fat, Broke, and Lonely

Someone was telling me about a book called Fat, Broke & Lonely No More!. Amazon has the following description about it:

Do you ever obsess about whether to order dessert, buy those pricey sandals, or be totally honest on a third date?

If so, then you are already acquainted with the fear of being fat, broke & lonely. If only we could eat less, get paid better, and be more outgoing.

Only it's not that simple. Our endless quest to be fit, flush, and partnered (no matter where we fall on the scale) inevitably makes us feel fat, broke & lonely. The symptoms are anxiety, shame, and fear, and the diagnosis is feeling miserable about ourselves. We have two choices: give up, convinced that this is just a lifelong, losing battle, or go toe-to-toe with our negative self-image and take back our lives.

Real-life anecdotes, practical strategies, and a touch of sass make this revolutionary five-step plan a must-read. First, Moran helps us discover the root of the symptoms. Then we learn how to break up with fat, broke & lonely for good. And finally, we learn how to hook up with the life of our dreams—and who doesn't want that?

I havent read this book yet but I am very interested in it. I am curious at what her solutions might be. I hope it is something more that a glorified instruction manual for losing weight, earning more money, and gettin' hitched. Nevertheless, just the title got me thinking. I have to admit that I think it is interesting that the author of this book is addressing all of these things together in one book. At first, I thought it was odd but when I stopped to think about it, it all makes a kind of sense because those things are all connected in a way.

I mean, I am fat. And like it or not, being fat makes it MUCH harder to find a mate. Being single increases loneliness. But it also has financial implications since single women tend to be poorer than married women. In my own case, I have a household income that is just slightly below the mean household income in the USA. But if I were married to someone with the same income, the two of us would have an income in the top 20% of household incomes. That is a difference between having a middle class income and an upper middle class income.

So...Fat, Broke, and Lonely. Here are my thoughts on each of those things.

Re: Fat.

Well, since I *am* fat, I pretty much always feel fat. What I have learned is that being fat is probably outside of my control. Or rather, what it would take for me to be not fat is more than I can do and still be sane and happy. I have also learned that doesnt mean that I am a bad person. Being fat also doesnt mean that I necessarily have to be terribly unhealthy. So I changed my goal away from losing weight and have made new goals that are more attainable. e.g. walking several times a week is a goal. Making sure I eat enough fruits and veggies is a goal. Reducing my sugar intake is a goal. Those are all good things but are not things that cause me to lose a significant amount of weight.

I have put a lot of focus on not internalizing the messages our culture has about fat, especially those messages that arent based in fact. For instance, it isnt laziness on my part that keeps me fat. It isnt a complete lack of willpower that keeps me fat. It is a constant battle though because our culture tends to shame people for being fat. A lot of people consider it a moral failing.

Basically my solution to feeling fat has been to change my outlook on what fat means. It doesnt mean I am unhealthy although since it is a risk factor for certain things, it does mean that I need to monitor my health more closely than others might need to. It doesnt mean that I am a bad person. It doesnt mean that I am ugly. It just means that I have a body shape that is different than most people's.

Re: Broke

I am often broke. Some of that is due to some bad financial management on my part but ironicly some it that is due to good financial management on my part, i.e. I feel broke when I dont have enough money to buy things that I want but not buying them anyways on credit is good financial management.

Lately though, I have been under more financial stress than usual. If I were to lose my job, I dont know what I'll do. Unemployment benefits would not be enough for meto live on. I might need to sell my house in such a situation if I couldnt find a job within a month or so. Almost all of my savings are in my retirement account which I could access but with penalties. I would hate to do that but if push came to shove, I guess I would have to.

What this has taught me more than anything is that I *really* need to work more on getting my financial house in order. I need to spend even less than I am spending now. I might need to try to find a roommate or something. I need to save more money so I can have that six months of salary that everyone recommends saved up so that if I ever find myself in a situation where I might lose my job, I wont be stressed out about it.

Re: Lonely.

I guess there are different types of loneliness.

There is what I consider real lonliness where one finds oneself cut off from the rest of the world. Sometimes in the winter I experience this because I tend to get depressed in the winter. It is a vicious cycle. I get depressed enough that just going to work sucks up most of my energy so I dont make an effort to socialize. Then the lack of social interaction means that I start to feel lonely, which makes me more depressed, which in turn, makes me even less likely to do social things. I often have to make a real effort to socialize even if it is only talking to someone on the phone for a half hour.

Being social and making the emotional connections that prevent loneliness are hard work. But important work. When I feel lonely, I call people and make an effort to see them. I tell people I love them. I hug my friends.

There is also the loneliness of being single. Some of that, though, isnt real loneliness on my part, but rather a response to cultural expectations that people, and especially women, be partnered up. Mostly, I have decided that I am going to be single for the rest of my life and I have come to terms with that. I honestly believe that it is better to be single than to be with the wrong person. If the right person should happen to come along, that is great.

Being single and feeling that particular kind of loneliness is still hard though. I dont meet very many men that I am interested in but when I do, they have (so far) pretty much always rejected me at some point or another. Well, all the men have rejected me except for the ones I rejected first! haha. Seriously though, that is a mind set I fall into occasionally. I will think, "Every man in the world has rejected me" but really that isnt true because there have been men who havent but whom I felt were lacking in one way or another so I actually was the one who rejected them. I guess it is easier to forget the people one rejects as romantic partners than the other ones. And ok, while I am not beating my many suiters off with a stick (although I did recently have a guy camped out on my front lawn), I do have some men who are interested. It just hasnt been anyone in whom I am also interested.




In conclusion, I guess I have to say that I am fat, broke, and lonely at least by many other people's definitions and I dont think it is all that bad really. There are worse things certainly and my life is generally pretty good!

Nancy Pelosi is sworn in as Speaker of the House

I am quite happy that a woman is finally top dog in the House of Representatives. I think that is great. It kind of reminds me of some t-shirts a lot of moms in my neighborhood wore when I was growing up that said “A woman’s place is in the House….and Senate” Yay women.

I had to laugh at some of the commentary I have heard about this business of Nancy Pelosi being sworn in because some people have suggested that this marks the end of discrimination against women in the political arena. Uh-huh. I figure that women are around 50% of the population of this country and I figure that there are nearly as many women who would like to be in Congress as there are men who would like to be in Congress so I figure that if there were no discrimination, Congress would be have between 45% and 55% female members. I don’t know exactly how many women are in Congress right now (and yes, I could find out but I am too lazy) but it is no where near 45%. I know that out of 540 members of the 109th Congress, only 82 were women. Now having around 15% of the Congress be female is an improvement over times past when the figure was pretty much 0%. But it also means that the fight for equality for women isn’t over. So Nancy Pelosi’s confirmation as Speaker is a milestone but really it is just one more (important) point on the journey.

This Week in Boobs

Boobs: There were a couple of stories in the news this week about boobs.

The first involved a mother in Vermont who was asked to get off a flight because of breast feeding. Ok, I will admit it. I am not totally comfortable when women breast feed in front of me. Surely this is because at least part of me has bought into the whole patriarchal idea that boobs are primarily a sexual part of the body. The thing is though, in reality, they aren’t. Breasts are primarily for feeding children. It is inexcusable for an airline staff person to tell a woman not to breast feed on a plane. This is ultimately a cultural issue and the problem is NOT women who breast feed in public, the problem is a culture that sexualizes a body part so much that people like me end up having a distorted view of the very purpose of boobs. Interestingly, the solution to this cultural problem is to encourage women to breast feed in public. For as uncomfortable as I sometimes get around breast feeding, I have become much less so as I have been exposed to it. Oh and I don’t mind mentioning that breast feeding on planes is a particular place where it should be encouraged. You see, breast feeding helps kids equalize the pressure in their ears. Which makes them more comfortable which in turn leads to LESS CRYING. Trust me, when I see a woman breast feeding on a plane, there is a part of me that wants to say to that woman, “Thanks for making my flight better!” Loud crying causes me way more irritation than my discomfort with breast feeding does!

The second major boob story this week involved silicone breast implants. The FDA has lifted the ban on silicone breast implants. What I thought was interesting about this story was that for cosmetic surgery, the cut off age is now 22. That seems strange. I mean, we let women vote when they are 18. We let them drink when they are 21. But they have to be 22 in order to get a boob job with silicone boobs? I assume a younger woman can still get a saline boob job. It just seems weird. OH well. As it happens, I am not a big fan of boob jobs for cosmetic reasons but then, I have always had really big tits so I have no idea what it is to go through life with small boobs in our culture where breasts are valued so highly as sexual items. Still, when faced with stories like this, I find myself wishing that women could learn to like their bodies the way that they happen to be. Even so, I imagine that women who are younger than 22 are perfectly able to make their own decisions about their bodies even if they might make decisions I would rather they didn’t even feel the need to make.

Worldwide Feminism

One thing I have learned over the years is that it is pretty easy, as an American, to forget that there is actually a world out there beyond our borders populated by people who dont want to be Americans. It is also easy to forget sometimes that while human beings the world over are very similar and generally want many of the same things, others might take a different road towards achieving those things.

Anyhow, one of the great gifts of the internet and blogging is that it gives me the opportunity to occasionally read blogs written by people from other parts of the world. One of my favorite blogs is written by a young Iranian woman named Proshat. It is a blog I encourage everyone to check out if for no other reason that to serve as a reminder that there are good people in Iran and that there are women there with a voice. We live in a time where our leaders here in the USA refer to this country as part of "an axis of evil" and the possibility of war with this country is anything but far fetched. We all need to remember that there are GOOD PEOPLE there as there are good people everywhere.

Anyhow, this post of mine really isnt to talk about Proshat (although she is wonderful). It is to talk about a post I found from a link on Proshat's blog written by a friend of hers, Sunnaz. Sunnaz writes about feminism in Iran (in English!). It is a rather interesting view into the feminist movement in an islamic society.

She writes:

Islamic history offers modern feminist role models (instead of western ones that are alien to them and generally viewed as a tool of patriarchal capitalism). These Islamic role models are used to accommodate present needs.

I thought this was particularly interesting. It is pretty common for feminists here in the USA to assume that our cultural context is easily applied to every other feminist movement in the world. And yet, how can it be? Issues like wearing burkas or wearing the hijab are examples of things most western women simply cannot grasp fully . It is important for us to remember that while we might wish to support women all over the world, we must allow them the space to create movements themselves because such movements will be more likely to work well within their particular cultural framework.

Some Thoughts on Feminism

One of the things I have been thinking about a lot lately because of some discussion I have read on various feminist blogs has been about make up and girly things and how those fit into feminism or how they don’t as the case may be. A lot of discussion has been around how such things are not tools of empowerment but rather survival skills in a patriarchy. Many are saying that it is perfectly reasonable for a woman to employ traditional trappings of femininity in order to gain power from men since it is still one way to do it. Some say that since women now have other options, options that result in women actually being seen as capable, they should leave the trappings of femininity behind. Others say that one should just do what one wants to do and should wear makeup and get married or whatever they else they want to do as long as they recognize that when other women chose not to do those things, it is a valid choice. I have to admit that I am in that camp. I simply cannot bring myself to get offended when another woman shaves her legs or puts on lipstick.

The discussion brought up some other thoughts though. One blogger, while talking about her love of things feminine made a comment along the lines of “no one ever accused me of being a feminist because I couldn’t find a man” (I cannot for the life of me remember which of the dozens of feminist bloggers I read who said that so I apologize for not giving credit.). That particular line got me thinking more about feminism than any other thing I read. Because you see, to me…lipstick is just lipstick and shaving one’s legs is something a person either does or doesn’t do and generally I don’t think about it too much unless I feel that I am being judged for not wearing makeup and not often shaving my legs or not having a man in my life as a romantic partner. You see, the thing of it is…I think that I am a feminist because I cant get a man. Seriously. (we will all just forget for a moment as I often do that when I say that I cant get a man, what I really mean is that I cant get a man that I want. I suppose if getting a man were my only concern, I could choose someone I am not interested in)



Ok. So here is the thing. By and large, I have been rejected by the patriarchy. I get no power from men. Men do not generally pay me compliments. Men generally do not ask me out. Sometimes men treat me badly because of how I look. Some women do too but they are usually women who get a lot of positive attention from men. Like it or not, getting a lot of attention from men gives women power in our culture. Less so than in times past but even today a woman can trade her beauty for economic security. It isn’t an accident really that most women’s economic position rises considerably with marriage. Men’s economic positions also rise with marriage but there seems to be less of an effect. There are other less obvious ways that women often find their self worth attached to the attention they get from men. I see this everywhere. From the shelves of books at the bookstore with instructions on how to get a man or how to keep a man to the comments made by single women along the lines of “Lots of men want me, I am single because I want to be” which may be true but still acknowledges that the attention of men is a valuable thing for a woman. (And to be fair, the attention of women can be valuable for a man but it seems different to me somehow and I am sure it is a power differential I am sensing)



Men, for whatever reason, are often attracted to women who take an effort to appear feminine. Now, of course there are all kinds of women who don’t wear make up and dont shave who still find themselves shacked up with some guy. I will just say that if one happens to be very overweight and also chooses not to wear makeup, high heel shoes, feminine clothing, etc that one’s odds of finding a guy drop considerably.

At any rate, at some point in my life, I stopped internalizing the bad messages our patriarchal culture was giving me that I was somehow not deserving because of my body or my choice be somewhat hairy and without lipstick on a regular basis. I stopped being offended by the phrase “women in comfortable shoes” since I generally like to wear comfortable shoes. What is wrong with comfortable shoes? Eventually, I decided that the real problem was outside me and that it was a problem with the culture at large and it was feminists and feminist writing that helped me see that. It was feminists who helped me take all of that self-loathing and put it outside me. And at some point I realized that I could starve myself and spend more time than I wanted to molding myself into a version of myself that was more approved by our culture OR I could just be the me that I have learned to love. I could learn that it is ok for a woman to choose to be herself even if it means not attracting a man. That was a very freeing moment in my life because once my sense of self worth was no longer in any way attached to attention from males, I could stop worrying about the lack of male attention I was getting and I could start paying attention other, more important, things.


And so…I have accepted that I am a single woman. But being a single woman has also made me appreciate feminism all the more. You see, married women do not feel things like the wage gap as much as single women do because their household’s incomes include a man’s income although I imagine that divorced women and especially divorced women with children feel the wage gap even more than single women do. Being single has made me appreciate the advances that have been made by feminists before me. I can have a job that is something other than being a librarian, a nurse, a teacher, or a social worker. I can own property and get a mortgage. I can vote. In short, I can do everything I need to do in order to have a fulfilling life even without a man.

More than just that though, being a single woman has given me a point of view of the outside looking in. There are a lot of amazing women in the world who have been blessed with incredible good looks, who get lots of positive attention from our patriarchal culture who have managed to still see all of the things I see. There are men who have managed to become feminists too. Those men and women are amazing. I don’t think I would have been one of those women though. I suspect that if I were given lots of power by the patriarchy, I would probably have used it for evil instead of for good. I think I needed to be challenged strongly in order to form my views in a way that was different than the patriarchal culture I was brought up in. I needed to be a woman in order to understand male privilege. I needed to be fat in order to understand how unfairly fat people and fat women in particular are treated in our culture. I say this because even with the challenges I have been given, I still accept at least some of the patriarchal notions of our culture. But I am working on it.

I know that is a thought somewhat far away from “is it ok for feminists to wear lipstick” but there you go. Sometimes I start in one place and end up someplace completely different.

Newsflash: In a patriarchy, some men feel entitled.

I had one of those annoying moments this morning where something said on the radio kind of pissed me off. It is funny because usually on the way to work, I listen to a station that plays music and has an idiot DJ because I found that arriving to work all pissed off probably wasn’t a good thing.

This DJ was talking about the news that Paul McCartney and his wife of four years, Heather Mills have decided to split up. He said that Heather Mills at sometime or another made a statement that she felt she deserved to be in the limelight as much as her husband. This DJ first laughs in that “oh how can she be so stupid” way. Then he starts in on how the marriage was probably doomed from the start because Heather Mills probably expected to have a egalitarian marriage with McCartney who is A BEATLE. He actually said that any woman who marries a guy like McCartney should expect to take a subservient role because if she didn’t, there were 10,000 women waiting to take her place. His tone through all of this was one of envy.

This DJ’s views on marriage apparent reflect our society’s views. The idea is that a man with power in his career can expect to also have power within his marriage or other relationships with women. The man is the head of the household. There is a culture where women trade youth and beauty for money by marrying rich men but beauty and youth are often transitory (I mean, no one stays young forever).

The power differential in many mainstream relationships was something very obvious in a movie I watched over the weekend: Shopgirl. There was a relationship between a young beautiful woman and a rich older man. The difference in the power structure there was very obvious to me. He really called all the shots because he simply didn’t need the younger woman. He didn’t need her financially. He didn’t need her emotionally. And mostly, he just acted entitled to being in control and the shopgirl automatically accepted it.

And that is it really. It is that so many men that I know have a sense of entitlement when it comes to things like relationships and that so many women accept this without question. Now of course, not every relationship I see is like this but a lot are and I move in a crowd of very liberal and enlightened people who generally accept feminism, who think the likes of Caitlin Flanagan are ridiculous. And yet, there is still that sense of entitlement.

My best example of the entitlement thing is one time, several years ago, when I still thought I might have kids someday, I was talking about what I would name them. I had first and middle names picked out for at least two boys and two girls since I figured I wouldn’t ever have more than two kids so I wouldn’t ever need more. One of the people in the conversation asked what I planned to do if the father of these future children wanted to have a say in the names. I said that I figured that he could either pick their last name or their first and middle names and that if he *really* had his heart set on giving the child a particular first name or something, I would be willing to pick the last name. There were lots of horrified gasps that I hadn’t considered it automatic that the child would have the last name of the father.

I don’t know. I guess that is how it is when one lives in a patriarchy. But I think that they way it offends me so much is good really. I used to always feel awkward when such things were discussed but it never sat right with me but now I know why. I don’t like all the power that so many men have over women and I really don’t like their sense of entitlement about it.