Girl Talk
Imagine the day
when we laugh with our friends
and never once,
not once,
mention diets.
from More to Love ©elizabeth patch, all rights reserved
Imagine (you may say I’m a dreamer) but just imagine a world
where women sit & talk about everything & anything
EXCEPT the pointless, meaningless, useless, and go-nowhere conversations
about diets, weight loss, and “I hate myself because I’m fat” discussion.
Every day I hear my female students truly distraught over something as meaningless as how small their jeans are.
Every day I overhear accomplished, smart, rich, loved, talented, polished, attractive and successful women, complaining to their friends about their thighs or butt or belly.
Enough already!
Let’s just sit right down with a glass of wine or a cup of coffee and talk about our husband, boyfriends, parents, bosses, where to find a good babysitter, global warming, that great new movie, the cure for cancer, the wars in the Middle East, how to make your child eat vegetables, what to wear to that fancy party…
I agree! Thank you for writing this. I would LOVE to see a world in which the conversations between women did not endless return to food, diets, weight, clothing, etc. I see my students (bright women attending college) lament about the same thing.
However, there is one thing here that I don't agree with, and that is that jean sizes are meaningless. They SHOULD be meaningless. Absolutely! They don't actually tell us anything about a person's character, or dreams, or brilliance, or compassion, etc., etc. Yet, even though they give us nothing of "substance," sadly, the size and shape of one's body can have very concrete ramifications in our society, especially for young women.
THAT is what we need to change. If we somehow managed to convey the message that clothing sizes are not indicative of a person's worth or character (and I agree that ending fat talk can be a way of doing this), my guess is that this talk would probably no longer be so all-consuming!
I agree 100%. It is sadly true that even though in a big picture sense, what size jeans you wear is meaningless, it has become a focal point of our negative self-talk about fat.
In fact, the competition for who wears the smallest jeans is so prevalent, that I created a page in More to Love just on that topic. A blog post about it is here
thanks for your comment!
[...] is End Fat Talk Week! By elizabeth patch, on October 20th, 2009 Here is a link to my post on ending “Fat Talk” including the illustrated page in “More to Love” on the same [...]
I have to agree with you in this one Elizabeth. We can’t continue to let our size hinder us and dominate our every day conversations. We have much more things to worry about and offer the world outside the size of our jeans.
Great post!