Should Jessica Simpson's Weight Gain be News?

Should Jessica Simpson's Weight Gain be News?

What makes us lose weight? Is it wanting to be what is promoted as pretty or is it something more.

I have been overweight my whole life.  I would go through stages where I cared that I was overweight mainly because I just wanted to fit in with the skinny people around me and other times I just could careless if I was overweight.  I would tell myself "Why do I care what other people think" when truly I did it was just easier to say that because no matter what diet I tried I could never lose weight.  But I learned over the past 40 years that is not a good reason to lose weight to impress people or to fit in.  I think this was the reason why I never did lose weight but gained weight. 

About two years ago, I started to realize I was getting older (not old but older) and that if I needed to start thinking about eating healthy for my health.  My mom has and my dad had health problems that if I don't start thinking about what I am eating there is a good chance I could get these heath problems too.  So I figured it was time to start eating health for myself.  So I decided I could not do this all at once.  So I started to take small steps in the process I started to lose weight slowly.  It amazed me when I was trying to lose weight to be skinny I could not lose weight.  When I stopped caring about losing weight started caring about my health I lost the weight.  

I want to chronicle my lifestyle changes and weight loss and I hope that I can help someone with my chronicles.

I do have question for you all to think about.  "Why are you losing weight and who is it for?"  "You or someone else?"  I think these questions are important to being healthy and losing weight.

In the eye of the beholder

Something that has stayed with me for years is when a female relative of mine asked me how I could stand working next to my coworker because she's so pretty. Of course that implies that I look like a dog (wait, dogs are cute) and should be ashamed of myself. Not go out in public at all maybe, or wear a veil over my head. That kind of comment gets said to so many girls/women (maybe not quite that bluntly) that they can't help but feel constantly judged on their appearance.

Cool New Title: "I Am an Emotional Creature: The Secret Life Of Girls Around the World," by Eve Ensler

I don't want this blog to default to the female type all the time.  That said, I was browsing through some of our new books today and came across this title that I thought seemed compelling and related in many ways to issues of beauty or physicality.  So, of course, this has to be about girls, right?  Yes.  Still, I wanted to just spotlight this book for you: In her new book, Eve Ensler, the author of The Vagina Monologues, has collected fictional monologues and stories inspired by girls all over the world.  The voices in the book cover a world of topics and emotions.  They are smart, complicated, tender, and most of all, alive.  To give you an idea of the subjects covered, take a look at the titles of selected pieces:

•                   You Tell Me How to Be a Girl in 2010
•                   Bad Boys
•                   What I Wish I Could Say to My Mother
•                   It's Not a Baby, It's a Maybe
•                   Things I Heard About Sex
•                   hunger blog
•                   The Joke About My Nose
•                   A Teenage Girl's Guide to Sex Slavery
•                   Refuser
•                   Things That Give Us Pleasure

Ensler seems a born nuturer: both empathetic and empowering.  In her introduction she writes:

     "Everyone seems to have a certain way they want you to be--your mother, father, teachers, religious leaders, politicians, boyfriends, fashion gurus, celebrities, girlfriends.  In researching this book I came upon a very disturbing statistic: 74 percent of you say you are under pressure to please everyone.
     I have done a lot of thinking about what it means to please.  To please, to embody the wish or will of somebody other than yourself.  To please fashion setters, we starve ourselves.  To please boys, we push ourselves when we aren't ready.  To please popular girls, we end up acting mean to our best friends.  To please our parents, we become insane overachievers.  If you are trying to please, how do you take responsibility for your own needs?  How do you even know what your own needs are?"
She continues, "This book is a call to questions rather than to please.  To provoke, to challenge, to dare, to satisfy your own imagination and appetite."

To read more about this book Click here.  or  just check it out at the library on our New Books kiosk in the Main Lobby.

Okay, I'm off to get my hair color done.....see you later!  

How Did We Get Here?

Beauty.  It's important.  Apparently in ways we don't (usually) even think about.  Aren't we bombarded daily with information including, but not limited to: who looks good, what body types we think are hot, how we can look good, or at least better, how to grow more luxurious eye lashes, how to get white enough teeth,  what we can wear to look better, what we can eat to look better, etc. etc.? Obsessive?  In a way it's no wonder that Survival of the Prettiest is our common reading.  But our common reading goes beyond our day-to-day experience with prettiness.  It talks about how we human beings are actualy hard-wired to look for and be drawn to pretty people.  If we're all subconsciously attracted and drawn to pretty features, as opposed to the not-so-pretty, what implications follow for how that shapes relationships, business, values, consumerism, mental health?  What do you think?  How are you effected?  As you read this book, many related issues will arise.  This blog is one way to discuss those issues that matter to you.  Everyone is welcome - pretty or not.