Stuff I’ve Been Reading

Life, my friends, is getting in the way again. I’m busy, distracted, not altogether in the peak of health, and struggling with tiredness like nothing I’ve ever struggled with before.

I’m fine, of course. All will be well. But my own work has ground to a crushing halt (which I deeply regret), and I don’t have any pithy advice to dispense, and I am all out of clever ways around writers’ block (unlike these guys), and I certainly don’t feel like much of an authority on anything these days, besides self-pity.

So.

This is a post about some stuff I’ve read lately which I’ve found particularly inspirational, interesting and/or useful. Not all of it is about writing – some of it is just about life. But it’s all good. Put the kettle on, relax, and share a cuppa with me, won’t you? Good-oh.

Aaah. Lip-smacking good!
Photo Credit: markhassize11feet via Compfight cc

On Being a Fat Bride

Some of you who’ve been around these parts for a while may know about my struggles with body image, weight and self-esteem. It’s something I take a huge interest in, this cultural obsession with thinness, and particularly the ‘health trolling’ which can surround commentary about women (in particular) and their bodies in the media. People feel it’s their right to treat those with weight issues like they were less than human, sometimes, and worthy of nothing but disrespect and ridicule. I hate that more than I hate almost anything else in the world. I am a person who struggles. I am a person who has struggled all her life. Most importantly, I am a person, and I deserve to be treated as such – not simply as a person who is fat. Sadly, this is so often not the case.

Several years ago, I got married. I felt great on the day, but I had trouble finding a suitable dress in the weeks and months leading up to the event itself. I had to think about things like covering myself up, pulling myself in, camouflaging things I hated about my appearance, and making sure the gown I chose was ‘flattering’. So, when I read this article by journalist Lindy West, about her own wedding day and how she was a happy, joyous, celebratory – and unapologetically, unashamedly fat – bride, it made me well up. Like Lindy, I loved my wedding day. Unlike her, I didn’t have the same sense of freedom around my appearance. I regret that I didn’t allow myself the space to enjoy my body, and that this is something I generally have trouble with. The article inspired me. I loved it. Have a read. But if you come across any comments, either relating to this version of the article or any of the numerous versions of it which were reprinted in other media outlets, do yourself a favour and skip those. Trust me.

On the label ‘MG’ and what it signifies

I love Philip Reeve. He’s a creative powerhouse and a central figure in the world of children’s books, both as a writer and an illustrator. He wrote a blog post in recent days about the label ‘Middle Grade’, or ‘MG’, and why it gets attached with such alacrity to children’s books outside of the United States, where the term ‘middle grade’ is meaningless. This is something which has bothered me, too, for a long time, but I could never articulate it quite the way Reeve has done. Perhaps his take on the issue is rather contentious, and somewhat divisive, but I largely agree with him. And, for once, the comments are ace and well worth reading (probably because most of them are written by children’s book professionals!)

On Illustrating, Illustrators, and the Hard Work of Being Creative

Sarah McIntyre (who has, incidentally, regularly worked with Philip Reeve) is another children’s book professional whom I admire hugely. She is an illustrator and a creator of picture books, and for a long time now she has been building a campaign online under the tagline #PicturesMeanBusiness, which aims to ensure illustrators start to get the recognition they deserve. I will hold my hands up and say that before I came across this campaign, I was a typical ‘text-fixated’ type; illustrations (whether they were on the cover or dotted inside the book) were, for me, an added bonus, but not something I thought about too deeply. That has all changed now. Before, I used to make sport of finding the illustrator’s name (usually in tiny type somewhere on the back of the book, or in the copyright/publication metadata at the front, and sometimes not included at all); now, I’m not happy unless illustrators get full credit, whether it’s online or in clear font, somewhere visible on the book jacket. I hope more people will get on board with this, and that we’ll see a change beginning in the world of publishing. For more, see Sarah McIntyre’s recent blog post on the process of producing illustrations, and how it’s a lot harder than it looks.

On Being a Weirdo (and Why it Rocks)

I’ve never read Laura Dockrill’s books, despite the fact that she seems like a fascinating person with a unique voice. This article, which she wrote for the Guardian during the week, might make me take the plunge into her wacky imaginary world, for once and for all. In it, she talks about the importance of being yourself, no matter how weird you might be – in fact, the weirder the better, it seems. This is one of the reasons I love books for young readers; they have such power to shape thinking, to alter the course of a life for the better, to influence and affect and make a difference. Not only do children’s books possess some of the most imaginative world-building, language use and characterisation in literature, but they make the children who read them feel part of something bigger, comfort them in times of challenge, make them see they’re not alone, and (hopefully) help them to be happier in their own shoes. And what could be better than that?

Nothing. That’s what.

And finally there’s this great list of reads from some of the contributors to the site (gasp!) Middle Grade Strikes Back, which details what people are bringing off on holiday with them to keep them company by the pool. I’ve read several, but most are new to me. Maybe they’ll inspire you, too.

Au revoir for now, poupettes. Stay well. I hope I’ll be back soon – and that there’ll actually be some writing news to tell you!

I Wish it was an April Fool…

…to say that I feel like death warmed up today.

Image: smchealth.org

Perhaps yesterday’s post took everything I had; perhaps the wet, dank, cold and frankly irritating weather has ensured some nasty little bug has settled quite happily in my system. Either way, I have a throat so sore I can’t swallow properly, and I feel like I’ve run a marathon, and I’m struggling to keep my brain online.

Not, it must be said, a whole lot of fun.

However, I do just want to say an immense word of ‘thanks’ to everyone who read, commented upon, or was in any way moved by yesterday’s blog post. It was a terrifying thing to put out into the world but my heart and mind feel far more at peace today than they’ve felt for quite some time. I was very touched by the kindness that came spilling out of every corner of my life – people taking the time to write to me and, even, telephone me, to express their solidarity and their concern – but I wrote the post for purely selfish reasons, to try to exorcise a nasty, spiky demon who has been living in my brain since I was five years old.

Image: heroes.ag.ru

He made his debut the first time I was teased in a school playground, and he grew in stature with every snide remark, half-covered laugh, and disapproving glance. He was there the day a teacher shamed me in front of my whole class because of my size. He laughed down my neck the day an adult – to my face – referred to me by an extremely derogatory name while laughing at the idea of me playing with my friends because they were sure I was too fat to run. (I was eight – and I was not.) He is in his element whenever any sort of social event looms on the horizon and the fear of having to buy something to wear starts to rise within me – the fear of having to look at my reflection, having to face up to the fact that nothing will fit, having to deal with how bad I look in outfit after outfit…

You get the picture.

There is a lifetime of hurt behind yesterday’s post.

So, thank you to all those who understood, and who cared. Thank you to all those who read my words. Thank you for helping me. The kindness I was shown was an unexpected, and very welcome, gift.

Image: commons.wikimedia.org

I spent all day yesterday proofreading and editing a technical document, so today – considering how I feel – will hopefully be spent dreaming up a story or two. Whatever you’re up to, may it go well.

Happy writing, and happy new page.

 

I Inhabit a Body

***Warning: possibly triggering for those sensitive to body image, eating disorder or weight issues***

The last few days have been something of an emotional ‘perfect storm’ for me.

It all started with this brilliant, beautiful and perfectly judged blog post by Foz Meadows, followed by this poem and this .gif (both seen on Tumblr), and finally this podcast from the Australian actor Magda Szubanski, which was shared by the wonderful Kate Wally over on Twitter. After I listened to the last link – the podcast – I had a good cry, and it wasn’t simply because of the power and sorrow of Magda’s story, though powerful and sorrowful it undoubtedly is. I wept because her experience as a woman, a woman with the temerity to exist in an imperfect body, with the cheek to appear in public in leisure clothing while enjoying herself at the beach, shattered something deep inside me.

For, like Szubanski, I am a fat person.

I am a fat woman, which is immeasurably worse than simply being a fat ‘person.’

I am a fat woman who has hated herself all her life, and I am sick of it.

Paleolithic (c. 28,000 – 25,000 BCE) figurine of a woman, possibly a fertility idol, known as the Venus of Willendorf or the Woman of Willendorf.
Image: gattonero.de

I inhabit a body which is large, and misshapen, and unpleasing. I inhabit a body which some would say has no right to exist.  I inhabit a body which I know would be sneered at, judged, condemned and – metaphorically or literally – spat upon by certain others in the society in which I live, and I have been aware of this for a very long time. I have learned to live with it, and I hate that I have had to.

Once, years ago, I lost a significant amount of weight by, essentially, subsisting on about 800 calories a day for the better part of twelve months; my body shrank, but my mind stayed the same. I carried my larger self around like a shell, my new body shrinking within it like a grub, or a soft underbelly. It felt vulnerable. The smaller I got, the more visible I became. As I grew thinner, I thought my life would start to make sense. I thought the world would open up to me. I thought my heart would heal and my mind would clear, and every day would be like a Disney cartoon.

But it wasn’t.

I was still me – just a smaller version.

The self-judgement, the self-hate, the ‘checking’ that had been part of my life as a larger person – all that stayed with me. It got worse, even. The thin me was ‘normal’ looking, and she had a new, unfamiliar set of rules to follow. I had to wear the ‘right’ clothes, do the ‘right’ job, be seen in the ‘right’ places. And I was never good enough.

And, over the years, the weight has come back – and I am still not good enough.

I am an intelligent and well-educated person. I know how bodies work, how nutrition works, how exercise works. I know my Vitamin A from my Vitamin K; I know my saturated from my unsaturated fats. I’ve been wailing on about the dangers of excess sugar consumption for ages, long before it ever became part of the global conversation on obesity. I know the dangers of carrying excess weight, particularly around the middle – where I carry it.

But I am a vegetarian. I eat plenty of wholegrains, pulses, legumes and salads. I get my protein from beans, eggs, and cheese carefully selected to be as low in calories as possible. I eat plain natural yogurt with a teaspoon of honey if I need a treat. Every morning I make porridge with skimmed milk and water. I eat three small meals a day.

And, very occasionally, when I’m out with family or friends, I will have a dessert – and I judge myself with every mouthful.

Image: mongoliankitchen.com

The last time I attended the doctor, it was for an issue entirely unrelated to my weight. The medical practitioner spoke to me briefly about the issue concerned, and then hopped straight onto the topic of my size. She insisted on weighing me, even though I told her I didn’t require her to. She gave me a condescending lecture about ‘letting ourselves get too big,’ and when I tried to explain that I eat mindfully and that exercise is not unknown to me, and that I was perfectly healthy, her response was:

I don’t care if you tell me you’re eating two lettuce leaves a day. Eat one lettuce leaf a day for three months, and then come back to me.

I am so tired of this.

I am so tired of trying to explain to doctors that perhaps my weight is a symptom of something else, and not a result of my lifestyle – which, no doubt, they imagine involves buckets of fried chicken, gallons of ice-cream and beer by the vatload. I am tired of not being believed. I am tired of being sent for blood tests to check for the diabetes they will not believe I don’t have, simply because I’m large. My blood sugar levels, for the curious, are on the low side of normal, by the way.

Often, in my hearing, people will comment on the weight of others, because it is simply something that we do, as a society, without even thinking about it. ‘My, hasn’t she put on stones since we saw her last?’ or ‘Look at Joe – obviously marriage suits him. He’s wearing his contentment around his waist!’ I hate this. Where possible, I refuse to take part in conversations like this, and I ask the commenter to stop. Not only is it cruel, and unnecessary, but I always feel that if people are saying these things about others, what are they saying about me? And, in my dark and private moments, it’s these words of judgement that I hear echoing around my own head, directed inwards.

Except, during my darkest times, they’re spoken in my own voice.

Image: quiet-elephant.deviantart.com

I have been hearing, and repeating, these words to myself since I was a child. I have ruined any joy I could have had in my body, my looks, my person, because I have absorbed the judgement of others, which has – over time – become self-judgement. I have a body that works – it runs when I tell it to, it walks for miles, it sings and laughs and shouts with joy; it jumps over puddles and climbs up hills and it danced up the aisle on my wedding day.

And yet I hate it because it is not small enough.

And I hate the voice in my head that reminds me, whenever I see my reflection, how far short I fall of perfection.

And I hate the world we’ve created, where little girls like I was are made to feel like objects – of scorn, of hatred, of scapegoating judgement.

And I hate that this voice – this eyebrow-raised, hand-on-hip, pursed-lip, can’t-you-just-control-yourself? voice, is with me every second of every day. I hate that no matter how much joy I try to take in all the things my body can do, and in all the boundless capability of my mind, this voice will never fade.

Fat people are not all slobs – but even if they were, so what?

Fat people are not all impulsive, uncontrolled, binge-eating, lazy good-for-nothings – but even if they were, so what?

Fat people – people like me – are not here to be anybody’s whipping boy, and we are not here to be made fun of or shamed or used as a spectacle, or as an example of what can happen when you ‘let yourself go,’ or as a thing to be laughed at. Because – and this is important – fat people are people, and they are as deserving of respect and equality and consideration as anyone else.

I inhabit a body. It might not be one that meets with societal approval, but it’s mine, and it’s one that I want people to judge – because judge they must – by the smile on my face, and the strength of my hug, and the width of my heart.

And the dark voice inside me will keep on murmuring, and I will keep on trying to silence it.

House of Pain

I’m a bit conflicted as I write this post. I’m torn, as I so often am, between warm nostalgia and remembered sadness. It’s late here, and I’m just about to pitch into bed, but I couldn’t go to sleep without writing some thoughts on a TV programme I’ve just watched. It’s called ‘My Mad Fat Diary’, and watching it felt like being given a return ticket to my own adolescence.

All right, so the main character in the show has just spent four months in a psychiatric hospital, and that never happened to me. She also attends a pool party (in 1996, in the UK? I’d say it’s unlikely, but perhaps I just wasn’t in a group cool – or rich – enough to have a pool party in 1996, in Ireland); that, obviously, never happened to me either. But in every other respect, I felt like the show could have been written about my life. I was that girl who didn’t fit in (in every respect); I was that girl who knew her music, and used that knowledge as a means to talk to boys and other alien species; I was that girl who hated being the ugly duckling among the flock of swans. I was the girl who felt so agonisingly self-conscious that she found it hard to look in mirrors, and who was always wondering, at the back of her mind, if people were laughing at her. I thought the show was brilliant, but it was almost impossible to watch, on some levels.

At the end of the show, the character asks her psychiatrist what his first impressions of her were. He says something like: ‘I felt you thought you were a fragile thing… but I think you’re a tough cookie.’ I don’t think I’ve ever encountered anything so true, in a programme of its type, before – it really struck a chord with me. At that age, I felt fragile, despite seeming like a large and capable girl on the outside. I used to feel invisible, despite being anything but. I felt like if you looked like an oversized, cumbersome girl physically, you didn’t have the right to feel delicate or vulnerable. It seemed as though such ladylike feelings were kept for girls whose bodies kept themselves within ladylike bounds. It’s tough to keep your head straight when it seems like the world you live in doesn’t allow you to feel what you need to feel. Thankfully, as the years of my life have ticked on, I’ve learned to accommodate all my emotions – if I feel fragile, I go with it until my strength comes back. It always does.

The most memorable scene in the show, for me, was one in which Rae (the lead character) is contemplating wearing a swimming costume for the first time in years. She remembers how, as a small child, she used to wear nothing but a swimming costume, and how she didn’t care at all about how she looked, or what people thought of her. The teenage Rae has a touching conversation with her memory of herself as a little girl, during which she tells the child that if she gets fat, people won’t like her any more. The little girl says ‘Of course they will! I’m brilliant!’ I loved that bit, probably more than was seemly for a woman of my age and station. I think I may have clapped at the TV. (There may also have been some cheering, but I’m not willing to confirm or deny anything.)

I had friends as a large, out of place teenager. I still have most of those friends now, and there are deep, unbreakable bonds between us. I’ve always had friends, and I’ve always loved people, and I’m very grateful for that. But watching this programme really brought me back to the difficulties I encountered growing up. Sometimes, despite the love of friends and family, adolescence can be the loneliest place in the universe, especially when you’re struggling with yourself and the only ‘person’ you feel you can be honest with is the person in the pages of your diary. I think the show seems true to life because it is, actually, based on a true-life story – the ‘diary’ of the title is a real diary, kept by a real girl (now, of course, a successful grown-up). I kept a diary very much like the one the girl in the show keeps, and I’m pretty sure the contents of my diaries were much like the contents of hers. Often, writing in it was the only thing that kept me going.

One thing I’ve learned, as I’ve grown, is that everyone feels pressures growing up, and nobody has a perfect adolescence. Of course, this is of little comfort when you’re going through it. But I’m not special or unique, and my long-ago torments are the same as everyone else’s. But I’ve loved growing older, and growing up. With every year I’ve clocked up, I’ve felt happier in myself and in my life, and I wish that more kids would give themselves that chance – the chance to grow up, and realise it won’t always be that bad. You won’t always be the fat girl stuck on the waterslide. You won’t always be the teenage boy with acne on his back. You won’t always be the kid with braces, or whatever it is.

‘My Mad Fat Diary’ was a welcome trip into my past, complete with the music, ‘technology’, posters and bands I would have been so familiar with back then. It made me realise how far I’ve come, and made me see that, despite what I thought of myself at the time, I was a good kid. I didn’t give myself enough credit for facing my struggles head on and coming through them.

It’s never too late to start.