 |
|
|
|
|
 |
 |
|
||
 |
 |
|
||
|
||||
 |
|
|||
|
||||
|
||||
My Horse Weighs More Than I DoOctober 26, 2005 Heading into my late forties, I had the impression that maybe women my age were ragging on themselves less and actually taking occasional delight in their physical selves. About time, thought I. It's a helluva lot easier for a camel to squeeze through the eye of a needle than it is for a woman in the U.S. of A. to grow to adulthood without hating her body. (Do you hear anyone suggesting the camel go on a diet?) Then I got back into horses. Horses bring out the best in many of us, but for some of us, it seems, they're just one more reason to go on a diet: "At my weight, it's no wonder my horse walks away from the mounting block." How to suggest that your horse walks away from the mounting block because you let him get away with it and now he's spoiled rotten? And that 140 or 160 or 180 pounds really isn't that much for a horse that size to carry? No one seemed to think a horse was overburdened with a man who weighed 160 or 180. Female pounds must be heavier than male pounds. I'm on a couple of horse-related e-lists. One of them's a friendly, low-key list of (mostly) women who've returned to riding after a long layoff, in some cases after a serious accident or illness. The other one's devoted to dressage, a method of training horse and rider to work in harmony. A couple of days ago a few of the women on this list got into another round of "I promised my horse I'd never weigh more than 130" and "I know I'd be a better rider if I lost 40 pounds" and I had to go AWOL for a bit before I started screaming. Why is it socially acceptable -- almost socially required -- for women to beat themselves up about their weight and anything else about their appearance? No, wrong question: there are dozens of whys, and even if you committed all of them to memory that wouldn't change anything. Think about Rosa Parks instead, Rosa holding her ground and refusing to cooperate with a law that said black people weren't entitled to the same consideration as white people. Everyone's talking about "the power of one" -- how do I do my bit to make women's self-hatred a little less socially acceptable? Mostly I just go about my life as a 54-year-old, 5-foot-5 (standing up very straight), 155 (approx.)-pound writer, editor, and born-again horsegirl, taking pleasure in my ability to hoist sacks of grain and bales of hay and do the various chores that horsekeeping involves. I steer conversation away from diets and workout plans, mainly because there's so much more interesting stuff to talk about. Long time ago I read Kim Chernin's first book, The Obsession: Reflections on the Tyranny of Slenderness. One particular line I've never forgotten: "The only thing women are allowed to control is our figures." (Wording approximate -- it's been a while.) Hell, if we stopped trying to beat our bodies into submission, we could probably end war and stop global warming before the end of the decade.
|
|
|||
|
||||
|
||||
|
||||
 |
|
|||
 |
|
|||
Home - Writing - Editing - About Susanna - Bloggery - Articles - Poems - Contact Copyright ©
Susanna J. Sturgis. All rights reserved. |
||||