The whole health Olympics schpiel is pretty transparent. I get it! You're healthier and therefore fit better into the beauty standards women are supposed to measure up to. You eat yogurt and blueberries and you love going hiking. All of this equals a pretty thinly-veiled proclamation: I'm skinny and healthy, right?!
Well, I certainly hope you're healthy, and I hope I am, too, but I'm not going to brag about how little meat I eat and how soda and french fries taste like poison to me. I have been called out by strangers for how Irish I look--potatoes are my favorite food. Stop hating on my french fries. I'm running a marathon this fall, I walk to the train every day to commute to work and sometimes I bike the 30-mile roundtrip trek to commute. I'm as healthy as I need to be, so keep your beauty standards to yourself, and pay attention to Ms. Haskins.
This also reminds me of a commercial Liz and I saw once. Our commentary struck us as amazingly hysterical.
Along with the graphic of a container of yogurt slimming down in its fat, fat midsection with the help of what appeared to be a tape-measure girdle, was this commentary:
Commercial: We cut the fat...Liz: Which makes it yogurt!Commercial: And we cut the calories...Smalls: Which makes it food!
Even on a long run last weekend, my running partner confessed that she is motivated in the last few miles of a run by thinking about the food she'll have when she gets home. I second that emotion! Except that when I mentioned making an omelette or having an egg and toast, she bristled and said, "Maybe some yogurt, and fruit or cereal." Since when is an egg and wheat bread bad for you? Eff off, healthier-than-thou sentimented smug people. Leave the beauty standard judgement to the patriarchy and stop jealously eyeing my potato chips.
I love the Yogurt episode of Target Women. I just introduced my friend Lahna to Sarah Haskins and now we're both hoping we'll run into her somehow in LA. But meal-comparing is becoming the new national pastime! Families, roommates, and co-workers all want to know what I'm eating and why. The constant food judgment of the outside world practically encourages a lady to eat alone in her room, with the door closed and the lights off. Lookie-loos can't count and compare my fiber intake in the dark. But it's ok, I need people to make sure I'm drinking that glass of red wine for it's health benefits and not for something silly.
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