Good post from Brutal Women that came just a day after I dealt with this issue in Aikido:

Brutal Women: Another Day, Another Roundhouse, Another Bad Right Hook

The room we practice in has mirrors, which were covered at the previous practices. They were uncovered Monday, and I had to look at myself standing doing footwork alongside all the other people. It was quite demoralizing. Because I’m very fat. Way fatter than most people in this country, and nearly always the fattest one by far in the room (often not the fattest one in the room in the US, though!).

The thing is, though, I don’t feel fat. I mean, I weigh about twice what a person my height ought to weigh, but I don’t usually feel like it. Sometimes I’m reminded, though, like when trying to do those yoga poses where my bulk gets in the way. I definitely got reminded in Aikido when having to do all that falling down and getting up again. Got reminded the whole week afterwards, that is! But usually I don’t think about it when performing physical tasks. I did not like the mirror, because it reminded me–and at a time when feeling negative about one’s body is not conducive to learning and performing.

(As an aside, I don’t think fat people get nearly the credit they deserve for the exercise they do, whether purposeful exercise or just going about their day-to-day tasks. Just imagine an “ideal weight” woman with another “ideal weight” woman strapped to her back at all times, going about her business. That’s me on a daily basis. Now imagine her going up several flights of stairs, rolling and falling in Aikido, or doing a shoulderstand. There–that’s my life. The US government and their new guidelines for physical exercise can go screw themselves. At least I don’t get harassed for exercising in public, like many fat people do. What is wrong with people?!?)

The fat acceptance movement has helped me a lot. It’s helped me realize that it is possible to be fat and healthy, and that fat people deserve to be treated just like anyone else, etc. It has helped me see a lot of discrimination that I otherwise wouldn’t have noticed. When I spend a lot of time around other fat people, like at a NOLOSE or NAAFA convention, the fat acceptance movement has also helped me to be able to see fat people as beautiful. But it doesn’t take long after I leave that supportive environment and come back to Norway to see myself as the freak I really am (freak as in “a thing or occurrence that is markedly unusual or irregular”). I’m not dissing my looks, as I generally think of myself as more attractive than average–heh. But I know my body is very fat, and I know that other people would do damn near anything not to have a body like mine (cf. the 1994 Esquire magazine poll in which hundreds of young women stated that they’d rather be run over by a truck than gain 150 pounds.). I know what others think when they see me. And of course I wish I weren’t fat. I may be able to see fat people in general and myself in particular as beautiful, but I don’t generally find fat bodies aesthetically pleasing. (There, I admitted it–SA police come arrest me now! Oh wait, I’m in Norway, and there is no size acceptance in Norway.)

It’s a common belief among many people who consider themselves to be “enlightened” that when looking for a partner, you shouldn’t judge a book by its cover. Certainly not solely, but appearances are an important part of the chemistry between two people. I think this is a big misunderstanding that a lot of people have about the fat acceptance movement–that we want to force people see us as attractive, or ignore their personal aesthetic preferences for thin people when it comes to dating. But no rational movement would seek to change people’s aesthetic preferences. Rather, fat acceptance fights discrimination based on appearance when appearance isn’t important to the case (e.g. Jennifer Portnick’s troubles with Jazzercise). Fat acceptance also helps fat people to see the beauty in their own bodies. I’ve experienced this firsthand. I just wish the effect lasted a little longer.

This just demonstrates the importance of fat role-models in fitness. People like the previously mentioned Ms Portnick or the lovely lady in this yoga gallery. We never get to see fat people exercising, often because they avoid doing so in public due to harassment, lack of workout gear that fits them, or because they just feel uncomfortable exercising alongside a bunch of thin people (perhaps because they imagine what people are thinking about them).

It makes me angry that I got so down, just by seeing an image of myself exercising. And this despite all my time involved with the fat acceptance movement. Johannes says it’s important to use the mirror to observe yourself when training to be sure all the parts of your body are in the correct positions. I know he’s right. Monday’s training was just a shock to me. It made me realize that I still have a lot of work to do, personally, when it comes to fat acceptance. And society has a lot of work to do if it’s serious about getting fat people to exercise.

Today was Aikido, and I didn’t go. I actually felt fine physically, amazingly enough. Monday’s practice, while still a lot of work, did not leave me feeling like I’d been run over by a truck. Last week I didn’t feel like a normal human being until Sunday. Johannes said that when he starts working out, the first and third weeks are the worst for him. In my case, I don’t think I’ve ever made it to the second week before! Well, with the notable exception of the yoga.

No, I didn’t go to Aikido because I’ve been feeling quite depressed lately. Yesterday was bad, today is worse. I don’t experience the depression now like I did when I was younger, nothing so dramatic like that. Rather, I just want to sleep all the time, can’t concentrate, get stressed out if I have too much to do (and it doesn’t take much!). I still feel depressed mentally, but for whatever reason, I can stand outside of the feelings, observe them while they’re happening. So on the one level, I am depressed and unhappy, but on a higher level, I know that these are just feelings, not “me”, and I’m not depressed about anything. However, while this knowledge has made it easier to deal with the depression in a way, it has not minimized the effects. I still sleep a lot, still feel unhappy, cannot concentrate enough to read anything more than a Nemi comic, etc. It just sort of brings home the fact that this disease is physiological. Genetic, even–since my biological mother got in touch with me, I found out that she has depression, so does her mom, and her son. So I can think of it like diabetes, or even alcoholism. Something I inherited and can control, but that I will always have. Not something that is my fault.

My work with meditation in yoga has helped me a lot with my depression (not to mention a lot of other stuff). The physical stretches can vary greatly in strenuousness, so even if I have virtually no energy whatsoever, I can usually manage a while in universal position. The stretches feel really good for the physical aches that the depression brings. Even when I am too depressed to move, the self-observation tactics of yogic meditation (”I am not my body, I am not my feelings, I am not my thoughts–but I can observe myself experiencing these things.”) help me to keep mental distance from the stupid, crappy, horrible unfair things going on in my brain that make me feel like shit.

Sadly, I’ve found that I’m enjoying my yoga classes less and less now that we’re focusing more on strenuous classical poses (like headstand, plow, or Lord of the Fishes) that just don’t work with my bulk. I know the solution is to start up a home practice, but that kind of thing isn’t easy for me. I’m hoping my yogaferie this summer will help.

I’m afraid that I might have taken on too much this term. Last term I tried to go to yoga twice a week, and I made it a lot of the time. This term I’m supposed to be going to Aikido twice a week plus yoga once a week. I’m finding it difficult to motivate myself to go to the Aikido because it’s a long commute and the building it’s in is a long, hilly, slippery walk from any of the nearest public transportation stops. Well, it’s not too long, actually, but it seems long because of the ice on the hills. I still haven’t found a way there and back that I’m satisfied with. And it doesn’t help that if I don’t time things right, I have to wait 20 minutes in the cold for the next tram to come. None of these are big obstacles, but they just stress me out. I have a long history of quitting things, so these stupid obstacles don’t help. There were never any obstacles to the yoga. Plus this term I need to finish the vast majority of the writing on my thesis, since I have to turn it in on October 1st. I am getting better at writing spontaneously, thanks to this blog, but I haven’t written anything on my thesis. I don’t know where to start. No, that’s not true–I know lots of places to start. I can start anywhere. I just haven’t. *sigh*

Eeeh, I don’t know. I’m really rambling here. Like I said, I’m not doing too well lately.

The New York Review of Books: Europe vs. America

Some quotes:

The US is an excellent place to be rich.

…

In the words of Valgard Haugland, Norway’s Christian Democratic minister for children and family: “Americans like to talk about family values. We have decided to do more than talk; we use our tax revenues to pay for family values.”

…

In its widespread religiosity and the place of God in its public affairs, its suspicion of dissent, its fear of foreign influence, its unfamiliarity with alien lands, and its reliance upon military strength when dealing with them, the US does indeed have much in common with other countries: but none of them is in Europe. When the international treaty to ban land mines was passed by the UN in 1997 by a vote of 142–0, the US abstained; in company with Russia and a handful of other countries we have still not ratified it. The US is one of only two states (the other is Somalia) that have failed to ratify the 1989 Convention on Children’s Rights. Our opposition to the international Biological Weapons Convention is shared by China, Russia, India, Pakistan, Cuba, and Iran.

…

The risks inherent in a “war of choice” (Iraq), or the abandonment of international agencies in favor of unilateral initiative, or an excessive reliance on military power, are thus clearer to Europeans than to most other peoples: “Europeans want to be sure that there is no adventure in the future. They have had too much of that.”[21] The United States, by contrast, had no direct experience of the worst of the twentieth century—and is thus regrettably immune to its lessons.

I don’t regret having moved here, but I do very often miss home. Ignorance is definitely bliss–now I feel like I’m not going tob e able to be happy either here in Norway or in the US.