Having some trail mix (then): Okay. Deep breath. Here we are. The time has come. The long awaited moment. Time for the serving of trail mix that I’ve been planning since last week. I get to have some trail mix! Carefully measure out three tablespoons. Scoop carefully to make sure it’s an even distribution of the different items bc if it’s too heavy on the raisins the calorie/sugar content will be higher than the label says, too many nuts = fat content higher, etc., and we have to stay on track here. Level tablespoons, don’t be a piggy now, you fat fuck. Make that scant tablespoons, to be on the safe side. Scrape some off the top. There. Ok. Here’s one serving. Now, I will begin with the boring raisins and peanuts as like a penance before getting to the coveted cashews and chocolate chunks. This is a process. This is the moment. This is all we get, right here. Slowly, one peanut at a time, to really draw out this experience, because even the boring bits are a decadent treat, and it’s exactly this many hours before we may eat again. Ok, now we have arrived at the good part. Soon we will get to eat a cashew. Here is the cashew. Savor it. Ew, you’re so disgusting for savoring it. What the fuck is wrong with you. Piggy. The serving is gone now. You’re still hungry?! After trail mix??! Why are you so fucking fat. Kill yourself. Better get the last crumbs because this is all you get. Ew, what kind of fatty licks the crumbs?! If they could see you now! Despicable! Ok, same time tomorrow? Shall we make this a daily habit? Shall we make 11AM 3Tbsp of trail mix a rule which, if broken, makes your whole day ruined and you an irredeemable failure? We shall!, whether you like it or not!. Now, go walk it off, fatty.
Having some trail mix (now): hungry. food time? food time. hmm. what’s this? ooh, trail mix. that’ll do. dump in bowl. looks like a lot. probably won’t finish. mm, cashews and chocolate chunks. take those first. yum. i wonder why they’re called ‘cashews’. funny. hm, looks like all the good bits are gone. now it’s just peanuts and raisins, boring. oh well, getting full anyway. Oh wait I had to go do that other thing i forgot about i’ll just leave this bowl here on the counter maybe i’ll
That’s not a rhetorical question. And no, this is not going to be a post about the price of groceries, although that is of course also an issue worth complaining about.
No, in this post I am wondering about how, i.e. in what way, according to which method, I am actually supposed to feed my kids. How, in 2026 America, am I supposed to feed them in such a way that they are healthy and full, eat a good variety of real foods, and form a healthy relationship with food that won’t require years of therapy to repair later on?
If you’re sitting here reading this going “what a dumb question!”, “but it’s obvious!”, “just do xyz!”, then you are not the target audience of this post; this post is not for you; congrats on being a superior parent and human; here, take your gold star and cookie and move along: ⭐️🍪
For those of you still here: ah, I’ve found my people. Now, let’s brainstorm this together. Because there is so much conflicting advice out there. And I am about to lose my ever-loving mind trying to figure out how the hell to feed these kids.
A bit about me and my situation: I have four kids, ages 6, 4.5, 3, and 11 months. The 11-month-old is a baby so he’s easy enough. The other three, though — I’m at my wit’s end, currently.
I feel like things were pretty stable before I got pregnant with my youngest. Meal planning was still a pain in the ass, because my husband and I have different tastes and the kids have different tastes so it’s like I have to make three grocery lists and plan three sets of meals. But I remember back then there was at least some semblance of order, to mealtime; a vague nod in the general direction of breakfast, lunch, and dinner.
But then, with the all-day first trimester nausea, I lost control and it was all I could do to survive and keep everyone fed; the nausea lasted up until nearly twenty weeks, and by the time things felt under control in the house again, I was late third trimester, and then had a newborn, and things became more chaotic than ever.
Now my baby is almost one and I still haven’t been able to get the kids’ meal situation under control. It’s just chaos. There is no “mealtime.” There is no breakfast, lunch, or dinner anymore. There is no table, there is no chairs. There is only snacks. From morning till night, everyone is constantly hungry, and everyone wants a snack. All I do all day every day is serve snacks. PBJs, crackers, berries, cheese, yogurt, chocolate milk. Those are the only things my kids like now. I try to keep it to two PBJs per kid per day, but sometimes it gets to three and they still want another. If I offer them anything home-cooked, even something benign and toddler-friendly like pizza or pasta, they take one look and declare that it’s “BWEH!” and refuse to touch it. PBJs. There are bits of snacks all over the house, pulverized Goldfish and half PBJs, because even though they are starving they rarely seem to actually eat. How the hell do I feed these kids.
I’m so torn, constantly, between “let kids be kids! Make happy memories!” and “raise them to be healthy, responsible adults, even if it’s hard.”
The former philosophy is the one I was raised on. I was a picky eater, and my mom didn’t fight me on it — she just accommodated me. I ate a lot of Chef Boyardee, Kid Cuisines, and Lunchables, when I was little, without shame. My family didn’t eat meals together except on holidays, and there was no strict schedule; I was pretty much fed what I wanted, when I wanted, with some limitations (like chocolate only after the meal). However, as you all know, I haven’t had a good relationship with food & eating, as an adult — quite the contrary — so, do I really want to replicate what my parents did? Clearly, something about that didn’t work!
The latter philosophy — the more strict approach — is the one that my peers, my fellow TradCath moms, seem to endorse. The old-fashioned way. “Picky eating is such a uniquely modern American problem! Up until recently, kids have always eaten what their families ate and it hasn’t been an issue. Just serve them real food, and not that highly-processed junk, from the very start! If it’s not an option they won’t ask for it!” — sounds so simple, right? But I think most of us real moms know it’s actually not that simple. Things happen. Convenience foods enter the household one way or another. And soon they’re the only thing your kid wants.
And that’s when you find yourself in my shoes. What do you do now?
I’ve tried taking away all the convenience foods. “We simply do not have any more PBJs or yogurt tubes. You’re going to have to eat the stir fry.” — that never goes well! Even if I make sure to serve it with something “safe,” like plain rice, as the experts advise! The kids don’t eat, the food goes in the garbage (waste of my time and money), and then they are hangry and life is hell for all of us.
“Just wait it out,” my inner critic scolds me. “You have to be patient. If you cave and give them junk, they’ll learn they’ll get junk food if they just refuse dinner and tantrum enough. If you wait it out, they have to eat eventually.” This seems awfully harsh to me. I remember being a kid; I remember how it felt, how repulsive certain foods were. The prospect of putting certain things in my mouth was so abhorrent. It’d be torture. Call me a softie, but I don’t want to torture my kids. Also, my kids are monsters when they’re starving, and I prefer for us to enjoy our life. Is that a moral failing?
Then there’s the middle ground advice. “Just keep exposing them to new foods! Just keep it drama free and don’t make it stressful! That’s how they’ll build positive associations with healthy foods.” — First of all, any advice that starts with “just” is surely BS, because nothing in parenting is “just xyz” — it’s hard. And furthermore: in practice, this advice is basically saying I need to serve two dinners, making things even more complicated than they already are. The “exposure” food, for them to just look at and “be exposed to,” and then the food they’ll actually eat (i.e. PBJ). Great, thanks for that. Real helpful. Waste of my time and money again. I may as well just show them pictures of food in a book if that’s how we’re gonna do it.
There’s been times over the last couple years when I run out of energy to stress about this whole food question, when I just say “fuck it” and stock up the fridge with GoGurt and string cheese and frozen nugs and let them eat what they want at whatever time — as long as they’re ingesting food and in a good mood, that’s a win! Sometimes I wonder if this is really the best strategy! Maybe it’s okay to prioritize our sanity! Maybe I need to get over the mom guilt, take the pressure off, stop comparing myself to other moms, and just let my kids be kids! Isn’t this the best way to avoid giving them an eating disorder? To keep food fun and low-pressure?
I sometimes start to think yes — but then I see these other moms, like the moms in my church mom groups, whose kids (the same ages as mine, or younger) are such good eaters. They never eat junk. These toddlers are chowing down on green salad, homemade kefir, baked fish, homemade sourdough crackers. “How do you do it!!” I ask my fellow moms. Their reply: they don’t offer junk, they are consistent about mealtimes, they don’t allow constant grazing. Basically: the “strict” tactic I mentioned above. And their kids are so much better-behaved than mine! Surely, they must be doing it right.
So I crack down again. “We have no more yogurt tubes.” “We’re not doing Goldfish in bed anymore. You will eat your dinner at the table.” — and once again, life becomes hell in my house! And the vicious cycle of guilt and misery and wasted time and money rolls on.
I wouldn’t say that feeding kids is the hardest part of parenting. The hardest part of parenting, for me, is the anxiety, the staggering responsibility, knowing that you are responsible not just for their safety, health, and happiness here on Earth, but in large part for their eternal salvation or damnation. It’s almost too much to think about. — The second hardest part is the socializing. As someone with AVPD, I hate socializing, but I force myself to do it, to attend play dates and play groups and parties and classes, so that the kids can have social experiences. The third hardest part of parenting, though: the third hardest part is the feeding. Undoubtedly the feeding. Harder even than the lost sleep, the lost free time, the messes, the potty training, and the financial costs — the feeding. Is it just me? How the hell do I feed these kids.
“Just model good eating yourself!” Maybe that is the secret. Eating as a family is hard for me to do. Because of the ED stuff and my weird control issues around food. Also, because of my upbringing, sitting around a table for family meals just feels weird and uncomfortable for me — always has. And my kids hate sitting at the table anyway, and whenever they eat are constantly asking me to bring them stuff — a napkin, some water, some ketchup, a clean spoon because they dropped theirs — so I wouldn’t really get to sit down anyway, even if I wanted to. So usually I don’t even try. I eat later, once the kids are in bed — the same way my parents used to do when I was a kid. If my kids see me eating, it’s normally like a string cheese or a square of candy or a cup of juice, on the go.
“Well no wonder, then,” you’re probably saying. “They’re eating exactly as you do.”
Ugh.
But once again I ask: is it such a moral failing for me to want to make life somewhat easier for all of us? Are my kids really suffering, am I giving them some great disadvantage in life, because I don’t like to sit down and eat lunch at a table myself? Is it that weird and bad for parents and kids to eat separately? Am I really setting them up for an ED by not actively eating meals in front of them three times a day? (I cannot stomach the thought of sitting down and eating three meals a day, ugh!) Am I making excuses? — Maybe my answer is buried somewhere in this paragraph and I’m just avoiding it. — or, more likely, I could sit with my kids at table three times a day and serve us home-cooked food and they’d still refuse to eat anything but PBJs. Probably the ED isn’t caused by family meals or the lack thereof, but by other factors and influences.
Do any of you have any firsthand experience to share? Can anyone commiserate? Does anyone have advice that’s not just a condescending “just do xyz”? How do we feed these kids? Comments are open!
“Successful in life” — wow, I’m flattered — who do you think I am, WordPress Daily Prompts? Do I look like Elon Musk, or Saint Carlo Acutis, or Kardea Brown (my hero!), or, I dunno, Barack Obama, or any other modern-day example of what anyone’s definition of “success in life” might possibly look like? Me? I’m literally just some wannabe writer blogging on WordPress on my phone while nursing my baby in a recliner.
Although I’m a pretty happy person — happier, I daresay, than many of my peers — I can’t claim to know much about any kind of “success in life,” as I’m not super great at any particular thing, and am very far from holy, wealthy, good, or “high-achieving” by any definition of that term.
I guess if there’s one area of life in which I can maybe say a thing or two about “success,” it is: recovery, as in: recovery from alcoholism and EDs.
First of all, before I share with you what I believe to be “the secret to success” in recovery, I’ll tell you my credentials: the reasons why you should, well, I won’t say “believe” or “trust” my advice, because my advice might not even work for you; different things work for different people, in recovery, contrary to what some folks in Recoveryland like to loudly assert; just in order that you might see that I have a legitimate reason to say anything on the topic at all. Or at least to believe that I may.
My credentials: completely sober from alcohol since March 2019 without the aid of any particular program or rehab or methodology; was in A.A. for four years before that (since January of 2015), but with only spotty bouts of sobriety there. Prior to that, I drank addictively, or at least problematically, since 2007/08. So, that’s approximately twelve years of active addiction, and seven years sober.
And also: virtually fully “recovered” from anorexia & bulimia since the same time, March 2019 (not counting a period of relapse in late 2021), also without the aid of therapy or inpatient treatment or any particular technique.
Prior to that, I lived with some iteration of an eating disorder since 2004, when I was fourteen and first diagnosed with anorexia. In roughly 2011, when I started drinking more heavily, the anorexia evolved into bulimia (alcohol will do that to ya!). I’ll spare you all the gory details. Long story short, the entirety of my teens and twenties were one long and depressing battle, and during this time I pretty much never got periods, because of being constantly in starvation mode, so I was pretty sure I’d never have kids naturally.
But since approximately 2019 (unlike sobriety, it’s harder to pinpoint the exact date of recovery from EDs, because it’s less black-and-white), I’ve been at a pretty stable and normal size. I’ve managed to attain, and even accept, my “normal” weight — i.e., the weight that I am at when I’m living a happy life and not thinking about food constantly. Feeling safe around food, and tbh even bored by it. And! Best of all, I’ve had four kids, naturally, without the aid of any kind of reproductive technology.
So, that’s fifteen-seventeen years of living with an active ED, approximately five-seven years “recovered.”
So that’s the abridged version of my little story. It’s pretty undramatic, I guess — no hospitalizations or brushes with death or whatever — certainly they won’t be making any movies about me, lol. But still, I think it’s evident that I’ve achieved what could be called “success,” in this area.
How? What is the secret?
“The secret to success,” in my opinion at least, is this: and I wish someone had told it to me this plainly at the outset of my recovery: the secret is getting used to being uncomfortable.
You’re not going to feel magically different. You’re never going to be able to eat unself-consciously, without worry, like you did when you were a kid. Let go of that dream. You’re never going to feel great about yourself; socializing will always be hard; you will never like the way you look. Yes, you could say some things about your life are “ruined” or “broken” — you just have a new normal now. You will get used to it — and life will be good anyway!
I wish it had been put to me so plainly — I wasted so much time and energy chasing after this mirage of “learning to love myself,” “finding myself,” “overcoming,” “gaining freedom,” being “happy,” etc. etc. etc., all of it useless lies.
But I guess those ideas are what sell. You’re not going to inspire someone to quit drinking or quit starving themselves if you tell them “it’s true, you’ll never feel good in your own skin, you’re always going to be uncomfortable! You’ll never have a “normal” relationship with food, and you’ll never like the way you look! You just get used to it!” If that’s how you try to sell recovery, sick people will just shake their head and say “I’ll pass” and keep right on choosing sickness — I know I would have!
Maybe that’s why it was never told to me plainly. I guess you have to rosy it up a bit, to inspire people to want to get better. “Learn the art of intuitive eating!” “Practice affirmations of self-love!” “You’ll experience a total personality change as a result of working the Twelve Steps!” Lies! All lies! None of that ever happened, for me, no matter how desperately I wanted them or how hard I worked to engineer them. — But guess what! Life is good anyway!
“You just get used to being uncomfortable,” a fellow alcoholic said to me in A.A. once, and that might have been the single most useful thing anyone ever said to me in my four years in the program, more useful than anything in the actual literature. It’s so true. It’s so unglamorous. There’s no Lisa Frank-looking utopia at the end of the dark tunnel. The dark tunnel is what it is. This is it, you’re already there. Your eyes just adapt to the darkness. And pretty soon you find it’s alright. You have a good life there. You actually have evolved — just not in the fairytale way that you’d hoped to.
Don’t give up! The discomfort gets less agonizing as you adapt. It becomes like the snores of an annoying roommate rather than the shrieks of some homicidal stranger who’s broken into your house, threatening you. Things even out. Things become undramatic. Things that used to bowl you over just make you chuckle and shrug your shoulders now.
My legs are massive — yeah, I hate them, I never want to wear shorts. So what. I’m 36. I literally have better things to worry about now. My life is good and I am happy even though I hate my legs and refuse to go out in shorts.
I don’t like to eat in social situations. So what. They’ll tell you you aren’t really enjoying life unless you can cut loose and eat a spontaneous indulgent lunch with your friends at a restaurant, and order dessert — that is blatantly false. I don’t do that kind of thing, but I love my life and am happy. Accepting my limitations and adapting to them — that was the secret to success.
I have intense social anxiety and can’t make friends — still true. So I just… don’t go out or make friends. So what. Life is still good. It’s quiet. It’s peaceful. I find other ways to scratch the social itch (hello, reader!). Am I lonely sometimes? In a way, sure, but it’s not world-ending. Life comes with little pains and sadnesses. It doesn’t mean it’s not a good life.
You get used to being uncomfortable. That’s the big secret. In a way, it’s actually a relief to know that. You don’t have to stress about attaining some mythical RECOVERED status. You don’t have to worry that you’re not recovered enough because you’re not happy enough, those layers of worry folding over and over on each other like puff pastry dough. When you accept that this is simply it, this is all there is, this darkness in the tunnel, then you can just… be, and accept that you are already doing it, you’re already there. You can start to get your footing there.
Now keep in mind I’m just one person and what works for me might not work for you. Or maybe you have actually attained some mythical Lisa Frank place of freedom and joy, in which case, wow! Congrats! I’m happy for you. But recovery is also available to those of us who for whatever reason can’t get there. Life is still good. You just have to really accept that it’s not going to be perfect. It’s actually so much better when you take it for what it is. Things are good now. I wish someone would have told me plainly.
Or maybe they tried. Maybe this is one that you really just have to figure out for yourself and put into your own words when you do.
Disclaimer: I’m actually much less mean than this post makes me sound, I promise. I don’t actually hate anyone! Sometimes we all crash out a bit, don’t we, and this was cathartic (and imo funny) to write, so I’m putting it on my blog, because it’s my silly little personal blog, and what’s a personal blog for if not a bit of silliness and catharsis, amiright. TW for bad language and strong opinions.
Shit be pissing me off these past few days, y’all! Not sure what it is, probably some weird postpartum hormonal nonsense, but I have exactly ZERO patience, especially for things that strike me as stupid, lately.
Just this morning I finally officially uninstalled Instagram (if you know me, you know I have an on-and-off toxic relationship with Instagram). The algo was already annoying me, but the final straw was this one stupid doughy-faced dipshit all up on my Suggested Reels talking about how Catholics shouldn’t vaccinate — and I don’t typically make fun of people’s appearances, because that’s just against my personal code of ethics, but damn!, today, that just crossed a line for me. Like don’t be coming up onto my internet with your misinformation and your doughy-ass face talking about “vACciNes aRe deMoNic” when there’s literally an active outbreak of a previously-eradicated virus raging through my neck of the woods right now precisely because of y’all’s self-centered antivax BS. With your bitch ass. Bye bye, Instagram. (And if you’re thinking of leaving me an antivax “dO yOuR rEseaRch” comment, don’t bother, I’ll delete it without reading. With your bitchass.)
ahem! Anyway, that’s not even the reel I came here to complain about! All of that was just a preface to demonstrate that stupid things, things that wouldn’t normally get under my skin, are getting under my skin lately. The thing I actually came here to talk about is: cooking.
Getting to the Point: The Reel in Question, and the Real Question
Again, it starts with a reel. And this one was randomly recommended to me on YouTube, God knows why. Here it is, if you’re curious, but be warned, it’s stupid as shit. The gist of it is: it’s a series of clips of street interviews, contrasting contemporary Russian women with contemporary American women. When asked whether they cook at home, the Russian women (who btw all happen to be very stylishly-dressed and made-up, also very fit and sexy) all responded, with their delicious accents: “yes, of course, I always cook for my man,” “lots of meat for my man,” “yes, obviously, I love to cook,” “yes, I cook breakfast lunch & dinner daily.” The American women, on the other hand (who btw were varying degrees of basic, out of shape, and casually dressed) all said: “ehh, a couple times a week,” “maybe once a week.” Moral of the story: Russian women are better than American women, because they cook. And women who cook are better.
Stupid! — but, you know what… is it true, I wonder? Am I mad because it’s true?
You might not be concerned about whether this claim is true; you probably have your existing opinion reconfirmed, and move on, thinking it’s obvious and “why would anyone wonder, let alone worry, about something so obvious?” Most people don’t worry about such things. But hey, this is my job, this is what I do, I worry about such things, so if you don’t give a shit and are just rolling your eyes thinking I’m being ridiculous, why are you even on my blog? Get up outta here. (With your bitch ass.)
I won’t bother discussing the issues of femininity, style, and beauty, as those are things I’ve discussed already (here, here, and here, if you’re curious); but today, will focus specifically on this question of cooking. Must a “good woman” necessarily be a good cook? Is it ok for a woman to not cook?
Backstory: Mith’s Personal Relationship with Cooking
Fuck cooking. I hate it. It’s taken me thirty-six years to realize and accept that I hate cooking. For much of my life, I really believed that cooking was one of my hobbies, that I genuinely liked it. But no. What I liked was “edging” eating. I liked being close to food, messing with food, touching and smelling it, as a substitute for actually eating it. A sick avoidant fascination with food. I developed an ED in adolescence, so my relationship with food is just permanently fucked up. Also booze. One of the funnest things ever in my life was drunk cooking. One of my absolute favorite things in the world: chopping vegetables and listening to music while drinking on an empty stomach — peak human experience. 🤌I used to slice all my fingers up so bad.
But then I got sober and got the eating shit under control, and surprise! IRL food is so uninteresting now. (I specify “IRL food” because I still love watching Food Network, writing about food, looking at paintings of food, reading cookbooks…not to be annoyingly self-referential today, but I discuss all of that here.) It’s no longer some exotic treasure to lust after. It’s just food. Ugh. No offense, but why does anyone love cooking? Don’t they have anything more interesting to spend their mental energy on?
A friend once asked if, hypothetically, a pill existed that one could take to meet all their nutritional needs so they wouldn’t need to eat, would I take that pill? And hell yeah I would. Food, digestion. Ugh. Do you remember that scene near the end of Infinite Jest where Hal is imagining, with a dread that borders on horror, all the food that he will have to eat to sustain himself during his career as a student at ETA? All the space that all that food would take up? All that eating you’ll have to do. Ugh. Why all this fuss over filling your stomach. Cooking. And the more elaborate the cooking, the bigger the mess you have to clean up, the more dishes to wash — yet another waste of my fucking life when I could be doing something mentally stimulating.
Sometimes I feel like: why, in 2026, are we still cooking.
No offense but sometimes, I feel like people who really love cooking and cleaning must not have much going on upstairs. Don’t come for me in the comments, I don’t actually endorse that thought. It just crosses my mind, fairly often, without my consent. I’m fully aware that cooking is an art and plenty of people way smarter than I are deeply passionate about it, and that’s cool. (Like I said, I’m obsessed with baking shows!) I don’t get it but whatever.
Image, as always, from pinterest
I hate cooking. I hate the stress and the mess of it. I don’t like to eat, so I don’t taste the shit as I’m making it, so I never even know if it tastes good or not. Left to my own devices, I’d probably never cook at all. I could happily live on coffee and smoothies. Fuck cooking.
Admittedly, this feeling may just be the result of my current situation in life. Cooking used to be “fun”… but now, it’s dull and practical. Now I have four young kids and a husband, all of whom have very different taste preferences, and we have a tight grocery budget and a kitchen that desperately needs renovation. And my kids pretty much won’t eat home-cooked food as a rule — anything I make, automatically disgusting. Strictly ready-made snacks from a package, for them. It all makes meal planning and cooking a real drag. — But, if the kids actually ate my cooking, and if I had money to blow on all my dream ingredients for all kinds of fun recipes, and a beautiful, efficient, well-outfitted workspace — then would I enjoy cooking again? You know what, maybe! But tbh, I feel like people will do the things they like to do regardless of their circumstances (case in point: me, here, writing this even though I have a zillion other things I should be doing). So if I really liked cooking, I’d probably like it even here and now.
I don’t like cooking, and am not very good at it. I do it, still — I make sure my husband always has a home-cooked dinner of some kind, even if it’s yesterday’s leftovers. But I don’t really fuck with breakfast (unless it’s pancakes/waffles, which I am actually decent at and make quite often, from scratch) or lunch, and my dinners are, at best, adequate. Nor do I care about aesthetics of plating or setting the table or whatever. Meal prep is not a joy, for me. Does this make me less of a woman?
I mean I think it’s obvious that I’m not a “good woman,” by the textbook definition. I’m a homely, frumpily-clad, small-breasted tomboy with cankles, a potty mouth, a bad attitude, and zero social or domestic skills. I’ve never felt girly or womanly. Honestly, I’m super grateful that I didn’t grow up in today’s age of transtrenderism, because if that shit had been popular back when I was a soft-brained kid, I have no doubt I’d have glommed onto the trend and started calling myself a “he/him,” and my liberal atheist parents would have encouraged it, and it would have long-term fucked me up even worse than I already am (lol). (Just pissing everyone off here, today, aren’t I?) Thank God I missed that boat. But anyway: all this to say: I hate cooking; does that make me less of a woman?
Finally getting to the meat of the matter: what is a “good woman,” anyway?
But what do we mean by a “good woman”? What is the textbook definition, and more importantly, who wrote that definition?
I’ll tell you who: men did! Men decided what a “good woman” is — and what they mean when they say “good woman” is: “good wife.”
Which is fine. I’m not complaining about that. That’s natural. And obviously women have a definition of a “good man” that’s gonna be different from a man’s definition. (However, I also think it’s true that women are better at recognizing that a man can be a “good man 🤝👍” without being a “good man 😍🥵” and vice versa — the two are not the same, in fact often quite different; whereas it seems like a lot of men can’t get it through their heads that a woman can be a person of value without being sexually desirable.)
I’m just saying: when I read the sentence “he’s a good man,” I assume anyone of either gender could be speaking, and what comes to mind is: “this man is virtuous, he did a good deed, he did something brave or maybe even heroic, he’s trustworthy and reliable” — but when I read the sentence “she’s a good woman,” first of all I assume a man is speaking, and what comes to mind is: “she’s traditional and feminine, maternal, she cooks and cleans and takes care of her man, and takes care of her house and her physical appearance.” If you want to describe a virtuous, brave, or heroic woman, you say “she’s a good person.” If you saw a woman do something selfless, you would go on to describe her as a “good person,” not a “good woman,” because the latter sounds kind of sexual or even objectifying, like you’re describing a good cow at auction — it doesn’t mean the same thing as “she’s a good person.” Whereas, about a man, the two terms (“a good man” and “a good person”) can be used interchangeably. Is it just me? Am I wrong about this? Do you see what I’m saying?
What I’m trying to get at is: men, and some of us Trad-inclined women, tend to conflate the one definition of “good woman” (“good human being”) with the other (“good wifey”). We tend to think that a woman’s value as a person = her value as a wife. And that is not true. I’m not less of a woman because I suck at cooking. Less of a wife, sure! But that’s no secret, is it?
BriefTangent About Housewifery and the Purpose of Life
I ain’t much of a housewife. I do my best, and don’t get me wrong, I do love this job! Since becoming a SAHM, I wake up every day with a sense of purpose, because I have the privilege of serving the people I love most in the world, instead of a bunch of often-shitty randos who don’t know me from Adam. It’s honestly so weird when I remember how depressed and suicidal and full of existential despair I used to be, working a job outside the home to support no one but myself. So much what is the fucking point. Might be a life for some, but it was none for me. I love being a housewife! I respect the job, and am always trying to get better at it, trying to improve my cooking, cleaning, and parenting skills — but, for the time being, I also happen to be pretty bad at it, skill-wise. Luckily, we don’t have to be super great at a thing in order to love it and flourish while doing it (exhibit A: me + writing, lol).
Back to the point & Another Question
Being bad at cooking, and/or hating cooking, does not make a woman less of a woman. (To use the real, non-sexual definition of “good woman.”) It makes her less of an ideal wife, sure. Fair enough.
But wait, is marriageability a moral matter? Is it a moral failing to not be good wifey material?
I bumped up against this question in my post about femininity, too. This is one that I can’t seem to decide on an answer to.
If two hypothetical women, Alice and Bertha, are both alike in virtue and holiness and moral qualities and all — love God and their neighbor, selfless, humble, charitable, et cetera — but Alice is a tomboy with short buzzed hair, who wears jeans and t-shirts and has more traditionally masculine hobbies, while Bertha is a super-feminine girl who wears dresses and long hair and loves cooking and taking care of children… is Bertha a “better” person for better exemplifying the qualities natural to womankind? Does she get like bonus points in God’s scorebook for being feminine?
I like to think no. I guess some folks out there would probably argue that Alice doesn’t truly “love God and her neighbor” if she dresses and acts like a dude, because if she really loved God she would honor His design for her as a woman, by being womanly; and if she really loved her neighbor, she would dress more humbly, more appropriately, so as to not call undue attention to herself or present a distraction. This is what my inner critic, Catherine (whom you may remember from this post) is saying in my head right now. But, I somehow don’t believe that Catherine is right.
However, I’m still on the fence with this one, and don’t think I’m going to solve it tonight.
In Conclusion
The dude who made that reel about Russian vs. American women is probably just some gross thirsty incel who’s been rejected by so many American women that he now fetishizes Slavic women and fantasizes about bagging himself a “Snow Latina” who, he imagines, will be just sooo happy to cater to all his needs. 🤮
And anyway, there were plenty of women in the comments going “uhhh, I’m Russian and I never cook” or “I’m American and I cook three times a day” — and someone even pointed out that his sample was rigged because he exclusively interviewed wealthy residents of Moscow. Biased.
And besides, Russia’s national policies really lend themselves to a traditional family structure. Not so in America. Oh no, not so — don’t even get me started. That’s a large part of why our culture looks the way it does. As American women, it’s not our fault. Russian women are not inherently superior — they’re not stronger or made of some better substance, or something. Their culture is just different. If they’d been born and raised in America, they’d be like us, and vice versa. People tend to forget the extent to which they are products of their time and place. People tend to think they’re original and in charge of themselves.
As someone who’s never traveled farther east than Prague, I think it is generally true that Russian/Slavic women are fitter and more feminine than American ones — so what. I do not believe that this reflects negatively on American women. And if you think it does, if you think that a woman’s value as a human being is actually determined by her ability/willingness to feed and take care of a man… then, with all due respect, i.e. zero respect, you can GTFO of here with your bitch ass.
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And on second thought, I’m not even going to allow comments on this one, because I just know you’re all going to be mad at me, lol.
TW: I do not recommend checking out the profile in question here if you’re someone who struggles with disordered eating/poor body image. In fact, you might not even want to read me quoting some of the things it says in its reels — I know there was a time when it would have been really damaging for me to even read such things secondhand — so, maybe you should just skip this whole post entirely.
If you keep up with any health & fitness or “body positive” or body size-related content on social media, you may have noticed recently that a certain influencer who calls themselves “@raqisright” is going rather viral. If you aren’t familiar, I’ll summarize what’s going on:
The account has blown up in popularity due to this person, purportedly a woman named Raq (I say “purportedly” because I get the sense this whole account might be not an actual person but just a troll, using a hired actress or something, and could very well be run by some douchebag named Jayden posting from his parents’ basement or some such), posting highly incendiary ragebait about how skinniness is everything and “fat” people (130 is fat, to her, btw) are all losers who need to shut up and cover up. Her slogan is: “make America hot again” (lol). And her claim to fame, if I’m not mistaken, was a reel of her ranting about how girls need to “act their weight,” i.e. don’t you dare act confident if you’re not skinny — “take that attitude to the treadmill.”
As you can imagine, tons of content creators, especially those in the “body positive” sphere, are totally up in arms about Raq. They’re stitching her reels left and right, all enraged and in a tizzy, an absolute uproar, about this “raqisright.”
But… is Raq right?
Maybe you don’t want to hear my take. Maybe I’m not the “right” person to discuss this question, seeing as how I’m not exactly “free” from disordered ideas about eating, myself. (Those demons and I, we signed some treaties, a while ago, and we have a comfortable working relationship these days. I didn’t want to, but it was the only way, since there was no way to evict them entirely.) However, I’m pretty “recovered,” at this point in my life, and I think I actually have a pretty healthy handle on this whole topic, a healthy emotional distance from it. I don’t get #triggered about weight/body image stuff anymore, really, so I can talk about it calmly and, I like to think, objectively. And, perhaps my history — having spent my entire life (from age 14 on) in the ED/recovery world, and having been all over the map, at every extreme, both philosophically and weight-wise, finally landing somewhere in the middle in both those areas — actually might give me the credentials to say something of value on this issue.
So here goes.
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There’s one major reason why people are rightfully mad at Raq. And it’s not because those people got their personal feelings hurt by her content. It’s because they are worried about how her content could affect young girls.
People my age, we are seeing the resurgence of heroin chic (call it Ozempic chic now, I guess), and it scares us; we hoped that it was gone for good, that we as a species had moved past all that, but once again it’s rearing its gaunt and emaciated head, in the world of female beauty standards. We worry about our daughters and their peers.
I get that. I have daughters myself. I’m doing all I can to shelter them from this weight-obsessed world for as long as I can. Recently, they heard a little friend of theirs use the term “fat dumb idiot” as a joke, much to my chagrin, and now I’m over here having to try to teach them that “fat” is not an insult (on my knees, holding their little shoulders and staring into their eyes like repeat after me: all bodies are good bodies, no joke), but it’s also not something we call someone to their face because it can hurt feelings. Try explaining that nuance to a four-year-old. I hate this world. I absolutely don’t want my kids exposed to “thinspo,” to skinnyism, to this message that Raq is preaching.
We absolutely need to cancel content creators that promote EDs. We need to quietly shut them down and not give them another second of our time (which, I’m aware, is exactly what I am not doing, with this blog post, lol). So if you’re really angry at Raq, I get that.
Why am I not more angry, then?
I guess, tbh, I feel for her. I kind of even adore her. And I also don’t think she’s entirely wrong.
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Like I said, I don’t think “Raq” is an actual person, so much as a symptom. Her voice is just the voice of my ED and yours; the voice that we all know so well, and a voice that, as I mentioned, I’ve long since accepted and made my peace with. Maybe that’s why I kind of love Raq. She feels so familiar.
And my heart kind of aches for her, this pretty young woman, because when I was at a point where I fully leaned into this philosophy she preaches — a point where, if I’d had Instagram and a bit more style and confidence, I probably would have created a very similar account, saying the very same shit, tbh — I was the most unhappy I’ve ever been in my life. Letting that voice take over, it does give you a short-term emotional reward, for sure, but it destroys you internally. There is no real happiness, for someone who subscribes to those teachings.
But her account so beautifully encapsulates the short-term emotional reward that I was just talking about: the fantasy of being skinny, pretty, desirable, and better than everyone else because you work harder than everyone else, you can do what those fat slobs are too lazy to do — that high feeling of caffeine on an empty stomach, where it feels like you are light as a feather and you can conquer the world and you are absolutely deserving of everything and morally unimpeachable: that’s the exact emotion that her page illustrates.
Problem is, that feeling is a lie. It’s a mirage, and not sustainable in reality.
So yes, it’s bad to perpetuate this idea — to glamourize the ED life. She should absolutely take her page down, and I hope she does, as part of her own healing process.
But at the same time… is she entirely 100% wrong? I genuinely don’t think she is. Stick with me.
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Tbh I kind of adore this Raq, the same way I adore someone like Britney, or Regina George, or Nicki Minaj (or hip hop stars in general, for that matter). Their world is so different from my own — I don’t want my kids exposed to it, and I personally could never live like that, and have no desire to!, it doesn’t line up with my moral beliefs; but from a safe distance I find them so lovely, so entertaining, so adorable; their confidence is so impressive, and their aesthetic so pleasing, it gives me great fond feelings of “girl power” and all that, and with my whole heart I wish them all the best.
I actually really hope Raq is a real person, and that she’s as happy as she says she is. Because the alternative is that behind the username lurks either a desperately sad girl who wants to die, and/or some pathetic troll just trying to upset people. Also, I like to think that this beautiful life she describes having is a real thing, for someone. That’s a nice thought.
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Finally — and this is the controversial part, so bear with me: I don’t think she’s entirely wrong.
There was a time, not too long ago, when content like hers was just normal. We were all used to it. Nowadays, with the advent of body positivity and #awareness, we’re all so used to having our feelings coddled, that when someone speaks like Raq, without regard for our feelings, it hits like a criminal offense. How dare she! How dare anyone say anything that might offend someone!
But, actually, Raq is right, I think, in a way. Body positivity has, imo, gone too far. And while I don’t agree that heavy women shouldn’t be allowed to be confident or sassy or dress cute, I also agree with Raq that we shouldn’t be “normalizing” obesity.
There’s this fine line here, this gray area, that I don’t know if we as a society are capable of living in because we like extremes too much. But obesity needs to be de-normalized without being stigmatized.
No, it’s not good to be overweight, just the same way it’s not okay to be sick. But that also doesn’t mean that fat people don’t get to exist, to post photos of themselves, to find love, to dress however they want.
We need to stop with the “love your body at every size” thing. Loving your body is not necessary. It’s just a body.
We don’t all need to love our bodies. Nor do other people need to love our bodies. (Someone once commented: “women’s bodies are not advertisements for women’s bodies,” and I think that sums it up.) And fatness is a very normal symptom of life in 2026 America, so it’s just stupid to get mad at people for developing this condition when our society and way of life make it dangerously easy to develop.
But that was a tangent. My point is, I think that someone like Raq does deserve to be proud of themselves for being fit in a culture that promotes fatness. You don’t have to love your body, but if you do, that’s nice; congrats to you. Being healthy and pretty is not necessary, not morally relevant, but still good. I do think we should bring back beauty. I do think we should be less afraid of getting our feelings hurt.
But what about my daughters?: well, as their mom, I’m not letting them use social media unsupervised until they’re eighteen. Social media is the wild wild west, it’s a free-for-all, it’s filthy and unsafe and no responsible parent would let their kids on there. We all know this, or ought to.
If you can’t handle getting your feelings hurt, don’t go on social media. And certainly don’t let your kids on there.
Content creators like “Raq” are just trying to make a living, with their little ragebait. They’re not our babysitters. It’s not their job to protect our kids — it’d be nice, if they cared enough to be mindful of our kids’ mental health, and I’d sure appreciate seeing that; but that’s simply not how this world works. “People gotta eat,” as they say (or, not eat, if you’re Raq, lol). I do feel bad for those young girls who will stumble upon content like Raq’s and be harmed by it. I hope their mothers are there for them.
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The bottom line for me: I wish we could just shut up about bodies. I wish people like “Raq” would shut up. I wish the HAES crowd would shut up. I wish the whole health & fitness industry would shut tf up. It’s an unrealistic thing to wish for, but a girl can dream. They say humility is not thinking less of yourself, but thinking of yourself less, and I wish we could all have such a humble attitude about bodies. The moral weight that’s attached to body size, for us, is so fucking exhausting.
I wish we could talk about body size in a neutral way, that Raq didn’t have to claim moral superiority, that fat people didn’t have to fight for their right to just exist, that people didn’t see skinny women and start shitting their pants and yelling “sOmEoNe giVe hEr a ChEesEbUrgEr” and that people who prefer fat bodies weren’t seen as having some weird fetish or miswiring in their brain. Bodies come in different sizes, some healthy and some not; so what. This bizarre obsession with being able to run a mile or do a pushup or whatever, as if that’s the ultimate defining factor of health — so fucking what. I’m so tired of it.
In conclusion: Raq, if you’re real, keep doing you. Society’s gone to shit anyway, so you may as well keep shining, though I hope you find healing in time if that’s what you need. I won’t make assumptions. You’re beautiful and bold and I sincerely hope you’re okay. Best believe I won’t be letting my daughters anywhere near your circle of influence though.
I admit, the idea for this post was not really my own. My sister, who’s much smarter than I, idly mentioned to me a few months back that it had occurred to her that our modern culture’s obsession with “health” (i.e. diet, exercise, & weight management) is analogous to religion in medieval culture. That, for us nowadays, “health” and “fitness” are basically our substitute for God.
And I’ve been mulling over that for a while, and I think it’s really true. And, tbh, really messed up.
“But Mith,” you may be saying, “health is so important! It’s a great thing to care deeply about.”
Of course health is very important! But “health,” in the classic sense, does not mean the things that people today have been led to believe it means.
A person is physically healthy if they’re: basically eating a pretty balanced diet, they’re at a pretty normal weight, their body does what it’s supposed to do without issue, and they don’t have any serious illnesses or glaring physical problems or abnormalities. Things like: taking a walk to get some fresh air and aid digestion. Staying generally active to keep your strength up. That’s a pretty general picture of “health,” right, and a pretty good standard.
But these days, physical “health” means: thinness, intentional muscle building, macro- and micronutrients, weight lifting (with perfect form), striving for the ideal body shape, whole foods, protein maxxing, intermittent fasting, skinniness, creatine, pedometers, BMI, this that and the other ratio, gym memberships, thinness, personal trainers, expensive name-brand water bottles, expensive skincare products to reduce the appearance of aging, thinness, expensive all-natural organic locally-grown this that and the other, being skinny, looking “sexy” into your fifties and sixties and beyond, being skinny, being as thin as possible, and so on and so on and so on. All of this is pretty newfangled and trendy. And I don’t think it really has much to do with “health.”
Like, people online are seriously out here calling fashion model Ashley Graham “morbidly obese” and “unhealthy” — when she is not only insanely beautiful, but also an objectively average body size. (And I don’t mean “average for an American woman,” because in America our “average” is heavily skewed due to how many of us actually are obese; I mean average for a healthy human woman regardless of context.)
WTF. Where is this skewed, exaggerated definition of “health” coming from? And why are we so obsessed with it that we treat it like our religion?
It comes from companies who want our money. That’s what it comes down to.
Every time I see someone calling someone like Ashley Graham “morbidly obese,” I see someone who’s completely brainwashed, who’s fallen prey to the money-grabbing schemes of the corporations, the retailers, the advertisers, the content creators.
No shame. Most of us do fall for it, at some point, to some extent. I fell for it myself, as a kid, with disastrous consequences. As so many of us do.
It’s really only recently that I’m coming to this realization that this obsession with Health is just a modern-day paganism – it’s idol worship. It’s a hypnosis induced by another flashy advertisement for some product that neither I, nor anyone (except maybe high-level athletes, ballerinas, bodybuilders, etc.) actually needs. It’s really pathetic.
“But Mith, my body feels great when I lift weights and proteinmaxx and drink my weird little fitness smoothies and count macros and–” OK cool! great! You do you. But let’s stop telling everyone they need to do all of this, because all of this is not normal. And it’s not necessary.
Most people feel just fine eating a normal (i.e. not an Instagram influencer’s) diet, at a normal (i.e. not a runway model’s) size, exercising a normal (i.e. not what Big Gym tells you is “normal”) amount. Sure: maybe they’d have a bit more energy if they lifted weights and proteinmaxxed and etc., but would that boost really be significant enough to be worth the sacrifice of your precious free time, of making it a whole obsession, as if your life depends on it?
That’s not health. Health is about so much more than how skinny you are and how much weight you can lift.
All these greedy vendors trying to get our attention with alluring images of this extreme, exaggerated, unrealistic ideal of “Health” – it’s all a lie.
It’s like if they tried to tell us we’re not really “eating food” unless we’re eating Wagyu beef steaks and caviar every single day. “Don’t have these? You have nothing to eat! You’re literally starving!” Or if they tried to tell us we’re not really “driving a car” unless we’re in a Lamborghini. Or if they tried to tell us we don’t really “live in a house” unless that house is 5,000 square feet and outfitted with all the trendiest finishes and the latest energy-efficient amenities. “Anything less is simply not a house! You’re literally homeless!” See how absurd that is? This is how stupid you look when you call someone like Ashley Graham “unhealthy” because she has visible fat on her body instead of just pure rock-hard muscle and bone.
People make so much money off of telling us we’re not good enough and we should hate our bodies. Don’t even get me started on the anti-aging industry.
I know that for some of you this is old news – you’ve been trying to tell us for years! But it’s really only just sinking in for me now, now that I’m 36 and long past the age of any hope of sexual desirability by conventional standards. I begin to see it now: neither you nor I will ever be “healthy” nor “pretty” enough.
I’m realizing how true it is that, by these modern standards that we idolize, no one will ever be healthy enough – and anything perceived as “unhealthy,” any deviation from this strict standard, is cast as a moral failing!
It really is a religion, for so many people! The analogy is plain to see. How did we get like this?
This health cult is a societal disease in itself!
I’m no expert, but if I had to guess, I think this disease is the result of (1) our Godlessnes as a society — our lack of an actual, real religion, and (2) our fast-paced post-industrial world, in which everyone’s expected to chase dollars and sell things and appeal to the masses, and (3) the modern media: the internet and social media, of course, but before that there were magazines and TV and tabloids and all.
The most important of these factors is (1), because it’s our Godlessness that leads us to fall into the traps of (2) and (3).
And also, because living without any real religion leads us to have an inordinate fear of death.
We’re deeply horrified by the vulnerability of our bodies. We refuse to accept that they are dust and to dust they shall return, sooner rather than later. We’ll kick and scream and do whatever we can to try and wrestle against that truth, to lengthen this earthly life, because we believe it’s all we have and when this is done, it’s done: curtains, lights out, party’s over.
That’s not a healthy perception of life and death. Our bodies, even the ones that are celebrated as so “fit” and “sexy” and “healthy,” are vulnerable! We’re all susceptible to disease and death, and no amount of time spent in the gym, no step count nor perfect macros, can change that.
Case in point: I once worked with this girl, an absolutely lovely girl, really smart and funny and fun to hangout with, a hard worker and a really likeable social butterfly, who also happened to be ridiculously hot: petite and tiny, super “fit,” maybe ninety pounds soaking wet, she looked like an Instagram model, and indeed, she was a former competitive cheerleader, so her body looked about as close to “perfect” as can be, by today’s conventional standards. All the men in the workplace fawned over her. And of course a part of me envied her body.
— That is, until I got to know her a bit better, and learned that she was being treated for a persistent cancer: colorectal cancer, in fact, which gave her all kinds of gory symptoms and painful trips to the bathroom and sometimes gave her uncontrollable diarrhea (she often laughed with us coworkers about these incidents, including an anecdote about shitting herself in a grocery store once; I guess if you can’t laugh, all you can do is cry). She’d gone through chemo before, and was getting ready to do it again soon. And shortly after we fell out of touch, I learned through the grapevine that this cancer, and its treatments, had caused her to tragically lose a pregnancy late in the second trimester.
Needless to say I no longer envied her body. I just felt bad for her. I’d rather have my sturdy, unsexy, healthy body any day than her beautiful sick one!
See? If you saw her on the street, you’d look at this petite girl and go “wow! She’s so healthy!” But she was actually not healthy at all!
So what is this idea of health? It’s a false idol, is what it is, and we’re all fools, enslaved by it.
Sure, being overweight is generally bad. I’m not one of those “health at any size,” “body-positive” advocates. That’s silly. Being too big is bad for your health, and if you are obese, you need a lifestyle change. That’s a simple truth.
But let’s not conflate that with “anyone with any visible fat on their body is a failure and a loser and deserves to be scorned and shunned” – to be excommunicated, if you will, from this Church of Health and Fitness.
It’s idol worship. It’s futile, it’s pathetic, and if you’ve fallen for it, I’m sorry, and if you’re out there perpetuating it, I’m embarrassed for you.
Let’s do better. Let’s return to the one true religion — or at the very least, let’s open our eyes and climb up out of this Plato’s cave that we’re trapped in.
Because living like this, worshipping this ridiculous extreme, offering it the bloody sacrifice of our hard-earned money, our limited time, our very self-worth – it’s not good. It isn’t (wait for it!:) healthy.
This post, like so many others, was meant to be a comment on someone else’s Instagram post, but ended up here instead because I just really hate Instagram comment sections, and hate to post there, and besides there’s not enough room for a full rant there anyway. So if you don’t care about social media, you can move right along. I’m just heated and have to get this off my chest, and what else is this stupid blog for if not getting dumb shit off my chest.
What happened is, this Instagrammer that I’m a fan of posted yet another hilarious reel the other day: in it, he’s making fun of those people who love to tell you, with visible pleasure, how they “haven’t eaten anything today,” “I’m so lightheaded,” “I’ve just been so busy,” etc. etc., and it’s painfully, cringily obvious that they’re just begging for you to be amazed by how skinny they are and how little they care about food. Wow!Should we call Bella Hadid?! is among this Instagrammer’s hilariously sarcastic responses to this person, whom we’ve all known at some point.
After clicking “like” and “save”, as I always do on these reels of his, because it’s always been a major pet peeve of mine when people do this and I love how he calls it out, I sauntered on over to the comments, and what did I find there but a bunch of butthurt whining and self-pity.
If you’re butthurt by this joke (which probably means that you’re the person he’s making fun of in this video), then you are part of the problem.
“But I’m actually really struggling with an ED, and you’re making me feel like I can’t reach out for help for fear of being judged! 🥺”
One: “lol I haven’t eaten anything today” to a random coworker — who may or may not be struggling with an ED themselves, you don’t know — does not equal “reaching out for help,” and you know it. You’re just being selfish; you’d rather get a little bit of attention than consider someone else’s feelings/triggers; you really think you’re that important? If you really want to “reach out for help,” then why are you acting cutesy with some random coworker who has their own shit going on and can’t really do anything to help you anyway? What, you want them to drop what they’re doing and offer to spoon-feed you a yogurt cup? Do you want them to help you wipe your butt after you go potty too? No fr. If you need help with an eating issue, you have the internet; you can find some actual help.
Two: I’ve known plenty of people with real, serious EDs, and none of them were ever the type to whine to randos about how they “haven’t eaten anything today!”. On the contrary, they keep this information to themselves. They are secretive about it. They don’t want to call attention to it. They’re not likely to volunteer information about what they have or haven’t eaten. They are ashamed. That’s what real EDs look like.
I’ve also known plenty of people who do this — “omygosh, I haven’t eaten anything today, I keep forgetting!” — and what do you know: none of those people had EDs. Not one of them. This is exclusively something said by people who do not have EDs, but who kind of glamorize EDs and in a sick way wish they had one. They’re just so eager for people to be concerned about them.
“Well how do you know those people didn’t have EDs, Mith?! Maybe they just mask their symptoms and keep it to themselves.” When you have an ED, you have symptoms. Symptoms that are visible to anyone who knows what to notice. I’m not necessarily talking about weight changes. I’m well aware that someone can be suffering and not be underweight. (They might even be overweight. I once knew someone whose anorexia had over time morphed into binge eating disorder, and she had become quite heavy; and I daresay she was actually suffering more than anyone else in that support group.) It’s a certain hypersensitivity around food. The people who love to loudly complain about how little they’ve eaten today are, in my experience, the same people who will e.g. go get McDonalds or Starbucks on a whim with their friends, are generally relaxed or even lazy in their approach to nourishing themselves, and happily enjoy food in all kinds of social situations. Zero neuroses.
“Well don’t assume, Mith! Maybe they’re just faking it!” Um, so, they’re so good at masking their symptoms that they have no symptoms whatsoever? An eating disorder is just that, an eating disorder: it involves the way you relate to food. If your relationship to food is virtually unaffected, then you don’t have one, sorry. At this point, the label “ED” has perhaps become a bit too inclusive, like the “autism spectrum” diagnosis. It means so many things now that it means nothing anymore — and flaunting that label when you’re basically a normie with a few little quirks, kind of does an injustice to those people who are really seriously afflicted.
If you think that noisily LOLing about how little you’ve eaten today to random people in social settings is “reaching out for help,” then you are lying to yourself.
In all seriousness, I’m sorry you are having a hard time with food. I know some people actually do struggle to eat enough, even if they don’t have a classic ED. Issues with food are not limited to folks with EDs. Like one of my friends suffers from chronic hypophagia due to underlying health issues, and genuinely struggles to keep her weight up, and I feel for her. But she also doesn’t go around loudly complaining to everyone she meets about “oh look at poor little me, I’m just too busy to eat!” No, she is able to talk about it openly but also deals with it in a mature way. It’s possible to deal with such conditions without announcing it loudly to the whole world and begging for attention.
Because did you ever think that by loudly complaining you may actually be triggering someone in your vicinity who is actually trying to recover from a real ED? This is why this Instagrammer is making fun of you. You’re being self-centered. And you’re glamorizing diet culture by flaunting your failure to take care of yourself like it’s a blue ribbon.
“No I’m not! I literally said it was bad that I haven’t eaten today” — nope, we heard your tone loud and clear. If you really thought it was bad, if you really knew the first thing about EDs, you’d keep your mouth shut about it, or at least you wouldn’t joke about it in such a cavalier way.
So spare us the pity party. If you need help, get help. But stop lying to yourself. If you’re butthurt by this joke then you’re part of what’s wrong with the world.
And now it’s almost Lent again, and, as always when a penitential season comes around, I am once again asking myself: what should I, as someone with a long history of EDs, do about the whole fasting thing?
I addressed this in a previous post, the tl;dr of which is: most people say that, if you have an ED, you shouldn’t fast from food, but find a different way to fast; to which the voice in my head replies: why? Isn’t it wimpy for me, as someone who struggled for 15+ years but is currently physically fine and in maintenance mode, to claim exemption from fasting? Isn’t that cheating? Wouldn’t the great ascetic saints, the ones who subsisted off Holy Communion alone, scoff at me? Wouldn’t the desert fathers laugh and roll their eyes? “My poor wittle mental health!, fasting might hurt my feewings!, I don’t wike myself, wah wah 🥺”, isn’t that pathetic of me?
(And for the record, as I’m sure anyone with an ED will understand: the voice in my head is only this critical with me — it is not talking about you (it’s like, “other people are allowed to exist, eat, feel, and be vulnerable, but NOT you!!, it’s lame and gross when you do it!”, etc., etc.; we’re all familiar with its double standard, aren’t we?). So I’m not making fun of anyone else, or calling anyone else pathetic — just narrating my own little weird mental process, which maybe some of you can relate to. If you have an ED history, I do NOT think that YOU should fast from food — you are obviously exempt. It’s only me who’s the fat pathetic loser, according to the inner voice.)
So: I’m always wondering: should I fast or no? Am I being hard on myself, or being too soft? What do I do??
Thankfully, I heard a really great sermon on Lenten practices recently, which shed some light on the matter. So here I am to write a follow-up to the post linked above, and to hopefully put this Question That Keeps Me Up At Night to rest once and for all.
In his sermon, this priest clarified some things about Lenten practices. For most of you Catholic readers, these will probably not be news, but I am an idiot and a bad Catholic who needs things boiled down to the basics and spelled out and at like a fourth grade reading level, so for me it was groundbreaking. I had never heard it explained this succinctly before.
Penance and mortification: both are things we resolve to do during Lent. Up until now, I’ve had a pretty nebulous idea of what these were. I thought that they were the same thing, essentially, and tbh never considered that that might not be true.
But actually, if I understood this priest correctly, there are differences between “penance” and “mortification.” The former is a work that we do to atone for past sins. The latter is a discomfort or inconvenience that we voluntarily take on in order to fight ongoing sin/temptation — to counteract a disordered tendency in our current life.
And he went on to explain that, to really have a fruitful Lent, we should practice these in a targeted, specific way, unique to our own personal situation. It’s not just “oh, I’m a sinner so I’ll give up sugar to make myself uncomfortable.” Lent is not about just being uncomfortable for the sake of being uncomfortable. It’s about removing obstacles to God’s grace. Which means that it’s much more useful if we look at our unique sins, imperfections, and bad habits, and tailor our Lenten practices to work against those.
Wow! No one had ever explained it to me like this before. W/r/t Lent, I’d always just been told “prayer, fasting, almsgiving.” Which is obviously good advice. Prayer, fasting, and almsgiving are things we should do more of, especially during Lent. But, this priest explained in his sermon, for maximum spiritual benefit, each individual should practice them in an intentional, specific, targeted way.
I’m just a stupid layperson, so what do I know, but: I feel like that’s a really important addendum.
It’s not necessarily a great idea to just tell everyone, in general: “you should fast.” Because what if someone is breastfeeding, or has a history of EDs (it’s me, I am both), or something else like that. “Just fast” is not good advice for that person. Similarly, “just give alms” might not be the best advice for someone with no money to give. Obviously we are all obligated to give money, but “just give more” isn’t always an option for everyone. Some people have to find other ways to be charitable. Humans are messy creatures and life is weird. So it’s complicated sometimes.
Which is why I asked in my previous post: what should someone in my situation do for Lent?
Thanks to this good priest, I see now that our penances and mortifications not only may, but should be tailored to our unique spiritual state, our unique weaknesses.
Maybe not every mortification is equally spiritually beneficial for every person. Someone who struggles with sloth might want to try waking up early and being productive every morning; someone who struggles to sit still in silence and solitude might want to schedule a block of quiet prayer time daily.
Fasting from food is a good practice for someone who has trouble practicing self-control with food. But if someone has the opposite problem, and has trouble letting go of control around food — well, it probably wouldn’t be spiritually beneficial for that person to fast from food, would it?
Which is not to say that I personally intend never to fast from food again. One day when I’m not pregnant or nursing, I look forward to fasting from food in some kind of way (a part of me looks forward to it a little too eagerly, if we’re being honest). But as it is right now, nursing a baby who has a sensitive gut, while also trying to sort of normalize after pregnancy, my diet and body image and mental health are such a touchy balancing act, which I am managing very carefully by only eating safe things at safe times — it’s just a real precarious tower of cards situation, right now — that I wonder if fasting from food just isn’t the wisest idea.
So what will I do then? Well, that will require me to look at myself and my life and figure it out.
But I’m glad that I can stop stressing about this particular question — at least, for this Lent. You’ll probably catch me yakking about it again come Advent.
My personal thoughts on eating meat? Oh man. It’s such a complicated question, as are all food-related issues for someone with ED history. My stance on meat has changed so many times, in my thirty-six years. At this point I’m an herbivore who understands carnivores and kinda wishes she could be one. I’m also an accidentally, circumstantially militant vegan with an intentionally, philosophically militant vegan living inside me, whom I can unleash at will when the time feels right. I don’t know what I even identify as, or how to explain it. Where do I even begin!
1. ED-Fueled Vegetarianism
I guess a reasonable place to start would be the beginning of my vegetarianism — although, I don’t actually remember when that officially was. I kind of became one by accident, and then decided to make it official. The ED came first. I stopped eating pretty much anything, and then realized at some point that I’d become vegetarian (none of my safe foods happened to be meat), and I happily assumed that identity because (a) it was an excuse to say ‘no’ to food, much of the time, and (b) it made me feel morally unimpeachable, as if my weirdness about food was actually some noble and unselfish thing (it was not).
But so I was vegetarian as a teenager and into my twenties, on and off. My occasional attempts at “recovery,” when forced upon me, coincided with brief forays into meat-eating, as I was often advised not to enforce any hard “food rules” for the sake of my mental health. I had mixed feelings about that. For me eating meat was always a performative thing for myself, like “ha ha, look at me, I’m having a steak, I don’t care anymore!” Invisible middle fingers to the voices in my head. Needless to say, it wasn’t sustainable.
I think I briefly attempted veganism my junior or senior year of high school, simply out of curiosity; but I found it too demanding then, because dairy is something I’ve always really liked. It was, in fact, a cup of Fage Total with honey that finally swayed me from veganism back then. (Fage is, without question, the best Greek yogurt out there. I dunno what they do to make it so much better than other Greek yogurt; it’s like a different food entirely. No, I’m not being paid to say this.)
Anyway, about four years after that, I was sick of food freedom and its resulting fatness, and once again on a super restrictive diet and, lo and behold, decided to go vegan again. You see the pattern. I was very serious about it now, and really enjoyed it, and it became a huge part of my identity: reading the philosophy, supporting organizations like PETA, all of it. This phase lasted for a while, went away, and made a resurgence after my second child was born in 2021, then went away again. I can take it out of the box and put it on when I want to, then pack it back up.
2. The Dormant Angry Vegan
It’s interesting in retrospect to see how I was (and am) able to look at this belief system from the outside, having no particular emotional connection to it (sure I liked animals, who doesn’t?, but, I’ve never been an “animal lover” per se, nor a hippie nor an environmentalist, and it wasn’t like I’d ever had some heartbreaking, life-changing epiphany about the cruelty in the meat industry or whatever), and just think to myself on some level: “why yes, I think I could happily become a radical animal rights activist. That sounds logically sound and also kinda fun and cool; let’s do it!” And I did really believe it, all that PETA stuff. I read and loved “Animal Liberation” by Peter Singer and “Eating Animals” by Jonathan Safran Foer. I did (and still do) find factory farms deeply appalling and depressing. I truly did get triggered and irritated by people who ate meat. I really did think it was simply an inexcusably ignorant thing to do, and that no meat-eater could ever really call themselves a good person. I completely believed that. (I feel differently about meat-eaters now; more on that later.)
I could step into this identity, but then, I could just turn it off at will. When I got bored of it, or needed a change in my food lifestyle for whatever reason. Which tells me that I could still do that at any time, if I chose to; if I decide to devote the mental energy to it. Vegan Mith still exists, in there, and if I feed her with vegan literature and vegan content, she will grow stronger. I very well might do this at some point in the future, but right now, I just feel a bit too maxed out, between raising little kids, managing the family meal plan and food budget, and trying to be a good Catholic — in which world it’s very uncommon, btw, and even frowned upon to be vegetarian.
I do think that if more Catholics were vegetarian/vegan, I’d probably let Vegan Mith rise to the surface again. Or if my husband, or anyone around me, were veggie. But no one in my life is veggie, so Vegan Mith doesn’t get a lot of stimulation or encouragement, and just lies dormant.
Which shows me something kind of interesting about myself. Apparently it’s true that either (a) my convictions are so feeble that I don’t bother living by them unless it’s amusing or others around me agree with it, or (b) I’m just a fundamentally weak person with few, if any, real convictions.
3. Accidentally Radical WFPB
These days, for the sake of convenience and comfort, I’ve mostly just been plain old vegetarian: the kind who will eat eggs but not fish or any other animal. And even this is not because of any moral convictions, really. It’s just that meat is gross to me, after so many years meatless. I actually kinda wish that I could stomach meat, because more protein would probably be good for me (protein is the hottest trend in nutrition right now! I remember when I was young, it was all about fresh produce, whole grains, and low fat/fat free dairy products; wild how the tides turn). But it’s just gross to me. And at this stage in my life, I simply don’t care to devote too much mental energy to the morality of my diet — which, after surviving decades ruled by a crippling obsession with exactly that, is actually kind of refreshing. So I guess I don’t really care that I don’t care.
But here’s the funny thing. As of writing this post, at age 36, I’ve accidentally become vegan again, and a more strict one than ever before, although not for the animals this time; for an entirely different reason.
My fourth child, who’s five months old and exclusively breastfed, has a sensitive gut. (I strongly suspect it’s because of the IV antibiotics they gave me during labor.) He can’t tolerate it when I consume dairy, egg, (hello again, veganism), soy, or even corn. And soy and corn are in literally everything, it seems! Virtually every processed food item on the grocery store shelves contains soy or corn ingredients. Did you know that? Even things like the ascorbic acid they put in juice to add vitamins, or the chemicals in imitation vanilla extract, or the added vitamins in breakfast cereal or almondmilk, ALL come from freaking corn!
A normal person would probably give up breastfeeding at this point, but not I. (I’ve fed formula before, for unfortunate medical reasons, and loathed everything about it, ugh; the stink, the infinite bottles to wash, the ridiculously high prices, the constipated babies, the having to get up out of bed go downstairs and prep a bottle at 3AM, and worst of all the constant anxiety about the very real threat of factory contamination — I don’t know how you formula moms do it. Nursing is so much easier.) So, for nearly a month now, I’ve been on the cleanest diet I’ve ever been on in my life. I literally only drink water and consume whole foods with straight-out-of-nature ingredients that I can identify and pronounce. And my baby’s gut is doing much better (thanks also to Smidge probiotics, which are expensive but totally worth the price, and once again no I’m not getting paid for this).
Is it hard? For me, not really. I actually love it. The only hard thing for me to give up was almondmilk. But actually, it’s made my life a lot easier, socially speaking. I hate eating in social settings, and hate being offered food, because one layover habit from the years and years of ED is that I prefer to stick with my “safe” foods. And now, I have an excuse! I can’t eat this, I can’t eat that, and for once it’s not that I’m just neurotic — my baby has a sensitive stomach! Tbh I’m kinda dreading my baby turning one (the age when most doctors say these intolerances tend to go away). Because then I’ll have to start pretending to be normal in food situations again.
And here’s the other funny thing about all this. Eating a completely whole foods plant based diet, with zero “processed” ingredients — it feels amazing! I’ve been doing it for about a month now, and I kid you not, I feel lighter on my feet, more energetic, less bloated, more alert, more generally positive — just more in touch with my body or whatever, as lame as that sounds. Even though I’ve been vegan before, I’ve never been completely whole foods vegan before without any processed ingredients. (I’ve always loved my nondairy milks and coffee creamers, cereals, boxed crackers, my Violife cheeses, my tofu and flavored sparkling water and all that fun stuff.) Now, I suddenly see why some people out there are so strict about avoiding processed foods. It really does make you feel better!
All of which makes me feel Vegan Mith gaining strength again. Gaining life, like Mariah Carey as November draws to a close.
4. Catholicism, Kids, and Carnivores
But, being Vegan Mith kind of puts me at odds with my religious community. Traditional Catholics are meat eaters. They’re homesteaders and “live off the land” farmers who raise and slaughter their own meat. I don’t think I could ever do that — I may not be an “animal lover” per se, I’m a bit too indoorsy for that, but I do hate to see animals suffering, and am kind of a softie about it. TradCaths are conservatives and old-fashioned types. In the TradCath world, eating organic, home-grown meat is the healthiest thing for your body. (It’s frustrating how nutrition advice is so different depending on whom you ask; I’ve seriously started to believe that everyone’s body is just different, and nutrition science is not universal.) In the TradCath world, vegetarianism/veganism is for liberals and prissies and hippies and government pawns.
And, you know what? I get it. I can see where they’re coming from. I’m no longer a Peter Singer stan; I do believe that humans are superior to animals (2011 Mith would think I’m a speciesist loser, lol), and that we have dominion over animals. And I do think it seems to check out that raising your own livestock on your own land and slaughtering them yourselves seems like a wholesome and healthy way to live. I’m sure all that protein is great for you. Logically, that sounds perfectly good to me. Which is why I’m no longer the kind of vegan who thinks all carnivores are ignorant, self-deceiving liars. I can see how, philosophically, meat-eating is not only permissible but even good, as long as you’re doing so as ethically as you can.
The other thing that’s changed my POV on carnivores is raising kids. I’m a mom of four kids five and under. And up until this year, I’ve raised my kids vegetarian. But recently I’ve softened their vegetarianism, and feed them meat sometimes; why?
A couple of reasons: (1), my husband is a meat eater, and if I make food that he likes, but the kids can’t eat it, that means I need to make two dinners. I’ve tried for years only cooking vegetarian, but my husband was never really satisfied, and always ended up sneaking out for fast food, so we ended up just spending more money on food than we should have been spending, and it was frustrating. I’m done trying to convert my husband to vegetarianism. I’ve decided to just accept that he is who he is, with food, and tbh it’s kind of a beautiful thing that he doesn’t overthink about it so much, like I do.
And (2), trying to manage four kids is hard. Together, they act like little dervishes, much of the time: a noisy little stampede of small humans, rampaging around my house. It’s incredibly difficult at church. It’s generally true that kids are calmer and better behaved when their bellies are full. And protein does fill you up faster. If I can get my kids to eat a bit of turkey or ham and actually fill up and simmer down and be satisfied, that’s better for all of us than just constant carb and cheese snacks around the clock. They’re so picky that, at this point, I’ll just feed them whatever I can to try and get them to fill up on something that’s not sugar.
However, if I decide to let Vegan Mith out of her cage, and let myself live by vegan principles again… guess I’ll have to figure something else out. Apparently I can choose to have convictions or not to have them. Which leads me to ask myself sometimes: am I even a real person?
5. In Conclusion
All of this to say, it’s a complicated issue; for me, anyway. I could happily be a militant angry vegan, if my circumstances allowed; I could happily be carnivore, if I didn’t mind the way meat made me feel physically. Which perhaps says more about me than it does about the issue. I guess I’m just a flake.
I welcome your comments on any of this, so please do chime in if you have strong feelings or any kind of reaction to this whole issue.
Just one?! But, as someone with AVPD, there are so many! I could easily make this into a Top 10 post, and have indeed written out such lists before, so I know from experience that that would just get depressing. So, I’ll try to keep this one concise and relevant.
As a Catholic, my answer should be: if I could change one thing about myself, it would be my sinful nature, my tendency to try and please myself rather than God. And that would indeed be a good answer.
But if I am being honest, which, isn’t that what this stupid blog is for?: there are probably other things that I’d be more excited to change about myself.
I’d like to change my economic status, obviously. The number in my bank account. Wouldn’t we all? That’s a big one. But even this is probably not the number one thing I’d like to change about myself, in like a magic genie type scenario.
As a sober alcoholic, I’d kinda love to magically gain the ability to drink in moderation. Even more than sudden financial wealth, this idea appeals to me. Because in some ways, drinking was a really cool and fun thing, and I think it’d be cool to have this superpower: to be able to drink socially. To go wine tasting at the scenic vineyards with some friends. To do a toast on holidays. To be able to have a glass or two to unwind, without it turning into a daily habit and a life-altering obsession. It’s funny: this all sounds very nice in theory, in a very vague, distant, hypothetical way, like the concept of being able to fly or read minds; but, again, to be perfectly honest: I have zero desire to actually drink in moderation. What’s even the point, lol? With my brain, it would be unsatisfying, and just leave me wanting more. So, I would probably not choose this, either.
What if I could just get rid of the AVPD? This might be the thing I’d change about myself. To have the ability to connect to others and relate to them and befriend them like a normal person. I’d be sorely tempted to choose this. And if I were younger, still in my teens or twenties, this is surely what I would choose.
But, honestly… maybe not that important to me, anymore. I’m lucky that I managed to get married and have a family and build a good life even with the AVPD. Sure it’d be a lot easier without this handicap, but, I dunno, I guess I’m used to it by now. As you know if you’ve read my little autobiographical bit about AVPD, my life is actually pretty pleasant and manageable most of the time, these days. It’s only really maybe once or twice a week that I painfully feel my AVPD symptoms; its little day-to-day manifestations are not too bad to live with, not anymore.
So I don’t think I’d choose that either.
Sometimes I think I’d like to change my whole personality, to make myself less of an INTJ and more of like an ISFP or something. I’d like to be more of a sensor type rather than an intuitive: perhaps tidier, more crafty, a better cook, a better dresser, more grounded in reality overall. And I’d like to be more of a “feeler” and less of a “thinker;” to be warmer, more feminine, and more approachable. All of these would be great assets in my life as a wife and mom.
But, personality type isn’t the number one thing I’d change about myself, either.
So what is? Would I make myself smarter? You all know I have a ton of emotional baggage about the whole “intelligence” thing, lol. Would I make myself a better writer? A publishable writer!? Or eliminate my inconvenient fear or bees and wasps? Would I exchange my awful, scraggly type 3 curls for a full head of thick, shiny straight hair? Erase all of my ugly tattoos, perhaps? Or, make myself like classical and highbrow indie music instead of the shitty stuff that I like to listen to? Of all the many things I hate about myself, which one would I actually change, given the chance?
The answer is pretty anticlimactic. The answer is: legs. I would like to have nice-looking legs.
“But Mith,” you might be exclaiming, “just lose weight and exercise and get some sun!” If only it were that simple. See, I’m actually a perfectly normal size right now, with a BMI that’s perfectly average. I have, in the past, been an underweight exercise addict and have been diagnosed with anorexia and bulimia, but even when I was extremely skinny, it was like my legs didn’t get the memo. They stayed thick and solid. Even as a bony little twig I had the legs of a much heavier person. Shapeless, sturdy, pasty “Irish” legs, with no definition whatsoever to the calf. Sometimes I’ve wondered if I have a medical condition, but no; I kinda wish I did, so that I could get treatment. But unfortunately I don’t have any pain or any other symptoms; just hideous legs.
(And as for “just get some sun”: sure, I could, I guess, but that would require going out in shorts or less, which I will not; and besides, my pale skin would not tan, it would just burn, then peel off to reveal a slightly darker shade of pale. I know this from experience. So, lightly-roasted bratwursts instead of raw ones from the fridge. Whoop-dee-do.)
I’m not sure what this says about me, that of all the many things I hate about myself, many of them with good reason, the one that bothers me the most is my legs. Why does it even matter that much, since I can (and do) simply cover up with maxi skirts and/or tall boots? I’m Catholic, so would try to dress modestly anyway, even if I had nice legs. And my husband, i.e. the only person whose opinion of my attractiveness matters, claims that he isn’t bothered by the legs (although I think he’s just being nice, for some reason; haven’t yet figured out his ulterior motives). And, as I mentioned, the legs don’t hurt or anything. They function perfectly well. Probably better than average, in fact! Best believe I’ve never twisted or sprained, let alone broken, an ankle. I’m way too sturdy for that.
So why is this so important to me? And what does it say about me that it is so important?
Probably you could draw out of all this some statement about the insidious toxicity of beauty standards, the cruel pervasiveness of diet culture in modern America. For me, a pretty average white millennial female, being perceived as thin and attractive is evidently more important than happiness, financial security, intelligence, or even my religion (!?). What is wrong with the society that formed me? Or is it just a natural, human thing, this senseless desire to be desirable? Who knows.
Probably it has something to do with the fact that I’ve hated my legs for longer than I’ve cared about money or religion, long before I hated my personality or started to show real symptoms of a personality disorder. My first clear memory of hating my legs was in first grade, so approximately age six or seven. I was on the school bus one morning sitting next to my friend (who was, perhaps interestingly, a boy), and for no reason this friend was telling me how disgustingly wide were the thighs of this other girl in our class. Her thighs were “this big,” he said, with abject horror, holding his hands up a certain distance apart; and I, true to form, chuckled in mild agreement while looking at that distance and then down at my own lap and realizing that my thighs were that exact same width, if not wider. The next memory is associated with a certain photo taken of me in the third grade, and it continues.
However, I already knew, before age seven, that my legs were weird and bad. I’m not sure why. No one ever told me so, not that I can remember. I guess it just came from comparing myself to other girls in my classes. Already in kindergarten you become aware that skinny = desirable, smaller = better. This hatred of fat is probably, nay, surely, so deeply ingrained in my psyche that I will never be free of it. And I’m not special. I daresay it’s the same for almost all of us.
Which is kind of dumb, isn’t it? It seems like sturdy legs are actually a very practical thing to have, from like a survival/evolutionary standpoint.
But that’s the thing. Skinny little delicate legs make you more vulnerable, more in need of protection and care. Make you easier to pick up and throw around. That’s what men like. The older I get, and the more I learn about how straight men actually feel about women and the way their brains work (just naturally, it’s not their fault; however, some men learn to master it, and others apparently do not), the more grossed out I am by the male gaze. But so anyway this is what we women want to appeal to. We want to appear like we need care and protection and someone to be the boss of us. All of which just points to the larger truth that we humans all are vulnerable and weak and need someone (i.e. God) to be the boss of us and take care of us.
So yeah, there’s a reason why skinniness is attractive. A very beautiful reason. Beauty is beauty because it reminds us of Truth. I get that. Maybe that’s why I so deeply loathe appearing so sturdy and stolid. It feels like a lie, a blatant contradiction to one of the most essential truths about me, about anyone. Or something. Or maybe it’s just that my legs look like bratwursts, and that is objectively freaking gross.
Funny you should ask, WordPress. This week was my birthday, so I’ve been thinking a lot about getting older and the advice that I wish I could give to my younger self. There is quite a lot of it, so this prompt will also be a Top 10. This was supposed to be silly and fun, but to my unpleasant surprise I actually experienced Feelings while writing this, ugh.
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Dear Adolescent Mith: a few words of advice from your future self:
12. Stop it with the sketchpads. Seriously. Get over yourself; you’re not an artist. At the very least, stop bringing your drawing stuff to school. Don’t carry all those papers around. That’s going to get you in trouble and embarrass you. Just keep your little pictures, your little scribblings, inside your head where they, and you, are safe. I mean this in the nicest way possible: no one cares about them anyway, and carrying them around does not make you look mysterious or cool.
11. Don’t let fear keep you away from things you want to do. Sometimes the people-y aspect of a thing can make it so scary/unpleasant that you will forget that you actually do want to do that thing. Like, going to the barn is hard, because you don’t fit in, there’s social pressure, and fear of doing something wrong or getting snapped at. Also, horses are kinda scary. But you love horses, and will later wish you’d never quit, and will long for another chance to learn to ride, like the one you had then. You must learn the difference between something you really want to do and something you feel like you want to do.
10. Don’t get tattoos. It sounds so cool now, I get it, but listen: you will regret it. It will, at some point, just make you look old and sloppy and cheap. And you may not comprehend this now, but there actually will come a day when you don’t want to look sloppy and cheap.
9. Learn some skills. I know it sucks, because your teacher has an attitude and, being the friendless loser in class with no one to be your partner, you got randomly lumped into a group with those two jock guys who like to goof off – but, please, try to pay attention in home ec. Learn on your own, as well. Learn how to cook actual meals (not just salads and saltine crackers and shit). Learn how to mend clothes, how to knit and crochet, how to iron, how to actually clean a house, how to garden, how to decorate; learn about first aid and natural remedies. Pretend it’s the olden days. One day you will wish you knew how to do these things, but you will no longer have any time.
8. Stop doing things you don’t want to do. Following up from #11: ask yourself: do I really want to be doing this particular extracurricular activity? Why am I wasting all my electives on band class when I don’t even want to be in band? Do I want to play this musical instrument? Do I want to be in this school play? Or am I doing it because my teacher tells me I’m good at it and I’m afraid of disappointing them? Newsflash: people do not care about you that much. Gym class? Skip it. Just leave. Just walk out of the building and go hide in the woods behind the school like you always fantasize about doing. So what!! It’s public school, child. It doesn’t matter that much. No one’s going to kill you for skipping this stupid class. Sure, there are some things that you have to do, like go to school in general – but you don’t have to do it perfectly.
7. Stay close to your sister. Don’t let dumb shit get in the way of that friendship.
6. There are worse things to be than fat, believe it or not. And it’s not true that “nothing tastes as good as skinny feels.” Being skinny is not going to fix you. You’d be happier and enjoy your limited time more if you just said “fuck it” and let yourself be a little fat. I know you don’t believe it when anyone else tells you that, so take it from me, since I am you.
5. It’s ok to be uncomfortable; in fact, to an extent, it is good to be uncomfortable; comfort is a lie. I mean psychological discomfort. Drinking will ease psychological discomfort temporarily, but it will fuck up your life majorly because you will be living inside of what is, basically, a lie. If I had to give you some advice right now about drinking, it would be: try it once, if you must, and see what it does to you, and then set it aside, knowing that that feeling is a lie and leads nowhere. Stop wallowing in self-pity and learn about the value of actual self-denial. (I’m not talking about going on a diet – what I mean is, denying the part of yourself that says drinking and dieting are necessary. Yes, it is hard.) It is better to live in the truth, i.e. the fact that life is uncomfortable. I hope this makes sense.
4. Save money and, for goodness sake, stay out of debt. I know it doesn’t feel like it right now, but guess what: the future actually does exist! And you exist in it! The choices that you make now will have a permanent effect on our life. Do me a favor and save some of that money you earned at your job instead of blowing it on candles and magazines and treats. Save that money from your grandfather instead of blowing it on vacations. Don’t keep taking out massive loans for school and trusting in this whimsical idea that “you’ll pay them off once you have a job” without having any idea what that job actually will be.
3. On that note, don’t chase your “dream.” If you must go to college (which, I don’t think you must), major in chemistry. You were good at that in high school, remember? You liked it! But you let things scare you off from that field of study, and decided it was best to Follow Your Heart. Don’t do that. Know thyself: you are an INTJ, you are designed to work in the sciences. You’re not a writer or an artist – you just like to indulge in your imagination because it’s fun, but hey!, you can still do that in your free time while making money as a research scientist or something like that. All that junk you’re told about following your heart and chasing your dreams – I’m sorry, but it is BS. At least, for you it is, because your “dream” is just a will-o’-the-wisp. Trust me, I have your best interests at heart here.
2. Forget about boys. Take heed: it is neither good nor necessary to date boys at this point, or do anything else with them. You scoff at those who save themselves for marriage, but set aside your prejudices and think about it, if you’re so “smart.” Dating boys will not validate you. It will not make you cool, it will not make you worthwhile, it will not make you more interesting or more of a real person or more of a real girl or any of that junk that you believe. You will not be missing out on some crucial element of life by not dating boys as a teenager. Seriously, just stay away from them, unless they want to (and I know you’ll laugh at this) protect your purity and become your husband. Your poor decisions will cause you a good deal of, and I do not use this word lightly, trauma, which will make things difficult long into your future. I know it’s not your fault; you were just a dumb kid out there in an ugly world, never taught otherwise, so I try not to hold it against you.
1. Go to church. Yeah, I know how you feel about that. You think you’re really smart, don’t you? Here’s what I wish you would do: remember that teacher in high school, the Philosophy/English teacher that you loved so much, whom you adored and who was something of a hero for you, but you just couldn’t get your head around the fact that she was Roman Catholic? Like, how could she be so smart and wise and cool but also religious?? Go to her after class sometime and ask her about it. Or, that nice Catholic kid in your class, the one whom everyone likes because he’s so humble and good and kind to every single person that he meets? Even you?! Ask him about it sometime. I dare you. Just try it.
I know you surely think future you has gone bat-shit crazy, reading this, but listen: I’m still you. We are the same person. The weirdest thing about getting older, is, you’re still exactly the same person, just with more experience. Old people are not a different species. You don’t graduate from youth and become someone else. Things just keep happening, one after the other, and it feels like your body gets older but you don’t. It’s actually really bizarre. So take my word for it. Go to church. Your parents aren’t right about everything.
As you know if you read this blog, I’m very worried about what kind of music is okay to listen to. And I worry a lot about why I like the kind of music that I do, what it does for me, et cetera.
I’ve found that, in most cases, I like to listen to bad music simply because it lifts my mood; it makes me feel less unhappy. Pausing to listen to a stupid song can sometimes allow me to then resume my daily duties with renewed energy and a more cheerful outlook. It’s a little bit intoxicating, maybe, like some kind of mood-lifting medication.
So then is it okay to listen to bad songs in like a medicinal way? To help myself out of a bad state of mind? I know that good ends do not justify bad means; but how bad are the means, if they don’t tempt me to sin? If they’re just a bit of unserious fun? Is levity always sinful? Can sinful songs be listened to in an unserious way?
I haven’t figured all of this out yet, obviously. But, this train of thought did lead me back to some of the songs that, historically, I’ve used therapeutically, to kind of help drag myself out of the depths of an intensely negative mental place. Also, being currently nine weeks postpartum, my brain’s been… not exactly in a super negative place, but just a really weird and erratic place (as you may have observed if you saw my most recent Rant, lol), so, I’ve been leaning on my music habit a bit more than I do when it’s at peak function.
All of which has inspired me to make another Top Ten for you. Not all of these songs are “bad” – in fact some of these are actually good, I think! See, my taste in music doesn’t completely suck. However, be advised that a lot of these songs are Bad, NSFW, and probably not good to listen to under normal circumstances.
Although all of these songs have a therapeutic affect on me, I probably wouldn’t put them all on a single playlist. For example, I’d have to be in very different moods to listen to 17 and 10, vs. something like 13 or 9; very different moods for 16 or 14 vs. 15 or 3. Some of these are for when you’re at rock bottom and want nothing to do with the world (17, 10, 7, 6, 5, 2, 1), others are for when you’re kind of just struggling with an annoying intrusive feeling (14, 13, 12, 3, 1) or recovering from a cringey interaction or misunderstanding (16, 13, 11, 8, 4). Some songs are better for combating the ED thoughts (17, 14, 9, 7, 6, 5, 2), while some are better for when AvPD symptoms are especially uncomfortable (16, 15, 13, 12, 11, 10, 8, 6, 4, 3, 2, 1). A few of these, like 1, 2, 5, or 6, could be used just about anytime; songs like that are such a blessing.
For fun, because I’m someone who enjoys a bit of synesthesia, I’m including the color that each song has for me.
Without further ado:
17. Monument by Mirah. Once upon a time in ED group therapy, one of the girls in the group made a mix CD for all of us (this was in like 2008 when CDs were still a thing). And this song was on the mix CD. It’s the only song I’ve ever heard that, imo, seems to deal directly with the topic of ED recovery. It’s a really pretty little song that feels like a friend talking to you; its color, for me, is mauve, kind of a dusty purplish raspberry.
16. Blind To You by Collie Buddz. Discovered this one during a short-lived reggae fusion phase that I had in summer ‘14, and it got me through some uncomfortable days at my job! This one’s definitely the yellow-orange of Kraft macaroni and cheese.
15. Smothered by Spineshank. There is indeed a time and place for nu metal. I’ve been into this song since eighth grade, and its cathartic power has not weakened in twenty-odd years. To me, this is dark bottle green or hunter green.
14. Roll It Gal by Alison Hinds. Picture, if you will, a creepy, sullen, stick-thin, deathly pale girl in a black jacket, gray jeans, and black leather ankle boots haphazardly striped with an excess of steel zippers, skulking down the sidewalk of a picturesque, historic Southern college campus, death-glaring straight ahead as if oblivious to everyone around her… while listening to this song on her headphones. This was me in 2011. This song is bright teal-green.
13. Go Crazy by Megan Thee Stallion (ft. Big Sean and 2 Chainz). “Why I gotta prove myself to bitches that I’m better than?” That’s a rhetorical question, of course. Megan certainly does not. This song is red, a bright purplish red.
12. Back Up by Dej Loaf (coincidentally, also ft. Big Sean). “I’m very antisocial, social network ain’t my motion.” Right?! This is another one that I’d blast in my car on the way home from a shitty day at work, after a client or coworker had pissed me off. Definitely dark teal-blue.
11. See The Light by Ghost. As you know if you frequent this blog, I have mixed feelings about this band. I used to be a superfan, but now avoid them as a rule, because they’re extremely blasphemous, which is unfortunate, because Tobias is such a good songwriter and performer, and some of their songs sound really good and are extremely satisfying when you’re in a certain mood. Lyrically this one is pretty vague, so I think one can still listen to it in good conscience, although it’s questionable. Its color is dark gold to me.
10. Disaster in a Halo by Ours. Of all the songs on this list, this one’s been with me the longest. The album Precious came out in 2002, and that’s when I got into it. As serious and sad as this song is, I have one memory of it that still makes me lol every time: at some point during my early teen years, I was watching a recording of a live performance of this song on the TV in my family’s living room, absolutely rapt because it was like some special footage that had just come out on DVD or something (this was before YouTube); and in the middle of it, my dad walks through the room, pauses, listens for a moment, and then goes: “huh! I guess nothing matters to that guy.” His sarcasm is so dry it still sometimes goes over my head, and he’s been my dad for 36 years. Anyway, this song is a combination of light ochre brown and grayish sky blue.
9. Say So by Migos. I used to crank this one when I was at odds with anyone in my life. “I know a real bitch, she say that it’s a fake world/ And she don’t surround herself by none of you fake girls.” Also I love that they describe cellulite as “sexy” in this song; thank you for that. Sometimes, this one could get me through a “fat” moment or day. This song is dark red to me, like burgundy or a dark brick red.
8. The Flute Song by Russ. “People are shady as fuck, I keep to myself, but I feel the energy though” — that always made me feel better about being the resident creepy weirdo wherever I went, about not having any friends; as if being socially inept were badass. It still works for me tbh. This one is a dark cerulean blue.
7. The Worst Things Beautiful by Ours. This song was kind of a literal Godsend for me. I first heard it on the car radio as I was driving home from the aforementioned ED group therapy one evening. I still remember exactly where I was. And listening to it, I was like: “isn’t that Jimmy?!” because at this point I’d been a serious fan of his for about seven years (which doesn’t seem that long at all to me now, but at that point it was over a third of my life), and I’d known he’d been working on a new album but had no idea when it would be out. And then this song just randomly came on the radio. It sounded so different from his older stuff, a whole new perspective from him; but just as good; the lyrics spoke to me very much at the time. Like most of his songs, this one is also in shades of golden-brown and blue.
6. Poem by Taproot. I was listening to this one when I was a tortured angsty seventh grader, and still love it just the same. Why doesn’t mainstream rock sound this good anymore? This is like the most validating song for when you feel like shit. It’s angry but also reassuring. For some reason it’s purple to me, kind of an eggplant purple; I think because it was track six on the first mix CD I ever made for myself, and the number six is indisputably purple (perhaps this is subconsciously why I ended up putting it at #6 on this list).
5. Überlin by REM. There’s been times when all I could do was lie there listening to this song on repeat. I swear, it has the most comforting chorus ever written for secular pop music. “I will make it through the day and then the day becomes the night/ I will make it through the night.” Sometimes I still play this song, or hum it to myself, or even just think about it when I need to remember that this too shall pass. This song for me is orange.
4. IDFWU by Big Sean (ft. E-40). Ok but why is Big Sean on this list three times?! I guess he just has that kind of attitude. This is THE song for when someone’s behavior is getting under your skin. It’s very yellow to me.
3. Due by MSI. (I used to be so into this band! Listening to them now gives me violent flashbacks to college – like, I can freaking smell the place, wow.) According to YouTube comments, I’m far from the only one who has a certain reaction to this song: it hits just right when you’re miserable, it strikes just the right nerve. Like #2 and #1, it expresses frustration so purely and precisely. Like if you want to kick someone, just listen to this song instead. It’s a lot of dark blues and bright greens in this one.
2. Superman’s Dead by Our Lady Peace. Something about Raine Maida’s songwriting and singing cuts me all the way to the bone, idk what it is. There’s this urgency to what he’s singing. And sincerity. And just the way it opens – “do you worry that you’re not liked/ how long till you break” I mean, dang, ok. Is it just me, or do you also feel very seen and understood by this song? I can listen to it endlessly. I put this in spot #2 but it’s really a tie for #1. Like many of their songs, this one is intensely blue to me.
1. Cirice by Ghost. I’ve talked in a different Top 10 list already about how much I love this song and how it helped me survive a rough patch. So I won’t go on and on now. Similar to #2, this song makes you feel like he’s seeing into your soul and validating everything there that you hide from the world. Dark red, for this one, I mean obviously – you probably don’t even have to experience synesthesia yourself to know that this one sounds blood red.
