Girl Anachronicles

(picture from huffingtonpost.com)

Simply put: Barack Hussein Obama won the presidency of the United States. It’s a victory for the Democratic Party, indeed. It’s a victory for the African-Americans as a minority demographic, also. It’s a victory for common sense, peace, hope…

It’s also much more than a win. What I see in the expressions of the people captured by the cameras of the press is not simple glee for having won this round.

(picture from huffingtonpost.com)

What I see is the same kind of relief that pervades the faces of victims rescued from a shipwreck. I know this tune from the smattering of science fiction TV shows we watch.

Party at Wall Street ...I mean "CIC". Recognize the relief dance?

We finally got to Earth. Yay!

Suddenly makes you think of the slaves liberated by Moses.

What the Democratic Party has delivered is not a simple win: it’s a deliverance, a liberation, a welcome change in the order of things. What you see is not a people happy for the victory of one man: what you see is a whole country sighing in relief because someone finally came to save us from ourselves.

(picture from huffingtonpost.com)

I confess I’ve been spending increasingly excessive (and unnecessary) amounts of time in certain forum I will not name. It’s usually not a problem, until a week ago. Someone I personally know opened a thread about plus-sized model Chloe Marshall, who was up for the title of Miss England.

I didn’t post anything in this blog about this particular topic because:
1) I didn’t have the time
2) I didn’t know what to say
3) I believe that a single size 16 model won’t make a true change in the beauty and health industry
4) It’s a beauty pageant, for gossakes! And given point #3, it’s such a biased event, with such a narrow spectrum of what beauty is, that I find all of it incredibly boring.

However, the girl that posted the thread thrives on pageants, celebrity gossip and your general menagerie of “girly” topics (makeup, diets, clothes). I decided to dive in when some other girls started talking about Miss Marshall’s health.

The only facts stated in press releases are Miss Marshall’s height and weight. This is, in my opinion, not enough data to go on to make a solid statement about the girl’s health. However, I found out last week that there are more fans of the BMI index than believers in “God”. And it seems a bit funny to me, considering that the BMI index was originally created by a Belgian mathematician for statistical purposes. It was not meant to be the end-all/be-all of health, much less was it meant to be the founding stone for physicians and health-care professionals to diagnose their patients’ health.

Most people I know, however, swear by this scale. They don’t believe that someone size 16 could be a healthy person. Miss Marshall said in her interviews that she eats sensibly and exercises regularly. I, for one, believe her, because I’ve seen girls the same size, young girls, beautiful girls, girls that eat normal amounts of healthy food (vegetables, fruit … not junk food) and exercise normally as well. They are not naturally thin, and I really hope that these girls will understand that being a healthy size 12, for them, will always be more beautiful than a forced and emaciated size 5.

So, back to the forum thread, I immediately started voicing the opposing point of view, always the dissonance in the crowd. Obviously, most girls started voicing their own opinions, most of them based on the BMI index philosophy, most of them awash with fashion-industry culture and thought. But there was one, sister to the girl that started the thread, that right away pointed spears at me as an individual. Not so much my opinions, but the reason for them. Her specific words, and I quote, were: “Girl, instead of a stick on your shoulder, you have a sequoia tree.”

Of course, she kept on at it, and the barrage didn’t stop when I clarified that this was more of a cause than a personal issue. She made sure to always state that my points of view were an exclusive product of my body and image issues.

Well … I wish I had had this blog post that day. Later on that day a friend of mine read the thread and insisted that I did have to lower my weight, of course, for health issues.

And this is the thing: they’re both right. My friend is completely right and I know where he is coming from: concern, worry, affection. I appreciate it, the same way I appreciated every single comment I received the last time I touched the subject. Most of you who read this blog mean well, and I thank you for your attention and friendship.

But the girl at the forum, my ex-roommate’s sister to be more precise … well, she may be right. That afternoon, after all was written and read, I had to sit down and come to terms with the fact that I have as much a body and image issue as I did when I was an anorexic 16-year-old. But I do not appreciate her intentions. The way she expressed herself about the things I said helped me realize that she was more bent on hurting me or making me feel bad about being fat (and she probably thinks I am in denial about it too) than she could have intended for her words to be enlightening or helpful.

Whatever her reasons for being such a bitch (which she was, no se puede tapar el cielo con la mano), I suspect it has less to do with difference of opinion and more to do with things that went down a year ago. And that, to me, seems petty, shallow and rude.

However, I gotta thank her. That afternoon I cried a bit, because coming to terms with issues that have been standing there for 14 years is not easy. What my friend said made me realize that I do have to do something. But what that bitch said gave me the strength to actually START doing it.

So, thank you, bitch, whether you read this or not. You did me MUCH LESS harm than you probably intended. Isn’t it ironic?

These past few weeks, eyes in general have been poised on the presidential candidate elections of the United States. This once, said process has proven to be incredibly intense, specially on the Democratic side (the side the whole world would prefer as victorious, given the horrid state of affairs thanks to Republican President George W. Bush). Up until now, both primary candidates for the Democratic Party (Barack Obama and Hillary Clinton) have been going at it neck-to-neck, one brushing by very closely to the other. Nothing definitive has been decided yet, not until the majority of delegates has voted in (last primaries will be held in June).

I’m not usually one to have my nose stuck in politics, but I suffer the consequences of a ridiculous, overlong war along with the rest of the world. And being an American citizen, I also suffer the consequences of a government led by an ass-head along with the rest of the American nation (like it or not, because I couldn’t choose who to be born to). So, when it comes to an election which could have a strong impact on where we go from now on as a nation and as a people, I can’t help but have some strong reactions, even if based on pure emotion rather than on an analytical process.

I don’t know when it occurred to me first, but a while after the war was kick-started out of the rubble of the World Trade Center, I became convinced that what could start fixing this world (yeah, the world in general) is another revolution.

Yes, I know it can be seen as a moronically romantic notion, specially in this age of skepticism and irony. Nowadays, the definition of cool is “sarcastic” and not much more. The more heartless you are, the cooler you are, no matter where your lack of faith is coming from. I’ve participated on this practice of sizing people up by their quality of nonchalant. Being naive has become the worst sin of all, akin to having sucked off an entire police squad.

“Not caring” is the sport of the 21st century. Suddenly all important issues can be found in a copy of the Entertainment Weekly.

So, I am aware of my un-coolness when I say that, regardless of the fact that I know that 99.99% of politicians are corrupted by power or will soon be, seeing these commercials reinforce the notions I’ve had that what we need is to turn the world upside down.

Maybe what we need is a black president. Or who knows, maybe I’m wrong, maybe a woman would be the right choice. I’m just glad the opposition has candidates that, either way, do not conform to the established norm.

I just hope that the one that wins will show that he or she has the cojones to truly change things around…

… and not let American History keep on this nonsensical course of violence by inertia.