Unbearable Lightness by Portia de Rossi

Unbearable Lightness by Portia de Rossi
My rating: 5 of 5 stars

I finished this book a week ago. I finished it in two days.
I haven't connected with a book this emotionally since Going Bovine by Libba Bray.
This was different of course, being non-fiction. A book about Portia de Rossi's struggle with Anorexia Nervosa and coming out.
I'm not anorexic, nor am I gay. But the way de Rossi wrote about her compulsivity with food and the fear of losing control which then leads to a loss of control in a hellish loop, touched on some deep issues for me.
I couldn't break away from the beautiful, honest prose. I cried when my Mum and sister came over and I had to stop reading. Not because I had to stop reading. Because I was dealing with my own anxiety issues through de Rossi's journey.
The whole last chapter I cried for her and myself.
Then the epilogue. It brought hope, and I felt relief. If she can come back from that obsession, I can certainly deal with my own problems. There is brightness in the future.

Now, one thing I asked myself before reading was: Can this celebrity write? Was there a ghostwriter?
Yes and no, respectively. There were passages where de Rossi's love of words was clear: in high school, she loved reading out Shakespeare and Poetry and giving emotion to the words.
And no one else was mentioned in the fine print. De Rossi is amazing and I hope she writes more.

Lastly, I loved the sense of Australianness I felt throughout the book. De Rossi hasn't lost her roots.


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Inspired

Just doing one of my rounds of blog-reading*. And I came across this post by Karen Healey. She says so many things on her blog that I agree with (actually, I agree with all of it). The post addresses sex and teens in YA fiction. One element that stood out to me in particular was addressed by this comment in the comments section:

I read a post lately on a blog that claimed to be Feminist in which it was stated that it's okay to call a girl a slut so long as you apply the same standard to men. I nearly swallowed my tongue.*** 


And with this too, I agree. The tongue swallowing, that is.


I am a Feminist. And one thing that gets me with the media and the pressure that is put on women to look a certain way is response to feminists when they call it out. Rather than lessening the pressure, more pressure is put on men**. So of course, we are all equal now! The women AND the men have to conform to what it 'normal'.  


It would be nice if we could all relax and be who we are, and let others be who they are, instead of who we and they 'should' be. Whether that be in body type or sexuality or self expression.




*Unfortunately growing less and less frequent.


**Funny thing, when you look at the moisturisers and 'men's products' that are appearing, the ingredients are all the same as the 'women's'. And most of the ingredients are not all that good for the body or environment. 


***Commenter was Redzolah.

Curls and Freckles

Body image. And positive body image. It's not just to do with size and shape. Many other things come in to play when people look at themselves and think: God, what is that?


Two things that I'm particularly happy with, but so many people complain about, are my freckles and curly hair.

Growing up, I never thought freckles were a bad thing. They were just part of me. Then I got to high-school and other girls started to complain about their freckles. In the later years I had a friend, where I found that 'brightening' cream in her bathroom. The stuff that's supposed to remove 'sun imperfections'. We were seventeen for chrissake! Wear sunscreen if you are worried, but that should also be to prevent, oh I don't know, Cancer. If you have skin anything like mine, freckles are inevitable. And they're beautiful.
The magazines didn't help - well, they were better with this than other stuff, but still - with their quotes of
 "Don't try to cover freckles with extra layers of foundation."and
 "Stop trying to hide freckles, (such'n'such a brand) has even released a freckle pencil for girls without." What?

Those are positive messages, but they imply that there were previously negative ideas. Hmm. I've stopped reading these magazines (in detail), so I'm not sure about what the current opinion is. Flawless skin is always the ideal anyway. While I assume it just means pimples, maybe I'm so confident that my freckles are gorgeous that it means them too.

Curls are the same. I grew up with crazy hair. Not curly, just crazy. Then at sixteen, a hairdresser told me I had wonderful curls. Really? I thought. A couple of weeks later I went with a friend to get her hair done and that hairdresser told me I shouldn't brush my hair dry because it ruined the curl. I took her word for it, and suddenly I had curly hair! And I was so happy because my hair wasn't supposed to be sleek and shiny.
 There are lots of similar stories on naturallycurly.com, some quite saddening. I've kind of gotten to the point of caring for my hair that when I see Mum, or she calls, she asks:
 "How's the hair?"

I'm at a good place with these two aspects of my body, but I hope there are many more others out there who are happy with freckles and curly hair. Or other beautiful things that the world doesn't generally hold up to be Perfect.

The Body Positive Thursdays (on a Friday)

'Cause yesterday I was procrastinating about writing the next article for my internship. By reading The Scar by China Miéville. Good book. Procrastination-worthy indeed.

Anyway, TBP Thursday. On a Friday.

In the past week I have read two posts that made me so happy. The first was Sarah J Maas's You Are Not Your Clothing Size. I linked it last week but here it is again.

The second was by Karen Healey, author of Guardian of the Dead (another great book, go read it if you haven't already). She posted on the topic of Food is Not a Sin. It really isn't.

That's all on TBP Thursday, because I'm actually getting into this article today. But in honour of food, go eat something yummy. Because you're allowed to.

Theme days

So, it's the first day of not-NaBloWriMo. And I want to keep blogging! If the month of blogging did nothing else, it made me realise that blogging is fun. I've always liked reading other people's blogs, but never thought I would have anything worthwhile to say. But thanks to you guys who followed and commented in October.

I have come up with an idea that will keep me blogging regularly. It's something a lot of bloggers already do, but I'm going to borrow ideas as well as start my own. And it will give me (and you lovely readers) some structure to stick to so I can write about the many things I'm passionate about, yet not worry I'm leaving anything out. It will also be a pirate rule (more of a guideline) just so I don't stress. The main idea is to get rid of rambling posts (like this one).

At the moment I don't have one for every day, but here's a list of my ideas thus far:

Wordless Wednesdays: Post pictures :D I got this idea from The Giraffability of Digressions and I'm Not Hannah

The Body Positive Thursdays: A bit wordy, but I wanted a day where I could write about the importance of positive body image.

Fiction Fridays: This was inspired by the idea in my last post, but I realised that with work and current WiPs, I wouldn't have the energy to post to another blog regularly. Hence, a once a week treat for you guys.

Swimming Saturdays: Where I can talk about what I learnt about swimming and the teaching of swimming that week.

Salsa Sundays: This one I won't start for a few weeks, as I've taken a hiatus from salsa dancing until uni finishes this year :( but keep a lookout.

And that's what I have so far. This is going to be fun.

No Tener Pelos en la Lengua

I've been a bad NaBloWriMo blogger again *ducks head sheepishly*. Moving on.

For two years now I've been studying Spanish as an elective to my degree. We've only just reached the point where we have covered all the conjugations and sentence structures. A few days ago we learnt a few sayings and this one made us all laugh, but I think it has great relevance to writing, and it will be a little mantra of mine from now on. 

No tener pelos en la lengua is translated by the text book as meaning 'to be outspoken, to be frank'. Literally it means 'to not have hairs in one's language'*. Hairy language, eh?

While we were chuckling about this, I thought it was a good way to think about one's prose or poetry, and in choosing the best words, paring back the language. This is something that John Steinbeck first taught me when I discovered Of Mice and Men in year 11. He's still one of my favourite authors. Then this year I took a poetry class and learnt it again. Then last week, Sarah at The Unwrapping reminded me of it again (go read her blog, it's beautiful). Aqui es una escritora si no tiene pelos en la lengua. (Sorry if the grammar is incorrect).

And of course, I submitted the first draft of my CP for assessment (I got 100%). One of the things my supervisor told me to do when editing is to 'tighten the language'. Get rid of all the hairs. So that is my mission over the next two days. Take my draft and turn it into something concise and sin pelos. 

On another matter, I was reading another Sarah's blog. Her latest post is on something I posted about in the first week of NaBloWriMo, body image. The post touched me, and I was so glad to see someone else speaking about the many intricacies of coming to love one's own body.
Once again, this is a website, and organisation, that is doing wonders for so many people in regards to self-love:

www.thebodypositive.org 



*Something I've yet to master, however.

Love it.

So, not off to a good start with the NaBloWriMo thing. But here is my first post and I will do my best to post for the rest of the month (fingers crossed). Here's my reason for not posting for the first three days of the month:

I'm up in Sydney visiting my dear family. The weather here is cool but the humidity is creeping in again already. Unlike Canberra where as soon as the sun goes away, it's cold again.

On to other things, like what I really want to post about today.

Positive body image. It's one thing that I've always been fairly good at maintaining. Mostly thanks to my Mum, who never allowed me to diet, and always encouraged me to maintain healthy habits for just that - my health.

Of course, I always have those bad days - everyone does. This morning for example, and yesterday. For some reason, just looking in the mirror, wearing outfits that normally make me feel good about myself, I felt... (now, I really hate the connotations of this word) fat.

The sad thing is, I know I'm not fat. I know I'm curvy, in a good way, a way that I usually like and am definitely not large. But for some reason, I was feeling bleugh.

Now, writing this at the end of the day, I feel better about myself. I just kept thinking to myself - you are a healthy, active individual, and skinny does not equal healthy all the time, curves are gorgeous. Out and about this afternoon I caught a glimpse of myself in a shop window and felt happy with what I saw.

My point to all this... I have friends who have terrible self esteem about their body, or admit that they know they are hot, yet are constantly striving for 'perfection'. This is an issue that applies to many women and men. The statistics are more concentrated on young women, but it affects people of any gender and demographic.

I also want to emphasise that just because I am saying that big is beautiful, I am not saying that thin is ugly. All sizes are beautiful. I think people many people would lead happier and much healthier lifestyles if they accepted who they are, and grew to love what they saw in the mirror.

The Body Positive is an American organisation run by a good friend of mine. The aim of it is to reach people and educate them on how to love and care for your body without striving for the One idea of what people should look like that is seen so often in the media.

As a last note, I feel I need to explain my feelings towards the word 'fat'. The word, especially in Western societies, brings to mind ugliness. Some people are bigger than others. This is okay, but the words I think should be used are big or curvy. They do not imply the same thing as 'fat'.

Part of my problem is watching my friends use the word as if firing a bullet charged with hate towards themselves, their mouths twisted. Big and curvy are words that conjure beauty in my mind.

Finally, if anything I have said in this post offends anyone, I apologise. I do not apologise for my opinions, but only if they become misconstrued.