Some Thoughts on Body Positivity and Representation in Fitness Media

Recently I read this Buzzfeed article as part of their Body Positivity Week series. I'm really excited about this series because so much of the conversation around fitness and health centers around being thin. As we all know, being thin doesn't necessarily make you healthy. There might be a correlation between the two, but they're not mutually exclusive terms.

Body positivity is important to me because I know that shaming people into losing weight doesn't work. All you end up doing is creating a cycle of shame where people feel awful about themselves, which doesn't create positive change. If we allow people to feel comfortable in their own bodies, they are more likely to decide that they want to start working out. When I started working out, it had nothing to do with wanting to get fit. It was part of my treatment plan for managing my GAD. Similarly, until I felt well enough to start taking care of myself I didn't feel good enough about myself to start exercising.

I would really love for the conversation about health and exercise to center around doing things that make you feel good. That your meals don't need to be earned and that you don't need to deprive yourself of things that you enjoy to be healthy.

Through more casual web browsing, I came across this website. I'm going to reference it specifically, but it follows the same trend as many fitness communities: paying lip service to body positivity while only representing a single body type.

At first glance, there's nothing really wrong with Fit Bottomed Girls. It gets its title from a Queen song. They use cutesy graphics. They post daily articles about things related to fitness, motivation and inspiration, nutrition and mindfulness. There's even a nice little graphic at the bottom of the page proclaiming that "Fit bottoms come in all shapes and sizes."

Do you notice anything in this photo?

If fit bottomed girls come in all shapes and sizes, why are you only showing girls in the same size: petite and slim? Perhaps those three women are meant to be the site's three owners, but why use the slogan if that's the case?

Upon further perusal of the website, I found an article where one of the site owners talks about how they have finally found stock images that look like them. Okay, great. Maybe they'll start using those stock images instead. Did they? Not that I can see.

In another post about minding your own business about other people's fitness goals (published after the article about the better representation in fitness stock photos, mind) - a concept with which I agree wholeheartedly - they're again using a stock photo wherein all the women pictured are slim and petite.

 

See the little pram in the top right corner? This was originally posted on their sister site for pregnant women, new mothers and young families. None of these women look pregnant, and none of them look like a recent mother. Granted, it's a stock photo and while the post about "minding your own fitness" is new, the photo itself may not be. I don't know, and I don't particularly care to find out.

 

I just think that if you're going to tout yourself as an inclusive website, you should make more of an effort to actually follow through on that ideal.

 

The last thing that I take issue with about Fit Bottomed Girls is their tagline: "Keeping a lid on the junk in the trunk." *rolls eyes forever*

 

Firstly, the size of your butt has very little to do with your overall fitness level. You can be fit and have a big butt - in fact that often happens as your overall fat percentage drops and the gluteus muscles become more prominent. You can be direly unhealthy and have a pancake butt. You can be crazy fit and have no butt to speak of at all.

 

Can we please just accept that people are going to be whatever size and shape they are? Can we stop portraying a single image of fitness like it's the only real one? And for the love of all things purple, can we stop coming up with stock photos of women vapidly smiling into their undressed salads? Because an undressed salad is just sad. You have nothing to smile about, girl.

 



Screenshot photos taken from fitbottomedgirls.com. Woman with crazy eyes and undressed salad taken from http://staging.thekitchn.com/10-totally-heinous-crimes-against-salad-that-need-to-be-stopped-220244.

My Journey with Mental Illness: Getting a Diagnosis

Today is #BellLetsTalk Day, which is a day designed to spread awareness and raise money towards mental health related causes. As such, I thought today was a good day to talk about my own experiences with mental illness.

I was always an anxious child. For as long as I can remember, I have feared that something catastrophic would happen in my day to day life. This was addressed in passing when I was in elementary school - one of my teachers noticed that I had written something like "I hate myself" on one of my assignments and the school board got involved. I scarcely remember this, but I remember both sitting with a social worker once a month and getting pulled out of school to go to a psychology clinic in the city. I remember going to two or three child psychologists before finding the right fit (our insurance at the time was pretty crummy, so choice was a little limited. Luckily the last one was fantastic). I was able to develop some coping skills, go through a little grief counseling and generally just return to being a happier and easier to deal with child.

Most of my primary and secondary education went well in that regard. I was, however, hyper-aware and extremely worried about how I was perceived. I would go through endless cycles of "What if they don't like me? What if they make fun of me? What if they don't want to be friends with me anymore?" It was exhausting (and still is, to a certain extent).

Things got bad in the year that I was in Grade 12. This was the year that I was applying to university. It was also the year of the Vancouver 2010 Winter Olympics, which my dad was fortunate enough to have been chosen by Bell to work at. He spent most of that high school year in Whistler, which was great for him (but less so for my mom and I). I had always done well in school (anxiety tends to lend itself well to being productive - "What if I don't do well at this? What if people think I'm stupid?" is a pretty good motivator to doing schoolwork), but this was the first time that I had ever struggled. This was the first year that I had an ineffective teacher, who actually told me that I wasn't smart enough to be an engineer, and it was also the first year that I had had so many heavy subjects at once. Suffice to say, the pressure was intense. I don't think that my mother and I have ever fought as much as we did that year.

I remember the physical symptoms: pounding heart, whirling brain, trouble sleeping, hands shaking. It was horrible. Still, I didn't go see anyone or talk to anyone because "it was just stress." In any case, my symptoms became much more manageable when I was accepted to nearly every university that I had applied to (I probably would have been accepted to the last one, but I had already accepted the offer from my first choice school).

Fast forward two years to my second year of engineering. I was in a dual degree program - chemistry and chemical engineering. I had just broken up with my live-in boyfriend and was unable to move out. My physical health was poor because of the house I was living in (my landlord at the time was a slum lord and there was so much mould that you could smell it as soon as you walked in). All of the symptoms that I had experienced in Grade 12 were back, but 10x worse. It was so bad that I hardly had the energy to do anything beyond get out of bed in the morning and get ready for school.

When classes finally ended and I moved back home for the summer, my symptoms didn't get any better. All I could think about was how my friends had abandoned me and how my ex had cheated on me (this has actually not been confirmed, but I very firmly believed it at the time). I lay in bed all day, staring at the ceiling. Eventually, my mother took me to the family doctor because she couldn't watch me do it any longer.

After describing my symptoms to her (the endless cycles of "What if I never get a job? What if they don't let me switch disciplines? What if I have to live at home forever?", the baseless feelings of doom, the perpetually racing heart, the body aches, etc.), she diagnosed me with Generalized Anxiety Disorder and Panic Disorder.

Honestly, that day was the best day of my life. I finally knew what was wrong with me. I wasn't crazy and I wasn't broken. When I was having a panic episode (which is like a panic attack, but lasts for a longer period), I was dissociating and not having some kind of mental breakdown. In those states, my body was just doing what it could to survive what it thought was a life or death situation.

The doctor originally prescribed me an SSRI, which I took for about a week, then stopped because it gave me wicked migraines. In the end, I decided that I would rather under go Cognitive Behavioural Therapy (CBT) which was more about re-training your brain than medicating it.

I have been doing much better (apart from last year's six-month long panic and depressive episode). I have a brilliant therapist, both here at MUN and back home. I encourage any Queen's friends to go to the counseling centre in LaSalle because they are fantastic. My journey is ongoing, and it always will be, but I no longer feel as if the obstacles that I may face are insurmountable.

Please, if you're struggling, reach out to someone. It doesn't need to be me or a therapist, but get help. You don't have to do this on your own. I'm here for you. We're here for you. You are so not alone in this.

Be well.

-K

Counting My Blessings

I've been doing a lot of thinking lately, which is to say that I haven't been all that busy and so have been left alone with my thoughts for probably a lot longer than is strictly healthy. In any case, I've been doing some thinking and I have come to a few realizations.

The first, and arguably the most important, is that I have had a much easier time of it than most other folks. And for this, I am extremely grateful. I'm grateful that I have supportive and mildly feminist parents - though 1/2 of them would not choose to identify as such - who have allowed me to pursue whatever dreams that have come to me. I am so lucky to have them. I know that not every person is so lucky, and in an attempt to repay what grace has been given to me, I volunteer with an after-school group for teenaged girls. If they only have two hours a week where they feel totally supported, I am so thankful that I am able to help them get there.

Secondly, I am very thankful that my parents were able to teach me the value of hard work without giving me an expectation of rewards. I know that my hard work will pay off eventually; or, if it doesn't, I'm barking up the wrong tree. Honestly, I can't stand the entitled attitude of many of my classmates and even of some of my ex-boyfriends. The people who I disliked in school were the ones who took for granted that they could indulge their whims because their needs were already paid for. I have never had an easy time of asking for things, and even less so for asking for my parents to pay for my recreation. I'm sure they would, but I just can't wrap my head around that sense of entitlement. We never had a whole lot of money growing up, nor do we now. We're certainly comfortable and I have never wanted for anything, but I also never took for granted that I could go backpacking around the world for six months after shelling out a hundred grand in tuition. I wonder if these types will ever truly understand what it's like to struggle for what you need or if I'm the one being pretentious.

My third realization is that whatever path I'm on must turn into the right one. Eventually. Things are going to have to work themselves out eventually. I'm not going to be an underemployed chemical engineering graduate forever. I don't have these dreams for nothing. There has to be an end goal somewhere, where I'll be able to reconcile what I've wanted to do with what I've actually accomplished. And maybe the end goal isn't to achieve something great, but just to be at peace with myself and making a small difference somewhere. Even if it's just with the kids that I tutor or the girls that I'm mentoring. That means something. If not to them, definitely to me. My actions matter, in a small way.

This is my life, and I will make it count. One way or another.

The Year in Review

So, 2014 was kind of a rough year for me. I think that goes for some others as well, so I think I can say with confidence that 2015 should be better than 2014 was. Hopefully.

I graduated from chemical engineering this past June, which means that the 6 months leading up to that fateful day were absolutely jam-packed full of stress. I had at least three group projects of varying degrees of complexity to deal with at a time, which of course also means I had a whole pile of different personalities to deal with. I had always thought of myself as someone who was easy to get along with, but that turns out is not exactly the case. I like to be in charge, as in turns out, as much as I may protest to the contrary. Giving up control is hard for me, and can make me either passive-aggressive (best-case scenario) or openly hostile (this actually happened towards the end of the bigger of the three group projects -- everyone's been there. I think).

After some reflection, I realize that I could have saved myself (and my group) a lot of heartache by communicating more and more effectively. This is the best lesson I think I ever learned from 4 years of engineering education. You cannot control people. They are their own people with their own thoughts and feelings. If you need something, tell them. That way, when they need something they'll feel like they're able to come to you for help.

So, after graduation, I had one of longest panic episodes of my life - maybe a whole week? I don't remember. I was terribly stressed about finding a job, feeling pressured by my family to work (even though I know now that there really was none - I just don't like being dependent), and feeling pretty worthless because most of my class was already working - or so I thought at the time.

In response to said panic episode, I took a job in northern Labrador for a mining company. It was a summer student position, and at the time I was happy to be able to make money (I was also happy to be able to be closer to my then-boyfriend. More on that later). It wasn't a great job, and I was strung along for over a month and a half waiting for a start date and I was terribly under-utilized but I met some great people. This past summer was probably one of the best ones I've had, at least in recent memory. However, the hours were shit, the isolation was draining and so was the travelling. I was offered the chance to stay on longer but I very politely declined due to my concerns over my mental health - I had more panic attacks during the time I worked there than I had all year.

Now I'm back in my hometown, living with my parents. This is both awesome and awful. I will not deny that the quality of the food is far superior to my life as a student, and that not having to pay for my own food or utilities while I'm not working is amazing. That said, I feel like I have no opportunity to have a social life while I'm here. I'm not really that close to many people from high school, and most of them have either moved to the city or are in their final year of university and thus too busy to hang out. I'm tutoring high school kids, but that's not exactly a steady-paying gig nor very intellectually stimulating.

Career-wise, I have no idea what I want to do. Oil is faltering at the moment, and I'm considered a flight risk in Alberta while I'm living in Ontario. Mining has turned out not to be my cup of tea (too environmentally damaging for me to want to be a part of). I'm not particularly interested in manufacturing, but that's essentially what my career has trained me for.

And yes, I do realize that I am in the incredibly privileged position of a highly educated person feeling unsure of their next step because they have essentially the whole world at their feet, but acknowledging this privilege does nothing to alleviate the stress of the indecision that I am now facing. I know that I want to be of help and of use to the world in some way, but the question is: what?

My Thoughts on Science, Religion and Morality in General

I did something more or less stupid this past week: I engaged with the troll people in YouTube comments.

To be fair, it was a vlogbrothers' video, and that community tends to be more or less reasonable. Imagine my dismay to find out they actually weren't! On this topic anyway.

If you have seen the video or haven't, it doesn't really matter for my discussion. John Green discussed how most people, religious or not, are essentially nihilists that in some way or another are looking to create meaning in their lives and the lives of others. I expect that most of us can agree with this statement. He also pointed out, that to him, the existence of a higher power itself was much less important than the question "How can I make my life worthwhile?" I agree wholeheartedly with this point.

Before we can go any further with my own experience, I'll briefly get into my own world view. I am not religious, nor was my upbringing. I was baptized Roman Catholic and I did attend Catholic school up until I went to university, but largely that experience helped me lose my somewhat lackadaisical faith. I distinctly remember the day that I realized I didn't believe in a Catholic god: we were discussing the afterlife in Religion class, and my own view is that souls may go elsewhere or they may be reincarnated if whatever lesson they were meant to learn wasn't totally learned. I was told in no uncertain terms that this was wrong and against the faith. Because I have a tiny bit of a problem being told what to do, I decided screw you guys, if you can't accommodate me, I'll find someone else who can. I flirted with the concept of Hinduism and Buddhism for a while, but after taking a World Religions course, I came to the understanding that all religions teach essentially the same morals, and they should all be respected.

Despite being more spiritual or even secular than religious, I still have an immense amount of respect for other people's faiths. Just because organized religion doesn't work for me, doesn't mean it isn't valuable to someone else.  I have a lot of friends who are religious, and a lot of friends who aren't.

Now, back to why I decided to feed the trolls. Based on the video and others that are similar, the Greens have never expressed that they were religious or not. People have been trying to figure this out forever (although I can't see why -- it has no bearing on the content they put out) and have more or less concluded that they aren't religious. Someone even said, in the comments, that "they are not religious. They are smart men."

I'm sorry, but that's too far. Intelligence (and the pursuit of scientific knowledge) and faith are not mutually exclusive. You can't say that people who believe in a higher power are stupid and behind the times. There are plenty of famous scientists who were religious and made huge efforts forward. Sir Isaac Newton, Louis Pasteur, Gregor Mendel, Sir Francis Bacon, Gottfried Liebniz and Michael Faraday were all religious men, just to name a few! Sir Isaac Newton is the father of classical physics and calculus (well, him and Leibniz on the calculus front). A good chunk of what we know today is due to Newton's contributions. To say that religious people are unable to contribute to the scientific world is untrue, unfair and incredibly ignorant.

The reason some people may think that science and religion have to be juxtaposed with each other is that the ordinary, perfectly reasonable religious people do not automatically come to mind. We tend to think of religious fundamentalists and those insane New Earth Creationists before we think of any of my teachers from when I was in Catholic school. Fundamentalists are not a good representation of the religious population (doubly so for Islamic jihadists - a lot of what they're doing goes against the Qu'ran, or so I've been told. Not being a Qu'ranic scholar myself, I can't say).

Science and religion do not need to be mutually exclusive at all. There is only so much that science is currently able to explain. I believe the universe was created by way of a big bang, but something had to set it off. I don't know what, but quite frankly I don't care. Like John Green said, that isn't the important question.

Student Government Is Complete Bullshit

So, if you know me (and thus far most people that read this blog do), you know that I am completely and vehemently opposed to participating in engineering-related extracurriculars. This is mostly because I want to get away from people that think exactly like me during my down time.

It shouldn't come as a surprise then that I am usually blissfully unaware of what my student government is doing. Today, however, I was reminded of their slightly annoying existence by a survey intended to gauge interest in this year's Chemical Engineering Chemistry themed clothing. I don't usually buy into any of these things (what can I say, I'm not a joiner) but I did today for some reason.

All the designs are horrendous. There is not a single item of clothing that they have designed that I would even consider putting on my body. Some of the designs could work if they weren't so fucking fixated on their chosen colour scheme (seriously, who does black writing on black fabric. Idiots.) and putting them on sweaters. Because I'm made of money and can afford your shitty over-priced clothing with ugly designs that I had no input in, or even the opportunity to give it.

My whole problem with student government, essentially, boils down to this: it's one big clique. If you didn't get involved in first or second year, none of the members that did will give a shit about your opinion. Even with this survey, I highly doubt anyone on that committee will modify their designs given our opinions. They don't care, they'll do whatever they want instead of what the majority of the class wants.

Yes, I realize that I could have gotten involved with this whole shebang earlier if I wanted to be a part of their decision making processes. Yes, I could let my class rep or whatever know that I want things to be done differently within their organization. Ultimately though, I don't really give a shit what happens. It's just incredibly stupid, in my mind, that they completely designed this faculty clothing without consulting us first. Or even asking us what kind of colour scheme we thought would be appropriate!

Whatever, they'll do whatever they want in their little hive minds. I'm not going to buy a Chem Eng sweater this year, just as I have never bought a Chem Eng related item before. I'll just go back to my student government free bubble, where everyone is happy and doesn't wear ugly black on black crew neck sweaters.

Jesse Charger's "Soul Mates Formula" -- A Seriously Damaging Idea

I was browsing through my newsfeed today and I found something that I believe to be incredibly damaging to the psyche of any person stupid enough to go through with it.

Jesse Charger, a seemingly unethical and extremely conservative business man, has come up with a way to make women "be and do whatever you want." Basically the premise of this bullshit is to teach men with "no game" how to successfully pick up women and trick them into falling in love with them. 

These women are supposed to look a certain way, act a certain way, have sex with their partners a certain way and I hated every single second I spent reading it. For some reason I needed to read the whole damned sales pitch, but it was scary stuff.

I noticed a lot of talk about how normal women can be molded into a man's perfect mate -- she would be subservient sexually (as I noticed that there was little to no mention of indulging in her sexual fantasies, just those of the man), she wouldn't cause "drama" which I'm guessing means she doesn't have any of her own opinions on anything, and basically is just a hot housewife that is meant to carry on your genes for you.

UGH WHY DO THEY DO THIS TO ME/US

If this guide was more geared towards how to make yourself a better partner in a relationship, I wouldn't be as disgusted. I could even understand and sympathize with that. Relationships are hard, as we all know, and some people just aren't good at them. I can understand wanting to understand what it is that other people are looking for in a good partner, and wanting to emphasize those qualities or improve something in yourself to make that happen.

I hate how this asshole believes (or rather implies) that there's something wrong with the woman if a man is shot down in a social situation. In order for men to not get shot down by women, they have to trick women into finding them attractive or interesting or basically just not horrible human beings. He even seemed rather proud of the fact that this bullshit pseudo-science laden "guide" was helping old men attract university-aged women.

Dude also spends a lot of time talking about women as sexual objects, which I'm sure I don't need to tell you, but I have a HUGE problem with this. The whole "give her multiple orgasms so she doesn't cheat on you" deal is not a flattering position to hold on women. I can tell you from experience that that particular tactic doesn't do shit if the partner is a total asshat.

To sum up because I could keep going forever and we'd never get anywhere and have a decent conversation about the damaging effects this psychopath could have on society at large:

While I don't think that there is anything wrong with learning to date more effectively in order to find a suitable partner, the whole idea of molding someone into becoming your ideal match is a scary one. To me, love shouldn't be about changing someone to become what you want. That just straight up screams oppression to me (and isn't this kind of thinking what feminism has been trying to get rid of for decades?)  and isn't doing anything close to helping form healthy relationships. I think it's very telling that Charger has to put "THIS IS TOTALLY ETHICAL" so people will buy his product in multiple places throughout the sales pitch because it very clearly is not.

Teaching people to be better human beings capable of loving someone else and being loved, instead of having to trick people into loving you would be a better use of time and effort. I seriously hope that the testimonials on the webpage were made up because the alternative is far too frightening.

If you want to check out this psychopath's (aka Jesse Charger's) website/sales pitch, here it is: http://www.seductionscience.com/soulmates/