Wednesday, January 03, 2007

Go Public

<-- We spent New Year's with this little possum, Caro & Anna's nine-week old baby

I've just enrolled in an online study of New Year's Resolutions (you can do it too if you want). I found out about it in the Age last week and thought the very act of articulating a resolution on a website might help me keep it. You log on, give a few details about yourself and your New Year resolution and then cyber-Prof Wiseman assigns you to one of four different methods to help you keep your resolution. Unfortunately, I'm in the 'Go Public' group. I was hoping I might get 'Reward Yourself With Shopping' or 'Weekly Massage' as my random assistive technique. But no, I have to tell everybody what my resolution is. So by reading this entry you are contributing to science.

I'm really quite embarrassed by my resolution so this is the worst randomised group I could draw. There are so many more interesting resolutions I could have made - resolutions I would like to go public about, resolutions that would highlight how interesting and quirky and smart and politically aware I am - like developing a career in radio and joining a choir and learning Italian and going back to ballroom dancing and taking up a cause when I get to Brisbane in February (at the moment I'm trying to decide between getting more involved with the Greens - I'm a very inactive member - or joining the Change Agency or working directly with a refugee group). But I know I'll do those, so it's cheating to list them as resolutions.

I'm going to lose weight.
Tedious, isn't it? And soooo unfeminist. After years of being told I have to embrace my body, and not to be entangled in patriarchal heteronormative definitions of idealised body shape, I'm giving in. I'm tired of struggling to accept myself 'as I am'. I want to be attractive and confident in my body. I know it is meant to come from within but I tell ya, it doesn't. I've read Kaz Cooke, I've read Naomi Klein, I've read Betty Friedan, I've even read those bloody magazine articles, the ones that say 'Ten Steps to Loving Your Body As You Are' accompanied by a full-page glossy photo of a laughing Elle McPherson eating ice-cream in her pyjamas.

I'm far from obese but I'm right on the outer border of my ideal weight for my height. I could pretend I want to get fit, or eat more healthily, but I don't really. I'llhave to do those things, but they are a means to an end. It's time to come out of the closet, stand proud and say 'I want to lose weight.' See how proudly I'm saying it?

Anyway now obesity is the new smoking. So I'm allowed to want to lose weight without being harangued for abandoning the sisterhood - because it's good for my health and not because I want to look sexy in some mainstream construction of desire objects

When my brother was having his psychotic episodes and I was having the affair with Grey* (this OF COURSE was before Lovergirl), I lost heaps of weight. For a year or two, I picked listlessly at food, I took long heartbroken walks along the ocean, I demurred modestly when people commented on my weight loss. Suddenly I found I was a size ten, o joy of joys. Suddenly those tiny slightly imperfect remaindered clothes marked down at the end of the season to impossibly cheap prices all fit me! As soon as I started eating again I snapped back to my regular size (not a ten). Ah, but that brief window has given me a taste for life a waif, a slender elfin creature, a mere slip of a thing.

One of my hobbies - probably my main creative activity - is cooking. I'm a very good cook. Desserts in particular are my specialty. Black Forest Cheesecake, lemon or chocolate self-saucing pudding, warm fresh banana cakes spread with lemon cream cheese, baked figs with honey marscapone. In Melbourne, along with the excesses of Christmas, we revelled in the fabulous pastas of Lygon St Carlton and the voluptuous mysteries of the Preston market - small Italian shortbreads dipped in chocolate, fried Greek doughnuts dripping with syrup, and heaven-on-earth Maltese cannoli - tubes of flaky fried pastry filled with vanilla ricotta cream. I also chased all over town trying to find burek, which is a savoury buttery layered pastry containing spinach and cheese - something like spanakopita but entirely superior.

So you can see how an extra microgram or two might have found its way to my midriff. So now - it's all going. Don't worry, I'm not going to monitor it here. How unimaginably boring! If I had my way I wouldn't tell you at all. But in the interests of science I am being called upon to 'Go Public' with my resolution. So here it is.

Oh My God. My New Year's resolution is to lose weight. I am revealed as Deeply Shallow.

6 comments:

Anonymous said...

Check this out:

http://themuriels.blogspot.com/

Anonymous said...

great, thanks!

Anonymous said...

This is in Italian because it's boring.
Trust me, it is.

Wow! Questa settimana perdo due chili.
Mi regole sono: une - non zucchero; due - non framento; tre - non fritto profundo; quattro - cammino tutto giorno (non sono molto bene a questo); cinque - non leggo e mangio.
Undici andare!

Stegetronium said...

Settimana due: sonno triste - questo settimana sonno une chilo more. E' il compleanno di L; mangio torta di compleanno e molti meals deliciosa. Oggi cammino, e domani cammino...
Duedici andare.

Anonymous said...

To lose weight, to lose weight: ahhh I'm with ya. How's it going?
And yes, greek doughuts (loukoumades) are the BEST.

Stegetronium said...

It's not going so well, I'm afraid! Too much travelling around the country having catered meals everywhere I go. Morning tea, lunch, afternoon tea, plus breakfast and dinner in restaurants charged back to the company...! These country towns and their scones with jam and cream and quiches!...Not quite the standard of Melbourne fare but warm and fresh and tempting nonetheless.