I had a revelation. Weight does not equate to health. Skinny is not healthy and being big is not unhealthy. If you’re "fat" by body mass index tables and you eat healthy and are active, you’re much healthier than an inactive "skinny" person. Weight is not the determining factor, LIFESTYLE is. But unfortunately, in this society, losing weight = good, and gaining weight = bad. My sister is constantly obsessing about weight, always feeling the need to reach a specific weight and calling high caloric foods "disgusting" and when she eats them, she’s "naughty." She even has a picture of a skinny, tan woman/model on her mirror to be her goal or ideal body image. Funny thing is that the body type that all women strive to be is only reached by 5% of the women. It’s crazy! There are so little women with that body type but they’re overrepresented on TV.
My mom tells my sister to go to the gym even though she herself doesn’t go. It’s because my sister is bigger than my mom, but just because she’s bigger or a different body type doesn’t mean she’s unhealthy. If anything, I think my sister is pretty healthy. She eats well and exercises regularly.
One of our classmates said she went to Mexico, got sick and got the stomach flu. She ended up losing 20 pounds in 2 weeks. She came back and people told her she looked good! She needs to get sick, vomit and have diarrhea, to look "good"?
What is this obsession with weight and with scales? It’s an obsession!...this need to count calories and exercise to offset the calories that we ate. That shouldn’t be at the forefront of our minds. Our goal shouldn’t be to be skinny or lose weight but just to be healthy, to enjoy exercise, and to have fun.
I went to a Body Positive event, and they were trying to share this concept of Health at Every Size. Genetics determines a huge proportion of your body weight. If you’re trying to lose or gain weight, your body will fight with you to keep your weight the same.
http://www.bodypositive.com/
Showing posts with label women. Show all posts
Showing posts with label women. Show all posts
Friday, March 13, 2009
Watch This: Pecah Lobang clip
"Teng’s award winning documentary not only focuses on Natasha’s struggle to honestly live her life, but explores why Malaysian society has turned repressive on transwomen through interview with a religious scholar, a physician who conducted sex change surgeries, a sociologist, three attorneys and an outreach worker."
Source: Racialicious
Wednesday, March 11, 2009
racism and sexual violence against api women
In my experience, the people I've talked to who argue that racism or sexism is not a big deal in this day and age typically have the privilege of not understanding why it matters. Except, as Jaemin Kim argues, “[T]hese stereotypes are dangerous.” The ones that she's specifically referring to are “societal norm[s] to reduce an Asian woman to a sexualized stereotype, a one-faceted 'thing' that is exclusively an object of desire.” (This Wikipedia entry provides a quick intro to stereotypes of API women.)
Kim's article (1) discusses recent cases of race-based sexual violence against Asian women:
“In Spokane, Washington, two white men and a woman specifically hunted random Japanese women in an elaborately planned scheme to kidnap, rape, sodomize, torture and videotape them. Their motivation? According to police reports, the rapists had a sexual 'fantasy and 'fixation' about young Japanese women, who they believed were 'submissive.' ...
During a one month period in Autumn 2000, the predators abducted five Japanese exchange students, ranging from age 18 to 20. Motivated by their sexual biases about Asian women, all three used both their bodies and objects to repeatedly rape - vaginally, anally and orally -- two of the young women over a seven hour ordeal.”
Despite a confession from one of the attackers of targeting only Japanese women, indicating the racial-motivations of the assault, they were NOT charged with a hate crime. Why? Because, according to a detective in Spokane who emailed Kim, “'It was felt that there was no hate involved instead he [the lead rapist] was very infatuated with the Japanese race.' (sic).” Kim states, “We, as a society, were told that it's not a hate crime to rape an Asian woman because of her race” in the case of the Spokane assault.
Underlying these incidents are issues of power, but not in the sense of what the survivor could have done or should have done. Instead, it's the fact that these people could assault the women and the fact that these stereotypes exist, and are still considered acceptable. Finally, in this case, I would add that while these crimes are clearly racially-based, there is also a gender dimension; in this case, Asian women were specifically targeted due to sexual stereotypes about this particular group. While issues of sexual violence are unfortunately often associated with women as the survivors, gender should not be left out of the conversation just for that reason. In responding to sexual violence against API women, it is important to acknowledge these intersections (2). How should we as a community organize EFFECTIVELY in response to sexual violence like this?
(source: Racialicious)
Kim's article (1) discusses recent cases of race-based sexual violence against Asian women:
“In Spokane, Washington, two white men and a woman specifically hunted random Japanese women in an elaborately planned scheme to kidnap, rape, sodomize, torture and videotape them. Their motivation? According to police reports, the rapists had a sexual 'fantasy and 'fixation' about young Japanese women, who they believed were 'submissive.' ...
During a one month period in Autumn 2000, the predators abducted five Japanese exchange students, ranging from age 18 to 20. Motivated by their sexual biases about Asian women, all three used both their bodies and objects to repeatedly rape - vaginally, anally and orally -- two of the young women over a seven hour ordeal.”
Despite a confession from one of the attackers of targeting only Japanese women, indicating the racial-motivations of the assault, they were NOT charged with a hate crime. Why? Because, according to a detective in Spokane who emailed Kim, “'It was felt that there was no hate involved instead he [the lead rapist] was very infatuated with the Japanese race.' (sic).” Kim states, “We, as a society, were told that it's not a hate crime to rape an Asian woman because of her race” in the case of the Spokane assault.
Underlying these incidents are issues of power, but not in the sense of what the survivor could have done or should have done. Instead, it's the fact that these people could assault the women and the fact that these stereotypes exist, and are still considered acceptable. Finally, in this case, I would add that while these crimes are clearly racially-based, there is also a gender dimension; in this case, Asian women were specifically targeted due to sexual stereotypes about this particular group. While issues of sexual violence are unfortunately often associated with women as the survivors, gender should not be left out of the conversation just for that reason. In responding to sexual violence against API women, it is important to acknowledge these intersections (2). How should we as a community organize EFFECTIVELY in response to sexual violence like this?
(source: Racialicious)
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