Carpe Diem Summer Challenge 2019: Beach Party for Every Body

Image by David Shaw from Pixabay

What I have been wondering for a long time is this.

Why is it that when you have a bunch of stupid guys on a beach and a person with the “wrong” kind of body walks by, and they yell terrible and mean-spirited things at this person who is minding their own business,

Why is everyone’s response to ignore and even justify their behavior rather than shouting them down?

Why shouldn’t everyone be allowed to relax and have fun at the beach or the pool?

Why is it only fun for those whose bodies have been deemed attractive enough?

Why shouldn’t fat people and skinny people and people with scars and stretch marks and ladies with saggy boobs and men with round pot bellies and hairy folks and scrawny scarecrow guys and gals with arms and legs like Betty Spaghetti have a nice time too?

I think it’s rather boring when the only people who can go for a swim without feeling self-conscious and like they must keep covered up are young people with the “right” kind of body.

Shouldn’t we have gotten past the idea that the only people whose bodies should be seen are sleek, unblemished, photoshopped visions of pornographic “perfection?”

Shouldn’t the beach be a place where everyone can cool off, not yet another spot where only the hottest hotties are allowed?

Beach parties are fun

For those with the right body

Not so much for those

Whose bodies have been deemed wrong

Ignoring not an option

~Cie~

Deep Thoughts With Cheesy and Barack

I wish there wasn't so much onus placed on being perfectly healthy. Nobody's perfect. Everyone has shit that goes awry, even those people who have supposedly "perfect" bodies. For instance, my cholesterol readings are actually stellar. You could frame that shit and put a blue ribbon next to it. But my endocrine system is a fucked-up mess, and my triglycerides are elevated. 

None of this shit says anything about my mind, my soul, my work ethic, my devotion, or anything else that I think is truly important. But a lot of people act like shit like blood sugar levels, abnormal labs, or a number on a scale defines a person on a moral level. It doesn't and can't.

~The Cheese Hath Grated It~

The Cheese Grates It: My Resolution to Minimize Body-Shaming Psychic Attacks

Per my resolution to minimize the amount of toxic, ignorant, psychic attacks negatively impacting my life, I kicked the radio station which had been my primary choice to the curb following an onslaught of weight loss surgery ads and the afternoon DJ making the inane remark that "exercising makes you feel thinner. This is especially true for women." 

I now have the radio in the Forester permanently tuned to the publicly funded jazz station. I have satellite radio in the Fusion, which tends to be on one of the 70's or 80's stations or the Underground Garage. They don't blather on and on about bullshit calculated to offend and shame people with non-optimal appearances: bigger people, older people, women who aren't conventionally attractive.

 It's a huge relief to be able to do my job and have some music to keep me from dying of boredom without some stupid advertisement or idiot remark from one of the DJ's raising my blood pressure multiple times during my shift. I've thought about writing a letter to the radio station, but I doubt it would do any good.  

I hope one day we will have a world where a radio station playing such toxic advertising would be flooded by emails rebuking them. 

People deserve to live their lives without being constantly reminded that they are seen as undesirable thanks to the constant brainwashing by mega-corporations hell-bent on taking their money.

Advertising is usually a form of attack rather than an informative medium.

It's time to stop kowtowing to the Frankenstein monster which was in no small part created by behaviorist John B. Watson. Watson was a bit of a shit in any case. He was unscrupulous in his experimentation on vulnerable subjects. 

We need to learn to think for ourselves rather than allowing advertisers to mold our beliefs.

~The Cheese Hath Grated It~

The Cheese Grates It: The Bullshit of Calories In Calories Out and Thin Equals Healthy

I want to smack everyone who says "you just need to eat less and exercise more" upside the head. I doubt I even eat 2000 calories most days, which is the average calorie intake for adults. 

Most of the time, I don't have the money to be able to eat three meals a day. I'm still fat, and I'm pretty sure I always will be unless I get extremely sick, such as my great grandmother did with acute myelogenous leukemia. I'm rather sure she was diabetic and hypothyroid and probably had PCOS as well, just by looking at her face. 

She was never diagnosed as such, but she tended to crave sweets, which is a sign of insulin resistance. Of course, all my family could ever talk about was how fat she was. Why the fuck is everyone so obsessed with other people's bodies? Also, she lost 105 pounds within the space of a year, and then she died. Guess that's a triumph right there--she had a thin body to put into the casket.

~The Cheese Hath Grated It~

The Cheese Grates It: Silly Cheese, Don't You Know Pomegranates are for Weight Loss, Not Eating Pleasure?

Here's a WTF moment in eating. (Trigger warning for discussion of food and body policing.) I get deliveries from Home Chef, and today for my lunch, I decided to make the blood orange and bulgur salad.
It has lots of good ingredients, like arugula, bulgur, almonds, blood orange, sweet potatoes, shallots, and pomegranate seed.
When I went to open the container of pomegranate seed, I noticed the picture of a pomegranate, which at first looked like it had a Saturn ring around it, or perhaps it was wearing a belt for reasons. But nope, it was a picture of a tape measure. Because fucking pomegranates are not something you eat because you like pomegranates or fruit in general, they are something you eat because they may just help you achieve that coveted, Next To Godliness thinness.
 Fuck. That. Shit.
I'm going to enjoy my salad anyway. I'm going to eat it right out of the god damn bowl, because I'm the only one eating it. Anything left over will be put in a container for later. But you know what? I would have enjoyed it all the more if I could have just prepared it without having the ever present reminder that people with bodies like mine should be eradicated shoved in my face.

~The Cheese Hath Grated It With Much Wrath~

The Cheese Grates It: Let's Focus on Issues, not Bodies

Donald Trump's character and policies affect the country and potentially the world. Melania Trump's nude photos do not.

Not that anyone I know is doing this, but how about we focus on the political aspects of the president elect and vice president elect and their deplorable cabinet picks rather than taking cheap shots at Donald Trump's physique or the photos that Melania Trump posed for in the past, both things that have no bearing on anything of any consequence.

I really couldn't give a rip about the photos. I can't stand the hypocrisy of many of Trump's supporters, though, who lambasted Michelle Obama for wearing a modest sleeveless dress, saying it wasn't "fitting" for a first lady, but completely ignore Melania Trump wearing far less. Notice I said the hypocrisy of the supporters, not her posing.

In any case, calling Melania Trump a whore does not solve the real problem: the damage that Donald Trump and MIke Pence are going to do while they're in office. I wish people would refrain from such cheap insults and also from the cheap shots at Trump's physique. You aren't hurting Trump by fat shaming him, you are hurting innocent people who may have that body type and see all the insults hurled at a person whose body looks like theirs, or may have loved ones with that body type. Instead of cheap shots, let's focus on the real issue: their politics.

I posed for art classes many years ago, and yes, I do mean buck nekkid. I had people (not the art students or teachers) saying that I must be an "exhibitionist" and thinking that I must be promiscuous. Nothing could be further from the truth. I dress very modestly, my clothing tends to be loose and concealing. I am far from promiscuous. My relationships were few and far between. Unfortunately, they were always bad, and as it happens, I have been celibate by choice since 2000 and have no desire to change that truth in this lifetime.

Nude photos (or artwork) are inconsequential. You can't glean anything about anyone's character based on whether or not they were comfortable posing nude.

Melania Trump is not the one holding the office of the President. Let's focus on the character and actions of the person who is, on his vice president, and on others holding key positions. Those are the people whose actions will affect our futures.

~The Cheese Hath Grated It~

The Ugly Truth About the Modeling Industry

This creepy picture of Donald Trump and his then fourteen year old daughter Ivanka appears in the linked article. This is an inappropriate way for a father to interact with his teenage daughter.

The article I'm commenting on is long. It's also well worth reading.

http://www.dailykos.com/story/2016/10/6/1578544/-The-Untold-Story-of-Trump-Model-Management-A-Daily-Kos-Exclusive-Part-1

Amazing journalism. The pedophilia, exploitation and sexual abuse of models is something of an open secret. People have been looking the other way for years.

I was one of those girls who was desperate to be a model and came to hate my body early on because it was obvious that it could never happen. I was too short (I ended up being 5 foot 6) and too chunky. I became bulimic at age twelve because I was disgusted with how “fat” I was. I weighed 110 pounds.

It took me until the age of 45 to stop saying hateful things about my body. I actually did end up being fat, and now I say that nobody has the right to criticize another person’s body. We also all need to do a better job of protecting our girls and young women. We have, as a society, failed them.

~Cie~