Skinny

I don't know why, but today I was almost enchanted with the idea of skinnyness. Maybe it was all the searching about thinsporation I did the other day. And today. The videos of women, with their pencil-thin legs and itty bitty wrists, and inverted stomachs, hip-bones poking out like bayonets of soldiers ready to attack... I don't know. Something about it was quite mesmerizing. And the messages that this was beautiful, that this was perfection had me nearly hypnotized.

I can only thank someone, or something, that I didn't find these when I was at my weakest. Those were days when I might have eaten 700 calories at the most. I have only done this a couple of weeks during my life, but I feel like I would have done it more had I found the proper support by these "ana" communities. What saddens me is that these girls are deeply, deeply ill, and in love with their disease. They love Ana. Who wouldn't? It's a friendly name. It's my name. And Ana will give you happiness if you just obey her commands.

On the same level, I love food. I mean, I really LOVE food. How else did I get to this point, anyway? Not by accident, that's for damn sure. And more recently, I have become much more enchanted with becoming healthy. And doing things the right way. And getting strong. When I do a 30 lb bicep curl, maybe it's not a lot, but man do I feel really strong. Oh, and when I do squats!! I feel really good when I do that too. I want to start running. I wrote down some of my goals last night in a Sigma journal that was given to me by my big sister. I won't post them here, I want to see if I can reach any of them, first. I know I'll keep working at it.

My main question is, though, why IS there so much pressure to be skinny? Why do young women feel that they must be skinny to be beautiful, or even healthy? And why if a woman like Gabrielle Anwar is on television (you can clearly see the vertebrae in her back and her ribs clearly in many shots--I unprofessionally calculated her BMI to be 16.2) there are no qualms, and she's even "real sexy," but all this fuss is made about America Ferrera and how inspiring she is and "good for her," and blahblahblah. I don't know. Both are slightly outside what is the "norm" in Hollywood, but one is slightly more touted than the other. I personally believe Gabrielle Anwar is far more unhealthy than America Ferrera, but whatever.

What I'm trying to say is that I have tried, and am tried, harder than I ever have to love my body. Not just be content and say "Well if I just lost 10 more lbs..." but really, honestly LOVE it. I want to care for it and make it happy, I want to exercise so it becomes even stronger. I don't want to look at myself and say, "Ugh, what big legs I have," I wanna say, "DAMN, what big legs I have!" And for the first time in my life, I'm doing it. I don't stare in the mirror and pick out the stuff I hate. I look at the stuff I like. I've never been so content and carefree about my body before, and I've never felt so much longing for someone who didn't feel that way to feel the same.

I hope I can hold onto this feeling forever.

Love,

Anna