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June 3, 2005
Who Wants To Be Cinderella?
This morning I was listening to NPR (as I usually do in the morning... see, MR, I do listen to news radio!) and an interview with Ron Howard, director of the new movie Cinderella Man, came on. Howard spoke of how during the Depression when so many people had lost so much, the character of the boxer who came back from oblivion to become the World's Heavyweight Champion allowed many people to live their dreams of a triumphant return from ruin.
It got me to thinking about how we love the Cinderella story, and how the incarnations that it takes tells us a lot about the time we live in. For example, I just read a book called From Fat to Fabulous, (yes, I do sometimes put down my cat-eaten de Grey articles and read chick lit), a book about a young woman who is very overweight, but then goes on a reality TV show about weight loss and loses some weight, but in the process transforms her life and speaks out for overweight people everywhere who have been discriminated against. It's actually a pretty good book, and unlike a lot of books dealing with the issue of weight, it doesn't include the heroine magically becoming a size 0 in six weeks. It deals pretty realistically with weight loss, and has some great commentary on how very shallow people can be about appearance.
Reading the book got me to thinking that the Cinderella story of our time often involves a physical transformation from fat to thin. The heroine is fat, unhappy, in a dead end job, unable to find love or in a bad/abusive relationship, and then she takes control of her weight and then meets the man of her dreams and lands her dream job.
Well, you should know by now that I'm not going to dismiss that as a shallow or stupid theme. To my mind, there's nothing wrong with wanting to be thin and beautiful. Who doesn't??? I'm not even going to complain that there's too much emphasis on beauty and not enough on health, though I think it is demonstrably the case that healthy people are much more beautiful than people who are thin yet unhealthy. In fact, the thin and unhealthy can be downright creepy looking, while the extremely thin CR folk look like they just walked off the set of Lord of the Rings, where they were playing the role of elves. Truth be told, I'm all for beauty, and I don't think that's shallow at all. We love art, we love beautiful music, we love pretty cats... well, I love pretty cats. I love ugly cats too. I love all cats, the way some people coo over any and all babies. But I digress.
Point being, I don't think it's so bad to strive for beauty, as long as people are taught that the only way to be both healthy and beautiful is to eat *right*, not eat *nothing*. But I think it's telling that in our times, the Cinderella story is about losing weight.
To make a story a fairytale, it has to be fantastic and unbelievable. The kind of thing that doesn't happen to you and me. I believe that the transformation from fat to thin is our Cinderella story because for most people, becoming thin seems just about as likely as being picked up by a carriage and transported to a ball where you meet the handsome prince and become a rich and fabulous princess. Peasants once dreamed of becoming kings and queens... now the average person (which in this country means the overweight) dream of becoming thin like movie stars. And the quick fix, just like the glass slipper, is what everyone is after.
This is the point where I'm supposed to say that there's no quick fix for health and weight problems, but I'm not going to say that because for me, the transition to CR really was a pretty quick fix. I lost 35 pounds in about seven months, and began to feel dramatically better almost the instant I started to cut my calories. Every time I made a change in my diet (upping my protein, cutting back on carbs, cutting down on alcohol, adding flax oil, etc.) I felt so much better that it was like magic. Of course the process took time, and it would have taken a lot longer if I had started heavier and sicker. But the process of changing my life happened oddly over night. One minute, I was a margarita drinking, nacho eating, size 8 wearing short girl who was on the way to being pretty fat, and the next day I was eating low fat cottage cheese and dreaming about a very tall, unusually thin, genius boy handsome prince from a far away land that is frozen much of the year, imagining that at any moment he would appear with exotic vegetables and a really amazing blender to take me away from all this.
Okay, that doesn't sound all that romantic, but this is MY fairytale, so deal with it!
It is my honest belief that health and beauty are attainable for everyone. It's not easy, and I know that because I make good money, have no children, am not cursed with a spouse who doesn't approve of CR, live near a decent grocery store, have the education to be able to understand MR's writings, own a gas stove, and live in a country with basic sanitation, I am ahead of the game. I'm not saying it's easy or blaming anyone for *not* yet being at their health and weight goals. In fact, when I look at women who have had several children, held down a job or two or three, cared for a spouse who is less than supportive of their health goals, and somehow managed to avoid having a heart attack, I am filled with admiration. When my mom and I used to go to Weight Watchers we would meet so many of these women, and one of my goals in writing the blog is to provide some simple, easy to follow lifestyle advice that can be incorporated into even the busiest of days.
I wouldn't do it if I didn't think the Cinderella story was in reach, not just for me but for many, many people who just don't know where to start.
That leaves us with an important question: can one wear glass slippers after Memorial Day?
Posted by april at June 3, 2005 10:18 PM
Comments
Certainly you may, but please, I beg of you, don't wear white shoes with black pantyhose!! The mania re: being thin has caused immense damage to thousands of young women and the madness is now creeping into the male domain. The focus must change to becoming HEALTHY by eating healthy foods. Becoming thin by itself, in my opinion, is a secondary benefit. Neither health nor thinness are attainable via the "quick fixes" promoted by the diet industry. I'd love to see t-shirts & buttons with the slogan, "STAMP OUT GAK!!" in big red letters! As for beauty -- bring on the blusher! JD :-)
Posted by: Judith at June 4, 2005 1:58 PM