This is Part 2 of a series
Part 1: So Where Are The Thick Romance Heroines?
Part 2: Slender Is A Status Symbol
___

The Ultimate Decider.

I’ve been thinking rather hard about thick v’s thin.

There’s been images of “thick” women on Facebook that caught my attention, and I posted about them, here, and wondered why we still insist on the “perfect” image of thin heroines in our books and movies.

And there’s the fact that “thin” is bloody expensive to acquire these days, which I also wrote about.

Thick vs thin is a very personal debate.  Unlike smoking, it doesn’t affect anyone else but you, and the “you” we’re talking about is, alas, mostly women, who are the gender of the race that must use appearance as the primary tool to attract a mate (unlike peacocks, where it is the male that gets to preen for the female).  So for the sake of this discussion, I have to bring this post back to focus on me.  I can’t and won’t speak for anyone else.   I suspect my thinking and my decisions are unique, just like every woman’s should be.

One of the things I noticed about the “thick” woman being spread about Facebook was that male applause was in the distinct minority.  This isn’t actually a can of worms I want to open today, except to say that I noticed the lack of male approval.

I’m also a bit of a clothes horse, when I can afford it.  I love to sew, and I love colours, and I love new clothes.  I love and adore going to the Romantic Times Convention because it gives me the perfect excuse to dress up in outrageous dresses that I could never wear anywhere else.  I also have (had) an enormous closet of shoes.

At the moment, I don’t fit into most of my great clothes, and they’re all years old, anyway, because I won’t buy new ones while I’m carrying this extra weight.  Frankly, a lot of fashions look terrible on a thick body, and I feel self-conscious and uncomfortable wearing them.  So I don’t.

Then there’s sex.  I’m sorry, but a thick woman trying to look alluring in skimpy lingerie defies logic.  There’s nothing sexy about it at all – not to me (and remember, this is purely my perspective for right now).  Sexiness is far more about attitude, yes, but if you look in the mirror and what you see makes you feel ridiculous, trying to maintain your sexy mindset is a struggle.

I won’t go into too much detail about loss of flexibility, and how a thick body limits creativity and inventiveness in the bedroom.  If you’re curious, try reading an old post of mine, “How to Start Looking More Sexy – Body Appearance“, which will give you some more food for thought.

All of these items are superficial.  If I used them as an excuse to blow thousands of dollars of our limited household budget on a quest for a new slender me, then you would be quite right to call me selfish, vane and worse.

But there’s one winning argument why I should do this that out-ranks everything I’ve said so far:  My health.

There’s overwhelming data, undeniable mountains of it, proving that older overweight women are at risk for a long list of diseases.  Most of the diseases are fatal.  They start at heart attacks and end with higher odds of contracting a dozen different cancers.  The list of diseases in between are no picnic.  By losing weight, I eliminate or diminish the odds of these diseases to close to zero.

My vanity says “take the excuse and run.”  Logic says “I don’t want to die, why am I still debating this?”

So I’ve stopped debating.  This is my choice.  I’m voting for thin.

I’m going to motivate myself with all the vanity excuses, but I’m really doing it because I want to live.  I have no idea how I’m supposed to afford it, but I’ll figure it out.

What about you?

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This is Part 2 of a series
Part 1: So Where Are The Thick Romance Heroines?
___

Slender Is A Status Symbol

I’ve been thinking a lot about thick vs thin lately.  I spoke about this the other day – thanks to the new “thick girls” idea, it’s sitting at the front of my brain.

It’s a personal issue for me, as I carry my fair share of weight and always have.  A recent bout in hospital has added to my woes.  My recent hospital stay, though, uncovered an underlying cause for my lifetime struggle:  a cranky thyroid.  But that doesn’t take away the hard work involved in dropping, and then maintaining, my weight.

Of course, after a lifetime of struggling with weight control, I know a lot about the subject:  diet, exercise, nutrition, you name it, I can sit down and give you forty minutes of expert testimonial on it.  I have rotated through raw food – veganism – vegetarianism – and was forced back to eating meat just recently (hospital, again).

I also know how bloody expensive it all is.  In order to seriously lose weight, you need to spend six months to a year making weight loss a focus of your life, so that you don’t drop the ball and start gaining while you’re busy doing other things.

It means at least joining a gym, or buying equipment for working out at home.  Home workout DVD’s just don’t cut it.  But even the workout DVD’s cost money.  You can’t last a year doing just one workout.  Mental boredom or muscle stability would set in after two months doing the same thing over and over.

You’ll need exercise clothing – at the very least, a decent pair of runners or cross-trainer shoes.

Once you get into dieting and exercising, you’ll find yourself in the wonderful world of sports supplementation.  Protein powders are the very least of it.  And they’re not cheap.  Everyone, whether they’re dieting or not, should be taking a good multi-vitamin anyway.  But there’s others you might want to consider once you start working out heavily.  For women, a decent B-vitamin helps a lot.  Glutamine, too.

And then there’s the food.

Crap food is cheap.  A family of four can eat sausage meat, hamburgers, and spaghetti for next to nothing.

But as soon as you start trying to eat clean — chicken breasts, lean meat and salads and bottled water – your grocery bill skyrockets.

Getting to thin isn’t cheap.

I often read with amazement and some envy about Hollywood stars who check themselves into a spa for four weeks to drop twenty pounds.  Or how they are on a special diet supervised by a team of medical specialists, with the food prepared by their personal chef.  Or how they work out seven days a week for four hours a day in order to get in shape for an upcoming movie…or just because.

They eat not just salads every day, but organic, freshly-made, whole-food salads.  The chicken they eat is free-range, and as lean as possible and cooked to perfection.  Their meals are prepared, weighed and served just in time for them to eat so they never have to step inside a kitchen or peer inside a fridge or pantry and be tempted by sinful indulgences sitting next to their diet preparations.

And yes, this sort of pampered existence is for the very top of the A-list lifestyle.

Most people live far more realistic lives and still manage to maintain – or regain – slender silhouettes.  They may not be eating hand-fed-and-petted chicken breast a la chef my-own in order to drop their weight or maintain it, but they will certainly be eating better cuts of meat and lots of fresh vegetables…in other words, expensive stuff.   They may even spend money on a weight loss system that provides the food, and those are really expensive. They’ll also be spending money on working out and staying active in some form or fashion, and spending more money on taking care of their health in either preventative or restorative ways – health supplements, prescription medicine, physical check-ups, etc,

There is a price tag attached to being thin.  A thin body is expensive.  A thick body is far cheaper to maintain.

Slender is becoming a status symbol.

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VE Day – Victory in Europe Day – marks the end of the European hostilities of World War II.  The Japanese would take another three months to surrender.

While there are huge numbers of monuments dedicated to ensuring we never forget the wars and battles we have fought, it seems odd that we don’t celebrate the positives that emerge from those wars.  VE Day was a victory, yes, but it also signalled a homecoming for millions of soldiers, resistence fighters, and guerilla soldiers tucked away in forests, hills and mountains across Europe and into Asia.  Surely, that has to be the most positive outcome of any war?

Yet VE Day is not a national holiday anywhere.  Nor is VJ or VP day in the Pacific and the Americas.

It’s been proven by research and experimentation that humans tend to gravitate toward what the mind focuses upon.  Also, the mind doesn’t register negatives.  So, for instance, if you keep repeating to yourself over and over again “Don’t forget the milk, don’t forget the milk, don’t forget the milk…” your mind won’t register the negative don’t at all.  And it will do exactly what you’re telling it to do:  Forget the milk.

In the same way, a mind immersed in information that is nearly 100% about wars and battles, will tend to lean towards violence as a solution, and that is what the mind is focused upon.

So if our culture continually celebrates and remembers wars, battles, the death of great leaders, assassinations, bombings, and more, instead of births and birthdays, victory days, the anniversaries of great achievements — what are we as a society missing out on?

Food for thought…

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North Beach, Gallipoli Peninsular; Turkey. The point at which Australian Troops first landed at Gallipoli and traditionally the focus for Australian Dawn services.

It must be because I grew up hearing the stories about what Australian and New Zealand troops achieved (and died achieving) during the First and Second World Wars, that Anzac Day tends to register in my consciousness more than Rememberance Day ever does, even living here in North America.

In Australia, Anzac Day is a national holiday, and by the time this post goes live, it will have already passed, because of the international date line.

So this is my very small acknowledgement of Australia’s and New Zealand’s contribution to peace-keeping around the globe.  I’ve been privileged to know more than my share of Australian forces personnel, and some of them are family.

It’s a universal thing, in the end, isn’t it?

___________________

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I like my shoes.  I really like my shoes.  But these shoes are beyond…anything.

Be boggled. :)

So…what pair(s) would you buy?

_____________

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Mark here.

So, I’m about to leave for a three day wrestling road trip and Tracy’s getting ready. Having me on the road for three days means that she gets three days of uninterrupted writing time. And she wants to make the most of it. That means it’s time to clear the decks – get everything else done and out of the way. So, like any good husband, I asked what I could do to help.

And here I am…

Now, what the hell am I going to write about?

I could write about all the crazy, wild, three-way sex we have as research for her books… but, we’re not supposed to talk about that in public. ;)

I could write about how Diana By The Moon got me in big trouble, caused a huge fight and a burned dinner just after it was written… but why dredge up the past?

I could write about how important tagging books on Amazon.com is to an author and that I think you should go tag Tracy’s books… but, I’m sure Tracy wouldn’t want me to talk about that.

Or I could just say that I think my wife is a brilliant writer and an inspired storyteller. Just how good she truly is amazes me. And, if you’ve ever bought and read any of her books, I’m sure you’d agree with me. If you haven’t bought and read any of her books, what are you waiting for??? Go buy Blood Knot! It’s only $2.99 and then you’ll be able to see for yourself.

Oh wait, I could talk about the time that Tracy and I went to the Romantic Times Convention and she dressed me up in bondage gear and led me around on a leash… but, now I’m out of space.

Maybe next time… if she lets me.

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So Mark hits me with the news that he had to pick up some wrestler from the airport at the crack of dawn on Saturday, and because they’re not heading to Red Deer for the evening’s show until noon (Red Deer is only a couple of hours south of here), said wrestler would have to come and park at our place for a few hours.

Mark had the grace to ask if I minded, although he did tack the question on at the very end.

I shrugged and said I had no intentions of entertaining the man.  Mark could do all the talking and distracting.  The two of them could talk shop for four hours and I could get on with my writing schedule in blissful peace.

Then Mark dropped the other shoe.  “Um…he’s Australian.  From Byron Bay.”

Which made this wrestler a mate from the olde sod, but from the wrong bloody side.  Byron Bay is in New South Wales.  Oh well, we can’t all be perfect.

I sniffed and said I thought I might be able to spare a moment or two to say hello.

Scott Justice, I found out, is really young.  As in (god, I can’t even believe I’m saying this out loud and in public) around the same age as my oldest son.  I was frantically washing dishes when he walked in, and my first impression was oh my god, I’ve just seen my first surfing dude since I left high school.  Bleach blonde hair, tan, and white teeth.  And charm.  Lots and lots of Australian charm.

Australians have this cultural bias towards heading overseas to travel and see the world as soon as they’re old enough for their own passport.  It’s hardwired into the brain because we imbibe so much foreign television, movies, books, magazines and more.  We think globally in a way that most countries just don’t.  Australians travel compulsively and often.  But they nearly always come home.  The idea of upping stakes and moving to a different continent just to break into a career choice is something we might consider, but few would actually follow through on — especially guys in their early twenties, like Scott.  But that’s what Scott did.

He moved to Canada on a working visa just to break into professional wrestling.  He had no friends and few contacts when he moved here.  His one ambition was to move closer to the heart of professional wrestling to try to break in.  He’s been in Canada for a couple of years, and he’s making waves in the professional wrestling scene.

But that’s not what prompted this post.

I offered him breakfast, and he asked hopefully if I had any Vegemite.  We didn’t, but we knew where to get some, so Mark took him to our local Save-on-Foods and bought him a couple of jars of (very expensive imported) Vegemite, and he tucked into toast and Vegemite for a late breakfast.

But the really interesting thing about Scott is what I found out later.

He must have been suffering from the lingering effects of concussion from an earlier match, because throughout the day, he kept vomiting.  Right up until showtime in Red Deer, he was sick to his stomach, and spent most of the time lying down and queasy.  Now, a lot of guys, even professional wrestlers, would have bailed on the match.  Mark watched Scott, though, three minutes before his entrance get up from where he was lying, shake it off, square his shoulders, and head out to pull off a wrestling match every bit as good as any other wrestler out there than night.

There wasn’t a murmur of complaint from him the entire day.  He met his commitment to the booker and delivered.

Wow.

Professionalism is one thing.  This was on another plane entirely.  Call it true grit, sheer bloody stubbornness, insanity, or the courage of youth…but it’s the sort of strength that makes the difference between good and great.

It’ll be interesting to see where Scott ends up in the next few years.

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For the (very) few U.S. readers who are actually sneaking away from their families and kitchens and are on-line today (my, you are addicted, aren’t you!) — Happy Thanksgiving.

Enjoy your turkey day.

Tracy

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Happy Thanksgiving to all my Canadian readers.  I hope you have a blast with your families today, and laugh a whole lot, eat a whole lot, then sleep soundly with a smile on your face.

Have a great day!

Tracy

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Even though I’m a PC nerd, I still fully appreciate the profound impact Jobs has had on the way the world works.

He’ll be missed.

If you really want to see something inspiring, catch his 2005 Stanford Commencement speech.  You’ll be awed.

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