What Happens Next: A Gallimaufry

melancholic romantic comic cynic. bi & genderqueer. fantasy writer. sysrae on ao3.

hogna-lenta:

thunderboltsortofapenny:

welkinalauda:

rainbofiction:

cj-sewers:

thethirddecade1121:

I just realized how fucking disgusting it is that it’s considered healthy and normal for teenage boys to eat everything ever yet teenage girls are obviously also growing but are fucking dieting all the time and shamed for eating while they’re growing

Shit

That’s not even the half of it because

- often when a teenager (male or female) puts on some fat it’s in preparation for a growth spurt. Grownups know this. 

- teenagers grow in weird gawky ways, like a girl’s hips will spread out and look “fat” until her legs get longer, or they’ll shoot up super tall and then slowly put on muscle and fat. Grownups know this. 

- it’s very common for a women’s body weight to fluctuate plus or minus 5% with her menstrual cycle

but in the diet mentality all of these things are considered personal moral failures, a failure of control, when controlling it is literally impossible. I am so incredibly saddened by women who weigh themselves multiple times a week and fuss over ten freaking pounds when that’s well within the bounds of menstrual fluctuation + just-ate-lunch. It’s horrible.

“A culture fixated on female thinness is not an obsession about female beauty, but an obsession about female obedience. Dieting is the most potent political sedative in women’s history; a quietly mad population is a tractable one.”
– Naomi Wolf

Grown ups really do not know this. I tell this to parents at least once a week, your child is sleeping/moody/putting on weight because their body is preparing to more or less jump the Grand Canyon of maturation stages. Hormone changes start a full YEAR before first menses.

My own mother, who works in the medical field and has worked solely for OB/GYN for the last 16 years, gave me grief about all of those things. And she knew about hormone level changes and weight distribution changes and she STILL did it. Don’t think hard facts will outweigh societal norms. Keep talking about it until they can’t ignore the facts

And it’s no wonder that so many women struggle with so many chronic health problems in adulthood, especially things like chronic fatigue, anemia, joint pain, osteoporosis, and hormone disorders. Starving yourself at a time when your body needs the most nutrition is an absolute disaster. I was anorexic during puberty and I have absolutely no doubt that this is a huge contributing factor to my fibromyalgia and hormone issues.

Your body is strong, but it is also very, very sensitive. It takes a long time to repair itself, and some things it’s not going to spring back from. Refusing to eat so that you can look like a Photoshopped model during puberty is going to set you up for lifelong problems because your body will steal the building blocks it needs from what it already has, causing things like scoliosis, joint pain, and chronic fatigue. Don’t do that to yourself. Eat.

Plus and also, it really doesn’t help that the type of thinness all women are expected to emulate is based on a specific white adolescent bodyshape: the kind of lanky-all-over, narrow-hipped thinness you tend to grow out of in your 20s if you’re not a natural ectomorph, and which is really only sustainable past about 25 by being underweight. Like, okay: I was skinny as fuck at 17, but even if I dieted and exercised myself down from where I am now, attempting to replicate that same teenage weight and bodyshape as a grown adult would be medically unhealthy. And yet this is what women are constantly pressured to do and to be, to the point of being made to feel like gross failures for getting their adult hips.

(Source: queercatmermaid, via aimmyarrowshigh)

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