I think I have carpal tunnel syndrome. I’m wearing a brace and everything. It’s not so painful that I can’t type, but it is just bad enough that I manage to talk myself out of typing lots of things, like blog entries about Love Your Body Day, and how, even though I’m all for their cause, I guess I’d rather this particular occasion of awareness be called Screw Sucky Media Representations Day, because, well, I know it’s just semantics, but a name like Love Your Body Day gets all up in your personal space somehow, like women at parties or guys at gay bars who feel compelled to tell you that your cleavage is very life-affirming. Or else it’s like having a Hug Your Children Day as a response to terrorism. If we need to have our most helpful and appropriate gut reflexes pointed out to us like this, what the hell does that say about us?
If you want to do more than just consciously emote Body Loving Feelings for ten minutes, and if you feel all horrible and guilty for reading this list and one by one ruling out most of the things on it, go and buy this Lynn Peril book and this Wendy Shanker book (and yes, I know she’s a spokesperson for this Love Your Body Day thing which I was just now being all contrary about, but that’s just how we Wendys work).
I would also recommend you get a TiVo so you can fast forward through all the self-esteem-withering commercials, although it can’t stop the atomic-particle-like torrent of eight hundred thousand product endorsements from a typical episode of America’s Next Top Model. Which–and I don’t know what you’ll think of me when I say this–is the show I was watching on Love Your Body Day.
No, really: it was the episode where the skinny girl cried and cried in the mirror about how ugly she thinks she is and the plus size girl cried and cried about how hard it is to be strong all the time. I thought it was great in ways I’d be happy to explain to you, as well as in ways I’m a little ashamed to admit. And then I didn’t write about any of it. Is it okay to say I really hate my wrist? I hate my fucking wrist.
