essays

Letters - Studies have shown that advertisers re-think their advertising campaigns upon receiving as few as five letters of complaint. Your voice CAN make a difference if you use it. Here are some samples of some letters I've sent - Now grab your pencils and Speak Your Mind.

I am writing you regarding my concern over the current Steve Madden campaign wherein the now common practice of electronically enhancing models has been taken to a gross extreme. You are surely aware of the growing epidemic of eating disorders amongst female teenagers, who are obviously your target audience. It goes beyond mere irresponsibility to so blatantly exaggerate the ‘lollypop head look’ now so common in Hollywood in ads aimed at these vulnerable young girls.

I do not need to give statistics in order to prove to you that what you are portraying in these Steve Madden ads is harmful, (although there is plenty of evidence on record). I can tell you first-hand as one who has experienced the very real hell of living with an eating disorder that it began with magazines and advertisements portraying an impossibly thin ideal. Advertisements that were much milder than yours had a very poisonous effect on me as I struggled to find peace with my developing figure. I am horrified by the direction the media is headed in and your ads are merely paving the way for even worse atrocities against the very young girls they are trying to attract.

You clearly have a team of extremely creative artists at your disposal. Why not try to be truly innovative and think of ways of empowering these girls with healthy images of strong role models? At the very least, I would ask that you please nix this harmful campaign promoting the ridiculously impossible ideal. I look forward to hearing from you.

The Body Shop
Attn: Kim Burrs
111 Sutter St.
13^th Floor
San Francisco , CA 94104

I am just writing to say ‘thank you’ for the positive message given by The Body Shop’s advertisements. As someone who struggled with an eating disorder for nearly ten years, I truly appreciate those few companies who do not actively compound the growing epidemic of anorexia and bulimia. I can say from first-hand experience that advertisements that glorify the skinny ideal can be very harmful to young girls who are grappling with finding peace with their growing curves.

I was very upset to find that the Ruby Doll ads were censored by Mattel. It seems that protecting teenage girls from eating disorders is not important, but there’s hell to pay if anyone touches the almighty Barbie image. Freedom of creative expression is clearly being suppressed by mega-corporations who have effectively purchased our media environment for their financial purposes. I am saddened by this injustice and miss the Ruby ads very much.

Please keep up the good work, and don’t let ‘The Man’ keep you down. (Yes, that’s right I just referred to Barbie as The Man.)

Thanks Again,

Eating disorders affect an estimated 11 million Americans and anorexia has the highest death rate of all mental disorders. I can appreciate the fact that Ginia Bellafante wanted to portray 'a downside of the trend' towards body acceptance. It is important to thoroughly pursue all angles to a story. But to discuss girls who feel free to show their bellies ('even when they have actual bellies to show') in the same breath as the so called 'danger in an increased acceptance of bigness....threatening their health' is to do a horrible disservice to girls reading her article. (Young and Chubby, January 26, 2003) To imply that a slight roll of flesh is a dangerous trend, implies that curves are unhealthy and that we would be wise to adhere to the age-old adage that one cannot be 'too thin.' Thinner does not equal healthier and for many of us, it can lead to obsession, starving and even death. According to the article, the Surgeon General has stated that the most immediate consequence of being overweight is poor self-esteem and depression. We need to ask ourselves if we changed our fat-phobic society, would we see a change in health statistics for the so-called overweight? Accepting our varied size is the first step in helping women and girls to stop hating their bodies. Now, doesn't that sound healthy?

I am opposed to dieting and as a former-anorexic I am offended by your poor taste in targeting me for your dieting scam. Diets don't work and I encourage you to re-evaluate what you choose to do with your own life and talents because being a pawn for the $40 billion diet industry which preys of people's insecurities is a pretty shitty way to make a living.

I am writing to express my deep disappointment in Crossing's decision to feature "Thin Within" as the Febuary pick of the month. As Christians we are to be careful not to follow the 'hollow philosophies of this world' and thinking that we all need to lose weight to be beautiful is certainly a world view. The line in the advertisement on page 4 that reads "learn to....eat like who you are - a naturally thin person!" is particularly offensive. It is using the same lie that secular diet scams use - telling us that we are all thin underneath if we would only stop sinning by eating! I am very angry at this implication. Surely looking around at God's beautiful creation, it becomes quite clear that he prefers variety. We are all wonderfully made, and some are larger models than others - no less valued by our Lord, only less valued by a superficial society. Shame on you for perpetuating this falsehood by featuring this weight-loss item.

Once my commitments are filled you can be assured I will be quitting your club and intend to speak with the many women in my church who use Crossings and encourage them to do likewise.

Essays
Just a very a small sampling of my work - watch for more essays coming soon.

Romans 12:1-2 says, “Dear Christian friends, I plead with you to give your bodies to God. Let them be a living and holy sacrifice – the kind he will accept. When you think of what he has done for you, is this too much to ask? Don’t copy the behavior and customs of this world, but let God transform you into a new person by changing the way you think.” --- New Living Translation

My parents were Hippie Jesus Freaks in the 70s when I was growing up, making me second generation Hippie Jesus Freak. Mom would pray every night that I would marry a Godly man. She should have been more careful in throwing those prayers around because I married a minister. And Dad tells the story of how every Sunday when the pastor would ask if anyone wanted to accept Jesus into their hearts I would enthusiastically wave my hands in the air, seemingly surprised that not everyone was jumping up at this offer.

As I grew up, even though I was very involved in church, the things of the world began to distract me from enjoying the presence of the Lord. I took what saw on TV and in fashion magazines and what I heard from adults and even young peers and I developed a WORLD’S VIEW towards my own body. This world’s view said that I should fit into a specific ideal, otherwise whatever I did didn’t really matter or count.

At the time I couldn’t see that the models and actresses I was comparing myself to were PROFESSIONALLY beautiful people. They were airbrushed and computer enhanced to a flawless and impossible level. It was their JOB to work out ten hours a day and not eat and they certainly did not have the energy to make huge meaningful contributions to society. Their purpose in life was mainly decorative. They maintained an impossible standard that creates a twisted version of a mythical ideal and many of them were very unhappy, selfish people who have ended badly. As a teenager I looked at them and decided to make them my HEROES.

I tried to change my body to fit into the World’s View of what was attractive. My body was growing curves, as naturally occurs in adolescents, (the average girl NEEDS to put on between 30 and 40 pounds during puberty) but through the World’s Eyes this seemed wrong. So, I went on a diet. I was encouraged by friends and family when I announced that I was going on a diet and because they all shared this World’s View towards thinness, (meaning the thinner the better) no one pointed out that it was totally insane for an average 15-year-old to go on a diet. The tragic thing was that I was very, very good at losing weight and was praised constantly for my success. I gradually grew more and more obsessed with food (as starving people tend to do) and losing more and more weight became the center of my life.

I finally reached a place where my hair was falling out, I was cold all the time and had grown a fine layer of fur (my body’s poor attempt at conserving heat), and yet I was STILL praised by peers who were so blinded by that World’s View of beauty that they couldn’t see that I was killing myself. There I was, all hunched over with huge black circles under my eyes unable to think about anything besides food, food, food, and the most popular girl in school spoke to me for the very first time to find out how I lost weight.

Everyone needs to feel special; I thought losing weight was what made me special. I was so isolated and alone and the hunger was just getting stronger and stronger and I would dream of eating at night and wake up terrified that I had eaten. Finally, I broke down and ate something outside my rigid food plan and went on to eat and eat like a starving person finally allowed food again (which of course – is exactly what I was).

It may sound like I had gained victory over my anorexia at that point, but I viewed my eating as anything but a victory. I was a failure. I hated my eating and hated my body, felt it had betrayed me and I wanted to get it back to that impossibly low weight more than anything. I continued to hate my body over the next ten years and developed a pretty weird relationship with food over that time. I would try everything to trick my body into losing weight. Eat just popcorn. Eat just pop tarts. Drink diet soda by the liter. Eat only before 11am. Eat only after 5pm. Sugar-free candies would give me awful gas. Eat bags of fat-free Snackwells Devils Food Cakes and would still be disturbingly unsatisfied. (Didn’t get that body really just wanted the FAT and I probably could’ve just eaten a pat of butter and been happy). I was trying to outsmart my body instead of listening to it – convinced that it would make me fat. I was always focused on how I could trick my body into feeling full when it wasn’t. My weight fluctuated greatly, but my hatred towards my body stayed the same.

I maintained that World View that blinded me to my gifts and talents and made me think that if I wasn’t thin, I had nothing to offer. So my weight remained my focus and as I result I was always either starving, or binging or thinking about how I was going to starve tomorrow, or crying because I had just binged. Finally I found bulimia which gave me peace until that, too, spiraled out of control. I would stand in church every Sunday praising God and thought I was crazy because my head would be back in the bowl by Tuesday. My body was just always fighting too hard to maintain a weight that I felt was above what it should be. God made our bodies so wise – so committed to keeping us at a balanced natural weight that is more for some than for others. The 40 billion dollar diet industry wants to keep us focused on the World View that thinner is better. It doesn’t matter how much you naturally weigh, by losing 15lbs, you will be a better person. They do this to distract us from the proven fact that DIETS DON’T WORK. (The only effective means of weight loss is bulimia – and that rots your teeth as well as your soul.)

Finally I managed to climb off the merry-go-round (up and down and round) and the first step was to look down and LOVE my body at exactly the weight it was at that moment. I weighed quite a bit more than I do right now (dieting also makes you fatter), but I went through my closet and tried on every single item of clothing and threw away everything that did not fit. I let go and relaxed and enjoyed myself at the beach for the first time in ten years. I stopped looking in mirrors for affirmation and I started listening to when my body was hungry and when it was full. I treated myself with kindness and my weight swung back and forth like a pendulum and landed here, about where it was before all the insanity began. (I don’t measure myself with scales anymore – they don’t take other factors into account, like my winning personality.) I began to look at myself through the Lord’s eyes, and could still see that little girl inside raising her hand every week asking Jesus into my heart. (A part of me raises my hand every Sunday.)

The poisonous world view had an agenda for my life – to keep me in bondage to hating my body. The enemy has an agenda for many of God’s beautiful women. He wants to keep us busy moaning about how awful our thighs are. I know what it is like to HATE this body that the Lord has blessed me with. There may be women reading this who hate their bodies and who believe that unless they lose weight, their bodies are unlovable. I know what it is like to speak to myself so harshly “You Pig,” “I can’t believe you Ate that,” “you LOOK disgusting,” “You ARE disgusting.” I didn’t even realize I was doing it. Perhaps some of you have done this, maybe even this morning; maybe you do it every day. I weep for all the beautiful women who are so tragically deceived and I mourn all the wonderful gifts they have that they are too ashamed to share.

The Lord decorated his earth with women. We add beauty and softness, and God must think that cellulite is really pretty because he put it on 90% of us. The World View tells us that it is horrifying because the world wants to sell us useless thigh cream. The way to be truly radiant is to seek the Lord daily. Have you ever witnessed the change that occurs in a person’s entire countenance when they accept Christ? The world tries to sell you a $60 beauty cream that does nothing but leave grease stains on your pillow, but Christ offers a true change that occurs on the inside and that actually shows in a person’s life. Wrinkles, Fat and Cellulite are part of the human condition, not evil - just distractions that can take our focus off of making real changes.

We can all appreciate the diverse beauty of the trees. We don’t expect them all to be wispy little saplings. So too, do we need to appreciate our own natural bodies. I learned to change my view, and love my body the way it is and to live a fully present life. I see my body as an extension of who the creator made me to be. I am not just flexible physically, but as a clergy wife I must be infinitely flexible in order to adapt to constantly changing schedules and plans. The Lord made me with good strong legs that serve me well as I stand firm on the truth of His Word. And he lovingly gave me convenient hip pockets as he blessed me with a sweet baby girl who, even at age three, prefers to be held all of the time. The world view wants me to look at my body with a critical eye – the Lord looks at his creation and smiles (I imagine him saying, “Ah, yes, 68 – a very fine year”).

When I was about five years old I remember riding in the back seat of the car and eating a piece of candy. I was so enjoying that candy that the thought occurred to me to share it with God. I took the candy out of my mouth and held it up that God might have a taste and was very pleased by my sacrifice and felt that God was very pleased by me. My father looked in his rear-view mirror through his adult World View eyes and asked what I was doing. I proudly explained “I’m sharing my candy with Jesus, Daddy.” At which he turned to my Mother and responded, “She’s getting weird, Jan.” It was like cold water thrown over me and, while I’m sure I did look weird, it was the beginning of my seeing things through the World’s Eyes. I hunched down in the seat and put the candy back in my mouth, but it didn’t taste so good anymore.

When I dance during worship and praise, it is a way to go back to that innocence, before I cared what anyone else thought about my body or how I relate to God. It is a physical act of spiritual warfare. I have broken free from the chains that bound me and I feel that adoration of the Lord when I praise him with this body that he blessed me with. I push away the judging World View and I worship in the heavenly realm. I dance with an army of angels, and let me tell you, there is not a waif among them. They do not look like supermodels. They are wonderfully varied in size and are all beautiful. Just like the women reading this: WONDERFULLY VARIED IN SIZE – ALL BEAUTIFUL!

Mattel’s pregnant Midge Doll maintains the same spindly limbs as the rest of the Barbie line, but comes complete with a tiny baby curled up in a magnetized pregnant belly. When the Big Day arrives, the pregnant stomach shell is removed, leaving the classic concave Barbie belly in its stead. The first time I saw the doll I found myself proclaiming loudly, “This is bullshit!” to the closest (harried) mother in the store.

Unlike the reproduction-skittish middle-America contingent who successfully called for pregnant Midge’s removal at Wal-Mart stores in December 2002, I have a different beef with Midge’s creators. In her current form, the poor girl would surely find herself back in the hospital for malnutrition within days of giving birth. She couldn’t breastfeed and keep up with a new baby with that small amount of body fat.

Mattel should have added a pump to allow young girls to learn about a pregnancy closer to reality. Girls could ‘pump’ out thighs, butt, breasts and upper arms in order to give Midge the extra heft that she will need to carry, deliver and care for that baby.

I grant that I’m a little oversensitive at the moment, as I am currently pregnant with my second child. My pregnant body could not be more different than Midge’s. It is different in a beautiful, lusty, full and round way that would be better captured in clay than plastic. I love my pregnant body and revel in the miracle of carrying life. Every woman, pregnant or not, deserves to love her physical form, and sadly so few do. Loving my body did not come automatically to me. In fact, just the opposite did.

From ages 15 to 25, I suffered from an eating disorder which dictated that I hate my form no matter what size. That size fluctuated wildly over those ten years. I was an emaciated anorexic with amenorrhea who hated her body. I was a bloated bulimic with swollen cheeks who hated her body. And most of the time I was a normal-weight average young woman who hated her body. I judged myself solely by the number on the scale and was never found worthy. The emotion I felt most often and completely was shame.

I finally got angry at all that wasted time and started fighting back. First, I had to recognize and silence the punishing voices that were keeping me bound in self-hate. Some of these messages were internal: “You don’t deserve to eat that, you fat pig,” and some were external: “Lose weight, burn fat, stop being a fat pig.” I stopped believing that there was something wrong with me if I wasn’t skinny like the models in the fashion magazines, and then I stopped looking at the fashion magazines altogether. I looked around at the real world and found beauty in varied shapes, sizes, colors and ages. I found that there was room in this picture for me, that I didn’t need to change to be beautiful.

After working for years on this, I learned to reject the impossible skinny ideal and embrace my natural curves. I learned to accept that I have appetites and needs, and that I am a complete and creative person, not just a jeans size. I have learned that listening to my body and feeding it what it is truly hungry for is so much healthier than trying to punish it and starve it. I love my body and as an extension of that, I more fully love myself. It is so freeing that I cannot believe that I settled for living without that love for so long. I cannot believe how many continue to live without that love and acceptance, how many don’t even see that they need it.

I continually coax women around me to speak of their bodies more kindly, to look on their figures more gently, and for God’s sake, to stop talking about their ‘extra pounds.’ I witness so many beautiful creatures who are burdened by the lie that they should be ashamed of their bodies. I see that most people’s acceptance of their bodies has nothing to do with how much they weigh. Loving and accepting one’s body is a choice. It always saddens me when I see women in that bondage of self-criticism. But I am never so outraged as when I hear a pregnant woman complaining about putting on weight. To be so brainwashed as to see a pregnant body as ‘getting too fat’ is a tragedy, and I hate to see women robbed of enjoying that sacred time with their bodies.

Thankfully, I was all-out in love with my body by the time I got pregnant (and thankfully after years of not menstruating I was able to conceive). I enjoyed the richness of my rounding state in a society obsessed with a slimness that has crossed all reasonable boundaries, including those between mothers-to-be and fashion models. I looked away from celebrity mothers who ruthlessly punish their postpartum bodies back into rock hard shape and I consciously rejected their twisted priorities. I pushed away the tsk-tsks of a thoughtless nurse when I put on weight more quickly than was “desirable.” I stood unashamed and announced that I was listening to my pregnant body, walking regularly and felt fine about how my weight was progressing. I gained over sixty pounds with my daughter, and it was a good thing, too. Within three months of giving birth I was looking gaunt and trying desperately to hold on to the extra pounds necessary to breastfeed my new baby.

For this pregnancy, I have asked to be weighed blind, and it is such a relief to feel free from the tyranny of that scale. To say that every woman should put on a specific amount of weight while pregnant is as ridiculous as saying we should all weigh 120 pounds in the first place. I listen to my hungers and appetites, and enjoy the natural flow of my body doing what it miraculously has the wisdom to do. It is supplying nutrients to my tiny baby, and I love that it is big and strong and round and housing life. I rejoice with my body during this holy time of splendor and I feel so very beautiful. I pray that every woman becomes free to love her form without hearing that critical voice telling them to watch their weight…that they find the freedom to see that they are beautiful.

Hopefully, Midge will go the way of Sleepover Barbie, who came with a measuring tape and a tiny scale set permanently at 110, and the first talking Barbie, who proclaimed openly that “Math is hard.” I am even tempted to purchase a Midge and put her away so that years from now my daughter and I can laugh at how ridiculous dolls could be in the early 21^st century. But I’m afraid to encourage Mattel, and I’m even more afraid that unless there is a huge change between now and when my daughter has children, we will not be getting that good hearty laugh after all.

It occurred to me this morning while absentmindedly eating a discarded bowl of Winnie-the Pooh cereal with a child-sized purple plastic spoon, that my eating habits have changed somewhat since becoming a mother. The realization sent me to the cupboard in search of a more respectable breakfast: my own bowl of Pooh cereal with an adult-sized metal teaspoon. While my tastes occasionally run toward the juvenile, I am grateful that deciding what to eat is no longer the super-charged emotional event it once was.

Adolescence marked my initiation into the prison of an eating disorder that morphed into every imaginable form over nearly ten years. I engaged in a war against my body because it began to grow more curves than I deemed attractive. In fact, judging by the fashion magazines I so cherished, my body was growing more curves than the world deemed attractive. And since my adolescent mind could not possibly realize that the world was wrong, and that my body was fine, I began a diet.

Diets teach us to mistrust the natural cues of hunger and fullness that our bodies send us. When diets are unsuccessful (which is nearly all of the time) they leave one feeling like a weak failure. We think there must be something wrong with us that we can’t stick to a simple diet (no matter how ridiculous said diet may be). When diets are successful, they can sometimes become dangerous. The overwhelming approval one gets for losing weight can be unbelievably powerful. It can send one chasing after ever smaller numbers on the scale until one arrives at a weight far below the one God intended. This is what happened to me.

For a long time my life was reduced to a tunnel vision focus on what I ate. Even as I moved out of the all-consuming obsession of anorexia, I continued to perceive my body as disgusting and needy, all because it wanted to be fed. I hated it and saw it as my greatest enemy. I constantly tried diet after diet, looking for peace but was either cranky because I was hungry, or else cranky because I felt like a loser for eating. I could not become totally free until I began to question the infallibility of the skinny ideal.

I am grateful that the Lord granted me the wisdom to see my natural curves as beautiful long before I became a mother. It is, in fact, a miracle that after years of hating and starving my body it helped to bless me with a perfect little girl. When she was born and I felt that overwhelming love for her sweet precious body, I wept with the knowledge that the Lord looks at me with that same adoration. Looks at my body with the acceptance and love it once so craved.

If God intended mothers to have flat tummies, we would gestate our babies in our backpacks. And if we weren’t supposed to have hips, we would carry our children around in pouches, not on the convenient hip-seats the Lord lovingly provides. Mommies are more fun to climb on when they are nice and soft, not all pointy and skinny. Thinking we cannot possibly love or accept our wonderful life-giving bodies until we lose ten or fifty pounds is truly ‘following the hollow philosophies of this world.’

Seeing my little girl playing now so innocently, I cannot imagine her ever criticizing her sweet body. I look at the media and at the statistics and I know that the odds are very high that she will. (42% of first through third grade girls want to be thinner and 81% of 10-year-old girls are afraid of being fat.) My daughter very well may look down at that miracle of her body one day and see it through the world’s eyes - as wrong. If she is built like her mother, she may be horrified by thighs too large and a butt too big - flaws as dictated by the mythological ‘ideal.’ Perhaps she will decide to try to change what she sees. Perhaps she will decide to hate what she sees. And I scream inside at the thought and want to claw down that wall the world builds between women and their own bodies. I want better odds for my daughter, I want her to see her body through my eyes as precious. To see it through the Lord’s eyes as beautiful.

Imagine the pain of having your daughter tell you she doesn’t like her body. The body formed in your womb that you prayed over and loved before she was born. Now imagine you are that daughter going to God, complaining about this lump or that curve and see His response. Take a minute out and thank your good body for serving you so well. Let your daughters see you loving and accepting your body AS IS, and perhaps they will have a shot at making peace with the women’s bodies they will one day possess.

I have worked hard to appreciate my body and feed it freely. It has repaid me by finding a healthy natural weight that may not get me on the cover of any fashion magazines, but that enables me to keep up with an energetic toddler. I tune into what my body needs and oftentimes am surprised that it knows what to ask for: A huge variety of wholesome foods and sometimes Pooh cereal, all in balance, all taken in with love. Of the hundreds of messages received DAILY telling you that you need to change in order to be beautiful, I want to be part of the voice shouting above the din, “You are beautiful, just as you are!”