scales

The Fiance thinks he's getting too thin even though people say he's looking really good. He fears being too jaunt. But thinness is a relative thing.

Sister Mary ponders all the conflicting comments about reaching her goal weight: too thin, too fat, not shaped right, while her doctor says she's fine.

My dress designer told me several months ago that I couldn't gain any more weight, mostly for the slight paunch I had that was ruining the line of the dress. I've never had washboard abs. But like my friend says, "that's LA for you. Everyone has washboard abs whether they lipo it or crunch it out."

On Entertainment Tonight, Jamie Lee Curtis openly talks about Hollywood's obsession over plastic surgery from the botox that makes faces look plastic, to liposuction when fat just comes back some place else, to going in Women's magazines showing what she looks like before 100 people work on her to make her look good.

One of my bridemaids struggles with gaining too much weight to fit into her dresses (she has another bridemaid's act the following month). At the bachelorette party, we discussed different diets: eating less rice, regulating portions.

After the engagement photoshoot I had a greater sense of the illusion of 2D pictures. Most of the time I was twisted in such a way that I was standing sideways, a twist that creates the illusion of a smaller waist. Hair that lays out in such a way that my face looks smaller. And of course in magazines, tons and tons of photoshop.

In college I took a course where you learned to give fitness tests. How far you can bend, how high can you jump, how long can you run on the treadmill. Once, a high school student taking a tour asked if all these tests were just another way to make people conform to a body standard. Yes and no.

it really depends on how you use the numbers. They are just numbers afterall and could care less if 140 lbs is under or overweight. And often times because we put so much emphasis on the numbers, we become afraid of them. And even then, we become obsessed with just one number. Don't want to step on a scale, don't want to listen to our doctors who measure us and say we're fine and end up listening to just about everyone else.

Growing up I think my mother used the "poor children in China" excuse once. Of course it always confused us because even if we don't finish it, would the food have gone to the poor children in China anyway? Overall I don't think my mom ever really forced us to eat anything we didn't want. When we were done, we were done. When I was young I had an aversion to Filipino food so I made sandwiches and cooked omellettes for dinner. But what mom did teach us was about eating healthy and liking fruits, and eating in portions, trying not to overeat. Though I think the tendency to snack and eat whole bags of potato chips comes from my dad's side. My mom's side are not big overeaters.

Filipinos are obsessed with food and with weight. Food as the way to show their love and hospitality. But the American ideal of thinness often creates a lot of clashing remarks from family: you're gaining weight, you don't eat enough, you're too thin, etc.

But all of it is relative. What outfit you wore at the time, what time of the month was it, when was the last time you saw them. I must admit though I do pay attention to people's weight loss and gain. But I don't really care about how much weight, i'm just looking to see it as a sign if the person is taking care of themselves. It's just one factor amongst many that include: do they look happy, do they seem more relaxed. Of course, losing too much weight in a short period of time is just as dangerous as gaining too much.

When we did the fitness testing we would ask people how they felt and what weight they felt good at and checked to make sure the weight they thought they would feel good at wasn't some crazy anorexic number for a person their age and build. But it's hard to trust our bodies, trust that when they say they feel good and healthy that they are because there are so many things in this world that make us question our hearts.

The Fiance brought his bathroom scale to my place since he doesn't really use it at his place and I've always wanted to know how much I weigh. Living on my own I've never owned a scale, much less wanted one. From what I know about my body and weight I tend to fluxuate plus or minus 5 pounds throughout the month on my base weight. This is normal. But I could see how if someone saw me on the low side then saw me again in my high side, they'd think I had gained 10 pounds, which is true. I was about 20 lbs less in my teens, then again I didn't have hips or shoulders then either.

Then there's the whole feng shui aspect of weight. If the body reflects the home and vice versa, then the weight gain is a sign of holding on, of building up walls to fortify oneself. Healthy weight loss is a sign of letting go of fear. The idea that I need to gain weight because there won't be food the next day. Losing weight makes one let go of that idea. And if muscles hold onto memory, then fat holds onto fear.

For those who have trouble keeping weight off, part of it has to do with changing the perception of who they were. If you always thought you were fat, well, even when you're skinny you're going to think you're fat not because you are, but because the idea that you are fat is now a part of your identity. Feeling unhappy about your body is part of your personal identity. And to be a person who feels healthy and looks at their body in a healthy way, we have to change who we think we are and that's scarier than we realize.

It took me many years to think I was pretty. In high school and even in college I was the "buddy" and not the woman who made men's head turn. It's not so much that I wasn't or couldn't be, but simply because I didn't think I was, so even if I did, I wouldn't believe it. It's only when I started to believe that I could be anything I wanted to be, that this standard of beauty would change. And I think it's part of what's spurring me on with this whole trying to be a "girlie girl," I just want to see if I can do it and what it's like to be one. I want to know I have the power of transformation. The power to be who I want when I want, to be people I didn't think I could ever be. It's a way for me to stretch beyond my borders, to be something more.

The more I write the more complex the whole idea of weight becomes. It is both real and an illusion. If you deal with heart disease and diabetes, weight is a critical issue. Yet if we're talking a few pounds here and there, I could easily wear pants that don't fit me well to make me look alot heavier or a nice cut that makes me look thinner. Then there's the emotional weight of eating, how we often eat certain things when we want to feel better, the comfort foods, how our families brought us up to perceive food.

But a scale is a range, not a set number. An average may not even be a datapoint on the map. If everyone is either 100 or 200 lbs, then there's no one who is the average weight of 150. There are good days. There are bad days. What you hope is that you have more good days than bad days and that the average sum of your life is what you want it to be.

44 days to go.