LOOK CLOSER
  …by Phyllis McCormack
             (written in 1966 while working as a Nurse)

What do you see nurses,what do you see?
Are you thinking when you are looking at me,

A crabby old woman, not very wise,
Uncertain of habit, with far away eyes.

Who dribbles her food and makes no reply,
When you say in a loud voice,
"I do wish you'd try".

Who seems not to notice the things that you do
And forever is losing a stocking or shoe.
Who, quite unresisting lets you do as you will
With bathing and feeding, the long day to fill?


Is that what you're thinking, is that what you see?
Then open your eyes, you're not looking at me.
I'll tell you who I am, as I sit here so still.

As I move at your bidding, as I eat at your will.
I'm a small child of ten, with a father and mother
brothers and sisters, who love one another.

A young girl of sixteen with wings on her feet
Dreaming that soon a true lover she'll meet.

A bride now at twenty - my heart gives a leap
Remembering the vows that I promised to keep.

At twenty-five now I have young of my own
Who need me to build a secure happy home.

A woman of thirty, my young now grow fast,
Bound to each other with ties that should last;

At forty my sons will soon be all gone
But my man stays beside me to see I don't mourn.

At fifty once more babies play round my knee,
Again we know children, my loved one and me.

Dark days are upon me, my husband is dead
I look to the future, I shudder with dread
For my young are all busy with young of their own
And I think of the years and the love I have known.

I'm an old woman now and nature is cruel.
'Tis her jest to make old age look like a fool.
The body it crumbles, grace and vigour depart
There is a stone where I once had a heart.

But inside this old carcass a young girl still dwells
And now and again my battered heart swells.
I remember the joys, I remember the pain

And I'm loving and living all over again.

I think of the years, all too few - gone too fast
And accept the stark fact that nothing can last.

So open your eyes, nurses, open and see.
Not a crabby old woman, look closer - SEE ME.

 
I've realized that
I don't want to CHANGE my LIFE.

I LIKE my life.  ....Most of it.....

Maintaining a small body size
is only one small PART of my life.

To manage that part,
I'm willing to eat less.
That's really ALL I need to change.

                   

Activities, especially the ones we find unpleasant or painful, that don’t yield a positive return to us individually, are counter productive. Acts such as reducing sodium, eating “organic”, or “exercising daily” can sometimes actually prevent a person from creating a healthy lifestyle for themselves.

Hate running? Then don’t run. Don’t like giving up pizza? Then figure out a way to fit it into your diet. Don’t like salads? Then don’t eat them.

So what would be a successful strategy for weight loss?
Choose the most painless, most effective way-of-eating possible, for you personally.

It’s foolish to force one’s own fitness or nutritional ideologies on others. Many people treat fitness and nutrition as though these issues are a Religion and try to push their own preferences on to other people.

Perhaps the Paleo diet worked very well for you. That doesn’t mean that it will work for someone who feels horrible on low carbs or loves bread.

Perhaps limiting all eating to three or less mealtimes a day feels “natural” to you. That doesn’t mean eating in that manner will be effective for those who greatly value daily snacks, or for those who have a strong personal preference for eating a larger number of mini-meals daily.

Perhaps it’s easier for you to restrict the amount of your food intake by establishing a pattern of skipping meals or fasting a few days each week. That doesn’t mean that an eating/fasting pattern is workable or desirable for everyone.

If you find a diet that works for you, congratulations! It’s okay to recommend this diet to your friends, but don’t turn it into Nutritional Dogma. Just be thankful that you’ve found a good strategy and move on with your life.

Saying that there is only one way to eat is the same thing as saying that everyone shares a common heritage, comes from the same cultural background, and has the same personal preferences. People are different. We are not all the same.

Giving NOTICE to the World.
Keep any negative comments, opinions, or questions
you may have about my body to yourself.
I’ll do the same for you.

My body is the house for my mind and spirit, and is the most visible part of me.
I am with it 24/7, and every action I take, whether voluntary or involuntary involves it. My hands open and close. My lips move. My eyes see. My body is me, and it is mine.

When I was 16 I wanted my body to be shapely and thin and to look like Jane Fonda’s body. It didn’t. Now that I’m over 60 and I’m now shapely (for my age) and relatively thin (a normal weight) it still doesn’t, … not even like Jane Fonda’s current over 60 year old body… but my body’s has been good to me. Far better than I’ve been to it.

I like the way my body looks today. There are many reasons why I don’t want to become fat again. Some of them involve my health. Some of them involve my vanity. Some of them involve keeping the negative judgments of others away from me.

A flaw means a mark, a fault, or other imperfection. So saying that my body has “flaws”, would imply that I agree with the arbitrary standard of beauty that gets imposed upon it by others… and I don’t. My own personal standards of beauty have changed over the years and … most of the time, … all of my body’s physical characteristics are acceptable, even dear to me.

My own feelings about my own body are my own personal business, and this is true no matter what size I happen to be. I don’t need anyone else to tell me how to feel. The author of the article below appears to feel differently about her body than I feel about my own, but I share her basic philosophy.

Don’t tell me to love my body
            by Elyse  - March 11, 2013 - www. skepchick.org

I want to talk to you about how you talk to me about how I talk about my body, and how I talk about how I feel about my body, and what’s wrong with everything you have to say about what I have to say.

In short, fuck you.

I don’t love my body. My body is awful. I will never love my body. I never have. And I’m 35 and maybe you think that’s too old to have real hang ups about my body. But I do. And I always will. And maybe you think that because I’ve lost a bunch of weight I should feel great about my body. But I don’t. And I won’t.

And maybe you think that because it’s my body I should love it and that I should think I’m beautiful. That I should somehow ignore all the standards the world imposes on me every single day, standards that make up “beautiful.” That I should make my own standards, and tell myself that I can just create my own reality. That I should pretend that I can never be judged by the standards of others. Maybe if I just love myself enough, other people will be able to climb into my head and begin adopting my standard of beauty and the world will follow and my formula will be the new standard and I will become The Most Beautiful.

Or maybe I shouldn’t. Maybe the fact that I don’t love my body isn’t really an issue. Maybe the problem is that everyone thinks I should love my body. That loving my body is some kind of standard of womanly goodness in and of itself.

But we’re told we will love our bodies once they’re good enough to be loved. Once we free them of imperfections… all of them. Once I erase my freckles and age lines and sagging skin and thigh flab and become faster and stronger and a better mom and a better wife and a better career woman and keep it all together and prove that I’m doing it all by looking amazing, then I will truly love my body.

Or maybe loving our bodies means casting aside the imperfections that make us who we are, while embracing only the things we want people to see about us, and the things other people would like to see. Loving my body means not exposing you to my armpit stubble but showcasing my bad-ass legs. That’s not really love… that’s what everyone always does, as much as they can, all the time.

Or maybe loving our bodies means loving all the things that bother us about it. Which is kind of fucked up because I don’t love everything about all the other people I love, and I certainly don’t embrace the really annoying things.

Or maybe me loving my body is about you. And how you feel about how I feel about my body. If I tell you that “I love my body. I love my freckles. I even love my sagging ass because it’s on my body.” You’ll pat me on the back and tell me that I’m getting it. And I’m not making anyone uncomfortable by complaining about how much I dislike being held up to fucked up beauty standards and how it fucks with my head.

But, let’s be honest, if I love my body, I’m not declaring it with apologetic disclaimers. Loving your body doesn’t include demanding other people understand that your appendectomy scar is gorgeous.

The problem isn’t about women not loving our bodies.
It’s not about how I feel about myself.
It’s not about how my body looks.

The problem is someone else telling me how to feel.

The problem is being told that there is a standard of beauty, and I should ignore it. I should ignore it despite the fact that everyone is still holding me to it. I should ignore it and create my own. As long as it makes me feel pseudo-good, and makes other people feel okay with how I pretend to feel about me. But while we’re pretending the real-world standards don’t exist, the real world continues judging us—It’s okay to be more critical of a woman who’s accepted herself. She’s strong and can take it… In fact, wow, what a conceited bitch she must be to think she’s so great when she’s clearly not. Maybe someone needs to take her down. She really has no business acting like she’s as good as other people.

But here’s the thing… It’s okay to not love my body. It’s okay to not even like my body. They’re my feelings and it’s my body and I will use those feelings to feel however I want to about my body. I don’t need you to tell me how to feel.

We don’t have to find ourselves beautiful. Beauty is not the one thing that makes us and our bodies worth loving. We don’t have to distort an already fucked-up definition of beauty, and pretend we fit into it, just to feel like we are people worthy of being loved.

Stop telling women that we should find ourselves beautiful and that we should love ourselves when you are standing right there, judging us on how our knees look in short skirts and how prominent our boobs are in a sweater and how much makeup we are or are not wearing.

Instead of us working harder on “love your body” and “find your inner beauty”, the rest of the world should be working harder on “stop telling women their bodies are a shameful place to live but that if they’re strong enough, they will learn to embrace that shame.”

This is my body. It’s not “beautiful”. I don’t “love it”. I don’t have to. I don’t have to have any strong feelings about my body. And whatever feelings I do have are not somehow invalid if they’re not glowing reviews.

What’s weird is that you think I should care about how I look as much as you do.

I should probably note that most of the things I hate about my body are the result of me losing 100+ lbs in 8 months. The parts of my body I hated when I was fat are still the same parts of my body I hate… but now I just hate them for different reasons. Even if today those flaws represent an incredible accomplishment and are the marks of an amazing journey, I don’t have to love them.

My face though?

I don’t hate that. But I’ve spent years getting comfortable enough with it to show it to you without make up.