It's All Relative. Age Is Just A Number. It'll Be Over Before You Know It. ETC.

It has been a strange, slow motion whirlwind around here, I have to say. It's pretty much expected and I feel like a broken record, saying this shit in every one-time-a-week post that I manage to spit out. I feel like the 140 characters of Twitter are passing for posts for updating and well, that's just stupid and sad.

But! I do have some time(ish) and figured that I could update you in a [modified tweet-type way] series of BULLETED! TIDBITS!

* Currently, I am ambulating in what can only be described as a kind of lurching stagger. It is, I think, a result of the combination of [being old] my muscles being atrophied from non-working out for MONTHS and [being old] bouncing on the ball while holding a 12 pound [monstah] baby in a sling. So, when I stand up from the floor or the ball, I experience a great amount of pressure/stiffness in my lower back that makes it difficult to stand ALL THE WAY UP into an erect posture right away. I end up going into a hunched over posture [you know, like an OLD FUCKING LADY] and then EASING my way up to straight. In addition, I have a CORN on my foot (OMFG) and I have to tell you that shit [MAKES ME OLD] HURTS.

* I get the corns on my feet from wearing only mules for shoes, I think. I wear the mules because I have abnormally small feet that make me look RIDICULOUS if they are housed (clothed? shoed?) in shoes that are my size. So, yeah, I buy shoes that are a half-size too big for me. WHATEVER. Then my feet slide around and create calluses/Corns of Death and that doesn't help the Ambulation Situation.

* The talk about being old is only because right this minute, I FEEL old.  Normally, I do not.  In regular times, when I'm exercising and stretching and eating well and uh, sleeping, I feel like I did in my early 30's, I guess. Late 20's even.  I never noticed a significant difference in my physical self from year to year and am usually flexible and limber.  I can always stand UPRIGHT for fuck's sake. Never having had any major medical issues, pregnancy, childbirth and having a newborn/infant (both times) were a seismic shift for me in terms of health, physical fitness and self-perception.  I believe that as I get more sleep and get back to a [semi] regular exercise routine, I'll get back to my old-but-not-old-feeling self.

* I normally do no Old Talk of my own and am famous for p'shawing any Old Talk from The Man.  I think that what you believe about yourself is important and how you talk about it/project yourself are significant in how you perceive yourself and how you are perceived by others.  Not in a whoo-whoo, The Secret way.  In a practical, 'You Are What You Think' way.  If you repeatedly tell yourself/others that you're old (fat, dumb, poor, ETC.) you are sooner or later going to feel that way. I'm not talking about 'Thinking Positive' or giving myself a 'Mantra,' nor do I think that the way I think can STOP TIME.  It's just that I think that the way you FEEL is often a result of what you are THINKING.  (This is making no sense and going nowhere. Probably Early Onset Dementia. Heh.) 

* In a related note: I do absolutely NO Fat Talk in front of my kid.  This isn't because I'm all of a sudden super-duper satisfied with how my body is looking. (I'm not The 'Oh, I LOVE my pooch! It was my baby's FIRST HOME!' Type. Just not.) It's because I am bound and determined to save her from that kind of deluge in the sanctity of her own home.  (I was certainly NOT spared and was SERIOUSLY DELUGED with that kind of Talk for my ENTIRE childhood/adolescence/adulthood, ETC.) Until TLNG can see commercials, music videos, print ads for underwear for herself, she will not be exposed to negative body-image comments from me or those close to me.  No Weight Talk, No I-Hate-My-Body-Talk, none of that.  Not that I think that this is going to prevent blahblabhbaalah, I'm just not going to be The Model for a fucked up body image. She goes to the gym with mommy to 'exercise' to 'keep our bodies strong,' and THAT my friends, is what she says EVERY SINGLE TIME we pull into the parking lot.

* Believe it or not, I've found that No Fat Talk Ever has kind of translated into a Calmer, Quieter self-evaluation.  I'm still not crazy about the post-partum body but I feel more like, 'I'll get there,' instead of, 'I SUCK AS A PERSON,' if you know what I'm saying.

Comments

[Kelly]

No fat talk in this house either. I know I'm screwing up in other ways, but I'll be damned if my daughters are gonna see me stare in the mirror and sigh and groan about the way I do or don't look.

[Lori]

hmmm I can so relate to this post. I do NO fat talking either in front of the teen. Or just insulting myself in general. Of course in my head its still ahappening. But I'm a work in progress.

[Julie @ The Mom Slant]

After recently biking an insane distance, I commented to Kyle: "When it's not my muscles or my lungs that hurt but my JOINTS, then I can't deny that I'm getting old."

There's no "fat" talk here either, but fortunately her friends do a damn fine job of f*cking her up in that regard.

[Manic Mommy]

You and I are exactly the same age. I think 41 is a whole new ballgame. I'm feeling it too. And I can't attribute it to the postpartum thing. I'm fighting it too and generally don't feel old but I am realizing that it's more of an effort than it used to be.

[mimi]

No fat talk. That's hard to do, but while I always knew I was harming myself by engaging in it, I didn't really knock it off until my daughter was born. Daughters force a lot of us to reconsider the imbrication of practice and theory in our feminism: the self-esteem project starts at home, man.

[Swistle]

Do you know, I don't know what a corn IS? No, don't tell me.

[Kate]

Yes! Feeling old post-baby. At age 39 when my first was born, I just assumed that it really was my age showing. My hubs is 44, so he has been feeling old too. I think, though, that newborns just suck all the youth out. Luckily, having kids also tends to make one feel more child-like as well, so maybe it will balance out...
And, yes, of course, no FAT TALK. Or BELLY TALK. My grandmother talked about the toll that pregnancy took on her for my dad's and his siblings' whole lives. Not pretty.

[the new girl]

@julie: I agree with you that we'll all have to answer some uncomfortable questions. There are, after all, PLENTY of ways to fuck up our offspring. Fat Talk is but merely one.

And let's face it: we have to give them SOMETHING to talk about in therapy later on.

[Shelly]

"Baby's first home"?! HAHAHA!! Um, yeah. Not exactly. I totally agree on No Fat talk and it's something I need to work on BIG time. One day, I was shopping with my daughter (who is 7) and a pair of jeans fit me in the next size down. I was super excited and said something about it. She was very confused and I realized that I really wasn't being a very good role model right about then.

[Vicki]

You are awesome. It takes strength not to talk about the things that bother you about yourself and especially in front of your kids. I call my kids huggy bear and sweetpea, etc. instead of some of the things I've heard other parents call their kids (chub link, chunky dunk, etc.) I never want my babies to think they are fat or too thin. I have a little one who goes constantly and rarely stops unless its to sleep or eat and so he's on the lower end of the weight scale. When asked why he drinks Pediasure, I just say to give him the right stuff to make him happy. I don't want him thinking he's too little. He's just the right size for himself. And I'm sure you are too!

[caramama]

For 2 or 3 (maybe 4) months after having my second, my body felt so old! My knees especially would ache so badly that I had trouble walking up and down stairs. My husband (God bless his supportive soul) kept saying that it was probably due to gaining and lossing all that baby weight so suddenly. I also figured it was partly because there is still a lot of the pregnancy hormones in the body for months after birth--you know the ones that make your ligaments loose.

I'm happy to report that I've been feeling much more like my old self over the last month (baby just turned 5 months). It was a slower back-to-feeling-normal period than from my first, but I mostly got there.

And I totally hear ya about not talking about your body and fat and diets and the like in front of our young, impressionable girls. I also believe that what one says about oneself and how one portrays oneself really does affect how one feels about oneself and what the children pick up (awkward sentence alert!).

[julie]

I totally get where you're coming from. We also exercise to "keep our bodies strong and give us more energies" and we eat healthy for the same reason. But now that my first born is 4.5 going on my mother I'm starting to have to answer questions I don't really like. Like "Why do you wear makeup?" Turns out I can't think of an empowering reason to wear it that would not make it meaningful for her to wear it now or to imply that she'll lose her current cuteness as she gets old. I guess we're all eventually going to have to answer to something (except my mother who never wore a drop of makeup).

[Lauren]

I have been practicing No Fat Talk and No Diet Talk since my 2nd kid was born (18 mos ago) and I love it. Not only am I giving my 3-yr-old daughter a better role model, I FEEL so much better myself. And I'm suddenly aware of just how often women talk about this stuff.

[Tessie]

AMBULATE. What an outstanding word! I love it so. Ambulation Situation. Ambulation Situation. Rolls off the tongue!

I also love this post, obv, up to and including the No Fat Talk Talk. I am also not an idiot who believes that my kid will never hear it, I am simply calling NOT IT on being the one she hears it FROM.

Also, I really DO think it helps with self-image/empathy, in a Fake-It-Till-You-Make-It sort of way. I'm always happier when I give my body image, and the bodies of others, LESS headspace, not more.