So today, I’ve decided to put out a long-needed post on weight.

Renoir painted me.  Michelangelo sculpted me.  Countless artists, actually, from Grecian Classicism to the Fin du Siècle, created masterworks with substantial women as objects of beauty.  Scattered over the world are these paintings and statues and sculptures and representations, and in not one of them does the subject look ashamed of her size.  She looks beautiful.  Consider the Venus of Willendorf.  Consider Renoir’s series of bathers.  Consider Rubens’ Venus at the Mirror. Consider Bouguereau’s Birth of Venus, nonwithstanding that that woman is far from heavy.  By modern Western standards, though… whatever.  Is it a coincidence that three of those four are goddesses?  Anyway.

To a horde of marauding Vikings, I would be the feminine ideal.  Long light hair, clear fair skin, bright light eyes, tall and imposing stature.  And weight and curves.  Hips and breasts and lack of protruding bones and all.

Obviously, being obese is far from healthy.  And I’m far from obese.  My doctor insists that I’m healthy; I continue to dance and fence and bike.  I hold to my strict vegetarian diet (fifteen years running!) and take a daily multivitamin/multimineral and calcium supplement.  I’m in good physical shape.  God damn it all, I can do nigh-on a hundred crunches without breaking a sweat.

So how did I suddenly get classified as fat?

I’m actually starting to lose my understanding.  For years, I believed it.  When I was thirteen, for instance, I went through a bit of psychological trouble.  I lost a lot of weight very very fast, and I gained it back gradually.  As I started to hate myself less, I learned to control my trichotillomania and eventually got out of therapy.  I still certainly believed that I was fat, though, hatred or no.

But in retrospect, at 5′9″ and 155lbs, I wasn’t.

And that speaks to both my perception of myself at the time and the images I was displayed of what female beauty looks like.

The whole heroin-chic waif thing really isn’t that great, folks.

I’m not generally attracted to women that look like they’ll collapse under the weight of their backpacks. Since when did being as thin as one’s stripper-heels become a goal (the sixties, sadly. Fucking Twiggy).

Women of all whatevers can look beautiful.

But that’s more a matter of confidence than a matter of weight. Do something healthy. Don’t get so thin that you can’t stand or so heavy that you can’t sprint.

But, most importantly, realize that you’re a work of art, or one of science.