Fat/Thin

I was poking around Jennifer Weiner‘s blog (she wrote Good in Bed, among other things, and while I have yet to read one of her books I am convinced that when I finally do, I will like them) and found this entry about her appearance on the Jane Pauley show. She was on an episode where women talk about losing weight without becoming happy.
It’s really interesting. Go read it.

Now I am all for the idea that losing weight will not necessarily make a person happy.
But you know, I lost about 30 pounds somewhere after grad school (most of it right around the time I found out I had a dermoid ovarian cyst) and it made a huge difference.
Guys hit on me now way more than they did 30 pounds ago. They look at me differently.
I feel better about myself now – although that’s probably at least in part because I have the most affectionate and wonderful bf in the world.
Sometimes I actually see myself in the mirror and think I might be attractive. There are a lot more photos of me that I like now. (I looked for an old pic to compare to a new pic, and I can’t find any on my computer. That’s how much I didn’t like how I looked, man. And I wasn’t that heavy.)
I can’t decide if this means I’ve fallen into society’s trap of thinking that thinner = better or if I’ve just hit a weight where I look better. Weight is such a sensitive issue – just ask a random person you know how they feel about their weight and chances are you’ll get a long answer that’s at least as much about how they feel about themselves as it is about how they feel about their weight.
We sure do identify our selves with our bodies these days, eh? Who we are is at least in part defined by what we look like, what kinds of physical activities we like, the physical appearance of the people we do sexual things with, all that. Personality is secondary.