not-so-glorious food

I have eaten like a total out-of-control person today. I started out okay with tuna, olive oil, oregano, Italian seasoning and plenty of chopped spinach served on wheat crackers (I'm not a traditional-breakfast-foods person). However, after that, the rest of my eating was shot. I've had two kaiser rolls, two turkey meatballs, some baked steak fries (technically, then, not 'fries' but, I suppose, baked potato wedges), a cookie and some ice cream throughout the day. My body is ready to kick me (herself?). Yeah, vegetables and fruits? Apparently not much of a priority for me today. Sometimes I get like this...I'll eat something crappy and then just eat crappily for the rest of the day. Ugh.

This makes me think, of course, of things like my horribly negative body image. (Self-fulfilling prophecy, anyone?) Every time I think about things like this, I wonder how to not pass this set of neuroses on to Pic. How can I not? Even if I insist that every body is beautiful, just about every other source of information about bodies is telling us othewise. We went to the store tonight and there were these Barbie fairy things that were like freaking twigs [I can't find a picture of these, sorry]. Then, of course, we passed the Barbies and by the time we reached the end of the aisle, we had reached the Bratz dolls. Um, and Disney princesses -- I almost forgot them. Then, there are the images of popular women splashed across the covers of all of the magazines, including some women who used to be more average-sized but who have become emaciated over the years (except their thinness is due to something other than lack of access to nutritional foods and plenty of access to ravaging disease). All that and my very own negative body image. It's not like she'll never pick up on that, right? Don't kids sense things that we think we are hiding oh-so-well? She's picked up on funkiness in our supposed-to-be marital bliss before when she was just a wee(er) lass.

Anyhow, this brings me to two other observations, both media related.

One is Gilmore Girls. I love Gilmore Girls, but I've always hated that these women (mother and daughter, sixteen years apart) eat worse than anyone else ever (except, perhaps, Michael Phelps) and they shun exercise, yet they are both incredibly thin women. What is up with that?

The other: The Women. I watched the 1939 version, which I thought was okay. Then, against the reviews of others, I watched the newer version (because I clearly like wasting my time). At one point, Mary's (Meg Ryan's character) ten-year-old daughter refuses to eat something because it'll cost too many points. As in Weight Watchers points. She declares herself fat. She's a thin little wisp of a girl. While she's told she's not fat (if I recall correctly), no one ever deals with this. This movie was such a disappointment for so many reasons, this being just a small one. (Like, what was up with the [SPOILER ALERT] baby at the end of the movie being a boy and then being passed from hand to hand across a backdrop of a wall painted sky-blue with clouds? Weird savior images abound.) Anyhow, don't watch it. Spare yourself.

Okay, well, so much more can be said about this, but I need to finish reading an article (forthcoming chapter?) on Michel Montaigne's anti-ethnocentrism (which I promptly looked up) and then read Twelfth Night and then read The Tempest and then read part of Stephen Greenblatt's Marvelous Possessions and then read.... (I really want to read Harry Potter again). Please send me some positive vibes (yes, I did just use that phrase) that I make it out of this semester alive...definitely not OD'd on ice cream. Thanks.