Tag Archives: body image

My Body, Right Now Redux

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A friend recently pointed out that I am not living up to my description of FFG. In the ‘About’ section I explicitly claim that this blog will be devoted to exploring my own embodiment. Instead, she noted, I have been undertaking sociological interpretations of gym and fitness culture. How true. I think that I am more comfortable with analyzing things in a slightly abstract way than with blathering on about myself. Does anyone really want to read about boring old me and my boring old flesh? Apparently they do. Well, at least one person does.

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My Body, the Money Pit

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If Gail Vaz-Oxlade saw my credit card bills, she would go ape shit. Not that my debt load is extraordinarily high; well, except for that absurd mortgage. The personal finance expert and star of the Canadian TV show ‘Til Debt Do Us Part would mostly disapprove of how I spend my money. After cutting up my credit cards (actually I have only one), Gail would give me some labelled jars and force me to live on cash only. Then she would take out her highlighter pen to circle the most offensive items:

–‘$109.09 at the Rexall Pharmacy? What the fuck?’ she would exclaim. Continue reading →

Vibrant Physicality

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What does health feel like? This question is challenging, especially if you are trying to be specific. According to S. van Hooft, a Dutch sociologist who never uses his or her full name, health is an enigma. It is ‘a state of being which is absent from consciousness and experienced only in its negation by disease and injury.’ I think, however, that a perception of health can be present immediately after an illness is over. Continue reading →

Paradoxical

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Feminist Figure Girl is a study in paradoxes: she is at once an ardent feminist and planning to strut around on stage in a bikini, hoping the judges like the shape of her ass; she lifts weights at the gym and then bakes obsessively, drawing from a cupboard entirely devoted to flour, some of it smuggled home from France; she eats 150 grams of lean chicken before going to a wine and coffee tasting, where she guzzles the Old Barossa Continue reading →

My Body, Right Now

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Right now I am sitting in a desk chair, trying to keep my wrists and back straight, with both feet flat on the floor. Thinking about my posture is, however, interfering with my productivity, suggesting that bodily awareness is at odds with writing. Perhaps being a professor necessitates ignoring the body, at least to a certain degree. Continue reading →