“Your sculptural outline, if one can speak of it that way, is fat, too, of course, if not to the same extent as a woman’s. For our sort, fat normally is only a twentieth of total body weight; a sixteenth for women. Without our subcutaneous cell structure we’d all end up looking like some sort of wrinkly fungus. The fat disappears with age, of course, resulting in the unaesthetic sags we know so well. The fat is thickest around the female breast and abdomen, the upper thighs–in short, everywhere you find a little something of interest for your hand and heart. And the soles of the feet, they’re both fat and ticklish.”
–Dr. Behrens on women and fat in The Magic Mountain by Thomas Mann
I was thinking today that sticking with a blog is like adhering to a diet–something I’m not very good at. In fact, in the Italian class I taught this morning, a distinguished gentleman asked me something. “Could I ask you something out of curiosity?” he said. He had already asked me how to say “eggs over easy” in Italian because he didn’t like scrambled eggs or fried eggs. I don’t eat eggs, so I promised to bring the answer for the next class. I thought he might be curious about how to say “French toast” or “bialy” in Italian, so I answered with a smile. “Can you tell me if you’re expecting? I don’t want to have to look for another Italian teacher,” he said. I calmly told the man that due to an unlucky distribution of body fat, I was merely a little fat in the abdomen and not pregnant in the slightest. It seemed like an honest question. Yet, by the time I made it to my car, I was pretty horrified. Would I announce to people in advance that I’m not pregnant? I wouldn’t want people wondering “When is she due?” Then the whole thing struck me as a terrible lapse in vigilance over my physical form. No doubt I would need to take vigorous actions and build up a wall of restrictions. Above all–no more almond butter! And then, I felt lost. It seems that like so many women, I’ve spent a lifetime dealing with this food and body stuff and I thought I had conquered it when I found Dr. Fuhrman and his incredible vegan diet. I lost a lot of weight and then kind of veered off course with some tumultuous events of the past year or so, though things have been getting back to normal in the new year. Though I’m not terribly fat, I do have a pinch of fat at the waist. (I remember meeting Dr. Fuhrman in person two years ago and after thanking him for his incredible vegan diet, the first thing he did was reach out and pinch my waist to see if there was any fat there. Of course, health-wise, abdominal fat is the worst fat you can have.) Never in the course of my day today did I ask why this great, supportive student felt comfortable asking if I was pregnant. And why did I feel so much shame about this? It seemed to me that I had committed some sort of crime. I have newly embarked on Dr. Fuhrman’s incredible vegan diet–which truly does take the cake (out of your mouth). Seriously, the diet it pure genius. And it feels good to be getting back on track. Yet, it makes me want to approach men with muffin-tops and ask them if they have any special news to tell me. I will have a delighted expression on my face. “Tell me,” I’ll croon. “When are you due? And is it a boy or a girl, or a bad encounter with Ben and Jerry, or perhaps even some light indigestion?” Though, this probably wouldn’t bother most men. “No baby!” they will shout. “Just one pizza too many!”
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