• I'm an E cup. When I was younger and skinnier I was only a C cup and could handle underwires. Then I got pregnant and discovered the bliss of maternity bras. Post babies and breastfeeding I went back to the wires only to find they poked me and now I've got 'birdseyes' in my cleavage. I cannot fathom the underwire. Obviously the person who designed it has never had to wear one. Having big boobs we're all encouraged to wear them, but now I'm old and fat they're far too uncomfortable to contemplate. I'm happy with my 'wirefree' bras. I figured that if manufacturers could make a maternity bra without wires that fitted perfectly and provided excellent support to lactating breasts, they could do the same for large, non-lactating breasts too. I found the perfect fit for me at a large chain store and bought the same type for years. Not terribly sexy, but comfortable and serviceable. Now I've discovered same large chain has a moulded cotton bra in large sizes. Better still, you can order them online when the sales are on and collect them from the store. Bliss! - BeansGran
  • Well put Sonya. I am so glad that you have created this documentary. Also, you have put forward a voice of reason backed up by compelling evidence & your own credibility. I am pro-vaccination, but I understand why it is an delicate decision for many parents. I haven't come across the anti-vax theories (I'd never even heard of the AVN until Mamamia kept writing & tweeting about them). I'd always just followed the immunisation schedule. But I have come across a lot of pushy pro-vaxxers and I have to say, it is a turn off. I understand that it's a passionate issue. But is it an effective way of increasing immunisation rates? Of course not. Some pro-vaxxers make it their full time job to name, shame & harass people opposed to vaccination. Is harassment going to change their position, heck no! Is it going to galvanise their anti-vac position, quite probably! I just think we need to be smarter about this. I know it is not a "debate" in the sense that the science is in on the benefits & general safety of vaccines. But it completely normal to feel uneasy about purposely injecting your child with something most of us know very little about. And then watching their every breath that evening as they process that vaccine. Sonya, I hope that your documentary is the beginning of the change in the way we talk about immunisation. Well done. - Kasey
  • I am very impressed by what you've set out to achieve and how you've come about it. Much of my work these days is in vaccination and I work hard to break down the myths and false beliefs people have about vaccines. I find listening to concerns, empathy and responding with good evidence based information has been the most successful manner I've had so far. I also reassure parents that it is always their choice, but I also share that I am a mum too and that I choose to vaccinate my child fully. And funnily enough that's usually the clincher. Respect, good information and empathy can go a long way. I really hope that many people watch your documentary and help absolve the many concerns and myths surrounding vaccination that are out there. You must be proud of your work :) - The Huntress
  • Not everyone has access too or any interest in the internet, you cannot drive a tractor and watch the internet but you can listen to radio, you cannot drive a car and watch the internet but you can listen to radio, you cannot wash the dishes, the clothes, yourself and watch the internet but you can listen to the radio, you can also lie in bed with Phillip Adams, half my University of the Third Age students go to bed with Phillip. Australia's best journalists were trained by the ABC. What I don't understand Gee is your palpable hatred, how can you be so angry all the time, just relax and learn that we are all different and some of us prefer the quiet nature of the ABC compared with the ranting and rage of radio shock jocks and commercial TV. Your phrase 'slash and burn' is shocking to me, no one I know hates anything, no one I know wants to destroy things or institutions, not even the IPA, why such violence of language? - sue Bell
  • [...] Science says vaccinate! [...] - LET'S TALK (NOT SHOUT) VACCINATION
  • Thankyou Emma for your good work and humanistic attitude towards others. I could not do your job and be nice to others at the same time, i'v e realized. The other ABC journo's et al should be taking notes.......all the best in your career! - louise
  • Why censor the pictures, Ro? Don't call them "young men" either. They are "vicious animals" as their act so clearly evidences. They are not human at all. Are you saying it is "justifiable" for ethnic Nigerians, who have never been to either Afghanistan or Iraq but grew up on the teat of the British Welfare State, to run down and then Halal butcher a complete stranger walking along the street and minding his own business? How can you possibly draw any connection between what happened in London and the alleged mistreatment of Aborigines in Australia? What a fine example of the "straw man" argument! Do you think NATO and other allies were "unjustified" in invading Afghanistan and liberating it from the Taliban? That same Taliban that banned girls going to school; regularly indulge in female genital mutilation and the sodomising of "dancing boys"; blew up ancient Buddhist monuments; regularly carried out executions by stoning and beheading as half-time entertainment at football matches in Kabul and Kandahar; undertook ethnic cleansing against Hazara muslims; banned music and dancing on pain of death; and provided a base for the racist extremists of Al Qaeda to operate completely unfettered? Do you think it was wrong to overthrow Saddam Hussein who had used poisonous gas on the Kurds of Iraq? Whose two mongrel sons crawled the streets of Baghdad looking for women to rape; who executed his own son-in-law after promising "forgiveness' if he returned from exile; who gained power in a coup and then personally executed scores of his own "party"? The problems in Iraq today have nothing to do with Saddam's overthrow and everything to do with the seething sectarian and ethnic hatreds that have plagued Mesopotamia since the Babylonian Empire. Why didn't those two vicious animals condemn the latest round of sunni-shia bombings and murders in Iraq? If muslim women are subjected to the regular sight of dismembered bodies, those bodies were provided by other muslims. Why is it that only this week we saw Syrian women asking Bob Carr why it is that the USA and the non-Islamic world is not interfering in their current civil war? The war is yet another essentially religious/sectarian conflict between a Sunni majority and an Alawi-Shia minority. Why should any young Americans, Britons or Australians risk their lives for these benighted, backward bastards who regularly tell us how much they hate us? Have you forgotten the spontaneous eruption of glee and happiness that occurred in Iraq, Syria, Iran, Afghanistan and elsewhere in the "Islamic world" when the 9/11 attack was carried out? It seems to me that you, like so many others, have forgotten the lessons of the period from 1919-1939. Appeasement never works. Trying to trivialise this disgraceful crime; saying that ...well, maybe, it was Britain's fault and maybe if Britain hadn't been and Imperial power 200 years ago and ... really, when you look at that and what happened to the Aborigines here, maybe they were justified in running over a total stranger, who'd done nothing to them or any of their family or relatives, and then hacking off his head with a meat cleaver. The white-washing, the diminution, the trivialising, the justifying has already started in media and the blogosphere. The appeasers and the white-hating racists are already talking this whole thing around so that in a few weeks they'll be wanting to give these two mongrels a medal and have them treated as Prisoners of War. I am so glad the British cops didn't shoot them dead. I want them to suffer in HM Prison System for the rest of their lives. But, knowing the way the British EHRC led by that treacherous hater, Trevor Phillips, operate, they'll probably be named and shamed and given 20 hours community service. - Jack Richards
  • Anyway. So long Latin. I know there will be people close to Hazel who will be feeling sad and confused today. Sad for who she was and confused because she is perhaps better off dead now. And then there is everyone else who were touched by Hazel's contribution to our lives. Thank you Hazel and her supporters. - ro.watson
  • Always thought that Hazel H. was too much in the background type of PM's wife.From the information revealed recently about her I've realised how essential and important she was to Australia. This deception was probably due to the limelight on her ex-husband/PM Bob .He might have been successful politically but how he maintained the persona of god's gift to women for so long, baffles me. He is just another ugly aussie male. He should show more atonement towards such an admiring woman as Hazel. Condolences to her children and their families. - louise
  • Perhaps I am projecting, but there really is something very special about the relationship between a regular cartoonist's work and their readers. A sort of mutual getting to know you abandon. - ro.watson
 
6
Categories:  Lifestyle, Wellbeing

ANATOMY OF A WEIGHT LOSS

By Victoria Birch
August 7, 2012

It was my 16th birthday and I received my very first diet book.

Puberty had slathered layers of fat on a body that had previously sported lean legs and bony hips.

I had been totally ignorant of my changing body but mum and her cohorts hadn’t. I imagined them gathering in small knots of concern in the kitchen, whispering about Womanhood’s bad intentions and how they should stage an intervention to stave off the blubber.

So they presented me with a veritable Pandora’s Box of neuroses and obsession in the form of the 28 Day Weight Loss book.

From the moment I opened its glossy pages and saw bubble-permed ladies standing proudly next to their saggy, grotesque old selves I was done for. Calories, weigh-ins, fat-free food, aerobics – all tools to get me to the Promised Land.

A place where milk and honey were off limits but a size 6 dress was up for grabs.

I started fantasising about reaching my thin place. Huge golden doors would open. Beyond the doors lay a better, more gorgeous, more popular me. I would be physically smaller but life would be bigger. An entire galaxy of opportunity and cute boys would be mine if I could just subsist on fuck-all food for a month…

…and here I am some 20 years later and frankly I’ve not really changed. I’ve been on the diet treadmill for two thirds of my life. I’m infinitely savvier than my 16-year-old self. I know about photo-shopping and extreme dieting and the perpetuation of body ideals.

And yet I STILL believe life will be a hunky-dory swell fest if I can get to X kilos.

I’m not fat, I’m not over-weight but there’s a part of my brain that’s turned its back on pragmatism and is sitting with hands over ears going ‘blah blah blah can’t hear you’.

My beautiful best friend recently separated from her husband. She’s rebuilding her life but the anxiety from the split has left her very thin. Too thin. She is aware of it, but the notion of allowing her body to get bigger is a complete anathema. In the back catalogue of conversations about our bodies, putting on weight has only ever been acceptable when we were pregnant.

I have struggled to talk to her about it. I’m scared the part of me that refuses to acknowledge sensible thoughts regarding diet would take over. I’m terrified it would reinforce the belief that happiness is inversely proportionate to the numbers on the scale… no matter how small they are.

And that’s the rub. It’s a numbers game.

A few decades on and my dieting (and I suspect that of many of my friends) actually has a nebulous connection to the achievement of a body ideal or even a smaller dress size (although that was definitely the catalyst when I was younger).

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6 Responses to this article

  1. Ellie August 7, 2012 Reply
     
     

    This story is a realistic portrayal of how most women in this country think and feel and I am no different.

    I have believed for the last 10 years that if I was 5 kilos lighter, my world would become perfect. What a ridiculous fantasy.

     
  2. The Huntress August 7, 2012 Reply
     
     

    It’s amazing how so many of us believe that if only we are our ideal dress size our lives would be perfect.

    I have learned the hard way that my weight will not determine my happiness. I remember when I was living with my first boyfriend and fantastically thin (I was considered very underweight by BMI) and he used to tell me how fat and disgusting I was most days. I did everything I could to try and lose weight, but after a year I realised it wasn’t actually my weight that was making me unhappy, it was the boyfriend. So he got chucked and I continued on.

    I have since had a rollercoaster of a life where I have often believed if I just lose weight everything will be perfect. But then I went to uni and got a degree that made me happy. I got a job that makes me feel good. I have a son who sees beauty in his mummy no matter what (no idea how that happened!). These are the things that make my life worthwhile, not the numbers on my scale. In fact I don’t weigh myself anymore, the only time I do is if my clothes start getting a bit snug and then I weigh myself monthly for about 3 months – weighing in any more than that for a woman just doesn’t give you good information as our monthly hormonal changes do affect our weight. I can put on 3kg in one day at the wrong time of the month! I did weigh myself last week as I have just had a breast reduction (Yipppeeeeee!!!! Now THAT has changed my life wonderfully!) and I was curious to see if the amount taken off would correspond with my scale. All was well, so I won’t be weighing in again for a while now.

    For now my happiness is going to be concentrated on finding a wonderful new job.

     
  3. the*sparrow August 7, 2012 Reply
     
     

    Oh Victoria, me too.

     
  4. RobynMarie August 7, 2012 Reply
     
     

    Wow I thought it was just me! I can still remember my Nanna saying I had ‘child bearing hips’ which is ironic because that is the very thing my hips were incapable of. But still, when I am skinny, that won’t matter. All the years I’ve said that to myself – needless to say I am not any where near skinny.

     
  5. Lizabelle August 7, 2012 Reply
     
     

    Well said, Victoria. My mum put me on a diet at eleven, and that started a lifelong cycle of bingeing and dieting which I’m still trying to find my way out of. Likewise, I can see the food issues going back three generations, from me (and one of my sisters) to my mum and grandmother. It’s just so sad.

     
  6. Jennie August 8, 2012 Reply
     
     

    When I was 15 I started eating carrots by the kilo to stave off hunger pangs, I ended up turning orange and got Vitamin A poisoning, apparently I could have died if my family had not noticed me turning orange. The things we do! I don’t remember my mother telling me to lose weight, but I certainly remember feeling fat although I would have been size 12 at the time, I was slightly pudgy but nobody told me this was normal for 15 year old girls. I had certainly got the message that I was not thin enough, probably from magazines like Dolly which were big at the time. I’m very proud that my own daughter has never cared as much about her weight as I did, she’s a size 12 to 14 but fit-looking. I always drummed into her that it didn’t matter (although I didn’t feel that way about myself) and she is very bubbly and curvy and in her early 20′s she beats the boys off with sticks, I think it’s because she is confident and doesn’t care that she isn’t a stick figure. Her father also told her over and over that men didn’t like skinny girls, which I think helped enormously too, and I think dads have a big role to play in helping their daughters feel confident and pretty no matter their size.

     

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Comments

  • BeansGran: I'm an E cup. When I was younger and skinnier I was only a C cup and could handle underwires. Then I got pregnant and d...

    Reply|Read all

  • Kasey: Well put Sonya. I am so glad that you have created this documentary. Also, you have put forward a voice of reason backed...

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  • The Huntress: I am very impressed by what you've set out to achieve and how you've come about it. Much of my work these days is in vac...

    Reply|Read all

  • sue Bell: Not everyone has access too or any interest in the internet, you cannot drive a tractor and watch the internet but you c...

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