Wellbeing Thread - who's in?

i want to lose weight because the area around my belly button is getting really sore where all my clothes dig in. it actually hurts, and when i'm at home i walk round with my trousers undone. i don't actually own a single pair of trousers that are comfortable excpet one pair of trackies. i'm also in the obese range for my bmi. and i'm out of breath walking up the stairs. i've also just moved to fitness and outdoors central.

it's feck all to do cultural expectations (except the pseudo-scientific one that says i'm about to have a cardiac arrest) or men. it's bloody uncomfortable and i'm too skint to keep buying new clothes just because i love food. i want to be able to eat, and zip my trousers. and they ain't skinny jeans, i can assure you. today i am sporting a sexy pair of black trackies, walking socks and a roll neck. i am the very antithesis of cultural expectation. that said, i do intend to drag out 'fat is a feminist issue' and re-read it.

tal, were you on the 'resisting compulsory femininity' thread? as a result of that one, i chopped off all my hair. it was waaaay down past my shoulders and a reet pita. it's now pretty much a crew cut. that and the hairy legs are all good. but the fat hurts and i want rid of it. i don't see it as any real part of the essential me - it's just weighing me down. i want to learn how to x-country ski this season, and at the mo it would just about kill me.

dust bunnies sound cute

Dust bunnies

Comrade, don't worry about it, I wasn't taking anything personally! Just wanted to stress this came from me, not him. Dustbummies and clutter just make me aarghh
Interesting the concerns that have come up on this thread. I very much read it as wellbeing and that the people who wanted to lose weight etc were doing it to make themselves feel better, ie healthier and more able to do anything they want to do, even if that's as simple as running up stairs without getting out of breath.
Personally, I think being any weight / size is fine, so long as you have a basic level of fitness so that your weight / size doesn't limit you from doing whatever you want to do. Some "fat" people can be very fit at the same time and correspondingly some people can be so thin that they don't have high enough energy levels to be able to undertake any kind of significant physical activity.
Disclaimer - I am not talking about people who have illnesses etc which limit their energy levels.

Didn't perfume start out as a cover-up-the-stink remedy for both sexes back in the day when nobody bathed regularly?

And thunderbolt, I don't think you're being relentlessly negative. You're focusing on what's underneath the unthinking beauty rituals a lot of women follow.

I'm in. I find the being kind to myself part very difficult.

LOL Chicken, I'll do my best.

Just in case my relentless negativity is spoiling this thread, what I really like about are the self nurturing aspects that people are talking about. I think that's definitely one area that women need to focus - being good to ourselves. Because whilst we're supposed to self improve, we're not supposed to be kind to ourselves and love ourselves the way we are right now.

It's not just our brains either is it Jacks, it's our talents, our hearts, our personalities, our achievements. There's so much that isn't taken into account.

Instead what's important is that our eyelashes aren't long enough and need to be extended.

You might feel fresh as a daisy, but the point about perfume is that women are supposed to wear it to disguise any unpleasant smell that might offend men, and also to be appealing to them. It's part of the female beauty duty.

I like your list TAL.

You sound cool. You can be my role model if you like :)

Hmmm... so on a day when I've showered and smell fresh as a daisy, what's perfume then? An indulgence that makes me feel good or... what? I have a scent that I really love, it just makes me feel all warm and mmmmmmm :).

Re: eyelash serum - what a pile of crap. I've tried it, because I needed something to help me repair the damage done by eyelash extensions, which I was talked into by a friend during a drunken night. They look beautiful (although my own lashes are ok) but do a bunch of damage when they're falling out. Having been left with little short stubby lashes (eeek!!!) I tried serum. What a waste of money.

Thunderbolts - you've summed up what pisses me off. I'd only like to add "we live in a culture where women aren't good enough and aren't valued for their brains so have to constantly try to improve their looks". Grrrr.

I did read a bit of the thread Elderberry and apparently one brand of eyelash serum stopped working so another was going to have to be tried.

I hope it doesn't look like I'm having a go at them, what pisses me off is the fact we live in a culture which believes that women aren't good enough and will never be good enough, so we have to keep constantly trying to improve.

My list would be (and this is from a feminist well-being point of view, not anything else):

1. Read Gyn/Ecology
2. Read Beauty and Misogyny
3. Think about it
4. Carry on

I've completed it already, so I'll just have to be happy the way I am.

Jackmania - women need perfume because they smell bad, apparently.

eyelash growth serum? What's that when it's at home? Is it scientifically proven to work?

bloody fruit.

sometimes I make lists of all the things I am going to do to be a better person, and then it gets me down to see how far I have to go!

So then I rebel and say, Im going to eat more chocolate and sit on the sofa and watch comedy! The thought makes me feel free and happy, and then I actually sometimes dance around and eat fruit.

So, a question about perfume. Is it a wellbeing thing or a vanity thing?

Oh, isn't that funny - I was half asleep this morning thinking I'd wanted to add my pumpkin bread recipe to this thread yesterday (briefly scanned and saw the post about banana bread which gave me the idea) and while lying there drifting thought, "the well-being thread reminds me of the princessing thread". It wasn't a bad idea at all, I thought. But I like the slant of this thread better - in that it's something we're doing for ourselves.

Morning all (7:40 am here).

This was the Project Princess thread:

www.mumsnet.com/Talk/style_and_beauty/1156122-Project-Princess/AllOnOnePage

They were also making lists of things to do to make themselves "better":

. 8 glasses of water a day

1. Exfoliate
2. Use teeth whitener
3. Use anti-aging face cream
4. Intensive nail care (feet and hands)
5. Use eyelash growth serum OR eye cream.
6. The Shred / other intensive exercise
7. At least 2 extra fruit & veg
8. Healthy breakfast daily

The bits I listed I thought were patriarchal Eleanor:

"skincare, clothes and weight loss"

Women being concerned with how we look and spending time and energy on it is what the patriarchy wants. Women not thinking we are good enough, in whatever way, and always being on a self-improvement jag is another.

I thought this thread might be an ironic take on the Project Princess stuff going on in Style and Beauty but in fact some of it sounds exactly the same as what they are doing over there.

Once again I"m not criticising anybody for taking part in these things, that's up to them, what I do find difficult as seeing this promoted as if it's coming from some kind of feminist angle when at least some of it isn't. The feminine corvee is real, women have to undertake it, it's not something we should aspire to though.

Juggling, the weight loss thing on this thread seems to be viewed as an uncritical good. Something like 40% of British women are on diets at any one time, most women hate their bodies. In my view that's the real issue, not what size anybody is.

I think there are 2 types of looking good.

The media driven one which we are all supposed to aspire to but never will. It's a caricature of the real life one, which is the one we compliment our nearest and dearest on. That's health driven - ok, and youth driven - not so ok,imo, so means clear skin, shiny hair, fit and toned looking, which doesn't exclude being overweight and does not equal thin.

If anyone can decipher those garblings fair play to you. v badly put, am singing and dancing to nursery rhymes as well at the mo

Hi thunderbolt and friends,

Is anybody else a bit concerned ...

Well, a bit concerned about the weight loss issues - I just think that's a very tricky issue. So hard for people to talk about solely in terms of health and personal well-being.

We seem to be so conditioned to look good in various ways for other people's benefit don't we ?

That's why I think this is such a good and interesting thread. Not without it's challenges though !

Gog walking, of course everyone loves that dog obv.

I do accept that the beauty standard thing is problematic - but I kind of like the colours thing for eg, it's about bending fashion to suit YOU rather than the other way round. I get you are still accepting the notion of fashion beauty etc but it's not the toxic version which imposes one standard for all, and it's more about bringing out the beauty of the face, which is possible for all ANd is our most individual physical feature, rather than castigating the body for not being 19 and perky.

I disagree thunders, I don't have any problem with wanting to look well,(even if the standards are patriarchal,) because

• it's only a minor subset of overall self care, in proper proportion to all the other facets of ourselves, which it is on this thread, imo.
• the thread is about self care and nurturing, which means doing what you want to do rather than should, iyswim, there are times for fighting the patriarchy and nurturing time is not it.
• there are loads of feminist discussions about the beauty standard which most posters are aware of, so it's not necessary about critiqing it here and now, I think most posters are aware of the context already.
• I see the weight loss talk etc as more of a happy side effect of taking more exercise which is enjoyable, yoga & gog walking for etc, rather than the point of it.