Occasionally I realize how long I’ve been thinking about size and body image. Here’s something a friend just found for me in a digital archive. It’s a piece I wrote in the mid-80s about dieting and eating disorders. Hard to read but the first line is about spring when young men’s hearts turn to love and young women’s hearts turn to dieting. Sadly what’s changed is that men diet now too. That’s not the kind of equality I was hoping for. Also, I wasn’t thinking then about body acceptance for all sizes. Thin women can be happy too–obviously. There’s no need to say Goodbye Twiggie. She’s welcome to the body positive blog celebration too.
I don’t recall the exact reason but I remember as a graduate student starting my writing CV afresh. I didn’t include any of the paid writing I’d done as an undergraduate on my official record. It was all publicly accessible and written for a general audience and I think I worried it was too journalistic and not professional/philosophical enough. That might be true but I like that my topics of interest and core values haven’t really changed. And now I’m doing more public writing again, I’d like some of that older stuff on my CV again.
I’m still looking for a magazine piece I wrote for a Canadian feminist magazine on the feminist potential of Harlequin Romances. It was an interview with a professor about her research. But no clue which magazine or how to find it. I also wrote a book review about the book Emily Murphy: Rebel. Again, it was for a book review magazine that gave you the book and paid you to write a review. Money for writing was how I started out.
I’m still trying to track this stuff down but I thought blog readers would appreciate how long I’ve been writing and fatness and feminism.
