Disobedience

“A culture fixated on female thinness is not an obsession about female beauty, but an obsession about female obedience. Dieting is the most potent political sedative in women’s history; a quietly mad population is a tractable one.” - Naomi Wolf

Hey...I know I usually like to take us on a wordy journey through the tunnels of my life, but that’s not where we’re headed today. In fact, I’m in no mood to dick around at all. I feel urgency in the air like oxygen, and so I’ll do what I can to get straight to the point.

One of the things that most deeply grieves me about the decades I spent all saturated by diet culture is the absolute disservice I did to the world around me.

I mean, what an abysmal waste.

I’m a smart girl, an agile problem solver, and I’ve got a hell of a way with words.

These are gifts that I could have applied to any problem that plagues humanity, but instead I dedicated them to diet culture. I counted carbs, made elaborate meal plans, and threw myself, with reckless abandon, into every single fad that came along.

Oh sure, I said it was about my health, but there was nothing healthy about it.

It was a distraction. 

A funhouse full of distorted mirrors.  

A “potent political sedative” of the most insidious sort.  

And now I’m pretty pissed about it.

But the absolute WORST part for me is not so much that I’ve squandered all of this skill, but that nearly every woman I know is doing the exact same thing.

Over the years, I’ve been watching us. Observing the way we think. Taking note of what we feel. And the conclusions are killing me.

I’ve watched us channel our passion and purpose directly into the food we eat, the meals we skip, the steps we take, the pursuit of just one single selfie where we can turn a “before” into an “after.”

And it all makes me wonder…. What if 10% of us decided to channel 10% of our energy away from the obsession with our bodies and toward the thing that sets us on fire….

It makes me wonder whether or not the world would still be on fire at all.

Because I have this theory:

Women are the answer.

We know how to hold humanity, rage against injustice, and dismantle toxic systems of oppression.

But we don’t know how to do any of that while our bellies are empty and our bodies are aching.

No, we only know these things when we are full. Sharp. Resilient. Determined.

And do you know what it takes for us to be those things?

It takes disobedience.

An outright refusal to maintain the status quo.

A bone-deep commitment to doing what is right, especially in the face of protest.

Which brings me today.

We cannot afford to be obedient any longer.

People who should not be dying are dying. Systems that should not be thriving are thriving. And we have obedience to blame.

But I want to make a world where that sentence reads: “We DID have obedience to blame, until we decided to disobey.”

And that world begins with you.

Don’t know where to start?

That’s okay. I’ve got an idea.

Throw out the scale.

Eat a bagel.

Marvel at your fullness.

Find the thing that sets you on fire.

And then go start a revolution.

If I’ve got the matches and you fan the flame, who says we can’t just burn the whole damn thing to the ground.