Procrastination, June Style

Yesterday, I found ways to keep my weekend going after attending a meeting and then looking for reasons not to work on my personal goals and the academic pressures to be on top of my game. First I ran an extra two miles than I usually do. Then I walked the dog. I went to the gym and grocery shopped. I came home and ironed a semester's worth of shirts. Finally, I read Susan Vaught's Big Fat Manifesto. I'm now thinking about ideal weights, body image and the stress of trying to fit a cultural mode that some bodies aren't designed to do. A quirky day indeed.

In the story, a young senior in high school writes about her boyfriend who chooses to have gastro-intestinal surgery to lose weight. Overweight herself, she works to unravel the risks of the procedure and to write a critique of thinness in her school's newspaper. It received national recognition, but also unravels her own insecurities, fears and troubles.

I'm left more knowledgeable about the stress of losing weight and how traumatic it is for young people, especially those labeled obese by their physicians. It helps me to recall the life time diet I've watched many relatives ebb and flow through. I recall my own drive to run for weight monitoring and the psychological drama of wondering what it would be like to genetically have a Hollywood body. Normal bodied people, I imagine, don't stress about weight because it's not an issue.

At the heart of this adolescent novel is the tension of trying to fit a 'norm' of acceptable being. There is no normal, though, and abnormality is more common than not. I'm going to think about this book for some time. It was well done and although it was a part of my procrastination, it is also a part of the work I do. I'm always a sucker for an adolescent story.