How to approach this New Year.
I’ve spoken about the tired old New Year-New Me fuckery before, (which you are very welcome to check out), but sadly this year, diet, exercise and self-improvement culture continue to be more rampant and pressurising than ever, so I thought that a little reminder of a few things wouldn’t go amiss.
The best Christmas present you can give yourself
Sending love to all of you this Chrimbo, it’s a weird and pressured time. Please don’t worry if you’re feeling a bit flat and shitty, but remember; denying yourself the simple pleasures of food won’t make you feel any better.
Hustle culture and finding your purpose.
It’s because capitalism has taught us that purpose = productivity and achievement (read: money and success according to capitalists). As a result, the search for meaning and purpose in life has become a fucking pressure cooker, fuelled by our fear of failure.
How to make life less stressful.
When life is scary, uncertain and full of grey areas we can’t control, it’s easy to be tempted into trying to secure our fate by following a set out plan to a T. But (without sounding too wanky) by doing this, we run the risk of closing ourselves off from the fruits of the unknown.
DUAL: disgust, disconnection and destruction of our bodies.
Director Scarlett Pivaro Monaghan will interrogate this battle between our minds and our bodies in her upcoming film DUAL (2023). An abstract analysis of how body dissatisfaction disconnects us from our bodies, and the resulting mistreatment of them.
Why do we hate ourselves?
As a society, we can’t compute the concept of being happy in oneself without some sort of martyrdom along the way. It’s rather curious: hating oneself is widely seen as the sure-fire way to eventually loving oneself.
Why calories on menus is bad news.
We don’t need anymore poor fuckers with eating disorders. Ignore the Tory cunts and enjoy whatever food you so please without even a shadow of guilt.
Eating Disorder Awareness Week
Using the word ‘competitive’ to describe an illness is pretty counter-intuitive, I know. I can’t offer solid evidence, but I highly doubt that those with cancer desire to be the sickest cancer patient on their ward, to have gone through the most treatment, or have the worst prognosis, but, eating disorders (EDs) are grossly competitive.
The damage of diet culture.
The fact that I recognise the messages that gym bunnies, “nutritionists”, influencers, fitness gurus and diet companies pump out, as similar to the messages I receive inside my head from an eating disorder, a severe psychiatric illness that has a 20% death rate…is rather fucking scary.
Why diets don't work.
These plans are only lucrative because of the ongoing hatred people feel towards their bodies. It is a vicious cycle. We hate our bodies because we compare them to made up figures on our screens and adverts, we look for an external solution to sort that out, the solution sold to us doesn’t work (because it can’t), we are told that it is our fault, we villainize our bodies for its lack of cooperation, scold ourselves for our inadequacy and look for another external solution to sort our bodies out.