My body is Healthy if not Perfect!

It has been too long since I have taken to the keyboard to write in this space. Chalk it up to writer's block with a hint of daily busyness. In any case something tweaked my sense of justice today that I felt was just screaming for a response. And you know me, I am never shy with my responses.

Last week actress Ashley Judd published an essay in The Daily Beast that was mostly a response to some fairly ugly media coverage about her appearance. While I agreed with most of what she said about the greater conversation that is constantly being had concerning women's bodies and the impossible and ridiculous images that we women are often forced to live up to, it struck me as just a wee bit disingenuous that a celebrity who has traded on her appearance for most of her career in order to further that career was pushing this important and necessary agenda forward. That said, I do think that most of what Ms. Judd railed against in her essay is just and valid. We women are held to unwieldy and impossible standards when it comes to our appearance, and the fashion industry, media outlets, advertising agencies, and others are complicit in this nightmare.

We fast forward to yesterday, where here in Toronto the mayor was conducting his weekly weigh-in. This mayor has struggled mightily with his poundage and while I disagree with the man on just about every policy issue he has, I can readily identify with his battle against the bulge. I commend the man for attempting to get healthy and, speaking as one who has spent a lifetime dealing with weight issues, I share his pain every single week when he publicly gets on that scale and stalls or gains a pound. Yesterday in the heat of the weigh-in two protestors from PETA crashed the party in an attempt to convert "hizzoner"to a vegan lifestyle.

Now I need to make it perfectly clear that I hold absolutely no love for PETA. As a vegetarian, I cringe every single time these crazy people try and speak for me and mine. In my opinion, this is an organization that seems to trip over its own tongue whenever it attempts to advance its single issue agenda. This publicity stunt was not well received by the mayor, the press, or much of the citizenry of Toronto. If we want to have a debate about PETA and their mission and the flawed messages that they attempt to impart, I am willing to have that discussion. What I am not willing to engage in is image bashing like that of one of my Facebook friends this morning that basically trashed the two young women's appearance and body types as evidence that their vegan lifestyle is a hoax. This type of crude attempt at humour is exactly of the kind that Ms. Judd was exploring in her article. When does it become okay to call out these crude responses for that which they are-neanderthal and misogynistic attempts at humour that disparage women.

What if I had used disparaging language to describe the mayor's body type in speaking about my opposition to his flawed policies? Isn't that just as disgraceful as my Facebook friend's comments about these women and the organization they represent? Until we can engage in civil debate about our differences without bringing body and appearance  into the fray, we will never be able to move the dialogue forward and have a healthy debate about the issues which Ms. Judd advocated.

Disturbing, Disgusting, and Dumb

A few random items have caught my eye over the last few days and I must confess that each and every one elicited a response of "WTF?" I have to seriously wonder what went into the thought processes behind these campaigns. Somebody, somewhere had to realize that they would make the files of the disturbing, the disgusting, and the dumb.

Disturbing:

Clothing maker Benetton launched their new UnHate campaign yesterday with a series of creepy visuals of world leaders kissing each other. Check them out here.

Yes, that is the pope kissing an imam, Mr. Obama smooching with Hugo Chavez of Venezuela, Benjamin Netanyahu lip-locked with Mahmood Abbas, and Germany's Angela Merkel getting it on with Nicholas Sarkozy of France. It should be noted that the Vatican was so outraged about His Holiness puckering up, that Benetton pulled that picture from its campaign. Alessandro Benetton, executive chairman of the company launched the ads yesterday and attempted an explanation.

"While global love is still a utopia, albeit a worthy one, the invitation 'not to hate', to combat the 'culture of hatred', is an ambitious but realistic objective. At this moment in history, so full of major upheavals and equally large hopes, we have decided, through this campaign, to give widespread visibility to an ideal notion of tolerance and invite the citizens of every country to reflect on how hatred arises particularly from fear of 'the other’ and of what is unfamiliar to us."

While I can certainly appreciate the ideals of love and not hate, there is something untoward about these pictures. I am not getting the vibe of world peace that I believe that Benetton was aiming for, but rather an uncomfortable and squeamish feeling in the pit of my stomach. An age of understanding cannot be forced upon us with a kiss. There is actually a christological Judas imagery that comes to mind. In truth the photo of Angela Merkel and Sarkozy is the creepiest for me. It reduces one of the most powerful women in the world to a sexist punchline. This is just my opinion, but I certainly would be interested in others.

Disgusting: 


Just in time for American Thanksgiving, those whack jobs at PETA are at it again. In a campaign aimed squarely at children comes this little gem that is popping up on a roadside billboard near you.

Nice? Friendly? Grotesque!! And I'm a vegetarian! I have discussed PETA's over the top tactics before and how I truly believe that their mandate of animal protection gets lost in the morass when it behaves abhorrently and batshit crazy. All this ad serves to do is creep out a bunch of unsuspecting kids and probably land them on a therapist's couch trying to figure out from where their nightmares emanated. I know that it kept me up! All I could think about was some weird science experiment involving the dog Eddie from Frasier. Get with the program PETA. If you truly want to educate kids about ethical eating my advice would be to tone done the nonsense, stop trying to scare the shit out them, and stop thoroughly pissing off their parents. 

Dumb:

And now for the truly dumb. On Tuesday the United States Congress decided that pizza is a vegetable. From the Associated Press:

The final version of a spending bill released late Monday would unravel school lunch standards the Agriculture Department proposed earlier this year. These include limiting the use of potatoes on the lunch line, putting new restrictions on sodium and boosting the use of whole grains. The legislation would block or delay all of those efforts.The bill also would allow tomato paste on pizzas to be counted as a vegetable, as it is now. USDA had wanted to only count a half-cup of tomato paste or more as a vegetable, and a serving of pizza has less than that.Nutritionists say the whole effort is reminiscent of the Reagan administration's much-ridiculed attempt 30 years ago to classify ketchup as a vegetable to cut costs. This time around, food companies that produce frozen pizzas for schools, the salt industry and potato growers requested the changes and lobbied Congress.

A series of high-powered lobbyists from companies that produce and provide frozen pizzas and tater tots to school cafeterias managed to get the deep thinkers from the Congress to classify the two tablespoons of tomato sauce on a pizza as part of the daily requirement of vegetables that school children consume every day. And all of this whilst the United States is battling a growing obesity problem amongst the nation's young people. Jamie Oliver is out there somewhere crying into his fresh veg. Congress is sacrificing children's health and well-being in exchange for a deep-dish from Di Giorno. And we wonder why Americans have no faith in their legislative bodies.

If you have others from the files of disturbing, disgusting, and dumb please forward them to me or comment below.

P.S I've been syndicated on Blogher They liked my post entitled "What Have You Learned, Dorothy" so much that they published it. They like me!! They really really like me! Does this mean that I am now a professional writer? You decide.