Wednesday, February 15, 2017
Girl Talk And A New Game!
Girl Talk And A New Game!
A recent email exchange between myself and my friend Lucy:
Lucy: I just bought some yogurt-covered coconut clusters, thinking they sound fairly healthy... only to find the main ingredient is chocolate... and theyre amazing. Damn you, diet! No wheat in them, though. I win!
Léonie: My "diet" is also going badly. Food-wise Im doing...ok... but I think drinking 5 glasses of wine (last night) and three pints of beer (night before) is not strictly ideal. I am thinking I am going to stop drinking anything but gin/vodka and tonic for a bit, because its all very well cutting down calories food-wise, but if you basically double your intake via alcohol it kind of negates the whole damn thing.
Must...be...thin...for...festivals...
Lucy: Yet not skinny... at least not legs?! Its confusing being a girl - I was talking about my diet earlier, and got a bit offended when the woman next to me gave me some advice - as though she was agreeing with me that it was for the best that I diet...
Léonie: Ha! Last night my friend said something like, yeah, well were just normal sized people, right? And I of course agreed but in my head I was going what? Normal? Normal like fat? Fat normal? I cant believe you just called me fat! Aaaaah!
Which perhaps is not terribly rational. Because its really not cool to talk about oneself as fat (third wave feminism tells us not to) so we all deny were on diets (at least I do). I deny it, but then get home and stare woefully at my (really quite normal) self and impose a One Love Bar A Week And No Chocolate And If You So Much As Look At A Bit Of Toast Youre A Horrible Weak Person injunction to try and become skinnier. I hate the word skinny but if someone used it to describe me (not just my legs - as the implication to me is pig on sticks) I would be secretly absolutely bloody delighted.
Anyway Lucy you dont need to diet, youre tiny.
Love Bars all round, I say. We can always puke them up afterwards. (Too far?)
Lucy: Haha! God, I hate being a girl. Were ridiculous creatures, all of us. Theres actually no way to win. All straight men must be bonkers!
And you dont need to diet either. Go buy yourself some yogurt coconut clusters.
Riots, not diets!
I think this sums up perfectly the relationship that most women my age have with their bodies. We tell ourselves and each other that We Dont Care, and Down With Size Zero etc, but secretly we all want to be a bit thinner. Peculiar creatures, arent we?
Also, on a side note, I drink too much.
Anyway.
I have developed a new game to entertain myself on the tube. Its called Imaginary Counting, and basically involves pretending to count stuff in your head. For example perhaps youre trying to remember which cats you put in that saucepan or how many ponies it take to change a lightbulb. If you use your fingers to count on, and do some pausing/squinting between each number, it can be really fun. There is, of course, no reason for it, but therein lies the joy. Only somebody with a penchant for the ridiculous would sit on public transport and pretend to count stuff for no reason, and that, my friends, is exactly why we should all do it.
Available link for download
