Carol Lay makes me sad (book review of a book I haven't read)

[psocoptera]

Back when I Discovered Comics, Carol Lay's Story Minute became a major influence on how I thought about panel breakdowns and the pacing and size of stories you could tell in a comic.

She's got a new graphic novel out now. It's called "The Big Skinny: How I Changed My Fattitude". There's a sample chapter available.

My reaction: sad. Of course, people can do anything with their bodies that works for them, and people can write whatever books they want to and I don't have to read them, but a) I wish this not-very-interesting subject matter wasn't how an artist I admire was spending their time and creative energy, and b) her perspective on weight seems harsh and limiting to me.

For example, on page 7, panel 5 of the sample chapter, Lay tells us that her "default weight" seemed to be 160 (pounds), and "at 5'9" that was at least 30 pounds too much." She shows us pictures of her clothes pinching, ripping, and popping buttons. (I just really wanted to say to her, dude, it's okay to buy clothes that fit.) On page 10 she draws herself standing on a scale looking sad when she can't maintain a "zaftig" 137 pounds. On page 15, panel 5, she draws her "before" and "after" self, 158 pounds vs 123.

I feel like I should say again, Carol Lay's body is not subject to my approval; there is absolutely no reason in the world she should care at all about what I find appealing or attractive. But this seems to me to be a story about how she dieted herself down from an unremarkable weight to a very skinny weight, and to my eye she already looks great standing on that scale on page 10, as she draws herself. And if *she* loved her body at 158 as much as she does at 123, she could be spending pages 17-25 on something more fun and interesting than calorie counting and denial fantasies. So it makes me sad, that she's apparently poured 200 pages into promoting the Pursuit of Super-Skinniness.

(As it happens, I'm also 5'9", and I also "naturally" weigh something like 160 pounds - my depressed, "sitting around and eating too much vending machine junk and too little good food" weight (as of spring 2008) was something like 160-165, while my strong, active "hiking weight" (as of summer 2007) was about 150-155. I'm not sure how pregnancy will affect that long-term, but I really can't imagine any scenario in which I would want to weigh less than 150-155, and I don't really care if my new strong and active weight is higher, if I can in fact get back the strength and stamina. (Fitting into my old clothes would save money, but, as per above, I totally believe "clothes that fit" are a reasonable expense.) To me, on me, 125 pounds would be scary skinny, like, serious illness skinny, and I can't imagine looking good or feeling good at that weight. Carol Lay might have much lighter bones than I do, or be built very differently, or any number of things that invalidate my automatic comparison. But I will definitely not be reading a book that will tell me how I can "change my fattitude" and go from the left side to the right side of page 15, panel 5, even though it's by someone who used to be one of my favorite cartoonists.)

Comments

[ruthling.livejournal.com]

*sigh*

Carol is/was/said she was also a very strict vegetarian. While I admire that, I also think it might be another symptom of her issues with food.

Thanks for the review. I will not buy or read this.

[crystalpyramid]

Wow. My mom's 5'8", and she's always referred to 135 as her "lowest she can ever possibly weigh". Like it's what she weighed when she was in law school and had no money for food, and she fit into those jeans which are terrifying to look at. As you point out, it's possible we have larger frames or something, but probably not enough to make up for that much difference in weight.

Also, 160 is currently my "weight I'm unlikely to reach, and which I might not like if I did". And I'm two inches shorter. >.<

[adfamiliares.livejournal.com]

Ugh. I'm all for fitness and trying to look good, and my tastes run somewhat skinny, but even to me those weight goals sound wrong. I'm just under 5'6", and 123 is my all-time-low, walking miles every day, "will never weigh that little again and probably shouldn't" weight. Builds differ, blah blah blah, but knowing how thin that weight was on me, I hate to imagine it stretched over an extra 3 inches.

Also, I'm having a hard time imagining a more boring subject for a comic book.

[glassonion]

My weight goal actually is 120, and i've hit that and liked it in the past. But i'm, y'know, 5'2".

Hmm, this is an interesting challenge. My off-the-cuff first submission is "playing DDR", which i think would beat out "watching televised football". (I'm thinking "subject which would make a boring comic book" rather than "boring subject" here.)

[psocoptera.livejournal.com]

Hahaha, 10K Commotion (http://10kcommotion.com/)! There are a number of points where the writing gets a little murky and hard to follow, but some of the art is just *gorgeous*.

This is a fun game, try something else!

[myalexandria.livejournal.com]

well, I'm about 155 right now and I'm about an inch shorter than you, so 160 might work ok for you. My in-my-dreams weight is about 135-140, which I estimate would put me into a size 6 -- lower than that would be awful with my bone structure.

oh, weight issues. Actually I must say, I'm pretty happy with my body lately. What an unusual feeling!

[myalexandria.livejournal.com]

well, I would say people writing dissertations, but really PhD Comics is pretty funny, so I guess I'm wrong about that. I agree that this seems like an incredibly boring subject -- I always roll my eyes when weight loss comes up at the dinner table (generally among people of my parents' generation.) I'm trying to think of other topics that bore me to tears. Oh! Competitive grocery shopping! My grandmother used to do this all the time; we'd take her out for her birthday and she'd talk about how she found bananas for 12 cents a pound or clipped a coupon for this, that, or the other thing. That'd be a seriously boring comic book.

[miraling.livejournal.com]

Oof, I read this too, and I don't really particularly have useful comments other than it makes me sad. Yet one more of the "hey, anyone can do this! It's not so hard! You just really have to want it!" stories that manages to both leave me thinking I can never, ever do that well and also that only a comparably low weight is successful. (What's the minimum weight recommendation for 5'2? I probably don't even want to know, do I?)

[eclectic-boy.livejournal.com]

An interesting challenge... I'd go with the digits of pi. A very long story that doesn't have a lot of high or low points (aside from 9 and 0)

[wayman.livejournal.com]

My reaction upon reading all this health-food-dieting stuff late last night was, upon seeing George Clooney come by with a nightcap, to feel a sudden urge to head downstairs and make myself a White Russian and have about half a bag of chips with hot salsa with it. (Er, yes, of course I acted on the urge! But I was sad I was not able to enjoy my nightcap with George Clooney.)

I really enjoyed about half of the dozen Story Minutes I read (didn't dislike the others, just didn't find them as wonderful), and at some point I'll enjoy going through the whole online archive. Thanks for the recommendation.

[wayman.livejournal.com]

The Feynman Point (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Feynman_point) is very exciting!

Also, I feel like any comic starring Richard Feynman would be inherently awesome, regardless of plot.

[wayman.livejournal.com]

I was shocked that TS Eliot's The Waste Land could be turned into such an awesome graphic novel: the entire, exact text is used as the narration for a pot-boiler detective story, and it works. Did sofer ever show this to you?

[ursula]

I think there are a bunch of pairs where "How to" is boring but the topic could have an interesting storyline. "How to count calories" is boring but "My mom addicted me to diet pills" is kind of fascinating. "How to vacuum floors" is boring but "the crazy lives of the clients I houseclean for" would make a perfectly good comic book.

[rebeccapaul.livejournal.com]

I admit competitive grocery shopping would not translate well into a comic book, but it is way more intersting than weight loss!

As someone who is a few inches shorter than 5'9" and at least 20 pounds heavier than 160, her goal sounds insane.

[psocoptera.livejournal.com]

While there is no reason at all that you should care about what I find appealing or attractive, my reaction to your last question was "why on earth would you care about the minimum weight recommendation?". Sexy curvy girls "should not", in my little world of preferences, be looking at the minimum weight as some sort of ideal. I am aware that "you can do well at being you!" sounds like something out of a 1970s children's brainwashing film, but if I was rewriting this graphic novel, that is what I would like it to say. (Gah, I'm going to have to start worrying about these messages in things my kid sees, aren't I. Stupid Cult of Skinny.)

[psocoptera.livejournal.com]

Ok, am I the only person in the world who just doesn't think George Clooney is that hot? How did he become the gold standard of sexiness, anyways?

[psocoptera.livejournal.com]

That is a really good point. A good narrative about *anything* will totally kick the ass of an instructional manual - unless you specifically need the instructions, I suppose. The "how to" comic of breastfeeding would probably be very boring for most people but I would totally buy it given that I'm reading the same stuff in text format anyways...

[wayman.livejournal.com]

It's less that I think he's hot and more that I think he'd be a fun guy to hang out with for an evening. We could chat about casino stuff, f'rinstance :-)

[psocoptera.livejournal.com]

Huh, that sounds familiar! I think I heard of it but never read it.

[wayman.livejournal.com]

I found The Cartoon Guide to Statistics to be more more useful than the lecture notes or text for the stats class I took in grad school: not just more fun to read, but more memorable and hence it led to better retention.

[wayman.livejournal.com]

Would you like to skim/read my copy during ES-Ball weekend, if you'll be in the area?

[psocoptera.livejournal.com]

I'm sure one could do a great graphic adaptation of the epilogue of Carl Sagan's _Contact_... but I don't know of any such thing existing. Um, how about this xkcd strip (http://xkcd.com/10/)?

[psocoptera.livejournal.com]

Hmmm. In Octopus Pie (http://www.octopuspie.com/2007-05-14/001-pea-wiggle/) the lead character *works* in a grocery store, but I don't think we ever see her shop, much less pursue bargains. Hrm... does the frugality blogosphere overlap with the webcomicsphere? I totally think there's someone who does cartoons... ah, no, I'm thinking about this blog (http://successfromthenest.com/), and he talks about freelancing, not frugality. And is also quite boring, as it turns out. You may have a win here, if the contest is "something so boring no one has bothered to make a comic about it yet". (On the other hand, I can imagine a good comic about someone trying to do one of those "eating on a dollar a day" challenges, or about a parent trying to stretch out the food stamps... it goes back to ursule's point about narrative vs how-to, I think.)

[psocoptera.livejournal.com]

I will not be at ES Ball this year - dancing and long car trips are both things that are not working so well for me at this time/size/trimester. But thanks for the offer - maybe some other time.

[miraling.livejournal.com]

Well, thanks! :) But what I sort of incoherently meant is that, even though it doesn't say it in so many words, the approach in the comic is definitely that (at least for her) the bare minimum "healthy" weight for her height is the right one. I mean, it seems to me like the ideal here, as well as sort of everywhere else I look is to weigh as little as you can get away with. So I guess it's discouraging to know that someone seven inches taller than me thinks 125 pounds is about right for her, when I can't even imagine approaching that weight. I think it especially hit me hard because 120 lbs is the imaginary fairy-wish weight I think about reaching. So if that's what someone that much taller than me thinks of as ideal, what would be "ideal" for me? 115? 110? 100?

I'm not sure how clear I was being there. I guess it's just hard for me to set a realistic, actually-good-for-me weight goal. I could probably feel much more in control of everything if I were really comfortable with a genuinely appropriate-for-me weight, but it's hard to not think "but I'll still be fat" in that range, or to think about the last time I was that weight and how unhappy I was about it at the time.

Er, sorry for going on about all of this. And yeah, I don't know how anyone is sane about weight growing up with all of Cult of Skinny stuff, but maybe you have a better shot than most at keeping these messages at a distance, having thought about it in advance?

[miraling.livejournal.com]

Nah, I'm with you. Totally "meh" on him.

[psocoptera.livejournal.com]

Larry Gonick is *awesome*. I think educational non-fiction is a much bigger category than instructional manuals, though - books like "The Way Things Work", "The Way Life Works", "Understanding Comics", and the Larry Gonick series are graphic classics, but there's much more to all of them than a "how to". I suppose it's possible that Carol Lay has written a book with all sorts of really interesting background about metabolism, the biochemical content of different kinds of foods, social associations of different foods, the history of dieting practices... but from the Amazon reviews it doesn't sounds like it.

[aryky.livejournal.com]

I would like to skim/read it, if the offer is open to other people ;-).

[wayman.livejournal.com]

Of course! And yay that you'll be here :-) But do please remind me by email closer to the ball. I'm hoping there will be various gatherings that weekend and that I'll see you at one or more?

[wayman.livejournal.com]

Huh. 7108914 does not appear within the first four million digits, but 71089314 starts at digit 2,533. I wonder if this was a typo by Randall.

[psocoptera.livejournal.com]

I hope this doesn't sound annoying preachy, especially from someone who's had "thin privilege" for much of their life by just happening to weigh something considered societally acceptable, but my fantasy numbers are 8 hours/9 miles/+-4500 feet/15 pounds. That is, being able to do an all-day 9 mile hike, up and then down 4500 feet, with an average pack weight around 15 pounds (probably the meeple half of the time and our supplies and water the other half). I would be able to summit Katahdin and Mt. Washington with that level of hiking badassery. I say this is a fantasy because I'm really, really, *really* far from that right now (right now I waddle at approximately the pace of my grandmother and my pelvis aches after an hour on my feet - which is not at all strange, given that I'm 34 weeks pregnant, but it's certainly not my body ideal), but it's also not completely crazy for me - I feel like I was getting in range of this when we trained for Half Dome. I don't know if I'll ever be able to get back to that point, but I would totally go for fat+that over skinny and not. Or at least, I *think* I would. Never having had to take much societal shit about my weight, I can't really understand how much it would suck...

Anyways, shorter: I think the answer to the whole weight target thing is that the only way to win is not to play, and a realistic ideal is being whatever weight you end up at when you can do cool physical things you want to be able to do. (Other numbers that come to mind for me are 19/21, being able to dance 19 out of 21 dances at the English-Scottish Ball, or 0/90, being able to make it through a basics yoga class without once worrying about my survival ::grin::.)

[psocoptera.livejournal.com]

I have a long reply to showergrrl below about "dream weights" - I know I have (or used to have) thin privilege and should maybe just shut up, but I'm against 'em. I mean, it is of course none of my business how y'all want to dream about your bodies, but I am of the opinion that we would all have better relationships with our bodies if we focused entirely on what they can do and not on how much flesh they happen to consist of while doing it. It seems obvious to me that those of us who are, say, extreme bad-ass long-distance pilgrimage hikers, should be proud of their tough strong selves, or that those of us who are on a path of ever-increasing jogging awesomeness should be excited about their prowess. (Those of us who are building a human are, honestly, pretty damn thrilled about our body's capabilities, despite missing a few of the abilities that have been deprioritized... ::grin::)

[aryky.livejournal.com]

If this is not the case, it would be strange!

[glynhogen.livejournal.com]

"weigh as little as you can get away with"

That's something I also see and feel. In my case it's largely because if I'm at the low end of my ideal weight, then I'd have a buffer between my current weight and "too much" (which for me falls right around the overweight line). This is probably related to the fact that I've never had problems being underweight (and I also don't like to have to make too many food sacrifices; buffer=no worries). Most discussion about weight revolves around how much you should lose and how you should go about it, not what you should do if you're underweight (aside from "shut up, stop bragging, I'd kill for that problem").

[myalexandria.livejournal.com]

I think George Clooney is pretty hot (though Johnny Depp is hotter), but I've always wondered what the hell people saw in Brad Pitt.

[tirerim.livejournal.com]

Huh. I'm 6'1" and tend to weigh about 155, which I feel is thin without being unhealthily so, so I can certainly see 10 pounds less than that being a possible healthy weight for someone four inches shorter, and maybe even a bit less for someone with less muscle mass (and women do tend to have less muscle mass than men). On the other hand, I have practically no body fat, so someone with more (including many healthy values of "more") is likely to weigh more than that at the same level of fitness. So I find it hard to imagine describing someone who was 5'9" and 137 pounds as "zaftig"; more like "rather slender". (My dad is 5'9" and weighs something like 130, but I'm pretty sure he actually has negative body fat.)

[irilyth]

I'm 6'1" and have ranged from 200 - 240 in recent years; I'm around 210 right now, and clearly have plenty of extra body fat, but not so much that most people would describe my apperance as "fat". (That's a lot more likely at 240.)

My first driver's license, at age 16, lists me as 6'1" and 145 pounds; I was very skinny, with not much in the way of muscle, at that point.

If I made a concerted effort to do it (e.g. training for some specific athletic event), I bet I could get get down to 180, and insofar as I have a "target weight", it's that; and if I did it by eating right and exercising (as opposed to by going on Survivor and enjoying a starvation diet), I'd be in sufficiently good shape that I could do pretty much anything I'd reasonably want to do.

[psocoptera.livejournal.com]

Your 4 inches less/10 pounds less notion makes sense, but 125 is *30* pounds less than 155, not 10. Which seems like more than "a bit less".

Also I think there is a difference between "I am built like a rail, like my father before me, yay rails" and "I have decided to defy my body's hungry-ness and my genetic heritage (see page 13, panel 3, in the pdf, where she shows us her "overweight parents") in order to be built like a rail, yay rails". At least there is a difference in my personal feelings about those two situations.

[crystalpyramid]

I totally agree with this statement.

My dream weight is a weight at which my arms could lift the rest of my body. This is a lot more like "dream arms" than "dream level of skinniness", though. Although that doesn't make it any easier to achieve.

[crystalpyramid]

My sister needs to read this. Can I have enough info to find her a copy?

[ursula]

I don't really go for clean-cut men twenty years older than me. Mind you, I wouldn't go for an intense dieter my mom's age, either.

[crystalpyramid]

Reading the excerpt, it actually doesn't bother me. The only part that's exceptionally annoying is that particular number — 160 being too heavy for 5'9". And the obsession with weight bit, of course. But all my reasonable weights are assuming a certain amount of non-negotiable top-heaviness, and if I had any of the same weights without that, I probably would've been much less happy with any of the weights I've ever had.

I don't know that it's interesting. But I can imagine it being interesting to the kind of boring middle-aged woman for whom that's really been the story of her life.

[tirerim.livejournal.com]

Oh yes; I didn't mean to imply that 125 was not more than a bit less. I was mostly just musing on healthy weights, and coming up with a number that was plausibly significantly below the weight she started at, but still probably well above where she ended. Something like 140. I'm not really sure what to think about defying genetic heritage, though: it's perfectly possible to have bad genes for all sorts of things, so it doesn't seem inherently wrong to defy one's genes with regards to weight, either. Mostly, though, I think that a healthy weight is the weight at which one feels healthy.

[belecrivain.livejournal.com]

Y'know, Jaime Hernandez has also, in the past, included stories that touch on women (specifically, Maggie) bemoaning their current weight, and even popping buttons, without it being the sole focus of the story in question. (Although interestingly, I don't remember a story where Maggie compares herself unfavorably to Penny, even though Penny was "just drawn that way" half a decade before Jessica Rabbit.)

Anyway. Most Boring Potential Comic Subject Ever: the SIC to NAICS conversion.

[psocoptera.livejournal.com]

I'm not really sure what to think about defying genetic heritage, though: it's perfectly possible to have bad genes for all sorts of things, so it doesn't seem inherently wrong to defy one's genes with regards to weight, either.

Hm. Hmmmm. Hm hm hm. My thinking around this is complicated, and possibly in error at several points. Bear with me, here?

1) I don't want to give any particular privilege to "genetic authenticity". By all means, fight the suckers, whether "at the source" (retroviral gene therapy, say) or "downstream" (chemical, surgical, behavioral interventions). Resculpt yourself into the image you, uh, imagine.

2) But not all images have the same value. They come from different sources, they have different costs, some are just more or less conducive to leading a good flourishing life.

3) "Resembling one's parents" is a frequent default of being a biological descendent, and I am suspicious about what is lost when one opts for deliberate rejection of this resemblance. Are there costs of that? Does it damage one's sense of connection to one's family? If you're mostly looking to people outside of your family as your sources for your image of how you want to look, are you sending negative messages to your family about how they look, and do you want to be doing that?

4) Does the success of some people in defying some aspects of their genetic heritage at an acceptable-to-them cost lead to an unrealistic expectation that *anyone* should be able to defy *any* aspect of their genetic heritage at an acceptable cost? Is it sometimes worth promoting acceptance of even those things one *could* change, to create a better buffer around the unchangeable? (Or is it better to for everyone to dream the impossible dream and fight the unbeatable foe and all that? I think my answer is that in many cases self-acceptance is a necessary precondition of self-esteem and personal growth, and that "never giving up the fight" can be a form of denial that rules out more effective strategies for getting to the further-on goals.)

[psocoptera.livejournal.com]

Wow, I had to look up what that was, and... yeah, that is pretty much the most boring potential comic subject ever. Dude.

[crystalpyramid]

I had an interesting conversation with my little sister this weekend, wherein I learned that when she had starved herself down to 135 lbs (she's 5'9" or so) she was still a size 12. Which is also the size she is now, at significantly more than that. I mean, she was very thin in the arms and shoulders and knees, but apparently her hips are just that big.