Accept ur age
Rae Armantrout, from “Up to Speed”
I guess I was feeling thirsty. So thirsty I posted a triptych of photos of me doing yoga in a park, zoomed in a little too close so it’s mostly man-thigh, old-man forearm veins and a garish running tank Andre Agassi would have worn to practice in his prime. I slapped on a Radiohead song that my yoga teacher likes, a couple dozen people viewed it and I managed to not feel mortified.
I’m just back from a visit to my parents’ place in Arizona, where my mom noted that her weight is still in the 110s. There, my son tried to get the parents to play Just Dance 2024, cuing up “Stronger", which featured a body-positive avatar to lead you through the moves; my mom noted that the avatar was a little chubby, which is strange because Kelly Clarkson is so focused on fitness. She loves Novak Djokovic, due to his complete lack of body fat and gluten free diet. She’s excited that her grandson is so tall and thin.
On the way back from Arizona I listened to the Book Fight podcast discuss “Bridget Jones’s Diary", reminding me of the discourse around the film adaptation, devoted almost entirely to how Renee Zellweger went from a size 0 to a size 2 or 4 for the role. (And how Hugh Grant was still being pilloried for paying for a blowjob.) I’ve never downloaded Threads, but the teasers on Instagram seem to think the one thing I care about is posts dunking on some knob who thinks women shouldn’t wear sundresses if they weigh more than 130.
It’s summer so body image is in the air.
I had some pretty shitty body-image views, tending to wish my partners were fitter and stronger, finding an athletic frame to be a big part of attraction. This was a great way to pass damage back and forth. Late in my last marriage I was pleased I had lost 10 pounds of flab off my narrow frame and my partner, who’d been powerlifting and watching her macros for years at that point, said it might be nice if I gained 15 pounds of muscle. I still feel sick typing that now. Also like a fucking hypocrite.
So when we started doing handoffs of our son in 2020, I literally never wore a short-sleeved shirt. I bought these oversized Nike winter tees in four colors, made sure I always had one in the car just in case on some 108-degree August day I forgot to bury my shameful self in fabric when outside her house. By then I was at a healthy weight, 30 pounds lighter than when we were married, thanks to staying sober, avoiding the buzz-munchies, running and yoga. I told my friend A — we’re rehab littermates — when I finally bared a little forearm in front of my ex; she said, genuinely, “That’s huge!”
Reminder: If you’re going through it, make sober friends.
I hoped that doing yoga in a city park would give the other visitors a real sense of old Austin, since I’m fifty, pretty gray, with a big curly poof. I was only there because my yoga friend T had advertised it for about 30 seconds before moving it to another date, but it turned out to be a perfect Sunday morning. I chatted with a young woman who’d also put it in her calendar; she hopped in the water then left. I stayed and went through 40 minutes of flow that would have been an hour if I had the discipline to hold poses as long as I would in front of a teacher. Meanwhile, the waterskiiers on the river were blasting “Walk” by Pantera. (Sample lyrics: “You can't be something you're not / Be yourself, by yourself, stay away from me”)
Don’t I look peaceful?
More bodies: a work colleague, R, decided at around age 40 that he was tired of being a fit, triathlete type, and instead went all-in on gaining muscle, gaining 30 pounds in a year. He shares a lot about gym cruising, running in shorts with microscopic inseams, and how much he can shoulder-lift or leg-push or whatever. He’s newly obsessed with a mesomorphic woman he met at the gym to the point where he’s considering reversing his vasectomy, because “their kid would have amazing legs.” I don’t know what his relationship is like with his mom, but he’d get along great with mine.
Anyway, my friend A posted a bikini pic in her stories the other day, and she looks great. Her post (like mine) was really quite modest, as these things go. I drew a lot of meaning from it because the point isn’t that she looked great, but that she posted it at all.
It’s enough to have a body that does things. The hard thing is to take up space.