On making a difference, one weight bully or starfish at a time

When I started writing this, it was going to be a rumination on how this asshole a few towns over, a former state rep for god’s sake, had made the news for insulting in his so-called political blog a town school committee chairperson’s weight, and how this woman, Lauren McLoughlin, then took a stand for herself because she wanted to be a role model for her thirteen year old twin girls. 

She made the front page of the local paper by talking frankly at a public meeting about the guy’s blog post and about how bullies come in all shapes and sizes. Every anonymous commenter out there then felt compelled to put in their two cents about women, weight, crappy schools, parenting, how it’s Bush’s fault, Obama’s fault, etc.   

For days since this made the news, ideas have been growing in my head. I wanted to respond. My knee jerk reaction was to talk about my own hurtful experiences with weight bullies. How in grammar school I was the chubby quiet kid who never got picked for anything. 

How I remember a particular incident in fourth grade when I was the last one, the odd one out. We were in the school yard and there were two groups of girls, one to my right and one to my left. In the middle, it was just me and the gym teacher.  I started crying. When the gym teacher asked me what was wrong I said I was crying because I had flat feet and they hurt.  It's been forty-three years, but that memory still makes me sad.

  

How I matured early. I’d grown boobs by age ten and endured getting my bra strap pulled on all the time at recess by creepy boys half my height and weight. I hid my mortification by laughing about it, along with everyone else. 

How by the time I hit junior high I had the lush body of an eighteen year old. Grown men would whistle at me as I walked down Main Street to my after school piano lessons in my plaid Catholic school skirt. How more than once, I got my butt pinched at the local mall. How high school boys hit on me at the public library. How this all frightened the shit out of me.

How I've spent most of my life trying to fix my flaws. How I thought about how much more I could write, did, then hit delete because I’d never finish. Like most women my age, I could write books on this subject and never get to the heart of the matter,  which is that there was always something about me that was just never good enough.   

For me, I suspect that this is partly rooted in my Catholic upbringing. We are all born with original sin. We’re stained from the start. Though I don't believe in sinner babies anymore, I do try my best to be my best, and I am quite aware that I am imperfect. 

For instance, why, with all the awful things going on in the world today --  the teaching to the test world we educators and our students live in, our abused babies, mistreated elders, starving world citizens, the multitudes of lying bags of crap Governor Christies out there – our state reps, mayors, presidents, princes, queens, neighbors, corporate executives – why am I focusing on this judgmental weight thing? How superficial am I, to talk about this stuff when there are so many more serious, life and death issues that I could be writing about instead?   

My guess is it’s because weight and bullying are things I know about and can act upon to some extent. I’ve been bullied. I’ve been a bully.  

I think many folks think this: Why do anything if, in the grand scheme of things, if, in the long run, it won't matter? I think that too sometimes, and sometimes keep my mouth shut.

  

Then I remember my college friend Janet, who goes to Africa every year to give a piece of herself to others. She was motivated by a story called the Starfish of Moshi. Google it. It’s about how, while we can’t help everyone all the time, we can still make a difference. We can start with one starfish at a time, or one child at a time, or one law at a time, or one marathon step at a time, or one kind word at a time, or one public meeting response at a time.

I think we judge each other and ourselves because judging is part of our human collective conscious. I think putting others down has to do with early survival instincts. That’s what I wanted to spend today writing about. I was planning on writing about survival instincts and why we do what we do and how we can be better than that if we just step back and take a few seconds to think about our words and actions, like the cruel blogger didn’t, before we go public, like Mrs. McLoughlin did. 

  

If we want to change the world, I guess we have to start with ourselves. In the end, that’s all I meant to say.