I'll eat you, Kate Moss.

Kate Moss recently shared with the world one of her "mottos": "Nothing tastes as good as skinny feels."

This is a contentious statement. It promotes unhealthy body image in a Western society that is already rife with women who obsess over their dress size or the circumference of their thighs. It is a damaging message to send to young girls, and one that you can find plastered all over the sad forums in pro-anorexia sites (yes, they exist).

I don't understand why the utterance of this "motto,"this thinspiration, is so shocking, though. Take one quick look at the supermodel and it's obvious that eating isn't one of her regular indulgences. Her 2005 cocaine scandal would lead us to believe that she prefers snorting her energy instead of chewing it. So why are the words ("I don't eat") worse than the image of a woman who clearly eats very little? Her teeny-tiny frame has become normalized (sad, yet true) through repetition in the millions of photos of her (and others like her; she's by no means the only one) in which we see this almost child-like body glamourized and adored. But we throw our arms up in outrage when the bony woman explains how she maintains such perfect emaciation. What's with that?

I also think we squirm at celeb admissions like these because there's some part of our female psyche that wants to believe that she's "naturally" thin. Amazing genes! A metabolism that's faster than Usain Bolt! Believing in such things allows unknown, non-stick-thin women to uphold the fantasy that models and actresses possess superior DNA than the rest of us (and maybe some can thank Mom and Dad for their natural thinness) and that's why they're so darn skinny. But when someone admits that they're thin because they don't eat, it shatters the illusion that those famous bodies are predisposed to thinness through some evolutionary "advantage." No one said the truth was an easy pill to swallow.

Being healthy feels better than being overweight or obese. That argument I buy. I have qualms, though, with the notion that being uber-tiny feels inherently better than being healthy. I mean physically speaking. I think that what might feel good about being extremely, celebrity-like skinny to some people is that they've achieved an ideal - not my ideal, but society's "thin ideal" - and this elevates them somehow, it sets them apart from the rest of us who are thin (but not shockingly so), or healthy, or chubby, or fifty pounds overweight. Our society praises people who have achieved this insane ideal. We see that message reinforced in every single piece of media that we consume. In Kate Moss's case, her skinniness is rewarded with mutli-million dollar modeling contracts and superstardom. So it's easy to see how, for Kate Moss anyway, being skinny feels pretty damn awesome.

Maybe things are changing, with celebs like Beth Ditto, America Ferrera, and Jennifer Hudson, among others, offering fresh representations of the female body in the media. There's also curvier model Crystal Renn who wrote Hungry about how, by gaining weight, she gained confidence and landed more gigs that she ever had as a twig with disordered eating. I haven't read that yet, but it's on my to do list.

I don't know. This is a complex issue - it's heavy, too heavy - and one that I've personally invested too much time, energy, and anguish into. I know I won't solve anything in a blog post, but it's good to talk things out. I could literally go on and on and on about this forever and still have more to add to the Appendixes. I studied a lot of fat/thin related literature while working on my mother-of-a-paper for my grad program. So, as a pupil, I've studied about the pressures and effects of the disappearing female body in contemporary media and, as a woman of that society, I've lived it.

In closing, I should also mention that there's another part to Kate's motto. Here it is in full: "Nothing tastes as good as skinny feels. You try and remember it, but it never works." Huh. Weird. It sure looks like it works to me.

All of thinking has tuckered me out. Now I'm gonna go stuff my face with cheesecake and watch Oprah.

Banana pankakes.

Made delicious banana pancakes for the first time in Dave's new place yesterday. Felt like a christening, like his place was finally really his now that we had made yummy flapajcks with warmed bananas like buried treasures in them. What could be homier?

I love that no matter how frustrating, irritating, or hectic the rest of your day is, you can take comfort in the fact that this crazy day started with a platter of piping hot banana pancakes with homemade maple syrup and fresh coffee. Not nobody can take that moment away from you, no amount of impatient public transit-waiting can screw with the bliss of that morning peace.

Weekend Horoscope:

I only believe in these things when they tell me that I'm destined for a life of great happiness, achievement or wealth. I tend to dismiss those that are of the more horror-scope genre. Like a superstar celeb who only reads good press, even though everyone tells her not to. This one's pretty sweet, though. One to return to when I'm feeling like a thunderstorm, all rainy and gray and thundery:

AQUARIUS
The sun moves into the area of your chart that governs your dreams this weekend, so you've got cosmic permission to think the unthinkable - and you'll soon be doing what others say cannot be done. For Aquarius, all things are possible.

Blogging is boggling.

Ah, wordplay. It's one of my favourite things. Especially when you create a phrase that is catchy, but also truth-revealing.

Boggle is my favorite board game, even though it doesn't exactly have a traditional board with pieces that you move around it. But it still fits into that cateogory of games that you stash on a book shelf in the study, or a toy room, if you're lucky enough to have one of those. When someone says, "Let's have a games night!" I always say, "Cool! I'll bring Boggle." People don't usually respond to the suggestion enthusiastically. So then I figure that Boogle will be the proverbial uncool kid at the boardgames party and then by extension I'll be the actual uncool kid because I brought it. And then that would make me sad. It would be pretty lame of me to sit in the corner and try to beat myself at Boggle (which I've tried before, and it's hard).

My dad's mom (aka my paternal grandmother, if we're gonna get all fancy here) was a diehard Boggle lover, as well. Don't you think that's weird? Sometimes, if my mom's in a charitable mood, she'll humor me and play a few rounds. As I'm giving her a good ass-whooping and dropping 8-letter words on her like bombs over Baghdad, she recalls how the exact same thing happened when she played with Mary (my dad's ma): she got beat, badly. Repeatedly. One day, she said "I must be a masochist" and wondered why she agreed to playing with me in the first place. Sometimes I wonder if Mom feels like she's playing Boggle with a ghost when we go head-to-head?

Other things that Mary Drummond loved that I also love: canoeing, crossword puzzles, my dad.

Catherine and I used to dabble in Boggle every other Tuesday or so at one point in our lives. I took her under my wing, she was my word-spinning apprentice. I showed her some of my tricks. She got real good. She may have beat me once or twice. We haven't played in a while. Maybe we could have a rematch?

So, yeah, if I ever ask you if you want to play Boggle, you should say yes. I'll most likely beat you, but we'll never know until we try.

p.s. That's me and my mom in the pic. We're happy like that when we're not playing Boggle!

Cheers to rebirth.

Here is part of a message that my friend Barrett sent me on Facebook a while back. The subject, our decaying blogs.

So our blogs are hurtin eh? I just checked yours yesterday after a long time of forgeting about the blogworld and I noticed that you're still running that marathon. Your legs must be PUMPED! I'm still going to nuit blanche...

So then I says to Barrett, I says:

Yes, our blogs are in quite a state of disarray. Maybe I need more pictures? Thing is, my digital camera died during a dance floor disaster at a wedding last summer, so I don’t really have the luxury of uploading artsy shots of my azure toenail polish or my raccoon-ransacked green bin every day. Fascinating stuff, but better represented by a pic, not by words. I’d have to do it old-school styles and get the film from my non-digital Canon developed at the drug store. I think they give you a disk, though, with your pics in digi-form, so I could upload them from that. But it ain’t as free as uploading them straight from your camera, is it? Nothing’s as free as free.

We gave these blogs life. They cannot exist without us. When we neglected them by not updating them, we essentially left them for dead. So if we have the power to birth them and the power to kill them, then surely we have the power to resurrect them? I think I’d like to try that. It could be an experiment for both us. A challenge. We could be each others cheerleaders. Then we could write about...on our blogs : )

So. That's the plan for now. Barrett, are you in?

My nose drips like a leaky tap.

I wrote a note to my nose today. It went like this: "Dear Nose: Please stop running. You're a nose, not an Ethiopian marathon star. So relax. Stop running. p.s. I like the way you smell!"

Not sure my nose has received the memo yet, considering the amount of crumpled Kleenxes in my waste basket.

Runner's Delight

On Sunday, I ran my third half-marathon (the Scotiabank Toronto Waterfront Half-Marathon). Go, me.

I felt nervous before the race started. It was still dark outside when Dave and I arrived at Nathan Phillips Square at 6:45 in the morning. The caffeine from the cup of coffee that I downed before leaving the house had given me a buzz: it made feel energized and excited, but it might also have been the source of my jitters.

Or, maybe it was all of those serious runners that made my stomach fill with butterflies. Some of those runners looked real intimidating, like they had a giant electrical current running through their bodies that made them ripple from head to toe every time they took a step. But I tried to ignore the hardcore racers and visualize the race that I was going to run. I said good-bye to Dave (he started in a different corral than me since his pace is much brisker – they were colour-coded according to your estimated finish time) and felt slightly at ease when I looked around at the runners gathered in my corral: these weren’t superstar marathoners. They were average people like me, who were probably just as anxious to get started as I was. Some of them wore humours, self-deprecating t-shirts that said “Training for Boston 2043” and “I will finish this, whether I run, walk, or crawl.” I smiled, which relaxed me. I felt at ease with the average-joe runners surrounding me. They weren’t there to win the kitty, or break world records: some were running for their mothers who were battling breast cancer, while others were running for their nephews diagnosed with bone marrow disease. They were running to prove something to themselves: that they could reach their goals, no matter how much blood, sweat, and tears it took. Let alone hours.

Once I started running, my fear evaporated and I felt good: there were no aches and pains, no doomsday thoughts dragging me down. The sky grew lighter. By the third kilometre, lots of people in my corral had slowed to a walk (amateurs, clearly; started out with too much gusto) and I breezed past them, still feeling confident, relaxed, ready to work – and yes, maybe a tad pompous, because I had so much steam left at a time when others were strolling lackadaisically, as if they were window shopping on Bloor Street.

Kilometres passed. I climbed hills, gave the “thumbs up” sign to my cousins whose cheering made me run faster (thanks, guys!), and wondered why I was doing this again, as a creeping ache colonized my right calf.

When I got to the 19 km mark, I said, “I don’t want to do this anymore.” I wanted to quit and walk it in (head bowed in defeat). All I could see in front of me were sore, tired runners who didn’t look like they would make it to the end. Seeing all of these people ahead of me made me feel claustrophobic. It made the finish line seem impossibly far away. “If I just stopped now…” I started to think, but I put the kibosh on negativity and made a compromise with myself – the same one I had made during the previous half-marathons: “Fine. I’ll run to the end. But I’m never doing this again” and I kept moving my legs, one foot after the other, until I crossed that damn finish line. (As I neared the end, I could hear my mother’s voice calling my name – “Katie! Katie! Go, Katie!” – from the large group of spectators gathered on the sidelines. I looked left to see if I could spot her, but everything was a blur. I couldn’t decipher her in that faceless crowd, but just hearing her chant helped me squeeze out the last dregs of energy needed to cross the finish line just a tiny bit sooner.)

Finally, after 2 hours and 2 minutes, the finish line had been crossed (conquered). Relief. Exhaustion. Dehydration. I walked with the enormous hoard of runners as we snaked our way through the fenced-off finish line behind City Hall to the open space of the square and I realized that, though I usually despise crowds, I didn’t mind this one so much; because this was a special kind of crowd. This was an accomplished crowd. This crowd didn’t have a subway to catch, or a meeting for which they absolutely could not be late. People felt proud – pooped, sure, but proud. They (we) wanted to languish in the charged glow of achievement. We wanted this rare, blissful, fleeting feeling to linger. And we wanted to do it right smack in the middle of the city.

As I broke away from the crowd to find my friends and family, I thought, “Why can’t people always feel this good? This proud? This unbothered by the strangers around them?” I spotted my posse by the fountain (Dave was there too, victorious). They were smiling and I returned the gesture, feeling very happy to see them and glad that the run was over.

And then: “Never again,” I promised myself. “Never again.”

Love actually

Fall is hands-down my favourite season. I don't love what comes after it (the humourless, drawn-out winter), but there are a million autumnal pleasures to savour - most notably, the season's fashion.

I almost died when I saw this Smythe jacket in the Globe and Mail Style section this weekend: I have to have it! I shrieked, already piecing together the perfect outfits for casual shopping days, nights out, and weekdays at the office. I love the chunky hardware on the pockets and the loose, button-less style. It's so effortlessly chic and avant-garde that it's no wonder they called it The Left Bank blazer.

My heart was pounding and my hands got clammy when I saw the picture of the edgy jacket in the newspaper and I knew that could only mean love. I was falling in love - instantly, unconditionally - with the perfect image in front of me. This jacket is so me that seeing it for the first time was like looking in the mirror, like it was already part of my identity. It was the culmination of all my fashion prayers, flown down to earth from the sartorial heavens, just for me.

But my elated heart shattered when I read the fine print and saw the price tag: a horrifying $575.00. So not in the budget. When I realized I couldn't possess the object of my desire, I desired it a thousand times more. It consumed my thoughts and I lost my appetite because what good would eating do me if I couldn't do it in my Left Bank blazer?

I knew that like any dejected lover, I needed to move on. I inhaled deeply and assured myself that Club Monaco or H&M would have a rip-off version on the shelves in no time. But these imitations would hardly satisfy because I would always know that it was a copy and not the one for which I truly yearned.

Actually, just knowing that I can't have the original version has pretty much already ruined my entire season, before even a single leaf has turned.