free hugs for peace

An important part of working towards a culture of peace is learning to connect compassionately with our relatives, human and non.

Juan Mann started the Free Hugs Campaign in Sydney, Australia, and it grew to a worldwide phenomenon. Coming home from London, he was standing in the airport feeling alone and needing a hug, and decided to stand on the busiest corner in town with a huge sign that said "FREE HUGS". He continued to do this, persistently, and started connecting with many people. The movement gained fame and momentum, and was consequently banned by the government. Not to be discouraged, Juan started a petition to un-ban it, and got the required 10,000 signatures.

Free Hugs is now an international phenomenon, with people worldwide holding their own hugathons.

Sometimes in our activism and passion we forget that at the basis of each relationship is connection, that at the basis of what makes us human is that moment in which we are one with another human being. Hugs are the physical expression of that oneness. And it is only by realizing that oneness can we truly start on the road to peace.

It's not always easy. Hugathons can and will be met with resistance, great or small. But in making the effort, and continuing to do so, come wind or rain or storm, we can make a difference. And that is true of all activism.

you can sleep when you're dead

SLEEP THERAPIST DR. RUBIN NAIMAN EXPLAINS THE TRUE CAUSES OF SLEEP DISORDERS, CAFFEINE CRAVINGS AND SLEEP HORMONE IMBALANCES
By Dani Veracity
News Target
Monday, January 16, 2006

http://www.newstarget.com/016768.html

Seventy-six percent of Americans are lacking something right now. No, it's
not the latest fad fashion, electronic device or even money in the bank.
It's sleep. Thomas Edison invented the light bulb so that people could work
at night, and there are now 25 million night shift workers in U.S.-occupied
territory. Thanks to the light bulb and the later invention of television,
sleep quantity (per person) has decreased by about 20 percent since 1900.
Furthermore, 76 percent of Americans have a sleeping disorder at least a few
days per week, contributing to our society's epidemic of daytime sleepiness,
depression and adrenal fatigue, sleep therapist Dr. Rubin Naiman said in his
November lecture at the 2005 Complementary and Alternative Medicine
Conference (CAMCON) in Tucson, Ariz.

Modern Western society doesn't comply with our natural biorhythms. Humans
are built to nap, according to Dr. Naiman. When we override our natural
desire for midday rest, the conflict carries over to sleep disturbances at
night. Furthermore, similar to the problem of our junk food-laden diets,
we're overfed yet undernourished when it comes to light. During the day, we
receive dampened light from fluorescent bulbs rather than the vitamin D-rich
sunlight that our bodies need. Then, during the night when we need the dark
to trigger essential melatonin production, excessive light at night (LAN)
erodes our "lunar consciousness" and throws our body rhythms out of balance.
In short, we have too much light when we don't need it (at night) and too
little when we do (during the day).

Melatonin, a neurochemical released from the pineal gland, is as essential
to the human body today as it was during our evolution. Accordingly, Dr.
Naiman talks in great detail about this product of serotonin, even looking
back into the ancient Greco-Roman perspective of it and sleep in general.

From a purely biological standpoint, melatonin, which is produced during
absence of light, communicates the fact that it is night to our bodies,
triggering the release of GABA, our bodies' natural tranquilizer. LAN
suppresses melatonin production, hindering this entire process and setting
the stage for a phenomenon many of us know all too well: Daytime sleepiness.

Even though we're tired during the day, rest is somewhat of a taboo topic in
modern society. We tend to associate it with laziness and, as Dr. Naiman
points out, "When we rest, we experience the opportunistic emergence of our
shadow issues." In other words, resting often gives us time to think about
everything we'd rather forget, which is one of the reasons why many people
don't like to rest. It's the common "I-don't-have-time-to-think" phenomenon.
Unfortunately, as adrenal fatigue expert Dr. James Wilson explains in his
November lecture at the 2005 First Arizona Choices Exposition in Tucson,
Ariz., "Our lifestyles have changed, but our bodies haven't." We may not
like to rest, or perhaps have time for it, but our bodies still desire it.

In fact, napping can provide amazing health benefits. It lowers diastolic
blood pressure, improves mood, improves work and school performance (bosses
and educators take note) and helps readjust our nighttime sleep patterns
back to the way our ancestors slept before the Industrial Age and, according
to some experts, the way our bodies were designed to sleep at night.
Historian A. Roger Ekirch of the Virginia Polytechnic Institute found that,
before the Industrial Age changed everything, people slept in two phases:
"First sleep," a period of being awake shortly after midnight, and "second
sleep."

Using this historical data as his guide, National Institute of Mental Health
(NIMH) psychiatrist Dr. Thomas A. Wehr set out to learn if the human body
would revert back to this segmented sleep pattern, given natural,
pre-Industrial conditions. In Dr. Wehr's study, 15 healthy adults were
prohibited from using any artificial light from dusk to dawn and given 14
hours (6 p.m. to 8 a.m.) for sleep. They slept 11 hours each the first few
nights to presumably catch up on lost sleep, but then eventually settled
into a pattern beginning with a few hours of nighttime rest.

This nighttime rest is "an essential bridge to night consciousness,"
according to Dr. Naiman. We have to slow down before we can fall asleep and
experience hypnagogia, a sleep-onset dream. Unfortunately, many of us don't
take the time to pursue nighttime rest for psychological and sociological
reasons.

After a few hours of nighttime rest, Dr. Wehr's volunteers then fell into
REM asleep for three to five hours ("first sleep") before awakening. During
REM sleep, the brain is as active as when it is awake. Due to this alertness
without daytime constraints, regularly awakening from REM sleep is
significant in itself, as it allows people to remember and reflect on their
dreams in a semiconscious state, according to Dr. Wehr. In fact, he
attributes modern society's disconnection with dreams, myths and fantasies
to our lack of midnight reflection.

Following this hour or so of quiet time, the volunteers then slept for about
four more hours before finally awakening. In conclusion, the NIMH study
reinforced Ekirch's historical data, making it seem likely that the human
body would naturally like to sleep as it did before artificial lighting, and
that waking up midway through the night is innate, rather than a disease
meant to be treated with sleeping pills.

Given that most of us are not getting the quality or quantity of sleep our
bodies require, and that our schedules often don't allow time for naps, what
are we supposed to do about our daytime sleepiness? Many of us turn to
high-glycemic carbohydrates like white flour or refined sugar as the answer,
putting our bodies at risk for obesity and type 2 diabetes. We also mask our
sleepiness with caffeine, making it what Dr. Naiman calls the "fuel of
industrialized culture."

Three hundred million cups of coffee are consumed in the United States each
day and it is the second-most commonly traded commodity in the world.
Unfortunately, our misguided "solution" to daytime sleepiness only adds to
the sleep disorders we experience at night, as caffeine's half-life is 7.5
hours, meaning that you still have half the amount of caffeine in your
bloodstream more than seven hours after you drink or eat a caffeinated
product. No wonder we can't fall asleep at night, or even get a "good
night's sleep" when we do.

Lack of sleep eventually leads to fatigue, which is much more serious than
everyday drowsiness. By Dr. Naiman's definition, fatigue is a "sustained
state of exhaustion, a lack of physical or mental energy." As you might
imagine, fatigue is all too common today, accounting for 10 million
outpatient physician visits in the United States per year, mostly associated
with depression. Ironically, Big Pharma's answers to depression, SSRI drugs,
actually worsen the sleep-related problems they were designed to relieve.
Pharmaceuticals like Prozac cause reduced REM latency, which actually
promotes depression, Dr. Naiman explains.

The real solution to fatigue is easy enough: Make time to rest. Taking a
break from time to time doesn't mean that you're lazy; it means that you
want to be healthy. Plus, keep in mind that attaining healthy sleep will
actually increase your overall productivity and your enjoyment of life.

The above is proof that being tired is not laziness--it's an indicator of an unhealthy lifestyle.

Right now it's 4am and I'm up, in flourescent light, doing stuff when I should be sleeping so I can call bill collectors early in the morning. Living example of the above. And the living dead.

breastfeeding bothers conservative america

http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/15720339/ MSNBC.com Woman kicked off plane for breast-feeding Files complaint saying she was being discreet, airline disagrees The Associated Press Updated: 2:07 p.m. HT Nov 16, 2006 BURLINGTON, Vt. - A woman who claims she was kicked off an airplane because she was breast-feeding her baby has filed a complaint against two airlines, her attorney said. Emily Gillette, 27, of Santa Fe, N.M., filed the complaint with the Vermont Human Rights Commission late last week against Delta Air Lines and Freedom Airlines, said her attorney, Elizabeth Boepple. Freedom was operating the Delta flight between Burlington and New York City. Gillette said she was discreetly breast-feeding her 22-month-old daughter on Oct. 13 as their flight prepared to leave Burlington International Airport. She said she was seated by the window in the next-to-last row, her husband was seated between her and the aisle and no part of her breast was showing. A flight attendant tried to hand her a blanket and told her to cover up, Gillette said. She declined, telling the flight attendant she had a legal right to breast-feed her baby. Moments later, a Delta ticket agent approached and said the flight attendant had asked that the family be removed from the flight, Gillette said. She said she didn't want to make a scene and complied. "It embarrassed me. That was my first reaction, which is a weird reaction for doing something so good for a child," Gillette said Monday. A Freedom spokesman said Gillette was asked to leave the flight after she declined the blanket. "A breast-feeding mother is perfectly acceptable on an aircraft, providing she is feeding the child in a discreet way," that doesn't bother others, said Paul Skellon, spokesman for Phoenix-based Freedom. "She was asked to use a blanket just to provide a little more discretion, she was given a blanket, and she refused to use it, and that's all I know." A complaint against two airlines was filed with the Vermont Human Rights Commission, although Executive Director Robert Appel said he was barred by state law from confirming the complaint. He said state law allows a mother to breast-feed in public. The Vermont Human Rights Commission investigates complaints and determines whether discrimination may have occurred. The parties to a complaint are given six months to reach a settlement. If none is reached, the commission then decides whether to go to court. A complainant can file a separate suit in state court at any time. © 2006 The Associated Press. All rights reserved. This sounds rather ridiculous to me. First off, it's a legal right for a woman to feed her child, whether in public or private, regardless of it bothering anyone. Second off, if it bothers anyone those people should be killed right now, because they obviously don't appreciate the gift of life their mothers gave them in birthing them and then breast-feeding them. Unless they're the non-breastfed type. Which would explain this sort of psychotic, anti-social reaction.

love is the answer

rereading entries whilst deleting them has made me re-realize how deeply i feel for blue...and how attached i was to her. and that may explain my clinginess with my boyfriend....emotionally, he's just blue's replacement.

i'm really fucked up.

remember, remember

so today is november 5th and the full moon, as well as my friend's 'expecting' date. i find it to be full of good omen...a remembrance of pagan traditions (burning man) as well as a celebration of revolution against tyranny. of course, i live in a place where it is illegal to set off fireworks on any day except new years or july fourth, so i will have to make due with a small beach fire tonight. because that's not illegal.

it's actually quite fitting...with the celtic new years just past, and the re-evolution that this day symbolizes, my plan to do a fire in which i burn all the negative things i don't want in my life, in order to make room for the positive things i do want. maybe a purely selfish way to spend such a day, but if i don't start with myself where should i start? besides, i could use more energy to do the things that are not selfish.

or perhaps just the strength of will to refuse the things i know i should--ie social life and fun--in order to do what's important--ie homework, writing, and activism. but it again boils down to that question of what's more important: personal happiness and a willful ignorance, or impassioned activism and absolute self-misery. they are both important--it's finding the ever-escaping-me gay psychic, it's achieving balance. it's having enough energy to do so.

and i find that i don't. and i end up swinging mostly to personal happiness, because it really is near-impossible to say no to my boyfriend. i'm not saying he's a bad influence--indeed, personal happiness can be a good thing to focus on if you're used to pushing it aside to make everyone else comfortable--i'm just saying i'm having trouble controlling myself.

and my emotions. i haven't taken my pills because mostly i don't need them, but then i have these wild mood swings every week or so, and they always catch me by surprise. so i take the pills and feel dulled down but not any happier. sr doesn't work as well as xl did for me. so i desperately try to stay happy, to stay afloat, at all costs, because i am happy. i am. this is not denial. i've just fallien into a 'used-to-it' happy that allows me to become upset at other things. the novelty has worn off; i've fallen back into old habits.

i feel too much, but the alternative is too scary. pure logic is pure evil. emotions dictate morals. that is why psychopaths are so scary.

but i do want to tone it down. to feel as much as i do but not show as much as i do.

i am tired of being a heart-on-my-sleeve girl.

hence this ceremony. hence the need for a change.

hence so much.

lit cigarette ends

Sometimes I really wish I could step away from it all. We're overstimulated, as a population. I would spend my time writing in a little hobbit hole somewhere north enough to be small-town but not uninhabitable and occasionally use the internet cafe down the street to check my mail and update a blog or two.

But then I get distracted and can't seem to reduce the clutter in my life because it all demands so much of my attention and where did I put my red sharpie?

Somehow my thoughts leap to the page, unedited, and I can't seem to stop the flow that pulses forward like my blood.

Today's lifestyle has cut into the vein of our existence. We're slowly dying. There is a lot of blood in this entire species, of course. It won't be as quick as with one human. 8 pints X 7 bil.

Moore was right. We're all getting ADD. We can't focus on one thing long enough to get it completed right because we're constantly multitasking. My leg shakes constantly just to keep me going--if I sat still I wouldn't be able to concentrate.

As it is my typing has gone steadily downhill in the past years, from 45 wpm to about 20 if that--that's including deleting to fix typos.

There's just too much.

And I just want to finish my book, and read, and lie in bed on Saturday mornings, philosophizing or maybe just sleeping with Travis, and go to the beach on weekends, and finish school, and maybe get some exercise, and eat right.

But the constant glare of flourescent lights and the shine of the screen make me sick to my stomach and head all day, and the air conditioning makes my breathing funny, and by the end of the day or sometimes 15 minutes into it my eyes are too tired and I walk blind, and I end up sitting for hours without food and by the time it occurs to me to eat I'm too hungry to wait for anything worth eating to cook so I grab a piece of pizza from last night and chow down without heating before retreating into the little cave of technology I inhabit.

Or I go to Kihei and hang out in the gaming center of the respiratory problems and the freezing cold, because I enjoy the company immensely. And I drive home in the dead of morning, very tired and blasting rock to keep myself awake.

I end up sleeping until the after noon, wasting most of the daylight hours on dreams and tossing and turning and occasionally falling out of bed, because a single is way too small for two generously-sized people.

And I feel like I can never find the time to do all that I want or need to do, that I can never find the energy to complete my projects or to keep a steady job.

I find myself shifting my concerns to my own happiness and not really caring who I hurt in that process--isn't it my turn?

And that is selfish of me, because I was put on this planet to do good for others.

But I can't help myself.

And I drop priorities to others and forgot to call others or email them for months at a time, and it's not that I don't care it's just that there's too damn much.

And there are so many expectations that I could just throw up.

So I say fuck it and go back to bed.

voting

"Those who are too smart to engage in politics are punished by being governed by those who are dumber." -Plato

I have a few friends who didn't vote--either because they refused to on grounds of principle, or because they were too damn lazy to register and/or get to the polls.

Then we go to see movies like V together and they get all "Well, I hope that the future isn't like that!" and we immediately go home to sit on our butts and play Kingdom Hearts or read fantasy or play online video games or somesuch student distraction.

Meanwhile, out of the 20 or so people on campus who actually know we have a school newspaper, not even half read the damn thing because they won't listen to student voices.

Said student voices get discouraged...and go back to playing video games.

This isn't about voting, though that subject is included here.

This is about caring enough to make an effort.

I'm not saying voting will make a difference, when we live in a world where electronic voting makes stealing elections so much easier. I don't even think it does.

But I vote, and will continue to vote, because it is one of the few ways I can attempt to revive Democracy from where it fell, slain with the Bush Admin's totalitarian agenda.

You can deny it all you want, you can deny that they would ever try to do that. They're doing it already, and when it comes down you'll be dazed by what hit you.

What no one sees is the connection.

In V, they didn't see it coming until it was too late.

Most people now don't see it coming.

I can see possible futures stretch in front of my mind's eye, coming to conclusions with ease fostered by years of reading and writing science fiction.

One example--the Peace King Tunnel, proposed by Rev. Moon (whose right-wing religious group OWNS the Washington Times) and supported by Neil Bush, brother to the president, is completed. As the Unification Church grows in power and influence, people of different religious and sexual persuasions go into hiding as best they can. But when you have to hide from your own spouse, who is chosen for you by the leader of the new world order, where can you go? What can you do? Under Rev. Moon's "Godism", the world falls to "unity" and sexual freedom and democracy disappear.

I am vaguely reminded of The Handmaid's Tale--except there was considerably more freedom for lesbians in that proposed future.

This guy is fucking crazy, and I think because of that we underestimate him.

Sure, call me a Kasandra, if it helps you sleep at night. I'm not saying you have to be paranoid--I'm talking about being aware, and wary. Whenever something new comes up you have to think of all the possible effects it could have on the world.

The trouble is, we don't. We play god and don't think of the repercussions. We don't listen to the wisdom of our ancestors, elders, or our youth. "La la la, agriculture is so hard! Let's make it easier by making plants into GMOs! It helps the plants too so we can feel like we have altruistic reasons for it."

If Nature feels like a plant needs to be changed, She'll change it.

And if She feels we need to go for the good of the various systems on Earth, She'll wipe us out too and not think twice about it.

You can believe whatever you want with regards to the level of consciousness Gaia has but you can't deny that we're killing her.

But then again, the Bush Administration has said that Global Warming doesn't exist--and if Bush says it, it must be true, right?

What we must realize is that we--homo sapiens rapiens--are an infinite, and therefore expendable, resource. The Earth is not. It's easy to make more people. Building a new Earth would be very difficult (and has only been accomplished in Science-Fiction stories). Nature knows this too. She's called Mother Nature for a reason--and we are not Her cubs. If need be, She'll kill us to protect Her children.

Frankly, I welcome it. If we can't change enough to solve this problem, then I totally support the complete annihilation of our species. If it is the only option.

I don't believe it is. I believe we can change. But I think those changes must be huge, and will require amazing sacrifices on our part. It's time to quit being selfish humans and to start doing our job--protecting the planet.

I'm sure many people would agree that we have to protect the planet, but that we have to protect it from outside forces, never ourselves. WE are the enemy. WE are the ones we have been waiting for. We are both sides of the same coin--destroyer and guardian of the Earth. It's all about choice.

The time has come. What will you choose?

vagabond

Hawaii still sucks.

I'm sure it was cool back when the Hawaiians were in charge, but now it's become like every other used-to-be-indigenous land in the States--unloved and uncared for. Don't ask for sovereignty unless you're willing to a) give up everything the white man brought and b) take care of your freaking aina. Yeah, no more Mecca Wal-mart, no more SUVs or Hummers, and sure--no more diseases, but no more medical care. Nope, you have to go back to canoes and loincloths. That's what sovereignty should mean.

And, of course, I will get lynched for saying this, because of my skin color. If I were browner it would be fine for me to say something like this, but because of my heritage I'm being an "ignorant racist cracker".

I'm not racist, but I do see what's going on, and yes, I do make generalizations based on what people tend to do. White people nowadays have an almost guilty air about them (the decent ones anyway--I'm not including the KKK in this generalization), as if they need to make up for what their ancestors did. So they fling themselves into Greenpeace and Maui Peace Action and cultures that don't belong to them, trying to make up for the mistakes of our past by holding on to what we almost destroyed, while indigenous people embrace the culture of the very people that raped, pillaged, and took whatever they had. And we continue to take it--white people are just that---white until written on. We're ambiguously European--we lack any real culture. Just a melting pot of everything else. So we latch onto whatever else we can find. A lot of kids here in Hawaii choose Japanese culture. I've chosen Mayan. And then we try to keep the traditions of our "chosen culture" alive in order to make up for the thousands of cultures we've destroyed.

Most of the hippies---the ones who have rejected taker capitalist culture--in Paia are white, whereas when I go to Wal-mart I see that 70% of the customers there are local. What's wrong with this picture? You ask for sovereignty, but if given back your land what would you do with it? I walk past your house and see ten dead cars on the lawn which has no green on it whatsoever and a brand-new SUV in the garage with flowerpots that grow dirt and cigarette butts, and I'm supposed to support your cry for sovereignty? I sit at school and I watch almost all the students throw their recycling in the trash, and I'm supposed to believe you care that damn much?

Sure--hate me for being white, for saying what you don't want to hear, for seeing the goddamn truth--hate me for all these things. But in the end, who's caring for the aina? You or me?

When you can answer that satisfactorily, then you will have true sovereignty--because that's what it is. Taking care of your land. That's what a [good] sovereign did. That's what we need to do.

v-clipse

V for Vendetta completely eclipsed anything else that may have ever been important. My entire life is now bound to that movie, to that idea, to that concept--to the memory of V.

No movie I have ever seen even comes close to measuring up to V. It filled me with hope--something I avoid feeling--for humanity, that maybe we'll survive. Maybe the impending doom of totalitarianism will not crush our spirits, wink out our flames, one by one by one by one.

It was set in England but speaks so clearly of what could happen to America in the very near future. There were scenes that sent chills down my spine for the very present truth shown in them.

And Hugo Weaving is such an amazing actor that I could sense his facial expressions even though all you see of him is a mask.

I will go back to see it again and and again and again and again until I run out of money, and then then when it is out I will need it so fiercely, so wholly, that I would not be complete without it.

I would sell my soul for this film.

Phantom restored my faith in filmmaking. V restored my faith.

fat can be fit

One of my big pet peeves...scratch that. Not a pet peeve. Something that irritates the fuck out of me is this new 'obesity epidemic'. Let's pity fat people because it's a disease, but they're still worthless human beings because they can't control it. That's like blaming someone who has hereditary cancer because it's "her own fault".

I'm so mad I could spit, so I'm not going to be coherent if I rant on this. Instead, read the article below by Courtney E. Martin to see exactly what I mean.

America is allegedly in the midst of an obesity epidemic, but our obsession with weight is the real disease.

If you watch any mainstream news, you know that apparently America is in the midst of an obesity epidemic. Fear-producing news segments feature footage of overweight men and women, cut off at the heads like criminals, lumbering along the streets in Anytown, U.S.A. Ads with skinny women touting weight loss miracles as they look disdainfully at old pictures of their fatter, sadder selves run on a continuous loop on daytime television.

The scare tactics are working. Americans continue to pump billions, and blood, sweat, and tears into their "body projects," convinced that if they are fat, they are doomed.

Conflating fat with sickness is a dangerous delusion. The truth about fat, reinforced recently by a $419 million federal study involving 49,000 women, is that it does not automatically indicate unhealthiness. Many thin people, who don't exercise or eat balanced diets, are at a greater risk for disease than those with some extra padding who work out and eat relatively right. Your health can only be improved by movement and moderation. That's it. The study, published in the Journal of the American Medical Association last month, concludes that low-fat diets do not, despite all of the hype, reduce a woman's risk of cancer or heart disease.

Being fat is not equivalent to being unfit. In fact, being underweight actually kills over 30,000 Americans a year. Equating weight loss, instead of lifestyle changes, with improved health is "like saying 'whiter teeth produced by the elimination of smoking reduces the incidence of lung cancer,'" argues J. Eric Oliver, author of Fat Politics: The Real Story Behind America's Obesity Epidemic. Even a group of CDC researchers admit that "evidence that weight loss improves survival is limited."

So why do highly educated, media-savvy Americans continue to buy into the idea that the thinner one is, the healthier and happier one is? The mammoth diet industry, not to mention the exercise, beauty, fashion, and cosmetic surgery industries, certainly has something to do with it. In America, alone, we spend $40 billion annually on diet products, even though diets prove to be ineffective 95 percent of the time. Not only is our stupidity disturbing -- those stakes wouldn't even lure the drunkest of Vegas gamblers -- but the implications are foreboding.

There is a slippery slope from dieting to disease, as the 7 million girls and women suffering from eating disorders in this country will attest. Thirty-five percent of those who diet go on to yo-yo diet, dragging their bodies through a cycle of weight gains and losses far more unhealthy than just being overweight; 25 percent of those who diet develop partial or full syndrome eating disorders. Mindfulness advocate Susan Albers writes: "The dieting mindset is akin to taking a knife and cutting the connection that is your body's only line of communication with your head." There is little hope for long-term health improvement with this vital line severed.

Cut off from our ability to listen to our authentic hungers, we ride a roller coaster of marketed cravings and emotional upheaval -- overeating, then guiltily undereating, then overeating again. But unlike brief and thrilling amusement park adventures, we can't seem to get off the ride. The explosion of coverage on "the obesity epidemic," though well-intentioned, has not served as the emergency break nutritionists and doctors so hoped it would. Instead, the sensational news spots on the dangers of obesity have often fed misperceptions about the direct link between fat and unhealthiness, or worse, fat and unworthiness.

Hyperbolic reportage on the expanding waistlines of America's children, in particular, has created a damaging hysteria. Fat camps are flooded with applicants who are solidly within their recommended body weight. In 1995, 34 percent of high school-aged girls in the U.S. thought they were overweight. Today, 90 percent do. And those who really are fat, and yes, there are many, are subjected to increasing scrutiny and scolding. The fat kid in school, once the butt of mean jokes, is now the target of a societal assault. A recent survey of parents found that 1 in 10 would abort a child if they found out that he or she had a genetic tendency to be fat.

We are being brainwashed by sensationalistic news segments and the 250 ads we see a day that tell us, not only that fat is unhealthy, but a sign of weak character. In a recent poll by Ellegirl magazine of 10,000 readers, 30 percent said they would rather be thin than healthy. Over half the young women between the ages of 18 and 25 would prefer to be run over by a truck than be fat, and two-thirds surveyed would rather be mean or stupid. The single group of teenagers most likely to consider or attempt suicide is girls who worry that they are overweight.

The messages are coming in loud and clear, and they are riddled with disempowering dichotomies -- all or nothing, feast or famine, disgustingly fat or virtuously thin, deeply flawed or triumphantly perfect. There is no talk of what Buddhists describe as "the middle path," no discussion of the pleasure of walking, eating homemade food, slowing down. There is no permission to say "no" sometimes and "yes" sometimes, and have those no's and yeses be simple answers, insignificant scores on a Scrabble board, representative of nothing more than a mood. Instead our yeses and no's signify our desirability, our life expectancy, our self-worth.

It is not fat itself that is unhealthy, but our hypocritical attitudes and compulsive behaviors that are. We drive two blocks to the grocery store and then spend 20 minutes circling the parking lot so we can get a close spot. Once inside we load up our carts with low-fat, microwave meals and diet shakes filled with artificial everything. In the checkout line, we read about the latest fitness trend in Men's Health or Self, then get back into our cars, drive the two blocks home, and sit in front of the television all night eating Pizza Hut while drinking a liter of Diet Coke. We go to bed late, wake up early, head to work -- in our cars, of course -- where we will spend the next eight hours stationary and bored. Rinse. Repeat.

We don't need expensive, genetically engineered foods or state-of-the-art exercise equipment. We don't need fancy doctors or pharmaceutical drugs. We don't need the latest diet craze book or even the latest medical study -- they all seem to contradict each other anyway. We don't even need Herculean willpower.

We just need to leave our cars in the garage, stroll down to the park, and play some softball with our neighbors on a Saturday. We just need to enjoy every last bite of our home-baked birthday cakes, then have some oatmeal for breakfast the next morning. We need to resist the pressure to overwork and underenjoy. If we want to live long, healthy, happy lives, then we need to stop believing the hype. We need to rediscover our own wise instincts that know far more about well-being than a whole country of experts.

Source: AlterNet