I try to avoid internet controversies--and with that introduction, you know I am about to weigh in on an internet controversy.
The other day this blogger I'd never heard of wrote a post about women gaining weight after marriage. I believe the money quotes were "Personally, I think it would be unfair to Husband if I gained a bunch of weight and did nothing about it,” and "But it would be false advertising if he’d married his 120 pound girlfriend and ended up with a 160 pound wife.” Much blog response ensued, and basically I'm with Cecily (scroll down on the first one) (I'm not pregnant and overweight, but I am married to a man who thinks I'm hot whatever my weight and finds this whole thing absurd) (and the dude who won't take his wife to his Christmas party...well, don't get me started).
Anyway, I had nothing original to add to the discussion, and I try to avoid internet controversies, so I said nothing (don't you wish people would do that more often? I wish I would do that more often). But even as I try to avoid internet controversies, I often find myself following them (it's like celebrity gossip, I just can't help myself), and today I saw this post, in which the blogger tries to clarify what she meant, and I do feel for her: I'm sure it's tough to be the center of an internet controversy, especially a controversy about women and weight. In this one, the money quote, which she bolds and repeats, to make sure we get it, is “people in an intimate relationship should be considerate of each other and understand that their physical appearance, and any MAJOR change to it, can affect their partner and their relationship.”
So I thought ok, fine, no problem, that's what she thinks, and I turned off my computer. Then, as I was baking a chocolate cake for the cake walk at M's school fair (Chocolate Domingo from The Cake Bible), I realized that the issue here was no longer women and weight, but marriage. Or at least, the issue that interested me, and about which I had something perhaps original to say, was marriage.
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At the end of Jane Eyre, Jane hears Rochester calling her, treks across England to find him, discovers him blind and alone in a tumbledown shack in the woods (kind of), and, Reader, she marries him. The money quote here is "I am my husband's life as fully as he is mine." Some people find this the most romantic thing ever. I find it depressing. Jane has finally escaped a whole series of men who want to control her, including Rochester. She has her own money, thanks to an opportune inheritance. She has found some lovely female cousins and is living happily ever after with them in her own cozy cottage. Life is good. Why does she need some blind guy? And the thing is, back then in Victorian England, a husband and a wife were one life, but, legally, that life was the husband's. According to the law of coverture, when a woman married, her legal identity disappeared and she became part of her husband. The fact that in the next sentence Jane says "No woman was ever nearer to her mate than I am: ever more absolutely bone of his bone, and flesh of his flesh," only reinforces, for me, the problematic--oh, let's just say oppressive--nature of their union.
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Wait, we were talking about bloggers, what's with the Jane Eyre exegesis?
Well, that blogger sounds to me a lot like Jane. In her vision of marriage, which sounds like it works for her, and it probably works for lots of other people, and that's great for them, the husband and wife are intensely bound to each other, merged even, such that they have the right, indeed the responsibility, to weigh in on each other's individual choices, because those choices are, essentially, their choices as well.
But I see marriage as two people coming together as autonomous individuals to share their lives. Indeed, in my vision, it is that very autonomy that generates the pleasure and productivity of marriage. (Several weeks ago I wrote a long post about our ketubah which sort of went in this direction, but I never posted it because I feared it was hopelessly sentimental.)
This isn't to say that S and I just do whatever we want. We can't, in large part because we have children whose needs must be met, which would preclude, say, me going to California for a month, or him quitting his job to be a starving musician. Economically and parentally we are a single unit, and we need to deal with those aspects of our lives together.
But our bodies? Our thoughts? Our work? Our friends? Our passions? Those are very much our own, if sometimes, happily, shared, and one of the cornerstones of our marriage is that we each try to enable the other's life. Sometimes this is relatively minor: I make it possible for him to go out and see music whenever he can. Sometimes it is major: he told me to quit my job before I truly lost my mind. In general, too, I'm better at theory and S is better at practice, but that's how it is.
Our marriage is in no way perfect--sometimes I wish it would just go away, or maybe I wish he would just go away--but one of the things I like best about it is that in it I can be fully myself, knowing that S is supporting and appreciating me for myself, whatever or however I am.
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12 comments:
Yeah, I've really tried to stay out of this one, but sometimes it's just not possible. You've really struck a chord here with the 'marriage of individuals' argument.
My husband and I still consider ourselves individuals. But just because we're individuals doesn't mean we ignore the union. In our relationship, there is a balance. My husband goes mountain biking, enters bike races, and even goes on climbing trips without me. Those things are important to him. They keep him happy and are important to his emotional and mental health. I don't mountain bike or climb, but I do support my husband in those things just as he supports me with graduate school and blogging.
What I was talking about was not asking "permission." That would be absurd. And I was not talking about enmeshment either, which is unhealthy. I was talking about open communication. Sometimes that open communication is merely a question like, "Gee, honey, I'm thinking of getting braces. What do you think?" Sometimes it's a whole conversation. For instance, a woman in my family is married to a man who used to be very fit. He recently gained a ton of weight, and it's all in his belly. This literally hurts the woman when they're being intimate because the belly pushes into her body. Shouldn't she have the right, as an individual, to say something about this? Shouldn't she have the right to say she prefers him being fit (again, assuming he has no medical condition that caused the weight gain)? If their relationship is healthy, she should be able to be honest with him (as long as she is kind in her approach). And isn't honesty better than harboring resentment?
As I read your post, I was reminded of when Husband and I were choosing readings for our wedding. We were looking at one by -- oh, I can't remember his name -- but the passage was about 2 pillars, a metaphor for 2 individuals who marry. What we didn't like about the passage was that there was so much focus on the indivdial pillars that it made them sound too separate. We wanted to express that there are three things in a union: 2 people plus one marriage. All three are important.
In any case, you raise a good point, and I just wanted to express my views from my perspective, which is not, of course, the only perspective.
Well said, Becca. And amen.
Re. Mim's comment, this stands out: This literally hurts the woman when they're being intimate because the belly pushes into her body. I think what annoyed me about the whole fat thing is what annoys me here: the way people constantly try to rationalize their fat-phobia with "health" or "consideration" reasons. I've fucked fat men. The belly doesn't hurt. And if it hurts her, there are other positions (notably, woman on top) that work just fine.
Now having said that, ok, let's assume that what this rationalization is *really* covering up is, "it really bothers her that her husband has gained so much weight." Okay, fine. Why not just say that? What's offensive is trying to justify personal preference and/or prejudice by appealing to some kind of rational/universal "fact," like "it's unhealthy" or whatever.
Sorry to address the thing you specifically wanted not to address, Becca, but that particular remark just bugged me.
I would actually go even further and say that Mim's cousin may not wanna walk around with a fat guy; she wants the skinny one she married and she's not into this new french-fried version. She didn't plan on being Fred Mertz's's wife - she was hoping to stick with the ever-suave Desi. But I'm not comfortable hypothesizing about someone else's feelings, so I'd rather just use the hypothetical of Jill, who married the athletic Jack. The reason it bothers Jill, the reason she is the type of person who is embarrassed by someone else's appearance, is because she does indeed define herself in terms of her husband, and their presentation to the world. He represents her, in a way; and she, him. He is no longer good enough for the party, or any sorta hottie. So Jill is now vastly uncomfortable with the idea that she is married to a fattie. They are no longer 'an attractive couple,' in her mind. And, of course, if Jill herself is the fattie, she has disappointed and embarrassed Jack, because he bargained for a certain type of woman - we come in several shades and sizes - and she switched on him. So she must go back to the original agreement, lest he opt for an exchange.
And now that we have that figured out, my Ball & Chain recently lost 10 pounds. He looks a lot better. I had been giving him grief about it - it was sorta weirding me out that he seemed to be eating enough for two: himself and his belly. Some days, as I had for years, I would admire his 'pillow,' the belly on which I napped. At other times, I was less affectionate. "Men and dogs," I would tell him, "should be skinny." At times when I am feeling particularly crappy, his remark is "looking good." Perhaps we are a bit lacking in sentimentality over here. When the doctor conveniently said B&C's cholesterol was high, and he should quit eating mayo sandwiches (basically), I was relieved. Am I a hypocrite? I dunno. I do know that despite any superficial tendencies, I never had a thought about him owing me a certain appearance. And when I look like crap, I don't expect to hear that I oughtta pull it together because I'm not holding up my end of the bargain. With the circles under my eyes, and his belly sure to return at some point, we're a match made for reality t.v. Now that's romance.
Wow. All kinds of assumptions. Maybe I should have mentioned that the family member of whom I speak is also overweight and always has been.
And BitchPhd, she's not entitled to her feelings? Fine. You fucked fat men. So fucking what? What does that have to do with her? What if she doesn't like other positions. Who are you to negate her feelings?
Mim
Yikes, you're right - I did assume your relative was thin. My apologies. My comment probably reveals more about me - I have many family members who are overweight - than hypothetical Jill. Thanks for remaining civil -I'm going to take a peek at your blog now.
Standing Corrected
Omigosh Mim -
What was I thinking? We see things so differently there's just nowhere to start. I stand by my apology, but I retract my knee-jerk 'it must be me' reaction. One too many whiffs of Lysol.
I'm maintaining my sanity for my husband myself and Becca and leaving this discourse permanently.
I do sometimes miss the old Roseanne episodes. Those two were hot for each other, and wicked fat.
I explicitly said she is entitled to her feelings, Mom.
Back to the individualism w/in marriage thing. I think, as those who read my stuff know, that it's absolutely vital. People will change, and they should; there's so much to learn and do in the world, that staying the way you are in your 20s or 30s, when most people get married, would be a horrible waste. I think, and it's very hard for me to figure out how to articulate this in a way that makes sense, that when I got married I felt that Mr. B. and I had a good sense of one another's essential character. Not the things we believe, or do, or feel, or how we look--all of those have changed in the last fifteen years (twenty-five, if you count from when we met). But there's some essential core of how one thinks: not the content, but the method, and that hasn't changed. The kinds of people we are haven't changed: Mr. B. is still basically easygoing, I'm still pretty forceful, we both think it's important to understand one another, he still likes appalling puns and subtle practical jokes, I still like teasing. In some ways he's less easygoing, in other ways more; in some ways I'm less pushy, in others, more. But the basic fundamentals on which more mutable things like beliefs, opinions, tastes, and so on rest are still there.
I think I would say that the point of individualism within marriage is to recognize the other person as a unique individual. Part of which means, obviously, avoiding making sweeping pronouncements about how other people should view their marriages--since those relationships, too, are obviously between unique individuals.
Mom, Mim, my bad.
Mim wrote:
What if she doesn't like other positions.
Then she suffers from a sad lack of imagination.
I weigh 165 pounds, plus on a bad day. I'm 5'9" and recently US magazine tried to claim that Mariah Carey was also 5'9" and 165, but the next week they ran an article in which she has battled her demons and lost 20 pounds, so who knows. And I'm single, and 38, and not getting laid. So I do think that losing 20 pounds would make me cuter to boys, but then there's that age thing. And the pubic trim/wax thing. Apparently we now have to do something "down there." This is all very stressful; it's so much easier not to do anything, see anyone, "get out there." If we are getting fatter, and lonelier, and more afraid, I'd like to think that this is a social/cultural issue, not an individual failing. Let's be kind to one another, especially if we're lucky enough to have someone in our lives on a daily, familial basis. Of course, I can say that easily, as there's something to be said for the peacefulness of sleeping alone. I don't think anyone wins.
I just got back from a family "vacation" with my in-laws. What interests me about them is that my father-in-law asked my mother-in-law to dye her hair becausse he "did not marry a woman with grey hair." Hearing this, I flew into a rage and ranted about how she didn't marry a bald guy, but I don't see her demanding that he generate some hair.
Anyway, in spending 10 days with them on a cruise ship, I noticed that my m-i-l has also gained a lot of weight over their 35 years of marriage, while f-i-l is still quite fit. He seems totally fine with the changes in her figure. I found that quite interesting and would have expected differently.
I guess my point is that people are weird in what they expect from others.
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