I was going to write about the current health issue d’jour in America-obesity-and my own year long weight loss. But, I’m sorta slack-jawed with confusion right at the moment. Everywhere you look there seems to be this huge awakening, “Hey, we’ve got a lot of fat people,” in America. Have we just discovered mirrors?
TV has put some of the fattest on a reality show called, “The Biggest Loser” that appears to take place on Paris Island, South Carolina where marines are trained. It is a popular show and of course I find it unwatchable. If that’s not enough entertainment for you, Kirstie Alley, once a diet company spokesman who lost 70 lbs and has now gained back 87, has her own TV reality show called, “My Big Life”. She paired herself with her ginormous “handyman” as her weightloss “buddy” and since he has more to lose than she does, I suspect, also chosen to be her “vanity” buddy as well. Look out, Kirstie. He may have more to lose but men also lose faster than women. Come to a Weight Watcher meeting and look at the rolling female eyes as a man says, “I’ve lost five pounds this week.”
The New York Times had a recent article about how doctors don’t know how to talk to fat people. They should take dialogue lessons from TV producers who apparently cannot resist talking to fat people.
So, it was the topic I was going to write about and probably will in the near future, but for now, I am just stacking the word bricks on this topic and shall go to visit my friend today who has dementia and who lives close to Boston. I’ll take her to the Museum of Fine Arts in Boston as this involves no language based activities and gives her an opportunity to interact silently with the layers of art that have no verbal or memory requirement and most of all– carries no responsibility to respond.
I have found it is the perfect place to bring someone who no longer finds social situations pleasant.
I’m at least two inches taller than she is and yet her stride always leaves me trying to catch up– such as this photograph (at least the first one used in this collage)– that I took two weeks ago when we went for a walk on one of the first spring days.
I’ll get back to discussing fat, later. Spanish still life and modern Indian art are two of the exhibits we shall walk into with me several steps behind my old friend.
©Pat Coakley 2010
PHOTOGRAPHS CANNOT BE USED WITHOUT WRITTEN PERMISSION
••Select photographs from this blog and my wider archive is available for purchase at www.patcoakley.com
I really like this image. It looks so subterranean and mysterious. Having said that, I’m not able to link the image in my mind with the text. Maybe I’m in denial.
Razz, you’re not in denial. There is no link. I started one thing, to talk about weight and fattiness (Stephen Cobert rip-off) and ended with my friend. The only link I have is that this photograph is one of the heavier ones I’ve done lately, heavy in terms of complications in life and complications in pulling it together. Having said that, there’s still no reason a reader would have a clue. I am going to do Part II but first I have to post my homage to what I saw today at the MFA. Absolutely the most flat out alive “still life” portraits of fruit and food that I’ve ever seen. There were so transcendentally beautiful that you could cry. Or, eat the canvas whole. The painter is Luis Melendez. O friggin’ god what a gift.
Pat, I liked this photograph very much and enjoyed your commentary on fattiness. Yes, apparently people are not aware that Americans are fat.
I, too, cannot watch The Biggest Loser and am always ready to punch a man out when he complains that he only lost 5 lbs this week when all the women in the room have lost 2/10’s of a lb and must be content that at least it’s a minus and not a plus.
Life is NOT FAIR. We are doomed.
Yep, you are in the same type of WW meeting that I’m in…men are brave to attend, though few do. Life is not fair and we ARE doomed but you shall make me laugh on the way to Doomsday.
great collage, pat. moving in spite of the tangle of wires, roots, branches.
and whats that? raindrops. or dewdrops. love the colors too. thats one of the best collage images i have ever seen, seriously