salad is rabbit food

i like this one columnist. read further and you'll know why. you're allowed to feel otherwise. it's a free country anyway. her articles can be found on the star website.

Source: The Star
Date:Sunday December 13, 2009
Article Title: A weighty obsession
SENSE OF STYLE
By DZIREENA MAHADZIR

I HADN’T seen my best friend Cleo in something like two weeks – which is an eternity to us – and the first thing I said when I saw her was, “Have you shrunk?” Even before looking at her shoes to check whose heels were higher. (Usually hers.)
My next thought was, I had grown fatter since the last time we met. Then she interjected: “Your face looks narrower.”

Okay, what does this say? Apart from the fact that we’re vain. That we’re obsessed with weight. Like almost every woman. I say “almost” because some women may get annoyed and say I’m generalising.

The Thinner (one) is the Winner. Really? Malaysians just LOVE talking about weight. They never hesitate to tell you, even if they’d just seen you yesterday, that you look thinner, fatter, bigger, smaller.

Why do we do this? I found myself doing it with someone I hadn’t seen in five years. (That’s okay, right? Five years!) “You’ve lost so much weight!”

No, it was not right, and it isn’t acceptable either.

We should not greet people with personal statements about how thin or fat they are/have become. That’s just rude. So I am apologising right now, publicly, if I am guilty of doing that every time I see any of you.

I used to work in an organisation where everyone took particular delight in constantly telling the women how terrible they looked. Maybe that was inevitable because we dealt with appearance – so we couldn’t look FAT, could we?

When I joined my present company, I was so happy because I knew no one cared whether I’d put on (or lost) 5kg and didn’t pass make remarks like, “You nampak macam boleh beranak sekarang,” when I was six months pregnant.

The other day on Twitter, one of my friends tweeted that sh’d bumped into an ex-colleague who told her she looked fat now. That immediately got me worked up. This friend is beautiful, tall and skinny.

I immediately tweeted back, “No, you’re NOT,” followed by, “Someday when you’re in your 30s, you’ll look back at pictures of yourself in your 20s and realise how hot you were. So live for now and don’t listen to fatsayers.” Yes, I created that word; “fatsayers” are people who can’t wait to tell you you’re fat.

To give you an idea on how weight obsessed we can be, my friend Shihab actually created this “organisation, called LAPAR (Malay for hungry). It actually stands for Let’s All Protest Against Rice. Clever, huh?

Basically, we don’t eat carbs. And if we do, we, er... lose our position. Believe, me, Shihab, President and Dictator-for-Life has been unseated numerous times. We’re in constant revolt.
Is there really a point to this? Sadly, yes.

I am looking at weight obsession from a humorous angle, but it is a serious problem. How many times have you seen this remark on Facebook: “OMG! I look SO FAT!! Take it down, NOW!”
And it doesn’t help if you’re surrounded by people who are thin or don’t eat, or are in an industry where you need to stay slim to fit certain clothes or look good at all times.

The other night while seated in a restaurant among several people related to the fashion industry, the waiter asked who’d ordered the Vanilla milkshake. These words popped out of my mouth– “Vanilla milkshake? We don’t take Vanilla milkshake!”– and in an aside to friend, “At least not publicly.” Oh dear ...

Kate Moss (the by-word for skinny) was recently quoted as saying, “Nothing tastes as good as skinny feels,” in an interview with Women’s Wear Daily. As you can imagine, there was an uproar.

I don’t advocate starving, pill-popping, liposuction or any form of surgical treatment to look thin. Neither do I claim to work out five times a week, watch what I eat and not touch food after 6pm. Don’t you find people who claim they do all that so annoying? Which planet did they drop out from?

Here is the simple truth. We’re weight-obssessed. And some of us are willing to do anything to reach the “ideal” weight, except follow the healthy options.

So don’t go around saying, “Do you really need to eat that?” Or, “You know you’re going to regret eating that later.”

And stop telling people they’ve put on weight. Even if they have, so what? It’s not your business anyway.

Look, how on earth do you think most people develop a weight obsession? Somewhere along the road of life, someone important to them probably said, “Maybe you need to lose some weight.” Or some variation of that. And that was the beginning of the end.

Dzireena Mahadzir is craving a double cheeseburger. Salad is rabbit food.

nazmin & naza

i have nothing better to do but thinking about their wedding that i attended the other day at taman tasik permaisuri; it's one of my unproductive days at work so i really need to do something and blogging is one of them. so here i am dedicating this post to them as she's like a dear sister to me. thank you for having me at your reception!

"My greatest wish for the two of you is that through the years your love for each other will so deepen and grow, that years from now you will look back on this day, your wedding day, as the day you loved each other the least"

(Anonymous)

i definitely need to take new pictures and upload it to my profile. and i certainly need to upload pictures on my photo blog. need to do that instead of lazing around. but people are doing video blog which is more hip now. well i never keen to try videography. i haven't mastered the photography so how could i handle both at the same time. no, will definitely stick to be a photography enthusiast.

i attended seri's and faiz's weddings. yeah, more people that i knew are getting married this year and more to wed next year, i believe. well if you ask me, it's not going to be around the corner like some of my friends. i've got a lot of other things in my plan. so getting married is the least that i could think of. same goes to him, i think

tomorrow morning i'm going to kl to attend ayong's and have to return home the same day as my mum is not coming and only afiq is going to drive me all the way. so it's better to head home right after the wed ends tomorrow. i have like very little time to meet with some friends but it's okay, i'm getting used to meeting less friends now because of work. but it affects me terribly because i don't like getting caught up with older minds as i heard enough (currently i'm researching new economy, liberalisation, ambitious young man who reads the edge, economist, etc) and so, i need my escape. plus, i need to feel young and silly again. so going away/getting away from it in any forms/methods is the best remedy.

meeting people that i haven't met in years gives me a new perspective. life's not that bad after all. it feels good to hear them laughing about the old days, to hear them saying your name and smile when they do that. it's nice to see them posing for pictures and laughing about their silly faces taken in snaphots. it's also nice to witness one of the most important day of their lives. to be a part of someone's history is just great!

i think having a bf spoils me. and i hate how it makes me feel, how it affects my judgment on certain things. but i don't like the idea of living without one either. not when you know that he's still adore you no matter what especially when you're in a complete terrible mess.

a conversation with one of my superiors made me cringe. it was a confrontation actually. only at first when he started asking about how i felt at work and was there any issue that needed to be highlighted so that we could resolve it in a diplomatic way, oh you know things that people would say when they care about you where everything would sound so sweet, so nice, so melting! but not when i heard the next words that really pissed me off, i thought that that wasn't his truly intention. he hid someting behind his sweet talk. and i was right.

now my colleagues have a thousand of reasons why they shouldn't entrust me. but i don't really care. if you think i'm on your side now then you're wrong. so goes to if you think that i'm on their side. i don't take no one side. but you could say that i'm trying to get out of the smothering hug-and-kiss-make-up after saying i'm full of anger, frustration and anger towards whoever. i don't have such resentment in myself. it's just that i take my work seriously and i frown all the time when i'm concentrating, i know that, maybe that's why i don't look like 23 years of age. it's a bad habit of mine like you who like to pick your nose everytime you stop at red light or bite your nails when you're freaking nervous to take your final exam. and i'm not keeping it to myself. well if i do, that's because i don't feel like talking especially to a person that would manipulate it for his own good. i have my own consultant for that, thank you very much.

one thing for sure, it won't solve the problem, but it will create another.