Weight Gain

"I would give anything to look like you."
"I only wish I could have your metabolism."

These are comments I get on a fairly regular basis, typically from average-sized to larger people trying to lose weight, whether they're on a diet, trying to exercise like crazy or what have you.  When I try to tell these people that being petite isn't all it's cracked up to be, the response is to dismiss me outright.  It's almost like I don't know what I'm talking about.

Growing up people always thought I was younger than I actually was.  For example, as a sophomore in college I often flew back and forth from my college in Ohio to my home in North Carolina.  On one of these trips I had an assigned seat in the exit row on the plane.  After getting situated the flight attendant came through to check on everyone.  When she got to my seat she looked me up and down and said "Are you old enough to be sitting here, miss?"  To which I, not knowing the policy of that particular airline responded "I'm not sure, what are the requirements?"  She quickly responded looking at me pointedly "Well you have to be over 14 years old."  At 20 I assured her I was able to sit there and she quizzically decided to continue her walk down the aisle.  What she neglected to mention was the other requirements, apparently one also has to be able to lift the door open if necessary.  The door is 50 pounds.  At the time had she mentioned this I probably would have changed seats to not sit in the emergency exit row.

Looking young by itself is never an issue for long.  As a child it was problematic at times.  I never attempted to go into a bar before my 21st birthday or try to trick anyone else into thinking I was older.  I knew it would never work.  My sister who is 22 months younger than I, looked like my twin growing up.  But now as I edge closer to 30 years old I am beginning to see that looking young can indeed be a blessing.  Among many changes, my younger sister now looks like my older sister.

My young look comes from a variety of factors, mainly my size.  I am 5'2" and 110 pounds.  Just as many of us have not grown since high school, I too have not lost weight since high school.  In fact for years it almost became a joke to me.  I could tell the nurse my weight before I even stepped onto the scale, 108 pounds.  If the scale measured any higher or lower I would at times say "Your scale is off."  And the nurse would look at me and say "You're right."  By some sort of miracle I have managed to gain a measly 2 pounds in the last year or so.  For all I know they have started making all the scales so that all weights are 2 pounds off. 

My size began to be a problem in middle school health class.  At the time I had never met anyone my age who was smaller than I was, shorter yes but not overall smaller.  So when we were required to watch a movie on eating disorders in health class it scared me.  I have never had problems eating, in fact I have a tendency to eat way more than the average person.  However, because of the video I was scared that I was anorexic or bulimic.  There was a mirror outside my shower and I began to be scared to look into it, especially while naked.  I was projecting the tiny anorexic woman from the film onto myself because I had never met anyone smaller.

In high school I began to have episodes where I would totally lose all my energy, feel very faint, lose sensation or get tingling in my extremities, be unable to focus, light headed, and at times be unable to stand up or raise my head.  In the beginning these episodes were accompanied by panic attacks because I did not understand what was happening to my body and it frightened me.  I ended up in the hospital several times which oddly lined up with my skipping a meal.  However, when I reached the hospital the first thing they do in the ER is to inject you with saline.  After many tests and many hours of waiting the doctors would find nothing wrong with me.  I had so many of these episodes I began to beg my friends not to call 911 because I knew they would just report that there was nothing wrong with me.  Finally my friends called an ambulance to come one night.  One of the attendants checked my blood sugar levels before moving me into the ambulance.  She found my sugar levels to be low so she said "Go get something to eat, I'll stay here and watch but you're hypoglycemic."  From that day on any time I had such an episode I knew my safest bet was to eat quickly.  I learned that it was often better to have a whole meal than a snack because snacks would just tease my body into thinking it was getting the right amount of food when it wasn't and make my sugar levels drop farther.

From that point on I made sure all of my friends knew of my hypoglycemia so that when I had an attack they knew I needed food quickly.  It worked!  I continued to have the episodes but with the food I was able to bring myself out of the symptoms quickly.

In college I had my first experience of being around people smaller than I am.  There were several Sri Lankans that went to college with me who were much smaller.  I also did a lot of traveling in Asia including Sri Lanka, India, Vietnam, Laos, China, Japan, Nepal, and Tibet.  Some of these places I was constantly surrounded by small people (Sri Lanka again being one with a large amount of small people).  It was only upon returning to the US that I finally started feeling the effects of our American culture on my body.  I had not gained any weight but now I, just like many other women in the US, began to wake up and have days where I thought I was fat.

I never thought twice about being hypoglycemic until this past year when I began to have episodes on an extremely regular basis, almost every other day.  I continued with my remedy but began to get upset.  I had never had so many episodes in such a short time period and they seemed never ending.  No matter how much I ate I would still have an episode.  I almost felt as if I was getting depressed.  So I began going to see different specialists - nutritionists, endocrinologists, doctors.  All of them performed a series of checks on me and came back to report that there is nothing wrong with me.  They even checked me for hypoglycemia only to report that I wasn't even hypoglycemic!

Yet I still have these episodes and they can still be remedied by eating.  So I recently decided to try and gain weight.  Maybe if I had more muscle I would finally stop having these episodes.  I had already started a new martial art that I love called jiu-jitsu but I decided to get a personal trainer too.  These trainers are equipped with nutritional knowledge as well as weight training and other information.  So over the past week I have been instructed how to eat more and what kinds of exercise to perform to try to gain weight.  This includes drinking protein shakes, cutting back on my cardio workouts so I do nothing more than jiu-jitsu and boxing, and lifting weights.  I carry food with me wherever I go and have been eating over 2500 calories a day.  Yet I still have these episodes...  I'm going back to the doctor to get them to check my thyroid.  But if they still find nothing the hope is that if I continue to eat the way I am my body will adjust, I may gain some weight, and stop having these episodes.

Being petite does actually have it's drawbacks and I think it would benefit the majority to understand this.  The middle ground is truly the best.  I wish I were "normal sized" so I wouldn't have the constant stress of possible assault, so I could be respected by people who are my age as an equal and not someone they think is younger, so I can have the shoulders I've always wanted, so I can have a sport that I'm good at, so I can feel more comfortable with my body without having to eat close to 3000 calories a day, and so I can possibly stop having these episodes.

Pity

"India seems so beautiful but I don't know if I could handle seeing the poverty." We seem to love to pity people. Look at those women who are forced to live inside and have very strict restrictions when they go out, how awful. And the poor, what a disgrace. It's not that I don't see them as pitiful, I do, you're right, there is a part of it that is awful. As for the women it's their life. We may want them to be free but freedom comes with its burdens as well. Freedom to express yourself amongst women in countries which we see them as "not equal" is to some extent even greater than our own freedom. These women look at us and see anorexic and bolemic people who don't embrace their weight, or who are obese because they can't stop their depression from being overweight and just continue to eat, and say to themselves "how awful, what poor women". Poverty is something difficult to accept anywhere in the world but personally it's harder for me to accept that there is such poverty amongst people who can do something about being poor than accepting it for people who can't do anything about their being poor. People here are poor because they have no jobs ... look for a job! Poor because they are badly educated ... go to school! Yes, it's difficult and yes, it may be close to impossible but it is still possible. In India you are born poor and will die poor, nothing you do will change that, no matter how much education you get or anything else. It's a fact. It amazes me way more that people just won't look for a job, or won't try to not be addicted to drugs or go to a mental hospital or take care of themselves than that life is life and it's fact. I don't know if I'm doing a good job of explaining myself....

Stuff & Architectural Anthropology

I hate stuff. Why? Why do we need a new computer every 3 years? Such a waste. I'm one of those people who would rather wait till things die and then get a new one. While I have them I take the best care of them possible and then I'm excited to get a new one. Unfortunately my husband isn't that way. My husband would rather get something new every year at the very least. This year it's an I-Pad, computer and camera. Noted that he already has a computer and a perfectly awesome DSL camera. It's just the act of getting the stuff that "makes him feel like a man". I'm not a big shopper ... at all ... so I just don't get it.

I feel like I've written about this already but I don't seem to be able to find it. Architectural anthropology is an interesting subject, even from how people react to it. Architects love it, they completely understand the idea that they create buildings based on culture and based on ideas therefore buildings must affect people in some way as they are all different and we spend our entire lives in them. However for an anthropologist the idea is completely foreign and the reaction I get every single time is "oh, space, I don't think that's a good idea" or "i know nothing about that." It's a complete conversation killer. Unfortunately I haven't figured out how to approach the career. Getting a masters in architecture doesn't teach me enough about people, but getting a masters in anthropology means I surround myself by "non-believers". I seem to be trying it from the anthropology view first, we'll see what happens.

Hard

It's hard to sit here alone ...
And know that I'm sitting here because of what I've done.
What I've done to myself.
I've become a person that no one can understand.
No one can be at my level.
Good at languages, understanding cultures, anthropologist.
Yes, anthropologist.
But an anthropologist who enjoys architecture.
Something most anthropologists frown at.
For the study of architecture is not the study of culture.
As we know it it is the study of inanimate objects, buildings.
Buildings that don't live and have no culture.
But any architect will tell you true to their heart that buildings do live.
They do indeed have a culture.
The scary part is no one realizes.
No one realizes how much their culture affects ours.
Architects create without knowing.
Anthropologists research without seeing.
Without seeing what's around them ...
Everywhere.

Tibet & Vietnam

"What do you think about the Dalai Lama?"
(Being super careful with my words.) "I almost saw him twice."
"Where?"
"In India and Nepal."
"You think he's good?"
(Again guarding my words.) "What do you think?"
"I think he's not a real man."
"What do you mean?"
"Real men wouldn't run away from an argument."
"Do you know his religion believes in not fighting?"
"But they believe in having slaves. They had a lot of slaves living there."
(No comment at all.)
My husband continues by telling me that Tibet has always been part of China as has Mongolia, the British just stole Tibet away from China for a while.

It's really interesting how much something can be drilled into your way of thinking. Chinese have been drilled from birth basically to believe that any place that China has ever conquered (in any of the past dynasties) is really part of China. Some people mean this includes Mongolia, Tibet and Taiwan but others include all of Southeast Asia and there are a few people who go to extremes like believing Germany is part of China (I've only ever heard one person I know say this). Throughout my time spent in China and throughout my relationship with my husband I have learned that when he asks me these kind of questions the only thing I can do (without getting us into a fight) is to keep my mouth shut. Thus the three T's during teaching in China have become the three T's of my life - Taiwan, Tibet and Tiananmen (specificially Falun Gong). These are things that I can only discuss with people who are not from China.

Interestingly I am currently taking a class entitled the Peoples and Cultures of Southeast Asia. It talks about how China really never conquered any part of the area except Vietnam and says "The more they [the Vietnamese] absorbed of the skills, customs, and ideas of the Chinese, the smaller grew the likelihood of their ever becoming part of the Chinese people. In fact, it was during the centuries of intensive efforts to turn them into Chinese that the Vietnamese came into their own as a separate people with political and cultural aspects of their own." I find this fascinating but it's the kind of thing I could never discuss with my husband.

ingeniality

So I figured out how to maneuver the system of binders. Do you buy one notebook (with pages) for each class? No because you'll never use it all. Buy a 5 subject notebook? Again it's so many pages you'll never use it all. Buy looseleaf paper to take your notes on? Just doesn't feel right. Just buy one regular sized notebook to take all your notes in and then tear them out and separate them in a 3 ring binder after class!

On another note this trying my best not to spend anything is resulting in not having friends, not that I'm good at making friends here anyways. For some reason this is the one city in the world where I can never make friends.

statistics

Stats are some of the most interesting things ever. As business people one comes to rely on statistics for everything, to show profits, how the business is doing, how much it is making, how much it is selling, almost literally every small bit of information. But for anthropologists we learn not to trust statistics. The percent of foreigners in a given area. First of all any statistic can be manipulated to show what one wants to show. Want to state that the city of Dalian, china has very few foreigners? Simply define the word foreigner as someone who has never owned the land there or who doesn't have any ancestors there. By doing so you determine the number of foreigners by only the expats that live there from outside east Asia. All Japanese, whether or not they have ever lived there before wouldn't be considered foreigners because Dalian used to be a part of Japan. Same with all Russians. Similarly compare the population of china with that of the USA. You will get an outcome that china is x percent larger than the USA. However this percent doesn't take into consideration any of the illegal immigrants who haven't been counted, nor does it take into account all the people in china born to one parent and thus have no identification in china and not considered Chinese at all statistically. But anthropologically they are still there, they exist and haven't gone anywhere.