Wife: Honey, does this dress make me look fat?
Husband: No… but your ass does.
Louie’s favorite Skinny Fat Chick joke
A psychologist’s work lies in helping the patient delve within herself, find her
truths, and use this information to redirect her life for the better. A woman can do
much to improve her life simply by being honest with herself.
My words sound childish and lacking in profundity. Nevertheless, we lie to ourselves
daily and encourage others to join in our deception. Take, for example, the wife who
asks her husband, “Am I fat?” Of course, the husband must answer “No,” else a
hormone-induced Hell rain upon him. The woman will respond angrily, because
psychologically, when faced with truth about her size, she loses the false securities
she has created.
The man must lie to his wife. If he tells the truth, that he does find her fat, this
will destroy the lies that the wife uses to comfort herself about her weight issues
and self-doubts. While the wife accepts herself as fat, she needs a beguiling
audience to convince her otherwise.
This audience and the fats jokes serve as her “defense mechanism”. As psychiatrist
David Viscott explains in Risking, the laughing audience and jokes shield the woman
from the pain of her reality. These lies about how she truly regards herself help the
wife to get along with herself and ease her pain.
If the truth about her weight is revealed to her, the wife’s barrier between
herself and emotions that she does not want to feel or address is removed. Thus, the
women’s only source of false security is gone and this loss leaves her fearful of
what else she may lose. She, in her mind, may lose her husband’s love and social
acceptance. These fears may exacerbate her anger.
A woman with a confident self-image relies on herself to determine whether or not her
shape and size is acceptable. That is, she no longer needs to request the opinions of
others, facetious or faithful, to establish who she is or how she looks. Such
fortitude of character takes practice and stomaching many ego punches.
Humanity’s most esteemed privilege, as bestowed upon us by our Creator, is to master
the ego. You can never master a thing you do not understand or whose truths and
weaknesses are still hidden from you.
You will not get this dieting thing if your ego is a servant to entities outside
yourself. While skinniness is en vogue today, in the next millennia, women may
torture themselves to weigh 300 pounds. As such are the fickle demands of fashion.
Ego mastery starts with learning, “to thy own self, be true.”
We joke about our weight and size as a means to alleviate the agony of our own
painful self-images. We then invite others along to our circus to laugh– but never at
us, that would hurt too much.
The easiest path I practice to ego mastery is taking full responsibility for all of
my emotions and actions. Nowhere along the way does my genetic makeup, social
background or financial status dictate how I treat and value myself. Nor do these
external entities mandate what I can or should achieve.
Of course, I’m not perfect at this mastery. However, the point is, mastering the ego
disintegrates many of the chimerical barriers that we plant between ourselves and
what we truly desire. Should you want to master the ego, dictate how you respond to
the world and its demands, denials, despairs– not the other way around. Then, you
will be well on your way to getting this dieting thing.