I love cottage cheese

OK, what is with this bullshit about cellulite? Summer's here, and I'm really getting sick of this whole body-hating hoo-hah.



Here beginnith my rant:

1) I've read it elsewhere, but the Wikipedia entry also confirms that 85-98% of women have cellulite.

2) Underweight, average, and overweight women get it; it doesn't matter. It's not about dieting or exercise. If you have female hormones, you're very very very likely going to have cellulite. (Note that more acceptable side effects of these very same female hormones can include: boobies, hips, fantastic orgasms, the ability to get knocked up, build a baby inside your body in a little muscular pouch called a uterus, and then give birth to a brand new human being. So like, not bad.)

3) No one even USED THIS WORD "cellulite" here until the 1960s, and it didn't exist at all up until about 150 years ago. It's like how women didn't shave their legs in the Western world until razor manufacturers decided they could sell to a broader market.

It's not far off from how marketing machines are convincing urban men that they aren't attractive enough unless they get regular pedicures and facials or use posh moisturizers. Tell people there's something wrong with them and that you have the answer, and you can make a lot of money. It helps if it's a natural, ubiquitous thing that's wrong, like skin that gets lines, toe nails that grow, armpits that sweat, moods that swing, shit that stinks.

Nowadays cellulite is used in the media as smug, self-satisfied evidence that Beyonce is getting fat, that Britney has really let herself go, that Paris Hilton needs to go on a diet, and by suggested extension, that no woman in our society is working hard enough to be attractive anymore. Boo fucking hoo.

So let me get it out there. Healthy CHILDREN don't have cellulite (or laugh lines, or much body hair, for that matter). I'm sure I'm not the first to think or say it, but I think all this crap comes down to the continued cultural project of fetishizing youth, and by extension, sexualizing children. (Then we wonder in horror at where all the kiddie porn comes from, when it's really just the toxic effluvia of a media culture that hates being adult and growing the hell up.)

Look, I'm part of this culture too, right? I shave my legs like any drone (I suppose in an annoyingly academic moment I might say it's because I can go with the enhanced sexual dimorphism angle), and I sometimes wear heels in what some consider a modern-day foot-binding/female hobbling exercise because I know it makes my calves look good and the rest of me taller. (Plus, some shoes are just so cute!)

I am drawing the line at this cellulite thing though, because it's a false "disease" and the "cures" are snake oil. So yeah, you beautiful creatures, I have a bit of cellulite, but anyone who grabs my bucket for a squeeze can vouch for the fact that things are, uh... "well in hand". (HAHAHAHA. Sorry.)

So like, can we focus on something else more important instead now, like turning the world around from the to-hell-in-a-handbasket program we're currently on? Just a thought.