I've been thinking about a few things lately, and I thought I should share my thoughts on here, for that future day when my blog gets its own domain and becomes wildly well-known by fat activists all around (that's right: I want to be the next Kate Harding. Except I don't think I could manage to be quite that awesome).
Anyway, so I was thinking about Pride. The other day I was talking to an acquaintance of mine on Facebook. I'd posted as a status something along the lines of "Weight is not a problem. Society's problem towards weight is, however, a problem. A huge problem." This friend agreed on an aesthetic standpoint, but not from a health standpoint. She says that her being overweight aggravates her asthma and that it's associated with a bunch of other negative health issues. I disagree, for reasons that I'm hoping to further affirm when I get off my disturbing-small-arse-for-a-big-fat-fattie and read up on health vs. obesity studies, and I told her why. She thinks we'll need to agree to disagree and that I seem a tad one-sided (duh. I'm very one-sided).
Anyway, at one point she said "I'm glad you're proud of your body", and I objected to that. I told her that I'm not proud of my body at all, but rather that I'm learning to accept my body as something that I've always had and that I have very little hope of changing beyond making it more lithe and flexible and fit (all that stuff that comes from exercise).
This reminded me of a conversation I had with a friend of mine a while ago. We were talking about eyesight, and I think she was voicing concern about her eyes starting to go bad. I narrowed my slightly astigmatic eyes at this, and said to her that out of all the senses to go, you'd hope that it was your eyesight, with all of the work that's gone into eye correction. She said yes, but she's proud of having perfect eyesight.
This struck me as silly. I can certainly understand being happy that you have good eyesight, or at least feeling extremely lucky about it, since some people are blind and many more look totally shithouse in glasses (not an issue for me - I look so much better in glasses). I have a cousin whose eyesight is so temperamental he has to get surgery done on his eyes quite often. Having a close relation like him certainly makes me appreciate how lucky I am to only be slightly astigmatic. But pride? It's the wrong word for it, and I think that is because pride is something that has to be earned.
And I think that is essentially what pride is for me. Pride is something that you have when you have done something to be proud of. and that essentially makes me think that pride is perhaps not a sin, at least for me. Because I don't think I'm ever proud of something unless it's something that I've earned, or someone else has earned. I'm proud of my high marks in various things, I'm proud of my skills as a sewer, I'm proud of my writing capabilities, my acting capabilities, my horn-playing capabilities, etc. Even though I am better at Linguistics than I am at Japanese, I am more proud of my Japanese ability because I've had to work harder for it. I'm more proud of my horn-playing than my acting because I'm much more of a natural actor than I am a natural horn-player, and I've worked harder at horn-playing. But, I'm fully aware that I suck, quite painfully, at both Japanese and horn-playing. But still, I'm proud of what I've achieved so far, or rather I'm proud of the time and energy that I've dedicated to either of those crafts.
But then there's my ambiguous sense of pride: The pride I feel in being Australian. I would say that I am proud of being Australian when asked, and this gave me pause, because Australian citizenship came naturally for me. I was born in Australia, therefore I'm Australian. But I don't think it's that aspect of Australia that I'm proud of. What I'm more proud of is how I carry myself in life. I'm proud of my trouper-like attitude; my way of getting up and, despite often not feeling like it, working on something until I achieve a satisfactory goal. I'm proud of my ability to question those supposedly "above" me, and I'm proud of my belief that nobody should consider me "above" them, either, until I have earned their respect (hence my dislike of the senpai-kouhai culture in Japan). I am proud of my belief in practicality, and I am proud of my efforts to not be lazy, most of the time. Those traits, I think, have to be worked for. And those traits are what makes me Australian, more than any cultural, generational hereditary link to the country. And that's why I'm proud of being Australian. If I decided to become a citizen of another country I would need to earn that citizenship (and rightfully so, imo). If I did earn it, then I would be proud.
So, that's Pride to me. What is pride to you?
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