Marilyn to the Rescue

In a strange way, the fact that her name resonated with Monroe’s seemed to chime out undercurrents of related tragic meaning which I have yet still to unravel and probably don’t have the time enough to do.

When I read the “The Women’s Room”, I could not entirely identify with some of the issues of white American suburban housewives, but there was enough to illicit freedom and rebellion in me. Don’t get me wrong, I always needed my bra and had no intention of burning a single one. Plus I had my own personal notions about women trying to ape men unnecessarily in ways that I found unattractive. I loved the fact that women should be able to drive buses, fly planes and play football if they had the ambition to and really wanted to. There was that whole childhood gender demarcation thing which would poignantly reverse women's progress so painfully in places like Afghanistan when the Taliban took hold for example. A country where for the privilege of being raped, the assailant also had the power and honour of depriving a woman of life, because he felt so ashamed that he could not control his own erection. In Western countries, similar deaths have also accounted for female loss of life. Emily's Suffragettes and others had brought women in the UK up to the 1975 Sex Discrimination Act but we are still struggling and hurting and are certainly worth all efforts ladies and gentlemen.

Looking back, I did feel that if men wanted to get together, as they certainly do from time to time, I really wasn’t interested in what they did in cricket changing rooms – stuff like that. No, what Marilyn provided me with was the opportunity to take a deeper look at what I was doing and why.

As a female with my own personal issues, reading her essentially helped me to stop the rollercoaster dieting. It gave me the freedom to stop dieting!!! I ran out and bought the biggest cheesecake I could afford and ate as much of it as I could without any guilt and didn’t even do a workout. Now, I had been an athletic person, loved the body beautiful, loved my curves and was ecstatic about dance and also did yoga when I wasn't engaged in all that high energy output stuff. I little realised at the time the damage these extra not to burn calories could also do long-term. I had however, reached the point where I just didn't care. If men preferred slim then it was time to do the opposite – get fat was the solution.

Putting on weight I thought would surely resolve that age old man problem of mine. I thought I could bury myself in some fat and that largeness would help keep the low life at bay - they could talk to the fat because it made me look more mature: "Watch my lips, not my hips!" It hopefully made me look more serious and might even attract more cerebral type of men; not that the ones I knew were lacking in intelligence most of them, but some were relegated on account of their behaviour. I was convinced that any man who could see me through the fat, would be a man worth knowing and hopefully worth loving. I could not have been more wrong, but it seemed logical at the time. It felt like men had some collective radar that sent out a signal saying: "That's what's her name." "No it can't be! She's fit." "I'm telling you it's her trying to hide her bad self in all that fat. Go get, Tom, Dick and Harry on her behind, trying to trick us like that. Hate it when women think they can hide from us ..."

Jamaicans used to like fat women and children because it showed you cared; something to do with not having enough to eat during slavery. I noticed African women had a tendency for the fuller figure too, though I did not at the time appreciate what that meant to women's status through African social eyes. Being fat in many African circles, unbeknown to me, was taken as a sign of wealth and I sure was not aiming for that intentionally.

Well, to begin with it seemed to work but that too was down to my being totally misinformed and catching the men off balance. I was to find that men’s desires were far stranger than I could possibly comprehend and there was no real “type” out there to be found, because they still came in all kinds of shapes, colours and sizes. If I had listened to some of the music like: "Fattie Bum Bum" and Heptone's "I need a Fat Girl" and all the rest, I would have understood my cause was lost from the get go, but I hated hearing fat records when I was slim and so really didn't know what that was all about.

When I was slim and put on a couple pounds every now and then, everybody would notice. Oh you need to loose a couple pounds, darling, honey, babe; drop the potatoes, bread, cakes. Well, the weight didn't pile on all at once. It took years. Suddenly everyone noticed I was fat and no one said a bloody word. It shut them up. I thought the camouflage could trick the eyes and senses and I still had my curves in the places that I felt good about.

It was my doctor who finally dared raise the thorny subject by saying I had to stop the weight on. My son thought it was great when I started putting on weight because he noticed his friends looked at me funny sometimes when I was slim, as I tended to look younger than my age. Mum being slim for my son was a trial and because he knew about some of what had happened to me. Sometimes people asked him if I was his sister; a few times in my mid twenties I was asked for ID (laugh) and once when I opened my front door in my thirties someone asked me if my mother was home. That was quite hilarious.

Reading Marilyn was a turning point for me without doubt. I couldn’t get into the follow up (“The Bleeding Heart”). “The Women’s Room” ran ripples through women’s issues in the West at the very least. I don’t know what men made of Marilyn’s rebellious book but I enjoyed reading it and it is certainly one of those books that left a distinct influential mark in my life.

I know African American women had their own critique on the issues she raised and I re-read pieces on how women of African descent had to wet-nurse for the white woman and be nurse maid and all that that undoubtedly embodied. However, I managed to bring this war down to a more personal level as to how the longest war was affecting me – the battle of the sexes. My short-term answer was to get fat – that self-destruct mechanism was armed and engaged. Well, I wasn’t going to take up smoking – coughing my guts out just wouldn’t work and I was never much of a drinker. Drugs just wasn’t an option either – just didn’t make any sense to me. I later found people preferred you to indulge all the other aforementioned rather than fat because those they could more relate to. Fat just seemed to be plain fat in their faces and really didn't make a lick of sense to them.

It is one of those things people find difficult to understand, how women sometimes try to make themselves unattractive so not to be noticed. They more understand the bulimic and anorexia side of this. In the extreme, fat is another form of self-harming of course but it is one that many don’t recognise for what it is. People think it has more to do with lack of self-control and laziness – nothing could be further from the truth. A lot of child sexual abuse and rape is hidden in much fat just rolling along the high street in a neighbourhood near you as far as I am concerned. Its toxicity and pain being neutralised by all that fat to stem the flow of shedding blood, aborting, cutting: suicidal women.

So before some people who want to try to roll away the salvation stone or pick up them rocks you would love to start throwing my way, I don't know how you think you can cure or save someone when that log in your eye is making you blind to the issues all around you because the statistics say it is getting worse. If they did it to the least of these, they also did it to Yeshua. I am sure that before man learned to play music there was rape and child sexual abuse; before man learned to make alcohol there was rape and child sexual abuse; before people learned to smoke pot, ash, shoot up heroine, take meth and whatever the latest drug is - there has always been rape and child sexual abuse. Unless we get to the root causes and teach our young about relationships it will not get any better. Internet porn sites are not role models for good behaviour and the dangers of learning about sex this way are right now running red hot.

I have written to MPs, read poetry and spoken to hundreds of people on these issues over the years, competing with "hair" exhibitions, "fashion" shows, concerts and all the other stuff we prefer to comfort ourselves with to dull the pain of all sorts, prettying up the daughters, sisters, cousins, wives for slaughter. I've had women come up to me quietly to say thank you, with tears in their eyes, men even - while other men stood and stared real mad at me - hating every word I uttered after I handed out for free copies of my self-published work on the topic: "Blood Feud". For me, this was what I found lacking in Marilyn's book. It missed the real spot for me, only it took me years to figure out what it was.

Women who wear glasses, looking more intelligent, are not protected from this either and since we can't walk around with a pack of Dobermans or Rottweilers for protection, I guess we're left with finally having to talk about it or think it through at the very least. These men have developed tactics teams of FA cup finalists would be proud of. It is not all opportunistic by any means. They take great pride in diligently planning and executing their assaults, even bragging about it later to their buddies, leaving women with dire despair issues or feeling life is not worth living. What a roasting to receive in some circles. When they recounted their stories of success after, who said it was wrong to do and who said they'd like to try that strategy next time? Eldridge Cleaver at least came clean about his rapes in “Soul on Ice”. His book angered me and I found I could not trust to read any of his other books.

When I was first told to eventually start losing weight, I thought I couldn’t do it because it was like losing some of my self-protection. My son was horrified at the thought. But now I have to get to work on it because it matters to my health and that is the over-riding factor, so I am now trying to diet with gentle exercise. I still feel Marilyn’s book was more of an asset to me than any kind of loss, but now I have reached another turning point in my life. It feels ironic to be in reversal of fat mode but I have always had pound for pound, far more bounce than any one man could possibly comprehend. Work it out ...