Body Conscious Solidarity

According to a UN Security Council meeting in 2002 there were 40 million starving people in the world and at least 14.5 million of these were in southern Africa. Now keep that in mind while I continue...

To begin with I must confess that I'm a total sucker for solidarity. I love it when people are concerned with current issues and when they actually care about the world around them. It makes me feel good but more importantly it makes me feel like part of the global “brotherhood”. (brotherhood here is used to denote 'family')

Some time back I was watching this documentary on eating disorders and it left me cold. It was tracking the rehabilitation journeys of a group of people with eating disorders. Grown women taking 3 hours to eat a dessert spoon of rice (that's kak embarrassing!) and because fast food has become a normal part of our eating regime, as part of the rehabilitation program they take these women out to fast food places once a week. Now you'll have to forgive me for laughing but the patients read out the menus and cry!!! What the FUCK???

Then I started giving it some thought and maybe I was being insensitive. Maybe its not as tragic as I assumed. Maybe its this inherent sense of sisterhood with the rest of the continent. Solidarity at its best ?

So the next time you're out walking in public and you see the size zeros, don't pity them because they will never know the sheer orgasmic thrill of pure Swiss chocolate or the comforting embrace of warm Italian crusty bread and butter, but rather be proud of them because they have decided to do what we cannot. They stand in solidarity with the 14.5 million people in Africa on the brink of starvation... Solidarity of body!