Another cultural extravaganza unfolded this morning and, boy, was it a doozy!
Last night, while searching the kitchen for extra towels to clean up a water spill in one of the conference rooms, I stumbled across a scale--not for vegetables, but for humans. I made the mistake(?!) of stepping on it, after having not weighed myself since arriving in Thailand. It read out in kilograms, and having no idea how to convert to pounds, I locked the kitchen and headed to the office to finish working. Sitting down at my computer, I googled "xx kg to lbs." Y'ALL. I got the biggest "OMG Summer Face" possible and immediately squealed to my coworker Mark, who was in the office, "MARK!!!!! I have gained sooo much weight in this country!!!!" Mark laughed hysterically and continued to tell me that, in fact, the scale is usually 5 KG off--lighter, not heavier. I told him that it was not physically possible that I gained THAT much weight in two months. He gave me a snarky grin and I immediately put my head in my hands and squealed again. I decided that it wasn't a mistake. I needed to know at some point, that yes, Summer, eating a double serving of dessert every night, sitting in an office all day, and plowing through Nutella, will indeed put some L-B-S on the Y-O-U. Awesome.
Now, before you start going through my Facebook pictures to compare the Summer from two months ago to the Summer now or think "What a ethnocentric post!" or think I'm looking for a sympathic "Summer, you're gorgeous" comment below this link, I am coming to a point and it is none of the above. I am an American girl in her 20s. I think about weight. However, being in Thailand, changes my thinking. Weight has different cultural capital over here. Not that Thai people don't care about image, that's far from the truth, but MY thinking about beauty and image in better/worse value judgments really diminishes when I'm over here. I tend to let my American walls of beauty and image and size and cultural pressure to wear xx size of pants crumble. I have touched a mascara tube twice since being in Thailand. That is beautiful. Now, I'm not trying to make generalizations, or place a right/wrong value on caring about image or not. At the end of the day, I believe that Adam and Eve ended up caring a lot about their nakedness and without combating this fear every morning I wake up with the Truth that God is ridiculously smitten by me, so will I.
This morning, I decided that the scale was obviously mistaken and it is better to weigh oneself in the morning anyways, so while the kitchen staff was busy serving 91 people for breakfast, I snuck in and jumped on the scale. While I was waiting for the numbers to settle, I felt one of the staff grab my arm and squeal "oooohooooooo XX KG!!!!!!!!!" to the entire kitchen. I was mortified and most likely a deep shade of red. One of the girls came over and grabbed my arm while I shouted at girl number one in Thai "Get over here and you weigh yourself!" (Gosh! I'm a terrible person.) She came over and being 5-foot nothing and tiny, she has no scruples about jumping on the scale. Then, girl number two jumped on and it began a game?!? A terrible, sick non-American game. Their attitudes went from surprised, playful, accepting (as in, that is what she is, not deeming it socially acceptable), and back to work in the matter of a minute. Why do I feel like my attitude will take a little more prayer and processing then theirs?
After this little ordeal, now that most of the staff heard the squealing, knows my weight, and thus, I am accountable come time for dessert, I must choose not to believe the lies that I am less ______ than I could/should be and choose the Truth. Jesus is infatuated with who He is and so am I. He is everything. So here's to a little more movement in my life, a little less Nutella (fo' real only a little less...that stuff is the bomb!), and lots of loving the women around me more than I did yesterday. Insecurity doesn't just stop when you reach a number on the scale. It stops when He says "You're ridiculously good looking. Insecurity, say what?!?" Or something to that end...
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