Football, soup pots and skinny girls

SO the Packers won...did I mention that I'm a Packers fan? HEY HEY...don't go away...that's not what I'm going to write about. (GO PACK...couldn't help myself)

On Friday night, while I was at Greg's game, I did a fair amount of people watching. 1. So that I didn't have to watch giant boys running into my kid and B. Because it's infinitely more interesting than watching football.

High school football has changed alot since I was in high school. We spent most of our time yelling out cheers we'd made up while we sat in the stands (mostly to tick off the cheerleaders who couldn't get a cheer in edgewise) . Now the cheerleaders are more polished than ours ever were and there are mostly only parents in the stands. We had a parent who would bring a large soup pot to games along with a huge metal spoon. She stood on the sidelines and beat that pot for all it was worth until one night another annoyed parent de-spooned her. That's okay...she just beat it like a bongo instead...no one tried to amputate her hands. I'll bet her kids wanted to though.

I was watching the high school kids this past Friday. Almost every single girl looked like they needed to be held down and force fed a sandwich. SO THIN. The "dance squad" (when we were in the school they were called the "kennel club"...they were all a little on the woofy side) came out shortly before half time. They wear these little one piece, black, form fitting, teeny tiny uniforms and carry tiny pom poms. They are all very very skinny. Emaciated in some cases. Why do girls feel that's necessary to be beautiful? Not one of them had curves. Their faces were colored only by the make up they wore and not by the rosy glow of health. Emma and I were on our way for popcorn and I saw two of them standing and talkng. One was so thin. She reached down at one point and clutched the area over her abdomen as though she were in pain. Being someone who has struggled with bulimia in the past, my imagination began to wonder if these girls are hurting themselves to look the way that they do. And for what? Two minutes every other Friday in front of a small town crowd who is only half watching because the 50/50 raffle is going on at the same time.
It makes me sad, what society demands of girls..or makes them think they have to demand it of themselves. I remember the feeling that I had to be thin when I was in high school. But never to the point that it would have occured to me or any of my friends to take extreme measures to get to that status. (I didn't get to that until I was in my thirties). I look at Emma's round little baby curves and hope that she doesn't ever hate her body enough to harm it to be thin. But now I'm getting all Oprah on you.

The rest of the scene Friday night was pretty unremarkable. Parents I'd never seen before, a high school band that couldn't seem to get the whole marching thing down. I've never seen so many legs moving in different directions in my life. Our band leader would have been clutching his chest on the sidelines. We used to sell candy bars in the activity room, and now they have a sophisticated concession area selling grilled pork sandwiches, pizza, popcorn, several different drinks, tons of candy and snacks of all kinds. So much has changed.

The good news for Greg is that since Emma talked me into that cow bell...I can leave my soup pot at home.