Tea at Trianon: A Rant on Weight

John Wilson Croker on Marie-Antoinette

"We have followed the history of Marie Antoinette with the greatest diligence and scrupulosity. We have lived in those times. We have talked with some of her friends and some of her enemies; we have read, certainly not all, but hundreds of the libels written against her; and we have, in short, examined her life with– if we may be allowed to say so of ourselves– something of the accuracy of contemporaries, the diligence of inquirers, and the impartiality of historians, all combined; and we feel it our duty to declare, in as a solemn a manner as literature admits of, our well-matured opinion that every reproach against the morals of the queen was a gross calumny– that she was, as we have said, one of the purest of human beings."

~from History of the Guillotine by John Wilson Croker, 1844

Edmund Burke on Marie-Antoinette

"It is now sixteen or seventeen years since I saw the queen of France, then dauphiness, at Versailles; and surely there never lighted on this orb, which she hardly seemed to touch, a more delightful vision. I saw her just above the horizon, decorating and cheering the elevated sphere she had just begun to move in, glittering like a morning star full of life and splendor and joy. Oh, what a revolution....Little did I dream that I should have lived to see such disasters fall upon her, in a nation of gallant men, in a nation of men of honor and of cavaliers! I thought ten thousand swords must have leaped from their scabbards, to avenge even a look which threatened her with insult. But the age of chivalry is gone; that of sophisters, economists, and calculators has succeeded...."

~Edmund Burke, October 1790

Wednesday, June 10, 2015

A Rant on Weight

While health is important, we are obsessed with weight in our society, our own and other people's. To all women and girls: please do not let anyone use your weight as a means to control you by making you feel guilty, or unlovable, or unattractive, or unsuccessful because they have decided that you are "fat." If you want to lose weight because it will help you to feel better and have more energy and therefore accomplish more, then that is good!! But don't lose weight because of other people and what they say or think. People who really love you will love you no matter what your weight is! People who are going to criticize you will do it even if you become as thin as a supermodel! Weight has become a tyrannical social control over women in our modern society, worse than any real or imagined grievances of the past. Whatever your weight is, true beauty comes from within! Share