2024-01-19 08:15:02
“At first I was in shock, I didn’t function,” recalls network star Mia Dagan in the first weeks of the war. “I saw people going out and volunteering, doing really amazing things and everyone coming together and working – and I’m sitting at home and can’t take a shower, and I felt so guilty.”
The guilt was replaced by an unexpected feeling of motivation, when she came across a post from a friend from the past: “After three weeks, I saw a picture of a friend from the army in uniform, and I sent her a message saying, ‘I didn’t know our unit recruited reservists.’ She told me, ‘We’d love for you to come, would you? ‘, and I told her ‘yes.’ After a week I was recruited.”
Did you think you’d ever put on a uniform again? “Of course not. When I was released I said ‘great, goodbye, I did my thing’, I didn’t think I would want to go back. I have to say, and this is the strangest thing, but the reserves saved me, simply saved me. It was a daily routine in the central area and there was something about leaving the house every day, Putting on a uniform, arriving at the unit, working. This is a foreign relations intelligence unit, of our intelligence corps with a foreign intelligence corps. I felt that I was able to do something, that I was really helping, which is significant and important and very interesting. I was released a week and a half ago.”
Is there anything we as citizens can do? “Speak, demonstrate, put pressure on everyone where they can. Trying to return the economy to normal is excellent, it needs to happen. At the same time, we must not forget for a moment. We are allowed to be happy, laugh, do, work, but continue to struggle until everyone returns home. We must not be indifferent. We are over a hundred days after the start of the war, when there are abductees in captivity. The heart does not know how to deal with such things. It is so frustrating, this feeling of helplessness, I say this from my place, which is nothing, it is irrelevant, but There are mothers and fathers and children who have been waiting for their family for over a hundred days and there is nothing they can do except beg and hope that someone will listen and do something.”
Bar Zega
Mia Dagan: “The reserves saved me, I realized how lonely I was in the last two years”
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During her reserve service, Dagan came to some significant understandings about her personal life as well. For the first time in a long time, she was no longer connected 24/7 to her personal phone, which, beyond her social life, was also used by her for work needs on social networks: “Suddenly I was reminded of how lonely I had been in the past two years,” she says. “The fact that I work with the phone from home every day, with myself, supposedly talking to lots of people and creating interactions, but in practice very alone, I realized how much I needed it, the energy, this feeling of working on something together. It reminded me of who I can be to be”.
How will this understanding get along with the fact that your profession is largely based on being constantly on social networks? “I’m really saying, it gave me pain that I don’t know if it suits me. Maybe I should go back to working with people, I really like working in an office. I think I’ll have to make a change in the way I live my life, because it shouldn’t be all So alone.”
You understood this in a very complex time. “It’s very strange because I didn’t feel alone, I didn’t realize that I felt lonely. On the contrary, being alone at home on the couch is my dream. I didn’t feel alone because I’m constantly interacting with people, but she’s not real. She’s great, nice, caresses you The ego is very much, but it’s not real closeness. It’s not joint action, it’s not a conversational dynamic. It’s a monologue and I’m terribly lacking in dialogue. It’s getting megalomaniacal just talking about myself at home all day, isn’t it?”
Do you go out and meet friends? “They come to me. I’m not a very good hostess, but I have fun at my place. In the two or three years that this was my job, I went and shut myself away. I turned my house into a fortress, and if someone wants me to leave the house, it’s fights. It’s very difficult to avoid going out, to avoid meeting people, it’s a gathering , seclusion. But I have improved a lot since the reserves, it changed something in me, opened my chakra. We need to say thank you to the IDF for many reasons and also a personal thank you from me Mia, my soul really needed it.”
There is a video where you try to find uniform pants in your size. did you find? “I found it. It took a week and I have to say that I received a message from an illustrator who said she loved my content. The army should be able to take responsibility for its soldiers. I gained most of my weight in the army, so this story of looking for uniforms in my size was also with me throughout The service, more toward the end when I reached extreme measures that no longer exist.”
They say that in the army there is a five kilo rule – either you gain five or you lose five. “I gained twenty. Cheetos, cheese, bamba. You’re terribly sad and I’m eating your emotions and that’s perfectly fine.”
2 Viewing the gallery
Mia Dagan
(Photo: Rotem Labell)
Even in this period it happens to people who eat their emotions. “As it should be, what else can be done? Okay, then we’ll buy new pants. I don’t feel that during this period I have more emotional eating than usual, but I think everyone has some emotional eating. Food is a friend, there’s a reason I’m fat. It’s not that it came because Place, it didn’t fall on me from the sky. I eat more than the calories I spend. I love food, I enjoy it, for me it’s one of the best pleasures in life. I don’t feel like I need to change. I’m good.”
Is there a price to pay for this? “Obviously. First of all it’s a social cost. Being a fat woman, you get looks, comments, especially on the Internet. People feel comfortable giving me advice from here until a new message. I put myself in a very exposed place, so I don’t complain about people reacting.
“There are also other costs such as not being able to find clothes, or going to the doctor with an ear infection and having him tell you ‘you need to lose weight’. There is also a health cost, I don’t think fat is a healthy thing, it’s not that I’m encouraging people to ‘attack the fridge.’ I say it’s my body, it’s what it is right now and I want to feel comfortable, walk around the world with my head held high. I don’t feel like I need to be ashamed or hide or starve myself to conform to what people think of my body. I’m fine and as long as my doctor says I am OK, so I’m fine, as long as my blood tests are normal, and they are normal.”
Do you feel there is visibility for fat people in the media? “There is an effort and an attempt to integrate plus models in fashion campaigns, plus actresses in series and movies, but we are still at the stage where it feels forced and I am not against the coercion, sometimes you have to force it until it goes down naturally in people’s throats. I think you have to go to extremes to reach the middle. I would be very happy to see More diverse representations on television, in cinema, in advertisements. This is terribly significant and not only in fat contexts, but also skin color, height, curls. Why are there no curls? Where are all the curls? Why is no one in the news curly? Show me variety.”
As befits a network star and a successful content creator, Dagan collaborates with well-known brands, including the cosmetics brand Sebocalm and the Super Pharm chain – where she advertises a line of unexpected products.
I saw a new and interesting collaboration on your Instagram – vibrators. explain “I started working with Super Pharm on something they call Sexual Wellness, and it’s really one of the things I believe in more. Female sexuality is something that, especially in Israeli society, is very muted, that it’s not appropriate to talk about it, as if women’s sexual desire doesn’t exist, as if it’s forbidden Let them know that you are interested. I believe that female sexuality is not only a very liberating thing, for me it is one of the things that most helped my self-confidence in a relationship. The fact that I bought a vibrator and enjoyed it made me much more confident in what is needed in a relationship, to someone who does not compromise and just says thank you for choosing her. As a girl I didn’t think I would be wanted, I didn’t think I deserved it.
“I think there is something in this process of figuring out what you like and what makes you feel good, before it even comes to a partner or something as a couple. I believe this is a really significant thing. I get messages from girls that thanks to me for the first time they finished. A thirty or even fifty year old woman says To me, ‘I finished for the first time’. It really makes me very happy. A lot of times sex feels like a chore when you’re not enjoying it. It’s supposed to be a positive and intimate and close thing in a relationship, it’s not supposed to be something you just do, ‘Okay fine, we haven’t slept for a week No, it should be fun for all parties involved.”
2 Viewing the gallery
Mia Dagan
(Photo: Rotem Labell)
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