gay, smoking, fat

Whew, happy hurricane aftermath.  Is everyone okay?  I'm happy to report that I did not lose power, and in fact spent my Monday watching almost the entire second season of this glorious show:



RuPaul's Drag Race!  The most perfect application of the reality tv format that this world has ever seen.  And besides all the (staged) backstage fights, absurd challenges, and just incredible camp, I love that Logo, the (queer) channel that hosts the show, features moments of the queens talking about their experiences being gay and how doing drag has helped them after rough childhoods.

While I had that thought stewing in the back of my brain, I spent a lot of time today browsing Dave Eggers and Jordan Kurland's site, 90 Days, 90 Reasons, where 90 different writers and performing artists have written short essays on why they are voting for Barack Obama.  I came across Lemony Snicket's essay, which features jaw-dropping quotes from GOP politicians, including this one:

I feel homosexuality is an aberrant, unnatural, and sinful lifestyle, and we now know it can pose a dangerous public health risk.

We can credit Mike Huckabee with this quote.  He said it in 1992, an important year in the AIDS epidemic, when many, less extreme people shared this same belief.  It made me think about changing public perceptions of fatness: on one end of the spectrum we have fat advocates who equate fat hatred with the passe belief that homosexuality was an immoral choice/ communicable disease; and on the other, fatness is like smoking; a bad choice for your health that we should shame and legislate around as much as possible.

Ah, obesity, the next great public health disaster.  Are fat people just "born that way"?  Or are they a product of some giant obesity lobby?  By the way, there is no such thing.

If you read Huckabee's quote out loud and change the word "homosexuality" to "obesity", does it feel natural for you to say?

The most problematic part of this comparison, and Mike Huckabee's wording, is that the idea of fatness is that it's "sinful" - morally reprehensible.  (Uh, it's not.  Prepare for a post on that soon.)  And that it's contagious.  (That is also untrue.)

So yes, as you can imagine, I fall into the camp that wants to push the stigmatization of fat people where it belongs, in the past, with the unfair stigmatization of homosexuality.  Which I believe is not incompatible with a productive dialogue about health that includes every one, regardless of sex, size, or income level.

Okay.  Looking on the other end of the spectrum, we have condescending reactionaries who write garbage articles like this one and think they are so clever.  The beginning of the article actually sounds like a satire, or a critique of the many ways in which we already shame fat people, but by golly the man is serious.  It stresses me out to think that this writer represents the epitome of what we're up against; a complete ignorance of what fatness is/means, an unwillingness to accept that shame is not an effective motivator and a handful of crude fat jokes.

We've already tried shame.  It doesn't work.

Two BAFLs speaking out against fat hate

Happy anti-bullying month!  October is here.  And my non-fatosphere blog roll and facebook news feed was all abuzz about two awesome women using a public platform to speak out against fat hatred.  Do yourself a favor and check it out!

First, Jennifer Livingston, an anchor on a CBS morning station, speaks out against a man who sent her a letter critical about her body, saying that she is setting a bad example to her community.  Kudos to her for, instead of shrugging it off, calling out this e-mail for what it really is: bullying.  She says: 

If you are at home and talking about the fat news lady, guess what? Your children are probably going to go to school and call someone fat.

Of course, I dream of a world where "fat" is neutral description rather than a taunting insult, but that is not where we're at.  I absolutely agree with Livingston.  Parents set an example for their children, and we cannot accomplish anything in a world where kids are taught to be cruel.

Next is my permanent crush, Krista Burton, who blogs at the highly popular Effing Dykes.  Even if you identify as straight, I highly encourage you to read it - her long-winded posts are so entertaining and in equal measure compassionate and hilarious.  This entry's topic is about a straight woman who asks Krista to blog about how all lesbians are fat.  She pours her heart out about generalizing, the word "fat", and queer bodies.

The post is here.

"I don't identify with my body"

There is a common narrative associated with trans people; that as they mature, they are confused by the body they see in the mirror.  It doesn’t match their idea of what their body should look like. 

Since I am not a) a trans person and therefore b) not every single trans person, I don’t know whether this is everyone’s experience.  However, I had a conversation with a friend today who identifies as genderqueer.  She said two things about body image that I found very striking:

1. She would love to be skinnier, because it would make her look more androgynous.

2. She does not identify with her boobs.

First of all, I want to thank her for opening up about a personal issue that I never hear discussed.  It’s hard to share your personal experience with an unknown audience that might not be receptive.  I’d like to make two separate points.

First, my feminist worldview provides me with both an eye to look out for issues that disproportionately affect women, and therefore, a vocabulary that limits me to talking about the world in terms of men vs. women, ignoring the experiences of people outside the binary. 

I have never claimed that men are not affected by society’s fat hatred.  A common trope is that men want to bulk up in order to fit the masculine beauty ideal, but there are plenty of men out there who are losing or trying to lose weight.  But I do think that women are disproportionately affected by the fat stigma.  Women’s bodies tend to be curvier, softer, tend to store fat more easily.  Women are also more bombarded with beauty-related information and are under more pressure to conform to a beauty standard. 

I can trace society’s association between androgyny and thinness – men’s bodies, though not necessarily thin, have neither big boobs nor hips.  Have you spotted this androgynous young hipster?

(Credit to iloveyounonetheless.wordpress.com)

(Courtesy of qwear.com)

Maybe this one?

You just do you, Patti Smith.  No matter what I love you forever.

But just as there are men of all shapes and sizes, there are androgynous people of all shapes and sizes, too, who are constantly forced to navigate through a world of people who don’t understand their gender identity and will never be able to “read” them the way they feel.

And my friend’s point shows this blogger that all people, not just people who identify as women, experience a pressure to look thin.  For all kinds of reasons.

The second point – the feeling of not identifying with her boobs – felt more personal to me.  I believe she was referring to her confusion at seeing her boobs in the mirror, and her aversion to being reminded of their existence.  (And it ties in with wanting to be skinnier – a skinnier body means less boobs.)

The experiences of the gender-variant are tough to fathom.  The gender binary is even more deeply ingrained into society than fat hatred.  Every single piece of clothing, every job, toy, and emotion in this world is gendered. 

(Thank you, socimages)

But I will be so presumptuous to say that I can relate with the feeling of being confused by the body I see in the mirror.  Both gender-variant people looking for people of their gender, and women trying to escape the stigmatization of fat, don’t see bodies that look like theirs in magazines, movies, and other media.  Of course, gender-variant people have gender issues to think about in addition to their body issues. But when I look in the mirror, I am confused that my body is not thinner.

These forms of media reinforce the idea that women’s bodies that aren’t thin don’t exist, unless they belong to a wacky aunt.  Mainstream main characters don’t have paunchy little bellies or uneven breasts or big calves.  Women in advertisements have perfectly glowing skin, delicately curving backs, narrow shoulders. 

Then the ads target me.  Everything about me that is different is an imperfection.  Newspaper articles come out with tips on getting a flat stomach.  Eating certain superfoods will make my legs more shapely. 

And then, we talk, talk, talk about it, silently comparing our bodies to each others’ and trying to one-up each other with our own body-related complaints.