The Conventional Wisdom

I’ve lost track of how many times I’ve heard people say something along the lines of “Everyone knows fat is bad.”  There was a breif time period where it was pissing me off a lot and so I started making notes intending to come back with a huge post about how dumb people who accept the conventional wisdom as fact are with lots of examples.  But then it happend so much that learned helplessness took over and I just cried silent invisible tears.

Today I was reading a really interesting article by Matt Taibbi on a completely unrelated topic. It is talking about Sarah Palin and her relationship to the media.  ( If you find non fat politics interesting it is well worth a read if only to read the phrase “eternal asshole of white resentment.”  Though there is some sexist language, pussies, really matt? You couldn’t come up with a two syllable word for your haiku that didn’t also insult my body?)

The essential gist is that Sarah Palin is getting piled on now because she has lost the support of the establishment.   It’s not the individual journalists opinions who matter, but the opinions of the higher ups int he publishing and media companies.  The Conventional wisdom is no longer behind her, so the media is piling on.

I think this is pretty much exactly what has been happening to us fatties for about 2 decades now.   It is better for ratings if fat is bad, and it is better for the diet and cosmetic industry if fat is bad.  Therefore it is better for the owners of companies that sell advertisements and rely on ratings if fat is bad.  Therefore the conventional wisdom is that fat is bad.

Obviously, like every issue it is more complicated than just the not totally altruisting motivations of journalists and their bosses.  But I think that thinking about how the conventional wisdom evolves and where it comes from is really important.

The next question to ask for fat acceptance is how can we make HAES the conventional wisdom?  My own pessimism says it can’t be done because no one profits from people trying to be healthy regardless of weight.  But maybe I’m wrong.

Tired

A month or so ago I was driving home from rehearsal for a show I was in and I was hit with a sudden wave of fatigue.

Not physical fatigue, but emotional fatigue.  I was tired of being the fat girl.

I was just suddenly so tired of being different, for once I wanted to be one of the cute girls with the bubbly personality who gets cast in some kind of romantic part in a show.  I wanted to wear a pretty costume, I wanted to go to Anne Taylor and buy clothes after rehearsal.  I wanted to fly on an airplane and not worry they were going to ask me to buy another seat.  I wanted to talk to people about why I think The Biggest Loser sucks without them thinking I should really be on it.  I just wanted to feel normal.

Of course, no one really feel’s normal. Normalcy is an illusion, an illusion from the media that “most” people are a certain way (white, thin, average height, able bodied, 2 parents 2.5 kids, etc).

In the end I’m lucky that the only things that make me different from that ridiculous concept of “normalcy” are my height and my weight.  And as tired as I am sometimes of having to work a little bit harder to feel good about myself I know in the end that it is worth it.

Sometimes I just wish I could take a little vacation?  Y’know?

 

Fat Actress brings out the Fat Hate

Shorter Alicia Villarosa at this website I’ve never heard of before:

Sure Gabourey Sidibe is a great actress, but could she please stop being FAT at me?

Really, that’s pretty much what she says. And the whole post is loaded down with the usual everyone knows fat people die b.s. She even uses the phrases “GAG!” and “SUPER Fat” (sic) to make sure everyone knows just how really really fat Gabourney Sidibe is. (And how totally NOT okay with it the writer is.)
I think my favorite bit has to be this:

As well adjusted as Sidibe purports to be, there’s got to be an emotional disconnect between the mind and body.

So, even though she SAYS she has no issues with her body, she obviously DOES. Don’t you know that we know everything about someone just by seeing how fat or too thin they are?
She follows this up with :

Finding comfort eating one’s way to morbid obesity is not healthy, nor is it self-affirming.

I THINK she’s trying to say that not only does Miss Sidibe have to be miserable about being fat that she also MUST be a comfort eater because how else would she get to be so fat?

Her ridiculous rant about Sidibe’s weight and anyone who would try to say that maybe obese people are I don’t know, people,  is inexplicably followed up with something along the lines of …But we’re also pressured to be really thin too and that sux too OMG.  As though by pointing out that being pressured to be super thin is also bad too, yeah, totally, it’s bad too and stuff, she can balance out the giant plate of steaming hot fat hate that was served up as the first half of the article.

It’s funny because she kindof almost sort of gets to a point about accepting yourself the way you are:

So how do we reconcile the bizarre extremes; the pressure to be painfully thin and the backlash that glorifies obesity? Is there a middle ground? Hopefully and tentatively, yes. Real women can, and do, have curves; people do come in all different shapes and sizes. So the message is to be the healthiest you. That means not hauling around a mountain of excess of weight that limits activities and invites health problems. Nor does it mean starving yourself or over-exercising to the brink of cardiovascular failure.

Accept yourself, you’re a real woman, that is unless you’re “SUPER fat”, and then exercising yourself to the brink of cardiovascular failure is probably a good idea fatty, don’t you know that being fat is going to kill you, stop it already.

Villarosa employs everyone’s favorite line of logic. She must be mentally unhealthy and have a poor diet, because she’s fat. Since we’re drawing unfounded conclusions about people based on very little information today, I’m going to assume this writer is miserable about her body and has decided that everyone should be too (omg especially if they are SUPER fat.) Sorry lady, you’re out of luck here.

Late update from TheRoot247’s twitter feed:

DISCUSS—-> “Fat people: thin people :: domestic violence victims:non-victims” — A Colleague

Anyone who writes for this website is clearly an idiot.  I mean it.  It’s not like there aren’t resources out there for people who want to research obesity or domestic violence victims.  There are tons of articles and commentary which might provide some enlightening information.  (Y’know based on research and facts instead of what someone thought up over their after lunch smoke break.)  Instead they publish the uneducated ramblings of some obviously privileged morons with no exposure to social justice issues.   Way to really raise the bar for online content. So I clearly flew off the handle after reading this tweet.  They apparently attempted to clarify it and it wasn’t intended to be quite as bad as how it came off at first glance.  I still am not impressed, but that is no reason for me to malign a group of writers.

Drunk on a train

This weekend some friends and I were going out partying. (TRIGGER WARNING: This may be triggering if stories of harassment bother you.) On the Red Line there was one of your quintessential “Loud drunk crazy people.” This guy was walking up and down the cars yelling about God and Jesus and his message to everyone and blah and blah.

He got to our car and he was starting to sit down, to maybe chill out when these three dickheads in the front of the train provoked him. Now when these guys got on the train I thought “oh look, some math graduate students decided to leave their cells for a night.” In retrospect I realize that this was unfair to math graduate students, they were probably undergrad economists. (Jk…kindof)

Anyway these three Dickheads start spouting out about how there is no god. Now of course, I agree with them, but the crazy drunk guy on the train(CDGOTT) is not interested in a theological debate, so he walks past us over to these guys and starts yelling. He is now riled up, someone has responded, he has an audience, the volume is cranked. They argue with him a bit, and when he’s not getting anywhere he turns around and starts walking back.

Of course, CDGOTT has to stop in front of me. (I must have been wearing “random guy” attracting cologne, it was a very weird night.) Hilarious that he would turn to ME for help in his religious crusade, less hilarious once he started grabbing his crotch and talking about how he was going to fuck me. When my “Ignore him don’t make eye contact” technique did not waiver he actually grabbed one of the other girls who was with me. At which point I did make eye contact and started to get up, and he backed off. (My friend then slathered herself in purel. I wish I could slather my brain in purel.)

Eventually CDGOTT gets back to the three dickheads in the corner giving atheists everywhere a bad name. They are arguing and the guys are clearly desperate to get rid of him. Trying to get him to leave the car. When I get really pissed off is when another young woman gets on the train by herself and one of the dickheads start encouraging the CDGOTT to harass that woman instead of their perfect and lovely selves.

I actually got up and told them off, I don’t know how effective it was, but I told them it was ridiculous for them to rile up this guy and then sit there while he sexually harassed women, even going so far to encourage him to harass another woman. They didn’t exactly seem cowed by it, but I just couldn’t let that behavior stand without comment. I”m sure some angry fat chick yelling at them between the rantings of the CDGOTT was hardly effective. But I couldn’t have lived with myself if I didn’t say something. (And the girl they had been trying to put in the line of fire actually thanked me, which made me feel like it was at least a little worthwhile.)

I don’t think that men are obligated to protect women. But the annoying theological bullshit the dickheads had to deal with (read, crazy rantings) was a far cry from the sexual harassment my friends and I were enduring. This guy was standing there threatening to rape me, and it wasn’t as important to those three dickheads as arguing with a crazy guy about God, and yet maintaining the comfort of their evening.

I know I was in no danger as there were a bunch of people on the train, and I could have taken this guy out. But having someone stand there and say disgusting and vile things to you while everyone else just tries to pretend its not happening is not exactly a warm fuzzy start to ones evening. (Nor does it make your plan to take the train home drunk at 2am seem like a particularly good idea. Three dickheads, if you read this, you owe me a $30.00 cab fare.)

It surprises me that men wonder why women don’t trust them. Not one of the many virile young men on that train could be bothered to take the heat off me and my friends. Not one of the other people said anything to those three dickheads in the corner encouraging a crazy man to harass a young woman.

I know I’ve said before that I hate chivalry, and maybe this is another reason why it bugs me so much. Holding a door for me is nothing but an empty fucking gesture. I can hold a fucking door, chances are I can hold a door better than most the tiny menfolk who hold doors for me. I can handle my chair, I can deal with it if you curse in front of me and I can buy my own fucking dinner and drinks.

What I can’t do is convince other men not to sexually harass or rape me. Where the fuck is the fucking chivalry then?

I do have to say that this incident made the CTA’s new anti harassment signs seem much more relevant. (It also made my friends and my earlier conversation about the creepy guys on the train seem all the more pertinent, fact, all three of us have had some guy on the red line jerk it in front of us. Ahh safety.) And a bystander did apparently call the new CTA anti harassment number and the CDGOTT was removed a few stops after we got off. Unfortunately the dickheads were allowed to go out among the people and continue being dickheads.

Ahh… Can you hear me? or Acknowledging Ignorance

I’ve been spending a lot of time reading lately. I have three Marketing Research textbooks on my desk along with piles of case studies and a few booklets about various software packages. I started a new job two weeks ago (hence my prolonged silence.)

The scariest part about starting this job (or I suppose any new job) is dealing with and acknowledging how much I don’t know. Not only do I have to learn a bunch of statistical methods I haven’t used before, I’m learning new jargon, new faces and names and a whole new business model. My technique for learning this stuff is basically what I use when confronted with most new things.

1. Shut Up
2. Listen
3. Read everything that I come across
4. Continue steps 1-3 until I have something new to add to what is going on.

I think this strategy is especially important in blogging and activist communities. I would never walk into a meeting with a bunch of professional graphic designers and hold forth on my thoughts about the color blue. Similarly I wouldn’t walk into any other community and start spouting my opinions without first really having a good understanding of what that community is about, what they stand for.

How could I think that I have something to add to that community, if I don’t even have an understanding of where they are at?

The land of Blog has a relatively low barrier to entry (compared to say, a career in journalism. People come to your site, they read what you say, they comment, some people tell you how great you are. (Seriously, you’re all welcome to tell me how great I am any time you want ) It is easy to believe that with just the right turn of phrase you too could be the next Queen of Blog.

But you can’t.

Some blogs in the fatosphere (also the feminist blogging community) have earned their place at the top of the hierarchy because they have been discussing and fighting and sharing and providing revolutionary and insightful commentary for years. They have defined key terms, brought more public awareness and just generally spent years talking about fat acceptance and feminism. Their insight, research, and excellent writing are what built this community.

You don’t just get to come in three years down the line and expect the same level of respect and acceptance. You don’t get to be an authoritative voice on a topic just because you showed up.

If it seems like the barriers to entry are high and your contributions aren’t appreciated it is because the barriers to entry ARE high, and your contributions aren’t exactly new. There has been a lot of material covered in the fatosphere over the years. There has also been a lot of going back, explaining, getting more contributions, losing voices, gaining new ones.

I guess the question every blogger has to ask themselves is “What am I adding to the conversation?” But how can you know what you are adding to the conversation if you weren’t even listening to the first half.

I don’t want to discourage people who are new to the community from blogging. Everyone has something to add be it your personal experiences or your unique take on social issues. But I would encourage you to read as much as you can first to make sure that this is really a community you want to be part of, and that you have something to bring to the buffet. (mmmmm buffet)

::boob jiggle::

Apparently as a woman that is the only real contribution I can make to the video game world.  See this review of Ninja Gaiden 2 at Game Revolution:

Speaking of nipples, this game has finally found the perfect use for the Sixaxis motion controls. During the levels in which you play one of three female characters, you can move and shake your controller to shake their boobs. All the straight men in the room say it with me: “Yes. Yes. A thousand times yes.”

All the women in the room say it with me: “Fucking Virgins lobotomized sex fiends.”

It’s not bad enough that the female fighting toon in Ninja Gaiden presumably sucks more, (if they are sticking to the formula from the LAST NG) and is “dressed” in some strategically placed scraps of clothing that somehow theoretically manage to keep her ridiculously large boobs from hitting her in the face while she tries to kill guys.   Now we have to further degrade her by allowing the player to virtually grope her cleavage.

Fucking great.

Shit like this makes me never want to play video games again.  And I love video games, so y’know, I’m pretty pissed.

Also, This.  Though I do not play Halo.

I wish I could go take my anger out on some virtual monsters, but that’s only going to remind me of HOW MUCH I FUCKING HATE THE VIDEO GAME INDUSTRY.

I’m going to go find a new fucking hobby that I can feel good about spending my money on.

**updated so I am not insulting people who don’t deserve to be insulted by being associated with asshole game developers.

The Case for discussing Thin Privilege

Cross posted from the comments at WATRD. (I know, I should not go back there. I fail.)

Look, you simply cannot talk about how one group is discriminated against without talking about how another group receives inherent privilege. You can’t unpack the nature of the discrimination without it sometimes coming up. It would be like trying to paint a painting with only shadows, never highlighting the bright points. Privilege is what happens when one group is discriminated against, it means that another group receives inherent benefits from NOT being discriminated against. It is a yin yang thing.

I totally get that being told to check your privilege feels like an attack. I feel wounded every time I have to check my white privilege or my cis gendered privilege or even my Tall well educated upper middle class privilege. It’s hard to acknowledge these inherent benefits you have because you feel GUILTY AS HELL. (Or at least I do)

But to just say we can’t talk about it because it is “Othering”? ORLY? Is it as “Othering” as say, people not sitting next to you on the bus? Or not getting jobs/ Or being called lazy? Being told you smell even when you dont? Being told to go to the gym? Not getting adequate medical care?

The fact is, it is othering, it is supposed to be, the point is for people who have privilege, for whatever reason, to take that opportunity and realize how while what they are saying may be valid in their experience, it comes from a place where they haven’t had to deal with the same damaging behaviors (See above) as the group they are discussing.

That is not to say that they don’t deal with ANY damaging behaviors. Just not the SAME ones.

If you find yourself reading this just trying to come up with more ways of proving that you’re right, then you aren’t learning. You are trying to find a way to defend your own ideas that you’re always right, or that you know a lot and other people don’t, or that you should never have to feel bad or guilty ever, or for whatever reason. It’s okay to be wrong sometimes, it is NOT okay to refuse to admit it. (Does that sound as patronizing as point #7?)

Updated: Spell Check FTW.

Hollaback Cards?

I was reading this great post at racialicious today. It is especially meaningful for me because I keep getting harassed in the scariest way possible on my two block walk from my bus to my house.

Men keep following me in their cars. This has happened a few times now, not a lot of times considering how often I come home. But having a guy turn off a street, or go around the block just so he can follow you down the street talking at you is INCREDIBLY SCARY for me. (I feel like I posted about this last year when a guy memorably told me that I had a “Seriously Big Ass” but I can’t find it.)

Anyway, this keeps happening, it scares the crap out of me. It also upsets me because the men who harass me are invariably black, and I don’t like how this is making me distrust black men (in cars) and having to struggle more with racial stereotypes.

I often wish there was a way that I could communicate to them WHY what they are doing is inappropriate, and how it affects me as a person. And reading this post at racialicious I thought, well, what about business cards, or post it cards that try to get this point across.

There are probably a lot of reasons it is a bad idea to be handing out cards to street harassers. It probably wouldn’t help, they probably wouldn’t read it, but it amuses me to think about it.

Maybe on one side it could say:

“About the woman you just harassed:

Likes: The color purple, dogs, cats,.
Dislikes: Being bothered on the street, especially by guys in cars. Brussell Sprouts, Dieting, being called “Sweetie” or “Darling”
Career: Statistician
Hobbies: Singing, Knitting, Video Games
Relationship Status: Cohabitating with a very large man, seriously, he’s large, so is my dog.”

On the other side:

I AM NOT INTERESTED

You have received this card because you decided to approach me in an unwanted manner while I tried to go about my day. I want you to know that I was not rude because I don’t like you.  I was rude because I have to deal with similar behavior from men every single day, and have decided not to expend additonal energy on men who harass me.

I deal with this so often I’ve had cards printed up. Think about it.

What do you think? what would yours say?

I’m not F*ing sorry

There are a lot of people that I work with, am acquainted with, live near, am related to, or otherwise encounter to that I hate. Their behavior aggravates me, from their inability to preform the simplest task to their ridiculous opinions based on no knowledge at all, to their tendency to yell things across the street and listen to loud music with total disregard for the time.

I find, for me, the pattern often goes like this. For 100 days this person gets on my last nerve, I try to ignore it, be as nice as I can, smile, nod, pick up the slack, put up with the bs. Finally 101 days later, I’m tired, have PMS, Have been working hard, feel sick, or have a headache. When they start being patronizing or leaving empty vodka bottles on my lawn, or just being annoying in my general direction my ability to maintain professionalism or the veneer of niceness evaporates. Nice cuddly Shinobi is gone.

Suddenly I am an angry Ninja, and they are fucking prey. I call them out usually as nice as I can, or I confront them, or if neither one of those is possible I find some poor defenseless person and rant at them for at least 10 minutes.

And then I feel bad, I know socially I’m not supposed to be this upset. It’s not okay. I start to wonder why couldn’t I keep my temper that 1 more time, why did I have to go run to my support system to vent and make myself feel better. Even though it felt good at the time, and there were no negative consequences, I feel bad for it. Why did they upset me this time, it must be because of ABCXYZ that happend/is wrong today.

Or maybe it’s because they fucking suck.

I’m not advocating for behaving unprofessionally at work and putting ones job at risk or alienating people close to you by flying off the handle at the merest provocation. What I am saying is that sometimes it’s okay to not be nice, to get fucking angry. You can’t always vent your anger at the person who deserves it, but it’s okay to be mad.

I get angry sometimes, and I’m not fucking sorry.

I suppose there other questions here, WHY do I feel pressure to feel bad for getting angry? Is it midwestern? Female? Recovering Catholic? All three?

I don’t know. I’m just going to keep this quote in mind “Nice is different than good.”

Also, this:

Janine Burgess, Emmett Everett

Catherine posted a comment yesterday linking to this article in the NYT about what happened in Memorial Hospital during Hurricane Katrina.  The article itself is worth a full read, if you’re not squeamish (like me.) It raises some important questions about medical ethics, triage, and natural disasters.

The gist is during the hurricane they were trying to evacuate the hospital.  They prioritized the patients, making some questionable decisions about who would go first.  As the evacuation winds down and they get to the lower priority patients the nurses and doctors end up “Administering Large Doses of Drugs” or, y’know MURDERING an indeterminate number of patients, (around 20 or so) rather than attempt to evacuate them.    So there were a number of patients, who could possibly have made it out of Katrina alive, but who didn’t because of decisions made by the hospital staff.

Specifically mentioned in the article are three patients who weighed over 300 pounds.  Only one of them was evacuated.  300 pounds, appears to, be the magical weight at which point your weight is worth mentioning.   Weight is not mentioned as a factor for other individuals mentioned in the article, though another man who was injected with drugs and then either evacuated or smothered was described as being “heavyset.” Perhaps he only weighed 250.

Below are the stories of these “obese” patients:

Janine Burgess

Most of the patients had been evacuated on Tuesday, but a few with D.N.R. orders had not.“What’s going on here?” he asked the four nurses in the unit. “Whaddya have left?” The nurses said they were down to one patient: Jannie Burgess, a 79-year-old woman with advanced uterine cancer and kidney failure. She was being treated for comfort only and had been sedated to the point of unconsciousness with morphine. She was so weighted down by fluid from her diseases thatCook sized her up at 350 pounds.

…..

the worst thing Cook could imagine would be for the drugs to wear off and for Burgess to wake up and find herself in her ravaged condition as she was being moved. “Do you mind just increasing the morphine and giving her enough until she goes?” Cook told me he asked Burgess’s nurse.

Cook scribbled “pronounced dead at” in Burgess’s chart, left the time blank and signed the note with a large squiggle. Then he walked back downstairs, believing that he had done the right thing for Burgess. “To me, it was a no-brainer, and to this day I don’t feel bad about what I did,” he told me. “I gave her medicine so I could get rid of her faster, get the nurses off the floor.” He added, “There’s no question I hastened her demise.”

Emmett Everett

Emmett Everett, a 380-pound man — was “very aware” of his surroundings. He had fed himself breakfast that morning and asked Robichaux, “So are we ready to rock and roll?”

The 61-year-old Honduran-born manual laborer was at LifeCare awaiting colostomy surgery to ease chronic bowel obstruction, according to his medical records. Despite a freakish spinal-cord stroke that left him a paraplegic at age 50, his wife and nurses who worked with him say he maintained a good sense of humor and a rich family life, and he rarely complained. He, along with three of the other LifeCare patients on the floor, had no D.N.R. order.

Everett’s roommates had already been taken downstairs on their way to the helicopters, whose loud propellers sent a breeze through the windows on his side of the LifeCare floor. Several times he appealed to his nurse, “Don’t let them leave me behind.” His only complaint that morning was dizziness, a LifeCare worker told Pou.

“Oh, my goodness,” a LifeCare employee recalled Pou replying.

Two Memorial nurses — identified as Cheri Landry and Lori Budo from the I.C.U. to investigators by a LifeCare pharmacist, Steven Harris — joined the discussion along with other LifeCare workers. (Through their lawyers, Landry and Budo declined to be interviewed. Harris never returned my calls.) They talked about how Everett was paralyzed and had complex medical problems and had been designated a “3” on the triage scale. According to Robichaux, the group concluded that Everett was too heavy to be maneuvered down the stairs, through the machine-room wall and onto a helicopter. Several medical staff members who helped lead boat and helicopter transport that day say they would certainly have found a way to evacuate Everett. They say they were never made aware of his presence.(emph mine)
…..
Then Johnson guided them to Emmett Everett in Room 7307. Johnson said she had never seen a physician look as nervous as Pou did. As they walked, she told investigators, she heard Pou say that she was going to give him something “to help him with his dizziness.” Pou disappeared into Everett’s room and shut the door.

What they actually gave him was a lethal combination of morphine and midazolam.

Rodney Scott

Rodney Scott, an obese I.C.U. patient who was recovering from heart problems and several operations, lay motionless on a stretcher, covered in sweat and almost nothing else. A doctor had decided that he should be the last patient to leave the hospital because he weighed more than 300 pounds and might get stuck in the machine-room hole, backing up the evacuation line. Cook thought Scott was dead, and he touched him to make sure. But Scott turned over and looked at him.

“I’m O.K., Doc,” Scott said. “Go take care of somebody else.”
………

At around 9 p.m., Rodney Scott, the obese I.C.U. patient who was recovering from surgery and heart trouble, at last felt himself being hoisted up the open metal steps to the helipad. Weighing more than 300 pounds and unable to walk, Scott was the last living patient to leave the hospital grounds. He felt relief. The four men surrounding him shouted, “Push! Push!” and rolled his heavy wheelchair into a Coast Guard helicopter. Evacuating someone as large as Scott had a cost — a nurse was briefly pinned against the helicopter, bruising his ribs and spleen — but it had been done.

No one is being prosecuted for the deaths of Emette Everette and Janine Burgess. As for Robert Scott, I am sure that his life is worth much more than some bruised ribs and spleen.

I can’t help but wonder now, how often the weight of a patient is an excuse not to even try.