Huge

Three thoughts:

1) How excited are many dudes I know about a fat girl in bathing suit on this poster? Nikki Blonsky is way cute. I mean this just in a yay-pix-of-fat-girls way (not maybe about the attitude it conveys). I wonder if other people get that that is part of the reaction to the show.

2) The New York Times got something crucially wrong in their article about it (not just wrong, wrong right in the lede): "Gainer blogs are an offshoot of a fat-pride movement that has bubbled up in response to what its proponents consider to be a pointless and hysterical national fuss over obesity."

No....no no no. This is more confusion from the feeder world, spilled all over the place. See previous rant here.

It is alarming to me that the NYT got this one wrong. I think it tells you something about how powerful the ideas in question are that people lose their head for logic and it ends up in print, no less. NYT is usually a little better than this.

3) I haven't seen the show yet, but will try to take it in. Very few shows pass my interest/tolerance test, but this one might for at least one viewing.

Hugely,
etc.

Sun Freakin Times

What the hell is going on over at the Chicago Sun-Times? I'm so thoroughly un-proud that all this shitty size-related journalism (whatever) is going on in my town.

Laura Washington, the S-T's self-appointed "Fat Nag," who wants to shame America into un-fat, challenged Kevin Smith in February after the Southwest fracas to "lay off the tweeting and put that energy into reducing his girth." She called his complaints about the airline treatment "just another dangerous dalliance with that tired old denial: It's OK to be fat, even if it's killing you." (Everything Washington has written about issues of size has made me lose respect for her, then quickly replace that with worry about her ability to use logic.)

More recently, this column by Esther Cepeda in the June 21 Sun-Times, "Time to turn up the heat on folks who are obese," presents ideas less monomaniacal than Washington's writing but more frankly bigoted.

After pulling together every recent bit of fat-is-bad news in her intro, Cepeda says: "I'm not going to copycat my tall and thin [? more journalistically credible?] Sun-Times colleague Laura Washington, who used her space in this paper to become the "Fat Nag" . . . but just for today allow me to be the 'Skinny Grumbler.' " Then she goes on to blame fat people and those who "enable" them for making her cold.

That is the point of this piece: too much air conditioning. A/C makes it easy to stay fat. Fat people--the "over-stimulated and over-served"--the "already health-challenged chow hounds"--the "well-padded"--make us keep the air too cold in restaurants and stores. The temperatures in our public places are a barometer of how we are unhealthy and fat.

"Enabling people who are challenged with the burdens and risks of obesity by making them more comfortable in public situations where, under normal circumstances, they'd be uncomfortable only reinforces the idea that their ill health is bearable. Why do we accept our public spaces masking unhealthy people's natural body signals that something is very wrong?"

I guess I didn't realize that fat people were the only ones with their fingers on the thermostats. Or were the only people miserable in the city when it's 100 degrees and humid in the hairy armpit of America that is the Midwest. Or that fat people never get cold.

The column is yet another piece that makes me wonder: even if I agreed with your shitty logic; even if thought that every time an innocent thin person gets cold it is the fault of a fat person; even if I felt that over-A/C-ed spaces were a sign of our gluttonous ill-health; WHAT DO YOU WANT PEOPLE TO DO?

Cepeda's answer is (clearly): smoke 'em out. Turn the heat up and sweat the fatties into shame. If you make them miserable, as nature wants them to be, they'll change. She pushes her thinking very far: "You should be outraged that your hard work in supporting a loved one's quest to make healthier choices is undermined by a society willing to make them feel more comfortable. And shouldn't others get to be comfortable sometimes, too?"

There is scary shit in the ridiculousness here. I do not think people who write "us" and "them" pieces about fat people realize how very much prejudice they pass along, how their arguments are built from hate and very little else.

- - - -

Addendum: at Cepeda's site, she adds that this piece was "satire": "NO, the subject of ridicule is not obese people, but rather, society's passive acceptance of a debilitating and deadly disease." Psych!

Using making fun of fat people to make fun of fat people isn't really satire. Nor is there any passive acceptance of the 'disease' of obesity. Anywhere. And as a group we have been blamed for everything from global warming to the decline of the mitten industry, so blaming fat people for thin people being cold doesn't actually read like satire. Plus: the column isn't funny. No satire there.

The comments on both her site and at the S-T piece are generally pretty great. I hope she's reading them.

the double down

I haven't been paying attention to the flutter about the KFC Double Down--the huge who-will-think-of-the-children ghoulish horror about its existence--but it strikes me as I squint at it as sort of disingenuous.

If you look at the fat content in fast foods, there are pages and pages of other foods with higher fat content, including standard fare like a 6-inch Subway meatball sub.

The horror seems to be directed at the attitude the Double Down conveys by its existence; its flagrant, yes flagrant, lack of shame about what it is (you go home and wipe that makeup off, young lady). Or at our own shame that manufacturers have looked into our souls and know that this picture of excess is what we want. You know some focus groups were eating these things a year ago.

It's as if the DD is no longer disguising what fast food really is: it's a full-blown, wanton, processed, animal producty thing, with no window dressing to make it more like real fud. (As Raymond Chandler wrote: "Americans will eat anything if it is toasted and held together with a couple of toothpicks and has lettuce sticking out of the sides, preferably a little wilted"). How is eating a Taco Bell Taco Salad (45 grams of fat) so different from dining on a Double Down (32 grams)? It just looks better. You could argue there's more nutrition in the bagged pre-shredded Taco Bell iceberg, but I'm not sure about that. The reaction to the DD also seems a little funny coming so fast on the heels of the Atkins surge of a few years ago, when the DD would have been hailed as the solution to all our no-carb needs.

Being appalled at doubling down seems a little like throwing paint on a fur coat while wearing leather shoes and belt. It's too obvious.

fat fingers officially tools of doom (woo)

Try google-newsing "fat finger" and you will see the problem that brought the stock market to its knees today. That term seems on its way to becoming semi-officially official... The fingers you have used to dial are too fat. To obtain a special dialing wand, please mash the keypad with your palm now.

Happy International No Diet Day!

Photo from Adipositivity.com! Check the site out if you haven't.

blogs of size

I agonized quite a while over what to name this blog.

My other blog was named on a whim, and I still regret it, inasmuch as saying the name out loud makes me squirm: it's pretentious, I don't really know how to pronounce it correctly, and I usually mumble it like an embarrassed teenager, less and less coherently (invariably people don't hear it on the first pass) when people ask me what it's called. It's not catchy at all, except to call it "tha ki-YAY" sometimes. I like it well enough in print, but that's different. All this I hoped to avoid here.

I also wanted to avoid the absolute sea of puns that exist for fat clothing stores and fat social groups and dating sites: More to Love, Big [Whatever]s, Large and in Charge, etc. Any good or thought-provoking punnery in amongst the cheese (and there's a lot) there has long since been exhausted, and I just didn't feel like those kinds of names would strike the right tone. They are too focused, ultimately, anyhow. I love names like Big Fat Blog, but I didn't want to go that kind of route anymore either.

I ended up with a few runner-ups. After speaking with my friend Hanne, I was seriously pondering two somewhat similar ones:

LIPOFILIA
or
LESSONS IN LIPO-LITERACY

...the latter being a nod to sociologist Mark Graham's brilliant term. Another contender was something my friend Damian used to say when he wanted to win an argument (I think it's already a blog name):

IPSO FATSO

The winner, though, came from Martha Bayne, tossed off from behind the bar, no less, in a fit of brainstorming while she served drinks. It's still working for me, and I really like the definite article. Let's meet at The Extender, shall we?

Thanks, Martha.

fearful subtext

There's nothing remotely surprising about this article, "How to Not Look Fat in a Swimsuit," but the subtext is so hilarious I found it worth noting. It's awful, but the fear in it is so strong it's funny.

The content is amped-up classic stuff such as: wearing dark on the bottom, drawing the eye up, hiding the tummy...wearing Miraclesuits and even Spanx while swimming. Full-figured women should "try a maxi dress, or a semi-sheer cover-up to give 'the illusion of a flawless figure.' " Disguise the bosom, moisturize the legs to hide cellulite, fake a thinner waist with a belt... "Your tummy needs to be long and lean . . . any little height will make you walk better, stand sexier, put a little spring in your step and make you look a little bit taller and leaner." Gah! Gah! Panicking, fumbling, worried...

Don't let anybody see you as you are. Don't let any part of you which departs from a norm show. Don't be fat, but really, don't look fat. You are entirely vulnerable to the judgments of those around you, and should be. What others think is the most important thing in the world. How you look is everything. The agony of being yourself is unending, and only a few people are good enough to be allowed in a swimsuit just as they are.

I guess the subtext isn't really funny, and this is an obvious feminist rant, and for what it's worth I hate shitty fashion too, but it's all just so tortured. It's absurd.

The point of wearing a swimsuit is to SWIM!! Action verb! Not to be viewed. I mean, at base. Right? Right? she bleats.

Some people might argue that this article is giving people tips for actually getting out there, but I don't think so. Not to mention--yea verily, some people just are fat, and how you're not supposed to not look fat in a bathing suit when you are fat is a question that can only be answered by not swimming or wearing a suit or even existing, and that subtext is tired and in fact not really subtext at all.

The honest, sad, terrible, kinda cool truth is that nobody's paying that much attention to you. Yes, people are horrible and dismissive to fat people (and everybody), but one ass-backward benefit of all this bathing suit angst is that if everyone is so tortured and inwardly-focused, then what do you have to lose by heading out?

[Thanks to Aris for link.]

the beauty of lines

Interesting piece in Burmese newspaper the Irrawaddy about painter Sandar Khaing, who paints figures and has a specific interest in fat nudes, through painting her sister as model.
I like what I can see of her work a lot.

"I just want to present lines, the beauty of lines."

[Thanks to Felecia for this link.]

ew

the one thing Sarah Silverman won't joke about

Just puttin this out there. From Silverman's interview with Larry King:

"But I guess if there is anything I wouldn't talk about. . . it's fat jokes about women. That always bums me out because I feel like we live in a country where fat women--at least in white America--don't deserve love. You know? And I--I don't think that's true for men, you know. You see every sitcom star is like a fat guy with some gorgeous wife. But we live in a country that really feels that way. It feels--it's in the ether. And that just makes me sad to make a joke of it or to make light of it."

"Many doctors don't discuss diet with obese patients"

...claims the LA Times, per a the 2009 National Healthcare Disparities Report.

I know I should say something intelligent here, but all I can think about is the stock art the Times chose for their blog entry (left).

Doesn't this fatty plate look like a person? Donut eyes, fried chicken nose, french fry mouth? OM NOM NOM.

a lil squint down the 'no fat chicks' axis

The following lines are from recent CL ads all over the country in different categories--men for women/men, women for women/men.

Now this is some parallelism. The point is not (exactly) that people can't have preferences, it's that it's awfully interesting what BBWs are collected in No lists with. It seems like it should be a song. A chanty, drone-y song. NO fatties no FATties no fatTIES!

• NO FAKES, PHONIES, BBWS OR DRUGGIES
• NO MEN, COUPLES, BBWS
  
• NO MEN, NO BBWS, NO SWINGERS, OR GHETTO CHICS!!
• NO BI'S, NO MEN, NO NEWBIES (1ST TIMERS), NO BBWS
• NO GUYS, BBWS, DRUGGIES, STUCK UP/SELF CENTERED WOMEN
• NO BBWS BE CUTE. ABSOLUTELY NO NO NO MEN. OH NO FLAKES
• NO GUYS OR TS/TG OR ANY OTHER T'S AND NO BBWS PLEASE
• NO BBWS, NO FUCKING FETISHES, NO FUCKING ANIMALS.
• NO BBWS, NO EBONY, NO MEN
• NO BBW, NO OLDER WOMEN EITHER
• NO ALCOHOLISM, BBW, BINGO, CATS, CHLAMYDIA, CHEAP WATCH, CHEWED FINGERNAILS, CLASS RING, COSTUME JEWELRY, DRUGS, FEAR OF FLYING, FREQUENT USE OF PROFANITY, GLAMOR SHOTS, HAIRY LEGS, INFREQUENT BATHING, JUDGMENTAL, JEALOUS & ABUSIVE HUSBAND, LINE DANCING, LIVING IN TOWN WHERE BORN
• NO EGOS, NO BBWS
• NO BBWS, PROS OR IMPLANTS
• NO 3SUMS WITH YOUR MAN, NO STUDS, NO BIG GIRLS, NO TEENS, NO BBWS, NO COUPLES, NO MEN, NO MEN, NO BOYS, NO FAKE PICS
• NO BBWS, NO PILLOW PRINCESSES, NO ATTACHED NO COUPLES!!!!!!
• NO BBWS, COUPLES, MEN, CURIOUS PPL, FLAKES, WEIRDOS
• NO BBWS OR TEDDY BEARS
• NO BBWS, DRUGS, SMOKERS OR WOMEN OVER 40. NO MARRIED WOMEN!
• NO BBWS OR BLACKS
• NO PRUDES, NO BBWS, NO OTHER MEN, NO STUDS, NO RELATIONSHIPS
• NO MEN! NO BBWS. NO BUTCHES.
• NO BBWS OR FREAKS OR FAGS
• NO BBWS, NO SIGNING UP AT WEBSITES!
• NO BBWS, DARK SKINNED GIRLS, OR ANYTHING SLOPPY
• NO BBWS, STUDS, COUPLES, MEN OR UGLY CHICS
• NO BBWS OR WHITE WOMEN
• NO BBWS, NO TS, NO MSM, NO NSA
• NO BBWS, NO FEMALES WITH KIDS, NO CONFUSED CHICKS WITH BOYFRIENDS
• NO BBWS, DRUGGIES OR HEAVY DRINKERS/SMOKERS, GAY OR BI GUYS
• NO BBWS, DRUG USERS, SMOKERS OR "PROFESSIONAL" LADIES, NO SPAMBOTS AND GAYS POSING AS WOMEN.
• NO FULL SWAP AND NO BBWS

The following may be the best "NO BBW" ad ever. I guess I'm a heartless jerk, because it made me laugh, but I'm sure not assuming it's real except in placer's desire to get laid:

ONE LAST TIME - M4W - 22 (END OF THE ROAD)

NOT GOING TO BORE YOU WITH ALL THE SAD DETAILS BUT I'LL JUST GET THE POINT OF IT:

I'M NOT LONG FOR THIS WORLD, ITS DAYS WOULD BE BRIGHTER AND NIGHT MORE STUNNING IF I JUST ENDED IT ALL.

FIGURED, I MIGHT AS WELL END IT ON A GOOD NOTE, SO HOW ABOUT IT? [I'm gonna kill myself...let's fuck.]

NO BBWS, ALL RACES ARE BEAUTIFUL, AND KINKY WOULD BE NICE BUT VANILLA IS ALRIGHT IN MY BOOK.

Just to round out this whole no-fat-chicks thing, check out this tattoo below (dude stole the DumpTruck logo). I dunno--when you bother getting an image of a fat chick permanently engraved in your flesh I might argue you don't actually hate them. That is protesting very much too hard indeed.

May Panel Discusison in NYC

Interesting upcoming panel discussion:

Fat Politics and Sexuality in the Face of Hate:
A Forum on Rights You Didn't Know You Needed
May 20th, 7pm
McNally Jackson Booksellers
52 Prince St, NYC

Fat stigma is reaching a boiling point in American society. As Harriet Brown stated in her recent New York Times article: "Public attitudes about fat have never been more judgmental; stigmatizing fat people has become not just acceptable but, in some circles, de rigueur." This evening's panel is a chance to discuss this cultural climate and present recent work by five individuals from diverse segments of fat activism, from academia to the blogosphere. Above all, this forum seeks to provide a nuanced perspective of fat-related issues that departs from the media’s monotone coverage of "the obesity epidemic" and its perceived social pitfalls.

The panelists include:

• Substantia Jones founder and photographer of The Adipositivity Project
• Lesley Kinzel, blogger of fatshionista.com
• Kathleen LeBesco, PhD Professor of Communication Arts and Distinguished Chair, Marymount Manhattan College; contributor to The Fat Studies Reader
• Zoe Meleo-Erwin PhD candidate and NOLOSE board member

in conversation with

• Marilyn Wann author of FAT!SO? Because You Don't Have to Apologize for Your Size!

"Is It Okay to Be Fat?"

...is how recent discussions of the topic in the media have gone--Dr. Phil, Nightline.

You can see where the question comes from/where it falls, evolutionarily, in cultural discussions of fat. It represents a crack in the usual discussion about it being completely wrong--it represents some voices being heard. Not just that, I think it arises from inevitable problems with the absolute monolith of unhelpful--whatever your POV--oversimplified thinking about fat. This question was coming one way or another at some point.

It's such a sucky question, though. It's progress, but it's so grim. Surely the one thing that people agree upon about fat, hate it or love it, is that it is. We are. Fat people are.

On some level it boggles my mind that there are people who (as Dorothy L. Sayers would say) maintain their right to disapprove of my existence, because this is what in effect happens when the answer to "Is it okay to be fat?" is "no." It's a very short hop from "no" to you should be smaller to it's not okay to be. That's how that goes, best intentions notwithstanding. The question doesn't hold water philosophically. Look at the responses to the Kevin Smith situation; how many people chimed in with, "They should just stay at home"? To be fat sometimes is to be weirdly invisible, to have people wish you were.

I know there are a lot of ideas to be discussed under the umbrella of this question. But the way it is framed reflects how sure we are that body size is entirely a choice and how it is assumed to always be--need to be--in flux. We are always supposed to be changing, always supposed to be getting smaller, all of us, fat or thin, really. There is a distinct lack of the present tense when talking about body size. There is always an assumption that what you are now you won't be in the future. Semi-measured articles like this in the Observer have bizarro subtitles like: "As obesity becomes a greater social and political issue, campaigners say they have a human right to be fat."

Well, er...yes. I do have a right to be me, I think. In the most calming of possible circumstances for those who hate fat people and see them--us--as walking embodiments of bad behavior--what am I supposed to do? Go home and think about what I've done? Swear I'm changing? Have something to prove my shame, like a passport? Show it when necessary to reassure people I'm not blithely unaware of how wrong I am? I am accountable to others, it feels, for existing as I am.

I keep thinking about Jude Law being dragged up in the helicopter at the end of A.I., saying, "I am. I was." I just am.

We have to ask different questions. This one's wrong. Whatever questions you want to ask next, this is the wrong one to start with.

Lane Bryant kerfuffle

Amanda Hess pretty much nails it about the dumbass Lane Bryant commercial controversy and the smoking hot LB model who's too good-looking and stacked for American to handle.

When I read about it, I immediately flashed on an old Glamour "Fashion Do/Fashion Don't" column that cautioned against wearing the sheer shirt/black bra combo (remember those?) if you were big-busted, because it'd "look slutty."

Outcries like this are about more than not liking fat (that model isn't fat)--they are about how narrow the prison of acceptable looks really is. You can't win.

More from direction of City Island

Very weird to see my world (well, part of it) written about on the pages of Salon: blog piece more or less about BBWs and FAs, from the director of City Island. Dude appears to have discovered some liking for the fatties with feelings about the John Warner-era Liz Taylor. Still haven't seen the movie, still tired at idea of feedery stuff, but--interesting.

meh

Great interview by Kevin Pang with Anthony Bourdain in the Trib's Cheap Eater thingie, but Bourdain stumbles in his comments about Jamie Oliver. Oliver is not doing "the difficult thing" or (as I think Bourdain used to say about Mario Batali and his emphasis on offal) "God's work," he's full of SELF-PROMOTING CHEESE. If Sandra Lee was doing Oliver's show, he'd trash it. Fat prejudice makes people stupid.

I loved Betsy Phillips' post about the Tennessee Obesity Task Force. I thought it put the anger right where it should be. That is some seriously dehumanizing shit there.

Kate Harding's BMI Slideshow

Do you know what "obese" looks like? "Underweight"? Worth a click!

not again

I'm happy there's a movie coming out with a plus-sized character in it (the totally cute Carrie Baker Reynolds in City Island) but why why WHY WHY WHY WHY does she have to be into feederism? Why always with this shitty conflation of topics?

I don't know how the issue is handled in the movie, but between this movie and the recent incredibly widespread coverage of the Donna Simpson story--not to mention adopting it as any central point of cultural reference--I despair. Feederism is one funny little corner of fat sexuality that receives never ending, gushing, disproportionate attention because of how it thumbs its nose at/gains excitement and traction from people's horror with fat. The focus (and the fetish, if you ask me, as with many fetishes, or basically any fetish you don't share yourself) is BORING. Feederism is the reddest red herring that ever herringed. It's just one small area of the world of fat people and sex. That's all.

The really bad part about all this attention is that it creates an enormous hateful cloud of misperception about fat sexuality. Not to mention it confirms--since people cannot separate the fetish from the fat person/fat person-liking population at large--every bad stereotype about fat people and basically guarantee that people see fat folk through a haze of...Food.

All in all, a very frustrating trend. I wish it'd go away.

"Man Goes On Meat Rampage To Save 'Chubby Girls'"

Reposted from The Consumerist:
"The AP says that an Indiana man went on a bizarre rampage in a supermarket, pulling out a hunting knife and attacking packages of hamburger. He then threw dog food onto it...."

Watch the news video on the link if you dare! ("Uh...she was preparing a pot roast or something...") This story is funny, but it's also really scary.

ticker shock

In case you haven't seen it, here is the story about the University of Rochester study that discovered non-obese patients had a 76 percent greater risk of sudden cardiac risk than obese patients. ("When overweight patients were factored out, the researchers were startled to find that underweight and normal-weight patients ran a 99 percent higher risk of sudden cardiac failure than obese patients.")

The line from the author of the survey - "He theorizes that because their bodies are already surviving bad treatment, they are more resistant to heart failure" - brings up something I find interesting, which is that people always seem to assume fat people's hearts are in bad shape because of all the checks they see in the con column without taking into account factors in the pro column as well. Every time a fat person climbs the stairs they are working much harder than the skinny person next to them. Which is good and bad or whatever it is, but it is ultimately a fact. That heart is working hard. Why isn't that ever in the equation?

oh pliz

No way is this story real. It started out all over British papers, not US ones, although it looks like the incident might have occurred in Florida...although you can't tell for sure where the story happened, that's how journalistic it is. I can't find any original reporting, just editorialized wire repeats.

And--it reads like a Fat Moral Tale told by MeMe Roth. The wages of sloth are fat! He built his own prison!

hard copies!

I will figure out a way to write in this blog more. There are barriers! More than the usual attached to procrastination and such.

I am realizing how much of the public discussion of size out there I have absolutely no desire to engage in. At all. What a very helpful skill for keeping a size acceptance blog! First and foremost because I think the way we are feel that what we or anybody else eats is perfectly appropriate fuel for every kind of revelatory, punitive, boundary-less public discussion is off-base.

So I gotta figure that out. Haven't figured that out.

In the meantime: what should I do with all my old copies of Radiance magazine? Getting Radiance in the mail was a really important, really big part of my life and development as a fat chick. Very different than reading things online.

I held it in my paws, and turned things over and over, and absorbed them much better than I do know. So...I don't know. I have many of them and haven't looked at them for years. I don't like them taking up room, but I'm still loathe to let them go. Hmm. We'll see.

yah yah roly!

terrible video quality, but I sure love this song