A lesson in what not to do...and other items.

When a conversation comes up about the immense pressure on people (especially women and girls) to conform to society's extremely narrow beauty standard and people voice their dismay at the difficulty involved in trying to keep our heads above water and above all the steaming, wretched horseshit thrust at us every single day, the way to reassure those participating in the conversation isn't to post up a picture of a Hollywood actress who is slightly larger than the average Hollywood actress as evidence of what a "real" woman looks like.



First of all, let's take a 101 break: EVERY woman is a "real" woman. EVERY SINGLE ONE OF THEM. The woman who is 100 pounds soaking wet is as much a woman as one who is 300 pounds. The whole "the only women who are REAL women are ones who have meat on their bones" trope is silly-ass and wrong, so you need to get that through your noggin now, thank you.

Second of all, posting up a photograph of a woman whose body shape is one that would be just as difficult to obtain for many women as obtaining an extremely slender body shape doesn't address the ultimate issue, which is society's extraordinarily small range of what is considered beautiful and the resulting, massive pressure upon all of us, women and men, to conform to that standard. So sit back, think a bit, contemplate the bigger picture.

Third of all...well, there is no third of all at the moment. Or maybe there is, I've still got time on my hands to yap for a bit longer. I found myself astounded a bit ago while reading Shakesville - Melissa McEwan linked to an op-ed column on the Chicago Sun-Times website, which I won't link here because I don't want the writer to get any more page hits than she already may be. The op ed is a fat-hating screed done under the guise of "being funny" (those always wind up going oh so well), and it's not particularly surprising in its smugness or its complete fail in the humor department. It reads like something I might have written as a humorous column for my high school newspaper - pretty much shit, shit, shit for 500 words or whatever. But what's truly shocking...is that a good 98 percent of the comments...TELL HER OFF. There's no "why yes, you're right Crappy Writer, those darn fat people make this world a shitheap"s or the usual claptrap. Like, there are people telling her she's an ignorant butt writing ignorant nonsense! I'm telling you, it's like setting eyes on a wonder of the world seeing internet commenters on a story about fat NOT HATING ON FAT PEOPLE. It's like Bizarro Internet Commenter World, up is down, black is white, dogs and cats living together - MASS HYSTERIA. I'm sure it's an anomaly, but damn, was it refreshing to read.

Oh, and one more thing - holy shit am I sick of the ad for Miller beer or some such shit that takes place at a dog show at a sports arena. The beer guys are appalled, heavens to Betsy are they appalled that a DOG SHOW is being held in a place where such masculine sporting events as basketball and hockey normally take place. Memo to dog showers - your hobby (in some cases, a mighty profitable one) is officially stupid, worthless, and just a wee bit too sissy to be held in a place that celebrates Manly Athletics and sells Miller products. In my view, it's not a gentle tease at the culture of dog showdom, it's a "jeez, those fuckers are weird and obsessed with *dogs* - so if you want to be cool, you'd better not be one of them".

It makes me think of a blog post I started a couple nights ago and then stopped because I was wedging my head far too up my ass and getting too pompous (and believe me, I am plllenty pompous) and Opening Up the Lecture Loft-y about the facts of life. No, not the facts of life involving the birds and bees, but the little things that I wish I knew at an earlier age that might have made certain years of my life a wee bit easier. One of those was that no matter what your interest might be, be it dog shows or "Star Trek" or cosplay or whatever, somebody out there is going to take quite a large amount of delight in shitting all over it. At some point you will be made to feel stupid for liking something or having a certain hobby, and you may be made to feel so bad about it that you abandon something you love in order to avoid the pain that comes with being mocked. If you abandon it, it's certainly understandable because being mocked constantly isn't, you know, fun. But if you can manage it and take refuge in the thing you love and the friends you may have made because of that thing you love, being mocked won't hurt quite as bad and you'll still have your kick-ass whatever it is to enjoy.

One of the best things I ever learned over my years was to stop wasting my time trying to be cool, trying to be hip, trying to be something or someone I wasn't. There is tremendous freedom in not giving a rat's ass and I invite you to try.

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And I link other people's blog entries.

Shakesville's Melissa McEwan hits it out of the park/smokes it/wails like awesome with today's edition of I Write Letters. Read more on this article...

Jonah Hill and my former life.

For those of you who don't know, Jonah Hill is a 26-year-old actor whose star is on quite the rise. He first garnered major attention in 2007's "Superbad" and has since become something of a go-to dude in dudecentric movies like "Forgetting Sarah Marshall"* and "Funny People". His latest film, "Get Him To the Greek", matches him with U.K. comedian Russell Brand, who reprises his role of Aldous Snow from "Forgetting Sarah Marshall". He's featured prominently on the posters for the comedy, and I'm guessing from the general tone of the trailer, he's essentially the star of the movie.

Oh, and he's fat. Fat, white, and male. Hmm.



I don't begrudge Jonah his success - it's rather refreshing to see a fat guy (not Hollywood fat, but full-metal fat) in the spotlight, even if it's in movies that aren't exactly warm fuzzy huggles for anyone who isn't male or white. He's even done a somewhat arty indie dark comedyish flick called "Cyrus" alongside Catherine Keener and John C. O'Reilly, so he seems invested in expanding his range beyond just baffled/affable zinger-doling fat guy. The thing that just kind of rubs my chub a bit is that we all know goddamned well that if Jonah was Joanie, Joanie wouldn't be toplining a major summer comedy release from Universal Studios. Joanie would be doing heartfelt, tear-streaked interviews with "Entertainment Tonight" or "Access Hollywood" about how repellent a person she was for being fat and how many personal trainers she had in her employ and what diet plan she was currently using to finally GET CONTROL of her life. She'd be doing the usual bullshit song-and-dance that almost every full-metal fat or even showbiz fat woman does the second she receives any sort of notoriety. Just now, I did a google search for interviews with Jonah Hill, trying to see if there was anything referring to him going on any sort of diet or weight loss effort for his "health", and while there's plenty of places where *others* discuss his fat, there doesn't seem to be anything from his mouth itself. His fat - at the present time, at any rate - isn't a liability.

And that just kind of frosts my ass a bit. In my younger days, I did some performing, I trod the boards, if you will. In college, I took improvisation classes with a wonderful teacher, Martin deMaat, probably the singularly most inspiring teacher I had in all my years in school. One of the initial exercises we did in my level one Improv class was standing in the middle of a circle of fellow students and loudly proclaiming, "I AM A GODDESS/GOD!". Ohhhh, I struggled with that a lot. Insecurity and cynicism does not lend itself to proclamations of goddessness. The size of my body and my general disdain of its size restrained me more often than not. I knew I was good at improv, I wasn't afraid of performing, I wasn't afraid of being funny - really, my only fear was saying unfunny things at inappropriate times. Martin gave me one of the best compliments I've ever received - that one of my strongest skills was being able to revive a scene that was dying and make it funny again. I could have easily moved into the training center at Second City, I reckon. But at 21, I also suspected what the score would wind up being. Second City was not (and still isn't) known for being a springboard to success for funny deathfat chicks. So I turned to writing - screenplays, primarily - and lost that improv muscle I'd worked so hard to develop.

Which, really, frosts my ass a bunch to this day. If there are any regrets I sport, it would be how I allowed my fat to guide my chickening out, because it was chickening out. Oh, I don't doubt for a second that my fat would have limited my "potential", and I would have struggled mightily, and hell, probably would have given up the ghost at some point. But I loved improv and I loved performing. I still love making people laugh. Not just *shrug* "love". We're talking LOVE in gigantic puffy letters. Looooooooooove from the back of your throat, looooooove from the bottom of your feet to the top of your skull. But my love couldn't overthrow the voice in my head that said "you need to apologize and make amends for being as fucking fat as you are/you need to be X size in order to be a success". My love (at that time in my life) couldn't have held up against the inevitable barrage of questions and demands my body would have inspired. Hiding was easier. Writing romantic comedies (ironic since when I was in my major screenplay writing mode, my life severely lacked both romance and comedy) that always featured a heroine that was just this side of plump was easier (Kate Winslet would be employed for eons if I had my own production company). I couldn't have borne the brunt of rejection that would have revolved solely around my fat rather than my ability.

Which leads to my ultimate frosting that frosts on behalf of both women AND men - that when you fucking google Jonah Hill, it autofills shit about his weight. It offends me that there are forums discussing Jonah Hill's weight or any other celebrity's weight. It's a plumb fucking miracle that I read an interview with him where he was discussing his part in writing the movie version of "21 Jump Street" and his weight wasn't referenced at all. While fatness might not be quite the liability for male performers as it is for females, we're always but a concern trollesque question or barely-disguised fat joke away in a puff piece or a movie trailer from being reminded that Jonah Hill or Kevin James or Jorge Garcia or Seth Rogen (though not so much at present) are GOOD SWEET CHRIST FAT!!!! They're Hollywood employable-fat, mind you, but fat all the same. And the shame is that 95 percent of the time, it's the performers themselves who work overtime to let us know that they are a) fat and b) will gladly humiliate themselves as needed onscreen or onstage in order to apologize for said fatness.

My dreamiest dream, which I don't expect to be fulfilled anytime soon, would be for a fat actor to be in a leading role where one's character didn't sob miserably due to one's fat; didn't engage in constant, snarky self-depreciation because of one's fat; didn't embark on a wacky montage illustrating just what a lumbering, clumsy oaf one was in physical/exercise situations because of one's fat; didn't sit down in front of a dinner plate piled with towers of "junk" food and proceed to shove it all into one's face because of one's fat; and didn't "strike out" with a romantic interest because of one's fat. I know, I know, it's asking an awful lot to see a movie or a television show where a fat person is portrayed as human, but I told you, my dreams are terribly dreamy.




*I am, despite its many problems, fond of "Forgetting Sarah Marshall" as the movie made a valiant attempt *not* to portray Sarah Marshall as the world's most awful harpy woman in the entire world - an effort was made to, you know, give her something resembling depth. Also, frankly...I have a Jason Segel thing.

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A little riffage on thin allies/potential allies.

I had a conversation once, a long long time ago, with someone who was miles, downright light years from being fat. This woman basically fit the societal mold of being appropriately thin. Somehow, the chat turned to shopping for clothes and I mentioned that I generally hated shopping because I had such limited options and finding clothing that suited my personal style AND fit decently enough. She nodded sagely and informed me that she really, really understood how hard it was to be a fat person because she had gone shopping with a fat friend once.

This? In my head? Not the way to be an ally. Not the way to show support. The only reaction I could have was for my eyes to grow very, very wide and go on a hunt for the nearest liquor cabinet.



Everybody's body is a target in this day and age, no doubt about it - the finger-wagging's aimed at every single person for a variety of reasons and no one escapes it no matter how slender, how toned, how muscular, how groomed. I think for Fat Acceptance to thrive, it needs to involve everyone of every size. However, I also think it's terribly important for those who are of a smaller, more societally acceptable size to kick back and listen to those of us who would be cast as a headless fatty in a news report when we say "no, you really don't understand what it's like to be a fat person simply because you shopped with a fat person once and I'm struggling to conjure up sympathy for you when you go on a roll about the trauma of not being able to find anything you like at Express or the Gap or Anthropologie or Banana Republic or Abercrombie and Fitch or about 19 trillion other clothing stores". It's important for you to understand that the experience of a fat woman like me, the dreaded deathfat, is going to be wildly different than the experiences you might have had. My body is the kind of body that gets cast as the headless fatty in panicked news reports about the obesity epidemic. My body's the body that runs the risk of getting its ass booted off a plane for being too fat to fly. And my body's the kind of body that is often tagged as being too friggin' fat for Fat Acceptance. Oh yes, I will explain.

When I say "too fat for Fat Acceptance", I'm not talking about folks who are enmeshed in FA and have been rocking it for a long time. I'm talking about the folks on the outside looking in, the folks who might be taking their baby steps towards reading up on it and pondering the concept, who are still stuck in that "Real Women Have Curves!!" mode. Women's magazines love to give a fuckton of lip service to EMBRACING YER CURVES! and LOVING YERSELF and so often on pages facing the latest HAWT diet advice. There's a decided limit on how much curve we're allowed to embrace and just how much we're allowed to love ourselves, and if you're built like me? Ohhhhh lordy begordy, I am SO not supposed to not diet. I should be on the table right now, having my stomach jacked with and shrunk down to the size of a thumb (or is it an egg now?) because I AM A TICKING TIME BOMB.

I've probably said it before (I do tend to repeat myself), but the thing you're going to need to accept (hurr) is that if you want to be down with Fat Acceptance and be an ally? It covers ALLLLLLLLLL levels of fat, ALLLLLLLLLLLL levels of health, ALLLLLLLL levels of ability. You don't get to decide that you're going to be all for the fatty that goes to the gym five days a week but scold the fatty that doesn't exercise at all. You don't get to fling kudos at the fatty who eats salad and tsk tsk the fatty that would rather shit twice and die than eat anything resembling a vegetable. Deciding that you believe in Fat Acceptance doesn't give you a pass to subsequently declare certain types of fat people unacceptable for Fat Acceptance.

I want Fat Acceptance to spread and grow, and I want to see loads of people join in. But I'll be damned if I'll blow party horns and toss confetti and have a welcoming cake party for someone who'd eyeball me and see me as a liability.


TWO BLOG NOTES!: 1) I am going to be out of town until Wednesday evening, so if you make a comment, I won't be able to moderate it until then. 2) This post was inspired in part by Lesley's comment regarding how experiences differ for differently sized people during this discussion.

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Of course it's because of the toys.

Being a FA blogger who shies away from taking apart articles and studies because I don't feel I'm terribly good at it means that I tend to avoid the terror-filled shitpiles of "lifestyle" and "OMG OBESITY GET IT AWAY FROM YEW" articles on pretty much every single website in existence. But as I was perusing the Yahoo Entertainment page, I came across this gem:

California county bans fast-food toys to stem child obesity

I didn't think it was physically possible for me to roll my eyes so far back into my skull!



I just...I can't even construct a reaction to this nonsense that isn't laden with sarcasm and disdain, everyone. From the hand-wringing about that - that - FAT-PUSHING SLATTERN MCDONALD'S!!! to the mind-blowingly dopey "Well gosh, our kids are just so darn persuasive so therefore we are incapable of saying no to them when they demand McDonald's"...it's sincerely appalling to me that people this incapable of critical thinking and simple logic are in positions of power.

Look, I'm not a parent nor do I have any plans or desire for becoming one, but I spend plenty of time in the company of parents who have young children (ostensibly the TARGET of the FAT-DEALING EVIL THAT IS MICKEY D'S - THE D STANDS FOR DEVIL!!!!) and let me tell you, none of them have any hesitation looking at their kids and saying "yeah, fuck no" to anything from "can we have McDonald's" to "can I get on the shed and play Superman". I would suspect a vast majority of parents are just as capable. In online brawls about the evils of fast food and whatnot, the mystical Horrible Strawparent is always conjured up - you know, the one that everyone's seen giving her infant a bottle of Coke and a fistful of cotton candy (and it's always the mother, of course, NEVER the father). Horseshit stories about pretend people doing things leads to horseshit "Childhood Obesity Epidemics" and a government program that has no qualms about othering fat kids.

I'm sure I've said it before, but of course, I'll repeat myself: it never fails to astonish me how so many people are willing to roll their eyes and treat with utter cynicism so much of what is reported by the media and handed down by the government, but the second it has ANYTHING to do with fat? Holy SHIT does the logic go bye-bye. Forget about it. Even if scienterrific geniuses of the modern age, the most brilliant scientists ever to walk the earth lined up at a press conference Mercury 7-style and each stated unequivocally that the kids are okay and that good eating and physical activity is great for everyone, not just fat kids, and that fat is not a death sentence and you know, dieting doesn't work, really, and hey, while you're at it, it's none of your fucking business what anyone else's health status is and you can't tell someone's health status by looking at them and oh, let me show you our sciences, I guarantee the average person would call it all hoo-hah. Which simply goes to show you that it's really not about health and it never has been. It isn't enough to feel as good as you can - there's no point to it if you don't have the "right" body to go with it.

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The cure for what ailed me.

I had a grumptastic day yesterday. A pair of loungetastic pants that I loved have gone missing, so as part of my fruitless hunt for them I decided I should go through the items in my dresser to see what still fit.

Ooooooh, mercy, it was a bit brutal. I've gained a bit of weight over the last few months, enough to bump me up a size or so, and as I chucked pants and shorts and skirts into a Hefty (hurr) bag, I got crabbier and crabbier, plannier and plannier about all the different ways I needed (NEEDED) to get rid of these damnable pounds that have crept up on me. Never mind that 95 percent of the items I was tossing were items that I haven't worn in literally years and had no immediate plans to wear, they were SIGNS, FABRIC SIGNS OF MY HIDEOUSNESS AND SLOTH.

So I grumped and muttered and ventilated into the ear of my gentlemanfriend (who I'm just going to call Mr. Blasphemies because it's easier than conjuring up new ways to avoid saying "boyfriend" because I'm 38, for Christ sake) for a while, knowing that the next day (or "today", if you will) I would be shopping with my sister who has lost 70 pounds and can't get through a conversation without making mention of it and that's not the kind of shit you want to hear when you're having a bad body day. But I hoped that perhaps a decent shopping excursion might perk me up. Not any random shopping, though - the only cure for what ailed me would be a jaunt to Vive La Femme in Chicago's Bucktown neighborhood.

Now, I hate shopping for clothes. My taste in clothing is generally not what is sold by Lane Bryant or Torrid (well, not anymore *HEAVY SIGH*), and I'm small-boobed and big-bellied - hard to find things I find to be flattering or, hell, comfortable for me. So I avoid shopping for clothes as often as possible, preferring to shop online or making twice a year treks to Lane Bryant to find something that I don't completely hate. But shopping at Vive La Femme is such an antidote to my shopping loathery. Owner Stephanie Sack is a force of friggin' nature, a character of characters, who will spend all the time you need picking out pieces she thinks will work on you and encourages you to try things that you might never try on your own. If you're in the general Chicago area, it is so worth the trip (and the hunt for street parking) because I walked out today feeling like a million bucks and then some - and let me reiterate, I. hate. clothes. shopping.

Added bonus - she's got some pieces from Lucie Lu in store, so I was able to try on and walk out with this dress - Marianne from The Rotund was definitely right - this dress is HELLO BOOBY, so I'll be throwing a tank top underneath this. Speaking of Lucie Lu, I ordered this dress a couple weeks ago and a) it looks really cute on me and b) I got it in, like, 30 seconds. Seriously, I think I ordered on a Thursday and got it on a Saturday. So thus far, my experiences with Lucie Lu have been quite positive. I would definitely encourage giving them a whirl.

(Notes: Vive La Femme, as well as Lucie Lu, swing into the pricey range. However, I will say that for the buck, you're getting a lot of bang and life out of clothes as compared to, say, Lane Bryant or Avenue. Also, while VLF states sizes between 12 and 24, there are plenty of things in store that would fit those of us over 24. I generally roll a 26/28 on the bottom and a 22/24 on top. Stephanie is fucking magic, I swear.) Read more on this article...

And now, a message from Your Royal Highness.

(h/t to Shakesville)

"When we get fat, we fool ourselves with every kind of lie imaginable. By 2008, my weight started creeping up and I said, 'Oh, I still look good at 150. I still look good at 155. I still look okay at 165. Some of my clothes still fit at 175.' And nobody was saying 'You're fat.' I was like a bank robber who was getting away with it."—Kirstie Alley

Well, first off, who's "we"? But that's just my initial reaction to yet another gigantically unhelpful quote from the annals of Kirstie Alley.

But let's see how I've fooled myself, Kirstie. I fooled myself for years believing that I wasn't worth a good goddamn because I was fat. I fooled myself for years believing I wasn't worth love or friendship or success because I was fat. I fooled myself as a child and adolescent by enduring verbal abuse from adults (TEACHERS!) who were simply "trying to help" by openly mocking me for being fat - I couldn't believe they didn't have my best interests at heart, because after all, they just wanted me to be "healthy", right? I fooled myself with endless diets that always failed because it was "my fault".



I must have been fooling myself when something - I couldn't even TELL you what at this stage of the game - kept me going, kept me living, kept me from shrinking into a corner and completely falling apart despite everything telling me that I was bad, wrong, awful, terrible, ugly, horrible, disgusting. And when I finally made up my mind that I was enough, that I was worthwhile, that I fucking rocked socks on epic levels as a fat fat FAT FAT FAAAAT woman, well, shit. I am clearly the Queen of Foolvania for daring to think that. You know what I've gotten away with? Freedom. Contentment. Calm. Joy. Enormous amounts of laughter. A real affection for goat cheese. Traveling the world. Shaking hands, making friends. ("Eric Stratton, rush chairman, damn glad to meet you.") Better health, both physically and mentally. Love - and not "in spite of" my being fat. Or that fucked up, creepy conditional shit where it's "okay" as long as I'm trying to lose it all. Actual full-metal no bullshit support and comfort and snuggles and smooches and nudity love.

Your experience is not universal, Kirstie. And you don't speak for me, or loads and loads of people like me. And it's my goal to see to it that there are more being added every day to the loads of people who have gotten away clean.

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