Consternation, uproar!

I have to be honest, I am a cynic, and one with a short fuse in the patience department to boot. Nothing gets my eyes rolling harder or elicits sighs of a huffy nature more than gooey, insipid claptrap. You know, like what Oprah and skridillions of other "self-help" creatures push. My attitude can best be described as "Eat, Lay, Shove". I'm sure someone could scan previous entries of mine and level a "insipid claptrap" accusation at me, and I'd cop to it because I am nothing if not painfully self-aware of how I get when I open up the Lecture Loft and start peeling off Nuggets of Knowledge (tm). Or maybe I should spell it Knuggets of Knowledge (tm)...hmmm, no, that's too cutesy, like calling a place the Kooky Kafe or Krafty Korner.

Anyway, I'm putting out there that I'm an asshole so you know that when I say things like what I'm about to say, you know I'm being very serious. Imagine me staring at you intently like James Earl Jones does in "Conan the Barbarian" when he's trying to hypnotize people before he beheads them, with the little "doodily doooo!" music sting from the "Tiki Idol" episode of "The Brady Bunch" when they go to Hawaii and Vincent Price is tall, Hawaiian-shirted evil. Or not. I can't really remember all that well at this point, but he's Vincent Price for Christ's sake, you know he had to have at least a little bit of evil in him. No, wait, he wasn't evil, but talked to a carved wooden Tiki face named, like, Bob or Oliver or some shit.

Nigel?



What I'm trying to tell you between the vomitings-out of my subconscious on a terrifyingly early Saturday morning is: it is time to get free and stop being afraid. Billions - BILLIONS! - of dollars are sucked out of us every year by those preying on our fears, fears that these creatures generate and exploit and have made a part of our general culture over the years. We are to do whatever it takes and spend as much money as possible in order to combat being fat, getting old, being "uncool", being "different". Oh, you can be different up to a certain point, mind you, especially if you still fit into a certain dress/pant size and, if you take your glasses off and put on some makeup or a classy suit, morph into the Hot Piece of Hiney that was being hidden by your damnable, silly desire to not follow the cultural norms.

We're to be terrified of food, too, have you noticed? It's always been there, but it's just getting worse the more people (people who wouldn't understand the concept of "privilege" if it sneaked up on them and bit them in the ass like a king cobra) yap about it. I think they're sincerely baffled by the concept that not everyone has access to farmer's markets, or even a decent grocery store. They don't get that no, it ISN'T affordable for everyone. And yet, these are the people on the evening news, instructing everyone that if they aren't eating precisely the way they insist you should, you are, essentially, a lazy, horrible, ignorant person. You know, fat. (insert eye-rolling here)

I am more terrified by the misinformation and overblown "DON'T LOOK AT IT KEEP YOUR EYES SHUT!" (/climatic scene in "Raiders of the Lost Ark" style) attitude about food than I am by a box of Frosted Flakes or the existence of fast food. I am genuinely dismayed, as I've said a trillion times before, at people hanging moral worth on what goes into their mouths. The thing I want for everyone, where possible, is to have a relationship with food that is enjoyable and generates nothing but feelings of "yuuuum". I want people to stop conflating having a normal appetite with disordered eating. I want people to stop believing that they must do all they can to ignore their hunger, to ignore what their bodies are telling them because they're terrified they'll "ruin" something. Lesley at Fatshionista fucking NAILED it when she said in a recent recap of "Huge": "Denial breeds craving — deprivation makes us desire whatever we’re missing more and more." If there's an effort that needs to be made regarding the food ingested by Americans, it needs to revolve around removing the shame that is hung on everyone for eating, period. It needs to revolve around working to give everyone safe, affordable access to food of all kinds. Yeah, it revolves around basically remaking society from top to bottom. Ain't I a stinker?

But it has to be done, so many things have to be done. It's hard work, but even the smallest, seemingly "nothing" things can have huge impacts. Simply being visible and living our lives without shame or apology is GIGANTIC in and of itself. I like to be insidious and sneak in my points in a cheery (yes, I can be cheery), casual fashion if an appropriate conversation comes up. I don't suddenly screech "YOU CAN'T TELL HOW HEALTHY SOMEONE IS BY LOOKING AT THEM!!!" during a chat about "The Lord of the Rings". I like the word "insidious" a lot. Hell, how do you think the powers that be work? They rock their shit in an insidious fashion, so why not do the same? I don't have any illusions that the "Thin Is the Only Way To Be" trope is going away any time soon, and ultimately, I'm a fan of body autonomy. But I am compelled on multiple levels to offer an alternative to everyone I possibly can, an alternative that isn't just for fat people, but for every single person on this planet. You have to do what you think you have to do in order to find your peace, but to give you a phrase: Don't Delay, Live Today.

Holy. SHIT. I think I have just found my cliche'd phrase that is going to pay and PAY HUGE BANK. Look out, Deepak Chopra, Wayne Dyer, and oh yes, OPRAH HERSELF: I am coming for you, and I'm equipped with Nuggets of Knowledge(tm) with which I will strike like a king cobra!

Eventually!

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Sunday morning ramblings from my bed.

I am frigging exhausted with:

Every time someone rails about people being superficial and then turn around to bag on someone's outfit, be they someone famous or someone walking down the street

Every time someone loses their shit "jokingly" about how revoltingly old someone looks

Every time someone trots out "real women have curves" and then crabs about "skinny bitches"

Every time someone says "everyone should embrace their body, no matter what" but then shakes a finger and tsk-tsks at deathfat-sized women, because "we need to be healthy"

Every time someone looks at pictures taken on the sly of strangers in stores and posted online in order to mock the fat, the poor, and the underprivileged

Every time someone makes fun of an old friend they've found on Facebook because they aren't wearing the latest clothes or have "fashionable" haircuts

The above are things I have read online or witnessed in person within the last couple of days. Holy shit, am I exhausted with it. I am tired of people talking out of both sides of their mouths. Don't sit there and tell me "oh yes, I am all for body and size acceptance and our children are being tormented by blahbettyblah" and then turn around and tell me how hideous so-and-so looks in zie's Facebook pictures.

I'm over people being told the "right" way to dress, the "right" way to appear, the "must-have" accessories for whatever, the "right" way to behave. I'm sick of reading wailing about how certain bodies shouldn't wear certain clothing or how one's body is just too "fill in the blank with some sort of body hatred" to wear a certain piece of clothing. I'm tired of fat being used as this devilish spectre that's always lurking around every corner, ready to POUNCE upon any hapless person (usually a woman) who DARES to eat something that involves sugar or carbohydrates. I am way over the idea that being constantly hungry is a state one should aspire to.

Can I also add that it fries my ass a bit when I read a cooking magazine and see recipes doctored up so they're less "decadent", "sinful", or "naughty"? Because you know what? I'm going to take that recipe and I'm going to make it with every fucking inch of full-fat and sugar and carb product I can possibly find. And I'm going to eat it and I may very well take pictures of myself eating it so you can see the big-ass smile on my fat fucking face as I enjoy the shit out of it until I'm satisfied and then I put it in a Glad container for leftovers the next day!

Like I said...Sunday morning ramblings from my bed. Read more on this article...

Today in "Check Your Privilege".

So I was watching the CBS Evening News last night, and they closed the show out with a segment about "Iron Kids", a program that has kids as young as seven or eight beginning to train for and compete in triathlons. Of course, the distances required aren't as massive as grown-up triathlons, but the essential elements remain - you swim, you bike, you run. Of course, it was framed as a STRONG VOLLEY in the BATTLE against CHILDHOOD OBEEEEEESITY with that sniffy underlying theme of "you're a bad parent if you don't have your child training for triathlons"/"nothing's worse in the whole wide world than being fat or having fat children".

What I find endlessly interesting in all the media coverage of fat is the absolute disinterest by ANYONE that has an ass attached to a media outlet regarding the concept of privilege. The particular Iron Kids group that they profiled was a festival of white faces and undoubtedly, serious cash money, and it was presented as simply the default state for all of us. Never a moment is taken to acknowledge that a goodly part of this country doesn't exist in a lush suburb of two-parent families where there's plenty of time in one's day to make homemade meals and shop the local organic coop and the farmer's market and enroll the kids in 1,498 different activities that will all magically make one's child into a slim, attractive, fit, intelligent, courteous, clever, and delightful human. And if you bring up the concept of privilege in, let's say, an internet message board forum about how folks aren't exactly made of money, there's always the ONE person who insists they managed to be unemployed and still eat fresh organic hoo-hah and there's no reason why other people can't do the same on a limited budget...and you know, that one person always seems to be single, no kids, and living in an area that actually has access to fresh organic hoo-hah. But zie's not privileged, no sirree!

When is someone, ANYONE in the mainstream media going to summon up enough courage to fully address the gigantor issues of privilege and how it affects people in this country and around the globe? Until that day comes, I have no choice but to regard every single hand-wringing story produced by the mainstream media as, essentially, a concern troll writ large, a concern troll that doesn't really give a rat's ass about health or fitness or wellbeing but instead is really, really miffed that fat people exist. And I have to admit that the idea that my existence causes such handwringing is kind of entertaining, because it's simply fuel for my fire.

"No matter how hard you try you can't stop us now." Read more on this article...

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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