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Anxious times.
  1. "There is little precedent for fat androgyny. Generally our androgynous icons are svelte and lacking in secondary sex characteristics. David Bowie, Tilda Swinton, Katherine Hepburn; these small-bodied, predominately white figures of androgyny have created an aesthetic with little room for deviation. This means that for those of us with bodies that do not conform to traditional standards of androgyny, we are often misread and misunderstood, even in queer spaces."
    Fat Queer Tells All: On Fatness and Gender Flatness - By Allie Shyer
  2. "

    It’s the clothes that don’t fit my body. Yet I walk away feeling like my body doesn’t fit into the clothes.

    The line between straight and plus sizes is as meaningless and invented as the boundaries between states, or money. And yet, like in both those examples, sometimes it couldn’t feel more important.

    That meaningless little line has the power to make us feel like shit, and uncomfortable in our own skin, whether we live on the cusp or firmly beyond it. It has the power to turn a perfectly attractive body into an anomaly, into something unacceptable and frustrating. It can make us stick our fingers down our throats in an effort partly to keep our lives and bodies within the established lines.

    It may seem like a small thing, being able to walk into any store and find clothing that fits on your body. And I can only speak for myself. But I know that if I could do so, I’d think about my body a lot less, and love myself a lot more. Let me know when that’s on sale.

    "
    Emily McCombs (via theselfieofdoriangray)

  3. »  “Dove Real Beauty,” self-esteem, and One Direction

  4. "

    I won’t say that hating our bodies is a universal experience, because I know that it’s not, but it is a pretty common one. The problem with a lot of the rhetoric around the whole “love and accept yourself unconditionally” ideology — popular and awesome-feeling though the words may sound — is that it doesn’t leave much space for individual realities, complicated as they are. There are many reasons why loving your body may occasionally be impossible. It happens.

    Allowing yourself to then feel like crap about your apparent lack of perfect loving joyfulness in your every molecule is self-defeating. I prefer to advocate for acceptance, because acceptance doesn’t place a value — positive or negative — on our bodies, or our bodily parts. Love can be fickle, but acceptance is not. Your body, and all its little idiosyncrasies and annoyances, exists. You cannot blink the frustrating parts away, and you cannot wish them into oblivion. If you are able to change them, it will probably take time. So you may as well accept them, as they are, right now.

    "
    Lesley Kinzel, SURPRISE! I Don’t Love My Body All the Time (And That’s OK)
  5. redefiningbodyimage: [Image: Typographic message on pink duotone background photo of myself: “Your response to the amount of space my body inhabits defines you, not me”] Part three of personal poster series involves separating my own thoughts about my body from the thoughts of others. Part Two | Part One

    redefiningbodyimage:

    [Image: Typographic message on pink duotone background photo of myself: “Your response to the amount of space my body inhabits defines you, not me”]

    Part three of personal poster series involves separating my own thoughts about my body from the thoughts of others.

    Part Two | Part One

  6. thenthwave: Oh, New York Times. Are you for real with this bullshit? NYT put together a slideshow of actresses who are ~*plump and proud*~, including Mindy Kaling, Lina Dunham, and Lady Gaga (yes, that Lady Gaga), all of which, you will notice, aren’t fat (or even “plump”). In fact, they have body types that are perfectly accepted by society. I don’t know their personal struggles, but I think it’s safe to bet that their thin privilege overfloweth. What about the other women included? Says the NYT about Retta, who plays Donna on “Parks and Recreation”: Overweight women are no longer being cast solely as the fat friend. Donna on “Parks and Recreation,” who is played by the actress and comedian Retta, “has an active love life and a naughty streak,” Ms. Stanley writes. That “active love life and a naughty streak” mentioned above is a reoccurring joke on Parks and Rec. Let me emphasize that last point: the concept that this character could be romantically or sexually involved with people is considered by viewers and writers to be a joke. That is not an achievement by any stretch of the imagination. And Rebel Wilson? NYT says: Rebel Wilson, an Australian actress and comedy writer, […] plays “the plus-size bride who gets a dashing, adoring groom in ‘Bachelorette.’ ” ‘The Bachelorette’, just so we’re all on the same page here, is at its core, one entire fat joke: how could a fat girl get a traditionally handsome man to marry her? LOL RIGHT? An entire movie based around a fat joke (with hundreds of additional fat jokes thrown in for good measure) is ACTUALLY not an achievement for anybody! Additionally, the inclusion of the above two actresses and the rolls they play reinforces the idea that it’s totally okay to be fat, but, you know, only if you are funny. The idea that a fat woman must be funny in order to be worthy in Hollywood isn’t doing any women any favors anywhere. When we have TV shows and movies where the lead is a fat woman and her weight is never, ever mentioned (ever!!), where she is portrayed as a human who is valuable with other qualities besides being funny, just as thin women are every damn day, then we will have achieved something. Until then, no, I will not accept this terrible, insulting, first-wave excuse for body positivity. NYT can take it and get bent.

    thenthwave:

    Oh, New York Times. Are you for real with this bullshit?

    NYT put together a slideshow of actresses who are ~*plump and proud*~, including Mindy Kaling, Lina Dunham, and Lady Gaga (yes, that Lady Gaga), all of which, you will notice, aren’t fat (or even “plump”). In fact, they have body types that are perfectly accepted by society. I don’t know their personal struggles, but I think it’s safe to bet that their thin privilege overfloweth.

    What about the other women included?

    Says the NYT about Retta, who plays Donna on “Parks and Recreation”:

    Overweight women are no longer being cast solely as the fat friend. Donna on “Parks and Recreation,” who is played by the actress and comedian Retta, “has an active love life and a naughty streak,” Ms. Stanley writes.

    That “active love life and a naughty streak” mentioned above is a reoccurring joke on Parks and Rec. Let me emphasize that last point: the concept that this character could be romantically or sexually involved with people is considered by viewers and writers to be a joke. That is not an achievement by any stretch of the imagination.

    And Rebel Wilson? NYT says:

    Rebel Wilson, an Australian actress and comedy writer, […] plays “the plus-size bride who gets a dashing, adoring groom in ‘Bachelorette.’ ”

    ‘The Bachelorette’, just so we’re all on the same page here, is at its core, one entire fat joke: how could a fat girl get a traditionally handsome man to marry her? LOL RIGHT? An entire movie based around a fat joke (with hundreds of additional fat jokes thrown in for good measure) is ACTUALLY not an achievement for anybody!

    Additionally, the inclusion of the above two actresses and the rolls they play reinforces the idea that it’s totally okay to be fat, but, you know, only if you are funny. The idea that a fat woman must be funny in order to be worthy in Hollywood isn’t doing any women any favors anywhere.

    When we have TV shows and movies where the lead is a fat woman and her weight is never, ever mentioned (ever!!), where she is portrayed as a human who is valuable with other qualities besides being funny, just as thin women are every damn day, then we will have achieved something.

    Until then, no, I will not accept this terrible, insulting, first-wave excuse for body positivity. NYT can take it and get bent.

  7. »  21 Things to Stop Saying Unless You Hate Fat People

  8. »  TODAY IN FAT LADY RAGE: Screw Your Manufactured "Concern" Over the Sex Lives of Obese Women - By Lesley Kinzel

    Last week, one Stephen J. Betchen wrote a column for his blog on the Psychology Today website, entitled “Female Obesity: It’s Not All Her Fault.” 

    In it, Betchen, who specializes in marriage and family therapy, describes that a recent early morning trip to his local grocery store has opened his eyes to the fact that obese women (most shockingly, who are not immediately dismissible as ugly and old) exist all around him, followed by his subsequent revelation that their relationships, sexual and otherwise, must necessarily be suffering as a result.

    But there’s good news! Betchen explains:

    Medical conditions aside, it’s pretty easy to blame some of these women for their poor eating habits and lack of self-discipline, but aren’t their male counterparts culpable as well. One of the most disturbing things I see in couples/sex therapy is men—especially married men— who rarely, if ever, attempt to make their wives feel sexy. […] Women do need to take responsibility for “letting themselves go.” And if I never see another loosely fitted, designer sweat suit again it’ll be too soon. But both men and women need to own giving up on themselves and on one another. 

    See, it’s not exclusively the women’s fault. It’s also their HUSBANDS’ fault. (Because, of course, all of these women were straight, monogamous and currently paired off.) The husbands are equally to blame for their fatass wives because they have failed to make said fatass wives feel sufficiently sexy, such that their fatassedness could be thwarted in the first place. 

    Sexiness, you see, is a natural weight-loss drug; if you feel sufficiently sexy, then you cannot possibly be fat.  

    FURTHERMORE, sexiness-feelings must be imparted by a husband. Or, I guess, a long-term boyfriend, maybe. Men are the bearers of the diet-sexy keys, and they bequeath their slimming properties — according to Betchen — by, like, complimenting you and stuff.

    The reward for this will be a not only be a sexy relationship, but a sexual one in which both partners will see themselves and present themselves as sexy, sexual beings who take pride in their bodies and their attractiveness to others.

    Because fat women are never, ever sexually attractive to anyone, and cannot possibly take pride in their bodies and their appearance to others. I suppose their feelings about how they look to themselves are irrelevant and inconsequential, especially if they defy conventional ideas of what kind of body is “allowed” to be sexy.  

    If Betchen is truly privileging the approval of a male partner over a woman’s individual feelings about her body and herself as a sexual being, then I’m genuinely concerned for his patients.

    This comment is not meant to address large woman [sic], many of whom are very sexy. I believe there can be a distinction between large and obese. 

    Well thank god for this concession. Maybe if we ask nicely, Dr. Betchen will provide a specific set of visual standards by which we can conclusively and universally determine the difference between women who are merely “large” and those who are “obese.” 

    And then we can burn it and laugh, because no one person’s individual standards should get to be the arbiter of what is an acceptable body and what is not.

    My point is that simply blaming women for their obesity might not be productive. If a man has an obese partner, he should take a close look at his potential contribution to enabling the obesity, and injuring the sex life of his relationship.

    There are a few minor flaws to this argument, like the bleeding obvious fact that many fat women are fat when they get married, or long before, and that many fat women feel sexy and have fucking raucous and fulfilling sex lives even without a husband around to apply his magical slimming sexifying compliments.

    Speaking personally, as a fat lady who was fat when I met my husband and has never ceased to be fat in the14 years since, literally every single problem my nearly 10-year marriage has ever faced has been a result of a lack of communication. Every. Single. One. 

    And every time we have had the occasional disconnect in terms of sex — and y’all, for most couples who’ve only fucked each other for a significant number of years, this will happen with a fascinating, if sparse, regularity — it has had nothing to do with our capacity for sex itself or even our feelings of respective sexiness, but has been a result of one or both of us failing to honestly communicate our feelings to each other. 

    Some women gain weight as an indirect result of an unhappy relationship. I won’t deny that. But the brazen gall of this man to go to his local grocery store and presume to know anything about the sex lives and self-esteem of every woman he sees is utterly indefensible. It simply reinforces the wrong thinking that fat people are a monolith of shared psychological issues, and that fatness is always a sign of illness, be it of the body or mind.

    The original Psychology Today post (link via Google Cache) initially came to my attention via Jezebel, who rightly tore Betchen a new one for his grotesque assumptions and patronizing tone. 

    And then what happened?

    The post was deleted.

    That’s when I became very, very angry.

    I understand that for some, the natural reaction to the deletion of an offensive piece of writing is a sense of triumph — Betchen has been successfully shamed into removing (or having it removed — I don’t pretend to know who made the decision to delete) his odious crap from the Internet. Like it never happened! Like it was never there.

    But this is precisely the opposite of what I want to happen when someone publishes damaging and difficult opinions — and I don’t care what they are — online. When an author later realizes something was problematic or poorly worded, and then responds to that revelation by erasing the offending piece entirely, it removes the opportunity for a productive conversation about why it was wrong (or misguided or damaging), and we then lose the chance to unpack the real consequences of uncritically advocating these troubling and injurious assumptions. 

    It is not enough for me to simply tell people they’re not allowed to say certain things, and have then obey. I am not content to plug my ears and pretend these opinions do not exist; neither do I expect to be protected from them. I want them out there, in the light of day, where we can all discuss them and maybe learn something about the impact our ignorant assumptions have on the real lives of other people.

    So you don’t just delete bullshit like this. You own up to it, and if you regret publishing it, you talk about why. You REFLECT. You LEARN. No one learns when assumptions are driven underground, when people stop saying things out loud only because they’re afraid of a reaction, and not because they have gained even a vague understanding of why those assumptions were damaging in the first place.

    People like Stephen Betchen see me every day. They see me in the grocery store, or at Target. They see me walking through parking lots. They see me holding hands with my husband while waiting to cross a city street. They see me at dinner, at the farmer’s market, in the bookstore. And they assume. 

    They see me and they assume things similar to what Dr. Betchen has written and subsequently retracted — they assume that I cannot possibly have a positive self-image and a healthy marriage. That I must be riddled with self-loathing and self-doubt. That I must be sick, uncomfortable, unhappy and stupid. And I can’t tell them different, most of the time.

    Dr. Betchen can delete his ill-considered post after a bit of criticism, but in this case that won’t stop me from telling it to him, and to anyone else who thinks he’s right: Stop making assumptions about my life based on the size and shape of my body.

    If you’re interested in what the lives and sexualities of fat women are really like, ASK THEM. And understand that for every woman you ask you’ll get a unique response shaped by a thousand varieties of experience, and odds are good you won’t be able to predict any of them with 100% accuracy.

    Because the only thing that the lives and relationships of fat women have in common is that they are not all the same. Just like everybody else.

  9. »  It's Been A Tough Week for Fat Kids in the Media - By S.E. Smith

    This has been a real banner week for hassling fat kids in the media. The Obesityepidemiczorz scaremongering has been spilling over onto kids for a while, but Tuesday dealt a real triple-whammy (with cheese on top).

    First, we had military officials informing us that fat children are a national security problem.

    Then, we had the BBC speculating about why it is that parents “let” their children get fat.

    And out of Minnesota, a campaign telling fat kids they’re an epidemic.

    WON’T SOMEONE THINK OF THE FAT CHILDREN?!

    Here’s the thing, though: shame-based campaigns really, really don’t work. This has been pretty well established by this point, and it includes kids as well as adults. In fact, lecturing kids about how their gross fatness is RUINING EVERYTHING is directly harmful. As Marilyn Wann pointed out last year, the rise in rhetoric about “childhood obesity” has contributed to bullying on not just an individual but institutional level, and it’s led to a rise in suicide attempts among children and teens, some of which have been successful.

    Funny thing. When much of the feedback you hear about yourself and your body is that you are a completely disgusting waste of space, you tend to internalize that. And you start to wonder if maybe the best solution to that would be to remove yourself from the equation. Can’t be an epidemic if you’re not around, you know.

    The military has been making obesity a cause for quite some time, complaining that it contributes to a decline in force readiness and has forced it to lower enlistment standards to accept fatties. It’s even started holding pre-boot-camp fat camps to get people within the specifications for enlistment. Furthermore, it claims, it spends substantial sums annually on treating soldiers and family members with “obesity-related health conditions.”

    And the military points the finger at high-calorie foods in schools like candy bars and chips with a rather colorful analogy: 

    The amount of junk food purchased and consumed within schools in the U.S. in a single year is the equivalent to 90,000 tons of candy bars, or more than the weight of an aircraft carrier.

    Now you’re not just fat and gross: You’re destroying the fabric of American society as we know it, leaving us vulnerable to invasion or terrorist takeover or who knows what. When the empire falls, you have only yourself to blame, fat kids!

    READ MORE

  10. "

    [TW: SELF HARM]

    People don’t wanna be compared to the teenage girl; the teenage girl is hated, teenage girls hate themselves. If you listen to a certain kind of music, or if you express your emotions in a certain kind of way, if you self harm, you write diaries, all those kind of activities are sort of laughed at and ridiculed because they’re associated with being a teenage girl. Even just things like being cripplingly self conscious or overly concerned with our appearance, that’s considered like a teenage girl thing and therefore its ridiculous, it’s stupid, it’s not relevant or legitimate, and you know, what we needed at that age was legitimisation and respect and support but all we got was dismissal and “oh you’re such a teenage girl.”

    "

    Feminism, Education, and the plight of the teenage girl (via grrrlfever)

    All this shit goes on, and yet we wonder why young women constantly undervalue themselves and their happiness, struggle with self esteem and body image, and deal with eating disorders or self harm. We can’t ask for it all, people. We can’t ask for a group that is an easy target to make fun of, easy to degrade, easy to laud as something to avoid, and simultaneously act like we’re concerned when more and more of that group begins to show the effects of being constantly hated and devalued. This shit’s gotta end.

    (via darlingfauna)

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