Two Whole Cakes

This morning I had an email asking me to respond to some (very common, but worthwhile nonetheless) questions. Excerpted below:

I used to be over 300 pounds, as many fatshionistas are. In principle, I believe in Health at Every Size. I thought I ate healthy and was not inactive, and my weight never went down. I know that crash diets are dangerous as well as ineffective, and that regimens like fasting were bad for your metabolism and counteractive to any sort of weight loss. I was sick of having a hard time sitting in “average” people seats and chub rub and strange boils and yeast infections. Even though I knew my cholesterol levels and blood pressure and everything else was fine, it seemed unnatural and unhealthy to have to deal with these obstacles. And you know, sometimes I had to admit – it’s really difficult to go about everyday activities with all this tush fat to carry around. It’s hard to think about this kind of stuff. I know it is.

[…]

I still think that big is beautiful and I love the way my fellow fatshionistas look. And I DEFINITELY believe society needs to stop berating people for being who they are and what they look like. But forgetting the issues of society, and leaving it to just the very large ones among us: Is it truly natural for us to be so fat? Not fat in any insulting way, but…fat as a descriptor sans connotations. I know this will stir some hard feelings but, biologically and nutrionally, should we really look like this? I’m not saying we should be skinny – that in itself implies no kind of health. But biologically, there is no evolutionary or scientific reason basis for we should be so large. A full-figured body, like the curves of the goddess Venus, is one that looks healthy, child-bearing (I’m not implying all women should have children, but again, biological basis), and yet, at the same time, probably does’t have to deal with too many yeast infections between the folds and under the breasts either.

As I’ve said before, and many times before that, I am of the opinion that bodies are really, really, really individual things.

Is fat natural? Well, sure, insofar as being a non-synthetic product. All bodies have some fat on them. Is it natural for some bodies to be fatter than others? I would argue that, as a concept, diversity is absolutely natural. Thus I’d expect that body size, like any other broad statistical measurement, tends to exist on a bell curve – there will be an average, “middle” size around which most folk fall, and then at either end there will be progressively smaller numbers of folks who are “naturally” fatter or slimmer (if we wanted to remove the value-laden weight issue from it, think of the same idea, but in the context of body height). My problem with proposing a carefully-defined “natural body size” is that it suggests that there is a narrow field of naturalness and that anything outside of that spectrum is abnormal and in need of assimilation or repair.

I have a really hard time believing that this is so. Now, I don’t suppose to speak for fat people as a monolithic group, not least because fat people are not a monolithic group. Ultimately I can only speak from my own experience, as someone who’s lived in a body weighing around 300 lbs for many years. And my personal experience, for one, is that skin problems like the ones the reader above mentions are genetically common (I would even hazard to say unusually so) amongst some of my immediate (and, notably, not-fat) family members, and yet I’ve never had a problem with them myself. My personal experience is also that, insofar as actual movement and daily life is concerned, I do not feel that everyday activities are more difficult for me because I have a bunch of fat. As I move through my daily tasks, I feel, well, normal. My normal, admittedly, but it’s the only one I know. Of course, there are aspects of life in general that are less fat-friendly than others, but I’ve yet to find one that I could honestly blame on my fatness exclusively, rather than on the situation at hand.

Here’s an example. I do occasionally meet with chairs or theater seats (Bank of America Pavilion on Boston’s waterfront, I AM LOOKING AT YOU) that are terrifically uncomfortable, but in that situation it ain’t my fat that’s causing discomfort – it’s the placement of the arms on the too-narrow seat. Because I am perfectly capable of sitting in wide-enough chairs (hell, I do it all the time; in fact, I am doing it RIGHT NOW) without any discomfort, and therefore my fat in isolation does not cause any sitting-related frustration, I cannot logically blame the fat on my ass for any trouble I have with certain seats. It is, rather, a failure on the part of the chair to be wide enough to fit me. Seat size is not a natural phenomenon. If seats were harvested (or line-caught?) in the wild, I might understand folks making a vague connection between not fitting my ass in a certain chair and some Great Omniscient Natural Plan for human body size. But the reality is that seats are built by people, and usually built to the smallest specifications the majority of people will stand, since seats are typically something that are sold (think of a concert, or an airplane) and thus more seats equals more money. They’re not built to be comfortable to a broad array of bodies. They’re built to be efficient. Sizeable (ha) difference, that.

Though I’ve edited the email above, I’d also like to address something else the author mentioned, which was that she (I am assuming she based on the included name) eventually decided to improve her diet by cutting out junk food, and to get more exercise. I am all in favor! I passionately hate junk food. I ain’t judging folks who love it, so long as they don’t force it on me. Truly, I often get a little resentful of (and occasionally miffed at) my junk-food-loving husband (as he will attest) for buying nutrition-free crap at the grocery store, or asking if we can run by a fast-food chain to get him something disgusting to eat, but I make valiant efforts not to be judgmental about it (I frequently fail, but I do try). When I do join him in junk-food hell, I inevitably feel gruesome the next day, since that stuff just doesn’t agree with me. I am happiest, inside and out, when I’m preparing and consuming whole foods, primarily stuff that grows in sunshine (though I haven’t been a true vegetarian in years, I generally only eat meat a couple times a week) and so that’s the normal routine I keep to. Similarly, I absolutely require a certain minimum amount of daily physical activity to be my preferred cheerful self. Regular physical movement keeps my stress down, and makes me feel centered and whole, to risk getting a bit woo-woo about it, and so I work hard to squeeze in as much exercise as possible, even on my busiest days. Now, I shouldn’t feel compelled to do these things just to justify my fatness, and I don’t – nor should any fat person feel like they have to be extra active or extra food-snobbish to validate their being fat. I do them because I dig them and they contribute to my overall, internal sense of well-being. I couldn’t give less of a shit about whether my personal choices impress other folks.

I still weigh 300 pounds.

The nature argument is sort of a pointless one to me; essentially it’s just using a very old ideology of Western culture, one that equates nature with pureness and virtue and truth, to try to validate or invalidate fatness. I remember years back, when Kirstie Alley was doing Fat Actress, she made a comment in some magazine arguing that you don’t see fat animals in the natural world. The quote went something like: You never see a fat jaguar in the wild. The mental picture this comment supplies is kind of funny, true, but the overall basis is actually really wrong, and the idea that because jaguars in particular tend not to be fat means humans shouldn’t either… well, that lost me. There are lots of animals – elephants and hippos spring to mind, both of which will mightily kick your ass and/or kill you really, really dead if so inclined – that “naturally” incline toward shapes that visually evoke fatness, at least when compared with a jaguar. Was Alley’s point that humans should be more like jaguars than elephants? I don’t even know where to begin with how random and nonsensical the whole idea is. Humans are humans. Elephants are elephants. Jaguars are jaguars. Never the twain shall meet.

So is it “natural” for me to weigh 300 lbs? I have no fucking idea. Maybe if I hadn’t lost and regained (and lost and regained, and lost and regained) so much weight as a kid and teenager, I would weigh less now. Maybe if I hadn’t started dieting at nine years of age and possibly affected what would have become a normal adult metabolism, I would weigh less now. I have no way of knowing. And I can’t travel back in time (….yet) to find out whether doing things differently would have led to a different result. And even if I could, I don’t know that I would bother.

Because at the end of the day, I don’t really care if this is my natural state, or the state I was destined to have at birth, or the state I’ve created through childhood decisions and past disordered eating… or not. There may be folks out there who worry about whether they’re existing as nature intended; I am not one of them. This is my body, right now, and after years of battling with self-hatred and self-doubt, I am truly, wholeheartedly, happy and satisfied with it. For those who feel differently, I don’t dismiss or belittle your discomfort or worries – in fact I sincerely hope you can work that out in some manner that enables you to feel similarly happy and satisfied with yourself. I just don’t share your concerns.

If that’s unnatural, then que sera, sera. I am okay with it.

Last week I skimmed an interview with Beth Ditto, talking about her upcoming Evans line. Though I don’t expect to buy anything from it (I’d be happy to be wrong! But it would take something impressive indeed to convince me to deal with the international shipping), I’m excited to see this happen for a few reasons. For one, if what folks are saying is true, it may possibly be the most trend-forward plus size collection many of us have yet seen. For another, it’s being offered by a British retailer, which is great for my dear long-suffering UK fats, whose local plus-size options are ten times more abysmal than what we have in the US.

“Some fat girl blogger was saying, ‘It’s cool that all these famous designers are making clothes for her, but they’re not going to make them for everyone.’ And the truth is, yes, they’re not going to make them for everyone. They make only a few pieces just to fit me,” [Ditto] shrugs. “For the rest, I have to make it work my own way. Maybe it wasn’t supposed to go round my shoulders because it was a skirt, but that’s how I wear it.”

I had a moment here where I went, oh, somebody else must have made the same point I did awhile back. And then I thought, OR, it is just dimly possible I’m a self-deprecating moron and she’s actually referring to my post. While I still stick by my original point, the quote above creates a tension in Ditto’s position I’d failed to take into account. I hadn’t really considered how surreal it might be for a fatty like myself, accustomed to waging straight-up war in nearly every attempt to cultivate a personal style out of the lemons mainstream plus-size clothing manufacturers offer us, to suddenly have Chanel call and offer to make me a dress. (Would years of rage spill out of me in a stream of vile profanity? Would I humbly blubber my thanks and send my measurements right over? Would I be caught between reactions and hopefully have the sense to accept a ridiculous opportunity even as the aforementioned rage was rising in my throat, lest the chance never come again?)

Though I became fond of the band Ditto fronts, Gossip, long before I knew she was fat, it probably goes without saying that I have no connection to Beth Ditto on a personal level (those who do, no doubt, have unique perspectives on Ditto as media concept). And yet as an activist and Thinker About Fat Things, in her role as a cultural figure she tends to occupy my mind fairly often, if only because probably one in four pop culture stories that mention fatness will also probably mention Ditto in the same breath. Even amongst self-accepting fat folks, we all, at one time or another, talk about Beth Ditto: how much we love her, how much we hate her, how we’re just not impressed with her, how we admire her courage but just aren’t so into her music, how much we dig her band but just aren’t into her performativity, etc. Beyond me and my fat friends, in public life, Ditto has come to represent an alien force in the discourse around weight and appearance. A good portion of the public has no language or context in which to place someone like Beth Ditto, so instead they respond by trying to force the same tired ideologies on her, even when they just don’t fit. Among the most popular expressions being that glamorizing Ditto (or Ditto glamorizing herself) is promoting an “unhealthy lifestyle”.

I find it incredible that the true first thought of anyone who sees Ditto, for example, posing for Pop magazine in the shredded Gareth Pugh dress above is, “God, she looks so unhealthy!” It’s possible that folk have swallowed more of cultural imperatives that conflate the appearance of health with traditional beauty standards than I like to think, but I would bet that the honest first inclination of most people who see photos like the one above is some heady mixture of revulsion, fascination, and fear, and that these feelings have sweet FA to do with their worries over Ditto’s “health”. This, for the reason I’ve cited above: most of us have no context in which to parse what we’re seeing. A fat woman, in a couture dress, and who is not being employed as the punchline to a joke. What? What does that mean? It’s like trying to read a language you think you know but written in an alphabet you’ve never seen before.

In a broader cultural sense, Ditto’s position as simultaneous muse and iconoclast to high fashion may mean something, but I’m not sure what that meaning ultimately will be. Beth Ditto is interesting to the narrow fashion world because she is an aberration. I expect her inclusion absolutely does not signal the coming-around of high fashion to embrace fat women as a whole, as I’ve seen some folks posit, wide-eyed and hopeful; in fact, I would argue that it further ensures that won’t happen, since including fats aplenty would erase the outsider-art novelty that Ditto’s fatness currently supplies.

That said, it’s indisputable at this point that Ditto’s media exposure is having a tremendous effect on individual people, and arguably on cultural discourse as a whole. Ditto is, intentionally or otherwise, creating an archetype for other fats to emulate and follow, and carving a space where fat folks who are NOT trying to just blend in can exist, loudly, and colorfully. Before Beth Ditto, a woman who wore outrageous outfits and loud makeup would have likely drawn comparisons to the character Mimi from The Drew Carey Show, but no longer; part of this shift is rooted in the fact that pop culture moves fast and a cultural reference from a long-cancelled show is not going to continue to have relevance to younger generations. However, it is also telling that prior to Beth Ditto, we had no other fat media figure meeting these attention-grabbing standards to deploy in her stead. Truly, I bet if I looked, I could find at least a few blog posts connecting Ditto to the fictional Mimi even now.

Now to be clear, I’m not arguing that Ditto should go put on a muumuu and tell Karl Lagerfeld to fuck off. (Though that WOULD entertain me a whole lot.) I think that ultimately Ditto’s cultural persona is a positive one, and one that is shaping the discourse around fatness, however subtly. At the end of the day, Ditto is a real person whose choices are her own to make, public or otherwise. And I prefer to let Ditto retain her individual agency, rather than point to her as a fat-shaped object simply being used by the fashion world to make themselves feel open-minded and edgy, which has been a common conclusion I’ve seen being drawn by a number of straight-size fashion blogs. But I still have to wonder what the impression she leaves will ultimately be.

Below, enjoy the first video from The Gossip’s new album, Music for Men, which goes on sale tomorrow.

Back in November of 2008, I wrote a post in which I used the phrase “death fat”. At the time, I didn’t actually expect people would connect with it in such numbers. As a result, I’ve been continually surprised by the ongoing adoption of death fat, by bunches of people in bunches of contexts.

However, in some quarters, it seems some folk aren’t getting “death fat” as a concept. There are also a fair number of folks landing here at Fatshionista.com by googling “death fat”, which leads me to believe that there are lingering questions. So I thought I’d clarify a few things, as I see them. (Your death-fat mileage, as in all things, may vary.)

1) Death fat is funny. It’s pointing out the ridiculousness of “morbid obesity” as determined by the BMI scale, considering this measurement marks not only Actual Fat People as in danger of being killed by numbers on a scale, but many athletes as well, simply because BMI works based only on height and weight and does not calculate for the types of tissue making up an allegedly-morbidly-obese body.

2) Death fat is funny. It’s highlighting that “morbid obesity” is an hilariously-overwrought turn of phrase*, particularly given the simple reality that not everyone who falls under this category is in imminent danger – or even long-term danger – of death by fat.

3) DEATH FAT IS FUNNY. Laughter relieves stress; for example, the stress of being a fat person who is routinely told – by an individual and/or by cultural discourse as a whole – that you are morally suspect, intellectually-inferior, physically-disgusting, and/or ultimately doomed to die (unlike, uh, everyone else). Dealing with the above is occasionally stressful even for me, and I have the good fortune to possess a healthy dose of criticism with which to process it.

Ultimately, I employ death fat as a means of gently poking fun at strangers who would get all wrought up over their manufactured concerns about my health. If I had my choice, I’d much rather folks just pretend I don’t need them to instruct me on how unhealthy they think I must be.

This could function in the same way we pretend that You, Nameless Fat Shamer and Health Cop, frequently accost drinkers in a bar to inform them of how they’re endangering their health, because you Care. And just like we pretend that every single time you see a woman on the street who appears to be over 40 years of age, you demand she inform you of whether she’s had a mammogram, and if not, you give her a tiny piece of your tiny mind. (Alternatively, you can substitute a colonoscopy for the mammogram, just in case she has done that already, so you’re not robbed of your opportunity to wag a shameful finger at a stranger.) And just like we pretend that every time someone near you sneezes, you can magically produce chicken soup from thin air and send them to bed, great paragon of health-promotion that you are. Just like we pretend that it’s not fatness alone that troubles your Delicate Health Sensibilities, and that the attention paid to fatness is more an aesthetic problem that conveniently uses health as an excuse to provide uninvited “intervention”… let’s likewise pretend I’m capable of looking after myself and managing my own physical well-being.

Of course, it’s just possible that maybe everyone who would lecture a fatty on the Inevitable Health Consequences doesn’t actually do these other things. And if they don’t, it’s probably because they’d be considered unwelcome, inappropriate, and intrusive.

Hence, death fat. It gives me a laugh. It disarms those who would debate with me on matters that are not their concern. If people are going to bring up the threat of death (an inevitability, after all, no matter what one weighs or how healthy one might be) at fat people and dramatically swing it like an axe at our throats, I am going to smile patiently and nod and admit, yes, it’s true, someday I’m going to die. But it won’t be after spending my whole life miserably chasing a body I’m not meant to have. It won’t be after spending my whole life fearing and doubting myself. And in the end it’s not something you need to worry about anyway; don’t let your own life pass you by because you’re trying to tell me how to live mine.

——–

* I am aware that some in the medical community are actively trying to phase “morbidly obese” out, in favor of obesity class I, class II, etc. I suspect the movement to do so is rooted in the indisputable over-the-topness of the original phrasing.

Oh Avenue. ALL I WANT TO DO IS GIVE YOU MONEY IN EXCHANGE FOR GOODS. That’s all! I don’t want us to be friends. I don’t even care if we’re barely civil to one another, given that I loathe probably 85% of what’s on your website at any given moment and I resent that you occupy a goodly portion of the already-limited map of plus-size options that go up to a 5X, sprawling all over territory I am inclined to think would be better employed by a greater diversity of non-floral apparel options. We don’t have to like each other. BUT, given that you are supposed to be a STORE (whence people MAKE PURCHASES, just to be clear) I don’t expect that buying things from you should be met with apparently willful obstruction at every bloody turn. In fact, I’d be happiest if my experience with you went so smoothly that I barely noticed the transaction had taken place. Unfortunately, this is not how things tend to go.

Every once in a great while, I’ll need to buy one of the items you do well. Such as your seamless bike shorts, or your high-cut underpants, or your swimwear (truly, two of my favorite swimsuits of the past couple years came from you). You’ll note here that I am not linking to any of these items’ product pages on your website. I would LIKE to link to these items, as I am a blogger and links are what bloggers thrive on. That’s just one small example of why your website is such an unmitigated disaster. A person cannot link to any individual product page. This is essentially the philosophical antithesis of usefulness. Do you realize how idiotic your unlinking website is? Without functioning links, why have a website at all? Why not just draw pictures of your garments using lampblack on papyrus and distribute them by carrier pigeon to the fat people of the world?

Furthermore: I cannot honestly tell you how many times in recent months I have selected a number of garments, placed them in the shopping cart on your site, and attempted to make my purchase, only to run into so many difficulties that I inevitably throw up my hands and close the browser window, flinging an array of expletives at both you at your parentage as I do so.

Avenue, if you were a person, the following have been the conversation we had this morning. Though this is a dramatized version, everything I describe attempting here in my failed efforts to make my purchase is 100% true.

Lesley and Avenue sit across from one another at a table. The only light onstage issues from a laptop sitting between them.

Me: “Hey Avenue, I’d like to make a purchase. I need some bras and tanks and have put them in your shopping bag thingy. The trouble is, I’ve forgotten my password. Luckily you have a ‘forgot your password?’ link here.”
Avenue: “Oh, I’m sorry. That doesn’t actually work. But I hope this error message is helpful to you!”
Me: “It’s not, actually. Um. I guess I’ll use the ‘checkout as a guest’ option.”
Avenue: “Great! Hi stranger! What’s your billing address?”
Me: [Enters billing address.]
Avenue: “Excellent! What’s your shipping address?”
Me: [Enters shipping address.]
Avenue: “Thank you! Now very important, this: would you like to receive thrice-daily emails from us about nothing?”
Me: [Ticks ‘no’ box.]
Avenue: “Hey, ARE YOU REALLY SURE ABOUT THAT? Mightn’t there be some confusing language I could use here to trick you into signing up?”
Me: “Yes, I am sure. No, there is not.”
Avenue: “Fabulous! Here’s your order confirmation screen! We’ll be shipping to [billing address] and thanks for signing up for our email list!”
Me: “Wait, no, I wanted to ship to [shipping address].”
Avenue: “Oh! Uh, then you can go back and edit, I think.”
Me: “You THINK?”
Avenue: “Sure! Give it a try!”
Me: [Goes back to address information screen, fixes shipping address, clicks ‘continue’.]
Avenue: “Here, again, is your order confirmation screen! We’ll be shipping to [billing address], and thanks ever so much for signing up for our email list! We’re already savagely beating your inbox to death, even as we speak!”
Me: “NO. I wanted to ship to [shipping address].”
Avenue: “Yes, [billing address].”
Me: “NO. I… ugh, maybe this is a browser problem, I’ll try it again in IE.”

Me: [Opens Internet Explorer. Puts selections into shopping cart again.]
Avenue: “Hi stranger! Would you like to sign up for our completely not overbearing email list? It’ll change your life!”
Me: “No, I am just trying to recreate my shopping cart so I can try my purchase again. Uh, why is this product page suddenly not loading?”
Avenue: “What are you talking about?”
Me: “Well, look, this page only loads halfway and then stops. How am I supposed to add this to my cart? Is it out of stock?”
Avenue: “I don’t know what you’re talking about. It must be your browser.”
Me: “I’ve tried to load this page on three browsers, two computers, and an iPhone. The same partial page is loading on all of them.”
Avenue: “You are mistaken. There is no product page.”
Me: “But..”
Avenue: “THERE IS NO PRODUCT PAGE.”
Me: “Okay, fine, I guess I’ll skip that item.”
Avenue: “GREAT.”
Me: “I’m going to try checking out as a guest again, since the forgot password link is still resulting in a singularly non-helpful error message.”
Avenue: “Hi stranger! What’s your billing address?”
Me: [Enters billing address, enters shipping address, ticks ‘no’ box under email signup.]
Avenue: “Awesome! Here’s your order confirmation screen! We’ll be shipping to [billing address], and thanks ever so much for signing up for our email list!”
Me: “OH MY FUCKING GOD. Fine, maybe the problem is with the guest checkout. I’ll sign up for a new account and try to checkout.”
Avenue: “Hi stranger! Give me all your delicious personal information now!”
Me: “Uh, okay.” [Creates new account.]
Avenue: “Oh, hi Lesley! Let’s verify your address and shipping information before you check out!”
Me: “Looks good.”
Avenue: “You’re sure I can’t change your mind about the email list? You enjoy getting notices about floral-print tunics four or five times an hour, yes?”
Me: “NO.”
Avenue: “Alrighty! Here’s your order confirmation screen: we’ll be shipping to [shipping address], and though I am sad you didn’t sign up for the email list, I will get over it with time.”
Me: “FINALLY!” [Clicks ‘place order’ button.]
Avenue: “Oh, hi Lesley! Let’s verify your address and shipping information before you check out!”
Me: “Uh, didn’t we just do this, like two seconds ago?”
Avenue: “Nope! Let’s verify all this and then you’ll be checking out before you know it!”
Me: “Well… okay, it still looks correct to me.” [Clicks ‘continue’ button.]
Avenue: “Alrighty! Here’s your order confirmation screen: we’ll be shipping to [shipping address]. All that’s left for you to do is click that little ‘place order’ button down there on the right.”
Me: “Okay.” [Clicks ‘place order’ button.]
Avenue: “Oh, hi Lesley! Let’s verify your address and shipping information before you check out!”
Me: “DUDE, WE JUST DID THIS!”
Avenue: “No we didn’t.”
Me: “YES WE – oh fuck this. Fuck your website, and fuck your bras. I hate you. I have spent nearly an hour trying to make a purchase that should have taken less than ten minutes, and it still won’t go through. Since apparently I can’t buy anything, I am instead going to blog about this now. Goodbye.”
Avenue: “WAIT, WHAT ABOUT THE EMAIL LI–”

Curtain.

Over the past couple of days, Fatshionista.com has been featured in pieces in the New York Times, what looks to be a lifestyle/magazine site in China, and an Italian women’s-issues blog. (Also on Jezebel for the second time in two weeks, though they misspelled the site name again. Ha. Oh, but I do enjoy Jezebel.)

Is all this internet exposure not enough? Well, my flabby little lambs, I’m happy to report that the NYC-dwelling amongst you will have a rare opportunity to see me and my death fat in 3D (thanks to the Boston reading attendee who put it so succinctly) along with the excellent Kate Harding of Shapely Prose and the inimitable Marianne Kirby of The Rotund, at a Lessons From The Fatosphere book event taking place at Re/Dress NYC this Friday evening. Browsing and shopping begins at 6:30pm, and the reading should start around 8:00pm. Post-reading I will be cheerfully accepting gifts of cake (there must be two) but in the absence of that I would just love to meet as many New York readers as possible.

And maybe, just maybe, the spirit will move me to tell you all about Fat Satan with maximum dramatic effect. But I promise nothing.

Lessons From the Fatosphere Book Event
Friday, June 5
Re/Dress NYC
109 Boerum Place
Brooklyn, NY
between Pacific + Dean
f/g train to Bergen Street stop
Shopping at 6:30, reading begins at 8.