Two Whole Cakes

There is a terrible man out there in the world who has recently made some terrible observations about whether the parents of fat children can possibly love them: he argues no, that no parent who allows their child to become fat could love that child, as their love should somehow serve as a barrier to all the imperfections of the parents’ own lives, their own food issues, their own family backgrounds, their socioeconomic status, their level of education, their access to quality healthcare. Love, he argues, should conquer all in the face of obesity, and if obesity wins, then the culprit is a lack of sufficient love.

I’m not naming the terrible man nor his terrible organization nor the space in which he has made his terrible assertions. I call him terrible because here he is behaving terribly, although I admit he is probably a complex individual, as we all are, prone to cruelty and ignorance and to kindness and intelligence in equal measures, often unpredictably. It may just be that the subject of fat brings out his darker impulses, as it does in many people. I persistently believe that those who are most vicious in attacks against fat people only wreak their havoc out of a misplaced sense of doing good, and being too wrapped up in their own perspectives to hear the experiences of the people whom they’re trying to save, cannot understand why anyone would ever disagree with what seems, to them, to make perfect sense. Of course parents who allow or enable their children to become fat must not love them, thinks the terrible man, because why would you blight someone who love with such an unbearable existence? You’d only do so much for someone you hated.

I have to believe that these people make their fat-people-hatin’ assertions out of misplaced good intentions, because I have to believe that these people are complicated individuals, each with their own motivations and histories, each with a story that brought them to the life they have today. I acknowledge them as people, imperfect though they are, because we all need a little forgiveness sometimes.

I acknowledge them as people even when they fail to do as much for me.

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Hey hey hey!* There’s new research out about fatties and sex! A pack of scientists from Duke University wanted to find out how fat folks feel about their sex lives, using an established questionnaire that “assesses and scores sexual functioning broadly across nine domains — interest, desire, arousal, orgasm, satisfaction, behavior, relationship, masturbation, and problems.” They’ve published their findings in the May/June issue of the Journal of Sex and Marital Therapy, and the study was funded by the National Institute of Diabetes and Digestive and Kidney Diseases. I guess we’re counting sex parts as digestive organs here. Y’know, for the money.

Tina! Bring me the blockquote!

The researchers analyzed questionnaires completed by 91 men and 134 women before they enrolled in a weight-loss study. They found scores were significantly lower for women than men on all subscales.

“We found that there was lower sexual satisfaction and lower sexual quality of life among women than men, and overall sexual quality of life was low among both groups,” said Truls Ostbye, MD, PhD, professor in the Department of Community & Family Medicine at Duke.

[…]

“Our findings contribute to a growing body of research that indicates obesity is associated with reduced sexual functioning and sexual quality of life among both men and women,” Ostbye said.

Hmm. Here I shall stroke my imaginary beard and idly wonder why.

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I was paging through CNN’s Compulsory and Gratuitous Weight Loss Stories (i.e. Health) section the other day, looking for blog fodder, and ran across a story about a woman who used “4 tips” (four? I thought all I needed was “1 old rule”!) to lose 232 pounds. The story itself is a standard weight-loss fairytale. Fat lady has fat and ill elderly family member she has seen suffering; doctor informs her she’s gonna die soon even though she’s not sick; she sees an unflattering photograph of herself and decides today is the first day of the rest of her life and she’s ready to make a lifestyle change! There are a couple of interesting deviations, however.

…Mills went into her purse and pulled out the tips the doctor had given her:

1. Eat 8 ounces of food every 3 hours

2. No sugary drinks

3. Do not skip meals

4. Do not tell anyone what you’re doing

Mills embellished these rules a bit by adding exercise. Her doctor evidently considered exercise optional for improving her health, an oversight both astonishing and illustrative. Tips 2 and 3 I don’t have a problem with, myself: I don’t care for sodas or other sugar-heavy drinks, and it’s pretty rare that I skip a meal. But Tip 1 sounds like a fad diet, and too like a breastfeeding infant’s eating schedule to be a coincidence. How do you live like that? What if you’re not hungry every three hours? Should you wake yourself up every three hours during the night in order to feed? If you’re going to be out all day, must you carry a bunch of individual ziploc bags each containing 8 ounces of nourishment with you? Isn’t that kind of weird and likely to further divorce the dieter from her natural hunger cues, if she was divorced from them to begin with? And isn’t Tip 1 in direct conflict with Tip 4? Wouldn’t your friends and colleagues eventually notice your iPhone alarm going off every three hours, and you immediately chowing down from a pre-measured bag of food like some weird doctor-instructed Pavlovian response? (And mightn’t they attempt to talk you out of such behaviors, which is probably why the tip is up there to start with?)

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Are you ready for your close-up? (PHOTO: REUTERS/Jason Reed)

I was faced with the new airport scanner technology for the first time immediately prior to flying back from San Franscisco in early March. The machines in SFO were not the ominous black-box Rapiscan monsters of ill radiation-dosing repute, but a clear tube with two scanning pillars that rotate around the scanee. I was pulled randomly from the regular bag-x-ray-and-metal-detector line for this privilege, and it was only when I found myself inside said plexiglas tube—which was very shiny and Total-Recall-ish and thereby more intriguing than scary—that I realized what was happening.

The woman on the exit side of my tube instructed me to place my feet on the footprints helpfully appliqued to the floor, and to raise my arms, elbows bent, palms facing out. Unfortunately, my first scan was a wash, as it seems I have a hard time raising my hands in the air without also waving them like I just don’t care, and so during the first go-round I did a little impromptu dance, which blurred the results. “PLEASE STAND STILL, MA’AM,” barked the exit-door lady, once the botched scan had completed, but there was a trace of amusement in her voice—I believed my dance to be saucy and appropriate for a clear-tube go-go performance, so I felt validated. On the second scan, I stood still, and they let me leave to get on my plane.

Leaving Fort Lauderdale this past Saturday, I was faced with the aforementioned Rapiscan machines, and truth be told, if they’d looked shinier and more futuristic, the notion of opting out probably wouldn’t have crossed my mind. Oh, I am a simple thing, when it comes to flying, prone to extreme anxiety, and so any vivid distraction, even one that comes with x-rays, is a welcome sight. Where the SFO scanners—which I assume are made by L-3 Communications, the other company contracted to supply them—looked like human-sized pneumatic tubes, or alien-spaceship sleep pods, the Rapiscan machines look like two big dark boxes with a three-foot space between them. Also, at FLL, it seemed everyone was dutifully tromping through the scanners, instead of just random selectees. My husband and I stuffed our carry-ons into the x-ray machine and then got in line for scanning. Again, we had helpful footprints on the floor to instruct us where to stand, as though standing in line itself is a murky, unfamiliar process, requiring clear instructions.

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Things will likely be quiet around here for the next week, but I figured I should send y’all off with an ass-shaker of a video. Fans of RuPaul’s Drag Race will recognize Mimi Imfurst, and while she may not have been hugely popular on that show, she sure as shit redeems herself here.

I love that “XELLE” is pronounced “X-L”, I ain’t gonna lie. Illegally-filmed single-take videos on moving subway trains are also very close to my heart, so this video is like glittery sweet candy for my brains. I hope you like it too.

Let’s start with the fluff and work our way down to the horror, shall we?

Those of you who follow me on Twitter may be aware of my ongoing Leggings Quest. A week or so ago, I broke down and ordered leggings from We Love Colors. They arrived! And they fit! I got the 3X, and could probably have done with a 2X as well. The leggings are comprised of a surprisingly substantial fabric and are well-constructed. Alas, they are a little pricey as leggings go, but as I said to Marianne, where else are you gonna get tie-dyed leggings in a 3X?

A whole bunch of readers have emailed me about Arizona’s plan to assess an annual $50 fee to Medicaid recipients who are fat, diabetic, and/or smokers. I’ve yet to see a coherent argument on this issue. The logic seems to be that taking $50 from somebody once a year will encourage them to be “healthier.” Also, that Arizona is broker than the windows in Chris Brown’s dressing room, and nobody likes fatties, diabetics, or smokers, so they’re easy targets!

Apparently this fine would only apply to “certain childless adults”, which ramps up the weirdness factor even more. See, Arizona’s only punishing fat smoking diabetics who refuse to procreate! Problem is, if poverty made people thin, obesity rates would not be so high amongst the poor. Not that this fine would be acceptable even if that were true. Maybe Arizona should consider restricting food stamps for fat recipients. And then they can levy fines against anyone selling or giving food to fat people. C’mon, Arizona, get creative.

Another sharp-eyed reader sent me this blog from the HuffPo about a project taking place in some public New York high schools. The program specifically selects kids with high BMIs, and gets parental consent to do a series of pretty standard tests, including “blood pressure, sugar, insulin and cholesterol levels.” The article also argues that fat kids have impaired brain function, but never quite makes any concrete connection betwixt their size and their smarts, aside from implying that of course fat will make kids bad at math! I guess!

Unleash the SCIENCE! Blockquotes off the starboard bow:

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Y’all have probably noticed I don’t do trigger warnings around here, or if I do, I serve them up extremely rarely. What’s a “trigger warning”, some of you are wondering? It is an advance heads-up that a given post is likely to contain ideas, anecdotes, or other information that may trigger a negative emotional response, including but not limited to destructive thoughts, or paralyzing anxiety. So, for example, prior to a post about anorexia, a person might include a trigger warning for people in recovery from eating disorders, letting them know that reading this post may be difficult or even dangerous given their history.

On this blog, I like to cultivate an environment in which people can assert opinions that are problematic and difficult and have them (respectfully) taken apart, if not by me, then by some of you amazing and brilliant commenters. Indeed, some of my harshest critics are people who’ve read me for several years, which I take as an absurd compliment, and also as a positive sign that discussion even with people with whom we categorically disagree is always possible, difficulty notwithstanding. Of course, the side effect of inviting such conversations is that this is not a safe space, nor even a “safer” space. There is always a risk of running into a commenter who will vehemently disagree with even the most basic tenets of social justice, or who will speak in a way that is overtly triggering, and there is always a risk that I will make an argument that is outrageous or ambiguous (or both), or that I will unintentionally say something problematic.

There is method in my madness. I like a good call-out. I like being called out on my own issues, as it promotes further thought and internal assessment that I might otherwise comfortably ignore, thanks to my own privilege. I like seeing other folks called out in smart and incisive ways, and calling them out myself, for the same damn reason: it makes us all think about what we’re saying, and why we’re saying it, and how we’re saying it, and what our expectations of the party to whom we are speaking may be.

I’ve mentioned that I’m currently exploring Tumblr’s hypothetical usefulness for my life, and recently I had a reader over there ask me to define “ableism.” I responded thusly:

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