Warning! Deeply UNFORTUNATE Wall-E spoilers ahead!
If you haven’t already, do check out the open Kung Fu Panda thread over at Shapely Prose. I’d pretty much (sight unseen) written off the movie as good for little more than multiple Orientalist buzz word and Fat Hate bingos, but commenters have persuaded me that there is some definite baby steps value in there, since the main character ultimately doesn’t undertake a diet or weightloss regime to gain skill & the respect of his peers. I’m not exactly thrilled with the other things described (food used as motivation etc) in the thread, but I’m somewhat placated by the fact that it isn’t just another hour and fourty minutes of focused fat hate and mockery. I wish I could say the same for some of the other upcoming animated releases.
The early descriptions of Pixar’s upcoming summer release Wall-E are rather harrowing, to say the least.
Over on the thread linked to above Bekki mentioned that the “villains” of Wall-e (which my partner & I have been looking forward to since the first images of the little Johnny-5 esque robot were released… we say “Wall-e” to each other in the voice and everything, it’s really quite sad) take the form of (the ever so original and not hackneyed at all) Fat! American! Couch! Potatoes! I didn’t want to believe that Pixar, the folks behind last summer’s resplendent Ratatouille, a brilliant movie about the importance of nourishment and appearance not ultimately dictating a person’s (or rat’s) skills or passions, could be capable of perpetrating some sort of heinous obesity crisis storyline but it seems the ugly rumours are true:
“WALL-E indeed seems to be making a statement about fitness and the obesity crisis. ‘It shows a future in which mankind literally spends all day on a giant starship moving around in floating chairs, drinking liquified food from Big-Gulp-esque cups, and forever surfing (and chatting) on chair-mounted video screens,’ says the source.
A section of the film reveals the history of mankind’s fall into sloth and fat: ‘There’s an amazing sequence where the camera pans over portraits of the previous captains of the ship — and we watch as they slowly devolve into amorphous blobs with each successive generation. Will the lethargic humans re-awaken to their possibilities as people? I hate spoilers: you’ll have to see the movie to find out!’ “
The (cited) article over at calorielab (from back in October) goes on to say these early screenings the human characters hadn’t been fully rendered yet, so it’s not clear whether or not they will actually appear as Jabba the Hutt with arms and legs in the final cut of the film… Still this is so INCREDIBLY disappointing. I feel personally betrayed by Pixar right now.
UPDATE: Rachel at the F-Word, wrote about this way back in November and I encourage you to read her incisive and detailed analysis of how this sort of portrayal advances damaging fat stereotypes here & here. We pulled from the exact same article even, so I’m kind of stunned my google search for didn’t turn up her posts on the movie. Evidently my google-fu is failing me today. Thanks, Rachel for being so cordial! I personally feel like I should have been whacked with a clue-by-four on this one.
Welcome to another installment of Fat Thrift Tips! If I’m doing my job, then last week’s preamble & inaugural post inspired all of you take up (or at least think about thinking about taking up) the fat thrift gauntlet! I hope that you’ve managed to clock some time out in the secondhand stores & thrift chains in your area & that your pilgrimages have been successful, yielding many sassy & sumptuous spoils! If your thrift-fu has been off (or, dare I say it, non-existant!) I hope that you’re at least pumped & primed to talk more shop & that this week’s tip will inspire you to get (back) out there!
Tip the Second: Find a Fat Thrift Buddy/Form a Dynamic Duo
This week’s tip is somewhat of a collaboration between Lesley (aka Lover of Dresses and site admin) and myself, in that I coughed out the raw goods and she styled it into something useful and inspired. You might just say she is the ingenious Leela & Amy to my hapless Dr. Zoidberg.* In the course of putting together this week’s tip I asked Lesley if she thought buddying-up was “too obvious†and she, ever-articulate and always in possession of the bon mot juste (if you can’t find yours, it’s cause she has it!) replied:
“I think a lot of nonactivist fat-friendships are based on collaboratively dieting and/or “supporting” one another in the apparent misery of fatness – I think the suggestion of taking a fat friend and forming a positive Dynamic Duo out to conquer the Fat Thrift Challenge is wonderfully inspirational in a non-body-hating way.â€
And how. Ever the shameless consumer, I was really only focused on the time-saving-stuff-acquiring strategic aspect of a shopping companion: dividing and conquering at the thrift store is a much more efficient & effective way to tackle & cover ground. Your friend can hit up cardigans while you scour dresses, you can scope out skirts while they plough through the pants. If you’re close in size, it’s a bonus because it means you’d be searching that size range for yourself anyway. Also if something you pulled for yourself doesn’t work on you, you can toss it over for them to try on!** If you’re different sizes, it’s really not such a big deal. I’ve thrifted with my smaller friends and it doesn’t bother me to search through a rack of smalls anymore than it bothers them to checkout the xls for me. The friend doesn’t have to be fat, really. They just have to be an actual friend (aka not negative or mocking of your body/size).
I have a fat friend who I thrift with on a regular basis, and I wouldn’t have it any other way. Our styles & sizes aren’t exactly the same, but we know each other’s tastes & body-types so well that we can grab stuff for each other. There’s a few thrift stores in my area that border on warehouse size, and I really couldn’t imagine tackling them solo. And I know I don’t need to tell you that trying on velvet sequined jumpsuits with gigantic shoulder pads when you’re by yourself is vaguely amusing if recounted. Trying on a velvet-sequined jumpsuit with gigantic shoulder pads in front of your friend (who may or may not have a camera phone) becomes a legend for the ages!
But back to Lesley’s more substantial political point: many of us have had friendships where we enabled body-hatred and negativity*** and no more was this hatred more actively played-out then during clothes shopping. Your mileage may very, but much of my mall (maul)-trolling days were spent with girls much smaller than I, though we all hated and resented our bodies with equal degrees of intensity. When things fit, we still found a way to put a negative spin on it “this is cute but would be better if I had more/less…†“I guess it’s nice but it looks better on you.†And I don’t think a day went by when we didn’t talk about how much weight we felt we should lose. Even if you haven’t all been a part of the Mean Girls**** type conversation I’m describing, we’ve at least given audience to them in fitting rooms, clothing stores, public washrooms etc.
And there’s probably a bunch of us who have forged relationships with other fatties through diet group meetings. I don’t doubt that people who also happen to diet can be just as lovely as those of us actively advocating body acceptance. It’s just that the context in which those kinds of relationships are established—one of a shared body hate & shame—is far from empowering.
Finding a fat friend to thrift with is, on the other hand, a really awesome premise to build on and probably kind of revolutionary for a lot of us. Just imagine how much more navigable clothes-hunting is/can be when you’re going at it with someone who you can bitch with about the lack of options (as opposed to lamenting your body proper) and celebrate with when you find something incredible. (Another fattie will TOTALLY get the exhilaration of finding a mint condition 50s house dress in your size and will probably squee audibly right along with you). Of course, thrifting with a fellow fattie doesn’t necessarily mean every day will be a good body day. But, if you’re blessed with (fat) friends like mine, you’ll find they are really awesome at acknowledging that loving and appreciating your body in this fat-hating culture can be really tough, while simultaneously refusing to let you perpetrate active self-hate.
I hope you’re enjoying this ongoing feature on thrifting/fatshion. If you have any tips you’d like me to share/write about feel free to hit the “contact us” button (put “thrift tips” in the subject line) and drop me a line. I’ve got more tips a brewin’ but I’d love to hear from you & will (of course!) credit you if I write about your tip!
*ever see that episode of Futurama where Bender ends up on tour with Beck? Remember how Dr Zoidberg keeps coughing up those blue pearls that Leela & Amy fashion into necklaces, which turn an incredible profit? Then Zoidberg is like “Apparently I’ve been making fine jewelry for years.†It’s exactly like that except that I’m not a lobster-like lifeform and I don’t so much eat dirt and the pearls I bring up are metaphorical not literal and Lesley isn’t two people or a cyclops and doesn’t own a pink velour tracksuit (that I know of)… But other than that, it’s TOTALLY the same.
**remember to make sure your friend is in the fitting room beside/across from you. One time I thought my friend was beside me, but she’d wandered off to scope out a record and I merrily chucked a shirt into some unsuspecting thrifter’s fitting room. Luckily said unsuspecting thrifter was a sportin’ sort & found the whole debacle rather entertaining. I’m sure not everyone would be so understanding.
***aka every friend I had in highschool.
**** I’m thinking specifically of the scene where the four girls stand around a mirror lamenting all the things that are “wrong†with their bodies. Lindsay Lohan’s character, Cady, having grown up in a remote area of Africa with her professor parents, is unfamiliar with the ritual and actually feels pressured into saying something nasty about herself to fit in. (though it’s worth nothing that the best she comes up with on the spot “in the morning I have really bad breath.â€)
The shop reviews on this site and the fatshionista community on livejournal are amazing resources for locating the latest fatshions online & in brick & mortar stores. Certainly the pleasure of slipping into a crisp brand-spanking-new-with-tags garment cannot be denied, but neither can the special sort of satisfaction that comes from discovering a lovely one-of-a-kind dress amongst racks full of Cosby sweaters and faded mickey mouse tee shirts.
In general, when I covet a certain piece, I will take to second hand & thrift stores first. I believe that as a society we (& lest you think I am pointing fingers, I am firmly including myself in this) produce too much, consume too much & waste even more. In Brave New World Aldous Huxley wrote satirically & critically of what he imagined would be our decadent & environmentally ignorant future–a future where people would treat all things (especially clothing) as disposable, would sooner buy something new then stitch a dropped hem or reinforce a button. In 1932, a lot of this seemed a horrific and implausible exaggeration, but in 2008, with the influx of throw-away clothing stores (Sirens, Stitches etc) & clothing quality of brand stores deteriorating exponentially, Huxley’s speculative satire proves (for me) to be portentous. (Most commercial) clothing is constructed to rapidly deconstruct, even as the price tag for new clothing doubles & triples. It goes without saying that a capitalist economy & infrastructure is necessarily built around a principle of planned deterioration. If things didn’t degrade as rapidly, we wouldn’t be back every couple of months (weeks?), forced to replace everything that has unraveled. So, I thrift (when possible) not only because I have a deep and abiding love for indestructible polyester & vintage pieces, but because I can much easier justify having a sizeable wardrobe if a (hopefully large) portion of it is comprised of recycled clothing. Thrifting is one of the ways I personally feel I can contribute (if in a microscopic way) to a healthier planet (& prevent myself from literally having to live in my shoes). To put it plainly, the [current] clothing industry taking care of us (by offering us quality & accessible options), we’re not taking care of the environment, thrifting seems–to me–like one possible way to address these issues.
No doubt by now some of you are saying tl;dr and heading over to cat rave or kittenwar, but others are saying, hey stitchtowhere, I kind of agree with some/all of this and I’d really love to get more into thrifting but… given the scarcity of fun and fatshionable things that I’d actually want to wear in stores that are supposed to stock my size, how can I reasonably expect not to be utterly demoralized and disappointed in a venue that isn’t explicitly fattie-friendly?
I won’t deny that shopping & scarcity(follow the link to site admin Lesley’s great post on that topic) is a constant issue. Indeed, thrifting can be very difficult & discouraging & demoralizing (and many other sad words beginning in d) when you’re outside of what the fashion industry/majority of retailers have dubbed the “straight” or “normal” size range. I will also freely admit that I’m fortunate because in my city (& neighbourhood) there are quite a few thrift stores and the majority of them even have plus sections. The proximity of these stores & the flexbility of my current job, & my general love of the chase, makes thrifting viable for me. Some days I have amazing luck, other days, it feels like the loveliest pieces never exist in double digits & these are the days that find me trolling places like Old Navy & the disposable mall stores & department store sales* for the pieces that elude me in the second hand shops & for things that will fit & still allow me to pay my rent. I don’t really have a solution for thrifting woes, but I can say that, for me, the rewards of thrifting trump the frustrations, and, are not just limited to the sartorial.
And because I want to encourage those of you who’ve got one foot on the thrifted (and fabulous!) wagon to climb aboard and go the distance, and my years of thrifting have taught me a trick or five, I’m going to start assembling a series of fat-specific thrift tips here on Fridays. Here we go:
Fat Thrift Tip The First: Try Shit On.
This might seem really, really, REALLY obvious, but one of the tragic flaws of shoppers (and characters in Shakespearean tragedies ha ha ha) of all sizes is that we don’t look at the actual physical dimensions a garment occupies but believe that it’s “fitliness†corresponds directly to the number on the tag. If a lovely catches our eye, we immediately find the tag and if the number on it proves to be smaller or–god forbid!– LARGER than the (arbitrary & usually inconsistent) number we think we wear, we–more often than not–dejectedly let it sink back into the second-hand depths. I am according to most plus size retailers in the 18/20/22 range but I’ve got things in my closet ranging from size 10-26 that FIT. I would never have discovered half of these things if I confined my search to the (singular and usually hideously fugly) rack labeled “PLUS.â€
Thrift stores are great places to build up your shopping courage/fattitude. I have never once had anyone in a thrift store stop me from trying something on, and I think that’s my where what my friends refer to as “my bizarre sense of shopping entitlement” comes from. You can treat thrift stores like giant fitting rooms & (in my personal experience) no one will bat an eye. There are very few among us who haven’t experienced a derisive remark from a salesclerk or even had other shoppers take shots at us for our size & I think the fear & memory & expectation of this sort of behaviour–the huge amount of ill-fitting crap notwithstanding–makes shopping really stressful & emotionally trying. Being able pull & grab stuff off racks & try it on the spot & in thrift shops is and continues to be a gratifying & liberating experience for me. It has greatly improved my eye for what will fit my body & it also serves to reaffirm just how wildly sizes vary, which has helped me not to be attached to a number & attach meaning–negative or positive–to that number, but rather to focus on WHAT FITS.
*I recognize that I am privileged to be able to buy some things new in the first place and, that were i not able to do so my wardrobe would be a lot less expansive.
Dressing for Attention, Talking Fatshion With Strangers, and Other Evolutionary Efforts
By Lesley | May 29, 2008
I don’t generally get to take it for granted that I can talk to other women about clothes. Because I very often can’t. When a non-plus-size woman asks me about something I’m wearing, the conversation is generally very brief. Oh, I got it at Dowdy Plus-size Retailer, which was quite a surprise, as their stuff is usually… well, dowdy. No, I doubt they’d have it in your size. Thank you, I like it very much. There’s generally a lot of agreement and little actual discussion. Even if the conversation turns toward the whole wow-it’s-difficult-to-find-cute-clothes-in-plus-sizes observation; the Non-Plus aren’t going to debate that. It ultimately becomes a wordy version of a more slender woman saying, “I like your dress,” and me saying “Thank you.”
I tend to think that thinner women get to engage in these conversations with each other more often, and with less hesitation. Oh, this? I bought it at Mammoth Cheapass House of Crap! You can go get one too! Oh yes, I was there last weekend! Did you see that top with the print on it? It was great/awful!
And so on.
When I do get to have these conversations – as I did earlier this month, shopping at Lee Lee’s Valise with some other amazing fat bloggers – their effect on me is impressive and formidable. Though I’m not much one for building relationships solely on shared consumerism, this is still a cultural rite in which I rarely get to participate, in the first person, in a three-dimensional space. And for all of my general contentedness with living outside these norms, it is a beautiful thing to occasionally get to experience them, to reshape them to fit my desires and expectations.
Such as being able to discuss a piece of clothing without lapsing into discusssion of how it “hides” or “masks” or “draws the eye away from” (what does that MEAN, anyway?) certain fatty bits. Look at THIS fatty bit, I imagine a dress saying. Not THAT fatty bit over there, which is obscene! It’s really just a choice among fatty bits, since it’s not as if I have any non-fatty bits I might distract people with. In the simplest sense, it’s incredible to be able to talk clothing with other similarly-sized women and be able to share how great our clothes are, how fabulous we feel in them, how excellent our options are. It’s like imagining a world in which such things are normal and universal.
The building in which I work also houses a small coffee shop. The coffee shop has a little section set aside where folks can get real sugar, numerous types of chemical faux-sweeteners, plastic utensils, straws, lids, and so on – as coffee shops are wont to do. It’s a smallish space and can really only bear two people busying themselves with sweetener-options at a time.
I go here to take sugar in the morning, to add to the tea I bring from home (is this stealing? I can’t decide). This morning, there were two women already there, so I had to wait. I often hesitate to call other people fat if said people haven’t identified themselves as such – “fat”, for all our attempts at reclamation, is still a profoundly loaded word – so I will say simply that both of these women were plus sized. Ultimately I had room to squeeze in between them, to fetch my sugar.
Almost immediately, the woman to my left complimented me on my dress. Without looking up, I thanked her, and said it was from Lane Bryant, which surprisingly enough had a few non-frumpy dress options this season. From this evolved a conversation about where we shop, our limited options, my commitment to buying things online. I said, I don’t really wear pants, because I don’t like how they fit or how they feel, and so I am essentially forced to shop online if I want dresses.
One of the women observed that she is not much of a dress person, and thus is takes a pretty spectacular dress to get her consideration. The woman to my left said that she “missed” dresses, with a wistfulness that was almost heartbreaking, considering my extreme devotion to dress-wearing. I felt sympathy, that any plus-size person should have to “miss” a whole category of clothing; and rage, that so many plus sized clothing lines are so limited and not meant to fit, not meant to be flattering, not meant to draw attention, or to wear well, or to last; and rage also that fat women are actively culturally discouraged from wearing clothing meeting any of the above standards. Don’t show your arms, nobody wants to see that. Don’t show your legs, they’re offensive to basic standards of decency.
There are lots of reasons why I wear dresses all the time. The fact that I am most physically comfortable in non-pants-based clothing is just one of them. I also wear them to make a broader point. Fat women can and should wear dresses. Fat women can bare their arms, their legs, their shapes, and be confident doing so. Your round and dimpled knees cause no one any harm. My soft and jiggling underarms do no damage to the people who may see them. Fat bodies are not dangerous, except when they post a threat to the culture that requires they remain hidden, a source of shame, a compulsion toward invisibility. I am not invisible, in my dresses and my cardigans, and neither are you, no matter what you wear. So why not wear something you love?
These ladies may very well be on diets. They may very well be unhappy with their bodies. The conversation did not go that way, so I can’t say for sure, and ultimately it doesn’t matter.
What matters to me is being able to have that moment – to chat, informally, impromptu-like, with two strangers, about clothes. It’s so novel, so unique, it reminds me of how rare and precious it is to be able to share in-person experiences with people who know, people who’ve had experiences like yours, who also bemoan the state of things. People who get it.
And, of course, people who also understand the deeply satisfying pleasure that comes from wearing fabulous dresses.
To: The Internet
From: Etana
Subject: There appears to be a problem….
Date: Right now, tomorrow….
It appears that we have a problem, internet. There are those that access you from points of the globe I can’t control. This would include the desk across the office from me and the cyber café across the ocean. There are people typing things and posting things and copying things that I can’t moderate. I can’t grammar-check, spell-check or simply content check.
Usually this doesn’t bother me. I wouldn’t generally take time out of my and your busy, important day to note this in such an open and irritatingly juvenile space. However today was a particularly bad one and I felt the need to bring a few things up to your attention. I wish that you would address them immediately and develop a protocol for avoidance in the future, though I realize this is impossible and ridiculous at best. I’ve constructed my complaints in a list for easy reading.
• Bigotry. It’s not easy leaving my house, internet. It’s not easy knowing that I will inevitably get grabbed, yelled at, harassed, run into, run around, avoided, talked down to, avoided, or mocked as soon as my hand locks the door behind me and my feet hit the cement. So why do you have to employ such physical methods across my screen? Now sure, I understand what you’re thinking. “Oh etana!†you say, “it’s just words, you can scroll past!†but I can’t scroll fast enough, dear internet, and the ability to re-post with a vengeance is all the rage these days.
• Assumption. You see, I do things for a variety of reasons the least of which usually involves my disabilities. Lately I’ve read a lot of assumptions about actions and reactions being chalked up to disability or perceived disability. I’m not really okay with that. I’m not okay with the overall assumptive attitude folks can take on the internet – defining someone else’s behavior for them.
• Mixed Media. Sure, you’ve got my personal information cached on google. Sure, I realize that my privacy policy and your privacy policy generally clash and I’m going to loose. But do you have to be so blatant about it? Really? Can you get your community of users to play fair and keep things online? It would be really, really helpful in honing my hacking skills if I didn’t have to include maps of people’s actual physical locations. Plus, it’s hard to remember real names vs. online personas.
• Photoshop. I know you didn’t invent it, I know! I’m not blaming you for it, I blame Adobe and geeks everywhere. Mostly I blame sighted people, but that could run into the ‘bigotry’ point so I’ll leave it at that (though that’s a passive-aggressive way of saying I’m not leaving it at that and you’ll have to talk to me personally to hear my bigotry, huh?). Anyway, Photoshop. I have a problem with it. As an Othered (that would be non-normal, eh?) body I’m irritated at all the times people can crop my features to fit their idea of what it should be. Whether that includes a white frown face instead of my giant zit-infested cheek or a bulbous ass where a forearm would go or simply a smaller thigh and reduced double chin, I’m not having it. I would rather photos remain as they are thank you very much, inaccessible and completely irrelevant to reality. This cropped and shopped shit has got to stop especially if it involves crudely drawn frown-faces….or was that your way of telling the shopper that you agree with me? Hmm….
• Erroneous labeling. Far be it for me, dear internet, to say it like it is and then demand that everyone else repeat after me, but can we please extend that train of thought to the rest of your community of users? I’m quite fed up with business as usual, and I’m equally as tired of conversations getting turned in to “but I don’t feel that way/do that/think that†meta-convos. It’s irritating. If you’re going to let websites hotlink and hotlink and go on and on and cache to their little RAM’s content, could you also please send out a quick reminder that individual reactions do not equate group or another individual’s reaction?
Internet, I would like to think that we can come to some sort of an agreement on this one. Perhaps we will have coffee and discuss it later. Perhaps you will reply with a thoughtful analysis of my Diaspora as it were. Either way, I’d like to stop banging my head against my keyboard and stabbing a desk when opening up my browser of choice. I’d also like to spread my identity across your nether-regions and know that although 8 gazillion people will mock me, you will at least do well to truly delete things if they must be deleted and not cache them for future use. I don’t ask for anonymity, just cryptic misanthropy. I’m okay with the flack for existing here as a disabled, fat, poor, frizzy-haired person of questionable taste. You take care of the rest.
Otherwise there will be mutiny.
Respectfully,
Me.
The following post references a recent situation in which attendees at a feminist sci-fi convention were photographed without their permission or knowledge, and then edited versions of the images were posted to a message board with commentary mocking the attendees’ fatness, disability, and/or gender orientation. Rather than try to rehash it all myself, considering I was not there, nor do I even go cons, nor do I know anyone who was affected – I’ll point you here for the particulars. As a non-con-goer, and a nonbeliever in “safe space” (in any all-encompassing sense, anyway – some spaces are always safer than others), this post is less about the specific incident in question, which I know little about beyond a few internet postings, than it is about this sort of hateful behavior in general.
Take my picture.
Take it without asking. Take my picture while I’m doing something I love, something that makes me happy. In a place where I can forget that my life often feels like one long activist battle, where I can not feel constantly on my guard, not feel always vulnerable to attack, not feel as though my body is up for debate.
Take my picture, and post it online, in as many high-traffic spaces as you can. Identify me if you want. By name, by location, by employer. Surround that picture with vitriolic commentary about my body, my femininity or lack thereof, my perceived sexual habits, my self esteem. Laugh, and laugh, and laugh, that gut-rattling laughter of unmitigated cruelty, that laughter that comes from laughing at people who don’t know you’re laughing at them, who were going about their lives and made a target simply for not falling, unseen, unremarkably, into culturally acceptable slots – people who are targets simply for failing to be invisible.
Take my picture every fucking day for a year. Post it online, and tear me apart. Point out the innumerable imperfections in my shape, my body, my face, my fashion choices, my eating habits, my health. Keep doing it. Do it again, and again, and again. Do it as loud as you can. Do it as often as you can bear it. Be as mean and as ugly and as unabashed as your nature allows.
Do it. Take it. Take my picture and eviscerate me online. It’s just a public, out-loud, communal version of what people do to me inside their heads every single day. It’s happened to me before, online and off. It’ll happen again. It’ll happen every day I leave the house, for the rest of my life.
I am still fat, and I am still not sorry. And nothing you can say, nothing you can post, nothing you can do will change that. No matter how many times you try to humiliate me. No matter how much you want me to hate myself. Because it’s my fucking body. And I don’t owe you a damn thing.
ETA: I just wanted to clarify a few apparent misconceptions.
1. I don’t call myself a feminist. I don’t have anything against those who do, however.
2. I did not go to Wiscon. I have no future plans of ever going to Wiscon, or to any con of any kind, for that matter. It just doesn’t interest me. However, as stated above, I don’t have anything against those who DO go to cons.
3. The above wasn’t really intended to be so specifically and exclusively applied to the Rachel Moss/Wiscon thing, though if it’s speaking to folks who were affected or upset by it, I’ve got no problem with that.
4. The above isn’t really meant to be read as angry or outraged; I’m many years beyond outrage on this sort of thing. I don’t actually worry if people hate me for being fat, or think I’m gross, or what have you. Some folk always will, I can’t control people’s feelings on the matter, nor would I want to. I was just stating my long-held position in situations like this. The Wiscon thing simply reminded me of that.
5. This website never had a “troll” comment ever, prior to this incident. Now I guess it’s cool to have the website’s troll-cherry popped, it also means I’m still deciding what counts as trolling, which a highly subjective concept. Generally though, comments that expound at length on why everyone hates fat people, and that this is the good and natural way of things, and why fat people should be killed, or whatevs – I’m pretty sure I’m counting those as trolling.
You say tomato, I say tomato.
Last weekend I had the unqualified pleasure of visiting with Deb, the brains and beauty behind the up-n-coming Re/Dress, which is soon to be NYC’s most amazing plus-size vintage resource (and possibly the world’s, considering the neverending struggle it is to find fatty vintage).
The shop’s not open yet, but Deb has been vending at the Brooklyn Flea, which is where I visited her. Deb’s eye for vintage is remarkable, and every single scrap of clothing she has is amazing (if only all of it would fit me! and I were also a millionaire!) and Deb herself is helpful and generally fantastic to boot.
This Sunday, May 25th, will be Re/Dress’s final appearance at the Brooklyn Flea, and possibly your last chance to check out these amazing wares until the store opens. So fat vintage-lovin’ sizes-12-and-up-wearin’ New Yorkers, embrace this opportunity! You won’t be sorry.
I have an obsession with the color red. Some would find this odd since I can’t see red. Some would find it odd since red is such a vibrant and hard-to-match color. Some would find it odd because they simply don’t care.
Which I can respect.
I’ve also discovered an obsession with peep-toe shoes. As summer kicks in and I prepare to get a pedicure, I’m debating my choice in summer footwear. Do I go for my traditional brown-and-black-flats that have survived many a summer under my treacherous step, or do I go with a few well chosen staples in exciting new colors? Do I explore heels, having only made it to a two-inch in the last two years and dreaming of 4 inch kittens?
Just as my wallet cries out for relief I’m reminded of something my mother once told me about heels and fat. At the time I was creeping into puberty and holding fast at a size 14. My 5 foot frame had plenty of early-bird curves and all I wanted for “Christmas” was a pair of red leather shoes….like these.
Instead, I got something like this:
and cried in my waking moments. I was mortified to wear these ugly, flat, goes-with-your-jeans shoes. I wanted to look smart and chic like the ‘pretty’ girls in school. Too bad I was ‘chubby,’ my mother told me. I couldn’t wear heels, I would fall all over them and look ridiculous. Didn’t I know fat & flats = safety and security? Better not tempt the fates with a wedge or stacked heel.
I lived by this mantra until last year. I figured I fell enough on my own with or without shoes on to continue fearing the heel
. I also figured that fat or not, a nice heeled shoe would be worth a little flabby embarrassment if in fact my fat legs looked ridiculous. Slipping on my first pair of 2 inch wedge sandals in black was akin I’m sure to a religious experience. The heavens sang, the rivers parted, small children brought gifts of flowers and diet pills. My mother in all her wisdom was wrong; I fell more in flats than I did all summer in heels.
Thus a euphoric addiction to the next-big-heel was created. And a new summer of new shoes is upon us. What I can only hope is a continuation of good fortune and limited flats on these fat legs in the months to come.
Give me your sticky, your sweaty, your tight and revealing; give me your cowhide and vegan-wear.
Calls for leather-wear fattie style go here!
I had a Moment today, at the doctor’s office.
I saw the nurse practitioner that I’ve been seeing since having the flu back in February. I love my actual doctor, but the nurse practitioner is easier to get an appointment with, and has been nothing but polite and wonderful in general. Add to that my existing affinity for nurse practitioners, and I’ve been pleased with working with her overall.
Today, she came back after fetching my prescription, and gently said, “I also wanted to ask, have you ever considered gastric banding? [pause] To help with your weight?”
This was a first for me. I’ve had some horrible fatphobic doctors, who berated and harangued me for being a fatass, but I’d never been propositioned with WLS before. Part of this is likely because on my first visit to my current doctor, I laid it out: I am interested in being as healthy as it is possible for me to be, but I am not interested in weight loss. I also decline to be weighed from now into perpetuity. He was okay with this so long as I promised to note any sudden unexplained changes in my size, and so long as I was open to discussing it if my weight was clearly causing me a health problem (or otherwise potentially related to a health problem). Considering he is, ultimately, a doctor, a group of people that, given my prior experiences, I tend to distrust on a level with my distrust of criminals and psychopaths – I thought it went rather well, and I’ve come to really appreciate his willingness to work with me on this. It probably does not hurt that he is a bit paunchy himself.
The NP, on the other hand, is tall and slender. And we’d never had that fat conversation. To her credit, this topic was not completely out of left field; at the beginning of the appointment she asked me where I’d gotten my dress, and I told her online, that I do most of my shopping online, since my only local options are places like Lane Bryant or Avenue, which can be fine for basics but unreliable for cute sundresses. Also, I honestly believe that her suggestion was an effort to supply the best and most thorough care; it was not accusatory, or even authoritative. It came across as just a question, like she might ask about a prescription, or a symptom.
After she asked it, for a split second I froze. Then I laughed. I looked down and laughed. And I took a deep breath, and I explained that I am a fat acceptance activist, and have been involved in this movement for over a decade. And I briefly explained my childhood-through-adolescence history of disordered eating and weight cycling. And that I appreciate her concern, and I understand where it comes from, but I am truly comfortable with my size and my body as it is. Finally, I stated that I am completely and utterly and unquestionably opposed to any kind of weight loss surgery.*
And the NP said that was fine, she just wanted to ask because some folks are curious and are unwilling to bring it up themselves.
And this was the unexpected part.
She thanked me. She thanked me for responding in a thoughtful and sensitive manner, and not tripping out. I acknowledged that her suggestion was obviously well-intentioned, and I took that into account. She said she absolutely believed that yes, prejudice against fat people (well, she said “overweight people”) exists (hey there, basic validation!). Of course, it wasn’t all perfect sunshine and roses. We had a bit of a conversation on the subject. The old bugaboo of “but there may be things you can’t do” came up. Which is kinda true, if we’re talking about skydiving, or riding tiny horses. But there will always be things I can’t do. No matter what size I am. And this is my size.
More than anything else, this was a Moment for me not just because of the NP’s reaction, but because I’d suddenly landed in a space that could have inspired emotional terror and I was, instead, simply true to myself. I did not panic. I did not cry. I literally took a deep breath, assembled my thoughts, and announced my position on the matter calmly, and personably, and respectfully, and most of all firmly.
And magnificently, it was not awkward or weird or upsetting. It was exhilarating. I felt great. The NP wasn’t put out and I wasn’t wracked with guilt over admonishing a well-intentioned person. I can be reasonably assured that the subject will never come up again. My fat body remains intact and defended and much beloved by me, as it should be.
It’s a small thing, but it made for a sweet day.
* This is not a slam against people who have WLS – I know many who have and I love them no less for the decisions they make regarding their own autonomous bodies. However, I am opposed to the procedure conceptually, and opposed to ever having it myself.
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