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Matters of weight
A reader, after considering my post on civility, sent a note asking whether the notion of justifiable incivility might not pose the threat of blowback, of giving some in the left camp perceived license to offend the usual victims of ridicule in this society. The reader pointed out the recent rise of the cliché “clutching [his/er] pearls,” used to signify either feigned or exaggerated outrage, usually targeted at a male in an attempt to mock. There is, after all, nothing men consider a greater insult than being called a woman. Witness the continuing use of the word “pussy” as a synonym for “coward.” Gay men and lesbians come in for their unfair share of abuse by metaphor, and transgender people fare worse: Google on “Ann Coulter” and “Adam’s apple” for examples of that latter one. I’ve written before about using slurs against the mentally disabled. And the racist invective unleashed by a few scattered blog commenters against people like Michelle Malkin — when there are so many other hammers she hands people to hit her with — continues to astound me, if only because she plays it to her advantage every time and the anti-Asian racist commenters still never learn that they’re helping her.
And my reader sent me a link to this as well. It’s not particularly unusual, as offensive tropes go. The person they target has earned his measure of insult for his absurd and abusive politics. But what the posters decide to deride is the man’s weight.
And the commenters, if anything, are worse than the predictably jejune post itself. We get this:
The derision is not for the corpulence, though…it’s for the hypocrisy.
If you’re going to tell the military how to run their affairs, you at least ought to be able to fit in one of their uniforms.
And this:
Well, that’s what wingnuttia is. Sloth. Intellectual, physical, esthetic…nothing but sloth.
And this:
In a second photo there’s a salad. Apparantly [sic] its [sic] a prop - as its [sic] noticeably out of arms reach and clearly untouched.
Salads are very safe around this dude.
And you know what? That thread is mainly remarkable for the number of people who spoke up to proclaim that they, or the people they loved, were fat. There is much worse fat abuse to be found elsewhere in the left online world. Atrios’ comments come to mind.
I’m gonna do something in response that I am not particularly comfortable doing. I know posting this photo means that people like the above-quoted will make certain judgments about my character, my habits, my physical strength, my libido, and my intellect with one glance. Maybe you are one of those people. But hey, what is personal poltics without personal risk?
This is me in 2002.
It could have been me in November 2005 as well, if not for the fact that we didn’t have a jackhammer in the yard in November 2005. Five foot eight and a half inches, two hundred thirty pounds.
Holly mentioned in comments to the FAQ post that she’d like to see me in a moment of sheer incivility. She almost got her wish in this post. There is part of me that wants to react with outrage at the insinuations that obesity necessarily means weakness, most of them surely leveled by people who have never once flung a 60-pound jackhammer around for two and a half days. In fact, I will go so far as to invite any of the fat-bashing “Sadly, No” commenters to accompany me on a Diablo climb. It’s only 3700 feet or so total climb, and 13 miles. And it takes me five and a half, six hours to do it. Counting the usual half hour or so of resting that includes, that means an average speed of just over two miles an hour. Surely they can match that pace up all those switchbacks. And then back down. And then again the next weekend. With six or so miles run during the intervening week. That’s not much exercise at all. They couldn’t possibly have as much trouble keeping up with me physically as they would intellectually. Could they?
But I won’t be that uncivil. (Or I won’t continue to be, anyway.) For one thing, all that exercise has gotten my blood pressure down into the low normal range, and I’d hate to mess that up. For another, my sense is that most of the really inane anti-fat slurs are written by the young, and I have the wisdom that comes from perspective, and I know that when most of them reach, oh, say, 38 or so a new generation of jerks will be saying similar things about their fat asses. And the painted ponies go up and down, though not without complaint if I’m sitting on one.
Besides which, the anti-fat bigotry is at least out in the open and obviously vile. It’s some of the well-intended rhetoric of the fat acceptance movement by which I feel the most threatened.
Lemme say that I completely support the goals of the fat acceptance movement, without hesitation. The cruel jokes and insults should stop. Discrimination in the workplace should stop. Looksism is offensive, and not just because it’s a clumsy-ass word. The current skeletal ideal body image kills girls and women, and some men. The Body Mass Index is best suited to guide the fitness plans of some other species with more uniform physiques. Flatworms, maybe. Physicians should be more careful to restrict their recommendations to actual medical issues associated with obesity rather than esthetic value judgments. The diet industry should be made illegal. Women suffer the brunt of prejudice against the fat. Agreed, one hundred percent.
Being fat is rarely a sign of moral defect. I will venture that it is rarely a sign of inherent laziness, of particular gluttony, or of lack of willpower too far from the American median.
But having made these assertions, some fat acceptance activists go on to claim that being obese is perfectly healthy. That I have problems with. I’m not talking about having a healthy and fleshy body mass whose existence is at odds with our anorexiophilic culture. I’m not talking about weighing twenty pounds more than you did on your wedding day.
I’m talking about obesity, the condition in which I found myself until this spring. Sometimes it’s a result of disability that prevents exercise, or other associated physical ailments. But for many, perhaps most of us obese people in the US, the condition is in large part the result of damage we suffer as the result of the structure of American society. We have been victimized, and to the degree the fat acceptance movement ignores the circumstances of that victimization while framing the damage it causes as “just fine,” that movement itself does further damage to people like me.
Every person is different, so every fat person is different. One man’s forty-pound beergut might be carried sustainably, while another’s might kill him in the medium term. There are no easy generalizations to make about those of us whose bodies tend toward roundness, some of whom are not even fat by any medical standard.
But for many of us, being obese is harmful. If a person might be hemorrhaging as a result of being stabbed in a mugging, the proper response is not to endorse the notion of Internal Bleeding Acceptance. The proper response is to determine whether the victim is in danger, correct that danger if it exists, and apprehend the assailant so that he can do no further damage. What I prefer instead is the notion of fat people’s liberation, addressing the social constructs that induce obesity in people like me, and providing ways to correct or counteract them. And if those methods also liberate some of us from obesity itself, so much the better. For me, accepting the blandishments of some in the Fat Acceptance Movement means accepting the damage that is done to me, and others like me, as inevitable and beyond criticism, and that I cannot do.
More on that in the next post in this series, probably this weekend.
In the meantime, to those of you who look at the whole spectrum of evils in which a neofascist rightist in this country is engaged and choose to deride the guy’s weight: you can damn well kiss my fat ass. If you can catch up with it.
Posted by: Chris Clarke
Note: A database glitch in 2008 ate a bunch of archived comments. Don't be offended if yours isn't here, or confused if the conversation seems disjointed. Thanks!
It is a little unfair of you to ask otherwise civil people to engage in incivility just to garner an invitation to climb Diablo with you.
By: By Tiltmom on 2006 05 19
This is possibly the most-nuanced and well-written essay I’ve ever read about weight. Thanks for your thoughts.
By: By Charles on 2006 05 19
well done chris. kudos to you for wearing safety goggles and ear protection. while i agree that many dieters and uber-skinny folks are fashion victims, i’m not quite as ready to grant unhealthily obese people victimhood. it is depressing to me to see shopping carts full of processed, extruded food products pushed by people much larger than you (were). i have known largish humans who are much fitter, and more graceful, than i am.
i’d love to hike mt diablo with you someday. not a race or contest of course.
By: By dread pirate roberts on 2006 05 19
I’ve had some similar thoughts rattling around my head for a few months, but you’ve done a much better job than I ever would have transforming them into a well-reasoned essay. Thanks, Chris.
By: By gary on 2006 05 19
A really excellent post, Chris. I’ve been thinking about this a lot lately, as I try to move back into healthier eating and exercise habits.
I think fat is beautiful, on other people. I find the sight of cushion and jiggle sensually and aesthetically pleasing. My lovers have been mostly, not consciously on my part, heavy to greater and lesser degrees. Those heavy people who are comfortable and confident in their bodies, who are willing to take up their full space in the world when the world tells them that they should shrink and hide themselves, are particularly beautiful and inspiring to me.
I’ve put a lot of emotional effort into fighting the voices inside me that say, “you can never be beautiful because you’re fat; you’re not allowed to be sexual because you’re fat; no matter what you achieve, on some level you have failed because you’re fat.” Those voices are still there, but I can argue with them now. The fat acceptance movement has something to do with that.
Even now, at my heaviest, I can still swim across the lake, and walk all day, and cause my male co-workers to jump up to try to take the heavy boxes away from me. I’m strong, and fitter than many Americans who weigh half what I do.
But I want the body back that I had when I was lifting weights, or the year in Texas when I biked every day. I want that effortless strength, that blood pressure, that resting heart rate, that knee that didn’t protest every lunge or squat. That doesn’t mean I want to lose the 80 pounds or so it would take to get me back into “ideal weight” territory (a place I’ve never been, ever). I just want my body’s strength and surety back.
But sometimes when I talk about this, I offend people who are upset not only at the poisonous beauty standards that society imposes on all of us (but especially on young women), or at the diet industry that preaches salvation through starvation and a never-ending stream of products, or at the medicalization of perfectly healthy weights, but also at the very truths of our bodies. Our bodies tell us that it is the case that obesity is strongly associated with some serious illnesses; it is the case that for each of us, there is a limit beyond which the weight we carry can strain our organs and joints to a dangerous degree.
The lethal lies of the diet industry; the cultural standards that compress all of our varied human beauty and sexuality into the pathological, dehumanizing worship of the young and thin; the societally enforced humiliation and invisibility of people who step outside of those standards-these we should fight. But not our own bodies.
By: By Stephanie on 2006 05 19
No confusion here, Sara. I read it the way you intended it.
By: By Chris Clarke on 2006 05 19
I like this:
my sense is that most of the really inane anti-fat slurs are written by the young, and I have the wisdom that comes from perspective, and I know that when most of them reach, oh, say, 38 or so a new generation of jerks will be saying similar things about their fat asses.
One of the few weight problems more pernicious and deadly than severe obesity is anorexia. That will kill you WAY faster than weight 50 pounds more than you should, and it’s much harder to treat.
I did profound damage to my health because I tried to diet away a basic body shape—let’s just say that baby got back, even when I was so thin my ribs showed through my clothes. So I will say, like Chris, that “I completely support the goals of the fat acceptance movement, without hesitation.” And I hope we see improvement in the situation, IMMEDIATELY.
By: By Holly on 2006 05 19
I like and enjoy myself when I am fit; for example when I did a 25K trail race on Mt. Diablo a couple of years ago in about your time, Chris. I like and enjoy myself a lot less when I am fat—overweight anyway by BMI. It simply doesn’t feel good.
I hate and abhor the “beauty standards” enforced by our society, but as an older lesbian, I’ve spent a lifetime fighting that off. I also don’t like being coerced into silence by the subset of my community that is trying to right the wrongs of fat hatred by insisting that being fat is good. Being fat is not good for me.
Why do I get fat? Really simple. The monstrous injustices of this society (some to me, many more to others) keep me in a constant rage that I sometimes tamp down with food. But being thinner and more able to move is better for me and perhaps better for the world, so I work at that.
It was brave to post your picture Chris—though I don’t think you looked bad. I too have flung around such a chipping hammer. Thanks very much for this post. Now I gotta go run.
By: By janinsanfran on 2006 05 19
Well i’ll be that lone voice of descent here, if for no other reason than to acknowledge Chris’s equivocation between obesity is okay, obesity is not okay. I will however try to be civil, which may or may not be okay?? hehe
So its not about fat, nor whether you are strong, or in better shape than someone else (so macho that male gusto to compete, eh?), or capable of now looking down and seeing your toes without bending forward, or a whole host of qualifying parameters. It really is about (and yes you did say this) the way in which the people of the US choose to live; our quite real and viseral lifestyle choices. We need then to keep this in a perspective that evidences just how damaging our fascination with justifying excessive caloric intake can be for the earth. And since i just got back from a conference on this topic, i have a few random facts to throw down.
Ten children die every minute from malnutrition and famine based causalities around the world (and i’m not referring to the problem to which Holly mentioned). That ratio (10/min) is most likely to increase dramatically over the next few decades. Estimates provided in the Global 2000 report suggested that by 2050 up to 200 million could be dying of starvation each year. That data was based on population densities and other factors that, given our most recent analyses, was well below current thresholds. But more importantly we currently, in the US need seven calories from oil to produce one calorie of food. In the 1950’s that ratio was more like 1 calorie of oil for 4 calories of food. The trends indicate that given the failing of soil to sustain moisture and nutrients worldwide, and the impending flooding of coastal plains from sea level rises, the ratio will tend toward 50 calories of oil per one calorie of food.
That would probably eliminate the diet industry, but dramatically increase the death ones. Now what does this represent in this current discussion. Well the US uses vastly more of the planet’s precious and limited resources to produce calories of food consumed well in excess of the sustainability of the planet itself. Humans are not the only species living here you know. Our vastly over-necessary caloric intake abuses them, as well as our fellow homo sapiens around the globe. We also reduce the access to healthy food sources for everyone, by forcing ever increasing costs of food production and distribution to provide greater “junk” calories sold to those who least need them, and the better healthier calories to the rich who can afford them.
I am trying to be civil, but when it comes to the earth, well, i choose the planet over the people.
By: By spyder on 2006 05 19
Interesting you bring up Malkin. A few months back, she was mocking Cindy Shehan for her “muffin top.” Having never heard of that particular perjorative, I had to look it up ...
On a related topic, my husband has a hairline deficiency he is obsessed with, but I hardly think about at all. Until he pointed it out, I never noticed how much the rest of the world is obsessed with baldness.
By: By Roxanne on 2006 05 19
Related to your point, spyder ... It’s interesting to note how obesity is disproportionately present among those below the poverty line in the U.S. And my understanding is that the high environmental costs of food production and distribution is more related to the type of food produced/ consumed (i.e. beef) and not the number of calories produced/ consumed.
By: By Roxanne on 2006 05 19
spyder, I think much of what you said flows from Chris’s observation about the structure of our society. One aspect of this is that people are simply far too disconnected from the reality of food production. I can’t cite the statistics offhand, but the percentage of farmers has dropped by an amazing amount over the last 100 years. The sad evidence consists of the number of empty houses dotting the landscape.
By: By Charles on 2006 05 19
Great post, both from a civility perspective and on the realities of overweight. People don’t realize that whenever they use a stereotype to bash someone, they reinforce the stereotype; it becomes not just an attack on the intended victim, but everyone else who falls under that stereotype. “Fat” is certainly one of the most common such cudgels used this way. And I’m glad you brought up Malkin, since although I find her odious, the means some folks use in attacking her perpetuate some deeply offensive stereotypes that affect all women of Asian ancestry, and Filipinas in particular.
There is nothing liberal about these sorts of attacks. Attacking someone on the basis of their appearance is grade-school level stuff. This kind of civility isn’t “political correctness”—it’s the way decent human beings behave.
By: By modus potus on 2006 05 19
Thank you for this post. The best person I have ever known is obese. It is the most thoughtless sort of prejudice to react to a person based on how they look.
By: By thebewilderness on 2006 05 20
I just don’t believe that’s a picture of you. It doesn’t look like your face.
It does, however, look like your jackhammer.
By: By Violet Socks on 2006 05 20
“There is, after all, nothing men consider a greater insult than being called a woman.”
I was sickened when I saw that AmericaBlog this morning had called Pat Roberts “a big girl” for being cowardly. And he’d apparently deleted the comments that protested. Funny a gay man uses such accusations, when surely they’d been used against him.
By: By KathyF on 2006 05 20
Your post on civility prompted a response on my own blog, mainly because I have been trying to distill from comments a better understanding. While I don’t counsel deliberate meanness, I do advocate insensitivity, in the practice of learning to ignore insults (real or not) and look for deeper content. Politeness run amuck mutates into a crippling political correctness that strips all discourse of its clarity.
I very much doubt I could keep up with you on a hike, but I do enjoy the juxtaposition of your picture with the finely-crafted posts you write.
By: By decrepitoldfool on 2006 05 20
As Charles suggests, the mass of the US population have no clue whatsoever regarding from whence their food cometh. There is sad truth to the urban legends of kids who have no idea that food products originate in other than packages found on supermarket shelving. Perhaps if stores still had public butchering that might make some educational difference, but the best solution, and one that addresses healthy eating, particularly for the impoverished populations who eat the worst of our unhealthy food products, is to get kids in buses visiting local food production and growing facilities.
Roxanne—that environmental cost to which you refer, was over-balanced towards means of production for a long time (given the Green Revolution’s careless abuse of land and water). Certainly pesticide/herbicide/ fertilizer runoffs and incipient carrying over into our own diets have been critical. However, the current research shows that the costs now have shifted to transportation and oil based problems. The economic costs of fertilizers and chemicals have skyrocketed (natural gas prices have tripled in the last 18 months—that is the major component of fertilizer), as have the dependency on transporting foods imported into the US. The US is both a major importer of food and, unbelievably, importing more than we export/produce. We have passed the peak of both oil and food production. That balance is critical in that our food production occurs further and further away from the retail locations. To eat healthier, with less calories coming from useless carbs and too many fats, we need to support local growers of good wholesome foods, esp. dairy and meats.
Of course that is harder than we imagine. Take bananas for instance; they are all imported. This past fall and winter, a disease hit banana plantations around the world. The actual cost of bananas has risen at the wholesale level by a factor of 3, yet your local retail outlets are hiding that increase by increasing all food costs across the board. You pay more for cereal products (wheat subsidies and prices have remained relatively unchanged since 1957) to keep the prices of foreign grown produce lower, in some cases at or below costs.
We need to really rethink how we eat, what we eat, why we pay so much for essentially poor quality products. Those who live below living wage and poverty levels are forced to eat empty or toxic calories, cheaper resources more locally produced—think fries, burgers, hot dogs, etc. Vegetables are costly, as are all produce. We as consumers can make changes by using our dollars and our good common sense to eat better and healthier, and increasing the access to lower priced good calories.
By: By spyder on 2006 05 20
Great post. Having grown up with hard working fat parents, I never was one to associate fat with lazy. I’ve spent most of my life dieting and regularly exercising, in hope of avoiding the health problems that many of my over weight relatives have experienced. Those habits have kept me from being submitted to the cruel barbs and unfair assumptions many people make about fat people. But since I’m only 5’5”, I have been subjected to jokes and unfair assumptions about my character from idiots that seem to think all short men are angry or bitter.
My height isn’t something I think about on a daily, or even weekly basis. It’s weird how important it is to other people. I recently found myself reading through the personal ads while waiting for a hair cut. The high percentage of women that placed ads seeking tall men was a surprise. Although a few superficial guys listed body shape and size requirements in their ads, the percentage of guys that blatantly expressed their body type bigotry was far smaller than the percentage of women seeking tall men.
Not that it made me angry or bitter or anything. Heh.
By: By Lou on 2006 05 20
Why are people who are miffed at the negative use of “pussy” and “cunt” often oblivious to, or at least quiet about “dick”, “dickhead”, “prick”, and “cocksucker”?
By: By labradog on 2006 05 21
I actually have no problem with any of those words, nor most pejoratives in general. Because: the meaning of the word, and thus the intent of the speaker/writer, is determnined BY CONTEXT. Most words have more than one meaning. It is a misapplication of the very concept of meaning to throw a word out entirely because it is possible to misapprehend the current contextual usage.
The alternative is to plod along with clumsy phrases sculpted to be inoffensive today, but which will surely become offensive as they accumulate other meanings tomorrow. I just can’t endorse ‘keyword correctness’ as a path to civility.
By: By decrepitoldfool on 2006 05 21
Labradog: I refer you to this post on my blog about why the term “cocksucker” is every bit as objectionable as the word “pussy.” But “dick” is not as objectionable an insult as “pussy” because “dick” is used to insult men, and they’ve got dicks. “Pussy” is NOT used to insult women directly—women are not called “pussies,” men are.
As for Spyder’s points, I absolutely agree with you that we in the US need to alter our methods of food consumption—even skinny people. One reason the Atkin’s Diet makes me crazy is because it has no regard for food production. I lived in Shanghai in 1991, and it was absolutely shocking to see what happened at the markets around the middle of November: there just wasn’t any food there any more, save for a few little onions, some moldy potatoes and some limp cabbage. It was a real eye-opener for me, the realization that in some parts of the world, once the harvest is gone, it’s gone. Of course there were plenty of fresh (imported) vegetables available in the big fancy restaurants that catered to foreigners with money, but I was paid by the Chinese government and didn’t even earn enough to make my student loan payment.
Then I moved to Iowa, where one of the main crops is pork. That’s right, pork is a crop. Reading about the pork industry in Iowa is the reason I gave up eating pork.
Then I moved to Arizona and taught high school on an Apache Indian reservation, where obesity is rampant for precisely the reason you mention: unemployment is around 95% and most everyone “[lives] below living wage and poverty levels [and is] forced to eat empty or toxic calories, cheaper resources more locally produced—think fries, burgers, hot dogs, etc.” Not only obesity but diabetes is rampant: they actually have a renal treatment center in the one and only strip mall on the rez.
Then I moved to the rust belt, to a city where there are no grocery stores downtown, crappy mass transit, and no way for people without cars to buy fresh vegetables.
I absolutely agree with you that the US’s relation to food is immoral, selfish and unsustainable. But that doesn’t change the fact that bigotry against people who are overweight is wrong.
By: By Holly on 2006 05 21
Chris:
I’ve enjoyed your wisdom and humor at Twisty’s place for some time, and come here now via a link from Majikthise.
One thing I’d like to add to the mix here on body weight that I don’t think has been addressed is this: The changing metabolism as one grows older. Among the many, many bitter realities of no longer being thirty- or even forty-something is that the body’s response to caloric intake and activity output starts dragging its metaphoric feet, despite conscious efforts to eat less and continue to push the body toward physical activity that for natural reasons becomes increasingly more painful. Throw in the monkeywrenches of, for example, pregnancy, hysterectomy, mastectomy, and chemopause (menopause artifically brought on prematurely, and instanteously, by going through chemotherapy), and other unearthly delights that many of us experience during these intervening years that only add to metabolic slowdown, and, well, even the Jazzercise three times a week and obsessively low-fat diets of yesteryear, if we still could stand such things, would no longer get it.
So I’m no longer a 125-lb. babe, which I once totally was. So now my daughter is. Would I trade the 30 pounds I’ve put on in the meantime, despite my best efforts, for that? Actually, depends upon what kind of day I’ve had. By the way, from your photo, I think you’re pretty hot. My husband is 6-ft. 4 and weighs 300 lbs. He’s hot too.
By: By MzNicky on 2006 05 21
As long as we have abundant food (issues of quality aside) we will have fat people. Watch the animal shows on PBS. When food is abundant, the critters eat constantly. When food is scarce, they spend lots of energy searching for very little. The women I know who stay fashionably slim have famine eating habits - skipping food for a couple of days, for example. Of course, in a real famine, I would outlast them because I have reserves and they have none.
Hey, Lou - be carefull about subjective observations. When I read personal ads, all I see are ads from men looking for skinny women. Just on the side - I’m 5’0”, and I love short men! Something about being able to look your SO in the eyes without getting a neck crick.
By: By Buffalo Gal on 2006 05 22
Whaddaya doing *flinging* a jackhammer around?
Great post, Chris. As you know, I’ve written one post about it already and plan to write a separate post dealing with your comments about fat-acceptance advocates harming their own cause.
By: By zuzu on 2006 05 22
Chris Clarke! For many months I have been reading your comments on other blogs with great interest. You are pithy and terse, qualities I would do well to emulate. I do not think you are FAT though. You are TOTALLY NOT FAT !! You look to be a barrel-chested man, not a stringbean as is now fashionable; you may have an unfashionable body type, I will grant you that. But FAT? Nope. You are absolutely HOT. I am afraid you have let the megaCorporations Brainwash you. About your appearance I mean.
By: By Kathy McCarty on 2006 05 22
Oh, man. Kathy McCarty thinks I’m hot? That’s kinda like having Stephen Hawking say you’re smart. Or having Amanda Marcotte tell you you’ve got attitude. I am touched, and looking into buying a bus ticket to Austin.
Here’s the thing, though: Barrel chested, yes, which looked ridiculous when I was 20 years old and weighed 120 pounds. But suspended from that is a gut that still gets in the way, although I no longer pant uncomfortably when trying to tie my shoes. Also, my pants are no longer uncomfortable.
I don’t really care how I look all THAT much. An occasional gorgeous Austin rock star calling me hot, and I’m good. But it didn’t feel good. I feel better now. And I’m going to write about that some.
By: By Chris Clarke on 2006 05 22
I’ve enjoyed your comments in various threads at Pandagon for a while but I didn’t click over to this site until the link from Feministe; and all I can say is, this is one of the best blog posts, on any subjects, I have ever read. You are so totally right; fat jokes are horrendous. Sometimes my friends will make fun of someone we know for being fat, and when I call them out on it they say “It’s because s/he is a horrible person to begin with, no one would say this if s/he were nice” and while on the one hand I do believe them on that… it’s just like, why is it necessary?
I don’t really have anything to add, except that fat jokes are not only hurtful to fat people, they’re also pretty hard taken by thin people with body image issues. Which isn’t like, a huge deal or anything but I felt like trying to contribute. Heh.
By: By Cassandra on 2006 05 22
That’s an official fuckload of busted concrete in that photo! What did you do with it all?
By: By spiritrover on 2006 05 22
That’s an official fuckload of busted concrete in that photo! What did you do with it all?
Sold it to Protein Wisdom commenters as cranial ballast.
By: By Chris Clarke on 2006 05 23
Excellent post. I’ll try not to let the image of the jackhammer-wielding grunt interfere with my enjoyment of your intellectual prowess. Heh.
By: By mimbreno on 2006 05 23
I think the _pearls_ metaphor, while it clearly has a gendered component, is _mainly_ using to good effect well-deserved stereotypes about the idle rich and powerful and their endless hypocrisy. Whether a pearl-clutcher is supposed to be a delicate hothouse flower too precious to survive in the real world we generally, women and men, all live in, or is a Babs Bush type who is neck-deep in villainy worthy of a Medici or Borgia or Norman lord, but shrink-wrapped in an impervious Teflon layer of personal purity and refinement, the message is clear and hits, I think, only those targets who deserve it.
After all I have plenty of stereotypical and actual life experiences of real women who do all manner of good in the world, and few of them wear chains of pearls on any occasion. Show me one who is never seen without them and I’ll show you a country club hothouse orchid—or a Borgia.
By: By Mark Foxwell on 2006 05 28
...Or Marge Simpson! :-)
By: By decrepitoldfool on 2006 05 28
I enjoyed this post, and am looking forward to the rest of the series, although I think I come from a slightly different place. Anyway I wrote a couple of responses on my blog.
I do think that it’s possible to look at structural issues around diet and exericse, while questioning the link between weight and being healthy (or in my case the term ‘healthy’). I think that because I discovered looked over my old posts that I’m almost incapable of writing about weight and health, without also writing about what I see as the structural health problems.
Now we may disagree, I’m looking forward to reading rest of what you write to see if we do. But that doesn’t mean that we’re not both looking at structural issues, we’re just looking at them differently.
But I think the larger problem, which you did bring up here and at feministe, is the problem of having a political discussion about bodies. It’s so easy to invalidate someone else’s experience when you’re talking about how we experience the world. I don’t have any solutions to that problem, but I thought I’d name it and see if other people agreed with me.
By: By Maia on 2006 05 28
Ah yes, Marge Simpson. Well, I totally missed ever watching the Simpsons (lived with someone who controlled the TV and hated cartoons, long story and I don’t live there any more) and when I finally rented the first Simpsons episodes (after having watched most all of Futurama, which has indeed become a major religion of mine, as Life in Hell once was back in the day when it was good and not all Akbar/Jeff all the time) I was quite underwhelmed by it.
And not at all surprised to find threads at Pandagon and elsewhere debating just when The Simpsons became shills for the radical right. Futurama recovered much of the wacky, edgy, all too accurate Matt Groening I knew and loved back in the early and mid-80s, but the Simpsons were pastel candy sell-out from episode one as far as I have seen.
So yeah, Marge Simpson has pearls to clutch—but is superior to a pearl-clutcher in that she doesn’t clutch them. But while she is solid gold compared to a pearl-clutcher she is one beaten-down, washed-out image of womanhood and _that_ is what I take the pearls to signify. Not that she is herself one of the rich and powerful and certainly not their trophy—but that she follows in their wake, not with any great enthusiasm but neither does she dissent. Not effectively anyway. Any more than Groening effectively dissented from the media empire-building of Fox network, as he more creatively did later with Futurerama.
Which, God knows, had its own sell-outs.
Um, Chris, I put out my own fat confessions on Superbabymama, OK?
By: By Mark Foxwell on 2006 05 29
Categories:
Science
