TWT's post is what it looks like when someone translates the subtext into text.
ETA: thanks to the person who pointed out that more thorough cut-tags on this topic would be the considerate way to go. I've rectified my earlier error; my sincere apologies if any of the material not previously behind the cut was triggering to anyone.
So, Kevin Smith appears to be the lucky celebrity who gets to be the first famous person with clout to get kicked off an airplane for being fat. Kate Harding's analysis for Salon.com is saddening, maddening and great.
thingswithwings' post is the most furiously, incisively right thing I have read in months -- on this topic, because it's not one I follow regularly, maybe ever. To wit:
Because I am just so fucking tired, as a fat woman living in America, of being the sin-eater (literally) for the entire fucking country. You know what, America? I get it. I do. You consume way more fuel, food, energy, natural resources, per capita, than anywhere else in the world, and you know you're supposed to feel bad about that. But getting that consumerist guilt consistently inscribed onto my body, just so that everyone else can reassure themselves that they're not gross disgusting evil consumers, is getting fucking OLD.
If you're only going to read one thing right now, read that. I'm posting not because I have anything nearly that meritorious to say, but because I started to reply this morning, stopped to think about what I was going to say, and realized it would be derailing. I felt better posting it here in my space than in the comments on her post.
My initial response to the above paragraph was going to go something like this: "God, that point about fat people being turned into America's sin-eaters is just mindblowingly on the nose. I'd never thought of it like that before, because as someone not seen as fat, it's something I have the luxury of not having to think about ..."
And then I stopped, and blinked, and thought, what the fuck am I saying? I think about it all the fucking time.
I am a woman of a size where no one around me apparently feels the urge to comment on it. I don't register as fat to people, as far as I know, and I don't think I register as thin to people who also aren't identified (self- or otherwise) as fat. (Whereas my ex's family, with two members over 6' and two members who met obesity criteria, thought of me as a miniature person.) People comment on various physical features of mine, sure. It's par for the course of being a woman in America. But my weight doesn't draw comment. I'm not fat, and have never thought of myself as fat.
Heavier than I wanted to be, sure. Not in as good shape as I had been. At the upper end of the range my body wanted to be.
All of which is by way of illustrating the gigantic fucking gap between not being subject to externalized or internalized fatphobia, and not thinking about my body and what it looks like. Because as noted above, I think about it all the time. I was lucky, in that I was 19 before I ever experienced looking at my body in a mirror and not liking what I saw, or worrying that people would find my body pudgy and less attractive. I wasn't any less awkward in my skin than any other adolescent, but my body decided to nail the female beauty standard when I was 13, and didn't waver from it until my second year in college. When I realized that negative body image had gotten its hooks into my consciousness, I was pissed. I fought back. It's never made me unhealthy. It's never made me truly ashamed of my appearance. It's never made me practice self-denial of any kind. A lot of the time, I manage to sublimate it into picking a healthier range of foods and getting exercise, both of which do wonders to make me feel better whether or not they make any changes apparent to the naked eye. But I've never stopped thinking about it.
And it's not just my body. This is the part I loathe. If I was just policing my own body, I'd be displeased, but not disgusted. I am constantly inventorying the bodies of the women around me: are they larger? Smaller? More muscular? Less? More like the builds visual culture idolizes "conventionally" attractive? Less? What would it be like to inhabit her body? Or hers? Or hers? And on and on and on. Even though I know it's none of my fucking business. Even though I know my thoughts are being coopted by the same system that teaches people (as thingswithwings puts it) that's it's okay to say It's Too Gross To Even Deal With If I Have To Sit Next to a Fucking Fatty on an Airplane.
I am not a fat person. I do not have to deal with being the target of the heinous, hateful bullshit from strangers that some of the most amazing people I know bear up under daily. On a systemic level, though, my non-fatness does not make this shit any less my problem. Nor does it make my occasional, size-privileged delusions that I don't have to think about it any less of a contributing factor to the problem.
So, Kevin Smith appears to be the lucky celebrity who gets to be the first famous person with clout to get kicked off an airplane for being fat. Kate Harding's analysis for Salon.com is saddening, maddening and great.
thingswithwings' post is the most furiously, incisively right thing I have read in months -- on this topic, because it's not one I follow regularly, maybe ever. To wit:
Because I am just so fucking tired, as a fat woman living in America, of being the sin-eater (literally) for the entire fucking country. You know what, America? I get it. I do. You consume way more fuel, food, energy, natural resources, per capita, than anywhere else in the world, and you know you're supposed to feel bad about that. But getting that consumerist guilt consistently inscribed onto my body, just so that everyone else can reassure themselves that they're not gross disgusting evil consumers, is getting fucking OLD.
If you're only going to read one thing right now, read that. I'm posting not because I have anything nearly that meritorious to say, but because I started to reply this morning, stopped to think about what I was going to say, and realized it would be derailing. I felt better posting it here in my space than in the comments on her post.
My initial response to the above paragraph was going to go something like this: "God, that point about fat people being turned into America's sin-eaters is just mindblowingly on the nose. I'd never thought of it like that before, because as someone not seen as fat, it's something I have the luxury of not having to think about ..."
And then I stopped, and blinked, and thought, what the fuck am I saying? I think about it all the fucking time.
I am a woman of a size where no one around me apparently feels the urge to comment on it. I don't register as fat to people, as far as I know, and I don't think I register as thin to people who also aren't identified (self- or otherwise) as fat. (Whereas my ex's family, with two members over 6' and two members who met obesity criteria, thought of me as a miniature person.) People comment on various physical features of mine, sure. It's par for the course of being a woman in America. But my weight doesn't draw comment. I'm not fat, and have never thought of myself as fat.
Heavier than I wanted to be, sure. Not in as good shape as I had been. At the upper end of the range my body wanted to be.
All of which is by way of illustrating the gigantic fucking gap between not being subject to externalized or internalized fatphobia, and not thinking about my body and what it looks like. Because as noted above, I think about it all the time. I was lucky, in that I was 19 before I ever experienced looking at my body in a mirror and not liking what I saw, or worrying that people would find my body pudgy and less attractive. I wasn't any less awkward in my skin than any other adolescent, but my body decided to nail the female beauty standard when I was 13, and didn't waver from it until my second year in college. When I realized that negative body image had gotten its hooks into my consciousness, I was pissed. I fought back. It's never made me unhealthy. It's never made me truly ashamed of my appearance. It's never made me practice self-denial of any kind. A lot of the time, I manage to sublimate it into picking a healthier range of foods and getting exercise, both of which do wonders to make me feel better whether or not they make any changes apparent to the naked eye. But I've never stopped thinking about it.
And it's not just my body. This is the part I loathe. If I was just policing my own body, I'd be displeased, but not disgusted. I am constantly inventorying the bodies of the women around me: are they larger? Smaller? More muscular? Less? More like the builds visual culture idolizes "conventionally" attractive? Less? What would it be like to inhabit her body? Or hers? Or hers? And on and on and on. Even though I know it's none of my fucking business. Even though I know my thoughts are being coopted by the same system that teaches people (as thingswithwings puts it) that's it's okay to say It's Too Gross To Even Deal With If I Have To Sit Next to a Fucking Fatty on an Airplane.
I am not a fat person. I do not have to deal with being the target of the heinous, hateful bullshit from strangers that some of the most amazing people I know bear up under daily. On a systemic level, though, my non-fatness does not make this shit any less my problem. Nor does it make my occasional, size-privileged delusions that I don't have to think about it any less of a contributing factor to the problem.