It's MMMMonday! Every Monday, we bring you special, maintainer-curated content to help enrich your VP experience. We hope you enjoy today's post, and remember, past MMMMonday posts and LRUs can be found in the "featured posts" section of the community.
Lashings of Ginger Beer Time is a UK-based queer feminist burlesque collective, whose work includes such delights as I'm Queer and The Fat Song! In addition to blogging up a storm over at the Lashings of Ginger Beer blog, they're also hoping to take a show called alt.sex.ed (or Alternative Sex Education) to the Edinburgh Fringe Festival this year, covering all the kinds of things your school lessons should have included but didn't, from how to negotiate enthusiastic informed consent to a history of queer figures. If you'd like to support this project, check out the wefund link! (The fundraising goal was just met at the time of this writing, but if you'd like some brick-and-mortar goodies, you can get your paws on them by helping to exceed that goal!)
Our guest post from Lashings of Ginger Beer Time is written by
sebastienne, LGBT's founder. It was originally posted on the LGBT blog here.
Five Fat Facts
Posted by Sebastienne
I thought it was time to unpack some of the assumptions behind our RENT filk, "Fat". (Lyrics)
1. "Fat" is a neutral descriptive term. It describes the way that a person's body carries adipose tissue, and says precisely nothing about their moral character, their health, their lifestyle, or their attractiveness. It is not offensive to call me fat - but it is offensive to assume that using the term to describe me is in some way insulting. And as for "but you're not fat - you're gorgeous!" - care to elaborate on what your problem is with my being both of these things?
Now - of course - as with any self-identification, there are going to be people who disagree with me here. Fat is a descriptive term with a nasty history - like "queer" or "dyke" - and there are going to be people who won't want to apply it to themselves under any circumstances; we have to respect that.
But I have very little time for the cultural narrative that casts me as "curvy" and "voluptuous", and even less for the one that uses "obese" or "overweight". The former tries to play "good fatty/bad fatty" - it implies that my fat is the good, sensuous kind, carries class implications, and distances me from fat people who are not shaped like some hourglass ideal. The latter medicalises, a modern-day "homosexual", pathologising natural diversity. These terms also make absolutely no sense - check out Kate Harding's Illustrated BMI Project.
2. "Obesity" is not a medical condition. I know, I know - medical professionals are saying this all the time, so surely I must be deluded to question their Scientific Facts with my silly-girl politics? But in fact, it is my grasp of the scientific method which forces me to draw this conclusion.
Weight is easy to measure in an experimental context - just stand somebody on a scale; neat, empirical, unfalsifiable. It is much harder to measure lifestyle factors like diet or activity levels - a researcher must either rely on self-report (which is prone to all kinds of biasing factors) or carry out a much more invasive programme of observation. There's also a large class element as well; people on lower incomes are more likely to work long hours, have little scope for recreational gym-going, and need to consume food with the greatest calorie-per-penny content.
So we end up in a situation where weight (or, worse, the useless BMI scale) is used as a proxy for these harder-to-measure factors. Where mere correlations between weight and disease rates (many of which are not even validated in repeated studies) are reified as omens of an "obesity epidemic", rather than interrogated until any mechanisms of causation can be demonstrated. And once such weak studies are reported in the media as Hard Fact, which the public are all-too-willing to accept due to general prejudices against fat people, critical thinking has left the building - healthcare policy is based on public opinion, rather than evidence.
And then confirmation bias leads to the media reporting everything anti-fat - up to and including press releases from diet-pill companies - and completely ignoring evidence like the fact that fat people have better survival rates in all sorts of disease studies. The actual evidence here is conflicted at best, people - meta-analyses do not yield strong results for or against any particular body type.
And even if the data pointed strongly towards thin people being healthier than fat people (which it doesn't), what would you propose we do about it? Because there's something that a lot of fat people know, that a lot of thin people assume the opposite of (because they've never had to try)..
3. It is not possible to make a fat person thin. In fact, dieting increases a person's average weight across their lifetime, due to the deregulation of biological processes around food and hunger. Of course, the entire diet industry is built on the idea of permanent weight loss; but how much more sense it makes in the context of late capitalism when we realise that it's selling aspirations rather than results! The diet industry sells us the idea of control over our bodies, then damages our metabolisms, causing weight cycling and a greater sense of loss of control - so we crave the "control" of weight loss products and programs even more fervently. We buy them more and more and we never stop. It's practically textbook. When we fail, we blame ourselves for our weakness; but the shame and the guilt and the blame really belong with the people who sell us this bullshit.
4. It is not possible to hate people for their own good (HT Marilyn Wann). Even if fat were an illness (which it's not), and even if diets did work (which they don't), shame would still be a shitty motivator. When 'comedian' Frank Skinner went on record as saying that kids wouldn't grow up fat if only they were bullied more at school (no, really), I will admit I did laugh - but probably not how he meant me to. Does he really think that it is possible to grow up in this society and not internalise the idea that to be fat is to not be a full human being? If shame worked to turn fat people into thin people, there would be no fat people. Just check out the "Things Fat People Are Told" twitter hashtag.
5. Your body is beautiful. Yes, even yours. And this has nothing to do with "real women have curves" - that's just a different kind of body fascism, demonising a different group of bodies. Fat acceptance is not about recalibrating social norms around body size slightly towards the larger end, leaving thinner people out in the cold; it's not even about expanding our category of acceptability to take in the moderately "plus-sized". It's about overwhelming those borders and radically re-conceptualising our relationships with our own physicality.
We cannot win this war we are waging against our bodies - we are our bodies. Late capitalism has set us to self-destruct, because of how profitable it is for us to hate ourselves. But it is possible to deprogramme yourself - replace Cosmo with a fatshion tumblr. Read blogs by awesome fat people. Get yourself an adipositivity calendar. Watch feminist burlesque artists sing songs about fat (lyrics).
Don't change how you look, change how you see.
Lashings of Ginger Beer Time is a UK-based queer feminist burlesque collective, whose work includes such delights as I'm Queer and The Fat Song! In addition to blogging up a storm over at the Lashings of Ginger Beer blog, they're also hoping to take a show called alt.sex.ed (or Alternative Sex Education) to the Edinburgh Fringe Festival this year, covering all the kinds of things your school lessons should have included but didn't, from how to negotiate enthusiastic informed consent to a history of queer figures. If you'd like to support this project, check out the wefund link! (The fundraising goal was just met at the time of this writing, but if you'd like some brick-and-mortar goodies, you can get your paws on them by helping to exceed that goal!)
Our guest post from Lashings of Ginger Beer Time is written by
sebastienne, LGBT's founder. It was originally posted on the LGBT blog here.Five Fat Facts
Posted by Sebastienne
I thought it was time to unpack some of the assumptions behind our RENT filk, "Fat". (Lyrics)
1. "Fat" is a neutral descriptive term. It describes the way that a person's body carries adipose tissue, and says precisely nothing about their moral character, their health, their lifestyle, or their attractiveness. It is not offensive to call me fat - but it is offensive to assume that using the term to describe me is in some way insulting. And as for "but you're not fat - you're gorgeous!" - care to elaborate on what your problem is with my being both of these things?
Now - of course - as with any self-identification, there are going to be people who disagree with me here. Fat is a descriptive term with a nasty history - like "queer" or "dyke" - and there are going to be people who won't want to apply it to themselves under any circumstances; we have to respect that.
But I have very little time for the cultural narrative that casts me as "curvy" and "voluptuous", and even less for the one that uses "obese" or "overweight". The former tries to play "good fatty/bad fatty" - it implies that my fat is the good, sensuous kind, carries class implications, and distances me from fat people who are not shaped like some hourglass ideal. The latter medicalises, a modern-day "homosexual", pathologising natural diversity. These terms also make absolutely no sense - check out Kate Harding's Illustrated BMI Project.
2. "Obesity" is not a medical condition. I know, I know - medical professionals are saying this all the time, so surely I must be deluded to question their Scientific Facts with my silly-girl politics? But in fact, it is my grasp of the scientific method which forces me to draw this conclusion.
Weight is easy to measure in an experimental context - just stand somebody on a scale; neat, empirical, unfalsifiable. It is much harder to measure lifestyle factors like diet or activity levels - a researcher must either rely on self-report (which is prone to all kinds of biasing factors) or carry out a much more invasive programme of observation. There's also a large class element as well; people on lower incomes are more likely to work long hours, have little scope for recreational gym-going, and need to consume food with the greatest calorie-per-penny content.
So we end up in a situation where weight (or, worse, the useless BMI scale) is used as a proxy for these harder-to-measure factors. Where mere correlations between weight and disease rates (many of which are not even validated in repeated studies) are reified as omens of an "obesity epidemic", rather than interrogated until any mechanisms of causation can be demonstrated. And once such weak studies are reported in the media as Hard Fact, which the public are all-too-willing to accept due to general prejudices against fat people, critical thinking has left the building - healthcare policy is based on public opinion, rather than evidence.
And then confirmation bias leads to the media reporting everything anti-fat - up to and including press releases from diet-pill companies - and completely ignoring evidence like the fact that fat people have better survival rates in all sorts of disease studies. The actual evidence here is conflicted at best, people - meta-analyses do not yield strong results for or against any particular body type.
And even if the data pointed strongly towards thin people being healthier than fat people (which it doesn't), what would you propose we do about it? Because there's something that a lot of fat people know, that a lot of thin people assume the opposite of (because they've never had to try)..
3. It is not possible to make a fat person thin. In fact, dieting increases a person's average weight across their lifetime, due to the deregulation of biological processes around food and hunger. Of course, the entire diet industry is built on the idea of permanent weight loss; but how much more sense it makes in the context of late capitalism when we realise that it's selling aspirations rather than results! The diet industry sells us the idea of control over our bodies, then damages our metabolisms, causing weight cycling and a greater sense of loss of control - so we crave the "control" of weight loss products and programs even more fervently. We buy them more and more and we never stop. It's practically textbook. When we fail, we blame ourselves for our weakness; but the shame and the guilt and the blame really belong with the people who sell us this bullshit.
4. It is not possible to hate people for their own good (HT Marilyn Wann). Even if fat were an illness (which it's not), and even if diets did work (which they don't), shame would still be a shitty motivator. When 'comedian' Frank Skinner went on record as saying that kids wouldn't grow up fat if only they were bullied more at school (no, really), I will admit I did laugh - but probably not how he meant me to. Does he really think that it is possible to grow up in this society and not internalise the idea that to be fat is to not be a full human being? If shame worked to turn fat people into thin people, there would be no fat people. Just check out the "Things Fat People Are Told" twitter hashtag.
5. Your body is beautiful. Yes, even yours. And this has nothing to do with "real women have curves" - that's just a different kind of body fascism, demonising a different group of bodies. Fat acceptance is not about recalibrating social norms around body size slightly towards the larger end, leaving thinner people out in the cold; it's not even about expanding our category of acceptability to take in the moderately "plus-sized". It's about overwhelming those borders and radically re-conceptualising our relationships with our own physicality.
We cannot win this war we are waging against our bodies - we are our bodies. Late capitalism has set us to self-destruct, because of how profitable it is for us to hate ourselves. But it is possible to deprogramme yourself - replace Cosmo with a fatshion tumblr. Read blogs by awesome fat people. Get yourself an adipositivity calendar. Watch feminist burlesque artists sing songs about fat (lyrics).
Don't change how you look, change how you see.
That said, this was an interesting read and informative!
Fat is often bashed and focused on, but what people don't often realize is that thin people are bashed and devalued too for their body too. I'm very thin and I get tired of being accused of starving myself, or being bulimic. I've had random people ask me if I eat, I've had strangers offer me food. It gets implied all the time that I cannot possibly be healthy. I get tired of assumptions that it must be easier for me to find clothes...It's not. Clothe sizes are general, they aren't "made" to fit anybody perfectly because we all have different bodies.
"Cool, thanks! Maybe I'll get some disease to make me skinny!"
I didn't say anything, but it really bothered me. I tend to drop weight like it's nothing when I'm depressed even when I eat, so it was triggering in more than one way.
It's hurtful to tell people whose bodies you don't like that they should change, but it's also hurtful if you're a person who hates your body, to hear that you will never change it, no matter how hard you try. Kind of breaks your spirit.
You shouldn't devalue a person's choice to break free from the norm and embrace their body type, no matter what it is, but you also shouldn't devalue a person's efforts to try and change, even if their motivations are because we buy into unhealthy societal standards.
Maybe this is a bunch of privelige fail on my behalf -- hell, it probably is, because I've got the entire, fucked-up diet industry supporting my goal to lose weight, telling me that it's the right thing to do. But, the quoted statement was incredibly triggering for me.
For what it's worth, I don't think it's a bunch of privilege fail.
I'm not a bad person because I don't like my body... I'm just a person who wants to be thinner.
Edited at 2012-05-29 03:05 am (UTC)
I know a lot of people who were not happy with their bodies. They set their mind to change it, and they did, through eating better (NOT dieting! Just simply portion control and not eating fast food every day!) and exercising. They succeeded and they're happier now for it, they're more confident and they feel better about themselves.
If you are happy, by all means stay the same. But I don't think it's fair to deter people from trying to make positive changes in their lives by altering their appearance. No, not everybody is going to fit into a size 0, even if they're healthy. But as long as people are realistic and not trying to do the impossible, there's nothing wrong with wanting to change or trying to change, no matter what their motivations are.
Edited at 2012-05-29 03:12 am (UTC)
I would also add that losing weight in of itself is not a bad thing....I'm currently losing weight, mostly because I got tired of huffing and puffing after walking up a flight of stairs. :/ I also like the way I look now a lot more than I had previously. I feel more like myself than I ever have, actually. (This, of course, would be different if I was losing weight in an unhealthy way...but I'm not.)
People who want to lose weight aren't always emotionally unstable or just brainless sheeple who blindly follow the unhealthiest ideals the our society perpetuates... sometimes they are just folks who want to become healthier and live life to the fullest.
But for the vast majority of people, whether they want to lose five pounds or fifty or five hundred, it is not possible by any method we have yet discovered, surgery included, to make a fat person thin. And imagine the relief it is, to know that you're not failing because you don't have willpower enough, or you haven't picked the right diet, or your body is defective, but because not losing weight easily is how the vast majority of bodies work.
One of the points that the book is really good about making is that contemporary western culture has twisted up size and morality so tightly that sometimes it's hard to tell the difference. This naturally makes pretty much all of us feel like shit about our bodies at one time or another. One of the triumphs of fat studies (and gender studies and queer studies and feminist studies and disability studies, and the huge debt that all of these owe of Black studies, Chican@ studies, and Native studies) is that they point out these messages we are given about our bodies. I feel like they tend to start from saying that feeling fucked up about your body is normal, because society pushes all these messages that says that certain kinds of bodies are not only good but right.
My relationship with my body is FRAUGHT as shit. Living here is hard, a lot of the time, and being joyful in my body is a long way off, if it's ever coming. I was going to say something here about how my body is like a separate thing and I don't know what that is, but I do and it's dissociation. I don't live here a lot of the time.
I think that what this post is trying to say is that bodies are hard, but you have permission to feel good about your body as it is, now, today, as well as how it could be in the future. You have permission to enjoy the experience of having a body.
For me, that is scary, but it is also kind of nice. Like, I can be here, in this fat, queer, hairy, dysphoric, scarred, weird fucking body, and it is okay for it to be weird for me, and it is okay to enjoy living here, and having a body is all okay.
Because I learned my body as a site of shame (because of size and gender and abuse and queerness and other stuff I can't even think of right now), it's really easy (probably normal and natural) for it to become hard to know how to care for it. Fat studies helps to recover the feeding part of caring for your body. Like I just read this post from Laci Green about how fat studies helped her lose weight, and that makes a ton of sense to me. Just like how the Fat Nutritionist's first approaches to learning how to eat have to do with giving yourself permission to eat whatever you want. Because your hunger is not shameful; your body is not shameful.
Grrr, this is really inarticulate and I can't get to where I want... I'm trying to say that I don't feel like this post is saying that if you have a fraught relationship with your body, or wish you were thinner that that means that you don't love your body. It's just saying that it's okay to love your body, whatever its shape. Fat studies, to me, has a lot to do with the permission to love imperfect bodies and not have to see them as works-in-progress. Like, if you are doing work on your body, that is cool! But it doesn't mean that you should have to love your body as it is, today, any less. You can want to change things about it, and still love it.
(I have a lot of Feelings here, so unless I've been a real asshole, please be gentle.)
___________
* I have it on mobi eBook. If this sounds interesting to you, send me an e-mail at my LJ username @vaginapagina.com and I'll pass it on to you. I'm not too far in yet, but it's a pretty useful intro to Fat Studies.
UGH, I HAVE A LOT OF FAT FEELINGS.
Wanting to change your body does not have to mean hating it in the meantime. Acceptance and change. And changing out of a place of knowing that you are ok! There seems to be this thing about how people should hate themselves so that they will be able to change. Like, it's ok to fat shame because it will help people be motivated to get healthier. Or it's ok to use humiliation as behavior control in schools. Or whatever the fuck. And I honestly think that's so backwards and fucking wrong. It's hard to want to care for something that you believe is not ok. It's hard to want to improve yourself if you are treated like a piece of shit. But if you know that you are ok, that you are lovable and worthy and wonderful, well then you also know that you are worth taking care of.
And that time my friend was dangerously overweight, was told by his doc that couldn't continue his job as a drummer in his condition due to heart problems, changed his diet and lifestyle, then dropped 40 kilos....and has also kept it off ever since.
I must have had some serious hallucinations.
As someone with a history of disordered eating and BDD, I've struggled with this. So I wanted to share something that's helped me recently.
Look at strangers & people you know, and find something you find beautiful about their body. It can be anything. Do this consistently. Eventually you're going to see some kind of beauty in everyone, and eventually, yourself. I've never seen anyone that I couldn't find something I liked about them. We're all human, we're attracted to other humans (most of us, anyway), so unless you're a plant or something, someone is going to love your body.
That's a lovely idea.