Monthly Archives: July 2011

The Fucking Awesome Truth

by bigliberty

Go read this fucking awesome post by Joanna at Dead of Winter:

The Truth is Radical

It will blow your fucking socks off. It’s so old-school FA, I’m all a-quiver like it’s 2007 again. Dammit, I miss Junkfood Science!

Some candy:

Instead of feeling liberated with the knowledge that I was not a failure or defective because of my weight, my health, or my lifestyle, I insisted on holding onto my prejudices, not just against others, but myself.

Why would someone do this?

The reason is two-fold: One is that we still want to hold on to “The Fantasy of Being Thin” that Kate Harding discusses. The other, more subtle, one is that we can’t bear to face it. To face it would be to realize just how thoroughly people hate us and how pervasive fat hatred is, inserting itself in every area of life, held by virtually all people in our culture, and knowing there is no escape for it.

Ding-ding-ding-ding-DING! Sometimes when I really think about how much I’m hated — how irrevocably the culture equates my value as a human/women to my weight, and how many times and in how many ways I’ve been discriminated against, seen as less valuable or even valueless because I’m fat — well, I get really fucking depressed. It’s hard to handle. Really hard.

Finally, holy awesome, Batman:

No. It is our anti-fat, healthist culture that is radical. It refuses to acknowledge any factor in health, fitness, or weight besides lifestyle. It refuses to allow people with socially stigmatized bodies and lifestyles to exist. It refuses to allow them any measure of worth, intelligence, or morality. It seeks to deny basic rights and social support.

Joanna has written the post I’ve wanted to write for at least a year. Con-fucking-gratulations, I’m so fucking glad to see something like this on the feeds, it made my fucking weekend. And I’ve been having a pretty good fucking weekend.

(EDIT: I just found out this is my 250th post on Big Liberty. Holy fucking mother of shit. W00t!)

The Conflation of Poor and Fat

by bigliberty

You’ve heard it around. It makes it onto the various fat feeds from time-to-time. It even regularly pops up on Progressive blogs that are otherwise less judgmental of people of size. That is, some version of:

“Poor people are fatter on average because they have less access to the ‘right’ foods and less ability/time to do the ‘right’ exercise.”

I won’t go into the much-pitched and varied solutions to the statement above; rather, I want to talk about the statement above as a statement of fact. Because I’ve rarely been in a space, even a fat-positive space, where the statement above isn’t taken as a statement of fact.

But really, isn’t this just another example of correlation = causation?

That is, where is the proof that if the average poor fat family eats the same foods and does the same exercise as the average middle-class, average-weight family, they will become average-weight?

Anyone? Anyone? Bueller?

That’s what I fucking thought.

I’m tired of the “Poor fats are fat because of their bad habits!” whether or not their habits are apologized for afterwards as being not their fault (the case in Progressive blogs, not so much in conservative spaces). It’s condescending, elitist, and makes me fucking furious. Unless you can back up your claims please cut that shit out. The vast majority of people are fat because they’re programmed to be fat, with some variation in a narrow range (like 30 lbs). (see my Truth About Fat: References)

Also, the perpetuation of the “Poor fats are fat because of diet/exercise” trope silences actual useful research as to why poorer people in “First World Countries” (I hate that fucking phrase) are fatter on average than their richer counterparts. That is, I believe discrimination, racism, and expectations play a much larger role than we think, and that understanding those factors as they contribute to the “poor fat problem” would be enlightening,  interesting, and possibly useful, unlike the tired, recycled, useless “The poor need to be educated to move more and eat better!” bullshit.

What do you think?

Living Our Fat Lives of Active Isolation

by bigliberty

This isn’t going to be the most coherent post. I’m angry, sad, and exhausted. I’m tired of being marginalized, and see no end in sight. I’m afraid of the opportunities that will be denied to me; I’m afraid of both hyper-visibility and invisibility — all due to the number on the scale.

My day job is in a corporate environment. Every year I help run a big event. Lots of photos are taken during the event — sometimes we hire photographers, sometimes students/staff take photos. We use the photos on our website and for promotional purposes afterwards. Since I help run the event, I’m there during all these ‘happening’ moments when most people are taking photographs. I tend to get into the photographs.

And those photographs I’m in? — get relegated to the dustbin, year after year. That is, there are no photos of me — though I’ve been helping to run the event for four years now — on the website, except in my profile in two shots of more than twenty people standing in a group.

Why, you ask? Well, because I’m both very tall (which isn’t any image-related crime in itself) and I’m very fat (bingo!) so in photos I often look like I’m from some planet of giants while everyone else are happy citizens of Normalville.

It’s pretty obvious. I see it. Still, I’ve got body dysmorphia from a near-lifetime of self-hate related to my body size, which I’m still working to get over (and might never get over), so I understand how I can see everyone else as normal and myself as the daughter of the Jolly Green Giant’s fat cousin.

But who the hell gave other people the right to just cut me out, like I don’t exist, like I don’t deserve to be there? Like my interest, my friendliness with the participants, my intelligence, my talent, my hard work — like those are traits of some invisible ghost and not a real, breathing, live, actual human who exists and takes up space?

I get it. Big fat people like me are a ‘blight’ on photographs, right? We’re ‘disproportionate,’ we stand out like ‘sore thumbs’ amidst the petite women and tall men (who are allowed to be a bit chunky, but not more than a bit). We ‘throw off the balance’ of the photo.

Except that that’s nonsense. How in the hell does a human throw off the balance of any group of humans? Do we not deserve to take up whatever space we’re programmed to take up? Says who? Are we any less human because we’re the size of two (or three) small ones? Is a ‘good’ picture one that lacks as much diversity of the human form as possible? Why? Why am I the ‘blight,’ the ‘disproportionate one’ — or is it that photographers just lack the skill to shoot fat people and thin people together?

And how does this effect the photographs we see of real people doing real things (not advertisements, that is)? As a fat person I often feel like I never see other fat people (especially fat women not in service roles) in photographs of conferences, schools, and professional events. It sends the message that fat people do not attend conferences, schools, or professional events. Could it be, rather, that fat people are being cut out of the photographs, or not photographed at all, because they’re an ‘unattractive blight,’ ‘throw a picture off balance,’ etc?

We attend conferences, schools, and professional events. We exist. Why are we being rubbed out? What is so goddamned offensive about our existence that we get treated the same as the accidental picture you didn’t mean to take of your blurry thumb, in the discard pile without a second thought?