Here is some stuff in the news today...
[Content Note: Misogyny] Former Speaker of the House John Boehner has some cool stuff to say about Ted Cruz: "Lucifer in the flesh. I have Democrat friends and Republican friends. I get along with almost everyone, but I have never worked with a more miserable son of a bitch in my life." Yikes! LOL. During the same talk, he also went down the "woman card" route on Hillary Clinton, to a decided lack of enthusiasm: "On Clinton, Boehner's reviews were more mixed. Early in the talk, the speaker impersonated Clinton, saying 'Oh I'm a woman, vote for me,' to a negative crowd reaction. Later, he added that he had known Clinton for 25 years and finds her to be very accomplished and smart." Interesting, isn't it? Cruz's own colleagues can't find a single nice thing to say about him, but it's Hillary Clinton who's supposed to be the "unlikeable" one in this race. Even though people at a Boehner speaking event like her enough that they don't appreciate his mocking her. Huh.
Whooooooooooops! "Sanders is biggest spender of 2016 so far—generating millions for consultants." Wasn't there a candidate whose platform was centered around getting money out of politics? I was sure there was... "Sanders's money blitz, fueled by a $27 average donation that he repeatedly touts, has improbably made the anti-billionaire populist the biggest spender so far in the election cycle. The campaign's wealth has been a surprising boon for vendors across the county who signed on to his long-shot bid. The large profits stem in part from the fact that no one in Sanders's campaign imagined he would generate such enormous financial support. So unlike Clinton, he did not cap how much his consultants could earn in commissions from what was expected to be a bare-bones operation, according to campaign officials." Another perfect example of why it's not a good idea to put goofballs in charge of your national presidential campaign.
(I'll also point out that Sanders spending the most money disproves his own thesis. Money doesn't actually buy elections. He's losing. That's not, by the way, an argument against campaign finance reform. It's just an observation that money isn't everything. You still have to be the best candidate to win.)
[CN: Warmongering] "President Trump fills world leaders with fear: 'It's gone from funny to really scary.' Most of the world seems to agree a Donald Trump presidency is a disturbing possibility that would inflict unthinkable damage, Guardian reporters found." The world is understandably in disbelief that the US could even consider voting for this asshole. (P.S. It was never "funny.")
Meanwhile, at home: "Registration among Hispanic voters is skyrocketing in a presidential election cycle dominated by Donald Trump and loud GOP cries to close the border. Arturo Vargas, executive director of the National Association of Elected and Appointed Officials, projects 13.1 million Hispanics will vote nationwide in 2016, compared to 11.2 million in 2012 and 9.7 million in 2008. Many of those new Hispanic voters are also expected to vote against Trump if he is the Republican nominee, something that appears much more likely after the front-runner's sweeping primary victories Tuesday in five East Coast states. A whopping 80 percent of respondents in a poll of registered Hispanic voters in Colorado and Nevada said Trump's views on immigration made them less likely to vote for Republicans in November. In Florida, that number was 68 percent." I'm very excited that so many new Latinx voters are enrolling! But I wish it was only because they had something great to vote for, and not because they were scared that Trump will fuck their entire lives.
[CN: Misogyny; rape culture] In other Terrible Trumpery: Trump held a rally in Indianapolis yesterday, and got former Indiana University basketball coach Bobby Knight to introduce him. If you're not familiar with Knight, he's a nightmare monster human who abused his players and had a massive anger management problem. Oh, and he loves saying shitty stuff about rape. While he introduced Trump, a guy was positioned directly behind him (campaigns are very involved in who is seated behind the podium at broadcast events) wearing a "Hillary for Prison" shirt. And once Trump came onstage, among his usual garbage fare, he bragged about having been endorsed by Mike Tyson, who was convincted of rape in Indiana. So, all around terrific event, basically.
And still more: Former cable host Campbell Brown says she blames TV for Trump. (Hey, so do I!) "My friends in the TV news business are in a state of despair about Donald Trump, even as their bosses in the boardroom are giddy over what he's doing for their once sagging ratings. 'It feels like it's over,' one old friend from my television days told me recently. Any hope of practicing real journalism on TV is really, finally finished. 'Look, we’ve always done a lot of stupid shit to get ratings. But now it's like we've just given up and literally handed over control hoping he'll save us. It's pathetic, and I feel like hell.' Said another friend covering the presidential campaign for cable news, 'I am swilling antidepressants trying to figure out what to do with my life when this is over.'"
[CN: Transphobia] GODDAMMIT: "On Tuesday night, the City Council of Oxford, Alabama unanimously approved a new ordinance that will punish individuals for using restrooms that do not match their biological sex as stated on their birth certificate. The policy is a direct response to Target indicating that trans people are welcome and will be respected in their stores. ...Anywhere within the city's police jurisdiction, it is now a criminal offense for transgender people to use restrooms that match their gender identity unless they have undergone surgery and successfully changed the gender marker on their birth certificate. Each individual violation will result in a $500 fine or up to six months in jail." I am just incandescently angry about this. I trust it won't survive a court challenge, but this is just unfathomably cruel in the meantime. JFC.
[CN: Police brutality; racism; guns] "A Baltimore police detective shot [14-year-old Dedric Colvin] in East Baltimore on Wednesday afternoon who he wrongly believed was carrying a semiautomatic pistol, Police Commissioner Kevin Davis said. The boy suffered what police called non-life-threatening injuries to a 'lower extremity,' Davis said. The weapon turned out to be spring-air-powered BB gun—not a real firearm." So, like Tamir Rice, Dedric Colvin was playing with a toy gun. Plainclothes police officers spotted him, confronted him, he ran, they chased him, he told them it was a fake gun, and then they shot him. And then Colvin's mother was taken in for questioning. Thank Maude he was not killed. Naturally, the police are already victim-blaming, because of course they are.
[CN: Police brutality; racism] Meanwhile, in Oklahoma: "A jury found a sheriff's deputy guilty of second-degree manslaughter Wednesday in the fatal shooting of an unarmed suspect. Robert Bates, who was a volunteer reserve sheriff deputy for the Tulsa County Sheriff's Office last year at the time of the shooting, never denied shooting Eric Courtney Harris. Bates, 74, said he meant to use his Taser stun gun, not his revolver, on the suspect, who had been tackled by other deputies and was being held on the ground. The jury deliberated less than three hours and recommended Bates serve four years in prison, the maximum possible sentence. Preliminary sentencing is set for May 31."
[CN: Rape culture] Also in Oklahoma: "An Oklahoma court has stunned local prosecutors with a declaration that state law doesn't criminalize oral sex with a victim who is completely unconscious. The ruling, a unanimous decision by the state's criminal appeals court, is sparking outrage among critics who say the judicial system was engaged in victim-blaming and buying outdated notions about rape." Rage seethe boil.
"Women would have to register for the draft under an amendment added to an annual defense bill Wednesday. 'If we want equality in this country, if we want women to be treated precisely like men are treated and that they should not be discriminated against, then we should support a universal conscription,' Rep. Jackie Speier (D-Calif.) said. The House Armed Services Committee voted 32-30 to include the amendment in the 2017 National Defense Authorization Act (NDAA). ...In 1981, the Supreme Court ruled that women did not have to register for the draft because combat jobs were closed to them. With that reason now moot, some lawmakers have argued women should now register. Others want women to remain exempt, while still others say this is the opportune time to abolish the draft altogether." All or nothing. I have super mixed feelings about the draft, because I don't want anyone drafted, but I also realize that the military is disproportionately staffed by people of color from low-income backgrounds, for whom the military is their best choice. Really, the answer is no more fucking wars. But that ain't up for a vote in the US.
[CN: Fat hatred; misogynoir; colorism] This is so, so good and important: "Bittersweet Like Me: When the Lemonade Ain't Made For Fat Black Women & Femmes." I'm not even going to excerpt it. Just go read the whole thing.
Paul Feig, y'all: "I've had producers lecture me: 'You don't want to get pigeonholed as a women's filmmaker. I'm like, what does that mean? If I did nothing else in my career but work with great women and provide great roles for them I would be very happy."
And finally! Baby Red River Hogs named after Star Wars characters! LOL YAY!
In the News
Quote of the Day
[Content Note: Fat hatred; bullying; harassment; abuse.]
"It's astonishingly rare to see a thin person intervene in the kind of commonplace bullying of fat people that happens. Even rarer to see a non-fat person say something proactively about accepting fat people. I can understand why. Some think poor treatment of fat people is warranted: if fat people don't want to be shamed, rejected, excluded, they should just lose weight. Poor treatment is the price of admission for having the body you have. Others become uncomfortable when they see a type of behavior they wouldn't otherwise tolerate. They shrink back, feeling a knot in their stomach as they witness something harsh and unwarranted—something they wouldn't otherwise tolerate. And what would they even say? And who would back them up? It's unnerving to witness, and isolating to interrupt. But that isolation, dear friend, is where fat people live every day. When we decide to stand up for ourselves, we are deciding to go it alone."—Your Fat Friend, in an extraordinary piece, "A call to action: your fat friend is going it alone."
Quote of the Day
[Content Note: Depression; suicidal ideation; fat hatred; bullying.]
"I've struggled with depression since childhood. It's a battle that's cost me time, opportunities, relationships, and a thousand sleepless nights. In 2010, at the lowest point in my adult life, I was looking everywhere for relief/comfort/distraction. And I turned to food. It could have been anything. Drugs. Alcohol. Sex. But eating became the one thing I could look forward to. Count on to get me through. There were stretches when the highlight of my week was a favorite meal and a new episode of TOP CHEF. Sometimes that was enough. Had to be. And I put on weight. Big f--king deal. One day, out for a hike in Los Angeles with a friend, we crossed paths with a film crew shooting a reality show. Unbeknownst to me, paparazzi were circling. They took my picture, and the photos were published alongside images of me from another time in my career. 'Hunk To Chunk.' 'Fit To Flab.' Etc. ...In 2010, fighting for my mental health, it was the last thing I needed. Long story short, I survived. So do those pictures. I'm glad. Now, when I see that image of me in my red t-shirt, a rare smile on my face, I am reminded of my struggle. My endurance and my perseverance in the face of all kinds of demons. Some within. Some without. Like a dandelion up through the pavement, I persist."—Actor Wentworth Miller, on how fat hatred harmed him, how fat saved him, and how he survives despite the bullies who will never fucking understand, or even try.
In the News
Here is some stuff in the news today...
Hot damn! This campaign advertisement featuring Shonda Rhimes, and the stars of three of her hugely successful shows—Viola Davis from How to Get Away with Murder, Kerry Washington from Scandal, and Ellen Pompeo from Grey's Anatomy—endorsing Hillary Clinton is pretty fucking cool. I can't even imagine how jazzed Clinton must be!
In other endorsement news, Dr. Ben Carson has endorsed Donald Trump. Sure.
On the other hand: "The AFL-CIO, the largest U.S. federation of labor unions, will launch digital attack ads targeting Republican front-runner Donald Trump next week as part of a multi-pronged effort to derail the New York billionaire's bid for the White House and dampen union workers' enthusiasm for him. Officials at the AFL-CIO, an umbrella group of 56 unions representing 12.5 million workers, told Reuters the ads will depict Trump as anti-union, and will appear on Facebook and Twitter. ...'Donald Trump has tapped into the very real and understandable anger of working people. But while he says he's with America's working people, when you look close, it's just hot air,' AFL-CIO president Richard Trumka told Reuters. 'Donald Trump is nothing but a house of cards, and once we educate people, the house of cards comes crashing down,' he said."
[Content Note: War; displacement; descriptions of rape, murder, and violence] The United Nations Office of Human Rights has published an incredibly difficult but equally important report on the vast scope of brutal human rights violations in South Sudan, in which a civil war between government and opposition forces has been waging since 2013. Women and children are especially singled out for vicious abuse and sexual violence, and UN investigators found that the South Sudanese army have allowed their affiliated militias "to rape women in lieu of wages while fighting rebels. ...According to the UN report, militias operated under a 'do what you can and take what you can' agreement that allowed them to rape and abduct women and girls as a form of payment. They also raided cattle and stole personal property, it added. The scale and type of sexual violence committed in South Sudan constitute some of the most horrendous human rights abuses in the world, UN High Commissioner for Human Rights Zeid Ra'ad Al Hussein said." And still the world continues to refuse to meaningfully intervene.
[CN: War on agency] In Indiana, the state legislature is attempting to pass another abortion restriction so extreme that even some Republicans are objecting: "Under HB 1337, which both chambers of the legislature passed this week, women would be prohibited from seeking an abortion if they discover their fetus has genetic abnormalities. ...According to a Planned Parenthood statement, the legislation is 'particularly cruel in that it's designed to shame and demean a woman who is facing tragic circumstances with a lethal fetal anomaly.' Essentially, a grieving pregnant woman grappling with the news that her unborn child won't survive outside the womb would be required to receive information dissuading her from ending the doomed pregnancy. ...'The bill does nothing to save innocent lives. There's no education, there's no funding. It's just penalties,' Rep. Sharon Negele, a Republican who has sponsored anti-abortion legislation in the past, said this week at a hearing regarding HB 1337." When Sharon Negele says you've gone too far, you have truly derailed.
[CN: War on agency] Meanwhile, in Utah: "A Utah bill requiring doctors to administer anesthesia to a fetus at 20 weeks' gestation or later during an abortion procedure now heads to the governor's desk, after Republicans on Thursday pushed through the measure during the legislative session's final hours. The bill, sponsored by state Sen. Curt Bramble (R-Provo), hinges on the unsubstantiated notion that a fetus at 20 weeks' gestation feels pain, despite an exhaustive scientific review saying that's simply not the case. SB 234 passed in the house in a 56-13 party line vote, after clearing the state senate this month over Democratic opposition. Republicans control both chambers of the Utah legislature."
[CN: Fat hatred; video may autoplay at link] Fucking hell: "A new commercial that is part of Lane Bryant's body positive campaign may never get a chance to air. A representative for the clothing company tells People it has been rejected by multiple TV networks including NBC and ABC. ...In a statement to People, a representative for NBC said, 'As part of the normal advertising standards process, we reviewed a rough cut of the ad and asked for minor edits to comply with broadcast indecency guidelines. The ad was not rejected and we welcome the updated creative.'" Um, okay. Let me guess: These "indecency" issues with fat female bodies would definitely not be a problem with thin female bodies.
[CN: Holocaust survival] Yisrael Kristal, an Auschwitz survivor, is now the world's oldest known man, at age 112 and 178 days. "As he received his Guinness World Records certificate, Mr Kristal said he did not know the 'secret for long life' and that he believed everything was 'determined from above.' 'There have been smarter, stronger, and better looking men then me who are no longer alive,' he added. 'All that is left for us to do is to keep on working as hard as we can and rebuild what is lost.'" Blub.
"This Incredibly Deep Space View Could Solve One of the Mysteries of Our Universe." COOL.
And finally! Baby aardvark! That last picture is THE BEST.
Quote of the Day
[Content Note: Fat hatred.]
"In that way, air travel is sadly familiar, a microcosm of what happens so often as a fat person. I am watched—and judged harshly—as I try—and fail—to fit into a space that was made for someone else. I am always too big, always too much, always unacceptable. I must make myself smaller and smaller, reducing and reducing endlessly, my stubborn body resisting at every turn. Still, I am never quite small enough to make anyone else comfortable."—Your Fat Friend, in a powerful essay which resonates strongly with me: "What it's like to be that fat person sitting next to you on the plane."
[H/T to Elle. Related Reading: A Life of Having.]
In the News
Here is some stuff in the news today...
Y'all, I just heard "burning dumpster fire" used on CNN in election coverage. Welp.
[Content Note: Misogyny] This is an incredible essay by former Obama speechwriter Jon Favreau, who, by his own admission, was deeply unfair to Clinton during the '08 election—and after: "It was one of the stupider, more disrespectful mistakes I've made, and one that could have cost me a job if Hillary hadn't accepted my apology, which she did with grace and humor. As a result, I had the chance to serve in the Obama Administration with someone who was far different than the caricature I had helped perpetuate. The most famous woman in the world would walk through the White House with no entourage, casually chatting up junior staffers along the way. She was by far the most prepared, impressive person at every Cabinet meeting. She worked harder and logged more miles than anyone in the administration, including the president. And she'd spend large amounts of time and energy on things that offered no discernible benefit to her political future—saving elephants from ivory poachers, listening to the plight of female coffee farmers in Timor-Leste, defending LGBT rights in places like Uganda. Most of all—and you hear this all the time from people who've worked for her—Hillary Clinton is uncommonly warm and thoughtful. She surprises with birthday cakes. She calls when a grandparent passes away. She once rearranged her entire campaign schedule so a staffer could attend her daughter's preschool graduation. Her husband charms by talking to you; Hillary does it by listening to you."
[CN: Fat prejudice] Oh for fuck's sake: "That spare tire around your waist may also be weighing down your memory. Experts believe that added fat changes the structure and function of the brain, including its ability to recall past events with episodic memory." We've heard this before. That post was six years ago; I wonder how it was possible I remembered it with all the FAT WRECKING MY BRAINZ?!
[CN: Racism] Good grief: "The Black Lives Matter movement has shed light on the racial profiling, police brutality, and racial inequality experienced by the African-American community across America. But apparently some of the employees at Facebook's notoriously white, bro-centric Menlo Park, California office don't agree. In a private memo posted on a company announcement page for employees only, Mark Zuckerberg acknowledged that employees have been scratching out 'black lives matter' (sic) and writing 'all lives matter' on the company's famous signature wall."
[CN: Transphobia] A new study has found that "socially transitioned transgender children have notably lower rates of internalizing psychopathology than previously reported among children with GID living as their natal sex." That is, trans children who are allowed to live as their real gender, instead of being forced to live as the gender they were assigned at birth, have better mental health and happiness. File under: Things Trans People Have Been Telling You.
This is pretty cool: "A team of Cleveland Clinic transplant surgeons and gynecological surgeons performed the nation's first uterus transplant during a nine-hour surgery Wednesday, Feb. 24. The 26-year-old patient—who is not being identified publicly—was in stable condition Thursday afternoon. The transplanted uterus came from a deceased organ donor." I really love the global interest in making womb transplants possible.
[CN: Homophobia] Of course: "Not surprisingly, the anti-gay Texas bakers who refused to make a wedding cake for a same-sex couple last week have quickly assumed the role of martyrs. Edie and David Delorme, co-owners of Kerns Bake Shop in the East Texas city of Longview, turned away Ben Valencia and Luis Marmolejo, saying they don't prepare cakes for 'homosexual marriages' based on their religious beliefs. ...'We just want equal rights,' David Delorme told Fox News. 'We want to be treated equally.'" STFU.
[CN: Transphobia; corporatism] Anohni, the first transgender performer ever nominated for an Academy Award, explains why she will not be attending the Oscars, after being disinvited from performing.
RIP Tony Burton. "Tony Burton, the former boxer best known for playing Apollo Creed's trainer 'Duke' in the Rocky franchise, has died. He was 78." He was so great in those films.
"Watch Tom Hardy trek through the wilderness in a loincloth." Okay!
This is definitely the Headline of the Day: "Pony dressed as unicorn leads California authorities on wild chase." Sure.
And finally! "Meet Mutka, Our Dog of a Thousand Faces." OMG this dog is the best! LOL!
Today in What Fat People Have Been Telling You
[Content Note: Fat bias.]
So, here is something I, and lots of other fat activists, have been saying in multiple ways for a very long time: Fat is not a reliable indicator of health. And to treat fat as a reliable indicator of health is not only bad for fat people, who are axiomatically presumed to be unhealthy (and thus suffer the consequences of a perceived lack of health, like denial of access to insurance and medical care), but is also bad for thin people, who are axiomatically presumed to be healthy (and thus may be harmed by undetected health issues they are assumed not to have).
Well, whaddaya know?
Millions of Americans who have been labelled overweight or obese based on their body mass index (BMI) are in actual fact perfectly healthy, according to a new study.This study, by the way, comes at a time when the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission (EEOC) has proposed a rule which "could penalise people with BMIs higher than 25...by making them pay higher premiums."
Scientists in California say that 34.4 million Americans considered technically overweight due to their BMI are actually healthy based on a range of cardiometabolic health markers, as are some 19.8 million 'obese' people. The massive misclassification isn't just about which words we use, either, say the researchers, since the flawed BMI's usage in the health insurance industry unfairly penalises some, while rewarding others.
"In the overweight BMI category, 47 percent are perfectly healthy," said researcher Jeffrey Hunger from the University of California, Santa Barbara. "So to be using BMI as a health proxy – particularly for everyone within that category – is simply incorrect. Our study should be the final nail in the coffin for BMI."
The researchers looked at data from the most recent US National Health and Nutrition Examination Survey to analyse the link between BMI – a measure calculated by dividing a person's weight in kilograms by the square of their height in metres – with a range of specific health markers. These cardiometabolic assessments included blood pressure, blood sugar, and cholesterol, among others.
What they found was that BMI incorrectly pegs people's health at both ends of the weight scale.
"Not only does BMI mislabel 54 million heavier individuals as unhealthy, it actually overlooks a large group of individuals considered to have a 'healthy' BMI who are actually unhealthy when you look at underlying clinical indicators," said Hunger.
I've noted that these sorts of policies are, truly, nothing more than fat hatred that penalize fat people for the way we look—and this study confirms it. Despite the alleged concern about "health," it's really just a tax we're required to pay, irrespective of our actual health, because we don't conform to a kyriarchetypical Beauty Standard.
BMI is garbage. And using it as a metric to assess health is actively incompatible with meaningful healthcare.
[H/T to Shaker ariadne83.]
In the News
Here is some stuff in the news today...
[Content Note: Racism; police misconduct] The U.S. Department of Justice and Ferguson, Missouri, officials have reached an agreement that is poised to overhaul the city's entire justice system. [January 27] marked the end of negotiations sparked by the Justice Department's 2015 investigation, which concluded that the city's policing methods violated the rights of its Black citizens on the streets and in the courtrooms, all in the interest of filling the city's coffers. St. Louis Post-Dispatch reports that the agreement, called a consent decree, will go through three rounds of public hearings before the city council votes on its adoption on February 9. If it rejects the agreement, the Justice Department will move forward with a suit against the city. Key points of the 131-page agreement include: Community policing and engagement, policies and training, eliminating bias, stop and search procedure, first Amendment activity, force, and municipal code reform."
[CN: War on agency] "Ohio's GOP-held state senate voted this week for the second time on a bill that would cut funding to Planned Parenthood. This time state senators were met with protesters offering testimonies, wearing patient smocks, and asking where the GOP lawmakers expected them to access health care." The protesters are so brave and amazing, but fuck if I'm not angry they are obliged to do this.
Potentially good news for marriage equality advocates in Australia: "Support for marriage equality in Australia's parliament has reached critical mass in both houses for the first time ever, according to the Sydney Morning Herald: 'According to the key lobby group leading the charge for a broadened definition of marriage in the Marriage Act, Australian Marriage Equality, there is now a slim majority of pro-change MPs in both the House of Representatives and in the Senate.'"
Taiwan has elected its first female president: "In a landslide victory, the leader of Taiwan's Democratic Progressive Party (DPP) Tsai Ing-wen won the country's presidential election, becoming the first woman in Taiwan's history to hold the position. ...A scholar with advanced degrees in law from Cornell University and the London School of Economics, Tsai served previously as chairwoman of the Mainland Affairs Office, a government office that mediates interactions between Taiwan and Beijing. In 2004, Tsai joined the DPP, stepping in as the party's chairwoman just four years later. Despite a failed presidential bid in 2012, Tsai persevered, guiding her party to victories in regional elections. Tsai also emerged as a vocal advocate of women's and LGBT rights, advocating publicly for equal employment opportunities for women and marriage equality, respectively."
(If there are less flattering things to be said about Tsai or her platform, I'm not deliberately concealing them; I'm just not super familiar with Taiwanese politics.)
"The US economy grew at an annualised rate of 0.7% in the fourth quarter of 2015 compared with the same quarter a year ago, official figures show. The rate of growth marks a sharp slowdown from the 2% growth recorded in the previous quarter. The US Commerce department said one reason for the slower growth was a slowdown in consumer spending." Here's an idea: Let's pay people livable wages and then see if they have more money to spend!
Okay! "Friday marks seven years since President Obama signed the Lilly Ledbetter Fair Pay Act into law, the first bill he signed, aimed at helping women combat the gender wage gap by giving them more time to bring lawsuits. But in that time, the gender wage gap—which means that American women working full-time, year round make 79 percent of what men make, a gap that's much larger for women of color—has only narrowed by two cents, not a statistically significant change. So to mark the anniversary, Obama will announce executive action on Friday to institute a new requirement that companies with 100 or more employees report what workers are paid broken down by gender, race, and ethnicity to the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission (EEOC)."
Octavia Butler's personal journal is everything. Wow.
"Octopuses are social animals that change colors to resolve disputes and even throw debris at each other, video footage of a group of the feisty sea creatures in Jervis Bay has shown." They are forever fascinating creatures.
[CN: Fat stigma; disordered eating] Oprah Winfrey, who recently bought a huge stake in Weight Watchers and has been doing the most dreadful commercials for them, said in an interview, "I actually was traveling the other day and opened a 5 oz. bag of crinkle cut, black pepper potato chips and I counted out 10 chips. And I ate the 10 and I savored every one. And I put the bag away. Of all the accomplishments that [I] made in the world, all the red carpets, and the awards and those things that I've done. The fact that I could close the bag and not take another chip—it's major for me." I understand that Winfrey is dealing with disordered eating, but her stated goal is explicitly thinness. And the fact that she regards not eating chips as one of her major accomplishments is just fucking depressing as hell.
And finally! Baby hummingbirds! Squeeeeee!
Today in Fat Hatred
[Content Note: Fat hatred; bullying; body policing.]
Here is a cool headline: "Obese women experience much more negative social stigma than previously thought, study finds." Previously thought by whom, exactly? Because I'm pretty sure that fat women have long been aware of how much "negative social stigma" we get.
Women who are obese experience many more incidents of stigmatization because of their weight — an average of three incidents a day — than previous research has reported, according to a study published in the Feb. issue of the Journal of Health Psychology.LOL! It's kind of incredible to me that anyone could actually believe that, if you even have any meaningful interaction with fat people. Or even just look at how fat public figures are treated and the enormous amounts of ridicule to which they're subjected.
Past research has tended to suggest that people who are overweight or obese experience negative weight-related stigmatization only a few times during their entire lives.
But: "Those studies relied, however, on asking people to recall any past experiences with weight-related stigmatization. This new study had women keep contemporaneous diaries." Which suggests how unfathomably normalized fat hatred is for fat people. We are obliged to navigate a world so full of fat hatred that to ignore or deny an enormous amout of it is a crucial survival strategy.
It also suggests to me how pernicious fat stigma is: There are undoubtedly a lot of people who are ashamed to report incidents of fat hatred, because we tend to internalize that it reflects badly on us, rather than the people who bully and shame us.
As background information in the current study explains, the stigmatization of overweight people has increased significantly over the past two decades. These negative attitudes have disproportionally been aimed at women, even though the rates of obesity are similar for both men and women.Sure. Because men's bodies aren't considered public property and men aren't regarded as a sex class who are expected to conform their bodies to the sexual expectations of every random woman on the planet.
Weight-related stigmatization can take many forms, such as interpersonal (being ridiculed or shamed for your size), institutional (not getting a job or promotion because of your size), or physical barriers (not being able to find clothes that fit or chairs in theaters or restaurants that can accommodate your body).And "interpersonal" fat hatred is not merely just "weight-related stigmatization," if and when it's delivered by someone close to you. The article notes: "The most frequent sources of the nasty comments, by the way, were spouses, friends, and family members." A stranger harassing you is also classified as "interpersonal," but when a spouse or partner or friend or family member does it, that's not just fat hatred, but emotional abuse.
Which is something this study, like most studies of fat stigma, doesn't address. Emotional abuse is further damaging, and fat stigma is on its own damaging in myriad ways:
Such stigmatization has been linked to low self-esteem and increased rates of depression, but it can also have physical and health consequences. People who report weight-related stigmatization are more likely, for example, to become binge eaters and to avoid exercise and other healthful habits.This, of course, is something I have been saying for years: I have been a fat person who hates her body, and let me put this as bluntly as I can: There is no incentive to take care of a body you hate. No one has ever gotten healthier, in any way, by being constantly treated like garbage. And no one has ever gotten bullied into feeling better about themselves.
This study is hardly the first to find fat stigma to be harmful. And it's not like there haven't been outspoken fat people saying that very thing for a very long time—not that most people, especially fat haters, care to listen to us and regard us as authorities on our own lives and experiences.
And most of the people who engage in fat hatred under the auspices of "helping" have to know that it doesn't work—which ultimately reveals that its true intent isn't to help but to harm. To punish fat people for having the unmitigated temerity to be fat in their presence.
At this point, we don't need more studies saying that fat stigma is prevalent and destructive. What we need is a culture that agrees and decides to start disincentivizing the harassment of fat people.
[Related Reading: Today in Things Fat People Have Been Telling You.]
In the News
Here is some stuff in the news today...
Let's start out with some fun news: These Ghostbuster character posters are FUCKING AMAZING! Omgomgomg!
[Content Note: Violence; silencing; covers next three paragraphs] And now on to what tops the news all day every day—some more fuckery from Donald Trump: "During a Friday-morning interview with Donald Trump, MSNBC host Joe Scarborough was baffled by the Republican front-runner's embrace of Russian President Vladimir Putin. ...'Well, I mean, it's also a person who kills journalists, political opponents, and invades countries. Obviously that would be a concern, would it not?' Scarborough asked. 'He's running his country, and at least he's a leader,' Trump replied. 'Unlike what we have in this country.'"
Okay, let's just stop right there for a moment to process that Trump just said that Vladimir Putin is a better leader than Barack Obama. Jesus Jones.
Continuing: "But again: He kills journalists that don't agree with him,' Scarborough said. The Republican presidential front-runner said there was 'a lot of killing going on' around the world and then suggested that Scarborough had asked him a different question. 'I think our country does plenty of killing, also, Joe, so, you know,' Trump replied. 'There's a lot of stupidity going on in the world right now, Joe. A lot of killing going on. A lot of stupidity. And that's the way it is. But you didn't ask me [that] question, you asked me a different question. So that's fine.' Scarborough was left visibly stunned. 'I'm confused,' the MSNBC host said. 'So I mean, you obviously condemn Vladimir Putin killing journalists and political opponents, right?' 'Oh sure, absolutely,' Trump said." Blink. Blink.
In other primary news: "Former Arkansas Gov. Mike Huckabee's presidential campaign, struggling with its low standing in the polls and underwhelming fundraising, slashed the salaries of senior staffers amid the departure of its top communications aide." Good. Get lost, asshole. Sooner rather than later.
[CN: Anti-choice terrorism] Rage seethe boil: "The lights are still dark at the Colorado Springs Planned Parenthood where on 27 November a shooter killed three people inside the clinic and wounded nine. But the protesters are already trickling back. ...The clinic itself is months away from being operational. ...But protesters are already prepared to take up old routines." My contempt for these people is a self-digging cavern that has nearly reached the core of the goddamn planet.
[CN: Fat hatred; disordered eating; childhood sexual abuse] I've written before about the correlation found between disordered eating and childhood abuse, so I was glad to see the issue getting some attention at The Atlantic, but I'm really pissed about this headline: "The Second Assault." Lest you imagine that means something other than getting fat, the subhead clears up any doubt: "Victims of childhood sexual abuse are far more likely to become obese adults." I'm a fat survivor, and equating being fat with being sexually assaulted makes me incandescently angry.
[CN: Sexual assault] A major progressive PR firm, FitzGibbon Media, has abruptly shut down after "allegations of sexual harassment and assault by the company's president. Trevor FitzGibbon and his team worked with some of the biggest progressive organizations, including NARAL, MoveOn, the Center for American Progress, and the AFL-CIO, as well as Wikileaks, Chelsea Manning, and The Intercept. The company sponsored an event with The Huffington Post earlier this year. Multiple female employees came forward with accusations of sexual harassment and assault against FitzGibbon, according to employees who spoke with The Huffington Post." Hmph. I wonder how long there were whispered warnings about this being ignored.
[CN: Rape culture; misogyny] This is rape culture: "National media heavily featured male reporters and sources in its coverage of campus sexual assault in 2015, although the majority of sexual assault victims are women, according to a new report released by the Women's Media Center on Wednesday. ...In their analysis of stories published between September 1, 2014, and August 31, 2015, researchers found stark gender disparities in both writing and sourcing related to sexual assault. Men wrote 55 percent of the sexual assault stories, compared to 31 percent written by women. Fourteen percent had no byline. Forty-eight percent of the quotes in the stories were from men, while 32 percent were from women. The researchers suggested that the gender of the writer affected how the stories were reported and written." Haha ya think?
Whooooooooooooops! Self-driving cars are getting into accidents because they drive too cautiously, i.e. actually follow the rules of the road, unlike human drivers.
And finally! "13 Funny Winners of the 2015 Comedy Wildlife Photography Awards." Hahaha! Oh, animals. How I adore you.
Today in Fat Hatred
[Content Note: Fat hatred; possible trigger for disordered eating.]
Yesterday, a collection of jackasses were handing out these cards to fat passengers on the London tube:
Overweight Haters Ltd | It's really not glandular, it's your gluttony... | Our organisation hates and resents fat people. We object to the enormous amount of food resources you consume while half the world starves. We disapprove of your wasting NHS [National Health Service] money to treat your selfish greed. And we do not understand why you fail to grasp that by eating less you will be better off, slimmer, happy and find a partner who is not a perverted chubby-lover, or even find a partner at all. We also object that the beautiful pig is used as an insult. You are not a pig. You are a fat, ugly human.Although they were ostensibly being handed out to fat passengers generally, every instance I saw yesterday, as well as every instance documented in this BBC article, describes the cards being handed to fat women.
Each and every damnable lie shoved into this tiny rectangle of fat hatred is something I've addressed in the Fatsronauts 101 series, as well as how the "fat people are are drain on resources" meme is straight-up eliminationist garbage.
Once again, I will observe that people who purport to care about fat people's health and happiness use, without a trace of irony, the most vicious and abusive strategies in order to harm us. And they scold us for "failing to grasp" their narratives about our lives, despite the fact that they are disgorging the most ignorant swill as though it's well-informed fact.
This sort of aggressive hostility toward fat people is only going to become more common, if governments continue their "war on obesity" using rhetoric that frames fat people as a threat and a problem that needs to be solved. We are routinely described as parasites, epidemic, the target of a war that needs to be won (by thin people). Inflammatory rhetoric is naturally going to lead to our harm.
That's how it works. Every time.
Today in Things Fat People Have Been Telling You
[Content Note: Fat hatred.]
For literally decades, fat activists have been pushing back on the "calories in calories out!" mantra shouted at us by fat haters who believe we are all liars and must all be suffering from disordered eating and consuming mass calories and never exercising and this is why we're fat, because human diversity doesn't exist and human beings are Bunsen burners.
Here is just a small selection of the posts I've written over the years on that garbage:
I Am Not a Bunsen Burner.
B-b-but CALORIES IN CALORIES OUT!!!
The Best Thing You'll Read All Day.
On Fat Hatred and Eliminationism.
Fatsronauts 101: "Everyone who is fat is fat for the same reason."
B-b-but Calories In Calories Out! (Again.)
Today in Fat Hatred.
Now, another study (thanks, science!) has found that what is a "healthy food" for one person (where "healthy food" is defined as not promoting weight gain, which is a whole other issue) might not be a "healthy food" for another person BECAUSE PEOPLE AREN'T BUNSEN BURNERS.
A healthy food for one person may lead another to gain weight, according to a study out Thursday that suggests a one-size-fits-all approach to dieting is fundamentally wrong.I'm grateful that there's now Official Evidence of a thing that fat activists have been saying over and over and over, but I am really angry at the mystified shock being expressed by these researchers that all bodies don't work the same, because it's such clear evidence that researchers haven't been listening to fat people, or trusting us when we report our lived experiences, or treating us as authorities on our own lives.
..."The first very big surprise and striking finding that we had was the very vast variability we saw in people's response to identical meals," said researcher Eran Segal of the Weizmann Institute of Science in Israel.
...Researchers were stunned to see the difference in people's metabolic responses to the exact same foods. For instance, some people's blood sugar rose higher after eating sushi than it did after eating ice cream.
And for one middle-aged woman, the act of eating tomatoes -- which she thought were part of a healthy diet -- actually caused her blood sugar to rise significantly.
"There are profound differences between individuals -- in some cases, individuals have opposite responses to one another -- and this is really a big hole in the literature," said Segal.
...Co-author Eran Elinav said the study "really enlightened us on how inaccurate we all were about one of the most basic concepts of our existence, which is what we eat and how we integrate nutrition into our daily life."
Instead of urging people to eat low-fat diets, a more personalized approach -- one that puts an individual at the center of the plan, rather than the diet -- could be useful to help people control high blood sugar and improve their health, he said.
There are people who make entire careers out of studying "obesity" who never listen to fat people. That is a problem.
It's a problem that fat people are called liars, when we are not being ignored, for saying the very thing that this study has concluded. It's a problem that we aren't taken seriously, or afforded the presumption of good faith, when we say that we know our bodies don't work the same way as many privileged bodies, because we can see it with our own fucking eyes. It's a problem that fat people are gaslighted and convinced that their fat is exclusively the result of personal failure, because other people refuse to fucking believe that maybe our bodies are just different.
So, you know, thanks for the research. But goddamn is it aggravating that we need a funded study to give permission to maybe treat as credible what fat people are saying about our own fucking selves.
Jared Fogle Sentenced to 15 Years
[Content Note: Rape culture; child assault; fat hatred. Video may autoplay at link.]
Jared Fogle, former spokesperson for Subway, who was facing a sentence anywhere from 5 to 50 years, was sentenced to 15 years and 8 months by US District Judge Tanya Walton Pratt at the federal courthouse in Indianapolis today. Fogle had pleaded guilty to "one count of possession of child pornography and one count of traveling across state lines to have sex with [sic] a minor."
The sentence is more than the 12 1/2 years that prosecutors agreed to seek in a plea deal. Pratt said the advisory sentence range of 135 to 168 months "does not sufficiently account for the defendant's criminal conduct."During the hearing, Fogle's defense attorneys enlisted the testimony of forensic psychiatrist John Bradford of the University of Ottawa, who tried to persuade the judge to give Fogle a light sentence because he has, in Bradford's words, "weak pedophilia." Thankfully, prosecutor Steven DeBrota pushed back on that shit:
Federal prisoners must serve at least 85 percent of their sentences. The judge recommended that Fogle be sent to a prison in Littleton, Colo., because of its program for sex offenders.
DeBrota, cross-examining Bradford, asked him about "mild" or "weak" pedophilia and whether those terms are used by other experts in his field.And we know this because admitted rapist Jared Fogle says so, I guess.
Bradford said they are not used by other experts.
"So that's a term you've come up with to provide scaling to the word pedophilia?" DeBrota said.
Bradford said yes.
...DeBrota asked Bradford about Fogle viewing images of children as young as 6. Bradford said that's still consistent with his diagnosis of "weak pedophilia."
DeBrota tried to make the point that Fogle is indeed interested in young children.
Fogle had "occasional fantasies" of sex with children, Bradford said.
"Not that he doesn't have an interest in children, but he has never laid a hand on, or molested, a child," Bradford said.
The defense also tried to argue that Fogle, who famously lost a lot of weight by, according to him, walking to Subway every day to purchase one of their sandwiches, a tale that landed him the spokesperson gig, "traded a food addiction for a sex addiction." Fuck that. It's not that it isn't possible for someone to substitute one addiction for another, but Fogle isn't a "sex addict." He's a rapist and a pedophile. And conflating disordered eating with a total disregard for consent and the abuse of women and children is some goddamn bullshit.
Relatedly, there are lots and lots of rape jokes being made on social media and comments on news items in association with this story, so heads-up if you were considering reading about this elsewhere. Also, I shouldn't have to say this here, but just in case: Rape jokes are categorically unwelcome in this space and will be deleted and their authors banned.
Fatsronauts 101: Representation and Visibility
[Content Note: Fat hatred; invisibilizing; eliminationism.]
So, here's a thing one hears a lot during discussions of fat visibility—or, more accurately, the lack thereof—in popular media, especially on television and in films: "We don't want to glorify obesity."
"Glorifying obesity" is shorthand for the idea that even to merely show fat people is to give tacit approval of fatness.
This is an interesting, ahem, argument for a number of reasons, including (but not limited to):
1. Conversations about the "glorification" of violence and/or other unethical behavior are nuanced discussions in which every position tends to be treated with credibility. People who argue that, say, Walter White, the protagonist of Breaking Bad, glorified criminal behavior are generally treated to be making their arguments in good faith, even if others disagree and cite the context of the show and intent of the creators to defend their opposing view. But there is no such nuance nor the presumption of good faith in debates (such as they are) about fat visibility, despite the fact that, contrary to popular opinion, being fat is actually not a moral failing.
2. Those making and supporting this argument axiomatically conclude that to communicate approval, tacit or otherwise, of fatness is A Bad Thing.
Any pushback on that reflexive contention is immediately met with Statistical Concern about how 1/3 of the population is "obese" (never mind that the definitions of "obesity" are arbitrary and many of the people technically meeting the definition deviate significantly from the image an average person conjures when they imagine someone "obese"). It's irresponsible, so goes the argument, to "glorify obesity" when fatness is an epidemic.
People who talk about "epidemic" fatness and the "scourge of obesity" are primarily thinking about people who look like me. People who are my size and bigger. But I don't go anywhere where 1/3 of people look like me.
[Photo by Deeky.]
I am the sort of person whose body pop culture creators are afraid of "glorifying."
But a large number of the people who meet the bullshit specifications of "obesity" don't look like me. So this is a specious argument, in addition to being a profoundly indecent one.
Still, because the people making it insist on again and again taking to fainting couches while moaning about 1/3 of the population being "obese," in order to justify their shameful lack of representation and visibility of fat people, let's just take that argument at face value for a moment. On the one hand, they are communicating that we do exist by citing that garbage statistic to fearmonger, and then, on the other, communicating that we shouldn't exist by refusing to show us, despite our being 1/3 of the population.
There's a word for the belief that 1/3 of the population shouldn't exist. It's eliminationism.
The fat eliminationists employed in content creation telegraph fear of two primary things: Of a thin person looking at a fat person and thinking their body is to be emulated; and of a fat person looking at a fat person and thinking that maybe it's okay to be fat.
Naturally, these fears are ostensibly rooted in concern for people's health, but fat is not a reliable indicator of healthfulness—although fat hatred is a demonstrable cause of a lack of healthfulness.
What it really comes down to, this handwringing about "glorifying obesity," is the same old tiresome (and only reluctantly admitted) perception that fat bodies are gross.
And wouldn't it be just terrible if someone got it into their head that fat bodies aren't gross? Especially fat people. Imagine the horror of fat people feeling okay about ourselves. Why, that might give us the idea that it's okay to be fat!
The people who worry about someone seeing a fat person and—the horror!—wanting to look like them are keenly aware that the people they put in visual media are viewed as aspirational figures. Consumers of that media want to look like stars; desire to look like them. And many of us strongly yearn to see people who already look like us.
Which is why—apart from the fact that I don't imagine greater fat visibility would result in scores of thin people suddenly wanting to be fat, thanks to the pervasive fat hatred in our culture that strongly disincentivizes fatness and privileges thinness—I am not concerned about the legions of hypothetical thin people who will be inspired to fatness by fat visibility, but about the actual fat people who are desperate to see ourselves represented.
Like thin people, we want to see styled celebrities with bodies like ours to give us ideas about how to dress and style ourselves. Especially since, for fat women, being "put together" is part of the way many of us convey to a judgmental world that we are worth caring about.
The content creators know that trendsetting and emulation is a key part of their business, and yet they want to deny it to a population for whom it is exceedingly difficult to access fashion and replicate popular style, even as our being taken seriously and given service and employed frequently depends on looking "put together," even more than our thin peers.
Visibility is about survival. It's about inclusion. And it's straight-up just about getting to see fat people doing "normal" things. Fat people need to see that to validate our lives and acknowledge our very existences, and non-fat people need to see that because they are used to seeing fat characters only when fat serves as a lazy shorthand for undesirable traits.
If only these folks were half as concerned about the consequences of demonizing fat people as they are about "glorifying obesity."
Showing fat people as typical human beings isn't "glorifying obesity," but let's say that it were: If the worst possible outcome of "glorifying obesity" is more fat people, so what? Being fat, in and of itself, isn't a problem for lots and lots of fat people.
I'm fat as fuck, and I have a roof over my head, a job I love, the greatest friends, and a partner who loves and respects me. If my body weren't used as an excuse by fat haters to treat me like a pariah and a plague and an object of ridicule, I'd be doing just fucking fine.
Which, of course, is the worst fear of the fat eliminationists.
Being fat and happy, or content, is something about which I've been writing for a very long time. It's a subject that interests me a lot, for what I'm guessing are obvious reasons.
Fat people aren't supposed to be inspirational figures. We're supposed to be cautionary tales. And hoo boy are there a lot of people who take it personally when we refuse to fill that role.
A lot of people think we should be miserable, and make it their mission to make us so. Because that's easier than the hard work of finding your own confidence and contentment.
Choosing to be fat has to be okay—and so does choosing to be fat and happy.
It remains a radical act to be fat and happy in the US. If you're fat, you're not only meant to be unhappy, but deeply ashamed of yourself, projecting at all times an apologetic nature, indicative of your everlasting remorse for having wrought your monstrous self upon the world. You are certainly not meant to be bold, or assertive, or confident—and should you manage to overcome the constant drumbeat of messages that you are ugly and unsexy and have earned equally society's disdain and your own self-hatred, should you forget your place and walk into the world one day with your head held high, you are to be reminded by the cow-calls and contemptuous looks of perfect strangers that you are not supposed to have self-esteem; you don't deserve it. Being publicly fat and happy is hard; being publicly, shamelessly, unshakably fat and happy is an act of both will and bravery.
I choose to be visibly happy. Both because I have moments of genuine incandescent happiness in my big fat life, where I am meant to have none, and because it is my protest against the people who would deny all of us such visibility everywhere else.
On That Project Runway Reunion Special
[Content Note: Fat hatred; emotional auditing; bullying; spoilers for the last season of Project Runway.]
This season of Project Runway had a first: A fat woman doing plus-size designing, who won the season with a plus-size runway show.
It also had a whole lot of fat hating along the way.
Project Runway is no stranger to fat hatred. Virtually every season, there is a "real woman" runway challenge, during which at least one designer gets "stuck" with a fat woman and bitterly complains about how they don't know how to design for a fat female body.
This season, the winner, Ashley Nell Tipton, was subjected to overt fat hatred, with some of the runners-up (and many fans of the other finalists) suggesting that the only reason she won was because the show wanted to be "politically correct"; fat hatred masquerading as solidarity, in the form of compliments about how "brave" Ashley was for doing plus-size fashion; and fat hatred that the vast majority of thin people will Occam's Big Paisley Tie into anything else, but fat women recognize as the unique form of bullying to which we're subjected every day of our lives.
Ashley was consistently underestimated, right until the final moments of the season, though she started out the season winning two challenges out of the gate. That in itself is recognizable to a lot of fat women. We are received as less competent, less capable, less smart than our thin counterparts. As I have previously noted:
Fat people are stupid. This is a narrative that gets transmitted all the time. We are too stupid to understand our own bodies. We are too stupid to be engaged in our own healthcare. We are too stupid to make "good choices." We are too stupid to understand how weight loss works. There is a website called "You Are Fat Because You're Stupid." If we are content in our bodies, we are too stupid to realize we should be embarrassed of ourselves and filled with self-loathing. Multiple studies have been funded purporting to find a link between "obesity and stupidity." Surveys have found there is job discrimination based on employers' assumption that fat applicants aren't as smart. If a filmmaker or showrunner wants to indicate that a character is soooooo stupid, there's a pretty good chance that character will be fat. The caricature of the Stupid Middle-American is always fat. Adorably daft animated characters in children's stories are usually fat. If there's a good-hearted but simple-minded (male) character in a fantasy series, odds are on fat.Because of this presumption of stupidity, fat women (in particular) are reflexively viewed by many thin people as lacking talent, lacking skill, unthreatening. And thus, we are underestimated.
"Fat and stupid" go together like a fat horse and a stupid carriage.
This particular prejudice has played out in my life over and over. If I deal with someone (who isn't a rank misogynist) about, say, a problem with a utility bill on the phone, I'm treated like a capable and intelligent person. If I deal with someone in person, I am more likely than not going to be treated like I am immensely stupid, right down to a slow, condescending speech pattern reflective of a presumption I cannot understand any words with more than two syllables.
But, like I said, Ashley quickly won two challenges, providing some evidence she might be a threat, despite being fat. And so it was that a group challenge had Ashley chosen dead last, despite the fact that she was leading the field in wins.
Host Heidi Klum called out how absurd it was that she'd been picked last. Ashley was clearly upset by it. The team on which she ended up, an all-female team, were immediately hostile toward her. Not only was she a threat, and upending their expectations of a fat girl being an easy defeat, but they'd been called out on their prejudice, though as obliquely as possible.
During the challenge, the one woman on the team who was not treating Ashley like shit—Laurie, a black woman—tipped Ashley, who is Latina, that the rest of the women on the team, all of them thin and white, were plotting to throw her under the bus on the runway. And that is exactly what happened. Every last one of them, when asked who should go home, named Ashley.
On the runway, guest judge Kelly Osbourne called them out, telling them it seemed like a "bitchfest." In the holding room, where the designers waited while the judges deliberated, a gay male contestant told the women they were behaving like "mean girls," while Ashley quietly cried.
Ashley did not go home. Because she did not have the worst design.
There were smaller incidents throughout the season, right up to and including the finale, when one of the thin white women, Kelly, who was the eventual runner-up, was disproportionately suspicious of Ashley who was helping her get a stain out of her garment. I watched Ashley do the Helpful Fat Girl thing, the thing I have done so many times in my life, helping out someone who wouldn't give us the time of fucking day, because being nice and being useful is how we petition for acceptance, and then watched as that someone regarded her with distrust and was so nasty about it she had to admit to Ashley that she had been wrong about her motives.
Which brings us to the reunion special, which aired last night and [video autoplays at link] included a segment in which Tim Gunn moderated, with hopeless cowardice, a conversation about the aforementioned "mean girls" challenge.
And it was an absolutely perfect and terrible encapsulation of the dynamic that has defined every situation in which I am the only fat woman in a group of women among whom there is some competition, either real or imagined.
The thin white women, who had ganged up on Ashley, had all the Totally Reasonable explanations for why they'd ganged up on her. In fact, they hadn't even ganged up on her! They each had their own reasons. They weren't acting as a group, despite the fact that Laurie had heard them plotting to throw Ashley under the bus. It's not that they hate Ashley; it's just that Ashley was the worst, in all of their individual and totally not coordinated nor compromised by fat hatred opinions!
(And despite the fact that the judges disagreed.)
And not only that, but anyone who says otherwise is a huge jerk! The man who came to Ashley's defense and called them mean girls is a jerk! But you know who the biggest jerk is? ASHLEY! For failing to defend them.
Laurie then shouts at them to imagine how she was feeling after they'd all just tried to get her eliminated, to underscore the manifest absurdity of their contention that she should have been defending them in that moment.
To which Kelly replies that if someone had called Ashley a bully (what a neat example!), she would have defended her. Imagine, she shot back, how she felt having been called a mean girl.
I need thin women who want to be effective allies to fat women to watch this scene. I need you to understand that this is what thin women do to fat women over and over and over, and how the issue of fatness is never addressed, not explicitly. It's just a fat woman being bullied, then being called a bully when she fails to defend the thin women who harmed her.
I also need thin women who want to be effective allies to fat women to understand that the theme running throughout this segment, and the entirety of the reunion special, about how Ashley is "emotional" and how she was always crying, is a thing used routinely against fat women, too.
Because there are a lot of fat women who do cry easily. There are a lot of women of any size, and a lot of men, who cry easily, too. But their reasons are not necessarily the same as many or most of the fat women who cry easily.
On the reunion special, one of the thin white women observes that, even though all of them were overwhelmed and emotional, Ashley was the only one who was crying. As if that's an individual character flaw, and as if it's a coincidence.
The thing is, by the time a fat Latina woman gets to a point in her day where she may be experiencing the same level of overwhelmed emotionality as her colleagues, she's not only navigated all the same misogynist bullshit that any other woman has, and all the same racist bullshit that any other person of color has, she's also navigated an extraordinary level of fat hatred.
These are the things a fat woman must navigate every day, dozens of which she may encounter before she gets to the point where she is faced with the same demanding tasks as her colleagues. She has expended eleventy metric fucktons of emotional energy just navigating a world that hates her, and maybe she doesn't have as much left over as a thin person who hasn't had to navigate any of it.
So maybe she cries.
Maybe she cries because that's what she needs to do in order to keep her shit together enough to keep working, to work twice as hard as the thin women who don't have to overcome the prejudices she does, so that she can fucking win.
And even when she does, those women will then turn around and sneer that she only won because she is fat, because she caters to fat women. As if there's ever been a prize for doing something swell for fat women.
Even winning isn't enough to put paid the fat hatred.
Frankly, that makes me cry, too.
Fatsronauts 101: Fat Halloween
[Content Note: Fat hatred.]
Halloween is right around the corner—and thus Halloween costume parties—and, every year, after Halloween, I see pictures circulated on social media, without their subjects' consent, of fat adults dressed up as recognizable characters who aren't fat. (Very occasionally, I see this done to fat kids, too.) These pictures are inevitably shared to mock the fat costumed person, often under the presumption that the fat person doesn't understand how they look and frequently accompanied by resentful accusations that the fat person is "ruining" the character.
Don't do this.
Let me tell you that fat people dressed as thin characters understand we look different than the thin character. It's not that we don't know how we look; it's that we don't care what you think.
And why should we, when you think that a fat woman dressed up as Trinity or a fat man dressed up as Spock "ruins" the character? That's a garbage opinion. You're telegraphing to us that your opinion shouldn't be valued.
I have seen arguments on social media in which mockers of fat costumed people justify their mockery, their assertions that the characters are "ruined" by fat people, on the basis that "Batman could never be fat" or "Wonder Woman could never be fat," literally without a trace of fucking acknowledgment that Superman and Wonder Woman could never exist at all. It's a fantasy.
What they're saying, with their also-bullshit contentions about what fat bodies can and cannot do (which are almost always wrong), is that a fat body ruins the fantasy for them. Which is really their problem. Not the fat person in the costume.
And frankly, if one can imagine a man who can lift an entire skyscraper with one hand, but couldn't lift his own ass into the air if it were fat, one really doesn't have much of an imagination.
But the problem isn't a lack of imagination so much as it is a lack of decency. All year long, fat people are expected to hide ourselves away from view—to not take up space; to speak softly; to exercise, but not in public; to cover ourselves in yards of fabric to conceal the shapes of our bodies; to carry ourselves hunched and bowed, so that we might be smaller and convey the shame we are obliged to communicate for our very existence—and it's the same on Halloween. Best that we don't show ourselves at all, and certainly not dressed as a thin character.
The message is clear: You don't deserve to be that character, because you are fat.
Fuck that.
We aren't required to wait to live our lives, to do the things we want to do, unless and until we lose weight. We can live and do and thrive right now.
The public mockery of fat people in thin character costumes is explicitly designed to shame us back into hiding, into not living, unless and until we earn the right of participation by making ourselves thin.
I repeat: Fuck that.
And then there's this: I am a fat person who actively wants to dress up as fat characters for Halloween. And before Melissa McCarthy made it so that I could be a cop, a spy, a goddamned Ghostbuster, three whole characters, there wasn't a hell of a lot from which to choose. Not if you want to dress as a person. A fat person. Like yourself.
So, you know, if you're mad that a fat woman like me comes to your Halloween party dressed up as a fat Lara Croft, direct your ire at the rest of the fucking world, which denies us a delicious array of visible fat characters we can cosplay.
And if you really want to be mad at a fat Halloween costume, how about the costumes that treat fat people's personhood itself as a costume?
Because, honestly, if you're angry about a fat person dressing like a thin fictional character, but not angry about thin people dressing like fat people as though we're monsters, you have derailed.
Here We Go Again
[Content Note: Food policing; fat hatred.]
Shut the fuck up, Jamie Oliver.
[H/T to Spudsy. Related Reading: Blame the Fatties.]
In the News
Here is some stuff in the news today...
O Canada! "Canadians have started voting in fiercely-contested parliamentary elections that could give them their first new leader in nearly 10 years. Incumbent Conservative PM Stephen Harper is fighting for a rare fourth term but the frontrunner is Liberal leader Justin Trudeau, son of late prime minister Pierre Trudeau. The left-leaning New Democratic Party (NDP) could also play a decisive role. Opinion polls have suggested many people are still undecided. ...An opinion poll released on Sunday showed the Liberals on 37.3%, seven points ahead of the Conservatives at 30.5%. The NDP had 22.1% according to the Nanos survey taken on October 15 to 17. The margin of error was 2.2%."
[Content Note: War on agency] This is a must-read piece by Irin Carmon: "Shuttered: The End of Abortion Access in Red America. 'How are we going to give voice to the women that don't make it here?' [Dr. Bhavik Kumar] asked. 'Because those are the women, in my opinion, that are going to be the more marginalized women—the women that perhaps can't afford to get here, can't afford it, the procedure, if they were to get here. Women of lower socioeconomic status. Women of color. Women that live in South Texas. What happens to those women? Where do they go?' Because, Kumar added, 'We know that there are always going to be women with unwanted pregnancies.'"
[CN: War on agency; anti-choice terrorism] In related news: "Abortion Rights Group Says Clinic Vandalism Should Be Investigated as Domestic Terrorism." Yes. Yes it should.
[CN: Police brutality; rendition; racism] Another must-read piece by Spencer Ackerman on Chicago's Homan Square: "Police 'disappeared' more than 7,000 people at an off-the-books interrogation warehouse in Chicago, nearly twice as many detentions as previously disclosed, the Guardian can now reveal. From August 2004 to June 2015, nearly 6,000 of those held at the facility were black, which represents more than twice the proportion of the city's population. But only 68 of those held were allowed access to attorneys or a public notice of their whereabouts, internal police records show. The new disclosures, the result of an ongoing Guardian transparency lawsuit and investigation, provide the most detailed, full-scale portrait yet of the truth about Homan Square."
[CN: Sexual violence; video may autoplay at link] To a frightening number of men and boys, rape is just a game, a bit of entertainment, something to be filmed so they can relive the excitement over and over again: "Five individuals—four men and a teenage boy—have been arrested in connection with the gang-rape of a 16-year-old girl at a Sydney house party earlier in the year, New South Wales Police have said. The incident was filmed on a GoPro-style camera, which was later seized by authorities in relation to an anti-graffiti operation. The sexual assault was discovered by police when viewing footage from the device. ...'It was quite obvious to investigators when viewing this footage that the child was either unconscious or semi-conscious during these assaults,' Detective Chief Inspector Peter Yeomans, from the Child Abuse Squad said." Fucking hell. I hope she has the support she needs. And fuck off, CNN, for ending with this shit: "The teen did not report the rape at the time of the incident." Fuck. Off.
[CN: Fat hatred] Oh good. I can't wait for the fat-hating fuckery that will come out of this deal: "Billionaire media mogul Oprah Winfrey has acquired a 10% stake in Weight Watchers International, sending the dieting company's stock soaring Monday after a prolonged slump." Yay! Let's all make money off of exploiting fat people after telling them to hate themselves! Wheeeeee!
[CN: Antifeminism] OFFS: Emily Blunt is the latest straight, white, thin, cis actress to opine about feminism and its nefarious divisiveness: "Sure I've experienced sexism," she told Radio Times. "But not that often any more. I sometimes feel that we can exacerbate the problem by talking about it more. I think you can keep talking about it and create more and more of a stamp of divide. I think we need to do more—and stop talking about it." Blink. Blink.
NEW ADELE! I repeat: NEW ADELE! EEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEE!
Are you a fan of Absolutely Fabulous? Then you might be excited to see the first image of the AbFab movie currently being filmed!
[CN: Moving GIF at link] And finally! What do you get a gorilla for her 44th birthday? Two kittens! ♥
In the News
Here is some stuff in the news today...
[Content Note: Transphobia] This is just making me all kinds of happy right now: After the students at Oak Park High School in Kansas City, Missouri, elected Landon Patterson, a trans girl, their homecoming queen, the epic fuckheads of the Westboro Baptist Church decided they would protest homecoming. But, instead, they were met with the students protesting them, shouting "Long live the queen!" in support of Patterson. The Westboro folks got back in their cars and scurried away. Kids today! Get ON my lawn!
Hillary Clinton does not support the Trans-Pacific Partnership, saying she is "worried 'about currency manipulation not being part of the agreement' and that 'pharmaceutical companies may have gotten more benefits and patients fewer. ...As of today, I am not in favor of what I have learned about it.'" Welp!
[CN: Guns] The good news: "Senate Democrats will begin a campaign to combat gun violence on Thursday as party leaders prepare to unveil a sweeping package of legislation that builds on their failed 2013 attempt to require universal background checks for gun purchases... In addition to background checks, Democrats are aiming to add new money for the Justice Department's existing background checks system that has recently faltered and include provisions to prevent domestic abusers from buying guns." The bad news: "The proposal is not likely to get a vote under the reign of Majority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.), but Democrats say the package is intended to show that Democrats are serious about reducing gun deaths but can't make headway in a Republican Senate." Sigh.
[CN: Death] I totally agree with Digby on this Joe Biden ad. In general, I don't feel good about the way Biden is using his son's death to (potentially) launch his campaign, especially when I read stuff like this: "Before that moment and since, Biden has told the Beau story to others. Sometimes details change—the setting, the exact words." And within the context of Biden having a history of dishonesty. It just leaves a bad taste in my mouth.
[CN: War; bombing; death] "President Obama personally apologized on Wednesday to the head of Doctors Without Borders for what he described as the mistaken bombing of its field hospital in Kunduz, Afghanistan, promising a full investigation into the episode, which took the lives of nearly two dozen doctors and patients. But five days after an American AC-130 gunship devastated the medical facility, Mr. Obama's personal expression of regret in a telephone call from the Oval Office appeared to do little to satisfy the leader of the doctors group, who issued a terse statement saying the president's apology had been 'received.'" What was she supposed to say? An apology is the bare minimum of decency, and it doesn't change what happened.
[CN: Rape culture] The fucking opening paragraphs of this WaPo article on an Indiana fraternity rape hazing ritual: "As a video circulated online Wednesday showing what appeared to be a sexual hazing ritual at an Indiana University fraternity, some who saw it shrugged. Others thought it was funny, tweeting 'LOL' and 'LMAO.' Some, however, thought it was rape.' Two sides to every story! Maybe it was rape, or maybe it was totes hilar! JFC.
[CN: Fat hatred; disablism; self-harm] A new study has found that "patients who have bariatric surgery to aid in weight loss are more likely than they were before the operation to attempt suicide or end up in the hospital after doing harm to themselves. As complications of weight-loss surgery go, the hazard was rare. A Canadian study that tracked 8,815 bariatric surgery patients found that in their three post-surgical years, just 1.3% of those patients landed in the hospital following a self-harm emergency, which included intentional drug overdoses or suicide attempts by other means. But that rate of self-injurious behavior represented a 54% increase over that seen in the same patient population during the three years before these patients had surgery." But trust this: Bariatric surgeries will continue, because the people who do them often believe that people are better off dead than fat.
[CN: Slut-shaming; white supremacy] This is a great piece by Zeba Blay on why "Reclaiming the Word 'Slut' Is an Entirely Different Beast for Black Women."
[CN: Carcerality] And this is a great piece by Cristina Costantini and Kristofer RÃos on the Brownsville Youth Court, a diversion court in Brooklyn that "hears low-level cases for first-time offenders between 10 and 18," and is run entirely by teenagers. "The Brownsville program is one of more than 1,000 youth court diversion programs across the country that aim to keep first-time offenders out of the court system."
This kid is amazing: Quvenzhané Wallis has "signed a book deal with Simon & Schuster that'll have her publish four books in just over a year. She's set to release a three-part Judy Moody–inspired series that follows third-grader Shai Williams, another young 'star in the making who has a flair for the dramatic...both onstage and off.' The first book will be published January 2017, with the next two installments coming fall 2017 and summer 2018. In addition to that series, she'll also release a picture book that's loosely based on Wallis's life in the spotlight about a 'spunky young heroine who is very much looking forward to a night out with her mom at an awards show.'" Adorbz!
Wow: "Student and YouTube star Jamie Raines, 21, was about to turn 18 when he first started taking testosterone [to begin physically transitioning]... He decided to document his transition by taking a selfie every day." Think of Jamie Raines the next time you hear some sanctimonious asshat pontificating about how selfies are narcissistic.
And finally! "Dog blames his dog housemate for creating a mess in the most hilarious way possible." OMG LOLOLOL!
Quote of the Day
[Content Note: Fat hatred.]
"Nobody knows for sure the long term health effects of living in a society that constantly stigmatizes you and tells you that you can't possible be healthy. Nobody knows what would happen to fat people's health if they didn't live in a society that constantly stigmatizes them."—Ragen Chastain, brilliantly stating what should be obvious but is anything but, in "What 'Everybody Knows' About Fat People."
I love this quote with one million hearts.
