Dump Trump with Integrity: Part Two

[Content Note: Disablism; appearance and name mockery.]

Earlier this month, I wrote a piece in which I explained that I don't care what Donald Trump looks like and that I'm not interested in armchair diagnoses of his mental health. Noting that Trump is himself an inveterate bully, I argued: "We must fight in a way that does not simply replicate the very harm we're resisting."

Still, there remains an endless stream of lookism, fat hatred, disablism, and name mockery up and down my social media timelines.

Almost exactly a year ago, before Trump had even won his party's nomination, I wrote a piece about why that's a problem, on several counts:

If you care about not stigmatizing people with mental illness, or not tacitly condoning looks-based bullying, or allowing people to go by whatever name they choose (which has particular importance to trans people), then you will be keen to find other ways to talk about Donald Trump.

Which is to say nothing of the fact that calling him crazy, or making fun of his appearance, or mocking his name, doesn't convey even a little how heinous his policies are and what a dangerous person he is.

That's why it's important to say what you mean. If you mean Donald Trump is indecent, say that. If you mean that Donald Trump is a bully, say that. If you mean that Donald Trump is a vainglorious poseur who incessantly disgorges rank bigotry masquerading as policy, then say that.

I then acknowledged that it can be useful—and feels good—to have some creative shorthand to convey just how terrible Trump is, so I provided 50 ways to say that Trump is the fucking worst that don't rely on appearance or name mockery, nor entrench stigma around mental illness.

Since here we are, a year later, and Trump is now the president (shudder) and the shitty language used to talk about him is more prevalent than ever, below are 50 more creative ways to say that Trump is the fucking worst. Please feel welcome to borrow them as needed!

Or, you know, come up with your own. If I can come up with a hundred of them, everyone else should be able to come up with one, and avoid the lazy shorthand of calling him fat, orange, and crazy.

Enjoy!

1. Donald Trump is a diabolical scourge.

2. Donald Trump is a tyrannical goblin with a chronic case of the mouthshits.

3. Donald Trump is a nightmarish creepazoid with infinite apathy for people who aren't just like him.

4. Donald Trump is Russian nesting doll of character defects.

5. Donald Trump is a mendacious gasser.

6. Donald Trump is the unrivaled czar of the deplorables.

7. Donald Trump is the vomitous conductor of a chorus whose only tune is white aggrievement.

8. Donald Trump is a contemptible hope thief.

9. Donald Trump is Putin's favorite dolly.

10. Donald Trump is a despotic blunderbuss.

11. Donald Trump is a vengeful carbuncle who cares about "law" and "order" only insofar as he can wield them to harm marginalized people.

12. Donald Trump is a despicable flim-flam man.

13. Donald Trump is a galactic empathy-free zone.

14. Donald Trump is an insalubrious slop-monger.

15. Donald Trump is a rumbumptious conspiracy cowboy.

16. Donald Trump is a human assembly line of uncapped crap juice.

17. Donald Trump is a white rage wrangler.

18. Donald Trump is a repugnant specimen of predatory putrescence.

19. Donald Trump is a leering clawbaw.

20. Donald Trump is a scummy gremlin whose cup runneth over with rancid hate-bisque.

21. Donald Trump is a vainglorious gold toilet aficionado who believes wealth is an acceptable substitute for decency.

22. Donald Trump is the anthropomorphized sound of stomping.

23. Donald Trump is a mince-talking numpty.

24. Donald Trump is a torpid stooge.

25. Donald Trump is an ambulatory receptacle of humanity's worst instincts.

26. Donald Trump is an inexhaustible ruiner of dreams.

27. Donald Trump is a prodigious connoisseur of white resentment.

28. Donald Trump is an unbridled cad.

29. Donald Trump is a galloping roaster.

30. Donald Trump is an intemperate grumbletonian who thrives on invented negativity.

31. Donald Trump is the living embodiment of a steam engine whose tank has been filled with bile.

32. Donald Trump is a bigotry curator.

33. Donald Trump is a vaccine against citizen indifference.

34. Donald Trump is a picnic basket filled with dogshit sandwiches.

35. Donald Trump is a white supremacy cyclone.

36. Donald Trump is the human equivalent of a dumpster view out your hotel window.

37. Donald Trump is a noisome jackass.

38. Donald Trump is King Crumblebun of the Wilted Glade.

39. Donald Trump is a mighty fart.

40. Donald Trump is a conniving bandit.

41. Donald Trump is a reprehensible lout whose only joy is cruelty.

42. Donald Trump is an empty shell with a façade of intolerable pomposity.

43. Donald Trump is an enormous syringe of poison.

44. Donald Trump is a filthy soul-crusher.

45. Donald Trump is a self-propelling Rube Goldberg machine that always ends in catastrophe.

46. Donald Trump is a policy sewer.

47. Donald Trump is a towering edifice of malevolent rot.

48. Donald Trump is a stupendous shitlord.

49. Donald Trump is a skinbag filled with whiny entitlement and hideous malice.

50. Donald Trump is a breathing portrait of toxic masculinity.

You're welcome.

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In the News

Here is some stuff in the news today...

[Content Note: Extreme weather; death] Dammit: "At least six people are feared dead and several houses, churches, and schools damaged after Hurricane Matthew, the fiercest Caribbean storm in almost a decade, ripped into Haiti and the Dominican Republic early on Tuesday. The category 4 storm made landfall near Les Anglais on the western tip of Haiti at 7am EDT (11am GMT), the US hurricane centre said, bringing 145 mph winds and storm surges that pounded coastal villages." And it's not over yet. I've not found any relief campaigns yet, but they will be coming (and necessary). As always, please feel welcome and encouraged to drop into comments suggestions on how to help.

[CN: Disablism; war; violence; trauma] Vice-President Joe Biden was extremely pissed at Donald Trump for his comments on PTSD as a weakness. GOOD.

Some new, detailed policy from Hillary Clinton today: "Hillary Clinton's Vision for an Economy Where our Businesses, our Workers, and Our Consumers Grow and Prosper Together." This hasn't gotten a lot of attention, but I really like this plan a lot: "Reward companies that share profits with their employees, not just their executives: Under Clinton's plan, companies that share profits with their employees would receive a two-year tax credit equal to 15 percent of the profits they share—with a higher credit for small businesses."

[CN: Body shaming] At a campaign event, a 15-year-old girl asked Clinton about Trump's body-shaming of women, and Clinton gave her a typically thoughtful response, which included: "We have got to be as clear as possible: You are more than the way you look."

Here are a few news items from Shareblue:

Peter: Crushing letdown for Clinton opponents as promised WikiLeaks bombshell is an epic bust.

Susie: NH Senate: Democrat Maggie Hassan hits Kelly Ayotte over Trump "role model" gaffe.

Me: Fred Trump illegally used millions in casino chips to keep debt-ridden Donald afloat.

[CN: Racism; slavery; sexual violence; harassment; self-harm] This is a long and interesting read by Vinson Cunningham: "The Birth of a Nation Isn't Worth Defending."

[CN: Assault; guns; misogyny] James Cordon seems like a good egg. Which is more than you say for the rest of the late night talk show white dudes. Fuck.

What have you been reading?

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Fat and the Bikini Body Meme

[Content Note: Fat hatred; body policing.]

It's again that time of year where a popular meme starts showing up on social media. It tends to feature silhouettes of what are meant to be read as female bodies, including or sometimes exclusively very fat bodies, and text which is some variation on: "How to Get a Bikini Body: Step 1: Buy a bikini. Step 2: Put it on your body."

Let me first say, once again, that fat women are not a monolith, and different fat women will have different reactions to this meme. I don't purport to speak for all fat women, some of whom like this meme very much, and I am not seeking to police or criticize their individual reactions to it.

I do, however, want to do some awareness-raising on behalf of the fat women who aren't so keen on the meme, because I know there are a lot of thin and in-betweenie women who spend time in this space who want to do good fat ally work and may not have considered some of the reasons not all fat women find it a strictly positive or supportive message.

So, here are a couple of things to consider before you share this image under the auspices of being a fat ally (or even as a fat person):

1. Not all fat women can buy a bikini. That's not just a consideration of financial realities, which are always at issue in consumerist memes, but it's also a reflection of the fact that even off-the-rack (or off-the-website) "plus-size" bikinis have a finite size range.

There are sites who will custom-make bikinis for women of any size based on their individual measurements, but that is, of course, a costly option. And naturally there are women who are skilled enough to make their own bikinis, but that is not an option for anyone who lacks those talents.

Casually suggesting that all fat women can just go "buy a bikini," without any acknowledgment of the fact that purchasing a bikini in one's size might not be an option, especially for very fat women, is not supportive. It also reinforces the idea that there's an "acceptable" level of fatness which tops out at the maximum size of most "plus-size" fashion lines, and anyone whose body exceeds those standard sizes is thus "unacceptably" fat.

2. Putting a bikini on one's fat body is not just about the physical act of getting into a swimsuit. There are all kinds of cultural disincentives to be a fat woman in a bikini in public, and we are obliged to navigate them no matter how much we might love our own bodies.

There is a vast difference in being a woman who has insecurities about a body in which she sees imperfections but is broadly culturally acceptable, and a woman who has insecurities about a body that significantly deviates from what is considered culturally acceptable. That is not to diminish, at all, the seriousness of body insecurities no matter what one's size. It is merely to observe that even if fat women get okay with their own bodies, there is not an existing cultural space in which we are accepted.

There's no equivalent for fat women to the narrative "we all have flaws!" No deviation from some impossible ideal should ever regarded as a "flaw," anyway, but fat is not regarded as a mere flaw.

And we are not, outside fat acceptance spaces, celebrated for a willingness to show our bodies "despite" their imperfections. We are not considered brave. We are harassed, shamed, policed, threatened, attacked.

The thing about "love your body" campaigns for my fat self is that I can love my body all the fuck I want, but the bigger problem for me is other people hating my body.

It's so much more complicated than just putting on a bikini, for lots of fat women. We need to respect and recognize that.

* * *

This isn't a comprehensive list of potential objections. I hope if fat women share in comments any additional concerns they may have with the meme, not-fat women will listen to their perspectives.

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In the News

Here is some stuff in the news today...

[Content Note: Militarism] Shit: "North Korea has test-fired two ballistic missiles, the latest in a series of rocket launches. US officials said the medium-range missiles, launched off the east coast, flew about 800km (500 miles) before falling into the water. Afterwards, the US called for Pyongyang to refrain from raising tensions. It comes a day after US President Barack Obama imposed new sanctions, following North Korea's 'illicit' nuclear test and satellite launch. ...The 6 January nuclear test and 7 February satellite launch were violations of existing UN sanctions, as are ballistic missile tests."

[CN: Privilege] Here's an interesting juxtaposition of articles: Rollcall's "Clinton Owes Her Commanding Lead to African-American Women." (No kidding!) And the NYT's "As Hillary Clinton Sweeps States, One Group Resists: White Men." It's pretty cool (ahem) how all the stories about Clinton not winning among white men are framed as though that's a problem with her and not the white men who are aggrieved that she pays too much attention to people who aren't white men.

[CN: Misogyny] Hahaha! "Sen. Elizabeth Warren has a message for the GOP lawmaker who compared her to Star Wars villain Darth Vader: The force is not strong with you. Rep. Blaine Leutkemeyer (R-MO) reportedly told an audience at the American Bankers Association on Wednesday that they should 'find a way to neuter' the Massachusetts senator and referred to her as the 'Darth Vader of the financial services world.' On Thursday, Warren, who is widely known for her commitment to curbing corruption on Wall Street, struck back via a fundraising email in which declared she has always seen herself as 'Princess Leia-type (a senator and Resistance general who, unlike the guys, is never even remotely tempted by the dark side).'"

[CN: Rape culture] It continues to be a real mystery while Republicans aren't connecting with a majority of female voters: "A Georgia Republican state senator is blocking a measure intended to speed up the handling of sexual crime evidence, accusing the bill's Democratic sponsor of playing politics. The bill, HB 827, requires hospitals and clinics to turn over physical evidence of a sexual crime—commonly called a rape kit—within 96 hours and for law enforcement agencies to deliver the evidence to the Georgia Bureau of Investigation within 30 days. The bill's sponsor, state Rep. Scott Holcomb (D-Atlanta), said the measure institutes a process to tackle a backlog of hundreds of rape kits discovered in recent investigations. ...But state Sen. Renee Unterman (R-Buford), chair of the state's Senate Health and Human Services Committee, told the Atlanta Journal-Constitution that she won't allow the legislation, which won unanimous approval in the state's GOP-controlled house, to advance to the state senate floor for a vote. ...'If there was a problem, I would be Johnny on the spot and I would have written the legislation,' Unterman told WSB-TV. 'I think [Holcomb] really overly politicized it in an election year and I've got a problem with that.'" GOOD FUCKING GRIEF.

[CN: Water contamination; class warfare] "Rick Snyder Testified Before Congress on the Flint Crisis. It Didn't Go So Well." Whoooooooooops! "Democrats repeatedly berated Snyder about what he did or did not know during the time of the crisis. 'I'm not buying you didn't know about this until October 2015,' Rep. Matt Cartwright (D-PA) said. 'You were not in a medically induced coma.' They also repeatedly called for him to resign."

[CN: Body/appearance/choice policing] What the absolute fuck: "A Des Moines waitress was stiffed Tuesday night at Zombie Burger when a customer wrote, 'Tips are only for normal looking people,' on the receipt's tip line instead of leaving a gratuity. The server, Taelor May Beeck, whose Facebook photo shows her with pink hair and a nose piercing, posted a photo of the receipt to her profile and wrote: Shout out 'to this girl for stiffing me cuz I look like a weirdo~hope she feels better about herself.'" I'm pretty sure anyone who behaves like that feels pretty terrible about themselves, so I hope someday that assholes really does feel better about herself, so she can start treating other people with respect and kindness.

[CN: Violence; guns] Well, this is one way to try to ingratiate yourself with a judge: "Convicted felon sings Adele-inspired 'sorry' to judge at sentencing."

Neat! "Some of the biggest and brightest stars in the universe are packed within a single cluster, a new study reveals. Researchers used the Hubble Space Telescope to image the young star cluster R136 in ultraviolet (UV) light for the first time. The cluster is located in the Tarantula Nebula of the Large Magellanic Cloud galaxy, about 170,000 light-years away from Earth."

[CN: Breed prejudice] And finally! A happy win over terrible breed-specific laws: Scrappy can stay with his family.

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Dump Trump. With Integrity.

[Content Note: Disablism; appearance and name mockery.]

Looking ahead to the distinct possibility of having to wage a battle to keep Donald Trump out of the White House (although this will be operative for anyone who gets the GOP nomination), I want to talk about the language and strategies that progressives will use to do that.

I have previously written about the importance of not using ableist slurs and instead saying what you mean. (Read that link as background to the rest of this piece.)

There is already an enormous amount of "Donald Trump is crazy," and making fun of his appearance, and [CN: video autoplays at link] care of John Oliver, a campaign to rename Donald Trump as "Drumpf," his family's name before it was changed.

If you care about not stigmatizing people with mental illness, or not tacitly condoning looks-based bullying, or allowing people to go by whatever name they choose (which has particular importance to trans people), then you will be keen to find other ways to talk about Donald Trump.

Which is to say nothing of the fact that calling him crazy, or making fun of his appearance, or mocking his name, doesn't convey even a little how heinous his policies are and what a dangerous person he is.

That's why it's important to say what you mean. If you mean Donald Trump is indecent, say that. If you mean that Donald Trump is a bully, say that. If you mean that Donald Trump is a vainglorious poseur who incessantly disgorges rank bigotry masquerading as policy, then say that.

Using words that have meaning is not only a decent thing to do, to save others from the rhetorical buckshot of ableist and other problematic language, but it addresses in a serious way the reasons why Donald Trump should never, ever, be president.

That said, I am aware of the fact that it can be useful—and feels good—to have some creative shorthand to convey just how terrible Trump is. So, because I am nothing if not generous, here are 50 ways to say that Trump is the fucking worst that don't rely on marginalizing language. Borrow at will!

1. Donald Trump is the unfiltered id of the Republican Party's gross platform.

2. Donald Trump is a nightmare disaster.

3. Donald Trump is a vile scoundrel.

4. Donald Trump is a fascist carnival barker whose entire candidacy is a raging dumpster fire.

5. Donald Trump is a calamitous wreck of undiluted privilege.

6. Donald Trump is a bigotry tornado.

7. Donald Trump is a celebrity chef with nothing but garbage stew on his menu.

8. Donald Trump is a colossal dirtbag.

9. Donald Trump is a harbinger of harm.

10. Donald Trump is a sack of gold-plated prejudice in overpriced shoes.

11. Donald Trump is a shameless purveyor of Social Darwinist trash.

12. Donald Trump is a catastrophic mess whose policies are diarrheic dogshit.

13. Donald Trump is a lie-breathing dragon.

14. Donald Trump is a yuuuuuuuuuuuge jerkbag with an advanced degree in dangerous nincompoopery.

15. Donald Trump is a loathsome zealot with the lingering smell of sulfur where his decency should be.

16. Donald Trump is a full-tilt bad idea machine.

17. Donald Trump is a cataclysmic chauvinist and nationalistic fiend.

18. Donald Trump is a self-aggrandizing creep.

19. Donald Trump is a gargantuan reprobate who surrounds himself with simpering sycophants.

20. Donald Trump is a detestable scapegrace.

21. Donald Trump is a Brobdingnagian bulldozer with zero empathy.

22. Donald Trump is an epically insecure poltroon who masks his insecurity and cowardice with transparent braggadocio.

23. Donald Trump is all circus and no bread.

24. Donald Trump is a human Hell House.

25. Donald Trump is the beating heart of authoritarianism with an artifice of patriotism.

26. Donald Trump is an anthropomorphized foul stench.

27. Donald Trump is a dastardly villain with ruinous machinations.

28. Donald Trump is an apocalyptic rogue.

29. Donald Trump is a shitty scofflaw who relies on his wealth to protect him from consequence.

30. Donald Trump is a collapsed flan filled with arsenic and poop.

31. Donald Trump is a magistrate of miscreancy.

32. Donald Trump is the kind of asshole who relocates the bootstraps factory offshore then scolds the laid-off workers for not having any bootstraps.

33. Donald Trump is a self-polishing turd.

34. Donald Trump is the sickening grimace of a menacing horror.

35. Donald Trump is an antagonistic shit who thrives on waging social affliction.

36. Donald Trump is a nefarious nogoodnik.

37. Donald Trump is exponentially awful.

38. Donald Trump is an anti-vacuum who disgorges a cyclonic cloud of grit and soot every time he opens his filthy mouth.

39. Donald Trump is the personification of dread.

40. Donald Trump is a noxious stain on the underpants of humanity.

41. Donald Trump is a symphony of repugnance played by demons on broken instruments.

42. Donald Trump is an abhorrent spectre of ghastly oppression.

43. Donald Trump is a dude who steps on people's backs and then complains that their bony spines are hurting his delicate feet.

44. Donald Trump is a looming atrocity.

45. Donald Trump is profoundly unpleasant, an understatement as massive as his ego.

46. Donald Trump is a void of joy.

47. Donald Trump is an unrepentant braggart whose favorite boast is how terrible he is.

48. Donald Trump is a human scowl.

49. Donald Trump is a putrid malevolence poised to contaminate the entire country.

50. Donald Trump is the fucking worst.

You're welcome.

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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.

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.

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.

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.]

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On #KissAGingerDay

[Content Note: Appearance mockery; bullying; hostility to consent.]

Twitter informs me that today is #KissAGingerDay. Oh.

Well, as you know, every day is a day for kissing a person with red hair at Shakes Manor, even if that hair is a little more white these days.

But because I'm the Most Humorless Feminist in all of Nofunnington who has to take the fun out of everything, I just want to make a couple of observations about #KissAGingerDay, some of which we've discussed previously in comments over the years.

1. Don't kiss anyone without their consent. Ever.

2. Language matters, and not everyone with red hair wants to be called "a ginger." (As opposed to "a person with ginger hair," which I grant would have made for an unwieldy hashtag, though that's not an argument for using problematic language.) Though one might argue "a ginger" functions the same way as "a blonde" or "a brunette," there is some cultural context to ginger, especially in certain parts of the world, that differentiate it. The actual equivalent would be "a redhead."

3. That aforementioned culture context includes anti-ginger prejudice, worse in some places than others, especially where "ginger," or its derivative "ginge," is used to refer primarily to people with natural red hair, very fair skin, and freckles. Lots of people who fit this description are bullied for their appearance, as children and sometimes as adults, and must navigate things like magazines running polls about whether readers would "fuck a ginge."

4. Thus, a number of people with ginger hair and/or features find it upsetting to be called "a ginger" or "a ginge" (again, separate from "a person with ginger hair"), as it may remind them of trauma associated with appearance-based mockery. It's not a neutral word for everyone.

If you're a person with ginger hair who thinks all of this is a bit silly and overwrought, because you don't care about being called a ginger, please remember that every person's lived experience is unique. Maybe it's not that other people with ginger hair are oversensitive and too delicate for the world; maybe it's just that you got lucky to escape what they suffered, or had access to better resources for healing from it.

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An Observation About Ageism and Visibility

[Content Note: Misogyny; ageism; body policing.]

Over the weekend, I saw a meme, generated in association with the recent ageism and body policing of Carrie Fisher, which read: "Men don't age better than women; they are just allowed to age."

Accurate.

And naturally that narrative coexists with lots of other misogynist ageist garbage, like our fucked-up expectations of what aging women should look like, and our warped view of what aging women actually do look like, thanks to Photoshop and fillers etc.

I also think there's something else at play: Carrie Fisher, like many other actresses who start their careers at a very young age, largely disappeared from the big screen for many years. Some actresses take hiatuses to raise families, and some aren't able to work because of addiction and/or other personal troubles, and some simply can't find work because of the persistent ageism in the entertainment industry.

There are a lot of reasons that a lot of actresses have big gaps on their IMDb pages around the time they hit their 30s, and it occurs to me that it's the actresses who, through some combination of talent and luck and ambition, continually work through the decade(s) when lots of other aging actresses disappear, that tend to be the ones to whom we attribute compliments about how they are aging.

We haven't seen Carrie Fisher in a movie, or multiple movies, or a TV show, each year of her long career. So we remember this iconic role she played in her 20s, and we weren't looking at her while she was offscreen being a playwright and novelist and generally awesome human being, and then she returns in a very public way in her 50s, and a bunch of d-bags are all, "OH MY SHE LOOKS AWFUL."

But, with requisite caveats about how every individual human ages differently, owing to a number of variables from genetics to lifestyle, Carrie Fisher looks perfectly consistent with other women of her cohort:

Meryl Streep, age 66.


Carrie Fisher, age 59.


Julianne Moore, age 55.
I chose Streep and Moore for a very specific reason: Because they are both women who are routinely cited as having aged extraordinarily well. And, to my previous point, they are also women who have continually worked and been onscreen in major motion pictures throughout most of their professional lives, without the major gaps we see on the filmographies of many actresses in their cohort.

Maybe, just maybe, the ageism that disappears so many Women of a Certain Age serves to reinforce ageist expectations, while uninterrupted exposure to aging women actually creates a more generous and less judgmental impression of those women.

Gee, it's almost like visibility matters, in virtually every imaginable way. Huh.

(And, just for the record, I wouldn't give an infinitesimal shit if Carrie Fisher looked like Nosferatu. She is a goddamn national treasure, and if a few wrinkles prevent someone from appreciating that, they deserve a life devoid of her awesomeness.)

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Strong Women

[Content Note: Body policing; fat hatred; disablism; misogyny.]

This is a terrific read care of Anne Thériault: "Strong isn't the new skinny."

Anne rightly points out that the use of "strong" as the new aspirational body objective for women is really just a new word to mean the same privileged, fat-hating, disablist shit, and that its use as the new aspirational character objective for female characters is really just the newest way to avoid charges of misogyny while engaging in the same old misogyny.

"Strong" is a problematic trope for women in so many ways—and different ways, depending on the complex identities of the women against whom it's deployed. The Strong Black Woman trope, for example, differs in key ways from the Person with Disabilities Who Overcomes trope, which differs in key ways from Inspirational Fatty trope, etc.

But what every iteration of the "Strong Woman" narrative shares in common is that it is used to "applaud" us (in demeaning, reductive, dehumanizing ways, as all the above links detail) by exploitive people who appropriate evidence of female strength to empower themselves via vicarious triumph, and to "compliment" us by people who want to deflect evidence of harm done to us by citing our allegedly impervious survival capabilities.

Female strength is only something deemed valuable when it can be used by other people at strong women's expense.

Never is that more clear than when a woman actually exhibits strength in her own defense. When she draws boundaries. When she physically harms a man who is trying to harm her. When she engages in self-care. When she categorically refuses to put up with splaining or harassment or catcalling or whatever other horseshit variation of misogyny to which some dude is trying to subject her. When she will not swallow shit, but will ruin the whole goddamn afternoon.

A woman who shows strength to the benefit of no one but herself is not regarded as a strong woman. She is a bitch. She is a cunt. She is uncivil. Her tone is inappropriate. She deserves to be harmed. She deserves to be killed.

She is too sensitive. She is fragile. She can't handle the world. She is weak.

That's how it goes. That's how the Strong Woman becomes the weak bitch, when a woman is strong for herself and for the pleasure of nobody else.

I will say once again: Drawing a line is an act of strength, not weakness.

I used to get upset when I would draw a line, or in some other way show strength on my own behalf, and be called oversensitive, reactionary, hysterical, weak. But that was before I understood how these were (unintentional) acknowledgments of my strength.

Now I just take the compliment and be on my way.

Open Wide...

Shut Up!

A Letter About Food and Judgment

[Content Note: Food, fat, body, and choice policing; disordered eating; privilege.]

Dear You:

I will not judge you for what you eat.

I won't judge you for the things you choose to eat—or the things you eat because you have no choice—or in what quantity you eat them.

I won't judge you for why you eat the things you do, or how much of them you eat.

I won't judge you negatively—nor will I judge you positively. I won't assess your character on your diet, or where you procure food, or how you procure it. I won't judge you negatively for using food stamps, and I won't judge you positively for buying organic, or artisanal, or farm fresh. These things don't tell me anything about you—besides, perhaps, how many financial resources and access you have or lack. And I won't judge you for that, either.

I might, however, if I'm being totally honest, judge you if you brag incessantly about buying organic, or artisanal, or farm fresh, or "clean," or even "healthy," in a way that is wholly intended to convey that it's superior, that it makes you superior, without even the merest hint of awareness that such bravado is indicative of privilege.

I won't judge you based on what your body looks like, or make conclusions about your eating habits based on your appearance. I won't presume to know anything about your health.

I won't judge your dietary choices, because I don't know a thing about your individual dietary needs. I won't judge you favorably if you are a vegetarian or vegan (although I may judge you unfavorably if you use your own choices to shame and demean people who don't make the same ones), and I won't judge you unfavorably if you are not a vegetarian or vegan, because I know too many people whose bodies can't be sustained that way. Did you know that there are people who can't eat dairy and nuts and cruciferous vegetables? Some of them find it difficult to survive without meat proteins.

I won't judge the amount I see you eating, if I have the pleasure of dining with you, or the groceries in your cart, or your order at a restaurant. I won't judge you if you have dessert. I won't judge you if you pass on dessert, either.

I won't presume that what's best for me and my body is necessarily the best for you and your body, or that what works for me will work for you, because we are different people with different needs, and I respect that you know yourself better than I do. I respect you as an authority on your own life.

I will never offer you unsolicited advice about food, or your health, or your appearance. (Although I would love to trade recipes with you, if you're interested!) I will never comment on your weight—not that it is too much, and not that it is too little, and not that you look like you've gained weight, and not that you look like you've lost weight.

I will never treat weight loss as a reason to compliment you, because I don't know why you've lost weight, or if you even wanted to, or if maybe you're sick. And because you looked great to me before and you look great to me now.

I will not judge you if you are a "good fatty," or even a "good" thin person, who can afford to buy and prepare and eat the foods we mark as healthy (even though there is no universal thing, owing to food allergies and the like) and who is able and has the time and opportunity to exercise. I will not judge you if you're "bad," either.

I will not judge you if you have disordered eating. I will not judge you if you overeat, by your own definition, for emotional reasons. (Nor if you undereat, by your own definition, for emotional reasons.) I will listen if you need someone to talk to about that, and I won't judge you.

I will listen from here to eternity and back again to someone who wants to honestly discuss their emotional realities, but I will not listen to you berate yourself about your eating habits or your appearance, and I will not listen to you talk endlessly about your calorie consumption, and I will not listen to any other manner of "diet talk," and I will not respond when you are fishing for compliments by putting yourself down, and I will not keep quiet when you tell me that you "feel fat," and I will not tell you whether you look fat in those jeans.

And I won't listen to you talk shit about other people's eating habits or bodies. And I won't let you do it to me.

But if you want to talk about your personal insecurities, or the cultural pressures that reinforce those insecurities, or the family dynamics that contributed to those insecurities, or the trauma which is inextricably attached to them, or the bullying you survived, or the totally amazing experience you just had of wearing a bathing suit in public for the first time in years, or the tattoo you're getting to celebrate finishing your first triathlon after being told your whole life that fat people can't can't shouldn't aren't can't, I will talk with you as long as you need, and I will grieve with you and be joyful with you.

And I won't judge you.

This letter is to anyone who reads it, and this letter is to myself—the one person at whom I still levy judgments I would never aim at anyone else.

With warm acceptance,
Liss

Open Wide...

Shut Up!

Fat and the Bikini Body Meme

[Content Note: Fat hatred; body policing.]

It's again that time of year where a popular meme starts showing up on social media. It tends to feature silhouettes of what are meant to be read as female bodies, including or sometimes exclusively very fat bodies, and text that is some variation on: "How to Get a Bikini Body: Step 1: Buy a bikini. Step 2: Put it on your body."

Let me first say, once again, that fat women are not a monolith, and different fat women will have different reactions to this meme. I don't purport to speak for all fat women, some of whom like this meme very much, and I am not seeking to police or criticize their individual reactions to it.

I do, however, want to do some awareness-raising on behalf of the fat women who aren't so keen on the meme, because I know there are a lot of thin and in-betweenie women who spend time in this space who want to do good fat ally work and may not have considered some of the reasons not all fat women find it a strictly positive or supportive message.

So, here are a couple of things to consider before you share this image under the auspices of being a fat ally (or even as a fat person):

1. Not all fat women can buy a bikini. That's not just a consideration of financial realities, which are always at issue in consumerist memes, but it's also a reflection of the fact that even off-the-rack (or off-the-website) "plus-size" bikinis have a finite size range.

There are sites who will custom-make bikinis for women of any size based on their individual measurements, but that is, of course, a costly option. And naturally there are women who are skilled enough to make their own bikinis, but that is not an option for anyone who lacks those talents.

Casually suggesting that all fat women can just go "buy a bikini," without any acknowledgment of the fact that purchasing a bikini in one's size might not be an option, especially for very fat women, is not supportive. It also reinforces the idea that there's an "acceptable" level of fatness which tops out at the maximum size of most "plus-size" fashion lines, and anyone whose body exceeds those standard sizes is thus "unacceptably" fat.

2. Putting a bikini on one's fat body is not just about the physical act of getting into a swimsuit. There are all kinds of cultural disincentives to be a fat woman in a bikini in public, and we are obliged to navigate them no matter how much we might love our own bodies.

There is a vast difference in being a woman who has insecurities about a body in which she sees imperfections but is broadly culturally acceptable, and a woman who has insecurities about a body that significantly deviates from what is considered culturally acceptable. That is not to diminish, at all, the seriousness of body insecurities no matter what one's size. It is merely to observe that even if fat women get okay with their own bodies, there is not an existing cultural space in which we are accepted.

There's no equivalent for fat women to the narrative "we all have flaws!" No deviation from some impossible ideal should ever regarded as a "flaw," anyway, but fat is not regarded as a mere flaw.

And we are not, outside fat acceptance spaces, celebrated for a willingness to show our bodies "despite" their imperfections. We are not considered brave. We are harassed, shamed, policed, threatened, attacked.

The thing about "love your body" campaigns for my fat self is that I can love my body all the fuck I want, but the bigger problem for me is other people hating my body.

It's so much more complicated than just putting on a bikini, for lots of fat women. We need to respect and recognize that.

* * *

This isn't a comprehensive list of potential objections. I hope if fat women share in comments any additional concerns they may have with the meme, not-fat women will listen to their perspectives.

Open Wide...

Shut Up!

Nope

[Content Note: Transphobia; cis gatekeeping; gender essentialism; body policing.]

Every single thing about this is terrible: A 21-year-old trans man from Louisiana named Tristan Broussard was fired from his job at Tower Loan after the company's vice-president told him that "the corporate office had to 'draw a line,' and that Broussard would have to sign an agreement that his gender identity wasn't 'in compliance with Tower Loan's personnel policies' or leave the company."

This, after Broussard had disclosed being trans to his direct manager, who'd assured him "that he wouldn't be judged and had nothing to worry about."

But the higher-ups disagreed, and insisted Broussard dress and identify as a woman at work or be fired.

"I told him, 'I can't,'" Broussard said. "'I'm going to have to turn in my keys.'"

So Broussard left his job, and now, with the assistance of the Southern Poverty Law Center and the National Center for Lesbian Rights, Broussard is suing for wrongful termination: "The complaint cites Title VII of the Civil Rights Act, which prohibits discrimination on the basis of sex, and which, since 2012, the U.S. Equal Employment Opportunity Commission has interpreted to apply to anti-transgender discrimination. In the past year, both the EEOC and Justice Department have filed lawsuits against businesses or governmental entities alleging Title VII violations based on anti-transgender discrimination."

The cis gatekeeping at work here is incredible, as it always is in such cases, but this is just beyond the fucking beyond:

According to the lawsuit, after Broussard declined to sign the agreement, Morgan told him that if "he 'had some surgeries and we can see some results,' then Tower Loan may consider hiring him again."

First of all, it never stops being awesome (it is the opposite of awesome) how cis people flippantly advise trans* people to get surgery, as if gender reassignment surgeries in the US are affordable and accessible. Even trans* people with insurance struggle to access all the healthcare services they need, many of which aren't covered by most employer policies, and this asshole wants to fire someone and then tell him to go get some surgeries.

Which is to say nothing of the fact that no trans* person should be required to get surgery, if they don't want it. Certainly not to please an employer at a job where one's gender is irrelevant to one's vocational competency.

And I don't know that I've ever read clearer evidence that cis people think it's our role to be gatekeepers of trans* bodies than telling a trans* employee you may be willing to rehire them if they have "some surgeries and we can see some results." See. Some. Results. Go surgically alter your body then come back here and pull your pants down, and we'll see.

Breathtakingly contemptible. And yet utterly unsurprising, because cis privilege routinely tells cis people that policing trans* people's bodies is not just our right, but our responsibility.

It is neither.

I wish Tristan Broussard good outcomes in his lawsuit.

[H/T to Shaker Westsidebecca.]

Open Wide...

Shut Up!

In the News

Here is some stuff in the news today...

[Content Note: Shooting] "One person was killed on Monday in a shooting at a North Carolina community college that was locked down as authorities searched for a gunman, officials said. 'There have been shots fired on the campus of Wayne Community College,' said Kim Best, spokeswoman for the city of Goldsboro, where the school is located. 'There has been one fatality, and there is one shooter.' The shooter was not in custody, she said. She would not say whether the man was still on campus." Further details are not available at the moment.

[CN: Police brutality; death; racism] Another death by Taser: "Incident reports show [Natasha McKenna, who may have had mental illness] died after being subdued with a stun gun at the Fairfax County jail [and] was restrained at the hands and legs when she was shocked four times. ...Documents show McKenna initially cooperated and agreed to be handcuffed. But she then began trying to fight her way out. Six officers in full biohazard suits then placed McKenna into full restraints. The reports show McKenna wouldn't bend her knees to be placed into a chair, so an officer shocked her four times with 50,000 volts." What the absolute fuck.

[CN: Sanctions] I don't even know: "As the United States and Iran come closer to a historic nuclear deal, many U.S. states are likely to stick with their own sanctions on Iran that could complicate any warming of relations between the long-time foes. In a little known aspect of Iran's international isolation, around two dozen states have enacted measures punishing companies operating in certain sectors of its economy, directing public pension funds with billions of dollars in assets to divest from the firms and sometimes barring them from public contracts. In more than half those states, the restrictions expire only if Iran is no longer designated to be supporting terrorism or if all U.S. federal sanctions against Iran are lifted—unlikely outcomes even in the case of a final nuclear accord. Two states, Kansas and Mississippi, are even considering new sanctions targeting the country. The prospect of unwavering sanctions at the state level, or new ones, just as the federal government reaches a landmark agreement with Iran risks widening a divide between states and the federal government on a crucial foreign policy issue."

[CN: Misogyny] In somewhat good news: "Chinese police have freed three women's rights activists who were held for more than a month, in a case that sparked an international outcry. A lawyer for Wei Tingting, Wang Man and Zheng Churan said they were not charged but their release was conditional. The women, who were detained shortly before International Women's Day on 8 March, had planned protests against sexual harassment on public transport. The fate of two other women arrested at the same time is not yet clear." Let us hope the conditions are lifted and that the other two women are promptly released.

I did not realize this: "This would make Hillary's campaign the first major presidential campaign ever to make combating climate change a central issue."

[CN: Carcerality] I ♥ John Legend: "John Legend has launched a campaign to end mass incarceration. The Grammy-winning singer announced the multiyear initiative, FREE AMERICA, on Monday. He will visit and perform at a correctional facility on Thursday in Austin, Texas, where he also will be part of a press conference with state legislators to discuss Texas' criminal justice system. 'We have a serious problem with incarceration in this country,' Legend said in an interview. 'It's destroying families, it's destroying communities and we're the most incarcerated country in the world, and when you look deeper and look at the reasons we got to this place, we as a society made some choices politically and legislatively, culturally to deal with poverty, deal with mental illness in a certain way and that way usually involves using incarceration.'"

Neat! "For the first time, scientists believe they have evidence of liquid water on Mars. It's only a tiny bit, and only in certain seasons, but this salty water makes the hunt for past life on Mars all the more exciting."

[CN: Body policing] Pink responds to body policers in a terrific way: "I can see that some of you are concerned about me from your comments about my weight. You're referring to the pictures of me from last night's cancer benefit that I attended to support my dear friend Dr. Maggie DiNome. She was given the Duke Award for her tireless efforts and stellar contributions to the eradication of cancer. Unfortunately, my weight seems much more important to some of you. While I admit that the dress didn't photograph as well as it did in my kitchen, I will also admit that I felt very pretty. In fact, I feel beautiful. So, my good and concerned peoples, please don't worry about my. I'm not worried about me. And I'm not worried about you either:)…I am perfectly fine, perfectly happy, and my healthy, voluptuous and crazy strong body is having some much deserved time off. Thanks for your concern. Love, cheesecake." My favorite part is: "And I'm not worried about you either." Perfect.

[CN: Hostility to consent; white privilege] Madonna planted a nonconsensual kiss on Drake last night at Coachella, and of course the conversation has largely centered around how she's "old" and "gross," rather than the fact that she sexualized a black man without his consent.

[CN: Animal neglect] Kids today: "Texas Teenagers Save the Life of an Abandoned, Dying Dog." Blub.

And finally! FROLICKING PIGLETS! True Fact: Frolicking makes piglets soooo hungry!

Open Wide...

Shut Up!

The Worst Idea

[Content Note: Body policing; misogyny; heterocentrism; objectification; evo psych; fat hatred.]

Yesterday, the Telegraph published a gross piece of linkbait [DoNotLink used] titled "'Schoolboys should tell girls their idea of a perfect woman,' says expert." It begins thus:

Teachers should encourage boys to tell girls their idea of a perfect woman in attempt to quell body image issues, a renowned child health expert has said ahead of a teachers conference on Wednesday.

To fight a "neurosis" amongst school girls on body fat, teachers should get boys to tell girls what they find attractive, including other qualities beyond pure looks, said Aric Sigman, author of "The Body Wars: why body dissatisfaction is at epidemic proportions."

He said it was important that teachers picked boys from an older year group because girls look up to them and they are not direct peers so it would be easier to talk about body image issues.

"It would be helpful for them to explain that what they find attractive is not just physical qualities but also qualities like caring, the sound of a girl's voice and her body language."

...More importantly, Dr Sigman said, boys should tell girls "that there are women who appear model-perfect visually but are just not sexy and there are girls who do not seem model material but are very attractive."

Dr Sigman also said the subject of female body dissatisfaction has been exclusively dominated by women so far and that it was time for men fight political correctness and get involved.

There ain't enough fuck you in the entire world for this garbage.

David Perry offers a good response to the article, in which he notes that the good doctor's idea "reinforces the patriarchal notion that what girls should be concerned about is to what extent they are or are not attractive to boys. Attractiveness remains the key arbiter of personal worth. Instead, the way to fight body image issues is to de-legitimize the male gaze as the arbiter of what is and is not 'good.'"

Absolutely. And this, with its admonition that men must take charge and insert themselves into body acceptance work, does the precise opposite of de-legitimizing the male gaze. Instead, it seeks to reify the male gaze as the most important arbiter of female body acceptability.

And this heterocentrist, misogynist, objectifying proposal presumes, once again, that there is a universal—or at most a very limited spectrum—of appropriate, attractive, sexy female body types among men.

This is not true, despite the strong cultural disincentives against male attraction to fat female bodies, the harsh judgment and penalties faced by men with fat female partners, and the pathologization of men who attracted to fat women.

Iain and I are currently fascinated by a show airing on FYI called "Marriage at First Sight," in which single (straight) people participate in a social experiment in which they're matched by relationship experts in an arranged marriage. (This show deserves a whole post of its own, at some point.) A new season just started, and lots of potential participants were interviewed, many of whom were accompanied by family members and/or friends, enlisted to project the appropriate amount of scandalized horror at the very prospect.

One thin white man, who was ultimately not picked as one of the to-be spouses, was interviewed with his very thin white mother sitting beside him. He was asked what sort of body type he preferred, and he responded by saying he liked hourglass and pear shapes. "Pear shape?!" his mother exclaimed, horrified. "Do you know what that means?" He replied, looking suddenly apologetic and embarrassed, that he did. "You don't want a pear-shape," his mother instructed him. "A nice slim girl would be perfect for you."

Even the hint that he might be attracted to fat women immediately resulted in auditing of his preferences and shaming.

So, what is the place for a young man with that sort of preference in the good doctor's proposed program, which is explicitly designed to tell girls that they are allowed to have "some fat," but obviously not too much eww gross yuck. What is the place for a fat girl who is found attractive by men whose preferences exist outside of the limited spectrum of acceptability being defined?

Again, attraction should never, ever, be used as the model of a human being's worth in the first place. But in addition to that fuckery, this program also more deeply entrenches the pernicious idea that there is essentially a universal human spectrum of attraction, which underwrites the pathologization of deviant bodies and transgressive attraction to those bodies.

That ain't helping anybody. Even the mere proposal should be treated with utter contempt.

Open Wide...

Shut Up!

In the News

Here is some stuff in the news today...

[Content Note: Terrorism; death; abduction; misogyny] Today, a teenage girl with a bomb strapped to her blew up a crowded bus station in Damaturu, Nigeria, killing at least 15 people and wounding more than 50 others. "No one claimed responsibility for the bombing in Potiskum but the main suspect is likely to be group Boko Haram... Witness Musa Ayuba, who was knocked over by the force of the blast, said the girl arrived at the Tashan Dan Borno bus station in a rickshaw and was trying to board a bus when she detonated the bomb." This is "the second such attack there this week. ...On Sunday, a girl with explosives strapped to her killed five people and wounded dozens outside a market in Potiskum." Both girls are being commonly being called "suicide bombers," which suggests consensual participation in the terrorist acts. But: "The use of female suicide bombers has become a common tactic of Boko Haram since last year as the group expanded territory and became stronger and more deadly." Also since they abducted hundreds of girls? I strongly suspect and fear and grieve that these girls are not willing volunteers in these missions.

[CN: Sexual harassment] Rajendra Pachauri, chair of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, has stepped down from his position, effective immediately, after a female colleague alleged that he sexually harassed her. "Last week, a 29-year-old researcher accused the 74-year-old Pachauri of making physical advances and sending lewd text messages and e-mails, according to a copy of the complaint and her lawyer." And get this shit: "It's 'understandable' that Pachauri resigned while he faces 'allegations against him in India. The allegations are unrelated to his post as chair of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change,' Bob Ward, policy director at the Grantham Research Institute on Climate Change and the Environment at the London School of Economics, said by e-mail." Oh. They're unrelated. So it doesn't matter if the chair of an international science organization sexually harasses his colleagues, as long as he doesn't do it on that particular job? Cool.

[CN: Police brutality; torture] Spencer Ackerman continues his reporting on the "Chicago police practices that echo the much-criticized detention abuses of the US war on terrorism": "The Chicago police department operates an off-the-books interrogation compound, rendering Americans unable to be found by family or attorneys while locked inside what lawyers say is the domestic equivalent of a CIA black site."

[CN: Misogynoir; racism; body policing] On the Oscar edition of Fashion Police, a show that should immediately be put into a cannon and fired directly into the sun, Giuliana Rancic made [video may autoplay] shitty, implicitly racist comments about Zendaya's locced hair. And Zendaya had plenty to say about that. Right on. (If you can't view/read the image, Bedhead has a transcript here.)

[CN: Anti-immigrant sentiment] After US District Judge Andrew Hanen "temporarily blocked" President Obama's executive action on immigration, the Justice Department vowed to appeal, and, yesterday, the Justice Department asked Judge Hanen to lift the temporary hold.

Meanwhile, a related showdown in Congress threatens to suspend funding for the Department of Homeland Security, because Republicans are not budging, even though Obama's above-referenced executive action which was the ostensible reason for their petulance has been put on hold. The editors of the Washington Post write: "Why not treat the policy issue as moot, which it is for the time being, and keep funds flowing? The answer, it seems, is that the fervor of Republican partisanship, especially in the House, is immune to logic beyond an insistence on victory at any cost—the cost in this case being the imminent shutdown of a critical chunk of the federal government." Yup.

[CN: Classism] Austin, Texas, is the most economically segregated city in America, based on research that combines "measures of segregation by income with ones tied to educational level and to the type of job a person has, and created an index of overall economic segregation in hundreds of U.S. metro areas." The researchers found: "People with higher educational credentials tend to cluster, especially in densely populated metro areas, and members of the 'creative class' tend to self-segregate into concentrated neighborhoods while people who work in service industries aren't able to do the same and end up scattered. Residential segregation is therefore driven primarily by the choices that wealthier, higher-earning people make about where it would be cool to live." Of course. Call it hipster segregation.

I guess it's only called "lying" when one of the hoi polloi does it: "Veterans Affairs Secretary Robert McDonald apologized today for mistakenly saying in a videotaped exchange with a homeless man that he had served in the special forces, though his service was entirely with the 82nd Airborne Division. 'Secretary McDonald has apologized for the misstatement and noted that he never intended to misrepresent his military service,' a White House officials told ABC News."

[CN: Animal endangerment] And finally! Tiny sweaters for tiny penguins! Which is the most adorable thing humans have ever had to do for animals because we are terrible and destroying their environment.

Open Wide...

Shut Up!

These Are Considered Acceptable Things to Say About Fat People

[Content Note: Fat hatred; body policing; shaming; health concern trolling; disordered eating.]

I read a lot of rank fat hatred every day, whether it's in my inbox or a published article in the media. And so it's really saying something when I note that this is one of the most vicious pieces of vile fat hatred that I have ever read.

The piece is titled: "Why are today's young women so unashamed about being fat? Horrified by the rolls of flesh she's witnessed on show this summer, LINDA KELSEY takes no prisoners."

The author, Linda Kelsey, is a thin white woman who proclaims: "I am unapologetically fattist." And although she does an extraordinary amount of remote diagnosis, asserting that all fat people are unhealthy, she is honest enough to also admit she's straight-up hostile toward fat people because "it's unattractive."

She spends an enormous (see what I did there?) amount of time detailing all the young women who have offended her delicate aesthetic sensibilities by forcing her to view their fat flesh with revealing clothing, and, even worse, with their disgusting attitudes that seem to suggest they think they have some kind of right to be fat in public. OH THE HORROR.

I could spend the next twelve hours of my life deconstructing every single thing wrong with this contemptible heap of bigtory, but: 1. Fuck giving this haughty shitlord that much of my energy; and 2. I've already spent a lot of time writing refutations to the onslaught of mendacious, judgmental, indecent garbage that Kelsey peddles here as if they're new ideas and she's the fucking Magellan of edgy, radical fat-hatred.

I will, however, note with no small amount of irony the final line of her piece, which she clearly believes is a devastating blow: "One way to start [tackling fat for the problem that it is] might be by calling a fat girl a fat girl. No apology required."

I've got news for you, Kelsey: I am a fat girl who calls myself a fat girl. No apology required. And, let's be honest, you and I: That's exactly the source of your ire—that you're losing the capacity to use "fat" as an insult anymore, against these uppity fat girls who refuse to be ashamed of our bodies.

Who think we aren't less than you, just because you're thin.

Whoooooooops. Looks like with that thin privilege eroding, you might have to resort to being a decent person. Good luck.

[H/T to Shaker IndyM.]

Open Wide...

Shut Up!

Fat and the Bikini Body Meme

[Content Note: Fat hatred; body policing.]

It's also that time of year where a popular meme starts showing up on social media. It tends to feature silhouettes of what are meant to be read as female bodies, including or sometimes exclusively very fat bodies, and text that is some variation on: "How to Get a Bikini Body: Step 1: Buy a bikini. Step 2: Put it on your body."

Let me first say, once again, that fat women are not a monolith, and different fat women will have different reactions to this meme. I don't purport to speak for all fat women, some of whom like this meme very much, and I am not seeking to police or criticize their individual reactions to it.

I do, however, want to do some awareness-raising on behalf of the fat women who aren't so keen on the meme, because I know there are a lot of thin and in-betweenie women who spend time in this space who want to do good fat ally work and may not have considered some of the reasons not all fat women find it a strictly positive or supportive message.

So, here are a couple of things to consider before you share this image under the auspices of being a fat ally (or even as a fat person):

1. Not all fat women can buy a bikini. That's not just a consideration of financial realities, which are always at issue in consumerist memes, but it's also a reflection of the fact that even off-the-rack (or off-the-website) "plus-size" bikinis have a finite size range.

There are sites who will custom-make bikinis for women of any size based on their individual measurements, but that is, of course, a costly option. And naturally there are women who are skilled enough to make their own bikinis, but that is not an option for anyone who lacks those talents.

Casually suggesting that all fat women can just go "buy a bikini," without any acknowledgment of the fact that purchasing a bikini in one's size might not be an option, especially for very fat women, is not supportive. It also reinforces the idea that there's an "acceptable" level of fatness which tops out at the maximum size of most "plus-size" fashion lines, and anyone whose body exceeds those standard sizes is thus "unacceptably" fat.

2. Putting a bikini on one's fat body is not just about the physical act of getting into a swimsuit. There are all kinds of cultural disincentives to be a fat woman in a bikini in public, and we are obliged to navigate them no matter how much we might love our own bodies.

There is a vast difference in being a woman who has insecurities about a body in which she sees imperfections but is broadly culturally acceptable, and a woman who has insecurities about a body that significantly deviates from what is considered culturally acceptable. That is not to diminish, at all, the seriousness of body insecurities no matter what one's size. It is merely to observe that even if fat women get okay with their own bodies, there is not an existing cultural space in which we are accepted.

There's no equivalent for fat women to the narrative "we all have flaws!" No deviation from some impossible ideal should ever regarded as a "flaw," anyway, but fat is not regarded as a mere flaw.

And we are not, outside fat acceptance spaces, celebrated for a willingness to show our bodies "despite" their imperfections. We are not considered brave. We are harassed, shamed, policed, threatened, attacked.

The thing about "love your body" campaigns for my fat self is that I can love my body all the fuck I want, but the bigger problem for me is other people hating my body.

It's so much more complicated than just putting on a bikini, for lots of fat women. We need to respect and recognize that.

* * *

This isn't a comprehensive list of potential objections. I hope if fat women share in comments any additional concerns they may have with the meme, not-fat women will listen to their perspectives.

Open Wide...

Shut Up!

In the News

Here is some stuff in the news today...

[Content Note: Anti-choice terrorism] New Hampshire Governor Maggie Hassan is expected to sign a bill passed by the state senate "to create a 25-foot buffer zone around clinics that provide abortion services. SB 319 was filed in response to over 60 complaints by patients of Planned Parenthood of Manchester since the start of 2013. The complaints detailed verbal harassment, intimidation, and passage-blocking by anti-choice protesters. It had largely bipartisan support when it was introduced." GOOD. Although 25 feet is hardly enough.

[CN: Carcerality; abuse] A whistleblower raises the red flag on inadequate healthcare in Arizona's prisons, and an investigation finds "dozens of cases of neglect in Arizona'€™s privatized prison health care system. ...Since the state privatized its prison health care, medical spending in prisons dropped by $30 million and staffing levels plummeted, according to an October report from the American Friends Services Committee, a Quaker social justice organization. It also found a sharp spike in the number of inmate deaths. In the first eight months of 2013, 50 people died in Arizona Department of Corrections custody, compared with 37 deaths in the previous two years combined."

[CN: Carcerality; coercion; racism; class warfare] Manhattan Federal Judge Jed Rakoff makes the case that harsh mandatory minimum sentences are creating a system in which innocent people take plea deals just to avoid long sentences. Naturally, "many federal defendants face the same problem, with poor black and Hispanic defendants bearing the brunt of it," and, notes David Patton, executive director at the Federal Defenders of New York, which provides lawyers for defendants who can't afford to hire their own, "the charges that carry mandatory minimums tend to be the type that involve poor people: drug, firearms cases. These are where you have the most coercive situations."

[CN: Misogyny; objectification; hostility to consent] Men Who Read Magazines That Objectify Women Are Less Likely to Respect Sexual Boundaries: "The researchers point out it's certainly possible that guys who already have 'dismissive' attitudes toward women are drawn to reading magazines that objectify women. But they also suggest that the media can contribute to larger cultural attitudes about sexual relationships." Culture: This is how the fuck it works.

[CN: Misogyny; body shaming] A Utah high school arbitrarily edited female students' yearbook photos in order to make them more "modest." Because of course they did.

[CN: Discussion of disease] So, apparently a bunch of dudes have started drinking breast milk, because they believe it's like the best energy drink ever. Jan Barger, a lactation consultant, is doubtful: "Since it's designed to feed infants, she pointed out, it has a tenth of the nutrients a 200-pound man would need. When I mentioned Anthony's breast-milk rationale, she laughed. 'Well,' she said. 'We can talk ourselves into just about anything!'"

LeVar Burton launched a Kickstarter to raise funds to bring back Reading Rainbow, and they raised over $1 million in a single day! Here is a video of LeVar Burton watching the donations hit $1 million, and it might make you cry! If you are anything like me!

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It's Okay to Cry

[Content Note: Fat hatred; body policing.]

Everyone in the multiverse (and thanks to each and every one of you!) has asked me if I've seen this tweet from Gabby Sidibe, responding to people fat-shaming her on the night of the Golden Globes:

I saw it care of my friend Elle soon after Sidibe had tweeted it, and my thoughts were, in order:

1. LOL! I love her!

2. I love recalling all the nasty critics who said she'd never have a career after Precious and thinking about what awful specimens they are. The best revenge is living well indeed.

3. I can't wait to see a bunch of thin people who don't really give a fuck about the harm fat hatred causes fat people reposting this.

Responses to fat hatred like this one are like catnip to people who want to give the illusion of agreeing that fat hatred is A Terrible Thing, but never actually expend any effort on fat advocacy. They love evidence of fat people who don't care, who rise above fat hatred. It's a consoling thought that victimization is down to personal choice and the will to overcome. Fat bootstraps.

That tweet is awesome. Full stop. And it is also something more.

#JK. Just kidding.

Gabby Sidibe, even in her private jet on her way to her dream job, knows that a fat woman can't be too serious about defending herself against fat hatred. Even as she conveys that she doesn't care, she is caring. She is aware that to be unyieldingly strident in rejecting fat hatred is to be marked as angry, oversensitive, unlovable.

To be marked as vulnerable. To show that it's gotten to her.

#JK.

I don't know how Sidibe was feeling in that moment, although I have every reason to believe that she really didn't give a flying fuck what people were saying about her. Survival as a fat woman of color depends on nurturing some ability to process a lot of this shit in a way that it passes through without lasting harm.

I am not remotely a subscriber to the belief that a person who sniffs haughtily in the direction of hatred is masking a secret pain. Sometimes, there is truly nothing to express but contempt.

But I wonder how many thin people who have enthusiastically shared this tweet understand that, even if Sidibe was breathing fire with confident disdain in this moment, she might not feel that way in every moment.

Which matters at least as much as one killer tweet.

And I wonder how many thin people understand the enormous pressure on visible fat women to convey strength and tenacity and resiliency; to model an impervious armor of deflective wit.

And I wonder if they understand how it's so much easier to conform to the expectation of brash indifference to the hatred constantly aimed in our direction than it is to talk about how much it can hurt.

Hurt to admit it, and hurt to have thin people respond with pity disguised as compassion. Who seek to cheer and console us, because they cannot abide the discomfort our pain brings them. Who elide our reality that, even though we may be writing about harm this day, we're writing about something that happens every day. Who don't understand: I'm not in a funk—this is my life, and sometimes it's hard.

#JK.

I don't know if Gabby Sidibe has ever cried because of fat hatred, and I wouldn't presume to speak for her.

I have cried.

There are days when I am breathing fire with confident disdain, and there are days when I cry. Sometimes those days are the same day.

It's okay that Gabby Sidibe wasn't crying. And it would have been okay if she had been.

But I suspect if she said, "This fat hatred hurts. I am crying." that tweet would not have gone 'round the world. Because we are prepared to deal with evidence of fat people not being harmed by hatred, and not with evidence of fat people being harmed by it.

Which puts fat women especially in a position where the only acceptable response to hatred is to say it doesn't matter.

#JK.

Gabby Sidibe's tweet was important and empowering to me as a fat woman. I want thin people who want to act as my ally to understand that her tweet is, genuinely and profoundly, awesome. But it also doesn't exist in a vacuum.

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Case in Point

[Content Note: Fat hatred.]

In case you needed yet another example of how fat hatred is, in fact, not about "health," the way that fat-hating body policers constantly assert that it is, but is instead about aesthetics, here is an actual headline at NBC: "Your spin class addiction may be the reason you're gaining weight."

Celebrity trainer Tracy Anderson recently told Redbook magazine that those trendy, expensive spinning classes can actually make you gain weight -- particularly in your thighs, and particularly if all you're doing for exercise is spinning.

That's the opening paragraph. Later, we get:

Spin class can indeed add bulk to your thighs – but keep in mind that it's muscle, of course, not fat.

Keep that in mind. But also remember that no one likes ladies with—gasp!—BULKY THIGHS. Oh the humanity.

Make sure to diversify your workout, so your healthfulness doesn't come at the cost of an aesthetically displeasing body, ladies.

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