D.H. Peligro: "Purple Haze"
Fatsronauts 101
Fatsronauts 101 is a series in which I address assumptions and stereotypes about fat people that treat us as a monolith and are used to dehumanize and marginalize us. If there is a stereotype you'd like me to address, email me.
[Content Note: Fat bias; discussion of disordered eating.]
#13: Fat people looooooooooove Twinkies!
This is closely related to Parts One and Four, but, beyond the notions that all fat people consistently "overeat" to get fat and all fat people routinely binge on massive amounts of food, there lies another myth that all fat people love and consume copious amounts of junk food specifically.
[NB: Although I'm using the commonly understood phrase "junk food" here to refer to foods with little nutritional value, it is not an untroubled term, as, within our current food system, cheap high-calorie foods are of value, i.e. not "junk," to poor children in particular.]
Because Hostess has been in the news lately, there has been a lot of anti-fat humor either suggesting that fat people are devastated by the news, or that fat people are responsible because they weren't eating enough Twinkies—long the iconic emblem of fat-making junk foods.
In either case, the implications are that only fat people consume junk food, and that all fat people consume junk food.
These assertions really ought to be self-evidently false, but nope! Even thin people who talk about loving Twinkies in one breath will make a joke in the next about how only fatties eat Twinkies.
So, let me just say flatly: Not only fat people consume junk food. Not all fat people consume junk food. The end.
But of course that's not really the end, because the real issue hidden behind this particular flavor of anti-fat humor (bullying) is some acknowledgment that "everyone" loves Twinkies, but it's different when fat people love them.
This is one of the most ubiquitous, insidious, casual ways that fat people are Othered: The tacit recognition that, sure, thin people eat junk food, too, but fat people looooooooooove it.
That when thin people eat a Twinkie, it's just a Twinkie, but when fat people eat a Twinkie, it's a symbol of our gluttony, our lack of self-control, our grotesque moral turpitude.
That when thin people eat a Twinkie, it's "naughty," but when fat people eat a Twinkie, it's gross. We're gross.
In both cases, eating junk food is absurdly assigned a moral component (which is itself a whole other post), but when a thin person eats a Twinkie, it's bad behavior, and when a fat person eats a Twinkie, it's being a bad person.
How could you? Don't you know that putting that stuff in your face is what's making you fat? And the rest of us have to LOOK AT YOU.
Because if we had any decency, we wouldn't be all fat in thin people's faces.
The ardent passion for junk food that fat people are alleged to have is shorthand for that repulsive indifference to polluting the world with our hideous bodies. We don't eat Twinkies. We devour them. Inhale them. Gobble them. Shove them in our fat faces.
Because we looooooooooove them. We can't get enough of them.
Remember that the next time someone tells you they food police fat people, or make "innocent jokes" about fat people loving Twinkies, because they're concerned about fatties' health. Remember what it means to imply that only fat people eat junk food, that all fat people eat junk food. Remember what's the real intent behind erasing the existence of fat people who don't eat junk food, and the thin people who do.
Remember it all the next time some thin jokester with hir great jokes and concern trolling about fatties' food choices insists it isn't about aesthetics.
Sure it isn't.
-------------------------
Previously:
#12: Fat people don't like/want to see media representations of themselves.
#11: No one wants to be fat.
#10: Fat people need you to intervene in their lives.
#9: Fat people don't know how they look.
#8: Fat people don't deserve anything nice.
#7: Fat people are permission slips for thin people to eat what they want.
#6: Any fat person eating a salad or exercising is trying to lose weight.
#5: Fat is axiomatically ugly.
#4: Fat people eat enormous amounts of food.
#3: Fat people are jolly/mean, and fat people are shy/loud.
#2: I can tell how someone eats all the time, because of how they eat around me.
#1: Everyone who is fat is fat for the same reason.
Top Five
Here is your topic: Top Five Favorite YA Novels. Go!
Please feel welcome to share stories about why your Top Five picks are what they are, though a straight-up list is fine, too. Please refrain from negatively auditing other people's lists, because judgment discourages participation.
In The News
[Content note: Homophobia, transphobia, war]
News For Your Tuesday News Hole:
The Associated Press has banned its journalists from using words like "homophobia" and "transphobia". The AP prefers "something more neutral." Okay.
Gun dorms attract zero students at University of Colorado's campuses.
Former Florida governor Jeb Bush is now a potential 2016 presidential contender. Good lord.
Why I hate sports, part 345,094.
This is what happens when a lion steals your camera.
Also: Polar bears frolicking in fresh snow.
Coldplay announced it's taking a three-year break. Viva la Sad Face.
Just FYI: I never did get a review copy of the new Glenn Beck novel. Sad face. But here's a nifty trailer for the book.
In the 1950s, the U.S. considered detonating an atom bomb on the moon as a display of America's Cold War muscle. Dang.
\m/ This is basically just a great sweater. \m/
Quote of the Day
"Now you, as a commuter, will pick. You can either drive to work or you can take public transportation... Public transportation is different from driving to work. You will make that choice."—Chicago Mayor Rahm Emanuel, on the Chicago Transit Authority's proposed 16% increase "to the cost of a 30-day pass and higher jumps for one-day, three-day, and seven-day passes."
Because apparently the Mayor is under the impression that everyone in Chicago owns a car.
Fun Fact! Not everyone in Chicago owns a car.
Fun Fact! Many of the people who don't own cars cannot afford to own a car.
Fun Fact! For residents of Chicago who cannot afford to own a car, public transportation is the most cost-effective way to get around the city, and CTA passes are the most cost-effective way of using public transportation.
Basic Math! If you are poor, it is better to purchase a pass of some description than individual fares.
Fun Fact! Individual fares are not being hiked.
So, here's the deal: If you are the sort of person who has the disposable income to buy a car in a city where car ownership is not generally a requirement of daily life the way it is in much of suburban and exurban America, you are also the sort of person who can afford taxis, and Zipcars, and individual CTA fares. Thus, this increase in the cost of public transportation will not affect you at all.
If, however, you are the sort of person who does not have the disposable income to buy a car—which, by the way, probably means you're living in a part of the city to which CTA service has been cut or was never very good in the first place, making a car more useful to you than someone living in, say, Lincoln Park—you are also the sort of person who can't easily afford taxis, or Zipcars, and who maybe has to watch every dollar, every quarter, every penny, so you opt for CTA passes, which make every ride cheaper than if you paid individual fares.
And if you're really poor, then you might only be able to scrape together the money for a weekly pass, which is increasing by 22%, or a three-day pass, which is increasing by 43%, or a one-day pass, which is increasing to $10 from $5.75—an increase of 74%.
Thus, if you are one of the people who most needs affordable access to public transportation, you will be shouldering the biggest burden of keeping base rates low for people who don't need the discount that passes convey, for people who can afford a monthly pass without breaking a sweat.
And if you don't like that, well, according to Mayor Emanuel, you can just drive your car to work.
Because apparently the Mayor is under the impression that everyone in Chicago has a job, too.
Tomato Tomahto
[Content Note: Racism.]
So Prominent conservative thinker [sic] Bruce Bartlett, who made a decades-long career out of being a rightwing ideologue, has written a long piece about how he realized awhile ago that US conservatives were closing themselves off from facts that challenged their beliefs and was persona non grataed for sounding the alarm.
Krugman calls Bartlett a mensch for his confession. Or whatever it is.
I don't disagree with Krugman very often, but I'm not sure I agree that it's time to "hail Bruce Bartlett" for showing evidence of the very insularity he's condemning, since, not for nothing, every sentient liberal I know has been making the same observation for a decade.
I mean, good job for catching up, Bruce Bartlett! Yay for you!
But I'm not exactly ready to genuflect in awed reverence to a guy who, in a piece bemoaning conservative detachment from the reality-based community, writes, as evidence of his own alleged connection to reasonable thinking:
Seeing the demographic trends toward an increasingly nonwhite electorate, which were obvious in easily available census projections, I decided to write a book about how Republicans could deal with it. I concluded that the anti-immigrant attitude among the Republican base was too severe for the party to reach out meaningfully to the fast-growing Latino community. Recall that Bush's proposal for immigration reform was soundly rejected by his own party.It's hard to believe such a great book could fail! Oh well, I'm sure it was definitely because Obama won the Iowa caucuses and not because even newborn kittens can intuit that black USians would rightfully hold in contempt a condescending white paragon of arrogance who believes people of color need their histories explained to them by white conservative men.
If Republicans had no hope of attracting Latino votes, what other nonwhite group could they attract? Maybe the time had come for them to make a major play for the black vote...
The best way to get Republicans to read a book about reaching out for the black vote, I thought, was to detail the Democratic Party's long history of maltreatment of blacks. After all, the party was based in the South for 100 years after the war, and all of the ugly racism we associate with that region was enacted and enforced by Democratic politicians. I was surprised that such a book didn't already exist.
I thought knowing the Democratic Party's pre-1964 history of racism, which is indisputable, would give Republicans a story to tell when they went before black groups to solicit votes. I thought it would also make Republicans more sympathetic to the problems of the black community, many of which are historical in their origins. Analyses by economists and sociologists show that historical racism still holds back African-Americans even though it has diminished radically since the 1960s.
So I wrote Wrong on Race: The Democratic Party's Buried Past. Unfortunately, it was published the day Barack Obama won the Iowa caucuses.
...After the failure of my race book, I turned my attention again to economics.
Maybe it's okay if we don't call Bartlett a fucking hero for stating the manifestly obvious and being only slightly less up his own ignorant ass than the rest of his ideological compatriots.
In Which Gamer Dudes Again Justify Women Speaking Out About Misogyny in Gaming
[Content Note: Misogyny; rape culture; homophobia; gender essentialism.]
At Kotaku, Luke Plunkett compiles some of the tweets from women working in gaming—and male allies and/or colleagues—sharing stories about misogynist disincentives against female participation in the industry via the hashtag #1reasonwhy.
Even knowing this reality, even having personally experienced, on multiple occasions (*cough* Fat Princess *cough*), the wrath of the Gamer Dudes Whose Entire Identities Are Wrapped Up in a Particular Rapey Misogynist Brand of Gaming Culture, it is moving and powerful to see women documenting what it's like to try to navigate careers in gaming.
These are brave and amazing women, to blaze those trails and to publicly share their experiences knowing what the response will be.
The first comment at Kotaku, care of commenter Marco Cattorini:
So what?I believe I have bingo.
It's not like there aren't situations where the opposite isn't true.
There are firms where women have the upper hand.
It's kinda normal.
Videogames have always been "male territory" like the fashion industry is generally populated by women (or "feminine men" if you know what I mean).
Men are different from women (or "women are different from men" if that's less sexist), and thus like different things. With due exceptions, of course, but we're not talking about exceptions here.
Call me politically incorrect if you must, but these are the facts.
The common theme in the #1reasonwhy hashtag is not listening to and not respecting women. Women document this dynamic. Some notable percentage of male commenters refuse to listen to and insistently disrespect those women.
The point. You are proving it.
[H/T to Iain. Related Reading: My Point, Here It Is.]
Welp, Pack It Up. We're Done Here.
France's former first lady Carla Bruni-Sarkozy says there's no need for feminism anymore.
"There's no need to be feminist in my generation," she said in an interview with the French edition of Vogue for its December issue.Ah, the old feminists are anti-family chestnut! Sure. No feminists have babies ever. That much is obvious and definitely true. (Nope.)
This view comes seemingly at odds with her image as an independent woman who forged careers in both fashion and music before settling down with her husband Nicolas Sarkozy.
Now she says she is happy at home with her two children, baby girl Giulia, and son Aurelian, telling Vogue, "There are pioneers who opened the breach. I'm not at all an active feminist. On the contrary, I'm a bourgeois. I love family life, I love doing the same thing every day."
I'm not sure, aside from "I don't understand feminism," what Bruni-Sarkozy is trying to say here, but I'm pretty sure she's saying she's too privileged to need feminism.
Okay. Well, good luck with that.
Thing is, there are still women without her privileges—even women in her generation—who still need feminism. I'm one of those women. And I find it pretty contemptible when women with the privileges of Bruni-Sarkozy demean the very activism that has afforded them access to the public platform on which they bask in the luxury of their disdain.
Question of the Day
What's the last thing that happened to you that restored your faith in humanity, as the saying goes, at least temporarily?
Photo of the Day
From the Telegraph's Pictures of the Day for 23 November 2012: An emperor penguin chick peers out from under [hir parent] in Snow Hill Island, Antarctica. [Thorsten Milse/Robert Harding/Barcroft Media]"Hello, world! Here I am!"
Good News, Everyone!
Our favorite Republican also-ran Rick Santorum says he's "open" to another presidential run in 2016:
"I'm open to it, yeah," Santorum replied. "I think there's a fight right now as to what the soul of the Republican party's going to be and the conservative movement, and we have something to say about that. I think from our battle, we're not going to leave the field."Welp, those definitely sound like some very nonsensical words from the mouth of Rick Santorum about running for president again!
In the meantime:
Santorum said he will be working with his organization, Patriot Voices, over the next couple of years. "We're going to talk about all of the issues with an emphasis on cultural issues," he said.That sounds great! Good luck with all your d-bagging, Rick Santorum!
Lean on Me
[Content Note: Pet loss.]
I love this piece by Kat Kinsman about loving and losing her dog so much. Everything about the way it is written is so lovely, so heartbreakingly joyful and sad.
And I am very fond of, and very much in agreement with, her notion that pets are part of a family, and don't have to be viewed as surrogate children to hold that place.
After all, my friends with children consider their pets part of their families, too. Crucially, so do their children.
I've always found it rather terrible that people who fiercely love their pets are considered a little strange or sad or pitiable in some way. With few exceptions, the people I've known who are profoundly kind to animals are also those most profoundly kind to other people.
The Walking Thread
This show is delightful.
(Spoilers are annoying the shit out of everyone herein. Content Note: Rape culture.)
When last we left our intrepid gangs of Grimeses, Grimes Gang 2.0 had captured Glenn and Maggie, and Grimes Gang 1.0 were about to start fixing to go get them. Spoiler Alert: When we once again leave our intrepid gangs of Grimeses, Grimes Gang 2.0 still have Glenn and Maggie, and Grimes Game 1.0 are fixing to go get them! Because this show makes glaciers look swift. Or some other metaphor not confounded by climate change.
"Don't bother me with your climate change hokum when I've got a zombiepocalypse to save the world from! Or at least my dwindling band of unfathomably faithful!"—Rick Grimes, probably.
Except he'd say "walkerpocalypse," because ugh this show.
Anyhoo. Grimes Gang 1.0 is still holed up in prison, and by that I mean the literal prison and the prisons of their own makings, and hey I heard you lost the anchor for your imaginary but very large yacht—please have this bit of symbolism from The Walking Dead which should keep it safely docked in Fuckthisshow Harbor FOREVER.
They invite Michonne in to hang out with them, by which I mean that Grimes and his mini-patriarch in training kill a bunch of zombies to save her, because she ran out of her endless toughness WHAT A COINCIDENCE right outside the gates of White Patriarch Hell. Immediately, Grimes starts yelling at her and LITERALLY TORTURING HER by jabbing her gunshot wound so she'll tell them where Glenn and Maggie are. Welcome to Grimes Gang 1.0, Michonne!
Carl the Hat and Grimes have a conversation about how Carl the Hat wants to name his baby sister Judith after his third-grade teacher, and if I didn't hate this garbage show with the fiery passion of ten thousand suns, I might find it slightly adorable or even sort of moving in the way it underscores in an atypically gentle way how Carl is still a child whose frame of reference doesn't extend beyond his school teachers. But OH WELL all I can see is some d-bag talking to his annoying kid because I am watching it through the GrimesPrism 2000.
Speaking of that baby, it's a good thing Carol lived so she can take care of the baby while the baby's father farts around in Unpleasantville.
Woman's work, bitchez.
So Grimes and Michonne and Daryl and the
MEANWHILE! In Unpleasantville, Andrea is very sexy and likes having sex with Governor Niam Leeson and slithers around and purrs like a sexy cat just to let us know what a great and sexy lover he is during their sexytimes. Great. Who cares. It's a good thing I automatically barf every time I see Grimes' face at the beginning of every episode, or I wouldn't have the luxury of indifference at this spectacle of sexytime horrors.
Governor Niam Leeson asks her to go help Melvin Nerdly with a zombie science fair project, and she does, and it makes for a super boring arc about how zombieitis devours its victims' humanity in its entirety, which, no doy, we already knew, and we don't give a flying fuck about Melvin Nerdly so we have no investment or interest in his awakening to this dumbola fact that we've known since Season One.
The writers pulled the same shit last week with Michonne's discovery that being covered in zombie guts makes zombies pass you by. That scene would have had more (any) impact if Grimes hadn't made the same discovery in like episode two of the series. And we care even less about Melvin Nerdly, so: BORING!
Who is writing this show? The basic tenets of storytelling seem to be eluding whoever is writing it. Is each episode being written by a contest winner? What is the contest? Least Understanding of Dramatic Tension, Consistency, Character Development, and Forward Momentum? That sounds like a great contest! But maybe it should have a different prize! Like a complete set of Two and a Half Men DVDs.
Elsewhere in Unpleasantville, Merle is beating up Glenn, and I say to Iain, "If anything happens to Glenn, there is going to be HELL TO PAY!" Where hell to pay = me, squeezing my fisties with impotent rage!
And then Governor Niam Leeson "questions" Maggie by telling her to get undressed and leering at her. At which point Spudsy texted me to say he was amazed "this show took three seasons to get rapey." And I reminded him that Shane tried to rape Lori at the CDC in Season One. Because ugh this show. And the reason I remembered that is because the scene with the Governor and Maggie was reminding me of the scene with Shane and Lori in that we were clearly meant to understand that both of these men are sooooooooo terrible but not so terrible that they'll actually rape a woman, because only real sickos do that, which is a fucked-up rape culture upholding narrative all its own. And it's not like I wanted to see either of those scenes end in a rape, because FUCK NO I DID NOT, but I wish that The Walking Dead wouldn't walk up to that line and then back away and then additionally redeem both of those men by showing them having mind-blowing consensual sex with Andrea.
Which is so gross.
Anyway, Maggie eventually gives up the prison hide-out so Merle doesn't kill Glenn. I hope Glenn's life has been spared so that he can murder everyone in this entire show the end.
Oh, also Grimes Gang 1.0 fed a hobo to some zombies. Cool gang.
Discuss.
Monday Blogaround
This blogaround brought to you by photosynthesis.
Recommended Reading:
Veronica: 16 Days of Activism Against Gender Violence
Alexandra: Ireland's Abortion Laws May Be Liberalized
FMF News: AAP Advocates Plan-B Access for Teens
Karen: Michigan Republicans Propose Tax Credit for Unborn Foetuses
Jorge: Readers Blast Hollywood Reporter for 'Blindingly Pale Group of Women'
At Racialicious: Corey Robin on Lincoln and Historical Whitewashing
Angry Asian Man: "Gangnam Style" Is the Most Viewed Video of All Time
Freewayblogger: Thanksgiving Day Postings
And long-term Shaker Broce could use your help, if you can.
Leave your links and recommendations in comments...
Quote of the Day
"It's not a yurt. It's a ger."—Secretary of State Hillary Clinton, correcting a reporter with the traveling press on her plane who "mentioned that she was scheduled to visit with the Mongolian president in his ceremonial yurt." Mongolians, Clinton noted, "prefer not to use the Turkic term."
Everything I love about Hillary Clinton, right there.
Quoted in this Washington Post article, which is pretty good even despite its preoccupation with whether she will run for president again someday.
Daily Dose of Cute
"I am so goofy!"
"Have you noticed how goofy I am yet? LOOK AT ME I'M GOOFY!"
"Cheeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeese!"
Fun Fact: The job title on Dudley's business card is "the Goofiest Goofball That Ever Goofed."
Everyone (Ahem) Loves a Good Redemption Story
[Content Note: Rape apologia; child sex abuse.]
So. There was that whole Penn State child sex abuse case, which you might remember since the abuse was just uncovered last year, and it was just last month that former assistant football coach Jerry Sandusky was sentenced to 30 to 60 years in prison for abusing 10 boys he met over 15 years—crimes that were concealed and abetted by multiple members of the Penn State football program and university administration.
Well, obviously it's time to put all that ickiness behind us and give Penn State its redemption story. I mean, it's been A WHOLE MONTH.
Thus, new Penn State football coach Bill O'Brien has been nominated for Coach of the Year. Obviously.
Jess breaks it down here. Go read her post because it's great, and it really teases out all the ways in which this nomination plays into the nature of redemption and how fucked up it is that we even desire a redemption story for a bunch of fuckos who concealed and abetted child rape.
The instinct behind this nomination is gross for a lot of reasons, not least of which is because it effectively serves to create the line past which anyone who still cares will be considered a grudge-holder, a bitter hysteric who can't "let it go" and "move on." This is the official "Get Over It."
And if we keep holding institutional condoning of child rape against the Penn State football program, despite the fact there has been no meaningful accountability within the program—or, for that matter, outside of it, where sexual violence is still a central feature of sports hazing—then we're ruining the lives of innocent players and coaches. And really, when you think about it, that makes us the REAL monsters. (Barf.)
Which underscores what another subterranean purpose of this nomination is: A bellicose fuck you to anyone who had the unmitigated temerity to ask for accountability on behalf of children who were sexually abused and safeguards to require vigilance to prevent future victimization. "We won't kowtow to the forces of basic decency! Take that!" Ooh bravo. What a bunch of fucking heroes.
If Penn State had any decency at all, they would politely decline the nomination with the explanation that its football program needs to quietly earn public trust again before commencing public celebrations of its awesomeness.
