Art imitates life…
Sunday, August 22nd, 2010
I took my daughter to the art gallery today – we went and saw the European Masters exhibition here in Melbourne.
Art Galleries make me happy – they feed my soul.. and part of the reason is because they give me some nice examples of beauty that doesn’t fit the modern ideal.
They remind me that once upon a time, my shapely arms, hips, belly and thighs were considered very beautiful indeed…that they way I look, was, in fact, the popular ideal.
I look at these paintings and I see me – or I see people I know. At the very least I see bodies that are like the bodies around me. I see the familiar. I also see how all these different shapes and sizes are beautiful..
Strange isn’t it – that in this day and age of photography and video that we struggle to find images we can similarly relate to in our popular media. The advent of the “size zero” ideal, along with the photoshop wizards have robbed us of a benchmark the majority of people can relate to.
In an age where we ought to be able to more accurately reflect “real” bodies.. we have all the tools to show EXACTLY what normal, regular, average people in all their glorious diversity look like right at our fingertips… instead, for some reason, what our magazines and billboards and catwalks show us is a hugely distorted view….
When we look backwards, to the age where they didn’t have photography, we see more realism shown through painter’s brushes than we do through our photographers’ lenses.
Strange, don’t you think?
Here’s some of the beautiful, beautiful fat people I was admiring today:
I don’t know about you, but just looking at these makes me feel more at peace with my own body.
Smoking versus Fat
Friday, August 20th, 2010
I hate smoking. I hate it with every fibre of my being. I grew up a severe asthmatic, and even the slightest hint of smoke sets me off. My father is a smoker, and has been since well before I was born. And I hate it. When I went to school my uniform blazer often reeked of smoke because he would light up in morning traffic. The smell was so much so that teachers would pull me aside to warn me about my bad habits. Hell, even my grandfather smoked for 77 years before it got him.
We are now a society that has banned smoking in a lot of areas, and as a society we tend to make moral judgements on those who do. Well, at least I do. If I’m being honest, I consider people who smoke to be less intelligent, more prone to impulsive behaviour and with disgusting hygiene. I am aware of the bias I have, given my family history.
Tonight I realised that people think these same things about me, but because I’m fat. See, I hate the smell of smoke. But they hate the sight of fat. I feel as if smokers encroach on my personal space. They think I, as a fat person, encroach on their personal space. I care about the damaging effects to smokers’ health and wellbeing. They want to fight obesity to improve my health and wellbeing. I must admit, it’s an interesting comparison that I hadn’t really considered until this evening.
Does this make it better/worse/indifferent? I don’t know. I think there’s a difference between fatness and smoking, because a person chooses to be a smoker – but then people think I choose to be fat, too. And maybe I do? Does it make them any better than me? No. It just means I’m fat. Just like it just means my dad is a smoker. It doesn’t make him better or worse than me. Or anyone. It just is.
Why do we make the moral judgements we do? Why is any one group more or less simply because? I will never like smoke being around me because too much of it induces an asthma attack. But my dad is a very considerate smoker these days, and if I ask him to he wont smoke around me. I’m afraid it can’t be the same if a person dislikes my fat; it’s not something I can (or am prepared to) change so easily.
My dad disagrees about the medical risks of smoking – he claims that people die of lung cancer and emphysema who don’t smoke, and that correlation does not equal causation. I don’t know what the actual research is or who did it; I only know about those ads I’ve seen on television where they wring a sponge out to symbolise a smoker’s lungs. But I’ll be the first to admit that I’ve been judging people based on the court of popular opinion, in exactly the same way people do about studies regarding fat, and obesity. I know it sounds crackpot and conspiracy theorist to assume that studies are wonkily funded, but if reading books on obesity and politics has taught me anything is that you can’t always trust the studies. It’s important to look at who funded each study, and if the research is unbiased. Only then can we get true results.
I’ll always disagree with smoking because it fucks with my ability to breathe. But I think from now on I’m going to stop making moral judgements. I have no right. Nobody does.
Hide my unsightly cellulite? No thanks.
Sunday, August 15th, 2010
Despite knowing how bad they can be for me and my mental health, I am still a reader of fashion magazines. I am a bit of a consumer at heart. I get a little thrill when I open the pages and the amount of “WANT. NOW.” overwhelms my senses and I am enthralled.
What takes me out of my “Oooo shoes!” trance is reading icky body shaming comments disguised as “helpful advice” for the girls.
My own fault for expecting something different from a mainstream women’s fashion magazine, I’m sure, but I was still disappointed to read a column in the latest issue of Shop ‘Til You Drop (September 2010), especially after their recent body love issue.
A writer from Australian Harper’s Bazaar has been writing a regular column for Shop from the viewpoint of being a plus sized woman in the fashion industry. I expect working in the fashion industry, being surrounded day in and day out by fabulous clothes that largely exclude a plus size body would take a toll on a person’s viewpoint of themselves, no matter how confident they usually are. The comment made in the column (“No one looks good with cottage cheese thighs” [pg. 60]), made me sad.
Yeah, ok, it’s probably seen as a pretty innocuous comment. Innocent, even. But couched in the “just us girls” rhetoric and the attitude that whenever girls get together, all they do is gossip about the state of their bodies, what they ate, what they bought, who is a bitch, how hot that guy is, it seems problematic at the very least.
Not everyone is at the stage of loving their bodies. I don’t love my body 100% of the time, 24 hours a day. To expect people to do so would be unrealistic. Everyone has their moments.
But, I worry about the influence of these comments and columns in a mainstream fashion magazines on impressionable teenage girls (hell, impressionable women and people who identify as women). I worry that it convinces them that it’s expected of them to hate their bodies, that they’re expected to tear themselves apart.
I’ll admit that, for a moment, I focused on my cellulite, the dimples on my arse.
Until I shook myself out of it. Until I remembered that I like my thighs, my arse. I’m still not quite at the love stage yet, but I’m getting there. And I don’t care if “no one wants to see it”, I will be happy when I’m ok to see it.
Excuse me while I punch the screen
Monday, August 9th, 2010
Yep, I’m watching Oprah again. And yep, her show is the catalyst for another post. I’m watching an episode where Oprah talks to Geneen Roth, author of the book “Women, Food and God”. Oh man, this episode has some hardcore mixed messages. As a disclaimer, I have not read this book, I’ve only perused excerpts on the web.
Look, Geneen Roth’s book is probably pretty accurate as to how a lot of people feel when they eat. Our society has attached moral value to food that I find truly bizarre. That it’s bad to eat cake, it’s good to eat vegetables, that kind of thing. And then when we eat the “bad” foods, we shame ourselves. When they read excerpts from the book, I fully agreed with it. Fat people (any people, actually) need to stop equating their self-worth with how much they weigh, and/or what foods they eat. Everyone needs to stop judging themselves as ugly, bad, or not the ideal.
It was actually a comment by Oprah that make me want to punch the TV. “Any time you better yourself, whether it’s losing weight, or getting a job or improving yourself in any way, and the people around you are not happy for that. It is their self loathing, it is their insecurity, it is their dislike and disrespect of themselves that they are reflecting out to you. It has nothing to do with you.”
I say this to you, Oprah. Any time you equate being thinner with improving oneself, you are perpetuating that same culture of self loathing, shame, and hatred over your appearance. It belittles the hard work people put into improving their self esteem. My appearance is not an indicator of my health or wellbeing and especially not my worth as a human being. We need to stop beating ourselves up. We need to stop the shaming. This is completely irrespective of weight.
I don’t understand this episode. First they say that you should love and respect yourself, and look past all your “flaws” and see the real you. And then it’s all brought back to losing weight. How are you loving yourself as you are if you’re still trying to change the way you look?
So conflicted. Have you seen this episode? Leave your thoughts in the comments.
Weight Watchers – I can’t get behind that.
Wednesday, June 23rd, 2010
We are a weight obsessed society. It’s everywhere; from TV to magazines to bloody facebook. Lose 5kg in one week! Dance yourself slim! Eat only cabbage soup and you too can look like me! Negative calorie water, YESS! Celebrities (who seem to be the body ideal for many) have abs just two weeks after giving birth, lest they be seen on the cover of a magazine looking less than svelte. And so there are programs for us regular schlumps so we too can look as good as those celebrities! HOORAY FOR WEIGHT WATCHERS!!
Look, here’s the thing. I just can’t get behind Weight Watchers. I have grown up with the whole thing drilled into me from a very early age (my aunt has been a WW fanatic for nearly all of my life) and knowing my personality, I’m sure this makes me totally biased against the whole program. I get that. And perhaps it’s just the way my aunt did the program, but I cannot see where the value lies, other than making a person feel inadequate about their current size and enhancing their need to fit into one particular beauty ideal. And when I see a company that whose entire business revolves around losing weight, of making people count points towards everything they eat, of receiving extra points if you exercise…. it honestly makes me think of someone with disordered eating. Because those things I just mentioned? They are all signs of an eating disorder.
And yes, I am fully aware of the confidence it can give individuals, but I don’t know if we as a society should be congratulating people merely for losing weight. Doesn’t that just perpetuate the cycle of thinner = better? Beauty should not revolve around weight. Beauty is confidence; beauty is standing up for yourself; beauty is the ability to say you are beautiful and really mean it, regardless of what “society” tells us.
My aunt (bless her heart) gave me a couple of WW points books when I was in my teenage years. I remember being totally saddened when I had something like 18 points allotted to me for one day, and a slice of cheesecake was 17 points. Given my penchant for cheesecake, you can imagine that I didn’t follow the whole WW ideology for too long. I get that they don’t promote eating only cheesecake in a day, for what it’s worth. But why even give people the option of points if they can’t “spend” them how they see fit?
I know quite a few people who either participate in or agree with the idea of WW, and far be it from me to tell people what to do. I think a lot of people go for the community WW gives them – you get to meet people who share similar stories; you can commiserate with their trials and celebrate with their triumphs. I totally get that – I just wish there were groups available to people that don’t intertwine someone’s value with what they weigh. Focus on healthful eating, focus on exercise, but fuckdammit. Stop focusing on your weight as an indicator of your worth. You are more than a number on a scale.
Have you had a positive WW experience, or know someone who has? Do you think this business (and others like it) are a good, bad or neutral thing? Am I totally off-base with my opinions? Leave your thoughts in the comments below!
Fat Eats.
Sunday, June 20th, 2010
Four or so months ago I became a vegetarian. This was because I thought it was hypocritical for me to eat meat; if I can’t actually deal with seeing an animal slaughtered, why should I be eating them? I don’t think this is the right viewpoint for everyone, and I would never -ever- lecture a person about what they eat. Like everything what people eat is a personal choice.
Previously I have ranted about Jamie Oliver and his quest to end fat people. I am being hyperbolic when I say that; I think Jamie Oliver’s intentions are actually not that bad. He’s trying to educate people about what food is good for your health. Now I don’t necessarily think he’s going about it in the right way (shock tactics and body shaming suck, yo) but I do recognise he’s trying to make the world a better place. (And by better I do not mean thinner.) His methods are in a similar vein to Michelle Obama’s. She is trying to get people moving and eating more healthfully and that’s a fantastic goal. Unfortunately she’s doing it by creating the action to end childhood obesity. All this kind of initiative does is shame kids (and adults) who are obese. And while I’m sure that wasn’t her intention, the fact of the matter is that people are going to take a volatile topic such as fat and skew the information to whatever they think is right. Fat kids will continue to be bullied simply for being fat; fat adults will associate the way they look with something bad – thus promoting negative body image. This in turn (however accidentally) promotes an industry that teaches people the way the way you look has direct correlation to your health and attractiveness, so you should change that at any cost.
It’s all too easy to blame particular groups for the world’s woes when really we should be tackling deeper problems; ones that investigate WHY people are the way they are. Often when I bring facts up to people who know little about the size acceptance movement, they say that the idea just gives fat people an “easy out” or an excuse to be lazy. That people are fat because they don’t do enough exercise and they eat like shit. After all, it’s just “calories in, calories out” right? First off, I hate it when people have said that to me, and be prepared to be verbally bitchslapped if you do. Secondly, saying something like that brings a complex societal issue with many different causes down to a few cliche catchphrases that aren’t true for every person. For some people it might be calories in calories out, but not for everyone. And even if that IS the case, what right does anyone have in making a judgement over how a person eats or exercises? Even if you look at it from a health perspective instead of a size outlook, what right does anyone have to comment on how my health should be? It’s my body and my choice. As long as I am not hurting anyone else, I will always feel this way. And frankly, if people were really concerned about health and not weight, then they would preach to everyone equally. I have always eaten more healthfully than my sister who is a size six – why isn’t anyone lecturing her about the benefits of eating more fruit and vegies instead of meringues and packets of nerds?
One of the tactics Jamie Oliver always tries to use is showing that it takes less time to cook a good healthy meal his way than it is to stick something in the microwave. By doing this, he’s skirting the one of the actual issues. People don’t cook full meals from scratch because it might require using a food processor/frying pan/mixmaster/chopping board, and all of those things require cleanup after use. Microwave meals and/or fast food can usually be eaten straight out of their packages. For convenience’s sake I know what I’d choose. Convenience foods are booming because people have less time and willingness to spend on cooking. I totally get it. I don’t agree with it, but I get it!
Another issue I struggle with is that I don’t think it’s anyone’s business on what I eat or how much I exercise. I think as long as a person is educated about what they are eating, then they should be able to eat anything they like. I mean, I have a penchant for a good butter chicken. Now I don’t use chicken these days, but it’s still gt a buttload of butter and cream in it, and I recognise this isn’t going to be the best thing for my health. I know that having too much of it is going to end up raising my cholesterol levels, and heart problems run in my family. I am aware of the health issues associated with eating the way I sometimes do, but in the end it comes down to it being my choice. I don’t insist that anyone else eat or think the way I do, and so I don’t think it’s anyone’s business but my own. I’m well educated on what may happen to my body if I eat the foods I do. I am aware that I probably wont live until I’m 100 years old. But that’s okay for me. I’m not suicidal either – I just want to eat what my body wants without being shamed by society.
To eat or not to eat – that is the question! Leave your thoughts about this topic in the comments below.
I like salad and I like muffins
Friday, November 6th, 2009
Who’s moralising food now? Why, Sumo Salad!
Let’s get this out of the way – I LOVE salad. Don’t keel over in shock or anything, but I think there’s nothing so refreshing in a stinky hot Brisbane summer as a fresh and crisp salad. Occasionally when I’m out in a shopping centre, I’ll get a hankering for something to eat and the best out of a bad bunch will be food retailers like Sumo Salad. I’ve had it approximately twice in my life (I don’t really go shopping much!) and every time I’ve been there, their staff (teenagers) have closed down the hotplates early so they can go home on time. I’ve had to settle for the premade salad in the bain-marie those times, but last night I snapped and turned on my heel so I could write a passive aggressive tweet about it. When I’m hungry, I’m grumpy. I like to avoid being grumpy.
I felt justified in my wroth when Leigh linked to Sumo Salad’s new ads which brought on waves of non-hunger related grumpiness that can only be assuaged by blogging furiously.
And anyway, that “cankle” isn’t even one. Fat and skinny people, and lots of people in-between, have cankles – you’re born with them and you may as well make peace with them!
Similarly, many men (from skinny to fat and back again) have “moobs” that they were born with – they weren’t made by chicken nuggets at all.
Hey, Sumo Salad! Your mascot is fat and appropriated for Maude knows what reason because none of your food is even remotely Japanese. Your salads are wilted and bland! I will now add you to the list of Foodcourt Retailers I Avoid – fear the angry fat lady’s wrath! I’m so over the body shaming and food demonising and I don’t understand how insulting your target market will entice them into your stores, unless your ads aren’t aimed so much at fat people but at people who are afraid of being fat. Sumo Salad, you are douchebags (and I like to keep douchebags away from my lady bits!)
