Posted: May 21, 2013 at 10:42 pm | Tags: body image, fat, Feminism, shame, thoughts
I would argue that there are two kinds of shame, the shame of realising that you’ve completely fucked up and done the wrong thing and the shame used to silence people by either making them believe that they are wrong, that something they did was against societal standards, or that they failed to live up to some imaginary standard.
I don’t want to talk about the first type other than to say being ashamed of doing the wrong thing is a powerful lesson, provided you admit it, apologise and work at not doing it again.
The second type is the one I want to talk about. The second type of shame, the silencing one, the one that can stop you seeking help you need, finding support mechanisms, that makes you feel less because of some attribute (real or imaginary) that you do or do not possess, or stops you leaving the house.
The second type can be imposed by other people or just through societal conditioning. As an example fat people are regularly shamed by just about everyone by virtue of being fat. Just existing as a fat person apparently is something to be ashamed of, and something that many people will point out to your face. Also less subtly and direct, is all the media and government “concern” about obesity and what needs to be done about it. Being fat is apparently shameful, and in worse case scenarios, fat people won’t seek medical help for life threatening conditions because they don’t want to be shamed further, or they attribute their health status to being fat versus whatever it might actually be. The fact that fat people are also shamed by their medical professionals adds to an incredibly unfair burden. Kath at Fat Heffalump writes a lot about why being fat is nothing to be ashamed of.
Being a woman is something that we’re often shamed for, whether it be because we haven’t removed enough hair, we’re not wearing the right amount of makeup, we’re wearing not wearing enough, we’re wearing too much, we’re drinking, we’re not drinking, we’re too old, too young, menstruating, eating, not eating, “being emotional”, nagging, having sex, not having sex, or any other of a number of attributes that some imaginary perfect woman would not have.
I looked at the list of things I was supposed to feel ashamed about one day, while standing naked in front of a mirror, and I decided that they could, for the most part, go and fuck themselves in a fire. Why should I stand cowered by the world because I didn’t measure up to some arbitrary standard that next to no one else measured up to either. Just think, if there were people who measured up to this standard women’s gossip magazines (which pretty much sell shame) would be out of business. I decided at this point that I was going to do my best to live shamelessly, to ignore other people’s attempts to shame me for being myself, and love who I was.
I’ve always found it interesting that “shameless woman” is an insult, but there is no male equivalent. Not that men aren’t shamed either – it’s just a different set of criteria (having feels about things, not acting in an appropriately masculine manner, being perceived as weak, etc). The phrase “shameless woman” does come from the bible though, so thanks Christianity for making life suck.
One of the things I learnt growing up was that I had to do it on my own, that I should be able to manage by myself, and that appearing as if I couldn’t cope was a weakness. Let’s just say that was one of the worst lessons to learn. It took me close to breaking point before I realised that I was trying to do it on my own in silence because I was ashamed to ask for help. The bad lessons I’d learnt included the silencing of shame – because asking for help would be an admission that I wasn’t able to cope and do this on my own any more. The relief of laying aside the shame and finding out that help was available was an amazing thing.
It’s terrible that as a society that we both unconsciously perpetuate shame by not speaking up against it, and that we let shame impact on us. Being you should be nothing to be ashamed of. None of us are perfect, none of us are perpetually strong, none of us have a perfect body, our emotional responses are valid, our choices to participate or not in the beauty standard are our own, our ability to cope or not cope as the situation arises is ok, your health situation is nothing to be ashamed of, your money or lack of it is nothing to be ashamed of.
Please do not let shame rule your life. Go out there, be a proud shameless person, and speak your mind.
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Posted: March 11, 2013 at 2:53 pm | Tags: body, body image, bullying, fat, fat hatred
*Trigger warning for bullying, fat hatred and eating disorders*
So that terrible, terrible show “The Biggest Loser” is back on TV, which means that I will be avoiding whatever channel it’s on (I don’t watch TV enough to even know that), and I won’t be watching that TV screen when I’m at the gym. Because regardless of how some people might see the torture of fat people “inspiring” as they learn to love/hate their bodies for TV, I just find the entire thing repulsive.
This season, according to the TV ads I’ve seen, we’re doing parent and child teaming, because with stats just pulled out of someone’s arse (because they’re not cited anywhere in the ad), if you are an obese parent, you’re far more likely to have obese children. The dad whose interview appears on the ads I’ve watched talks about how his son comes home from school crying because he’s beingbullied about his weight and that this (Biggest Loser) is an opportunity for him to gain some confidence.
Just no.
Really, no.
The Biggest Loser, apart from being a show that even in the ad we see almost kills the father, is not a show that will help anyone gain confidence. In the small amounts I have watched over the years, I cannot see how being screamed at by personal trainers, being forced to binge on food to the point of tears, being hounded about not doing enough, and having your body gazed upon and judged by the entire country is going to do anything for your confidence.
If that boy was my son, I would be talking to the school about the bullying he’s receiving, I’d talk to the parents of the children who are bullying my son and explaining the effects of bullying, I’d go to the Department of Education and demand more action if not enough was taken, I’d ensure that my son had proper counselling or psychological care to help build resilience, confidence and develop tools to build support networks. I’m not saying that this family hasn’t done any of this, what I’m saying is that in my toolbox in dealing with this issue The Biggest Loser does not, and would never, appear.
I feel sorry for those who compete to enter The Biggest Loser. I feel for all the fat hatred they’ve swallowed and believe that they only way that they’ll truly be happy is to lose weight while almost killing themselves for the pleasure of doing so.
Don’t let me be the only one telling you that The Biggest Loser is possibly the worst torture porn you will ever watch, let Kai Hibbard, a contestant in the US version tell it to you instead. Parts 1, 2, & 3 of her interviews with Golda Poresky detail her experiences on the show, having to ignore doctor’s orders, developing an eating disorder and the bullying from the TV producers.
Do Australia a favour and do not watch The Biggest Loser. Leave it alone, shun it as it should be shunned, and instead work on removing fat hatred from your own vocabulary and if you can, pointing it out to others as something that is unacceptable.
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Posted: November 2, 2012 at 9:32 pm | Tags: body, body image, fat, identity
This is my body
This is my skin
These are my curves,
My corners, my moves
I do not need you to tell me I am fat
It is impossible for me to ignore
I know from the way you look at me
I know from the way you look away
I do not need you to tell me I am fat
I know whenever I try to buy clothes
Try to find clothes that make me look good
Try to find clothes that are comfortable
I do not need you to tell me I am fat
I know because I do not fit in your space
I know because I always see what I am supposed to be
Far too many attempts are made to shame me for being who I am
I do not need you to tell me I am fat
I know
You think my size is down to choice
or weakness
You judge my body and me for it’s outward appearance
I do not need you to tell me I am fat
My body belongs to me and only I know it
I know how to move in it
I know how to make it feel good
I know how strong I am
I do not need you to tell me I am fat
I am far more than a number on a scale
I am far more than the size of my clothing
I am far more than the judgement you make based on how I look
In the end
When you judge me
For things I can or cannot control
When you judge me
Based on your fears of your own body
When you judge me
For failing to meet some imaginary standard of beauty
You lose
You lose a friend
You lose a lover
You lose a mentor
You lose someone who could make a difference
This is my body
This is my skin
These are my curves,
My corners, my moves
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Posted: November 2, 2012 at 9:11 pm | Tags: body, body image, fat, Feminism, music
Whenever I go to the gym I tend to put my earphones in and try to avoid watching the music video screen, which is huge. Instead I focus on the display on the treadmill, other people at the gym, or the TV shows on the tiny screens. However, every now and again I see something interesting out of the corner of my eye, or a film clip I actually like, and I catch myself watching the music videos… and wow, some of them are terrible.
As a generalisation, the film clips shown at my gym, when sung by male singers, feature women as objects, as tits and arses, as thin, gyrating people who are clamouring to have sex with the singer, or the viewer. Interestingly though, those film clips of songs sung by women, have women front and centre, as entire beings, and generally as free agents. The two messages don’t really go together, and I am increasingly grossed out by the male-dominated film clips at my gym (hence me not watching them).
This is a gym, a gym that believes to be fit and healthy, one has to be slim and preferably muscular. This gym believes that I have joined solely to lose all that fat that keeps following me around, because clearly fat is an unwanted thing and not part of who I am. And that being fat is a bad thing, and being thin is a good thing. None of this has been said to my face, but it really doesn’t have to be with all the posters extolling the virtues of their boot camps with before and after photos.
So imagine my surprise when I saw a film clip of the Beth Ditto song, “I wrote the Book”. Here was a proudly fat woman, singing a great song, dancing like she had every right to, and in the film clip being desired by several gorgeous men. I was amazed – mostly because I had completely failed up until this point to even notice Beth Ditto (not watching film clips didn’t help), and also because this was so subversive. I was exercising at the gym, an activity that many people looking at me would assume be because I hated my fat body and wanted to be thin (I just want to be fit and strong), and here I was watching a proud fat woman, dance and be desired, knowing that although outside the gym this is actually a normal part of life, inside the gym it was subversive.
So thank you to whoever programs those songs for sneaking in a Beth Ditto song. Please note that I’d like a whole lot less of the “women as sexual objects” and a lot more of the “everyone, regardless of who they are and what they look like can have a good time” clips for the future.
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Posted: January 21, 2012 at 12:47 pm | Tags: body, fat, Feminism, gender roles, identity, lgbtiq, sex
From the new and awesome blog Queereka, “Sunday School Salutations” which is soon (probably already has) launched a sex advice column and is seeking questions:
The most instructive answer I got was “your first column must contain at least two (2) hymen jokes.” However, this answer is mostly useful because it is pretty bad advice, at least as regards the goal of this column and this blog. I mean, not to get all RAWR HETEROSEXISM on my friend (who was, of course, making a joke), but one of the goals I have for Sunday School in the first place is to tear down the dominant narrative about sex. Raise your hands, dear readers: did your first sexual experience involve hymen rupture?
Yeah, mine didn’t, either.
The Huff Post lists some very interesting tech failures at marketing products to women, noting that women are already big consumers of electronics.
On Monday HSN announced the results of a survey by the international research firm Parks Associates that asked 2,000 adults about purchases they wanted to make before 2012. The results showed women outstripped men in their interest in owning electronics, with 18 percent of women planning on buying a tablet before 2012 (compared to 15 percent of men), 20 percent of women wanted a laptop (only 14 percent of men did) and 20 percent of women planning on purchasing smartphones — compared to 17 percent of men, Mashable reports.
The MailOnline has an interesting piece on the BMI of models and how they would be ranked as anorexic. This article is NSFW – there is nude “plus” size model posing with a “straight” model.
Tesseral Harmonics reblogs (it’s Tumblr, I’m not sure how it works really) on ““Bisexual” is not oppressive, can we talk about biphobia and straight privilege? and other thoughts on bisexuality”:
It’s a big problem that people who are bisexually identified (or engage in bisexual behavior) are dismissed and mocked by gay/queer/lesbian people. I honestly don’t think I need to spell out an explanation of why it’s important for spaces that call themselves “queer” or “LGBT” to be inclusive. In short, anyone who is bi (in name or behavior) is still queer and may need support as a queer person. Biphobia also makes it difficult for anyone who is gay-identified and experiencing sexual fluidity (Lisa Diamond’s research on sexual fluidity (pdf) is super interesting, btw). It also means that gay people who are in “straight” relationships for whatever reasons (family and religion are two examples) are dismissed by the queer community. Biphobia is part of a culture of identity-policing, where if you don’t adhere closely enough to the requirements delineated by the official bureau of gayness you’re out of the club.
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Posted: July 4, 2011 at 4:00 am | Tags: bisexuality, Christianity, DUFC, fat, Feminism, gender roles, Language, lgbtiq, media, minority rights, politics, privilege, racism, rape, Religion, sexism, violence
Down Under Feminists' Carnival Logo
Hello everyone and welcome to the 38th Down Under Feminists’ Carnival. Thanks for all the fantastic submissions and to everyone who wrote all the fantastic articles I’m linking to.
If at any point I have misnamed, mislabled, or misgendered someone, please let me know immediately so that I can correct my error. If I have included a post of yours that you would not like included, please let me know and I will remove it. Should any of my links be broken, just let me know and I’ll attempt to fix it.
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Posted: May 21, 2011 at 5:53 pm | Tags: body, fat, health, me, story
Before reading this post you may want to consider that it details some personal medical information about myself and my recent hospital experience. If you are someone who doesn’t deal well with TMI, you might want to stop reading here and go and play somewhere else – you can come back when the next post is written.
On Tuesday I noticed a painful discomfort in my vagina. I had previously had what I thought were called Barton Cysts – which had all been painful, but I knew that they could get infected and possibly need surgery to be repaired. So I looked it up, it was indeed a Bartholin’s Cyst and I would probably need to have it looked at. I poked at it, and it was tender and large, and so I went to bed thinking about what I was going to do about the whole thing. On Wednesday night it was sufficiently painful and uncomfortable to stop me going to the gym, and I decided to take Thursday off to go and see my GP and see what could be done. This was also on the recommendation of my sister who has previously had infected Bartholin’s cysts and had had surgery to resolve them.
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Posted: April 29, 2011 at 10:08 pm | Tags: body, body image, exclusion, fat, radical
As I was travelling home tonight on the train, I looked at my reflection in the window of the train. I saw a fat woman… and wondered, briefly, what other people thought of me. I wondered what they’d think if they knew that I am polyamorous and have multiple partners (and a queue of people interested in also playing). I wondered if they would think that there was something wrong with these people who find me quite sexy and sexual and who want me.
Because I’ve been on the receiving end of “they’re interested in YOU?” as well as sometimes thinking myself “why are they interested in them?”* And it’s not fun. Not just not fun because it clearly states that I am not a sexually attractive and overall attractive individual, but also because it suggests that the person who is attracted to me has defective taste or is broken in some way.
Or… as I have heard suggested about some other fat friends, acquaintances, or strangers, perhaps the person attracted to their fat partner has a fat fetish. Which again is quite horrible because fetishisation (outside the fetish community) is seen as a mental illness by some or an undesirable trait by others, so to fetishise something is unappealing and gross. It also dehumanises the fat individual – because fetishes are typically objects and/or parts of a person – not an entire person.
Clearly the idea that anyone who is fat is also a full human being who is interesting, attractive, sexy, sexual, lovable, and desirable, is incredibly radical. How about we stop looking at the outside of people and judging what we see, and get to know people and learn who they are. You don’t have to like them or love them, but you do have to acknowledge their humanity.
* Though that’s a whole other post because it’s not just how someone appears that makes me question someone else’s relationship choice – it’s a huge package of stuff – personality, political affiliations, choices, religion, etc
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Posted: February 28, 2011 at 10:01 pm | Tags: body, body image, diet, fat, pain
So tonight my physio told me that I needed to lose weight. There is a whole lot more context that I’ll share in a moment, but to say I was disappointed is putting it simply.
My physio has returned from an 8 day conference at the AIS where he spoke to a specialist in Gluteus Medius Tendonitis about his (my physio’s) patients (me included). No doubt there were other discussions with other specialists, but one message seems to have been given to my physio by this specialist… and that is that overweight people with this condition will struggle to resolve/heal it while they remain overweight, as the extra weight will aggravate the condition.
So tonight, the first time I’ve seen my physio in 3 weeks (as I started a clinical pilates thing that I’d been doing on my own), he suggests to me that I should lose weight. In his favour, he was genuinely uncomfortable about saying everything he did, the fact that I didn’t look impressed to be told this most likely added to his discomfort (which I’m so not sorry for). He did say that being overweight leads to death (well cancers and heart attacks apparently – and why yes my blood pressure and cholesterol are fine and I don’t have a family history of cancer), very, very quickly, before moving onto the fact that extra weight puts extra stress on my tendons and so we can perform maintenance on my tendonitis, and it may heal but it will take significantly longer. He then recommended (in his favour again) that I see a dietician and discuss with them what I do and don’t eat (tonight’s dinner – stir fried vegetables and chilli marinated tofu, with satay sauce, served with rice), and perhaps have a meal plan developed – utilising my GP to get a referral so that it will be partly covered by Medicare. And that he’d be happy to talk to me more about it if I wanted him to.
He finished the whole thing off with, “There I’ve said it”.
I spent the next 5 minutes (while he was poking at my back – where a lot of the conversation had also occurred), wondering if I was going to quit this physio and given I have a basic understanding of what I need to do to deal with my back and my tendinitis and whether I should take that elsewhere and maintain myself. Then I thought about Greta Christina’s weightloss (problematic framing aside) and how she decided to lose weight to stop her knee(s?) from hurting so that she could continue the activities that she wanted to do. I then thought of another friend of mine whose medication induced weight gain has resulted in a nerve being pinched (I think) in her thigh so it waivers between almost numb tingling and painful tingling, and her medical professionals who have told her that the only solution is for her to lose weight (which is resulting in fun medication adjustments).
So I can sleep without waking up in pain (several times a night), so I can sit cross-legged on the floor/bed/couch, so I can do yoga and Body Balance properly (I can’t do any hip flexion exercises), so I don’t stand up stiff and limping until I’ve walked it out, so I can have sex without paying for it for a few days afterwards, and so I don’t sit in a chair feeling my hip/s ache, do I attempt to lose weight to possibly speed up the process of healing my hips and taking the pressure off them so I am not aggravating the condition or do I just keep doing the exercises hoping that it will get better on it’s own? (nice complex sentence, sorry).
My partners will support me in any decision I make – which is lovely of them, and they tell me that I’m gorgeous, sexy, wonderful, beautiful and lovely now (not in some potential future state). I could attempt to lose the 10kgs that being on steroids last year (briefly but oh how the weight stuck around) put on, and see where I go from there – whether the pain is less and my ability to move improves. It won’t be easy (in fact it will suck immensely), but is it the best thing for my body right now?
I currently feel a bit let down by my body, which isn’t fair on it I know. It does a lot for me, and puts up with all the things I want it to do. I spent the weekend being depressed about clothes shopping being too goddamn hard because fat people are hard to make clothes for, including spending bits of Sunday in tears because it all sucked so much. Hearing today that being fat is also aggravating a painful condition that I want treated and healed was not the news I was after.
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Posted: February 26, 2011 at 4:35 pm | Tags: body, body image, fat, gah, WTF
You suck.
You suck in so many ways it’s difficult to quantify how much you suck and the amount of despair you put me through whenever I go shopping for clothes. In an ideal world you’d all have the clothing sizes you carry listed on the outside of your store, that way I wouldn’t bother setting foot inside your store looking for something to wear because I know you don’t cater to me. This would also require clothing sizes to be standard, something that would also make me happy. Do you have any idea how frustrating it is to not quite fit into the size 18 for “thin” people, but for the size 18 for “fat” people to be too big? Does this even make sense? And why is the clothing for “fat” people so limited in variety and fashion? I walk in, look at what you have on offer and turn around and walk out again – it’s boring, uninteresting, and certainly not flattering. It’d be nice if you offer clothing for “thin” people and “fat” people that the sizes just continue up the scale – and that you sell the same type of stuff.
And those stores which do sell clothes that fit me – why is everything made from such heavy synthetic material? I prefer to wear cotton or cotton blends, I like my clothes to breathe so I don’t overheat. Also, don’t suggest that I “enjoy my curves” by completing covering them all up – that doesn’t make sense.
And if we “fat” people are to exercise to lose weight – why on earth do you not sell exercise clothing for people above a “thin” size 18 – yes I am specifically looking at you Target…. and in fact most sports stores. It’s a catch 22 situation if we’re told to exercise because we’re too fat, but can’t buy clothes to exercise in.
So thank you for making me almost cry in a shopping centre from frustration and shame. I really appreciated the public humiliation you kindly dished out to me. Please remember – the harder you make it for me to shop in your store – the less I’m likely to return if I do ever lose weight and fall into your sizing range.
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