Well, That Sounds Like a Great Reason!

A friend sent me this ad she saw in a newspaper:



I can understand why people who are larger and not that flexible might be uncomfortable taking yoga in a class full of people who are smaller and more flexible.

But, to gender the situation in this way plays into the uninspired tropes about authentic masculinity being "large" and authentic femininity being "small."

What if someone's a woman who's interested in yoga but feels self-conscious about being large and inflexible, can she take Man Yoga?

Or, is the male ego so uniquely frail that it's incapable of withstanding the dishonor of doing a physical activity in the same space as women who might appear physically better at it than they are.

I'm not sure if this ad is more insulting to women or to men.

On a final note, my knowledge of yoga is limited, but I do think the philosophical underpinnings of many forms of yoga would find this obvious catering to the ego to be problematic. Americanized versions of practices that have Asian roots continue to amuse me. As a practitioner of a traditional Asian practice, I don't think mind-body-spirit practices from Asia should never be altered. I think they can be thoughtfully and mindfully modified, but it's sad to me when they become infused with some of the worst, ego-driven aspects of American society.

I wouldn't be surprised if there's a "Buddhist" Temple For Dudes somewhere where they crush beer cans on their heads upon entering, and then hang them on the door to keep out the taint of Woman from entering.

Lady Bicycle Faces

I have no idea if this is real or not, but I find it amusing.

It's a list of don'ts for women on bicycles from 1895.

Note that it's not a list of "dos and don'ts." Just a list of don'ts. Like it was threatening enough for women to ride bicycles at all, so Gawd forbid they ride bikes on their own terms.

Some of my favorites include:

• Don’t criticize people’s "legs." [Not sure why "legs" is in quotation marks! Were they called something else back then?]
• Don’t cultivate a "bicycle face."
• Don’t appear to be up on “records” and “record smashing.” That is sporty.

Note, too, if you read the entire list, how the list polices gender so that a woman's bicycling behavior would accord with stereotypes of femininity. The lady biker is ordered not to boast, not to wear a "man's cap," not to refuse assistance, and not to race. Society granted that women could bike, as long as they remained humble, non-competitive, the opposite of men/masculinity, weak, and in need of help. That is, as long as they remained different from, and not in competition with, men.

Femininity, the conventional narratives tell us, is a woman's "natural" state of being. And yet, look at all these rules that women have to learn so that they may properly display traits that are allegedly inherent in them. Doesn't the existence of these lists beg the question of how inherent "femininity" is in women? Wouldn't women, being women, Already Just Know how to properly Bicycle While Woman?

Perhaps the most amusing part of the whole thing is that, within this list of commandments telling women what kind of clothing and accessories not to wear, how not to wear their hair, what kind of faces not to make while biking, we also see the following order:

"Don’t imagine everybody is looking at you."

I can't imagine why a lady biker would ever think that.

It's just so classic, isn't it?

Women are excessively body policed, gender policed, and judged and then implied to be self-absorbed for being aware of that fact. Women have to know what the Special Lady Rules are, but we can't let on that we know that the rules exist and that people are holding us to those rules.


Can't. Fucking. Win.

Ashley Judd Stands Up For Women

[Cross-posted at Family Scholars Blog]

Ashley Judd, in the Daily Beast, notes:

"The Conversation about women’s bodies exists largely outside of us, while it is also directed at (and marketed to) us, and used to define and control us. The Conversation about women happens everywhere, publicly and privately. We are described and detailed, our faces and bodies analyzed and picked apart, our worth ascertained and ascribed based on the reduction of personhood to simple physical objectification. Our voices, our personhood, our potential, and our accomplishments are regularly minimized and muted....

That women are joining in the ongoing disassembling of my appearance is salient. Patriarchy is not men. Patriarchy is a system in which both women and men participate. It privileges, inter alia, the interests of boys and men over the bodily integrity, autonomy, and dignity of girls and women. It is subtle, insidious, and never more dangerous than when women passionately deny that they themselves are engaging in it. This abnormal obsession with women’s faces and bodies has become so normal that we (I include myself at times—I absolutely fall for it still) have internalized patriarchy almost seamlessly. We are unable at times to identify ourselves as our own denigrating abusers, or as abusing other girls and women."

Say, what am I doing posting this piece at Family Scholars Blog (FSB) anyway?

Well, conversation about women's bodies- pregnancy, bodily autonomy, gamete donation- are a part of the regular discourse at FSB. As we question and debate these issues and practices, how might they relate to some of these other narratives about women's bodies and who gets to control them and how they get talked about?

Also, I often wonder, how many women are turned away from feminism in general, and feminist analyses like these in particular, because know-nothing "critics" of feminism like Rush Limbaugh threaten women with loss of the Real Woman Card if they dare embrace feminism? (Limbaugh's infamous, ignorant quote about feminism is easily found on Internet, so I won't re-print it here.)

How do upholders of the patriarchy drive wedges between women as they pick apart our appearance, engage in gender role policing, and act as though there is only one correct and authentic way to be a Real Women?

Another interesting tidbit. Notice the headline of the Judd article:

"Ashley Judd Slaps Media in the Face for Speculation Over Her Puffy Appearance"

Writers don't generally write the headlines of their pieces as major media outlets. I doubt Judd wrote that headline, either. But it is telling, isn't it?

In the article, Judd is standing up for herself and for other women, imploring that our appearances not be endlessly critiqued and used to diminish our self-worth. And that, we are to believe, is an instance of Judd inflicting aggression on the media. She is, we are to believe, "slapping" an institution/people in the face?

Notice the flip-flop that's going on- the way that a feminist is accused, even figuratively, of being the violent aggressor.

In this way is feminism further defamed in service of patriarchy.

Boys Need Boy Food

From a recent Smithsonian magazine article, entitled "The Basque Revolution," about Basque cuisine in America:

"If you happen to be at the Noriega Hotel, the only Bakersfield Basque place that still functions as a boardinghouse, this procession of dishes, known as a 'set-up,' is only half of the meal. The set menu changes daily, but there will typically be a tureen of lamb or beef stew, a plate of overboiled spaghetti in tomato sauce, and finally the main course of fried chicken or baked spare ribs or leg of lamb accompanied by vast platters of hand-cut French fries that still have the flavor of the field about them. If you are a 9-year-old boy, you will be given a vast scoop of sherbet, and after dinner you will throw a tennis ball around the adjoining tennis court while your parents linger at the bar for a last Picon Punch." [emphasis added]

And if you are a girl? (Ho ho! As if!) You will get to lick a stamp for dessert, after which you will proceed to sit daintily and mutely while the grown-ups finish their drinks.

But seriously now.

Unless this particular restaurant literally only gives boys sherbet (which would be a whole 'nother issue), why does the author inject gender into this piece in this way?

Would it have been that difficult to just say "If you're a 9-year-old" and leave gender out of it? Why alienate at least half of one's readership with the presumption that sherbet is a boy thang? Is one presuming that one's readership, that "you" the author initially references, is comprised of men?

I realize that there are Worse Things In The World for a feminist to criticize, but yes, this kind of casual, subtle instance of gender policing is a legitimate microaggression nonetheless.

It plays on the narrative that it's charming, endearing, and wholesome for boys to have Big Appetites and to Love Ice Cream A Whole Bunch, because the goal of being a boy is to eventually get big and strong- to take up space in the world. Eating and liking to eat is, to some, how boys and men demonstrate "authentic" masculinity.

Girls and women who love to eat, have big appetites, like ice cream, and who are larger than the beauty standards governing the ladies say that we should be are, meanwhile, subtly told that we are masculine. Because, naturally, men and women are complementary, opposites. This, despite the fact that I reckon the majority of American women and girls do or are all of the above.


Related:

Man Food, Again

Men Need Man Food

I Eat

Happy Barfentine's Day!

[Content/Trigger Warning: fat shaming, gender policing]


I think what's most amusing about conservative men who advocate for "traditional gender roles" is how utterly corny, trite, and "one size fits all" their ideas of Heterosexual Romance are.

Which makes sense.

When dude thinks most men are inherently non-romantic juvenile sex fiends and that most women are sexually-repressed mommy-wives whose idea of the Perfect Valentine's Day is to receive chocolates, a card, and flowers followed by a night of cuddles by candlelight, there just aren't many narratives available for him to come up with something more... tailored to actual people's actual interests.

Not that the above scenario is unappealing to all women. But to think that's what all, or even most, women want just because they're women and that's what women want? Kind of clueless and lazy.

See, when a man is limited by his own refusal to recognize the reality that few people's hopes, desires, sex drives, and ideas of romance fit tidily into "pink" and "blue" boxes, his advice by necessity is going to be "one size fits all." But, in reality, one size never fits all.

So what ends up happening is that dude tries to write an advice column to The Ladies that ends up being as resonate as a group of drunk, white Republican men engaging in what the kids call "rapping" on stage at cocktail hour after their panel on "blah" people and welfare.

Take our friend Playful Walrus (PW), who took a break from pecking out another anti-LGBT, anti-immigrant, anti-union, anti-poor, pro-rich, pro-corporate screeds (Just Like Jesus Would Do!) to write a "handy-dandy" guide on how the [heterosexual married] ladies can make Valentine's Day enjoyable for their husbands, all of whom apparently hate the holiday.

He begins, by of course explaining things to the ladypeople:

"There are many reasons why most men do not enjoy Valentine's Day.

Men tend to be practical when it comes to money. You expect him to blow money on overpriced chocolates, flowers, jewelry, gifts, dinners in crowded restaurants, hotel rooms, etc."

Oh we do, do we?

Scratch that. Of course PW isn't talking about women like me. (Whisper: The homosexualist kind). He's talking about The Real Women. The heterosexuals.

That being said, here's a little newsflash: Banal marketing aimed at women during Valentine's Day isn't necessarily a reflection of women's actual expectations surrounding this holiday.

He continues, not only are all women apparently entitled, superficial gold-diggers, we're fat, and therefore don't deserve chocolate anyway:

"Chocolates? They'll be gone soon, and frankly, most American women don't need the extra calories. That's a fact, since 2/3rds are overweight and half of those are obese."

Indeed, a man's just better off buying his bride from overseas. Where the women don't sit around eating whole boxes of chocolates all day long while he's at work. And as for flowers?

"They'll be dried and withered soon."

*sad trombone*

Speaking of things that are suddenly "dried and withered" after reading this post, PW's views on sexual obligations sound... really... swell (#Ohdearhispoorwife):

"Men show they love their woman year-round by paying the bills, by protecting her, and by doing many other things, often including lifting heavy objects, opening things, reaching for things, removing scary things, doing fix-its on the home and vehicles. Do you show your love for him by respecting him, keeping yourself together, keeping his stomach full, making love to him as often as he wants it without dropping things he enjoys off of the menu, being a smart shopper, and doing domestic chores (if he is the breadwinner)? These things may not be important to you, but they are likely important to him." (emphasis added)

Okay. Gross.

The more unthinking accounts and "how-to guides" of "traditional marriage" I read, the more they sound like planted PR campaigns against marriage and heterosexuality.

Under PW's view of proper hetero relations, men essentially buy sex and housekeeping from their wives by being the "breadwinner." PW tosses the word "love" around, but he doesn't seem to be talking about love. What he is talking about is a commercial exchange of goods and services.

Under this view of marriage, a man doesn't want in equal partner in life, he wants a domestic/sex worker who he deserves things from because of all his hard work. Andrea Dworkin famously noted that, "[Right-wing women] see that traditional marriage means selling [sex] to one man, not hundreds: the better deal." PW's version of marriage seems to be a case in point of marriage as an exchange rather than a partnership.

Happy Valentine's Day! *Swoon*

You know, in my experience interacting with conservatives, many of them have a certain worldview regarding How The World Is that they insist is some sort of "universally generalizable" truth for all people for all of history. This view often posits that men are the breadwinners who pay bills, protect their wives, lift heavy stuff and, in return, deserve blow jobs from their no-fun wives whenever they get boners.

Any actual women, men, and relationships in the real world who deviate from this worldview- gay men, lesbians, trans* people, heterosexuals in egalitarian relationships, gender non-conformists- are dismissed as strange anomalies from reality, too few in number to count. Inauthentic. If one points out the existence of these "deviations" from the conservative worldview, one is frequently accused of making these experiences up as part of a Marxist-Feminist plot against "reality." As though our very existences are not a part of reality.

It's quite something, really. To deny and erase the existence and experiences of millions of people who have different experiences with gender and marriage just because it doesn't fit into one's romanticized narrative of how the world is and how amaaaaaaaayzing man-woman marriage is for all people everywhere ever in history.

I mean, I have no doubt that for some people, these "traditional" performances of gender and marriage work and exist. But I am equally confident that that for lots of other people, this traditional gender narrative is completely subverted, completely abusive, and that there's lots of gray area in between. And that's okay to acknowledge. People don't have to have the same experience with marriage and gender. How is it even reasonable to insist or expect that they would?

Why acknowledging that reality is met with such resistance I have no idea.

Anyway.

For some reason, PW puts a parting shot in very small print and parentheses at the end of his post. Like he doesn't have the courage to fully commit to the assholery it contains:

"(There are unfeminine women reading this scoffing that anyone still believes in gender roles. I guarantee you they are not making any man's Valentine's Day enjoyable.)"

LOL. Okay, playa.

Like many an anti-feminist, PW does not seem to understand his ideological opponents. He certainly doesn't understand feminist critique. Therefore, it's understandable as to why he would think that only "unfeminine" women would be "scoffing" at his post, as opposed to, say, lots of women of varying degrees of femininity. I laugh at the strawdyke version of his critics that must be dancing around his uninspired noggin.

His ignorance also explains why he can't even articulate what it is that his critics would "scoff" at regarding his post. What does it even mean to "believe in gender roles"? He thinks we don't "believe in" them? We're not talking about Santa Claus here. Sigh.

Lastly, his ignorance allows him to operate under the assumption that his critics, presumably feminists, would think it's a Big Time Insult to be told that we're not sufficiently enjoyable, feminine, and hawt to heterosexual men.

As though he, via Internet Telepathy, can not only ascertain our femininity levels, beauty, sexual skillz, and worth as human beings, but that he is also the Big Decider of what is and isn't enjoyable to all men on Earth.

Sure.

The biggest failing of so many anti-feminists isn't that they're assholes, which many of them indeed are, but that they so utterly fail at understanding feminism or what it is they're even objecting so strenuously to.

What's Better Than Winning The Beauty Contest?

Not being forced into it in the first place.


[Content/Trigger Warning: body shaming, gender policing]

I've written before on the various body-shaming, gender-policing memes, often spread on sites like Facebook, that go something along the lines of "real women have curves, not the body of a 12-year-old boy."

A more recent version of this meme depicts various famous women who are skinny, contrasts them with other famous women (like Marilyn Monroe) who have have curvier bodies, and says some variation of: "this [arrow pointing to curvier-bodied women] is more attractive than this [arrow pointing to skinnier-bodied women]."

So, yeah. Gross.

What this body-shaming reminds me of are those memes where conservative women denigrate the looks of liberal/feminist women in order to prop up their own status, stripping other women of their beauty and reinforcing the notion that a woman's most important feature is her sexual appeal to men.

Likewise do these Skinny Women Are Ugly memes arbitrarily strip some women of their beauty in order to enhance the standing of a different group of women.

Both instances accept, rather than reject, the premises that (a) a woman's most important feature are her looks and (b) that there is one true way to a beautiful real woman.

Via Jenny David at at Cyborgology, discussing the Skinny Women meme:

"As Heather Cromarty posted over at Sociological images, these memes pit women against each other in antagonistic comparison, and reinforce male approval as the pinnacle of female success. Rather than escape the male gaze, these attempts at feminist liberation work only to reformulate the desirable ends towards which women control their bodies. In short, the female body continues to be an apparatus of (heterosexual)male pleasure."

I can appreciate fat acceptance and the rejection of conventional beauty standards. Unfortunately, that's not what is going on with the Skinny Women Are Ugly memes.

Rather, the meme has always struck me as instances of uncritical, approval-seeking "You go girl!" fauxminism designed not to empower women, but to divide us and cement our status as the submissive sex class. The big take-away from such narratives, especially when they collide with the pervasive fat-shaming narratives circulating in society, is that if you are a woman and you have a body, you can never be good enough, authentic enough, beautiful enough, thin enough, curvy enough, or pleasing enough to the all-important hetero male gaze.

No thanks.

A Traditional View of "Females"

[TW: Gender policing, misogyny]

A recent Ann Coulter quote:

“I think all real females are right-wingers,” Coulter said, ” and I can tell you that based on experience — and my bodyguard will back me up on this — all pretty girls are right-wingers.”

What I've found is that a person's use of the word "female" as a noun is often a tip-off that I'm not dealing with a person who thinks rationally or fairly about women.

Aside from that, I find that "conservative women are OMG SO HAWT" meme to be an interesting revelation insofar as it reflects not only some major dishonesty, but a big conservative view of the value of women.

It is no accident that many prominent conservative women probably are considered attractive by the conventional beauty standards governing women. The sad truth, though, and one which many conservative men and women alike apparently don't recognize, is that the movement is largely unwilling to promote competent women as figureheads who fail to live up to those beauty standards.

I mean, it's complete and utter bullshit, of course, to claim that every single conservative woman is OMG SO HAWT! When uttered by conservative men, it's just a lie they tell "their" women to keep them in line.

It's the sick opposite of the also-utter-bullshit lie that "liberal/feminist/progressive women are OMG SO UGLY" claim. When uttered by men, that one's purpose is to strip women of their alleged primary value in life: their attractiveness to heterosexual men.

Welp, sorry gals, but here's a newsflash for ya:

All conservative women are not OMG SO HAWT.

The sad truth is actually that conservative women who are not considered conventionally attractive are usually marginalized within the male-dominated, feminist-bashing conservative movement.

They never get to be the big stars with the book deals or the shows or the radio programs.

They sit on the sidelines, like cheerleaders, rooting against their own self-interests in exchange for the "safety" of not being called ugly.

Don't Touch Their Man Food!

Apparently, some putrid MRA reddit caught a whiff of my article on Man Food.

In this post, I talked about an annoying, sexist event that I had experienced in relation to food. Namely, that when my partner and I were visiting with a heterosexual couple, the person making the breakfast, a woman, asked only "the men" if they wanted eggs with their pancakes, and proceeded to scoop heaping piles of eggs onto their plates alongside their 2 pancakes. On the women's plates, sat one lonely pancake.

Although a "little thing," it was illustrative of the ways eating and body image are gendered. Men are often encouraged to eat a lot, so they can get "big and strong" and take up space, while women are encouraged to not eat a lot, so we will remain small and dainty (and, although it's not often said, weak).

So how this post of mine was the Worst Thing Ever, I'm not sure. But that didn't stop the aggressive MRA responses to it from being positively brimming with Illusory Superiority of the "feminist wimmin are so dum" variety.

I think the most amusingly-incoherent response went something like, "WTF, it was a woman who offered the men more eggs, why is ths stoopid feminist complaining?!?!?"

As though, I don't know, it's.... hypocritical(?) for a feminist to admit that women too can do sexist things?

What a strange argument.

Think of the blanks one has to fill in regarding this MRA's thought process and visions of straw feminists that must be dancing about in his head. His argument only "works" in the following way:

(a) Feminists think all men are evil and sexist.
(b) Feminists thinks all women are paragons of perfection
(c) Therefore, if a feminist admits that a woman did something sexist, the entirety of feminism collapses under its own hypocrisy.

Sure, dude.

I'll just add that one to my collection of files proving that the vast majority of MRAs don't even understand feminism well enough to be able to render competent critiques of it.

The Trouble With Tobacco-Free Hiring Policies

[content/trigger warning: This post contains a discussion about fat shaming]


I used to smoke, But I'm Not Self-Righteous About Being a Non-Smoker (tm). (Seriously, I loved to smoke. Loved it. So I totally get why some people can't or won't quit.)

I quit about 6 years ago.

You'll notice I say "about" because, for me, quitting was a gradual process. One day, I ran out of cigarettes and just didn't buy more. I stopped taking smoke breaks. And, even though I wanted to smoke, I began using gum, toothpicks, coffee, tea, exercise, water, and fun energy drinks to fill in the gaps of the time I used to spend smoking.

Naturally, I became that annoying person who borrows cigarettes because she "only smokes when she drinks." And then one day, I stopped doing that too. Now, I'm at the stage where smoking doesn't even sound appealing to me anymore. I tried a cigarette about a year ago at a party and it tasted/felt like what I imagine it must taste/feel like to people who have never smoked. Like smoke (it taste/feels different and better to many smokers, LOL). I think, for me, I had to make quitting not be a Big Thing that I, like, talked about and shared with everyone. It let me live in denial for a little while about the fact that I was quitting something I really liked to do.

So, with that disclaimer noted, I recently came across this article, about how some workplaces are refusing to hire smokers.

The reasoning is that "such tobacco-free hiring policies, [are] designed to promote health and reduce insurance premiums." Within the article, the following statistics are noted:

"Each year, smoking or exposure to secondhand smoke causes 443,000 premature deaths and costs the nation $193 billion in health bills and lost productivity, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.....The bottom line will benefit because health care costs for tobacco users are $3,000 to $4,000 more each year than for non-smokers, says Bon Secours' Cindy Stutts."

While I understand employers' concerns about "the bottom line," two issues stand out to me with respect to this hiring policy.

One, I wonder if it will have a disparate impact on certain groups. While I do not believe smokers are, or should be, a "protected class" as is understood in the US legal system, smoking does correlate with socioeconomic status, education level, and sexual orientation*.

For instance, according to the CDC's statistics, 49% of those with a GED reported being smokers, compared to 5% of respondents with a graduate degree. 31% of those living below the poverty line reported being smokers, compared to 19% living above the poverty line. In addition, a (somewhat dated) 2001 study (cited in
this PDF) found that 46% of gay men and 48% of lesbians smoked, a rate double that of their heterosexual counterparts (data on bisexuals was not included).

A blanket policy against hiring smokers is going to disproportionately impact these groups. The assumption seems to be that such a policy will get people to quit smoking, but an argument could also be made that a policy that doesn't take into account why some people tend to smoke more than others might not be an effective anti-smoking program. It might just end up turning many smokers into people who are good at hiding their smoking, while, say, tobacco companies continue to develop
charmingly-named projects aimed at recruiting new groups of undesirables smokers.

My second issue is that if we look at the reasons for the policy in light of the dominant narratives regarding obesity, a policy against hiring fat people could also be developed. No one, to my knowledge, is proposing such a ban (erm... right?), but I think we have reason to be wary of a parallel reasoning process being applied to fat people.

Consider:

The employers' argument is that smokers choose to smoke, smoking has high health and economic costs, therefore, the hiring ban is acceptable. If people want to be hired all they have to do is make different life choices.

Headlines consistently inform us that Obesity Is Overtaking Smoking As the Leading Cause of Preventable Death in the US. The US Surgeon General reports that 300,000 premature deaths per year are attributable to obesity, while the CDC notes that the health costs of obesity are a "staggering" $147 billion dollars per year.

A quote in the smoking article notes that smokers are easy targets, but (as someone who is, or tries to be, a fat acceptance ally), it also seems like fat people are easy targets too. The two words "smoking and obesity" are practically a conjoined phrase in conversations about "preventable" deaths.

Many fat people believe (and I would agree) that being fat and being happy is a radical act given the degree to which fatness and fat people are shamed and demonized. Many non-fat people view being fat similar to how they view smoking, as a bad life choice and an individual you-deserve-what-you-get moral failing, rather than as the result of more systemic, collective issues.

So, to circle back to a point I made earlier, I don't expect policies that only penalize people who fall into certain categories and do not address the reasons why people fall into those categories to be effective public health measures. When employer honchos say things like, "We're not denying smokers their right to tobacco products. We're just choosing not to hire them," I think a lot of people are going to hear:

"We're not denying people disproportionately targeted by tobacco companies the right to their tobacco products, we're just choosing not to hire them"

or:

"We're not denying people who live in food deserts the right to eat their cheap, high-fructose-corn-syrup-laden food, we're just choosing not to hire them."

or, (my personal fave):

"We're not denying people who get fat partly because they work in front of a computer all day the right to work in front of a computer all- oh wait... yes we are. Whoooooops!"


[*Note: Although, the CDC also reports similar smoking prevalence levels among Blacks, Native Americans, and Whites (with lower prevalence levels among Asian-Americans and Hispanics), it also deserves highlighting that tobacco companies have aggressively and disproportionately marketed certain tobacco products to African-Americans and that African-Americans disproportianately suffer from tobacco-related disease.]

Quote of the Day

Via Kate Ragen at Dances With Fat:

"I’ve said before that I’m much more concerned with fat people realizing that they deserve respect than with other people realizing that fat people deserve respect. It turns out that the same goes for posting pictures or videos or numbers. Don’t like what I post? Don’t believe me? I don’t care. This isn’t about you or for you, I’m done making that mistake.

This is about refusing to be hidden by society. This is because fat people deserve to see themselves represented as more than just a headless picture carrying a fast food bag and I can help with that. When it comes to athleticism, there are fat people of all stripes – some are couch potatoes, some are active, some are hardcore athletes. Lots of us are healthy and happy. This is about showing an example of that."

Awesome.

Check out her post for photos and video of her being sporty, strong, flexible, and dancy.

The People Previously Known As Women

[TW: Gender policing, body shaming]

A radical notion:

"That is what I like about women. They don’t give a damn. Their neck bulges over the back of their collar? So what? Their ears are hairy, their hands are rough, they snore and make noise and take up lots of space. That is what women are supposed to be like, and if they are going to start frowning into the magnifying mirror and getting all teary when bathing suit season comes around, then we might as well just call it a day. Good night, America. Sorry, Ben Franklin. It was a pretty good country, but it’s over now.

So how did we get here? The generation of women who were perfectly at home with homeliness hasn’t even completely died off yet, for pete’s sake. Wrinkles, rough skin, bow legs, calluses and crow’s feet—these used to be the signs of femininity, the evidence that a life had been lived. It was in the late 1950s that things began to change....Now leg and chest waxing, manicures, and highlights are commonplace for people previously known as as women. Botox? Why not? They don’t even feel the need to make discreet appointments anymore, because everyone’s doing it."

Of course, Catholic writer Simcha Fisher was actually talking about men, above, and specifically, men who opt for cosmetic procedures.

Yet my gender reversal is interesting, no?

In Fisher's bizarre piece about how vasectomies have apparently led to the de-masculinization and metrosexualization of men, we see yet another instance of the conflation between masculinity and authenticity. Even though many women naturally possess wrinkles, deviated septums, rough skin, bow legs, calluses, crow's feet, hairy ears, and fat, Fisher frames these characteristics as masculine ones. She claims "these used to be the signs of masculinity- the evidence that a life had been lived."

And in women, these are signs of what, then?

That some of us are men? That we are manly?

The truth in plain sight becomes apparent when the genders are reversed in Fisher's piece: Many women- cisgender and trans- actually have to do a lot of work, including engaging in multiple surgeries, in order to be seen as Real Women precisely because authenticity is conflated with masculinity.

For, the logical extension of her idea that the traits of being hairy, fat, bow-legged, etc. are endearing in men precisely because they are essential to men is that women are then excluded from the class of persons who are able to possess such traits and retain our femininity. Under her reasoning, wouldn't any woman who is hairy, fat, and/or bow-legged be by definition manly? It's as though she takes the man-as-default to a literal extreme: Women are actually men until we shave our legs, reduce our body fat percentage, stop farting, put on make-up, and go to etiquette school.

Now, if Fisher's goal is the eradication of beauty standards for men, I am with her. There are many ways to be a man. Including, ahem, being a man who has gotten a vasectomy.

Yet, one gets the sense that it's not so much the application of beauty standards to humans that she is objecting to here. Rather, to her, what's unfair is the application of certain beauty standards that have long and unfairly been applied to women now being applied to men as well. Criticizing women's bodies is just treating women like how we're supposed to be treated. But men, they are entitled to exist in their natural, hairy, fat, wrinkled states of being without objection because that's just part and parcel of being a Real Man.

Under Fisher's criticism, a man's compliance with beauty standards is loathsome precisely because that compliance is coded feminine. A man's compliance, according to her, turns him into an artificial man. A girly boy.

And, rather than acknowleding the many industries that promote and create beauty standards for women, she takes it as a given that a woman's compliance with whatever arbitrary beauty standards are in fashion at the moment is evidence of women's naturally vapid, vain, and shallow natures. Thus, by association, a man's compliance with "feminine" beauty standards becomes infected with this taint.

We see that what might, to some, on the surface appear to be an article about liberating men from beauty standards is actually a piece that further entrenches both women and men into them.


(Leftist Gender Warrior tips her beret to Personal Failure)

Concerned Women [For Some of] America

[TW: Body shaming]

"It takes a really weak, insecure, and spineless man to attack a woman on television....All women, regardless of their political persuasions need to speak out against these kinds of attacks because they harm everyone who is female from age 2 – 92." -Penny Young Nance, CEO, Concerned Women for America (CWA), writing of Bill Maher's sexist attack on Sarah Palin

Quick! Somebody alert the Concerned Women for America (CWA) that their buddy bud Glenn Beck, Famous Mormon Dude, recently attacked a woman on his radio show. And by attack I mean, in response to a skin cancer public service announcement featuring Meghan McCain visibly naked from the shoulders up, Beck reacted by pretending to repeatedly and violently vomit. And, as a presumed dig at her weight, Beck and his pals repeatedly called her "luscious."

I guess Beck doesn't find McCain, who supports same-sex marriage, sufficiently human or conservative enough to be treated with respect.

Other than supporting my maxim that patriarchy exists to give men, attractive and otherwise, the authority to declare women Obectively Out Of Compliance With What Constitutes True Beauty, Beck's display mostly provides evidence of his own immaturity, incivility, and sexism. And, well, no big surprise there. Keeping women in the sex class is basically the point of the religion and politics that men like Beck subscribe to.

I condemn Beck's actions and place the blame solely and squarely on his shoulders. As Naomi Wolf observed in The Beauty Myth, our society's Skinny Mandate for women parallels eating trends in developing countries where food is reserved for the most important members of society- boys and men. Nothing pisses off misogynists in the US more than a woman who unapologetically refuses to starve herself.

At the same time, unfortunately, the prevailing view among female collaborators in patriarchy, sexism, and misogyny- that would be, organizations like CWA- is that some women don't deserve to be defended. Indeed, unlike liberal and progressive feminists who regularly take liberal and "progressive" misogynists to task, those so-called Conservative Feminists who are BFFs to male anti-feminists are usually nowhere to be when their male political allies are sexist.

We get the message loud and clear, ladies. Some of us don't deserve to be defended because we really are ugly or fat or queer or liberal or leftist or socialist or pro-choice or what-have-you, and so the attacks inflicted upon us because of our gender or sex are deserved. And, being attacked for our looks is fair game because, of course, a woman's looks are the most important feature about her.

McCain herself, puts it well, in responding to Beck, many women- including Beck's daughters- "are probably dealing with the sexist, body-obsessed media environment that is difficult for all women. Is this really the legacy you want to be leaving for yourself?"

Leaves!

Today I'm going to take a break from political blogging (and on a Thursday of all days!) and post what I think is one of the most endearing coming-out revelations portrayed on television. From Grey's Anatomy, we have Erica Hahn, MD, newly-realized Alpha Lesbian.

[Note: This clip does not contain graphic depictions of sex, but it could be NSFW if you work for, like, Focus on the Family or something. In which case, why are you even interested in watching a video featuring lady lovers?]



Rough translation/description: Callie and Erica are lying in bed after having sex. Oddly, they are still, like, completely clothed, but I digress:

Erica: [laughing] That was a-mazing.

Callie: [smiling] Yay! It was for me too.

Erica: I mean... that was amazing!

Callie: [Getting up from bed] Me too!

Erica: [Still in bed, watching Callie] My whole life. My whole adult life I have been with men and it always felt... fine. I mean, good. I just never... I mean. I did. But, not like this. This is like needing glasses.

Callie: Have I blinded you?

Erica: When I was a kid... I would get these headaches. So, I went to the doctor and they said I needed glasses. And it didn't make sense to me because I could see fine. And then I get the glasses and I put them on and I'm in the car on the way home. Suddenly, I yell. [starts to laugh and cry]. Because the big green blobs that I've been staring at my whole life weren't big green blobs. They were leaves, on trees. I could see the leaves. And I didn't even know I was missing the leaves. I didn't even know leaves existed. And then... leaves! You [looks at Callie] are glasses.

Callie: [Starts to look a little freaked out]

Erica: [laughing] I am so gay. I am so so SO gay. I am extremely gay.

Callie: Ummm... I have to go. [Abruptly leaves].]


1) So, after contemplating this scene for two seconds, it struck me that I relate to Erica here. Both with the needing glasses bit when I was a kid, and the feeling so gay bit after first kissing a woman. Oh, and also, the having my first girlfriend panic afterwards and slowly back out the door like, "Welp that was great but I'm outta here, I'm not gay or anything."

Which, you know, I can totes laugh about now but it did kind of suck at the time to be in an intensely secretive relationship. (It gets better). Not that my first girlfriend's somewhat slower realization of her own sexual identity diminished my own feelings of gayness. My reaction was more like, "Come on! It's so amaZING! Everyone just be gayyyyyyy! I can see leaves!"

Shut up. I was 19.

2) I'm not crazy about how the writers disappeared Erica and I do think Callie's latest love interest Arizona Robbins is pretty awesome, but Erica will always have a place in my heart (er, I mean, um, Callie's heart), not only because she's a kick-ass fictional surgeon, but because she was pretty laid back about Callie's coming-out shenannigans with Dr. You-Know-Who. (Although her "you can't only be kind-of a lesbian" comment to Callie wasn't cool).

3) While I think Callie's lesbian/bisexual freakouts with Erica were maybe a bit exaggerated, I adore Sara Ramirez's portrayal of Callie. She's one of the few women in television whose body size is larger than Hollywood's Usual Standards For the Ladies where you're basically "plus-sized" if you're over a size 4. And yet, her character is written to be and is portrayed as funny, sexy, sexual, smart, attractive, uncertain, scared, human, healthy, and to top it all off, capable of "build[ing] arms and legs out of nothing." She is a superstar.

4) Why did Erica wear a doiley to bed? NTTAWTT.


Talk about whatever you want in the comments. Especially if it involves my fave topic of sapphic subtext or maintext.

Man Food, Again

Are you kidding me with this book?

It's called: Mad Hungry: Feeding Men and Boys

Product Description (I shit you not. Also, emphasis in original.):

"Civilize the wild beasts in your life, one meal at a time."

From Publisher's Weekly:

"Television host and Martha Stewart Living's Executive Food Director, Quinn forays into the tricky world of feeding men with this colorful volume, awash in Stewart's clean, classy and crowd-pleasing aesthetic. Though the emphasis is on men, Quinn's instructions keep the whole family in mind, especially the woman doing the cooking..."

One helpful tip: "Never be caught without bacon"

Because MEN NEED MAN FOOD!

Just, in general, what is so especially tricky about "feeding" men as opposed to "feeding" women? Do these purported differences really necessitate a special book devoted to the topic? Can't "the woman doing the cooking" just pretty much fix herself a salad and buy the wildebeasts' food in bulk from, like, Petco?

Taking a peek inside, I read the introduction, barfed, made a few farting noises, and then knew ya'll would want to see it:

"Men eat differently from women- they eat more, they eat constantly, and they eat passionately. They ransack a packed refrigerator and scrounge crumbs from an empty one. They eat standing in front of the fridge, and they eat with their fingers. They always make a mess and never notice."

So, I do a lot of those things too as do, I suspect, many other women. Especially my lovely girlfriend, whose crumbs I am constantly wiping up. Because I'm the lady. But she cooks too. And we both like food. But we're both women. Are men and boys are sneaking into our house, raiding our fridge, and leaving crumby messes on our countertops? SO confusing. (OMG, marketing opp. I can see it already: The Hunger: Satiating the Lesbian in Your Life)

On a serious note, we see here how the gender binary is perpetuated for marketing purposes in that gross essentialist Men Are From Mars manner. Because men and women are so very different, they apparently have vastly different feeding habits. Therefore, a book needs to be written, and then bought, on how women can feed the men in their lives.

Notice, too, how being passionate about eating is presented as being somewhat endearing when it's men and boys doing the eating. As in, ho ho ho boys will be boys, what with all their amazing bottomless pits of stomachs! as though being really hungry sometimes is a "male" thing instead of a human thing. This framing is similar to how authenticity in male appearance is sometimes heralded as Real Manhood while authenticity in female appearance is framed as "masculine" and "un-feminine."

I mean, can you even imagine a book existing on how men can feed the voraciously hungry women and girls in their lives? Hunger in women is unbecoming. It is manly. And most importantly, a book giving girls and women the entitlement to feel okay and natural for loving food would put a real damper on the market telling us not to.

Dan Savage: Please Stop

[Trigger warning for fat hatred, fat shaming, dehumanization, bullying, suicide, and child abuse.]

In September 2010, Dan Savage founded the It Gets Better Project in response to the recent suicides of gay youth who had been bullied. About founding this project, Savage wrote:

"I wish I could have talked to this kid for five minutes. I wish I could have told Billy that it gets better. I wish I could have told him that, however bad things were, however isolated and alone he was, it gets better."

It's a great idea, to have adults who have lived as children in a homophobic society telling kids that life might not always be as difficult.

But does Dan Savage think the bullying of gay kids is the only type of bullying that counts?


Read more, at Shakesville, where I have written a guest post.

Because Going Without Make-up Is Only Natural For Men

Confession time: I subscribe to the WorldNetDaily email alerts. Wahoo!

What can I say, I like to be apprised of the conspiracy theories and gold-buying schemes the far right is buying into these days. Check out a section of one recent email alert:




That's right. Immediately following an US Weekly-esque link urging readers to "get a load of" Katy Perry without makeup, presumably because ohmigod WorldNetDaily writers find a woman less attractive without her lady costume on, is a link to the "Daily Blessing" where readers can receive some Christian inspiration.

Because misogyny is so loving and kind and devout and just like Jesus. Don't you all remember that part in the New Testament where Jesus was like, "Yo Mary, are you really not going to put lipstick on?"

(Maybe conservatives are still pissed that Katy Perry wrote that song that has "lesbian undertones"?)

In Which Gay = Male, Again

Silly me for thinking that when former President Jimmy Carter said we might be ready for a gay president, we were actually talking about a president that could be either male or female.

Maureen Dowd, and those she cites, confirms yet again that in cultural narratives about "gay" rights, the default gay is still a gay man. She writes:

"Others feel we’re not ready for a gay president, citing the fear and loathing unleashed by the election of the first black president. 'Can you imagine how much a gay president would have to overcompensate to please the macho ninnies who control our national debate?' Bill Maher told me. 'Women like Hillary have to do it, Obama had to do it because he’s black and liberal, but a gay president? He’d have to nuke something the first week.'”

I called Barney Frank, assuming the gay pioneer would be optimistic. He wasn’t. 'It’s one thing to have a gay person in the abstract,' he said. 'It’s another to see that person as part of a living, breathing couple. How would a gay presidential candidate have a celebratory kiss with his partner after winning the New Hampshire primary? The sight of two women kissing has not been as distressful to people as the sight of two men kissing.'”

Gay men often cite that "straight dudes love watching ladies kiss" rule as proof that the public isn't as "distressed" by queer women as they are by gay men. What they fail to consider is that the above rule usually only holds true if the two women's looks are in compliance with conventional standards of beauty. That is, if they're hot according to, not just the straight male eye, but the queer male eye as well. But more on that in a minute.

The gay-male centricity in this narrative about whether we're ready for a gay president perhaps illustrates that the thought of a woman president, any woman president, is still too unimagineable for some to even hypothetically consider.

Yet oddly, Fred Sainz of the Human Rights Campaign told Maureen Dowd: "[A] lesbian would have a better shot at the presidency than a gay man. 'People are more comfortable with women than they are with men because of stereotypes with gay men about hypersexuality,' he said."

You know, as a real life lesbian myself, I've found that once you scratch the surface of someone's homophobia and remind them that queer women exist too, we often find that people aren't actually more comfortable with queer women. We are an afterthought, mostly. But still a deviant, immoral, and/or ridicule-worthy one in many people's eyes.

Someone named Andre Leon Talley, who is apparently a "Vogue visionary," adds his two cents by basically demonstrating that some gay dudes (or maybe just him) don't really take the idea of a female president seriously. What would be most important about a lady president would be, natch, her outfits:

"[He] pictures a lesbian president who looks like Julie Andrews and dresses to meet heads of state in 'ankle-length skirts, grazing the Manolo Blahnik kitten heels.' She would save her 'butch trouser suit for weekends at Camp David and vacation hikes in Yellowstone. No plaid lumberjack shirts at any time.'”

Har har har-wait a minute, I thought stereotyping was wrong. Oh, that rule only applies to "gays"?

But seriously, after Dowd gives us quote after quote about how it is unfair to gay men that negative stereotypes define them as oversexed sissies (and it is unfair), we learn from these men that (a) being a lesbian is so much easier and (b) that a lesbian president would be subject to some serious fashion policing, this time grounded in the lesbian lumberjack stereotype, effectively demonstrating that contrary to popular gay male opinion and no matter her sexual orientation, a female president's campaign for the highest office in our land would be no fucking walk in the park.

Male privilege FAIL.

Somebody Call the Gender Police!

[Cross-posted at Our Big Gayborhood]

Perhaps you've heard of blogger Nerdy Apple Bottom's post about her young, adorable son's decision to dress as a female cartoon character for Halloween. She recounts her experience upon dropping him off at school in costume:

"Two mothers went wide-eyed and made faces as if they smelled decomp. And I realize that my son is seeing the same thing I am. So I say, 'Doesn’t he look great?' And Mom A says in disgust, 'Did he ask to be that?!' I say that he sure did as Halloween is the time of year that you can be whatever it is that you want to be. They continue with their nosy, probing questions as to how that was an option and didn’t I try to talk him out of it. Mom B mostly just stood there in shock and dismay...

[I]t also was heartbreaking to me that my sweet, kind-hearted five year old was right to be worried. He knew that there were people like A, B, and C. And he, at 5, was concerned about how they would perceive him and what would happen to him."

Many LGBT bloggers have picked up on this story, lauding the mother for her support of a son who might grow up to be gay. The son very well may grow up to be gay, and it is wonderful that the mother says she would continue to love him anyway. At the same time, I don't think it should be glossed over that this is less a "gay" issue and more a gender nonconformity issue. The horrified mothers were perhaps somewhat concerned that the child might be gay, but I would argue that they were far more concerned about the fact that he was a boy! Wearing a dress! Acting like a girl!

I write often about the intersections between LGBT advocacy, feminism, and gender policing precisely because, as lesbian, gay, bisexual, and transgender people, many of us go against society's mandate that our sexual and romantic partners must be of the (misnamed) "opposite" sex. Liberation from the gender police means liberation for LGBT people. Yet, whatever our sexual orientation, every culture has written and unwritten rules regarding appropriate behavior for male and female beings meaning gender policing affects all people, gay, straight, bisexual, and asexual.

Dresses and the color pink are, for instance, arbitrarily assigned to the female sex in the US, while suits and the color blue are assigned to the male sex. On an emotional level, men in the US are often conditioned to believe that expressing any emotion other than anger is un-manly, while women are conditioned to believe that they are allowed to express any emotion but anger. Countless examples exist, and vary incredibly by culture.

So, my question for commenters today is, how has societal gender policing (or the threat of it) stopped you from doing something that you have wanted to do in your life?

My personal example may appear somewhat backwards. I am cisgender woman and a lesbian who is somewhat androgynous. Although I am often told that I "look straight," I have never been invested in appearing all that feminine. I don't wear make-up, dresses, or heels and I don't carry a purse, all common markers of "female" in US culture.

And yet, despite my loathing of wearing dresses and everything "pink," I have always wanted to take ballet lessons. I think it is a beautiful art form and I long to try it. I still occasionally look up adult beginner classes and contemplate signing up.

However, I invariably decide against it when I see that the required clothing for women is usually tights and a leotard, two items of clothing I could not identify less with. Even in the few classes I have found that don't require such attire, I fear that I will show up as the lone woman wearing shorts or sweatpants and, consequently, will be ridiculed for not conforming to the Rules Governing the Proper Attire of Lady Ballet Dancers. I fear that the other women will mock me for looking too athletic- that they will call me too "manly" behind my back.

Feel free to share your experiences.

APA Report on the Sexualization of Girls

The American Psychological Association's Task Force on the Sexualization of Girls has issued a report (PDF) defining sexualization, examining the prevalence of sexualization, evaluating the evidence suggesting sexualization has negative consequences for girls and society, and describing alternatives to counteract the influence of sexualization.

The entire report is worth a read (72 pages), but I've provided some highlights below.

Defining sexualization, the report's introduction aptly summarizes how the sexualization of girls works concurrently with dominant beauty standards for women to further harm girls (and women):

"...[I]n the current environment, teen girls are encouraged to look sexy, yet they know little about what it means to be sexual, to have sexual desires, and to make rational and responsible decisions about pleasure and risk within intimate relationships that acknowledge their own desires.Younger girls imbued with adult sexuality may seem sexually appealing, and this may suggest their sexual availability and status as appropriate sexual objects. Concomitantly, women are often considered sexy only when they appear young, thus blurring the line between who is and is not sexually mature (Cook & Kaiser, 2004)."

I am reminded here of the Glee photo shoot in GQ wherein two adult women portrayed sexually available teenage girls. At once, the images imbued "teenage schoolgirls" with adult sexuality while simultaneously reinforcing the message that adult women are sexiest when they look incredibly young.

Indeed, the report notes how the media contributes to the sexualization of girls:

"On television, young viewers encounter a world that is disproportionately male, especially in youth-oriented programs, and one in which female characters are significantly more likely than male characters to be attractive and provocatively dressed (Eaton, 1997)."

I know, in other news, sky is blue.

Nonetheless, the media saturation of sexualized images of girls and women is an observation that needs to be made in order to make the case that something should be done about it. And, when you read through the report's examples and findings of sexualization, it is infuriating.

It is often said that Women These Days Don't Know How Good They Have It because, I suppose, anti-discrimination laws are now in effect and we therefore live in a post-feminist society. But, despite the appearance of "legal equality," how equal are men and women really when movies, TV, magazines, cartoons, music lyrics, and advertisements send girls (and women) the message our most important feature is our ability to gain the attention and approval of men via our looks?

Isn't it telling that so much appearance-related advice to women is of the How To Lose Weight variety, rather than the How To Be Healthy type? It is society's metaphor for keeping women, and our roles in the world, small. Weightless.

Particularly sad are the findings related to how when girls internalize the idea that they are sex objects leads to feelings of shame, repulsion, anxiety, depression, low self-esteem, and heightened fear of becoming fat. And, when men are exposed to media that objectifies women, they are more likely to treat women like sexual objects and to view women as less intellectually competent.

The report also proposes a number of ways to counteract some of the negative consequences of the sexualization of girls. As a feminist blogger, I find it somewhat validating that among these tactics are educating girls to view media critically and reaching girls and women through alternative media such as feminist blogs, books, websites, and forums.

So, yeah, fellas, stick that in your Feminists-Should-Stop-Criticizing-Silly-Things-Like-Sexist-TV-Shows pipe and smoke it.

I Eat

[TW: Eating disorders, fat phobia/hatred]

Yippee, personal anecdote time!

Today, I'm going to talk about food and body image. Two disclaimers. One, I am mostly a n00b when it comes to the emerging movement known as Fat Acceptance, mostly because, as a thin person, I've had the privilege of not having to think much about what it is like to live in a virulently fat-phobic society. For instance, I can clean my plate, part of someone else's, and then order dessert in public and mostly not think twice about how other people might be whispering "no wonder" and, instead, am often treated as though my Healthy Appetite For A Lady is somewhat endearing.

It wasn't until I began reading Shakesville a couple of years ago, and specifically various posts by Melissa McEwan, that I began thinking about the politics of fatness and society's hatred of fat people in any real way. See, for instance, this post and the links and comments therein that speak to the ubiquity and the social acceptability of fat shaming.

Two, I am coming to a growing awareness of how living in a fat phobic society as a thin woman has combined with class considerations to give me a somewhat fucked-up relationship with food and body image. How many of us, no matter our size, feel as though if we're women and we have bodies we can't fucking win? But at the same time, I want to fully acknowledge that, perhaps in a way similar to how patriarchy also hurts men, my experiences with fat phobia, hatred, and body image are qualitatively and quantitatively different than what a fat woman (or man) experiences on a daily basis. I intend no equivalence with this post. Construcitve criticism is welcome.

So, onward.

I am thin. I have always been thin. I don't know how to define "thin" but, if this helps, basically even after puberty I used to look like a 2x4? (Which, of course, can have its own set of body shaming experiences in a society that likes its women Voluptuous But Not Too Voluptuous). Or, and I know the Body Mass Index has shortcomings, I have always fallen into the problematically-named "normal" category of the BMI.

Despite my lifelong thin appearance, it was when I went to college that I learned for the first time in my life that I was fat, actually. Or, rather, that I had a lot of it and was "at risk" for becoming noticeably fat. See, I was an athlete and during our pre-season physicals, which included a body fat measurement, I learned that my body fat percentage was significantly higher than that of all of my teammates despite the fact that all of our bodies looked, on the outside, very similar.

I didn't understand then why my body fat percentage was higher than other people's, but by the raised eyebrows of teammates and coaches regarding my body fat, I do remember feeling as though I had done something very wrong by having this fat. Stereotypes of fat people dancing in my head, I felt ashamed and judged as lazy, undisciplined, and immoral. I also see now that it was a remarkable privilege that it wasn't until I was 18 that this was my first fleeting encounter with fat shame that some people live with every single day of their lives.

So, after the physicals, I was called into my coach's office to have a meeting about my body and all of its (un)apparent fat. After taking an inventory of my typical meals, my coach jokingly asked how I was still alive. For the record, I genuinely thought pop-tarts for breakfast, doritos and a 3 Musketeers for lunch, pizza for dinner, and ice cream for dessert were all totally fine meal options.

It's a cruel irony, no?

Fat people are often lambasted for the inaccurate perception that all they do is scarf down whole cakes all day long (while possibly sitting on their beds alone and feeling sad for themselves), but there I was having actually eaten almost nothing but the nutritional equivalent of chocolate cakes for most of my life while nonetheless appearing skinny and, thus, "healthy." I got a lifelong free fucking pass to eat whatever junk I wanted as long as I stayed skinny while doing so!

Society gave me brownie points for looking thin. But, thanks to my food ignorance and growing up poor, I was malnourished, pre-diabetic (thank you high fructose corn syrup!), and had a fucked-up metabolism.

Prior to college and its wonderful meal cards, food for me was never about quality. When you're poor, you don't have that luxury. Eating, during much of my childhood, was always, always about taking in what I thought would make me full enough until the next meal. When you're a kid, you don't usually have your own money to buy your own food. You don't always want to take the free lunch at school and, sometimes, even your parents are too proud to let you take it. What you eat is whatever your parents put in the cupboards. Then, when you're a teenager working at a fast-food joint, finally earning your own money, you don't go shopping at the Whole Foods that doesn't even exist in your rural town. You eat free french fries at work.

Now, as an adult with a decent income, when I am eating with friends in a restaurant, my heart still sometimes races when someone asks the inevitable "Why don't we just get a bunch of stuff and share it?" Perhaps some of you reading this also hear that warning in the back of your head whispering, "What if I don't get enough?" To some of us, "sharing" is associated with going to bed hungry.

And so, I eat.

I eat and I finish my plate, almost always, because growing up poor means you don't waste food. And yet, when you eat and finish your plate you put yourself at risk for Becoming Fat.

I don't know what combination of genes, environment, or metabolism kept me thin during my young adulthood, but after meeting with my coach in college, I picked up on some subtext. Screw diabetes, if I didn't make big changes to my diet, my sneaky skinny fat would somehow spread to the outside and, thanks to her and so many other societal messages, that would be the Worst Thing Imagineable.

I have been battling different levels of that fear for most of my adult life.

During and immediately after college, I was probably exercise anorexic, which apparently seems to be a real thing. I loved food too much to forego it and so when I ate, which was frequently, I would work out to maintain caloric equilibrium. I would work out. For hours. Despite what I led people to believe, my working out was not mostly for purposes of Being Healthy, but for purposes of Not Getting Fat.

Throughout my life, compulsive exercise has interferred with my education, jobs, relationships, happiness, health, joints, and vacations. Yet, compulsive exercise isn't a typical After School Special topic because the skinny athletic person is Doing Everything Right according to fat-phobic cultural criticism of bodies.

These days, moderation is my mantra, but I will probably always live with some part of me worrying about becoming fat. Haven't we all, to varying degrees, internalized the message that to be fat is to be lazy, immoral, and gross? Doesn't it seem like for fat people, It Doesn't Get Better?

Today, every woman in my life has had at least some degree of a frenemy relationship with food and her body image. I am a Fat Acceptance ally not only because I believe fat people have the same human dignity as thin people, but because challenging narrow cultural standards of beauty effects all of us.