Feminism, Anti-Feminism, and All The Cakes

I started reading Amy Farrell's Fat Shame: Stigma and the Fat Body in American Culture recently, and I am really enjoying it so far. 

Amy was supposed to be in one of my NWSA panels last fall, but couldn't make it, and so instead I read her paper for her...a fantastic essay on how antifat sentiment was used by both those for and against women's suffrage, which was part of a chapter in her (then upcoming) book. I was so impressed with her work and fascinated by the topic, especially because I think it shows the way in which antifat attitudes have been woven into the historical fabric of feminism.

The white, Western mainstream feminist movement took off the same time that Western attitudes about fat began to change. Fatness became a serious character flaw, a symbol of failed citizenship. As Amy says in her book, fatness was a sign the middle class folk couldn't handle modern society, couldn't regulate themselves in amidst the new potential for excess. And as Amy points out, the body was increasingly understood to be an important marker...indeed, it was also the height of the Eugenics movement. 

And sadly, these discourses about bodies were utilized by claimsmakers (or people trying to persuade) because those arguments were found to be compelling. 

As such, some feminists of the time used Eugenicist language/arguments to make claims about their (white) right to "women's" suffrage and "women's" rights. They used ideas that already compelled people, that already panicked them, that already tugged at their (a)moral compass. 

Which is why feminists use of anti-fat sentiment didn't come as a big surprise for me...though I find it tremendously interesting. In fact, before I had even read Amy's piece, someone showed me this link to an old book from that time period, archived in Bryn Mawr's "Women's Suffrage Ephemera Collection," called "Ten Little Suffergets."

"Ten Little Suffergets" is a sad piece of anti-women's suffrage propaganda; it's hilarious in it's ridiculousness until you think about the fact that feminists still face these kinds of ridiculous arguments. The "suffergets" (pictured as little girls in dresses, maryjanes with socks, and bows in their hair) hold signs like "Votes for Women" and "Equal Rights" (innocuous enough), "No More Home Rule," "Down with Teachers,"  "Down with the Men," "Let the Man be the Housemaid," "Protection for Infant Industries" (not sure exactly what that refers to), "Every Day a Holiday," "No More Bedtimes," and........."Cake Every Day." 

That's right. Cake. Every. Day. I think it's clear to us all now that suffragists are the architects of the obesity epidemic. Feminism really is the downfall of society!

The storyline of the book is merely that each of the "suffergets" encounters an issue--either she throws off her ideals (the "sufferget" who held the "Down with Teachers" sign ends up bringing flowers to her teacher, thus the end of her feminism)  or she is injured in some way (the story starts out with the first "sufferget" getting a whipping--get this, cuz "suffergets" are naughty. Infantilization + sexualization + physical domination  = sexism win!). Essentially, if she doesn't learn her lesson on her own...harm shall come to her, as it should be.

Guess what happens to the "sufferget" who was fighting for "Cake Every Day"?

Her gluttony and cakelust is her own undoing and she can no longer protest on behalf of cakefreedom. Twowholecakes is one thing, this gal "gobbles" ALL TEH CAKES. If only feminists had an allthecakes shout-out back then to turn this on its head.

In her chapter on "Feminism, Citizenship, and Fat Stigma," Amy talks both about this kind of anti-suffragist attack and about how the suffragists tried to depict themselves a slim, young, and beautiful...and anti-suffragists as fat cats or fat and aging (behind the times).  

Rather than saying something radical, like, "We're fat, so what, give us our fucking votes!" it seems early feminists used the antifat sentiment and lookism of the day to argue for their cause. Although it's lazy (and often despicable), it's much easier to utilize narratives that people already accept or find persuasive, symbols that jive with their (often fucked up) cultural logic (Eugenics, antifat denigration, etc.) than to vie for your cause AND challenge systems of privilege and oppression that are in place...or at least refrain from perpetuating them. Fatness is a place marker people can use to rile people up and win them over with the sensationalism, fear, and panic (not so dissimilar from the functions and dynamics of panic about racial purity) when otherwise they fear their argument is not compelling or persuasive enough. When in doubt, rely on fear and hate, right? It's a surefire plan.

As fat activists, we should do our best to avoid falling into the trap of relying on or reinforcing systems of privilege and oppression and/or cultural tropes to vie for our cause. Our cause stands on it's own.

Highlighting Funny Fat Jokes?

I want to keep a file of funny fat jokes. I'm tired of being tired of tired fat jokes.

The beau and I watch Late Night with Jimmy Fallon (judge not!), and he regularly does fat jokes during his monologue. But last month it was like EVERY DAMN DAY a boring, irritating, and stereotypical fat joke. He made a manboobs joke about the fat guy who ran a marathon. COME THE FUCK ON.

Then SNL actually did a funny fat joke...or maybe even two. Of course, they made some fat jokes worthy of heavy eye rolling, but any fat joke that is not that is, sadly, noteworthy to me. I feel like when someone tells a funny fat joke, an angel gets its wings. President Obama even did an obesity joke during the White House Correspondents Dinner where (I felt) Michelle Obama was the butt of the joke, rather than fat kids/people. 

It seems like something we might try to highlight. If we say, "Yes, more of this please!" perhaps people will catch on and up their game!

Anyway, rad fatties, what are your parameters for a funny fat joke?

I think these two SNL jokes from Weekend Update are funny. The first calls out Martin Lawrence for his fat-suiting, stigmatizing movie characters.




DESCRIPTION
Scene: Seth Meyers. Shown to right: photo of a headless fatty (masculine-presenting) wearing a button up shirt with thin vertical stripes, a belt, and jeans.

Seth Meyers: Some researchers are warning the efforts by global health officials to combat obesity is actually creating a stigma against fat people. Though I'm gonna go ahead and put equal blame on Martin Lawrence. (Shown to right: Enlarged photo of Martin Lawrence as 'Big Momma' from mid-chest up in front of the DVD covers of each Big Momma's House movie.)




The second one makes fun of Perez Hilton for being a bullying jerk.




DESCRIPTION
Scene: Seth Meyers. Shown to right:A picture of a Perez Hilton from the shoulders up, smiling widely and wearing black. Underneath the picture, the words, "Writing Children's Book."

Seth Meyers: Celebrity blogger Perez Hilton has signed a deal to write a children's book called, "The Boy with Pink Hair." But really he just took another children's book and scribbled insults all over it. (Shown: a picture of Babar the Elephant, a character from a children's illustrated book/TV series, on a sidewalk in a black suit and wearing his crown."Fat!" is written over the picture in white with a white arrow pointing to Babar.)


Are these jokes you would consider "funny fat jokes"?

If you have any funny fat jokes you would like to share, please send them to withoutscene at gmail dot com.



Note: I'm trying to transcribe videos to make their contents accessible, but I'm new at it, so I might not be doing the most thorough job yet. I'll get better. *Constructive* criticism is helpful.

Note, the 2nd: The captions on the videos are not synched up. Have tried to fix it, but each time I load the original video, the captions are out of synch.

Down the Rabbit Hole

This is the story of a night on the internet. I went down a social justice rabbit hole, and I want to show you where I went. I want to tell the story of my experience and what I found. I am posting links rather than embedding video because it's gonna be a long haul, folks.
__________________________________________________

It started with a newsletter from Kimberly Dark. I met Kimberly for the first time at the 2009 National Women's Studies Conference. She walked up to me in the exhibit hall and introduced herself. She had seen me present on a panel about teaching fat studies earlier that day. Between my crazy hair and my loud dress, I suppose I was easy to recognize. She complimented me, we chatted briefly, and she gave me a postcard about her work. When I came home, I put her postcard on my board in my office with a thumb tack. Later, I visited her website and searched for videos of her performances on YouTube. I was in awe of the stories she told and the way she told them. I signed up for her newsletter. Since then, we've become Facebook friends and met again at NWSA 2010, where I was very grateful we got more time to chat. Kimberly is powerful artist/performer, activist, and sociologist. If you know anything about me and know anything about her you might understand why I look up to her. Let's just say she's my kind of gal.

So instead of leaving her newsletter in my Inbox to be forgotten, I opened it up and read it with a smile. Here's the part that started the rabbit hole:

Campus Pride Blog names Kimberly as one of the Top 25 "Best of the Best" LGBT speakers, performers who raises awareness of inclusion, visibility on college campuses nationally!

I clicked the link. I read Kimberly's bio. I scrolled. I wanted to see if there was anyone I recognized, and more importantly, find people I didn't know about who I obviously should know about. I began the YouTubestravaganza. Though I didn't YouTube every name, there were some people who stood out.

First,

"Kit Yan tell stories through slam poetry from the lens of a transgender Asian American from Hawaii now lost in the big city of New York."

I watched Kit's "3rd Gender." I really wish I had known about this so I could show it to my class this week when we were talking about sexuality and gender identity. It would have blown their minds.

My favorite quote:

"Sometimes my gender is boy who looks like a girl who likes boys. And sometimes my gender is girl who is a boy who still feels like a girl sometimes. And sometimes my gender is a boy-girl who likes everything in between, but most of the time...my gender is FUCK YOU, MIND YOUR OWN GODDAMN BUSINESS."

I also watched Kit's "Open Letter to HRC." Honest and touching. If you're not familiar with critiques of the HRC, do some Googling.

After YouTubeing a few more people/groups, I came upon the bio for Mia Mingus. I will post it in its entirety because it blew me away.

"Mia Mingus is a queer physically disabled woman of color, Korean American transracial and transnational adoptee, living in Atlanta, Georgia, raised in St. Croix, US Virgin Islands, and born in Korea. Through her work on disability justice, race, reproductive justice, gender, queer liberation, transformative justice, transracial and transnational adoption, multiple oppressed identities and multi-issue politics; she recognizes the urgency and barriers for oppressed communities to work together and build alliances for liberation. Though her work for liberation changes and evolves, her roots remain firmly planted in ending sexual violence. Mia was a Co-Executive Director of SPARK Reproductive Justice Now until January 2010. She is a member of the Disability Justice Collective, the Sins Invalid Advisory Committee, and the Atlanta Transformative Justice Collaborative. She is currently speaking at various conferences, universities and gatherings around the country in order to support her writing."

I YouTubed her and found this POWERFUL video of Mia speaking at the CLPP conference. Holy shit. This woman busts it up. She reminds me of Andrea Smith, who spoke at the 2010 NWSA conference, because she just pummels you with knowledge and liberating passion.

The finale of her speech:

"We have to start relating to each other more as whole people. I don't want to live in a world where I have to leave the movements that I'm a part of in order to feel like I'm whole or in order to be able to practice healing. I don't want to do that. I don't want to have to feel like in order to stay connected to this movement or to other social justice movements I have to cut off pieces of myself, and say, "Okay, well I won't talk about my queerness." "Okay, I won't talk about being an adoptee." "Okay, I won't talk about being disabled." That's not the kind of movement I want. And that's not the kind of movement that I know you want. So I hope as we go through this weekend, we can practice what it would be like. Challenge ourselves to be as whole as possible and to be as connected as possible."

Of course then I had to know what CLPP was. CLPP = Civil Liberties and Public Policy. I watched the video on their homepage to get a sense of what they were about. Seems like I should know about them too. I signed up for their listserv and also bookmarked their amazing resources page.

Then I YouTubed Unique Robinson, one of the interns for CLPP, who appears in their front page video. Unique and Monika Martinez, performing also at a CLPP conference, weave a beautiful and painful narrative, drawing on their experiences as women of color. They end by highlighting the unproductiveness of tearing each other down and suggesting, "Just listen to ourselves/ a future trapped in our past/ where whiteness equals beauty/ and brown paper bags/ Drain your brains of this poison/ and embrace all that is true to you/ so we can't call ourselves free/ until we call ourselves beautiful/ until we call each other beautiful." Definitely thinking of pairing this with Kiri Davis' "A Girl Like Me" when I teach beauty, body, and race next time.

Unique is also a part of SisterSong Women of Color Reproductive Justice Collective. So I decided I should get more educated and browse their website. I knew about SisterSong, and am still hittin' myself for missing the opportunity to hear Loretta Ross speak at NWSA a few years ago. I'd only heard about the anti-choice billboards that are targeted at communities of color, so hadn't seen these videos of theirs about the group behind the billboards and their "Freedom Rides" event. Another long haul, but worth it to watch em. It's some messed up shit and is also revealing about the complexity women of color face when it comes to reproduction and abortion in the U.S.

Then I was on twitter and saw a Crunk Feminist Collective post called "How Chris Brown is Effing Up My Sex Life: A B-Side to Dating While Feminist." The post is about whether or not you can sleep with someone who believes things you think are harmful. I think it depends on the people involved and the situation. I think no is the right answer for some and yes is the right answer for others. But regardless, it's an important question to consider.

In the comments of that CFC post Alexis said, "Makes me want to create an ad campaign that gives new meaning to the phrase “come correct.” Then, like magic, someone created a Tumblr in honor, called "Betta Come Correct." Apparently some amazing women created it over their lunch break.

Betta Come Correct introduced me to the Lost Bois, D.C. duo A.O and B.Steady, speaking about consent with the Consensual Project. After watching this video, I YouTubed and Googled Lost Bois. Sincerely was the first Lost Bois video I watched, full of cute nerdiness, crushing hard, and swagger. Here's a good interview interspersed with videos. GEMS.

BCC also has an interesting post on Jessie J's "Do it like a Dude," which I had never heard. While the video gives a crazy amount of visibility to queer women of color, again we see a white woman appropriating women of color and using them as "background color" in a video for a song that admittedly is making fun of black masculinity in hip hop. While calling out that appropriation, CFC notes that Jessie J also invokes the male gaze and CFC asks the question, "What does it mean that boys are getting hot by women performing a decidedly black masculinity?"

If you've never observed the fact that people of color are used as background color for white people, you need to think about that some more. Think of Outsourced, a show about a call center in India, where the show's main character is a white man. Google "Gwen Stefani cultural appropriation." Hell, I watched Florence and the Machine's "Dog Days are Over" video the other day and was just SHOCKED at the level of blatant excessive cultural appropriation. And if you may not yet think cultural appropriation is a problem, go back and read the Background Color link and the subsequent posts on the same topic.

So that's my social justice rabbit hole for the week. I'll leave you with a US Social Forum compilation video on "Liberating Gender and Sexuality" that features Mia Mingus, Andrea Smith, and Loretta Ross, among others.

Badass Fatasses of the Week

First, the Fat Strong Lady, from California. Two days ago, she posted a video of her exercising and talking about her experiences, and it has been making the rounds. From the video description:

I created this video in response to all the fat hate in our culture right now. From Michelle Obama's many comments about the "obesity epidemic" to the non-stop flood of trolls who jump at the chance to shame and attack fat people who are enjoying their bodies and living healthy and free. Hating someone "for their own good" has never worked.

While it can't be said enough that we don't have to be healthy or strong or ANYTHING AT ALL to deserve dignity, respect, and rights, I think it's really important to see fat people being in all sorts of ways; and it's transformative, in my opinion, because seeing different ways of being expands our ability to envision and embody different ways of being. When we know more possibilities for fatness, we are better able to challenge a world that reduces us to myth and stereotype and even monsters.


And our second Badass Fatass of the week is Kim Selling, who's video of her slam poem "Fat Bottomed Girls" is also making the rounds. Kim takes a different approach in this video, the fuck you approach, if you will, to fat activism. She says many great things, but here are a few:

I was going to post my favorite quotes, but instead, just watch this video as many times as you need in order to soak all those powerful words in (I've watched it about 10 times now and I'm still not done soaking up the awesomesauce). And then do a body love booty shake in honor of badass fatasses everywhere.

"SKINS" Open Mic: Kim Selling from Champ Ensminger on Vimeo.

Hoodwinked By Fat Panic

The "church makes you fatter" articles are making the rounds after a new study tells us confirms what similar previous correlational studies have told us before: people who are regularly involved in religious activities are fatter.

Each article I've seen on this current study briefly mentions that
THERE WERE NO SIGNIFICANT HEALTH EFFECTS FOUND,
meaning in this study:
1. Church is not correlated with bad health
2. Fatness is not correlated with bad health

Hoodwinked. Our culture is so fucking hoodwinked by fat panic, by 'obesity epidemic' discourse that OMGFATTIES is the default EVEN when 'health concerns' are admittedly non-existent. That's because it's not about health at all. It's fat panic for fat panic's sake.

Keep on Livin'

I wish there were a way to properly explain how much joy this video gives me.

Le Tigre Karaoke - Keep on Livin' - Unskinny Bop


I love watching it and pretending I'm in a big, queer dance party. Even after 5+ years of YouTube, it amazes me how people you don't even know can touch your heart, can get you through when you're feeling down. I suppose I feel that way about the internets in general.

And I was reminded of the above because of this video, one of the most touching "It Gets Better" videos I've watched, by JD Samson (formerly of Le Tigre), simply and meaningfully reading the lyrics to Keep on Livin.



We are touching each other across the world. And for all the cries about how the internet isolates us, our connections matter and they are real.

I imagine the people who may have watched these videos, and hope that they did keep on livin. And I hope you do too.

I Suggest You Do Some Clicking /or/ Sleep for Me, Reading for You

Read this Psychology Today post "The Demon Fat and Why We All Need to Make Peace with It" by the fabulous Harriet Brown. Harriet, as always, does an excellent job of cutting to the core and illustrating the fucked up relationships we have with food and how they are connected to eating disorders. (Speaking of which, have you checked out Harriet's Project Body Talk lately? Cuz, well, you should!!!!)

Also, if you haven't put resilient fat warrior Pattie Thomas' Psychology Today column, I Take Up Space, on your feed...I suggest you do some clicking. Pattie has come faced some hate-filled personal attacks there, and I'm sure she'll continue to need our support.

Finally, whether or not you've heard of the story of Casey Heynes, who was bullied and fought back (on video tape), you should check out Nicholosophy's post about his personal experience of bullying and its effects on Samantha Thomas' blog Discourse, and both of Paul Campos' posts (here and here) related to the story, where Paul breaks it on down (as usual), building on his argument from this lecture. After that, or you know, at any time you please, also read Brian's badass takedown of an apparently idiotic takedown (I refuse to read or link, for my own sanity) of Paul Campos' argument on Red No. 3.



And now, sleep for me. I mean, "I'm going to sleep." Not, "Dear readers of my blog, please sleep for me." Get the rest you require, but to my knowledge it's not transferable.

Aaaaaaaand I think this meta-conversation I'm having with myself demonstrates exactly why sleep is an important goal of mine at this point in time.

So. Yes.
Sleep. For me. Reading. For. You.