How to Catch Yourself Before Enacting Privileged, Ignorant Assholery*

Just now I was thinking of how unappreciated our university janitorial and cleaning staff is, at least in my building. They are largely invisible--they come in in the middle of the night, clean the place, replenish goods, and leave before most students, faculty or staff get here. And the state of our building is something, then, we just take for granted.**

I'd imagine as cleaning jobs go, a job cleaning at a university pays more and offers more benefits than most, though I only imagine that--I don't know. Still, we are very fucking privileged to have people who clean up after us, who sweep our floors and dispose of our trash, who buffer the floors so that they are shiny at the beginning of the semester. Since the workers come at night, though, we find that things are magically clean and disposed of, and we are so used to it we barely think of it unless some anomalous uncleanliness presents itself.

"We should all appreciate and be cognizant of the work of our janitorial staff," I thought. "I could put fliers up in this building," I thought, "telling everyone to appreciate the janitorial staff they take for granted, to be mindful that the work they do in the middle of the night gives our lives ease." "Maybe just for a day, or a few minutes, people would remember to think about the people behind their tidy campus lives."

Now, let me say that those are not bad thoughts. All the intention there is good. But this is precisely why I try to get my students to separate intention from effect.

In a moment of clarity, I then thought, "Hmn. I wonder if the janitors would want that? What would it be like for them if I did that? Would they want me to do it? Would they want that attention? Would people think my signs represented their unhappiness or resentment? Would that attention result in harassment or foster negative attitudes toward them? Would it create a hostile work environment?" Heightened visibility can be a powerful and good thing, but it can also create harm, particularly if it's not chosen visibility.

Now, maybe it wouldn't do harm. Maybe my signs would bring about a joyous appreciation of janitorial staff and people would value the work that they do and the way in which it improves their every day lives and that would catch on throughout the whole campus and the whole nation and the whole world and janitors would be respected and paid more and given more benefits.

Probably not.

But that's also not the point. First of all, my idea for janitorial appreciation signs assumes that in their lives, it's lack of appreciation and recognition that needs improvement. Some happy-go-lucky sign-hanging recognition day is a nice gesture, but would it be what they most needed? Would it create change that would most improve their lives? It's not that easy things to do (like hanging signs) never make a difference or are unimportant, but it's about whether it can make a difference and is that difference the difference that's needed?

Second of all is an important reminder for me that I cannot speak for other groups of people. Not having experience as a janitor--here or anywhere else--I don't know what the work life is like...and therefore, I can't really predict whether appreciation signs would be meaningful or whether they would do much more harm in the lives of the janitorial staff than they would good. Separation from the janitorial staff, which allows myself and others to take them for granted, is exactly why I shouldn't "help" them, at least not without getting well-acquainted with their needs by talking with them or by having them state their needs and suggested solutions. I don't have their lived experience, therefore I can't speak for them OR do for them. It also assumes they need help. Maybe they have recognized a problem and are organizing to fix it. Either way, I am not savior of the janitors.

While it's fine to have good intentions, if you don't consider the lived experience of others, you are bound to harm them. So before you go about saving anyone or helping anyone...before you think you have some brilliant idea:

1) Think about yourself in relation to the people you want to help.
2) Question whether your actions have the potential to do more harm than good.
3) Importantly, question whether your actions would address the self-determined needs of the group of people and whether, really, they need your "help" at all.
4) Humble your damn self.



*Alternative Title: On How I Checked My Own Savior Complex--How You Can too!

**Now, in my old building, on my old floor, we have a daytime janitor. The fact that we see him heightens our awareness and, perhaps, appreciation of him. He becomes a person, a visible part of our lives. He also regularly interacts with other staff, and sometimes faculty and students. However, in his experience--for all I know--his co-existence with faculty, staff, and students might make his life more stressful...might highlight the class differences that exist between janitorial staff, administrative staff, students, and faculty. Again, I am not him, so I simply don't know.

On never getting thin... or More Fat: Still Awesome

Tomorrow I go to my 10 year high school reunion. I have little doubt that I will be the fattest person there.

I spent a lot of energy as a teen thinking about how I'd be thin by the time I graduated high school....no? well, I'd be thin at our high school reunion and I'd show them all! Then they would recognize how awesome I am.

But I never got thin. I got a lot fatter. And then I got a lot less afraid of that.

At some point in recent years, I began encountering a critical mass of people who think I am awesome, and that has made a huge difference in my life. It's a big change from my life as a teenage girl who simultaneously didn't want to be seen (for fear of judgment) and was desperate to be seen (recognized as worthwhile)...to a 28 yr old who has the privilege of knowing many people who see her and even seek her out.

I don't know if people will be assholes or if I will have a good time. I am not going for anyone else. I am going for that teenage girl I was, the one who couldn't imagine a world in which anyone could see her as anything unless she became thin. And then I'm going to write a letter to a young girl I know, who is that girl I was, and really and truly make it worth my time.

Reflections on My Complicated Relationships with Other Fat Women

For awhile now I've been meaning to post about my reflections on the fat women who have affected me in my lifetime. I even began writing about it in a notebook--which is somewhere around here--before ever starting this blog. This is a new start and will probably come out in multiple rambling posts.

The way I related to other fat women and girls (and men/boys, but that's perhaps for another reflection another time) over time says something about my fat identity.

Fat women have always been in my life. Although my mom was thin when I was little, family on both my mother's and father's sides were on the hefty side more often than not. I remember the first time I saw a picture of my mother from high school. My body made so much more sense to me. In her childhood pictures she is an average sized girl with short blond hair, but as she aged her hair grew and darkened and she became heavier. Her high school picture was very different from the thin mother I knew as a child, or even the size 12 mother I knew as a teen. At age ten I was wearing my mother's clothes--in fact, I raided her closet often for the clothes I thought were funky and 'vintage,' which mostly meant I looked like a bit of a weirdo to my classmates, but I took a lot of pleasure in it and remember feeling a loss when her clothes no longer fit me. I hadn't quite found thrift shopping at that point.

I think middle school was the point at which I started to feel actively antagonistic toward other fat women and girls. One day in homeroom I was sitting with a table of boys. Assigned table, probably. Our homeroom teacher was fat. She had also, oddly enough, been my fourth grade teacher. I didn't like her very much then. Perhaps I already had some antagonism going on. She seemed nicer in middle school homeroom, though. In middle school she mostly taught kids who were lagging behind and kids who were differently abled.

In homeroom I sat next to a boy I had once had a crush on in grade school, who at that time had picked on me in art class and then gotten me called to the principal's office after I apparently reacted by smashing clay into his clothing (which angered his mother), though I didn't remember doing it even at the time I was called to the principal; what I do remember was that going to the principal was a BFD for a kid like me. Anyway, said boy, skinny and short with sandy hair in a bowl cut commented about our teacher being so fat. I agreed! She was sooooooooo fat. I'll never be that fat, I thought or said, I'm not sure. I couldn't imagine being that fat. My plan was to get skinny! I had already internalized the dream of showing up my classmates by getting skinny and (thus) beautiful (desirable, lovable). This conversation, in fact, is documented in my 8th grade yearbook where he wrote:

"Good luck in high school. cheerup and don't be a crump like usual. Surly don't end up like Mrs. _________. (fat)"

Next to it, for good measure or for posterity or as a reminder to myself, since it was my own yearbook, I wrote. "I won't. I PROMISE."

And I meant it. I couldn't imagine being as fat as our teacher. I trembled at the thought of becoming that fat. Looking back, perhaps my classmate didn't think I was fat (and maybe I wasn't, really), but I already thought I was. I remember having an identity as the fat girl because I also remember feeling like I had to take sides. Someone talked about the fat teacher, I had to also denounce her. And to cast off fatness even further, since the possibility of real fatness was borne on my body, I had to swear it off myself. I wanted nothing more than to disassociate myself with a fat teacher; I already felt enough stigma because of my body. 

My relationship with fat girls was more complicated. I had fat friends (at least 'fat' friends), but a few 'fat' girls--often, I'm ashamed to say, poorer and less physically attractive 'fat' girls--I didn't associate with. To be fair, several of these girls were seriously lacking in social skills and I found them to be mean, though I'm sure those things are partially attributable to the fact that they were heavily ostracized; it was hard to know which came first. It felt good to know I wasn't dead last on the middle school/high school totem pool...but honestly, not that good.

Other 'fat' girls who were my friends sometimes simultaneously held this weird antagonistic place in my mental space. They were the sassier, bolder fat girls. Fat girls with attitude, striking and opinionated, and it felt like perhaps there was only room for so many of us. I never became very close with these girls. It was as if there was an unspoken competition--we were all about equal in status, so perhaps that made things more tenuous between us.

In fact, there's only one sassy fat girl I can think of from that period of my life with whom I did bond with. I met her in drama club, and she was a grade older than me. She'd scoff at me calling her sassy--she was the driest wit and had the most sarcasm in our whole high school--but it was a kind of sass. To this day she is one of my best friends. Our sass-es must have meshed well, harmonized. There was another 'fat' girl in drama club who was also a grade ahead of me, and she did hold that antagonistic position in my mind...though she did get the part I wanted in the play and was kind of a dick about it since her head inflated considerably. I told myself I would not have gotten such an ego about it, though I had wished the part would give me an ego boost.

Growing up I had a couple of good friends who were thin, but by middle school many of them were 'fat.' Less sassy fat girls I could bond well with. They were not void of sass--that simply would not do--just a milder sassy. Usually I was the sassiest. I felt a bond with my 'fat' friends based on the mere fact of our size. I thought there was a certain understanding, a certain point of view we shared. I didn't feel judged by them or in competition for my sassy fat girl identity. And I wasn't afraid to be associated with them, for some reason wasn't afraid that they'd bring me more stigma. I suppose as long as they didn't drag down my social status in other ways, that solidarity meant something to me socially. And none of them were "that fat"--as fat as our teacher--nor could I imagine that they ever would be.

Perhaps another reason was because, in a typical contradictory fashion, I started to identify more with other fat girls, though not fat teachers. There was a delicate balance of feeling and not feeling solidarity, but I certainly could not identify with the fat teacher.

In high school, though, even that started to change. Our Spanish teacher was a very fat woman with very thin curly long brown hair and a striking redness to her face which I now know to be rosacea. She often wore knee-length, long-sleeved dresses made out of sweatshirt material. I could not understand, at the time, why she would wear such hideous, unflattering clothing. I'm sure I understood, to some extent, that she didn't have many options, but I still couldn't fathom wearing what she wore.

Needless to say, high school kids were horrible to her. Terrible names for her playing on her last name. No respect whatsoever. She could not control the class, and I slept a lot because I was either very bored or annoyed. She stopped calling on me once she realized I could lift my head from my desk, open my eyes, and answer her questions correctly. I believe it was in her class that I realized I had to get the fuck out of that town...of the high school.

For one of group projects, we were to bring in food. Was it supposed to be food from Spanish speaking countries? I don't know, but my group brought in chocolate covered strawberries. Maybe she also taught an English class. At some point a student was going to put a tack on her seat, which I protested against and thought it was better not to cause a teacher physical harm. I thought they had given up on pranking her when suddenly I see the ass of her white sweatshirt dress is smeared with chocolate. Someone had put one of our chocolate covered strawberries on her seat or at least wiped chocolate on it.

I was horrified for her. I prodded friends to tell her, to no avail. Finally, at the risk of others thinking I was on the side of the fat, poorly-dressed, red-faced teacher, I told her about the stain. How could anyone in good conscience let her go around like that all day? In addition, I was furious at my classmates because above all, I knew that the reason they behaved this way was because she was a fat woman, a fat woman who didn't even have what most would consider a pretty face, nor a flattering outfit, to compensate for her size.

Something in me changed that day, just a little. I started to identify more with the way she was treated and less with my classmates who taunted her. I knew what it was like to face that stigma and disdain...and there was some emotional connection there that could not be mitigated by fear of that same stigma.

I could tell she was embarrassed, but I was almost concerned when she didn't seem nearly as mortified as I had expected. Perhaps she was used to these kinds of things. Maybe she didn't care so much about what people thought. But in her reaction I discovered a new respect for her. She wasn't the coolest fat lady, but it was clear to me that she was a stronger person than I had known.

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.