Oh noez the fatness.

Okay as promised today I am talking about fat and presentation in the media.

I want to start out with some tabloids and then move onto "legit" media.

Ready..break GO.

Now lots of tabloids are putting out their absurdly titled "DEADLY DIETS" etc type things and I had a good look at some of them. Lots of trends.

1.) Lots of photoshopping. Lots and lots of subtle changes to photos. Add a shadow here, a highlight there and you can make a normally thin woman look like she's about to drop dead. Alternately you can make someone with cellulite suddenly look like they've imported the surface of the moon onto their legs. Or for the trifecta onto their face.

2.) Not two "comparison" shots were at the same angle, in the same clothes or even taken in remotely similar situations. One of those deemed "scary skinny" the too skinny picture was taken with her in a bikini, clearly exhaling and stretching upwards. If you're a thin lady and you do that, chances are your ribs might show. Duh. Same to the "fat" pictures. Women had pictures of themselves at 25 compared to their picture at 60. Are you serious?

3.) One of my favorites, in every instance of yo-you dieting, weight gain or consistent fatness the "reasons" were all ever so cleverly worded and almost exactly the same person to person. All in the vein of, "too much fried food, indulging, oh noez she eated a doughnut" etc. There was nary a mention of possible health problems, aging, natural body weight, previous drug addicts, previous eating disorders. Just lots of "over indulgence." Also missing were the same kind of admonitions to the underweight. Organ damage, diseased, what have you. Also missing from the scary skinny blurbs were mention of the above, aging, health problems, drug problems, personal issues. All of those can adversely effect your body weight in one manifestation or another.

That was the tabloids.

Sadly "legit" news fares about the same. Sure if you go to CNN and click health then weight or obesity they use fancier words. They have good old Dr. Gupta telling you how fucked you are. However they are all working on the same base assumptions.

Fat=you are fucked and yer gonna die and possibly lose a foot to the diabetes.
Skinny= You are fabulous and yer gonna die and possibly lose a tit to cancer.

You see my point here.

Fact is regardless of your weight you could have some serious health problems. If you are a 105 pound person who eats nothing but Micky D's, beef jerky and Coke. Yeah your body might get pissed off. And don't tell me there aren't people like that. Bullshit I know them.

It's not a moral imperative to eat well and exercise and whatnot. If you don't want to don't.

Also if you're going to say that fatties eating in public should be shamed, or behave like they should be I suggest you irritate everyone sitting in Burger King because it's just as bad for the thin people as it is for the fat people.

I'd like to point out at this point that if you're human and residing on this planet you are pretty much fucked. You are going to die. No matter how many miles you run, how many times you don't eat that pie. No matter how many days you spend counting your calories. You and every other person on this planet is going to die someday.

And while I'm at it. I will bust some weight loss myths.

Astonishing amounts of weight loss will not make you less of a douchebag. If you were a fat asshole, chances are you'll be a skinny asshole. The reverse is also true. If you were a skinny asshole you will probably be a fat asshole if you get fat.

Another fun fact is that if you are trying to lose weight, and you go on an uber restrictive diet, you exercise until your balls are going to fall off. You could very well be doing yourself harm. Are you working your ass off literally and figuratively but you still don't feel good? You're run down maybe, maybe getting sick a lot. The big picture is telling you without scientific evidence that you are not doing yourself any good there.

If you seriously think weight is a stone cold pointer to how someone lives I suggest having a looksy at Kate Harding's BMI project. And for the love of fluffy bunnies everywhere use your brain.

Fat acceptance is not about how you may or may not want to live. Nor is it about forcing you to want to hump every fat person you see. It's about basic common decency. It's about everyone regardless of size being able to live their lives without being demonized.

Let me put it into another context.

Let's say that you are an acceptable size 8. But you have let's say some really big ole titties. I'm talking like a JJJ cup. And everytime you go to the doctor for say birth control or allergy medication all you hear about is how it's all because of the titties and you don't get decent care.

Would it be okay for you to just disappear into the woodwork and suffer because you are perfectly fine with your big ole titties and feel pretty good otherwise. What if something was really wrong? But it got to the point you were too angry or too afraid to go to the doctor? Let's say it's something terminal and by the time you get help it's too late.

Would it be okay then?

If you think that is a perfectly acceptable situation then move on. I have no use for you.

If thinking about it in those terms ridiculous as they might seem, makes you uncomfortable, angry or sad then let's talk.

My entire point here is that regardless of your weight we as human beings do not need to be menaced by media that sends mixed messages. We do not need to be demonized or scape goated. No one has a right or the privilege to decide what you do or don't do with your body.

Okay I'm done.

I have horrible horrible cramps and kind of want to jam a hand up in there and tear out my uterus.

Or maybe lay in a bed and jerk off for three days. It could go either way.

Homo Out.

Stumble It!

Musings and glee.

I was reading over at FatFu last night and Meowser posted about Pseudonymity on the net.

Back in the day when I started my first online journal I was really paranoid about people in my life outside the net reading it or knowing about it for that matter. Honestly that lasted all of six months then I said fuck it, I got tired of thinking about it. These days if you google my given name, the name of this blog etc you'll find a whole shitload of stuff and that's perfectly ok with me.

I haven't used a pseudonym in probably more than a decade for anything. The very first piece of writing I had published was under a pseudonym and it felt so weird to me. I own my words. It felt weird and disingenuous to look at something I quite honestly slaved over and it did not have my name on it.

Since then if I say it, 98% of the time my name is on/associated with it. And that suits me just fine.

However I will say I have a space somewhere on the internet where I talk about things I am not comfortable talking about here or other places where people know me. For awhile I struggled with this, however my number one concern is making sure that I feel okay while I'm working some shit out. I have a few friends who read that, and one in particular with whom I talk about it.

Strangely I'm one of those people who talk a lot of the time just makes me feel worse. I like to write it down and work it out for myself. Which sometimes admittedly doesn't work all that well.

On a fashion note I had a gander at some of the new Lip Service stuff for 08 and I am again disappointed. Nothing I liked comes in my size. Admittedly I am really seriously considering losing a dress size.

Honestly it's not just Lip Service clothes that put this into my head, and it's not the whole Fantasy of Being Thin as discussed quite awhile back at Shapely Prose. I have long given up the dreams about thinness.

1. Thin is healthy and good. When I was thin, I was not health and I was a cranky hungry unhealthy mother fucker. And the thing that made me feel cheated was that I was doing the "healthy" thing. I was working out and eating an uber healthy diet. And I felt like shit.
2. Thin is beautiful. Again I felt cheated. Frankly once I go below at the most a size 10 I just look weird. My proportions are not made for that. Also, because my health was not great my skin looked fucking horrible, my hair looked bad, I had a hell of a time finding clothing that fit. I did not feel beautiful in any way shape or form.
3. Thin makes it all easier. That was a huge thing for me. My life did not get magically easier when I hit the lower end of the "healthy BMI" range. I still had all the same problems, I had some brand new and shittier problems.

That all said the following is not about the myth. And I know damn well this sort of thing isn't looked upon favorably in the FA circles but I don't give a fuck.

As I've mentioned before I am fairly firmly in the area called Inbetween. There are a lot (A LOT) of plus sized clothing that just is too big for me. Frequently things are just enough too big in odd places so the fit gets fucked all to hell. It fits in the hips but is too big in the waist, it fits in the shoulders but not in the boobs, it's supposed to graze knee length and comes down to mid calf. And don't get me started on pants right now I will yell.

On the flip side I am just ( ) that much off (measurements wise) for a lot of straight sized clothing. Things are too small in the boobs, fit at the hips but not in the low waist thus giving me hang over of doom in the love handle area, fits in the waist/hips but not in the ham. Shirts fit in the boobs but not around the upper arm hence my aversion to cap sleeves, fits in the boobs but rides up to show my whole stomach when that is not the idea.

I spend way more time than is probably necessary searching and searching and searching for clothes that fit right. And what irritates me is that out of necessity I've had to stick to the same silhouettes for so long because I have such a hard time finding things that fit and my sewing skills are not quite up to actual tailoring just yet and gods know I don't have the money to have it done by a pro.

So where does that leave me?

Honestly (and boo hiss if you wanna) it leaves me with the bottom line that on my frame and body a small big of weightloss or gain would go a long way. A few pounds in either direction means pretty much I could be solidly plus sized, or solidly far end of straight sizing. I've been resisting it and not wanting to think about it for months but it is actually the truth.

Does this mean suddenly I am super pro diet and whatnot? No. What it means is that I finally (after 31 goddamn long years) in tune enough with my body and familiar enough with my body to be able to make a conscious well thought out decision as to what to do. That is a huge thing for me. For the first time in my life I feel like I have serious and tangible autonomy in terms of my body and what I'm doing with it.

I played at and tickled autonomy for years, especially in terms of decoration. Body mods, tattoos, wacky clothing and hair but, I wasn't here. Here being the state of mind I'm in right now.

I am clear. I am aware and my thought processes aren't muddied by politics, should and should not thoughts, other people none of it.

That alone makes me very happy.

Where does this lead.

I am not going to get or be thin. Barring serious medical illness it's just not going to happen and that makes me happy and it's okay.

I also absolutely do not believe that me going down a dress size will create some alternate reality where I am rich, fabulous and everything is super peachy.

What does it all mean?

It means that I am currently this instant open to a change in my body. It means that for the first time in a long time my eyes aren't clouded and I think,no I believe I can make a decision one way or the other.

It doesn't mean that I am going to run out and half kill myself trying to lose that 10 pounds. To tell the truth I don't even know if my body would approve of that.

It does mean that I am enjoying the feeling that emotionally, I could probably handle adding a fairly rigorous exercise routine to my life and it doesn't feel bad to think about it. I don't feel like I might do that and go off my fucking nut and start working out for hours on end. That feeling that fear isn't there.

It doesn't mean that I don't want to be fat or I hate fat or anything of the kind. Although I'm sure someone will get that from it.

Tell you the truth I don't care. I am actually very proud of myself for coming to this right now.

And I think I'm spent there is something wrong with my neck and it hurts like the proverbial mother fucker.

Homo Out.

Stumble It!