That’s the title of a list of handy tips from Cosmo, sent to me earlier this week by reader Maggie. Cosmo offers the usual “If you really want to eat X, try Y instead! It’s exactly the same thing except for how it doesn’t taste as good or fill you up, but THINK OF HOW VIRTUOUS YOU’LL FEEL!” advice.
Since you’ve all read that article a thousand times before — alongside a million other helpful diet tips — I’d like to offer you an alternative. Let’s call it “How to Eat Like a Normal Human Being on Thanksgiving (But Without the Guilt).”
- Eat whatever you want. You’re a grown-up, and it’s your fucking stomach.
- Enjoy your food.
- Stop eating when you’re full.
- If you don’t manage to stop eating when you’re full, don’t worry about it. Nobody does on Thanksgiving.
- Do not feel guilty about any of the above. You’re a grown-up, and it’s your fucking stomach.
Follow those simple rules, and presto! You’ll have enjoyed a feast day without guilt! Cosmo’s instructions run three pages, but I just told you how to do the same thing in about 50 words. And when I’m the one who can get a point across more efficiently than… well, any other writer alive, you know there’s something wrong with that other article.
Happy Thanksgiving, if you’re celebrating. If you’re not, please feel free to apply those rules to whatever you eat today anyway. Especially 1 and 5.
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I’ve been thinking about Stupak, and compromises, and patriarchal religious groups inserting themselves into the legislative process. I’d like to propose an alternative compromise to Stupak and the others currently in the legislative mix. No, it’s not perfect; but I think it speaks to the perceived needs of some of the anti-choice power brokers in the debate. Plus, it’s short! Only two stipulations with two corollaries. (And no, I have no idea what format bills usually follow. This is a blog post. Work with me.) Ready? I propose:
1. No abortions of pretend children.
Because you know who is really easy to love? Pretend children! They can be anyone you want them to be! That pretend boy can be the son you never had – who, manning up enough to stifle his tears, says at your funeral: “Everything important in life I learned from my father!” That pretend girl can be the daughter you might have taken to the daddy-daughter dance, where she would have worn a clean white frilly frock and looked up at you adoringly, pleading, “Twirl me again, Daddy. Please?”
I think we can all agree that pretend children – those who have no concrete existence whatsoever, but who, as hypotheticals, obligingly receive adult projections about childhood – should not be aborted. Heck, a pretend child is always safe, affordable, desired, and convenient. A pretend child shows up on your terms. And when you’re tired of a pretend child, he or she is whisked off to become someone else’s problem. Awesome! Who but a tar-hearted monster could want to get rid of a pretend child before she even has a chance to twirl in her pretty frock?
However:
Corollary to 1: Actual human fetuses are not the same things as pretend children. (Hell, actual children are not the same thing as pretend children, but that’s a whole ‘nuther post.) United States Conference of Catholic Bishops, Democrats For Life, etc.: do you see the difference? Actual fetuses are particular and concrete, do not exist in ways unthreatening to the woman in whose body they live, do not lend themselves to easy moral absolutes, and do not yet at this point want to twirl with you at any daddy-daughter dance. Whatever else we end up talking about, can we PLEASE PLEASE PLEASE PLEASE FREAKING begin by agreeing on this, please? Do you need me to explain it again? No? FANTIDDLYASTIC. THANKS. COMMON GROUND IS A BEAUTIFUL THING.
2. The Best Caregivers for Pretend Children are Pretend Mothers
It’s not easy being nothing more than a projection of someone else’s wishes, and pretend children have got to be taught how to do it, from… their pretend mothers!
Pretend mothers bond with their pretend children in ways you and I cannot understand, but can only observe with rapt piety. Is that pretend baby boy hungry or thirsty or tired? Ask his pretend mother; she will know. (Well, I mean, not know-know, obviously. It’s not as though she has a unique set of circumstances requiring constant prudent judgment, let alone set of specific skills that are a credit to her. I just mean that she will know, in the same mystical and precious way that the apple tree “knows” when it’s spring or a lamp “knows” how to give light. Things do what they’re designed by someone else to do, you get me?)
She’s hard to spot – the pretend mother, I mean – because she takes up so little space. Or perhaps I should say she takes up just enough space to remind us that good mothers don’t take up too much space. Occasionally we’ll catch a glimpse of her, yielding and compliant; suffering even the worst indignities with a shrug, a good attitude, and heroic self-sacrifice for which she never asks for credit. “Little old me?” she asks, smiling demurely and looking at the floor, revealing the lines around her eyes that have come from years of smiling beatifically. “Oh, heavens. It was nothing.”
And in fact it was nothing because – being pretend – she doesn’t actually need social support, or an income, or to be assigned work that bears some relation to her unique interests and skills, or recognition for that work, or the ability to exercise any control over her own circumstances. She doesn’t even really exist! You gotta love that about her!
HOWEVER:
Corollary to 2: Actual human women are not and never will be pretend mothers. Pretend mothers don’t exist. Actual human women are actual humans, whether or not they have children. Religious anti-choice conservatives, are you prepared to say otherwise and see what that gets you in terms of political capital? No? GREAT. FINE. AWESOME. I ASSUME THAT WE AGREE. THANK YOU.
I think we are making real progress.
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In Kate’s State of the Prose she discussed a concern very near and dear to my heart:
A lot of people refuse to accept our self-identification as bloggers — no more, no less — and keep insisting that as long as Shapely Prose remains the most visible blog in the fatosphere, we have an obligation to “lead” it in ways that are never clearly defined and involve some highly mobile goalposts. So we made the difficult, much-discussed and verrrrry well thought-out decision to reduce our visibility in the fatosphere — by simply not being part of it anymore.
This passage resonated deeply as I also struggle to move beyond my -isms and be recognized as a writer first. By making a conscious effort not to write daily -ism updates, I have reclaimed some of my writer self. Gudbuytjane puts it another way:
As I’ve been thinking a great deal about the paucity of trans women’s voices discussing things other than trans issues for cis people, and inspired by some writing by other trans women, I’ve decided to open a companion blog to gudbuytjane: gudbuytjane’s Music Blog.
Trans women writing about things other than trans issues?! This feels almost revolutionary.
As a marginalized person I have been asked to put aside my artistic vision in service to “the movement”. This has meant some of my writing – and I am an incredibly prolific writer – has not been as warmly received as my frothy rants against whatever -ism was acting up that day.
In college this meant having my subversive Shop & Fuck fiction being dismissed as “low brow” while professors all but demanded a Beloved knock off. Professionally, it has meant I have been cutoff from the pop culture discourse because as a “Black” writer my thoughts on Sidney Lumet – unless it relates to his marrying Lena Horne’s daughter or the deliciously craptastic The Wiz – are not desired or welcomed.
By the way, those two Lumet items are related.
I could tell you more than you’ll ever want to know about James Bond, have spilled more ink spectacularly deconstructing the misogyny of Kubrick and DePalma – two directors whose work I very much enjoy – yet much of my published work focuses primarily on the ways in which I am marginalized.
I have a voice. My stylistic choices are deliberate. It is meant to be cheeky and accessible. I can ramble academically with the best of them. But c’mon, who doesn’t love “Zombie Playa” with a side of “Chicken Fried Fail”?
As members of marginalized groups we must tell our stories. There is no debate on that point. However, we must also carve out spaces where we are artists first and our -isms are merely the lens in which we explore our craft. There is space for a diversity of voices writing on a diverse collection of subjects. We need as many people living life as themselves first and their -isms second. This is the only way to be seen as complex beings, both as artists and people.
There are some days where just getting out of bed – here comes the oppression rundown – as a fat, queer, black female is all the radical action I can manage. And if on those days I want to wax poetically about Jack Soo’s nuanced performance as Det. Nick Yemana rather than give an -ism update, who are you to tell me it lacks merit and derails “the movement”?
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I am doing Nanowrimo this lovely evening and I’m focusing on my 50k word count goal. I am 2300 words away! I am gunning for an early finish tomorrow.
Anyway, rock this open thread, Shapelings. Fluffication rules don’t apply.
In keeping with what Sweet Machine wrote in the last open thread, BEHAVE.
Here’s the comment policy
This is my first open thread, so be gentle with me!
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Today is Transgender Day of Remembrance, a day to remember transgender victims of violence. Here’s a list of the people we’re remembering in 2009. Please take a moment to read their names and stories — what is known of them — and think about these people, mostly young women, who suffered often exceptionally brutal violence for their gender identity or presentation.
But don’t stop there. It’s important to have a day to remember the dead, who are often in danger of being ignored, but there are victims of anti-trans bigotry every day, and that bigotry is also ignored or glossed over or made light of or even lauded. Liss at Shakesville wrote about how TDOR is about remembering the victims of discrimination and indifference as well as the victims of anti-trans violent crime:
Lacking federal employment protections, transgender men and women are at higher risk for lack of insurance, adding to the difficulty of securing routine medical care from welcoming practitioners. Transmen, for example, frequently have trouble locating accommodating gynecological services for annual pap smears, risking undiagnosed cervical cancer. The great 2001 documentary Southern Comfort spans the last year in the life of Robert Eads, who died of ovarian cancer after two dozen doctors refused him treatment.
That’s the kind of hate crime that doesn’t make headlines. Or even federal hate crimes statistics.
We remember all the victims of violence and apathy today.
Kate wrote about TDOR at Broadsheet, and highlighted the fact that many of the violence victims were members of multiple oppressed groups — not only were they trans, but most were women and many of those with photos seem to be people of color. She quotes Queen Emily at Questioning Transphobia, who writes:
So it seems to me that to unite all trans people under one banner ignores the specifics of death – sex (the majority are trans women), race (Latina and black), class and occupation (sex work) are as important factors as transness. Appropriating those deaths for political work seems dubious to me at best.
Queen Emily goes on to say, though, that while transphobia may not be the only contributing factor in these murders, it adds an element of silencing that TDOR is designed to counteract:
So what I want to acknowledge is that there’s a paradox, that no trans person can truly witness for the murdered–especially those we’ve never met. And yet, with due caution, I think we should. Not to further our own goals, not to get legislation passed that protects only the already-privileged or to wallow in self-pity, but to honour the memories of every single trans person murdered this year, and to acknowledge the violence that our community lives with as a whole. To acknowledge that even in death, transphobia and cissexism mean that the murdered are not properly remembered, not even by the correct names and pronouns–and those people should be remembered as the right sex.
I’d add, for our cissexual readers, that the prevalence of intersecting oppressions in murders of transgender people, while it in no way lessens the need for transgender victims to have their own dedicated day of remembrance, should also remind us that standing for social justice means standing together, even (especially) with groups who are often still being relentlessly othered even by progressives.
I want to close with a link to Gudbuytjane’s terrific post about her struggle to come to terms with TDOR, because I basically just want to quote the whole thing:
I used to distance myself from the Trans Day of Remembrance. It made me angry, and in ways I couldn’t discuss with my mostly cisgender community (as some of that anger was directed at them, inevitably). … So I kept away, head down and earphones in as November 20th snuck past my peripheral vision, exhaling only when it was gone for another year. Still, on my own I found myself on the internet, reading the stories of the dozens of trans women who are brutally murdered every year. I learned their names and their faces, and soon this cisgender dominance began to slip. I felt myself reclaiming my own experience of the day, my relationship to these women who died, and ultimately my responsibility to them. …
In the face of a cisdominant culture that enforces false narratives to keep trans women marginalized, it is imperative we make our voices heard. I’ve written about this before, and I believe it is an essential process for dismantling cissupremacy. The most important voices to be heard are our dead, and the responsibility for those voices lies with those of us who are still alive. Not for cis culture to consume, not even for ourselves, but for these women who are no longer with us; By giving them dignity we give ourselves dignity, and demand it from a culture which withholds it from us. Even if it is only knowing their name or a tiny bit of their story, it gives back to them some of the humanity their killers took.
Although cisdominant media inevitably focuses on the murders of these women, pieces of the stories of their lives nonetheless get through. This is how she died is supplanted for brief moments by This is how she lived. Amplify that. Know the stories of their lives, and tell the stories of your own. Not just on November 20th, but every day.
Cissexual readers, please let this Transgender Day of Remembrance be a day of transgender awareness, not only of how transgender men and women die but also of how they live, and the silencing and othering they face in both. For trans readers, of course, every day is a day of transgender awareness, but please know we’re with you.
ETA: Just saw a post from Meloukhia that does a better job of what I was saying in my last paragraph than I did.
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• Remember how Starling gave a rough number of 1 in 60 when guessing how many men commit rape? And Dude Nation went ballistic about how it wasn’t a robust figure? They’re right. At least in some populations (in this case, college students of all ages) it should have been four times higher.
• The calorie recommendations have been telling you to eat too little, but this is NOT a license to eat more!
• Breaking: Some obese people don’t want to lose weight! They actually had the delusion they were healthy, even though they had incidences of high blood pressure and high cholesterol that were similar to or lower than the population as a whole!
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According to Glamour, there are seven reasons why your “man” adores you as is. I have a bit of a problem with the concept of “as is”. I associate the concept with final sale sweaters with ink stains not coverable by a cabbage rose brooch, not loving relationships. But then again, I’m still doing cabbage rose brooches like it’s 2000. so I might have missed a few things.
John Ortved writes:
It’s not your boobs. Or your butt. Or even your bank account. Sure, we men like all of that. Ultimately, though, we’re in it for exactly one thing: you. As a sometimes sucker of a boyfriend myself, I’m well aware of how tempting it is to try too hard. But I’m tired, and I’ll bet you are as well. So consider this a to-don’t list, and chill.
Holy mansplaining, Batman. I was laboring under the delusion that loving relationships work best as a partnership rather than a dictatorship. I stand corrected.
The article goes on to list seven reasons why you can chill including such gems as:
No need to inhale a steak on a man’s account, but we love women of all shapes—with bodies and legs and soft things to hold on to—and it takes food to get that way. (By the way, your ribs? They’re meant to protect your organs—please don’t make seeing them a fitness goal. Thanks.)
Despite giving the appearance of embracing body diversity, the concern trolling about eating habits and body shapes is rather disgusting. The message is still: I dictated the terms of desirability based on what behaviors, aesthetics and fitness goals I deem valuable.
Then there are quotes from male participants providing supporting evidence of just how open minded and progressive this is article for women.
Charles, 28, from Boston: “My girlfriend was really into trying this move from the Kama Sutra. In order to get it done, all of my focus turned to balance, abdominal clenching and other nonsexual, lifesaving things. Not fun.”
Thanks, Chuck! Clearly the fault lies squarely with the girlfriend who was trying too hard. Ever heard of the statement, “Hey, this ain’t working for me.” Try it. It works!
And forget downstairs grooming. Turns out, it’s unnecessary because he says so!
Let’s be real: At the end of the day, it’s your vagina, and you should give it whatever haircut you want. But “extreme maintenance” should be the name of a reality show on TLC, not something that you do to your body. Men have a range of tastes, everything from full monty to landing strip to a grown-out seventies bush. If it’s that important for your guy to be with the ridiculously clipped, stripped and shaved women of online porn and you’re far from interested in going there, simply point him toward the computer and tell him to feel free to help himself.
While I appreciate the freedom to dress my vagina in corduroy and denim, I don’t need anyone to grant me permission to make my own choices.
“No-frills cotton underwear says that a woman knows she’s hot and she doesn’t have to convince me of it.” —John, 29, Gainesville, Fla.
My hackles go up every time I read this sentiment expressed in articles. A person’s choice of underwear is simply another fashion choice, dictated more by personal tastes than anything else. Maybe, now I know this sounds ridiculous, just maybe, a person rocks sexy chonies because it makes THEM feel sexy, without regard to other people’s opinion. My personal philosophy on chonies comes from Erika Lopez who wrote (I can’t find the exact quote, but this is a pretty good approximation) “Panties would just get in the way of everything we’re trying to accomplish here.” I wonder if I should get some “No-frills” cotton chonies. I don’t think so. If there are chonies to be worn they have got to be show stopper chonies. But that’s just me.
I’m not snarking on the writer, but I am questioning why we need another article telling women in a rather patronizing tone what to do to make relationships work. Placing the responsibility squarely on women gives the appearance of agency when the opposite is the case.
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When I was college I took a graphic design class. I eagerly enrolled encouraged by the 100 level of the class but possessing no artistic talent. I dreamed of prismacolor markers, art bins and black bound sketch books. I fantasized about being locked in an art store and sleeping on a bed made entirely of Faber-Castell sketching pens.
I sat behind a woman who possessed incredible artist talent and wonderful discipline. However, she was not strong in the theory as I was. We both came to the first class with decidedly lopsided skills.
If you’re waiting for the part of the story where we combine our powers like The Wonder Twins, well you can exhale. We didn’t. In fact I never actually had a conversation with her deciding instead it was much more useful to be bitter and envious.
But what if we had? I would have developed my meager drawing skills and she’d know Gropius from Albers.
Each Sunday night I pull out index cards and write my weekly wish list. My weekly wish list doesn’t merely contain tangibles like “Get season three cast of Homicide: Life on The Street to perform top five episodes in my living room.” though it probably should!
It usually starts with one wish:
- Replace judgement with curiosity.
That initial wish informs the rest. Sometimes I make big, loud wishes like, “Stop calling self Dr. Schadenfreude” (that’s probably not going to happen anytime soon.) Other times it’s something like, “Find one good thing about each day”
When I started doing these I was skeptical. I do not always believe in the magical. I go to the puppet show and look for the strings. But I have to tell you these 3 x 5 index cards of wishes transformed what was once a relationship to my body to something that is starting to approximate a relationship with my body.
Y’all are smart cookies. Smart, delicious cookies…wait, where was I? You can connect these two stories. The way you feel about yourself informs what gifts from others you allow yourself to accept. And I say “allow” not because SP is going LOA, but because new shit is coming to light daily and you have to be outside your head to notice it.
Sometimes we are so defeated by our -isms we forget to wish for something beautiful. We forget we’re more than our bodies or our -isms. We are more concerned with pain avoidance and less concerned with pleasure seeking.
Flip that script. Make some wishes for yourself today.
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1981 saw the release of Sharky’s Machine, a Burt Reynolds helmed taut crime thriller. The film is both a love letter to the city of Atlanta and an astute critique of the systemic corruption that held the city hostage for much of the seventies and eighties.
Critic Roger Ebert had this to say:
SHARKY’S MACHINE has a lot of plot, most of it inspired by the original novel by William Diehl. Maybe it has too much plot for a movie that Reynolds has referred to as Dirty Harry Goes to Atlanta. But this is an ambitious film; it’s as if something inside Reynolds was chafing at the insipid roles he was playing in one car-chase movie after another. He doesn’t walk through this movie, and he doesn’t allow himself the cozy little touches that break the mood while they’re letting the audience know how much fun Burt is having. The result of his ambition and restraint is a movie much more interesting than most cop thrillers.
This film came into my life during a very low point and provided both the inspiration and encouragement to chafe at the insipid societally sanctioned roles required of me. And my handle is a loving homage.
That answers question number one.
In The Fantasy of Being Thin Kate closed with the following:
The question is, who do you really want to be, and what are you going to do about it? (Okay, two questions.) The Fantasy of Being Thin is a really convenient excuse for not asking yourself those questions sincerely — and that’s exactly why it’s dangerous. It keeps you from being not only who you are, but who you actually could be, if you worked with what you’ve got. And that person trapped inside you really might be cooler than you are right now.
This was my first entry into the Shapely Prose world and at the time when I read this quote I wasn’t having any of it. I was going through my own TFoBT and I had some damn good reasons why I deserved a “doctor’s note” to be excused from class.
My logic was as follows: Being brown and female were two fixed points of oppression. Being a chunkerbutt wasn’t. So if I could jettison this one oppression in order to lessen (but not entirely relieve) the way in which the other two impacted my life… (wait for it) THINGS WOULD BE SO MUCH BETTER.
Sound familiar?
No matter how you arrange the notes, the song is the same.
Who was this woman to take away my sunshine! My reasoning was certainly legitimate. I had oppressions and examined things through lenses and used “the way in which” and found things problematic. I didn’t need anyone harshing my mellow.
Gimme my weight loss! Give me my moment standing inside one pant leg. Give me my makeover montage set to New Attitude.
I had been on this roller coaster before. I practiced body acceptance, usually when things were going well. It was always amazing how a couple of challenges would send me back to the fantasy. Oddly enough it was through my fiction that I was able to find my way back. I created a character who could only complain about her life if she turned it into a blues song. I spent so much time living with this character that I found myself Bessie Smithing my own woes. It is quite challenging to pout when you’re making harmonica sounds without the benefit of an actual harmonica.
Harmonica sounds led to making complaints in Vader voice, which of course led to actively seeking ways to get out of the body snarking business completely. Talking like Vader gives you a sore throat.
The other day, longtime commenter Arwen noticed something:
HEY, SNARKYSMACHINE HAS A BLOG!
Oh, sorry. I got a bit excited there.
We did, too, when we first found Snarky’s blog, and after a couple of weeks of reading that and her smart, hilarious, ass-kicking comments here, we started wondering if she’d ever consider blogging for Shapely Prose. Unfortunately, we also read the “about” section over at her blog, which says:
Having been burnt out on online activism, ally jockeying, ally cookie distribution and watching the snoozefest which is oppression olympics, Snarky pretty much seeks to avoid attracting that kind of thing to her current blog. So please spare her your critiques of her politics, language or viewpoints, as she probably wrote theory behind your critiques on the internet two billion years ago.
And we thought, yeeeah, it figures we’d never get that lucky.
But then she kept being fucking awesome, and we finally decided nothing ventured, nothing gained. So we actually asked if she would ever consider writing for Shapely Prose, and Shapelings, SHE SAID YES! We have a new blogger!
Snarky’s been waiting patiently for two days while Fillyjonk drew the icon and I finished writing the mammoth post that went up right before this, though she’s already moderated a few comments for us, BLESS HER FUCKING HEART.
Now all that’s left to do before she starts gracing this place with her fabulousness is add her bio to the “About” page here:
Snarky’s Machine is a writer, storyteller, blacademic and rabid Barney Miller fan who wrote her first short story at the tender age of nine. She can’t recall the specifics of the story, but it rocked. Currently, she writes grants and presents workshops on a host of pop culture-y, diversity and writing topics and doesn’t mind being paid in delicious cupcakes. (Sometimes.) Her work has been featured in Bitch and couple of other places she can’t actually remember. Snarky received her MFA in Creative Writing from Goddard College in 2007 and can be contacted at snarky@snarkysmachine.org.
Welcome, Snarky’s Machine! We could not be more thrilled to have you.
