Party Pictures

Posted on July 2, 2009 by Kate Harding

As most of you know, one of the reasons I’ve been largely absent from the blog recently is that I was planning my wedding reception — for 6 months after the actual wedding. In another state. WHILE IN THE MIDDLE OF A FUCKING BOOK TOUR. Boy, am I ever not going to repeat that mistake with my next wedding.

Anyway, the party was a total blast — I honestly didn’t expect to have as much fun at my own reception as I did. For your enjoyment (and to get a post up without my actually having to write anything intelligent), I present the following pictures. I tried to include the best available shots of my dress, which was a custom Jane BonBon — essentially this plus this plus a boatneck, with all the detail tone-on-tone. I cropped Al out of the last one, since he doesn’t like me posting pics of him (even though I have before, oh well), and I left three of my grad school besties in the group shot, because I’m pretty sure they’ve all authorized me to post photos of them in the past, but, uh, HI GUYS IF YOU DON’T WANT TO BE HERE E-MAIL ME.

So. Friday night, everyone who was already there met up at a pub, and then a group of the most accomplished drinkers continued on to the fucking ridiculous penthouse suite we got free for a night as part of the hotel’s Please, Please Have Your Wedding Here Even Though There’s a Recession package. Four of the most accomplished drinkers, of course, were Fillyjonk, Sweet Machine, Marianne and me:

As Fillyjonk said, the Photoshopping makes them look both more disturbing and soberer.

As Fillyjonk said, the Photoshopping makes them look both more disturbing and soberer.

The next afternoon, I went out to get my hair and make-up done. Here is the kind of responsible, organized person I am: I made sure to arrange in advance to have my friend Chris show up with champagne for me to sip during this process (see below), yet I completely forgot to get SOMETHING TO PUT IN MY HAIR, which was kind of a crucial part of the planned ‘do.

Arty!

Arty!

Fortunately, one of the nice things about throwing a big party is that the morning of, everyone you know asks if you need anything. Naturally, none of them expect you to say yes, but when my friend Jo asked, I was all, “Yeah, could you swing by Target and find me ANYTHING to stick in my hair? Bobby pins with pearls on the end, or the least tacky fake flower available or something?” She accepted the mission — and recruited her husband and our friend Meg to join her — but the poor things got more than they bargained for. Target had squat. Macy’s had squat. Much furious texting ensued, and finally, I was like, “Can you find me a live flower?” Please note that Jo, her husband and Meg were all very much from out of town, so I was sending them running all over a strange city because I was too scatterbrained to remember a hair accessory. That is love, man. And eventually, they came through with something way better than I would have gotten for myself:

I didn't look nearly this good from the front.

I didn't look nearly this good from the front.

Here I am with the three aforementioned grad school friends, illustrating why women with huge boobs are often advised to avoid boatnecks. (On the up side, I was able to wear a full-coverage grandma bra and never had to worry about my boobs falling out of the dress — or about the traditional Beginning of Summer Heat Rash I had all over my chest. Woo hoo!)

Hence the term "Rack of Doom."

Hence the term "Rack of Doom."

Here are Sweet Machine and Fillyjonk, all gussied up and minus heads. (FJ ’shopped the other one for me, but my skills are limited to inelegant cropping.) Fillyjonk scored that dress at Marshall’s a few hours before the reception, and I cannot believe it fit her that perfectly off the rack. NOT THAT I’M BITTER OR ANYTHING. She was shedding glitter everywhere all night, but she looked amazing — as did Sweet Machine, who is wearing a dress she got at Vive la Femme, in case any in-betweenies are wondering if it’s worth a trip. (Also, when I did the reading there, the friend at the far right of the pic above — who I think wears about a size 4 or 6, usually — managed to find a 0x top that looks great on her. So the bad news is, some “plus-size” designers are fucking looped in terms of sizing, which we already knew, but the good news is, if you’re a smaller fat or even a non-fat, you might be able to find something at Vive.)

HEADLESS FATTIES FROM THE INTERNET (except for how one of them's not fat)

HEADLESS FATTIES FROM THE INTERNET (except for how one of them's not fat)

The dome thingy where we did cocktails and dancing (at the Millennium Hotel Minneapolis, if anyone’s looking for a venue) looked awesome once the sun went down, as did Marianne. Well, she looked awesome in daylight, too, but I love this picture. Her dress is from Torrid — I believe it’s this one.

Head-ed fatty from the internet!

Head-ed fatty from the internet!

Al and I both brought comfy shoes to change into, but holy shit, I waited too long. I mean, my original shoes were fairly sensible, all things considered — Naturalizers with only about a two and a half inch heel. Problem is, I have plantar fasciitis in my right foot (or at least, I’m 99% sure I do — have never gone to a doctor about it), which almost never bothers me because I wear flats with ridiculous arch support 99% of the time. But when I wear heels? It always bothers me for a day or two afterwards. When I dance in heels for two straight hours before remembering I brought flats to change into? Turns out I wake up the next morning, take one step, scream in pain, and seriously consider sending Al to CVS to buy me a cane. (I managed without one — it’s always worst right upon waking, and the pain soon downgraded itself to a non-screaming level — but I was limping for a day and a half. Definitely the worst foot pain I’ve ever had, which probably means I really should go to the doctor and get custom orthotics instead of relying on Danskos and Mephistos to keep it at bay.) Anyway, these (Borns) would have been great, if I’d put them on sooner:

ow ow ow ow ow

ow ow ow ow ow

And finally, we arrive at the end of the evening, where I am soaked with sweat from dancing all night — turns out when the playlist is almost all songs you picked, you’re not as motivated to take a break as you might be — looking both happy and slightly evil, which kind of sums up my relationship with Al.

Sweaty fat girl!

Sweaty fat girl!

There you go, Shapelings. I wish you all could have been there, except that would have been really expensive.

Now that I’m done with the planning process, I’d like to say I’ll be around more often, but honestly, I just started working on another book proposal, so don’t hold your breath. In the meantime, FJ, SM, and AS will be doing what they can, and you can use this thread to talk about whatever you feel like talking about.

Filed under: Miscellaneous, Plus Size Fashion | 60 Comments »

Fried eggs, boulders, and spaghetti straps

Posted on July 1, 2009 by Sweet Machine

Via Jezebel, which has a sharp post on female confessional journalism: Christa D’Souza writes about her breast implant saga in the Daily Fail. D’Souza clearly had a terrible time, and her article highlights the ways in which the reality of implants differs from the promise of implants. The short version is: she’s dissatisfied with her post-baby 34B breasts; she gets implants (34E), which “encapsulate” (i.e., scar tissue wrapped around them, making them hard and immobile); she downsizes to 34D, which encapsulate; she downsizes to 30D; she gets breast cancer, has radiation, and decides to remove the implants altogether when radiation is done. Clearly, D’Souza has had a complicated relationship with her breasts, driven partly by self-consciousness brought on by teasing as a girl, partly by her regret at the drastic solution she opted for. Getting breast cancer must have felt even more hideously unfair than it always is. I wish her well and hope she continues to recover safely.

But, since this is SP and I am a humorless feminist, I want to talk about the body-shaming language D’Souza uses throughout the article. You’d think that a confession about what a mistake it was to get implants would have a less judgmental about the female body than other articles; you’d be wrong. Here’s how she describes her natural breasts: spaniels’ ears, fried eggs, a bog standard 34B, virtually flat-chested. Here’s how she describes her enhanced breasts:

when I unwrapped the bandages a few days later my breasts were . . . gargantuan.

…

Instead of feeling sexy and young, I felt like a superannuated porn star. And when I didn’t feel like a superannuated porn star, I felt like Alastair Sim in St Trinian’s, with this new massive ‘monobosom’.

So here I was . . . wearing a puffa jacket, two cardigans, two sweatshirts and a pair of scruffy Ugg boots – and still attracting wolf whistles from workmen in the street.

The truth was I felt like a transvestite. Instead of giving me the desired Jessica Rabbit silhouette, the implants had made me feel butch (if you don’t have the hourglass waist to begin with, that’s what happens).

This is not an article about the size of her breasts. This is an article about self-hatred, only D’Souza doesn’t know it.

This article boggled me even more than I expected it to at first glance because the size that makes D’Souza feel like a gargantuan, transvestite porn star—34E—is my natural size. (Most of the time, anyway.) Now, I’m not as thin as D’Souza seems to be in the old (implant-having) pictures, but still: I don’t feel like a superannuated porn star. I don’t feel like Jessica Rabbit, either. I feel like a woman with big tits. There is very little acknowledgment in the article that some women actually do have naturally large breasts. Everything that is described as a post-implant horror—except for the encapsulation—is something that just comes with having large breasts, whether they’re natural or not.

I couldn’t see my feet in the shower, which was strangely disturbing, and I’d also started to hunch my shoulders in the way congenitally huge breasted women find themselves doing.

…

I have spent most of the past decade having to wear two sports ‘minimiser’ bras if I want to go for a run, and having to buy separate bikini bottoms and tops because the tops would never normally fit, of looking improper in anything even vaguely tight.

Now I long to go braless, to wear all those pretty little spaghetti strapped tops, to have that elegant, cherry-pipped silhouette that all the models in the magazines have.

Sound familiar to anyone? I haven’t gone braless since I was 12, personally.

The problem is not that D’Souza didn’t like her implants; it’s her body and her life, and I’m sorry that she had what was clearly an awful experience with plastic surgery. The problem is that her article perpetuates the distortions about the female body that are so prevalent in our culture. Big breasts are gargantuan, improper; small breasts are elegant and let you wear pretty clothes. 34E is a “massive” size, but 34B looks like a 12-year-old. The range of acceptable racks, like the range of acceptable dress sizes, is shockingly narrow. On either size, you’re not “really” a woman at all: you’re a transvestite or a prepubescent, unwomanly, unnatural even if what we are talking about is your natural body.

The most telling line in the article, to me, is this one: Implants point not only to footballers’ wives, but a bygone era. In a nutshell, I feel terribly ‘20th Century’ with these two boulders of silicone in my chest. What body types are fashionable changes, and quickly. Keeping up a trendy body costs money, time, and pain. My gargantuan tits and I are just fine being out of style.

Filed under: Fat, Femininity, Sweet Machine | 272 Comments »

Fat Faith?

Posted on June 28, 2009 by A Sarah

First off: Remember this one?? For those that don’t want to click through and read it all again: that was the one where I snarked at a guy who, based on his understanding of Catholic theology, opposed marriage equality by (among other things) comparing homosexuality to obesity. His basis for the comparison was that both indicate “disordered appetites.” (Because human beings are “ordered” to reproduce with the opposite sex, just like they’re “ordered” not to eat truckloads of deep-friend lardballs with mayonnaise every day. Which is the only way people become obese, natch.)

The fish-in-a-barrel moment was when he asked incredulously whether anyone SERIOUSLY believed that OBESE people deserved “special” civil rights, by which he seemed to mean the right to be obese. Or something. It wasn’t always clear.

Okay, well, I’ve sat with my resultant mocking screed for a while now, and… you know what? I can really see why it struck some as anti-Catholic. My little vignette at the beginning about the odious priest was, in particular, gratuitous. And I’m sorry. By way of context: I forgot that not everyone can magically discern that I in fact once became Catholic at some personal cost, having been taken by a number of things about Catholicism — its mystical and contemplative traditions, its healthy numbers of peace activists, and its age. And just a few years later I left, because I felt very hurt and let down by the church, such that I could no longer believe it was anything like what I’d thought it was when I’d first become Catholic. Point is, although I knew I was writing as a grumbling estranged family member, I can see how it would have seemed like I was an outsider taking cheap shots.

I think I also knew it was my first real time out, and I was trying to bring extra snark, because I wanted to prove myself.

Anyway, as an attempt to make amends… and as a special gift to those Shapelings who are self-identified religion and theology dorks and have requested a theological post… I’d like to go out on a limb and share some of my own (not-especially-snarky) reflections. I mean, this Fournier fellow took something of a risk, putting his thoughts about sexual and gastronomical appetites out there for the whole world to see. And I just aimed my cannon and fired at him, without offering much in return or taking many risks of my own.

So what follows are some ways that I think about FA intersecting with my spiritual life. My goal isn’t to bring everyone around to my own way of articulating faith (yeesh…. no!) but rather just to see whether this is a conversation to be had, and whether there are other Shapelings who see fat acceptance as a spiritual thing. I write in a Christian idiom because… well, at this point in my life there would be no other honest way for me, personally, to write. The Christian community, for good and ill, formed who I am spiritually and furnished the symbols with which I think. But my idiom isn’t the only idiom, let alone the master idiom, and I really don’t want to seem like I’m proselytizing. Let’s bring all our faith lives, or lack thereof, and talk about what they might have to do with FA, or not, is what I’m saying.

Okay, so. One of the reasons I grudgingly remain a Christian, is because of a particular story that Christianity tells about bodies. Now, I hardly need to point out that not all the stories Christianity has told about bodies are good ones. A lot of them are crap. Maybe most of them; I don’t have an exhaustive understanding of Christian stories about bodies, but of the ones I come across, most are terrible. But there is, I think, a strand of the Christian tradition that is very body-affirming. For example: You might not know this, but there’s actually good reason for viewing the notion of a “soul” going to “heaven” as an interloper in the Christian tradition. Well, maybe “interloper” is too strong. But many theologians would say that, at best, it’s a belief that’s become an unhelpful distraction simply by being so focused upon. (Like, it actually doesn’t say in the historical canonical creeds that Christians’ souls will go to heaven when they die; it says only that Jesus was resurrected from the dead and then ascended into heaven, where he’s hanging out until he comes again.) (Er, I’m paraphrasing.)

Arguably, the FAR more consistent and long-established Christian belief about life after death is EXACTLY NOT that some immaterial vapor of selfhood will go into a happy place in the sky. Rather, it’s that our bodies will be resurrected and perfected.

Aieee! Perfect bodies. I’ve gone to church since I was a wee tot, and have now made a job of it — and yet when I hear about bodies being “perfected,” what springs to mind is not the Christian belief in the resurrection of the dead. No, it’s diets. It’s bikini season. Clear complexion products and spray tan and so forth. I fill with dread and anxiety and self-loathing.

But in the Christian theological sense, “perfected bodies” means mostly that our bodies won’t be in pain or die again. (Well, you have people like St. Augustine who also specified that everyone would be 33 years old in the resurrection, but that’s sort of an academic point.) More interesting than what the bodies won’t be, is what they will be, according to this particular flight of the Christian imagination. Namely, they will be ours. Recognizably. They will be physical bodies, the same ones we have now, just… transformed, somehow. They’ll be even more what they are now, more alive, more there. Their longings and yearnings will be fulfilled and satisfied. The delightful tangibility and vulnerability that comes with being fleshy won’t go away, but it won’t any longer be an occasion for danger and harm. It has even been speculated by at least one Christian theologian (and yes those are weasel words, and no I can’t remember who said it but I swear it’s in my seminary notes!) that our perfected bodies will retain their scars. The reasoning was that it makes sense that anything which testifies to suffering’s having been overcome will be preserved.

And what’s one image in the Christian tradition that has consistently been used to describe this new, redeemed, embodied life that awaits? Obviously not immaterial souls becoming harp-playing angels on clouds. Nope nope nope. A feast. A feast, where nobody is left out and everybody has enough. A feast where – if I may extend the image in a manner I think is faithful to it – there are no good foods and bad foods… no popular table and no nerds table… no foods that look gorgeous on the plate but are the result of cruel and world-killing technology… no need to make eating into a locus for control in the hopes of finally, finally being worthy of love. Just a beautiful, intimate, abundant, joyful, and peaceful meal with your close circle of friends. Except that the circle is extended to every creature, and the Holy One is sitting with us at the table too.

Okay, so that’s one very ancient and long-standing Christian image for what awaits: a feast. Want to know another? A “wedding night,” but understood as sexual encounter between two as-yet-unconsummated lovers who have been waiting, yearning for each other so much they’re practically driven crazy by desire. And now they FINALLY know that the desire is mutual, and they FINALLY get to be alone together and touch each other, erase all the distance between each other, and thank heaven the wait is over because IT’S BEEN DRIVING THEM CRAZY NOW TURN OFF THE LIGHT ALREADY!

Please, just for a second, put out of your mind everything you’ve heard about purity balls (tee hee) and True Love Waits and staying “pure” until marriage, and just… you know, think about that kind of longing. Er, I trust some people here know the feeling? *pointed look*

Now, proviso time: Goodness gracious, have those images EVER been turned into weapons. The wedding night one, in particular, has been HORRIBLE for women. One might almost guess that its main use has been to equate “God” with “male” with “savior” with “(sexual) agent”… and “creation” with “female” with “saved” with “passive” with “pure receptacle for Him.” It’s a vile and death-dealing construct, and I wish it weren’t there. Well, then why is it there? Why do these nearly-universal embodied longings — which are used to say something important about the purpose of all creation — end up being a cause of division and exclusion?

Ah, that’s where I see the whole “ordered appetite” thing come in. And, you know, I can *almost* cut my tradition some slack here. I mean, if you’re saying that both gastronomical hunger and its fulfillment, and sexual longing and its fulfillment, reveal something about the very goal of the whole cosmos… well, suddenly, it seems pretty important to put in a bunch of provisos about how there are right and wrong ways for those appetites to be ordered. Because we don’t want to say that just EVERYthing that someone might theoretically do sexually, or EVERYthing you do related to your meals, is redemptive and good. A meal can be the occasion of exclusion and harm, even accidentally. So can sex. So can a bunch of other embodied longings.

Well, better make a whole bunch of rules to make sure that people only do the right things with their appetites, and not the wrong things, right?

Uhhh, sure, go ahead. Make a list of ordered and disordered appetites. And rules. And good people and bad people. And good bodies and bad bodies. Knock yourself out. EXCEPT REMEMBER THAT a big horking part of the Judeo-Christian narrative has to do with the guardians of “order” always being tempted to use that order to shore up their own power. And meanwhile – at least as I read the Christian Bible, but I’m not alone – God has pretty consistently cast God’s lot with those who’ve been othered by the authorities of the day.

Seriously, that’s like, um, kind of the whole freaking plot of the Bible, over and over and over and over and over again. The guardians of order say, with some plausible reason, “These are the conditions necessary for God to find favor with people!” And then God says, “Aww, nice try, mates, and I can totally see how you got there… but turns out I’m not so simple. ‘Scuse me a sec… Hey, you outcasts over there! Come join the party!”

I trust I don’t need to draw you a map of how I connect all that to FA. And I should wrap this up, but I can’t write about this without mentioning a memory that I shall cherish for as long as my memory functions. It illustrates everything I’ve just been trying, in fits and starts, to describe.

In the early ‘aughties I lived in a sort of pacifist anarchist Christian commune. One of the things we did — in addition to dumpster-diving, protesting war, and gardening — was provide a place for families with children who needed somewhere to stay. (At the time, in the city where I lived, most regular shelters and agencies wouldn’t place parents and children together.) One young woman, a high school student, stayed with us for more than a year. She’d been kicked out of her house when she got pregnant and decided to proceed with the pregnancy.

One day – when she was getting near her due date – she and the baby’s father announced they would be getting married. “WHAT!? CONGRATULATIONS!” we exclaimed. “WHEN?!” Whereupon this woman said somewhat dejectedly that they’d just get it taken care of the next day, because it’s not like they’d have any family who’d want to come.

At this point the matriarch of the community BEGGED her to let them try and give her a beautiful wedding. The bride happily said yes. And what I saw come together in the next twenty-four hours… I just don’t know how to describe it except that it felt like God was a sprightly and eccentric auntie throwing a wedding for her favorite niece. Somehow the news spread throughout the whole neighborhood. Little things just came together. For instance, the next morning my friend Christy and I found gorgeous entire bouquets of fresh flowers in the dumpster behind a florist, which we used to decorate the basement chapel. The intentional community down the street baked a wedding cake using, for the toppers, boy and girl chocolate Easter bunnies that they happened to have gotten on clearance. One of the other moms in the house worked as a caterer, and she made piles and piles of pupusas and heaps of black beans. Other neighbors brought chicken and I don’t even remember what else. A very psychologically troubled friend of ours who had some musical gifts sang “Danny Boy” as a solo. The preacher from the storefront church half a block away offered to do the ceremony. And the eighty-five-year-old grandfather who lived up the street — the sort who’d sit on his front porch in all but the worst weather so he could greet everyone as they passed – asked the bride if he could give her away.

ALL THIS HAPPENED IN ONE DAY.

It was both a feast, and a wedding night. And to me, it was a very scripturally-appropriate foretaste of the future of justice and peace that I try to work for. But I’ve often reflected how it satisfied exactly nobody’s rules for proper behavior or ordered appetites. Nobody. Certainly not wedding experts. Certainly not most religious people, who would have frowned on the bride (and perhaps only her) for having sex. Not the young woman’s family, who were angry she proceeded with the pregnancy. Not the vegans in our community, because of the chicken. I mean, they handled it with good humor and everything; I’m just saying if *they* had been in charge there probably wouldn’t have been chicken, you know? The wedding probably wouldn’t even have satisfied the government, seeing as how the groom didn’t speak English, couldn’t understand a word the preacher said, and didn’t actually repeat any vows. Hell, as a feminist I wasn’t thrilled in principle that she was being given away!

Didn’t matter. There was some power that had gone out ahead of us, ahead of all our rules, and brought us together in a place of peace… in a way that none of us could have anticipated. It was a gift *precisely* *because* it didn’t just spring up out of our fastidious adherence to rules.

Well, that’s my take, anyway. It’s also a long way of telling how I eventually found my spot in a liberal Christianity where a love of embodied life (in its lumpiest and bumpiest and earthiest sense) is at the heart of my faith… a Christianity that expects God to be especially at work in the lives of people with the “wrong” kinds of bodies, who have or are believed to have the “wrong” kinds of yearnings, longings, appetites.

Is anyone still reading? Do other Shapelings see spirituality and FA as informing each other? Or if you don’t believe in a deity or multiple deities, how (if at all) do you articulate your source of ultimate hope that sustains your work? I want to make sure I’m setting that up in a way that won’t lead to debate.

Filed under: Fat | 322 Comments »

Friday Fluff: The Shapely Manor

Posted on June 26, 2009 by A Sarah

Does anyone remember the episode of Family Ties where Elise and Stephen Keaton go out of town and leave Alex in charge? And he turns the place into a cozy little B&B called Keaton Manor, and rents out rooms?

Yeah, so the other SP bloggers are living it up in Minneapolis this weekend, leaving me in charge. WOOOOOOO! My sisters Mallory and Jennifer will be cleaning up your rooms and cooking you comically bad breakfasts, while I will be taking your money!

No, not really. But it provided me a handy way of mentioning two things:

1. Y’all, I’m it for the weekend, AFAIK, and I’m new; so go easy. I’ve got a very long and theological post in the works, but I think I shall save it for tomorrow, because we’ve had lots of posts today and I don’t wish to overwhelm. (Edited Saturday PM to add: I’m SORRY, I’m SO sorry, but it will be Sunday. I just keep obsessing and editing. It’s just such a fraught topic, so personal to me yet so prone to giving offense, and I already gave offense once before… blah blah, anyway, if I don’t put it up by tomorrow night then give me grief for it because that will mean I’m really obsessing way too much. ) And if you need something you can email me at teenageradiostar at gmail.

and

2. Let’s talk about cozy interiors! (Er, the connection was that B&B’s often have cozy interiors. Was that clear?)

See, we are moving to a new city in two weeks, and our new home (while not fancypants) is nicer than our current home, in that the new home has wood floors and granite (I think?) countertops and solid doors and whatnot.

What it lacks is color and quirk and personality. Not that I fault the previous owners for that because when your house is on the market that’s precisely what you’re supposed to do — make everything look generic and neutral. But once we arrive, we are getting down to bidness in terms of adding color and quirk. But most of all we want to be welcoming; we want there to be people coming over, playing, eating, relaxing, connecting, etc.

So anyway, what does the SP collective consciousness say in terms of making a house/apartment a home? How do you make a space welcoming, and what does that mean to you? What are some rooms and homes that you’ve loved? If you want to go all Derrida and talk about whether violence is inherent in “hospitality,” go to it! If that’s not fluffy enough for a Friday, another burning question I have is how we all feel about orange kitchens. (Specifically orange kitchens with black countertops? Too Halloweeny?)

What say you?

Filed under: A Sarah, Friday Fluff | 122 Comments »

They’ll kick you, then they beat you / Then they’ll tell you it’s fair

Posted on June 26, 2009 by Sweet Machine

Whatever your thoughts on Michael Jackson, his fame, his music, and his troubled life, I think we can all agree that the songs from Thriller were pretty much the best thing to ever happen to music videos.

What I can’t help but think right now is that Jackson’s strange life demonstrates that it is possible to be one of the most talented, most loved people on the planet and still hate your own damn face. Embracing your body is an endless challenge in a culture that tells us certain bodies are more worthy, more valuable, more human than others.

young-michael-jackson

Filed under: Pop Culture, Self-Image, Sweet Machine | 90 Comments »

Allegorical Figures

Posted on June 25, 2009 by fillyjonk

The local commuter paper ran an interview today with John Currin, a painter who deals in explicitly physical and sometimes pornographic images of women. (The first picture on the linked slideshow, actually, is NSFW.) I find his work interesting, if sometimes (deliberately) disturbing; I wouldn’t exactly count him among my favorite painters but I have no beef with the guy. However, I found this bit of the interview rather telling:

Express: The majority of your work is of the female figure. Why is that?

Currin: The simple answer is that I enjoy looking at women more than I enjoy looking at men, but the more pretentious answer is that I find it easier to think of metaphors and allegories when I’m using women in paintings.

This got me thinking. Part of the reason we show such public interest in — and sense of entitlement to — women’s bodies is that they’ve historically been used to represent things that are at once greater and smaller than “individual woman.” When we’re accustomed to women’s bodies signifying virtues and values and cultural mores — instead of signifying, you know, a woman’s body — it’s no wonder we start to feel they’re public property.

Imagine walking into a museum room containing representative samples of figures in the history of Western art. Some of the female figures you see will be representing Venus, the Madonna, and so forth — but many will be allegories of love, virtue, chastity, poetry. Think of the Graces: three women usually represented from front, back, and side, a 360-degree view of the female form. That’s what “grace” is. Think of the Muses. Think of the Sistine sibyls (not to mention Brittania), who are not just qualities but places. Male figures appear in these paintings too, but almost always as gods or Biblical figures, people with names. Men are characters, women are symbols.

They’re still symbols today. The female bodies used in advertising rarely stand for actual people — they mean “smooth,” “tasty,” “appealing,” “sexy,” “expensive,”  “new and improved.” Half the time they don’t even have faces, just a flank or a bust being used as a backdrop — the Nymph of the Liquor/Aftershave/Cereal/Beer. That repugnant series of Bacardi ads got one thing right: they gave their female images names and characteristics (at the expense, of course, of dignity — can’t have them getting too uppity). Most advertising bodies and body parts don’t even get that far. The much-maligned Headless Fatty is the other side of this coin, of course; she’s not a real person, but a metaphor for gluttony or ill health or consumerism or the downfall of society (if not all of the above).

Is it any surprise that women’s bodies are treated as a public concern? The entire culture is accustomed to seeing them used as metonymies for our highest (and lowest) values. The long historical pedigree of anti-woman sentiment means that the fact that women’s bodies contain women’s minds has always been elided, in favor of metaphorical elevation or degradation. We always have to stand for something, and what we stand for is  everyone’s business.

This is why objectification isn’t just the province of misogynists, by the way. Often you’ll hear Nice Guys protest that they don’t objectify women — no, they worship them! So instead of just being sexual receptacles, women stand for all that is good and beautiful in the world. How original. How healthy.

In some ways we’ve come far from Elizabethan sonnet cycles where the beloved is Virtue and Wisdom Personified, but in other ways the female body is still being treated like Humpty Dumpty treats words — it means whatever people want it to mean. How do you get people to get their figurative thought off your actual figure? That’s probably a long and complicated process involving, more or less, overthrowing the patriarchy. As we get back control of our bodies and images, we’ll regain control over what they signify. Until then, just remember that you don’t have to be somebody’s metaphor. Don’t stand for just “standing for” — your body deserves more than a symbolic existence.

Filed under: Feminism, Fillyjonk | 64 Comments »

Open thread: Follow the rules?

Posted on June 25, 2009 by Sweet Machine

Shapeling RedSonja has a question that we think you all can answer better than we can. Let’s play collective Aunt Fattie!

Here’s the situation:

My boss was telling me the other day that his sister and her children are coming to visit. Apparently she felt both fat and ostracized in high school (I say felt, because he indicated he didn’t get that from that time period AT ALL) and, in an effort to prevent that for her 3 daughters, she has begun food restricting them. (Their ages, BTW, are 7, 5, and 3) He has been instructed that, while they’re visiting, they can’t serve desserts, the girls can only have 2 carbs a day, stuff like that. He’s concerned for his nieces, but wants to respect his sister’s feelings. Any Shapeling suggestions on how to do this? Also, when I asked him, he felt that she would be more likely to be responsive  to anecdata than to studies. Any guidance any of you have would be appreciated!

What do you all think? Should the uncle follow the rules? Should he confront his sister? Should he put delicious bowls of ice cream right at kids’-eye level? The man wants anecdata, so have at it in the comments.

Filed under: Dieting/WLS, Fat, Food, Sweet Machine | 182 Comments »

Midweek link roundup

Posted on June 24, 2009 by fillyjonk

When I was in school I always used to get in trouble for talking or passing notes with my friends instead of doing my work. Little did I know it would prefigure my blogging habits. Sure, we haven’t turned in a lot of essays, but here’s a peek at what we’ve been passing notes about in the last week or so:

Adams’ argument applies on several levels here. The ad displays both the meaty sandwich and the female body as objects ready for masculine consumption. The woman in the ad is not meant to enjoy the burger, for this is not about her. Like the meat, she is a thing to be consumed, a thing that will provide the viewer with a hearty dose of masculinity and virility. In an interesting twist, this ad, which is clearly intended to sell a piece of meat to straight men, also presents the phallic stand-in as something desirable. Men are supposed to see this image and think something along the lines of: “I like BJs and burgers, cuz I’m a real man. I need some BK,” yet the ad makes the meat into a sexualized, fetishized masculine object.

So is it “natural” for me to weigh 300 lbs? I have no fucking idea. Maybe if I hadn’t lost and regained (and lost and regained, and lost and regained) so much weight as a kid and teenager, I would weigh less now. Maybe if I hadn’t started dieting at nine years of age and possibly affected what would have become a normal adult metabolism, I would weigh less now. I have no way of knowing. And I can’t travel back in time (….yet) to find out whether doing things differently would have led to a different result. And even if I could, I don’t know that I would bother.

  • I’m curious about this article — the thesis seems to be that obesity has always been treated as a product of metabolism and genetics, but maybe instead it should be treated as an eating disorder. Was this published in Proceedings of the Bizarro Academy of Sciences?
  • BMI may be even less accurate for African-Americans. There’s increasing evidence that race needs to be a factor in at least some medical decision-making, but as in so many other areas of life, able-bodied white men are the default and everyone else is considered an outlier or a deviation. It’s good that research is being done, but I’m thinking the medical community needs to listen to Lesley: bodies are not variations on a narrow template.
  • Friend of the blog Robin Abrahams (otherwise known as Miss Conduct) wrote an excellent piece about how to handle situations where the rules of etiquette and one’s personal preferences for treatment are at odds. We’ve been kicking around ideas about a post on “safe space” (and also a very belated review of Robin’s book) so look for those in the future, but meanwhile, you get a slightly-less-belated link.

Just as we expect more than etiquette strictly demands from those whom we love, we should be willing to accept less than etiquette demands if there are no emotions at stake. That’s how it works with those whom we love and who love us: we learn which buttons to avoid and which ones we can happily pound away on all day.

And it’s absolutely vital to sanity to realize that when you step out of your circle of loved ones, you no longer have the right to that kind of customized treatment. People will say things that are hurtful to you, and if those things are within the common bounds of civility we’ve defined as a society, you cowboy up and answer them politely.

  • Hanna Rosin at Double X writes about a new documentary on sex changes in Iran and makes our heads explode. Don’t tell me I’m “used to thinking of ‘transgender’ as the last stop on the gay train to freedom and self expression,” Rosin  — believe it or not, I think that the ability to become the opposite gender is not actually all gay folks’ ultimate goal. (Watch also for the part where she claims to have a better idea of “the universal truth about being transgender” than trans activists do!) Still, the documentary sounds very interesting.
  • Sweet Machine’s looking for a go-to dress for summer, something as versatile as this one (or at least, as versatile as that one would be if you weren’t a total remixing GENIUS). Do you have a go-to piece that acts as the underpinning of infinite outfits?
  • “The pudgy John Hodgman” hit a home run with his astute and funny speech at the Radio and TV Correspondents’ Dinner:

  • ETA: Holy shit, just saw this from Jez. Ableism doesn’t get a lot more blatant, folks.

So what have you guys been talking about?

Filed under: Feminist Blogs, Fillyjonk, Medicine, Other Stuff We Read, Shopping | 68 Comments »

Happy Birthday, Al!

Posted on June 21, 2009 by Kate Harding

He’ll probably kill me for this, but I like acknowledging birthdays, and if his birthday isn’t all about me, I don’t know what is.

 

The man I married, being himself.

The man I married, being himself.

His present didn’t arrive in time (read: I didn’t order it in time), but I’m currently letting him sleep in and considering other generous and heartfelt expressions of love, such as loading the dishwasher, making him a piece of toast, and maybe not yelling so much. But hey, he’s the one who doesn’t like birthdays, so I don’t want to get carried away. 

Happy birthday, my love. I’m glad you were born.

Also, happy Father’s Day where applicable, and big fake internet hugs to those who are missing someone today. (My own dad is frightened and confused by the internet, so I’ll give him a call later.)

ETA: Just talked to my dad, who said, “You know, I was proud of you, until I saw a 3-year-old on TV this morning who can run a whole pool table. Cute as hell, just a little wee thing, had to stand on a box, but boy, can he shoot. I was a bit disappointed he didn’t smoke a cigar. Anyway, I thought you were a pretty great kid until I saw that.” LOVE YOU TOO, DAD.

Filed under: Miscellaneous | 72 Comments »

I would need a lot more than a Bacardi Breezer to be able to stomach this

Posted on June 20, 2009 by Sweet Machine

Via Jezebel and The F-Word, a nauseating ad campaign from Bacardi (warning: link plays music and also destroys your soul) suggesting we all make ourselves feel prettier…by standing next to an “ugly girlfriend.” That concept right there tells you everything you need to know about what sexist assumptions underwrite these revolting ads: self-esteem is a zero-sum game; the key to feeling good is feeling pretty; you are always in competition with other women for male attention; standard beauty is the only way to be “hot;” women are commodities that you can “get” and trade; and so on. You know the drill; we’ve all been living it all our lives.

What the concept alone doesn’t tell you is what makes these particular women “ugly,” which is, as you can guess, that they each deviate from the beauty ideal in one or two ways. Remember, the following women are supposed to be self-evidently ugly.

Sally's so fat, she's...fat!

Sally's so fat, she's...fat!

The gorgeous hair can't distract you from her very slightly crossed eyes!

The gorgeous hair can't distract you from her very slightly crossed eyes!

My god, the woman wears GLASSES! I may faint.

My god, the woman wears GLASSES! I may faint.

Sure, she's thin and white and bikini-clad, but she looks like a horse, see?

Sure, she's thin and white and bikini-clad, but she limps, for god's sake.

So hideous, she doesn't even get a name.

WOC don't need names or background stories like those white women, right?

This is how the patriarchy and the beauty ideal collude: we are supposed to see these women and be so stunned that they aren’t thin, white, blonde, able-bodied, and perfectly symmetrical that we can only call them ugly. We’re supposed to look at these pictures and say “At least I’m prettier than her.” We’re supposed to view our female friends as accessories in our true life goal, which is to look hot for men. There are hot women, and there are ugly women, and if you’re not the hottest woman in the room, you’re automatically the ugliest.

The appalling part of these ads is not the women; it’s the blatant misogyny. Once you take off your Patriarchy Blinders (patent pending), the charge of “ugly” doesn’t even begin to make sense. If you saw these pictures without any text surrounding them, what would you think of these women? Even with the pernicious text framing them as objects of derision, this ad doesn’t work on me: these women are straight-up pretty. Pretty, stylish, and flirty even. I guess they have some of that self-esteem that’s been going around lately.

Update: Sean-Patrick Hillman of bacardi.com comments below:

June 21, 2009

Thank you for taking the time to post your story regarding Bacardi Breezer.

The campaign you are referring to ran in 2008 for two months in Israel. Even though Bacardi Breezer is not sold or distributed in the United States, we immediately notified the appropriate Bacardi affiliate and had this website shut down.

Bacardi proudly celebrates diversity and we do not endorse the views of this site.

We sincerely apologize to anyone who was offended by this site and thank you for bringing it to our attention.

Filed under: Fat, Femininity, Media, Self-Image, Sweet Machine, You've Got to Be Kidding Me | 193 Comments »

Next Page »