I note, too, that the editors who pair these photos with stories are, while making sweeping and unfounded and insulting assumptions about the subjects of the photos, also making a sweeping and unfounded and insulting assumption about the VIEWERS of the photos–namely, that they will all be repulsed at the photo subects. It’s insulting in the way that it is when someone tells you an abusive joke assuming that you’ll find it as funny as they do, because doesn’t everybody react like them?

Clearly we don’t. Clearly many of us react with rage at the attempt at dehumanization by the news organizations involved. (And I must admit, while my thinky brain is reacting in high feminist dudgeon to the dehumanization, a much baser part of my brain is reacting to the occasional photo with “Nice ass, YUM,” which I am QUITE sure was not the intent of the story, either.)

So, if you see this guy taking pictures of fat people, you may be seeing a HF photo in the making.
Here are the articles that the photos illustrated:
http://www.canada.com/Health/Researchers+link+obesity+birth+defects/1277326/story.html

http://www.canada.com/Health/Body+levels+good+indicator+overall+health+Doctor/1274455/story.html

(the second article is something I’ll blog about if I have time tonight)

So, now I’m imagining I’m wearing a fabulous outfit (with a really great looking bra) and my hair looks amazing, and I see Mr. Lucas with his fancy heavy camera with a really big lens (you know what they say about a man with a really long lens) and I realize that he’s about to take a picture of me from the neck down (I suppose he could take a picture that includes my face and then crop it out later — I don’t know how that works) and I approach him and let him know that I’ll sign a release, that I don’t want to be a headless fatty. And he’s taken aback at first, but produces a release from his messenger bag and I take out a really nice pen from my fashionable bag and sign it with a flourish. And I give him my card and let him know I can be photographed in the future. And he has a spiritual awakening and never takes another HF photo again.

So: we get to see the bony women’s (whenever there’s any mention of underweight, whether it pertains to EDs or not, they only show women, never the young men who are the majority) heads, but not their faces. Fat people, pregnant women, we get to see the bodies but not the head. ‘Hot’ women are often reduced to close-ups of the part in question (see the Olympic volleyball player post) There must be some sense to it.. *ponders*

I do think there’s a lot of intersectionality going on in the HF photos. First, I have to say that I think fat is a shorthand as well as being its own oppression. The words “fat slob” bring up someone in cheap, bad clothing, dirty environment, and of course fat–all of which can easily be tied to the working poor. Africans and black Americans have been demonized by images of fatness from the mid-1800s on. I don’t think it’s coincidence that what is being focused on in Nadia Suleman is that she is fat, POC and also living on government funds, for one modern example of fat undesirables.

Then I find it interesting that most HF that I see are white. It’s not particularly shocking when a black person is fat, because of course someone “undesirable” in one way will be “undesirable” in another. I see HF-dom as slipping racial borders. By presenting a white person in a badly classed and raced position, it stirs up more than just fears about being fat–it’s about loosing privelege too. If you eat that pizza outside, you will become Headless Fatty. If you don’t control your portions, you loose white privelege. If you don’t exercise 2 hours a day, you become white trash.

I think it works so well as a tactic because most white people don’t even understand the fears of loosing their priveledge, and it hits them even harder for being so intangible but so deeply rooted into their daily lives.

Headless, no one looks good eating a hot dog. Even if it’s an organic veggie dog in a whole wheat bun.