Poetry Project: To the Big Girl

Hi all, here’s the second poem that I’ve actually liked in my poetry collection. I have another to post soon, but it needs a bit of work. I’ve been writing two a week, and not posting them here because I haven’t liked them enough. But this one I like a lot. Here it is!

To the Big Girl

You gotta gimme a shimmy, honey, with those hips so damn wide, and that languorous shaking bowl of jelly behind, you gotta gimme a wiggle, girly, flaunt what you got, waves instead of angles, sweet sugary S’s down your sides, give a giggle, babe, flirt with yourself, the flop and flounce of your skin don’t bother me, you got the jiggle down, that smooth whisper in your body, you got the roundness to bend my will, and the shape to satisfy, you know you gotta be a sexy thing, your plus size makin’ more for me to love, more to take and have, you gotta gimme a little, honey, let me have a bit of you, sweet as honey, you got more viscosity than syrup, open up to me, sugar, you know I want what you got, and if you laugh for me, gimme a smile, you know you won my heart, baby, you gotta flash those pearly whites and invite me to you, you got so much workin’ for you, more than most, you’re thick and juicy sweet, so gimme a shimmy, lover, cause I wanna go big.

Spanglish

I’m watching the movie “Spanglish” right now on TBS. One of the first scenes in the movie, which establishes the characters consists of the mother, Deb, and the daughter, Bernice. Deb comes home with huge bags full of clothes for Bernice, and Bernice, all excited, starts trying on all the clothes. Immediately, it becomes obvious what is happening. Bernice pulls out a jacket and starts trying it on, and it doesn’t fit. She looks at the tag, “Eight.” she says. She looks through everything, and they’re all size 8. Deb then says, “what? I know you’re going to do it! You’re going to lose the weight!”

This scene makes me so mad at the characters. It’s heartbreaking. Bernice gets upset and cries, and I can’t help but sympathize. Poor girl. How many times have I tried on clothes that didn’t fit? How terrible did I feel? And here this girl’s mother had BOUGHT her clothes that don’t fit! It makes me so sick, and so angry.

The next scene is of Flor, the Spanish-speaking maid, and central character in the story, asking her daughter how to say “just try it on” in English, and then taking the clothes and altering them to fit. The next day, she forcefully asks Bernice to try it on, and she does, and the happiness is so beautiful. It was a little alteration. She was only one size bigger. And she just lit up at having the beautiful new clothes suddenly fit.

Anyway, it made me terribly angry to think that that sort of stuff happens. But I know it does. And it makes me want to scream.

Grrrrrrr…

Oh, and I think it goes without saying that Bernice is a beautiful girl. Can we please stop teaching these terrible ideals?

I look really silly…

…but I’m totally jumping up and down, pointing at my computer monitor and going, “Yes! What she said! Yes!”

Chrissy linked to The F-Word in her last post. I read it and I’m totally feeling it.

I don’t deny that there exists a correlation between physical activity and body weight, but other than a fleeting reference, nowhere does the article address the health implications for sedentary, thin people. Such people seem to get a free pass to be inactive, while fat people are simply assumed to be inactive.

This, right here, is it, folks. I am very much a skinny person. I’m about 5′ 9″ and I weigh, on average, 125lbs. I am skinny. But I’m also fucking sedentary as hell. The flight and a half of stairs from the door into my residence hall up to the floor I live on raises my heartrate. Other than walking to and from class, I pretty much don’t exercise. And I get a free pass for it. No one (boyfriends aside, but they get a much deeper view into my life than most people) has ever suggested that we go work out together, with the obvious intent of trying to make me be healthier. Even when I make it perfectly clear that I really detest sports, no one mentions their health benefits. They try to sell me on how “fun” they are (sorry, they’re not fun for me. That’s why I don’t play them).

Sometimes I get annoyed that I don’t exercise, because with my family’s health history, I worry about blood clots in my legs from spending so much time sitting in front of my computer. But I still end up just not doing it. I’m lazy. And I feel confident in assuming that no one has ever called me that behind my back.

Something a physically active, healthy fat person cannot feel. Grr.

Textbooks

I am too lazy to try to add anything to an already delicious post at Big Fat Blog, so I will just say:

Go read this. Now.

Coming Soon

I know there aren’t a lot of you who read regularly, but I wanted to say to all of you SORRY for disappearing. Even Jamie B., my new cowriter, sent me a message yesterday saying “You disappeared!” I’m so sorry. I’ve been extremely busy.

Firstly, I FINISHED my DOCUMENTARY on my fat. A long and painful process, that produced a final product that I can’t say I’ll ever be happy with, but only because it’s so personal. I should be posting it soon (at the earliest tomorrow).

Secondly, I’ve been having a lot of trouble getting my poetry done for my poetry collection, but it’s all coming together. I think I’m starting to get at it a bit more, and that’s what I wanted to do. So maybe some of that will be posted, too.

Thirdly, as stated before, Jamie B. has joined Jiggly Bits as a contributor! She and I are real life friends, and both in a very similar place in the exploration of ourselves and our view of the world. WELCOME Jamie!

Finally, to tide anyone out there over, I want to send you to some other blogs that are posting good things. Firstly, there’s Big Fat Deal which posted a beautiful video today of a woman accepting herself as an average sized woman. I applaud her for her efforts! You can find her video at BFD or here.

Also, in wake of Jamie B.’s post from yesterday, here’s another blog discussing HAES (Health at Every Size). It gets at the “Couch Potato Problem” in America.

Might have more than just the documentary post tomorrow. I plan on catching up on some of my backlog of articles to read, and also will find out if I got the Senior Resident Assistant position at my university for next year! Maybe some good news?

Intent vs. Impact

I had an experience the other day which, a month ago, wouldn’t have particularly struck me one way or the other. Yay FA for a bit o’ eye-opening, eh?

I was having lunch with a semi-friend (I am a Resident Assistant (RA) at my college, and she is another student in the next job level up, but not my direct boss. She handles a different building). I’m going to call her Sandy. ^_^ We talk sometimes, and more often than not we discuss fairly lofty things, since she’s one of only two or three other self-identified feminists that I know.

On Tuesday, which was Earth Day, our dining hall decided that in order to save a bit of energy, they would not be using trays for us to carry dishes on – the idea being that this would save water from washing the trays and perhaps encourage students to take less food and thus waste less – for one day only. Because of this, our conversation started out by discussing how superficial most efforts to be “green” usually are – especially from large corporations. From there we started to discuss, more or less, how we both want to change the world and are sometimes overwhelmed. This brought us to the topic of how we were coping with that, and the smaller, more feasible ideas that we actually want to implement.

Sandy has a great idea. She thinks it might be her calling, in fact. She noted that while many communities have fitness centers, they rarely have a place that will combine a fitness center with healthy living classes, a place to get healthy food, etc. That is, a place that rather than addressing a single component of the “healthy lifestyle,” includes something to cover all parts – in her words, “physical, emotional, mental, spiritual.” She has already identified her target demographic as busy middle-class women. And obese people.

I struggled to keep a frown from my face at this point. We were talking about dreams for our futures and passions for careers, and I really didn’t want to derail our conversation by hauling off on a HAES lecture.

I really wish I could remember exactly what she said. What her words said (if not these precise words) was basically that she wants a place that makes it more convenient for people to combat obesity. She also said, and this is much closer to her actual words, that when people come out of those week-long, intense “healthy-living” boot camps, she wants them to have a place that will help them maintain those habits. Sigh.

This conversation wasn’t a total loss. When talk turned to our quick-fix culture and how people need to learn to sacrifice, two things happened. One, we clarified her definition of “sacrifice,” which she meant more to say that we need to think long-term. Two, I was able to bring up the intuitive eating concept, which she immediately agreed was a great idea. Sandy is not a scared-of-teh-fattiez type person. She is very happy in a body that would probably not withstand the BMI test-of-doom. She’s also very active, athletically, but…whatever.

This leads me, finally, to the ultimate point of this post.

The most disturbing aspect of this conversation, to me, was how the concept of obesity was dropped in so casually as something that she expected me to understand as what-not-to-be.

Intent vs. Impact

Her intent is to tell me about her dream of a place that aids others in living healthy. Her impact is to tell me about how awful the obesity epidemic is and how no one in his/her right mind could possibly be happy being “overweight.” Would she have brought it up if she perceived me as fat?

Sandy is a pretty open-minded, cool woman. I’m going to link her to Shapely Prose and I imagine that will have a lot of good effect. But I was just struck by how much she had internalized this idea of an obesity epidemic, and how she assumed that I had, as well.

Who’s Fat? I’m Fat!

For the past week or so I’ve been working on a project for my documentary film class all about my fat. The premise of the assignment is to do a “personal video essay” that discusses something specific about yourself. My friend Lisa, for instance, is talking about how she hates talking about art (and the fact that she’s an art major) and incorporating it with her dislake of playdough (that was funnn for me to film!).

Anyway, my project is a video that (I hope) will talk back to the word FAT. I feel like we’ve given it so much power in our world…I know I have.

For the project though, I’ve done two things that were pretty difficult. Firstly, I stood up on a platform in our TV studio and had Lisa lable the parts of my body as in, “Arm Fat,” “Big Butt,” etc. Actually doing it wasn’t hard, but watching it afterwards was. I mean, I generally don’t see myself so close up, nor so far away, and it is hard to watch. I kept saying “ewwww!” when I was watching it, and Lisa turned to me and asked, “isn’t this film all about your self acceptance?” I guess no matter how much I think I’ve changed, I’m really still hit by the way I look. That’s what I get for letting the media get to me, eh?

Second thing I did was go out on the street and ask people “questions about body image.” Really, it was one big social experiment. I asked two easy questions to start: if you could change anything about yourself, what would it be? and do you consider yourself to be fat or overweight? Both of these got a variety of answers, it was what I asked next that was the fun part.

“Do you consider me fat?”

Some people looked me up and down, and then said “No.” or “Yeah, you’re a little overweight.” Some people immediately said, “No!” even if they’d already identified themselves as fat (and I was definitely bigger). Only one set of women said, “I don’t know! I don’t like to put that on people!”

I think more people had a problem with telling me why they felt that way. One guy admitted, “Yeah, you’re a little overweight.” and when I asked him why he said that, he said, “…I…I don’t know! You just look a little overweight!” all flustered-like. One guy told me that I wasn’t fat, and when I asked why he said that he said, “You’re proportioned! You’re not, you know, lumping out anywhere!” That was pretty funny. I wanted to ask what “lumping out” really meant, but I didn’t.

But overall it just goes to show exactly how taboo the word fat is. One woman told me that it depended on my BMI. Only one or two people said that yes, I was indeed fat. They were honest with me. And I appreciated that.

I’m trying to put the documentary together now (takiing a quick break) and I’ll put it up when I’m done (hopefully on Tuesday when it’s due). Thus far, it’s been an interesting ride. We’ll see where it takes me…

Fat Stats

Today was a day full of lots of Fat stuff for me. To start, I went downtown with Lisa earlier today to do the street interviews for my personal essay. Audio issues aside, it was verrrrry interesting. But more will come on that tomorrow. I also had “Group” today, for the first time since last year. By “Group” I mean the overweight women group I attend at the Counseling Center every week. We all get around and gab about fat issues and life as an overweight woman. It was great. I also had poetry, with my big FAT collection, as I’ve taken to calling it. So there it is, as well. Those poems will be up after I’m satisfied with them…

Today was also extremely busy, but I have an article I want to talk about.

I found this article this morning, and found it deeply disturbing. Though the author is making the point I think needs to be made, the statistics in the article make me deeeeply sad.

A group of women who had previously been obese and lost weight were asked if they would prefer to be obese again or to go blind. Alarmingly, 89 percent stated they would rather be blind than gain back the weight they had lost, and 91 percent of this group said they would rather lose a limb than be heavy again.

Does that make anyone else extremely angry? Go without one of your senses? Or gain some weight? Alarmingly, people would rather live without ever seeing their child walk, the sunset, their brother’s wedding, etc. than be fat. I think we need a little bit of perspective here. Sadly, all the thincentricity is making people BLIND in a completely different way.

Next, lets talk about fat employees, who are paid “12 percent less” than thin employees.

Employers and co-workers described obese employees as “lazy, less competent, less productive and emotionally unstable.” Physicians and nurses said that obese patients were “dishonest, noncompliant, lazy and lacking self-control.”

To this, my friend Jamie commented to me after I sent her the story, “You know what’s really scary? How much the things people said about their ‘obese’ coworkers sounded EXACTLY like things people said (and, frighteningly still do say) about black people until it was made illegal.” Sound scary familiar? And too true to bear? Look at this:

Mental health professionals were given two nearly identical patient profiles except one of the two patients was labeled obese. These providers diagnosed the obese client with more psychological problems and predicted a poor outcome with treatment.

And this:

Children ages 3-11 were shown photos of a child with a facial disfigurement, a child in a wheelchair, a child with an amputated limb and an overweight child. They ranked the overweight child as the least desirable playmate.

How deep-rooted is this evil? I firstly can’t even believe they conducted that experiment, but since its done and overwhelmingly anti-fat, can’t we see that we are brainwashing our kids! As young as age THREE they are picking on the fat child. How utterly depressing. I can see the ghost of eating-disorders-to-come.

All in all, its the same old weightism making the same point. It makes me want to cry. Utterly and completely breakdown and yell at the world.

But, my dears, that is what this blog is for. Lets all yell our anger to the hilltops on three. One…two…threee!

Exhausted

Long exhausting day. I feel burned out. From not really getting a lot of sleep, to working out today (which makes me tired) to doing a big part of my Personal Essay Doc in the studio (emotional exhausted, let me tell you), I am just dead.

And Mondays aren’t even my crazy days. Tuesdays are.

Arg.

Real post tomorrow. Stay put!

Revisit: Rowling against Thincentricty

Sometimes, to feed both my Harry Potter obsession and my obsession with my body image, I jump over to J.K. Rowling’s webpage and look up her entry called “For Girls Only, Probably…” So as I revisited it today, I thought I’d write about it. I remember wanting to, way back when it first came out, but I can’t find any evidence saying I did in my other blog. So here it goes…

Rowling makes many good points. First, by discussing seeing a woman in a magazine “who is either seriously ill or suffering from an eating disorder (which is, of course, the same thing)” and how sad it makes her. Next, is the anecdote of a Harry Potter film actor who told Jo about a girl he knows being called fat by her classmates, which baffled him because she “really not fat.” In response to this, she says,

His bemusement at this everyday feature of female existence reminded me how strange and sick the ‘fat’ insult is. I mean, is ‘fat’ really the worst thing a human being can be? Is ‘fat’ worse than ‘vindictive’, ‘jealous’, ’shallow’, ‘vain’, ‘boring’ or ‘cruel’? Not to me…

The first half of this quote reminded me of Joy Nash’s Fat Rant on youtube.
Being fat should NOT define who we are. As women, we give it sooo much power! Jo continues, saying,

But then, you might retort, what do I know about the pressure to be skinny? I’m not in the business of being judged on my looks, what with being a writer and earning my living by using my brain…

I went to the British Book Awards that evening. After the award ceremony I bumped into a woman I hadn’t seen for nearly three years. The first thing she said to me? ‘You’ve lost a lot of weight since the last time I saw you!’

‘Well,’ I said, slightly nonplussed, ‘the last time you saw me I’d just had a baby.’

What I felt like saying was, ‘I’ve produced my third child and my sixth novel since I last saw you. Aren’t either of those things more important, more interesting, than my size?’ But no – my waist looked smaller! Forget the kid and the book: finally, something to celebrate!

This is the saddest part for me. Jo is exactly right. Why was her drop in weight her biggest success? I mean, I personally thought Half Blood Prince was one of her best novels. And having a child should take the cake as more important and interesting. But of course, in our society we are so absolutely OBSESSED with weight, that we can’t even see success past a small weight fluctuation. Why are actors and actresses cast aside after they gain some weight? Why is it a stipulation to everything, “Oh yeah, she’s a great singer. Too bad she’s fat.” How does our weight diminish our capability?

It doesn’t.

Jo goes on to talk about Pink’s song, “Stupid Girls” and how it’s a satire against self-obsessed, thin-obsessed women, and shows that these women should not be held as role models. Then she brings it home:

Maybe all this seems funny, or trivial, but it’s really not. It’s about what girls want to be, what they’re told they should be, and how they feel about who they are. I’ve got two daughters who will have to make their way in this skinny-obsessed world, and it worries me, because I don’t want them to be empty-headed, self-obsessed, emaciated clones; I’d rather they were independent, interesting, idealistic, kind, opinionated, original, funny – a thousand things, before ‘thin’. And frankly, I’d rather they didn’t give a gust of stinking chihuahua flatulence whether the woman standing next to them has fleshier knees than they do. Let my girls be Hermiones, rather than Pansy Parkinsons. Let them never be Stupid Girls. Rant over.

This is my power. This is how I want the world to think. I hope to be a Hermione, and believe that being a Hermione is all I need. She’s a strong, intelligent, brave woman. And so is Jo Rowling. She took a lot of crap from the media for speaking about this, including stabs that all her “fat characters” were evil. I won’t discuss that today, but it makes me mad.

We all need to step out of our fat obsession, get a brain, and try to be Hermiones. I think that’d do us all a WORLD of good.