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Some time ago, I wrote a post called “Simple Thoughts from the Lunchroom.” This is my apology and reflection about that piece.
I immediately started getting some feedback telling me my privilege was showing. I took the post down so that I could try to reflect on this without further comments saying the same thing getting my hackles up (I suck at not getting defensive, but I know this so I try to correct for it).
It has been well over a month, if not two, since I wrote that post. I promised honest and thoughtful reflection and, for those who asked, an accounting of just where the privilege was sneaking in. My bio on the Author page notes that I am not as good at thoughtful analyses as Chrissy. There often seems to be a disconnect between the keyboard and what I think I’m saying. Usually I just go with it and try to correct when I get constructive criticism, but I am writing from a privileged perspective on this blog. I can’t just let it slide anymore. I vow to take more time to critically analyse what I’ve said/written from this point forward.
Now that I’ve gotten that bit of the defensive “I meant well, I just suck at writing” bit out of the way… It is time for me to get down to the nitty-gritty. Ultimately, the biggest problem with the post was this (which I’m quoting from below the jump):
I knew nothing about this woman, and I simply used her and the fact that she was fat and eating a classically-demonized food like Wendy’s to paint a story onto her.
That’s the privilege, there, folks, in case you were wondering.
There was more that I did not do well, at all, and so if you want to read through some of my thoughts about it and where I think I messed up or could have done better, please continue. The original post, in all its sloppy glory, with my thoughts and statements about it made inline, below the jump.
I am not sure how I feel about this.
On the one hand, if you want to wake up every morning and immediately do 30 reps with a dumbbell, more power to you.
On the other hand, what if you’re in a rush and you don’t have time to do the reps but are awake anyway? Is there an emergency shut off?
And on the third hand which I appear to have spontaneously generated, is this just another straw on the back of the camel currently transporting the rest of the fat-phobic, faux-health craziness in our society?
You decide.
I’ve been feeding my feminist side lately by perusing several feminist blogs and magazines, and today came across this article on Alternet about “Out-of-Body Image” and the predominance of self-objectification:
Self-objectification is a state of “double consciousness … a sense of always looking at one’s self through the eyes of others.”
It struck a cord in me. I know self-objectification all too well. Probably from ages 10-20, I perpetually saw myself through this “out of body” lens. Every little bit of energy for me was focused on how I looked to others, how I appeared, and what they’d think of me. Sometimes, it was positively focused: I’d be walking into a grocery store in a cute outfit and think, “People must see me and think how confident I look, and how aloof and beautiful I am.” But usually, it was in an extremely self conscious way. I’d try to think how I was being perceived from all sides, and pose my body, my mouth, my facial expression, etc. into something more “beautiful” or “polished.” I did it completely without thinking most of the time.
And I did it mentally, too. I saw a psychologist over the summer between my senior year of high school and my first year of college, and the way I explained it to her was that everything I’d ever done, all my perfectionist attitudes, my desire to strive in the theatre, orchestra, my need to get good grades, all of it was making up for my one greatest flaw, which at that point was my fat. I tried to counter-balance my ugliness with an inner-beauty, and success. I was nice to people, even those who were not nice to me. I was diplomatic in most arguments. I made myself emotionally available to everyone around me, for advice, and help. And I was a perfectionist.
My psychologist, who helped a lot in just being the first person to really listen to me, tried to tell me there was no reason to “counter-balance” in such a way. I, of course, didn’t listen.
Moving into college opened up a whole boatload more of insecurities. Sex and physical relationships were all around me. More stress was put on my physicality, and I didn’t have those lifelong friends who saved me from most of my misery in high school. I honestly don’t know how I made it through my first few years in college, but I know that those were some of the loneliest days of my life. I didn’t trust many people. And I often felt betrayed by the people I did at the drop of a pin. I would scream and yell at my friends because they were being “insensitive” and “trying to hurt me” when really, I was just hurting myself.
I know that I haven’t completely given up my self-objectification. I still think everyone is judging me, even my close friends, sometimes. I rarely let go of my inhibitions. But I know now that all of that has to do with me still trying to get comfortable in my own skin.
So know, I’m putting this here to encourage myself to do it, I hope I can think about what I’m doing, and take a step back. Self-Objectification has led to nothing but trouble for me. And, according to the article I read, has been proven to be severely detrimental to performance in all areas of life:
Self-objectification has also been repeatedly shown to sap cognitive functioning, because of all the attention devoted to body monitoring. For instance, a recent study by Yale psychologists asked two groups of women to take a math exam — one group in swimsuits, the other in sweaters. The swimsuit-wearers, distracted by body concerns, performed significantly worse than their peers in sweaters.
AND
….self-objectification impeded girls’ ability to throw a softball, even after differences in age and prior experience were factored out.
AND worst of all:
One of the more stunning effects of self-objectification is its impact on sex. One young woman I interviewed described sex as being an “out of body” experience during which she viewed herself through the eyes of her lover, and, sometimes, through the imaginary lens of a camera shooting a porn film.
It’s not mentally healthy, not physically healthy, and we all need to take the opportunity to stop. So I’m going to try. I’m going to stop judging myself, and others. And I’m going let me be me. In the words of Joy Nash, “You’ve only got one life to live. Live it up!”
I’ve put all the troll comments in moderation, because it seems they’re taking my blog as an open post for them to write absolutely inane things on. I’ll probably mark them all as spam soon. Mostly because they’re taking up space in my inbox, and being rude to people who respect the blog! I might be putting all comments on moderation for a little while. Sorry if this is inconvenient to yall!
Oh, and to our dear troll friends: Jamie and I find it soooo funny when you all make fun of us as a unit, considering that she is thin thin thin, and I am teh fat. It puts into perspective (as if we needed it) exactly how little you know about us!
Oh you trolls. You make me laugh so hard! At least Tara (who, btw, made an appearance on the last post!! Haha!) was semi-intelligent, even though she was anti-fat.
Any more suggestions on how to control the spittle from these trolls is still welcome! But for now, I’m thinking of just sending them some twelve inch subs so they find it hard to click buttons and type.
Yesterday and today, Jiggly Bits was up on WordPress’ “Growing Blogs” page (in the second spot!! Thanks everyone who’s visited!!), and I’ve gotten a stream of trolls, mostly on our “About the Authors” page, and my Poetry Collection. When I got my first troll, the infamous Tara, I took this stance:
Your insults don’t hurt, and I won’t give you the satisfaction of a post all about you in the future, because you aren’t that special. Just know my stand: your pettiness is noted and rejected. Please continue living your life as a minion of society, but I won’t let you drag me down with you.
Well, I still stand by that, and I don’t want to make this post about these haters and their comments, but I have a question for all you readers out there who actually respect what I do: what should I do with the comments I get that are from the trolls? I just discovered last night that I can actually edit their comments(!!). Should I leave them up, as they are? Or should I edit the comment to say something like, “Oh, yes. I’m a troll. Hummdy hum hum…doo doo dee doo!” Or should I delete them so they don’t have to sit there looking at us all funny?
I thought it’d be funny to change what they say to completely fat-positive comments. What do you all think?
Oh, and feel free to go troll hunting. I support it, as long as it’s witty and respectful (in the sense that you don’t insult any other groups while doing it…I’m not looking for hate, I’m looking for some confident expulsion of hate…do you know what I mean? Wittiness and sass are appreciated!).
Margaret Cho
I love Margaret Cho. Her humor, her positivity, her activism, her voice, and her beauty all continuously awe me. She is a proponent of loving yourself, and has such a positivity. She speaks candidly about everything from sex, to body image, to identity, to race. And I find her incredibly inspiring. She’s sexy, funny, and a real role model.
You can imagine, then, how gleeful I was when I found the link to this video at Feministing. I’m about to die with excitement. I did not know she was getting her own show, nor did I expect to to be as great. And I am more excited than anything to see it.
I know some people may not love her as much as I do, but I seriously love her. Feel free to disagree, but Margaret Cho is my homegirl!
Via my ever-interesting MSN feed on hotmail.com, I stumbled across this article today about a model agency called “Ugly New York:”
Ugly New York’s mission: To find the look of someone who is anything but outright pretty. There are safe words to describe the look; it could be “real” or “eccentric.” But certainly, “tall,” “short,” “fat,” “thin” and, well, “ugly” also fit.
The model agency, who started in 1969 in England, is looking for people who are interesting-looking. People who represent reality. The agency represents a wide variety of people, regardless of shape, size, height, color, or age. And each individual has their own type of beauty.
Now, of course, they don’t represent just anyone. But the owner, Simon Rodgers, had trouble describing what he was looking for:
“The truth is, it’s just a gut feeling,” Rogers told Roker. “Some people just have that something special. For me, the basic thing is they’ve got to be happy with themselves.
“They have to be content with who they are because after all, they’re going to be out there in front of the camera.”
I have to admit, I was delighted by finding this article. Ugly NY seems to be really, really, correct in their whole enterprise. They’re taking people that most of the media and most of the world would say, “You’re ugly!” and showing that even normal people, women, men, young, old, etc., can be beautiful. They make me gleeful!
What did not, however, make me gleeful was the presentation of the article. First and foremost, it had a way of sort of back-handing it’s subjects. For instance, this delightful paragraph:
Brian Thomas, an extra-heavy-set Ugly model, joked that he already knew he was model material before the agency took him on. “Well, I’m hot,” Thomas said. “Let’s just get that right out in the open. I’m drop-dead sexy.“
But seriously?
“My sister actually sent my pictures in to Simon and when Simon called, I thought it was a prank call,” Thomas explained. “I thought it was my buddies at work fooling around. But it’s been a great ride. I’ve been having a blast ever since.”
Umm…what’s that “But Seriously?” there in the middle? I’m quite sure this guy is actually drop-dead sexy. Especially if he’s as playful, and confident, as he seems in those few quotes. Those are incredibly attractive qualities, not to mention that fact that his “extra-heavyset-ness” is probably quite sexy as well. Lose the attitude there, MSNBC.
Not to mention the fact that on my page, the article was presented with FOUR different sections that contained some sort of contradictory message:
Ugly NY Article ads
Number 1: Ad for Crest Whitestrips. Because, you know, you have to be obsessed with the whiteness of your teeth. If not, you must be reading the wrong section of MSNBC.
Number 2: Hair worthy of gold medals, wrinkle busters, etc. In case you wanted to fuss even more over how you looked.
Number 3: Miss Venezuela wins Miss Universe. Beauty Pageant, enough said.
Number 4: Check out these ambush makeovers. We’re making people look better, because they loosed SO terrible before!
Ahem. MSNBC needs to catch what Ugly NY is throwing at them. Here they are featuring them in an article, and on the Today Show, apparently, and they still don’t get it. It almost makes me feel like they’re making fun of the whole thing. Like, they thought it was just so quaint that such a Model Agency existed.
Well, Ugly NY, you got my support! Keep making beauty real, and making reality beautiful! Thanks so much for what you do!
I’ve been watching the Olympics almost non-stop since they started. My family spent all day the first day watching them, and since then, I haven’t been able to stop. It wasn’t until last night, however, that I realized why I love them so much. It has something to do with how much I love to see people succeed. It came to me last night when I was, mindlessly, watching the marathon of America’s Next Top Model on MTV on commercials during the Olympics, and I realized that the two had something in common: it was the quest for achieving a dream.
Although the Olympics are about 75,000 times better than ANTM, I now get why I watch all that crap: I like to see people chase what they believe in, try their hardest, and win it. I think I’ve read before how much reality TV (in some cases) has to do with the playing out of people’s American dreams, and that’s exactly what it feels like for me. As I watched Salescia win over Chantal, the American Men’s 4×100m Freestyle Relay team defeat the French team in the last five meters, as I watched the American Men’s Gymnastics team take Bronze in the team event, as I watched China nail their events in Gymnastics, and take an emotional gold, all of it was incredible to me because it was about peoples’ dreams coming true. And I cried during every one of those things.
Now, I realized I’m comparing the Olympics and America’s Next Top Model, which are actually not even close to the same level, but I’ve realized they actually have a lot in common. It’s about being an expert in what you do. Whether that be modeling, or swimming, or gymnastics, etc., you have to be great. And you have to be confident. There’s something there that I really appreciate.
Anyway, I’ve fallen completely in love with watching people win medals. I don’t care what happened to them before, or after, or what they did in the past to get there, all I want to see is their face when they realize they’re the best in the world at what they do. I want to see their face light up, and their dream come true.
I hope one day to feel the same.
Letting out the Jigglies