All Up In Your Facebook with My Body-Positive Rant

Not to make a totally random comeback or anything (oh, hi, blog!) but I woke up this morning to a Facebook thread so simultaneously inspiring and infuriating that I had to leave a giant rant comment on it that I needed to share with y'all who are still tuning in (some of you lovely people, I hope!)

So basically, a friend of mine/girl I know from college-- who happens to be a gorgeous, very skinny former model-- posted the above photo on her Facebook with a caption saying how beautiful she thinks this woman is. Well, I was pleased to see most of the comments on a very long comment thread were positive, which shocked the hell out of me. But of course, some members of the OMG THINK OF MY EYES! THINK OF THE CHILDREN! brigade came out to make comments that basically said the following:

1. She can't possibly be healthy and that's gross.
2. Fat is objectively less attractive than being skinny.
3. Self-love is an excuse to give up on yourself, yuck!

Maybe it was a combination of my desire to spread the word that fatphobia is damaging and the fact that it was 7 a.m. and I was so not yet in the mental space where I can tolerate a metric ton of stupid bullcrap, but I had to feed the trolls and rant. I wanted to post it here because I've been away too long and I thought you might be interested in how I dealt with it. I didn't edit this at all for the sake of authenticity and I wrote it in a huff so if there are weird typos/grammar things, forgive me.

"Just putting it out there that your weight doesn't always have anything to do with your health, because it's just not that simple-- illness and genetics can make you fat or skinny just like eating and exercise can. First of all, I know plenty of overweight people who exercise and eat better than a lot of the skinny people I know. Secondly, it's bull to make that argument because-- really-- do you care what some random chick get told at her doctor's appointment (and if you've never been fat, you might not realize doctors can be hateful, too, about your weight and not want to deal with you beyond telling you you're too fat)? People use health as an excuse for fatphobia, plain and simple. You know what people don't deserve just because they're not healthy? Hate. People are people. We all deserve to feel safe and get some basic respect. Because of the way this society works, most fat people I know (myself included) have hated themselves and wanted to be skinny and tried. But guess what doesn't work? Punishing yourself. And that's all weight loss is for a lot of people: punishing themselves for not being beautiful, not being good enough, not being thin enough. They do it out of hatred for their bodies and it doesn't work. If hating yourself and dieting worked, everyone would be thin. Instead, the hate creates a negative spiral of unhealthy mental energy and actual behavior. At my skinniest, I was my most depressed, held the most self-loathing, felt most isolated from everyone around me, but at the same time everyone was telling me how much prettier I was and good for me. People noticed me, and believe it or not, that hurts. It really does, seeing for yourself that so much of what makes you you isn't appreciated unless you look a certain way. I didn't feel any more beautiful in size 2 jeans than I felt 10 or more sizes larger [EDIT: Apparently in my rage I forgot women's jeans sizes often go by twos. 10 is more like 5, if it's at all relevant]. I ended up gaining most of the weight back, but I'm at a point where I FEEL deserving of love and respect and I FEEL beautiful and no one needs to validate me (despite the fact I have a fiancee who I've been with 4 years who would beg to differ that skinny girls are objectively more attractive). I eat a more balanced diet now than I did when I was skinny and starving myself. I'm more physically fit than I was when I was working out obsessively. I do those things because I love myself and my body. I do it and it's sustainable because it doesn't come out of a place of hate. But I also realize plenty of people probably look at me and other people who deviate from the ideal as disgusting. But that says nothing about me. That says something about the people who would judge others on their dress size."

I've probably fed the trolls and if it starts a proverbial shitstorm, I'll update you. Maybe no one will say anything about it or notice it, but at least I put myself out there so that some people might look in the mirror before they go judging others.

Have you ever seen people being fatphobic on your news feed? What did you do? If you said anything, what did you say (P.S. you go, girl!) If you didn't, why not? Would you handle it differently in the future?

The Quarter Life Crisis

here

Today was my last day at my internship. At ten of two, I walked into my editor's office and asked her to sign the time sheet I have to pass into Career Services to verify my academic credit. I tried to stay calm and collected. I tried to be funny. She thanked me for my work and told me I was talented and that she wished me the best. And I tried not to cry, because I hate things like this. I thanked her for the opportunity.

I went back to my cubicle and started packing up my things. The senior writer, who I had worked with quite a bit covering his boxing training for our website, came over and asked if I was leaving. He's young, and he graduated from the same college as I will be in a few weeks. He wished me the best, too, and asked that I keep in touch. I tried not to cry, because I hate things like this.

When I went to say goodbye to our-- oh gosh, not our anymore, I suppose-- online editor, she stood up and went for a hug. In my brain, I panicked. This would unleash all the emotion, I was sure. I held back tears, because I hate things like this, hate when things I love have to go away, and told her we'd keep in touch.

And even as I walked down the stairs and called my cab one last time, as I waited for that cab on the corner of Water and Harrison Street across from The Broadway Deli, I didn't cry.

See, I don't like change sometimes. Most of us don't love it all the time, I suppose. And right now, so many things are changing. Though I knew that my internship would have to end, it's the first part in a series of important events that are coming up for me.

On May 22, I will walk across a stage and get a diploma, a B.A. in English and Journalism from Clark University.

I will walk away from friends that, in some cases, because of geography, I will never see in person again.

On the same day, I will pack up the last of my things into my family's car for the last time. I will lock the door of the last dorm room I will ever live in and give my key back to the RA for the last time. We will drive away from Worcester, Massachusetts, back to the little town of Danvers, Massachusetts, that I call home.

Soon, with any luck, I will get a job, and my boyfriend of three-and-a-half years and I will move out. We will pay our own bills and live paycheck-to-paycheck as he goes to law school. I will not be going to graduate school like so many other people I know.

And I guess what's scariest about all this change is that it happened so fast. I remember the group of Clarkies that Facebooked each other over the summer before college and arranged meet-ups. The Massachusetts kids, we ate at Fire & Ice together and had Ben & Jerry's and sat on Boston Common. I remember my first day at college, freshman year, for our week-long orientation. I remember meeting my first roommate and how awkward it was. I remember when Douchebag Ex Boyfriend visited for the night and we slept in the same bed for the first time ever and how he didn't love me but I kissed him goodbye because he was going to bootcamp. And I remember how, when he was away, I met the boyfriend I have now, and how a good friend from Texas made damn sure I made the right choice between a guy who didn't love me and someone who would.

I remember the night I sobbed hysterically on the phone with my mother because I was floundering in my science classes and I just didn't want to go to medical school anymore and how disappointed she was that I wanted to be a writer. It's funny, because nowadays, I never think about that and journalism never seems like my plan B.

It wasn't some kind of concrete moment, but in college, as corny as it sounds, I learned so much about myself, found myself.

Maybe the School vs. Real Life paradigm is a fake. Maybe it doesn't matter, but as I sit here right now thinking about the way my life is changing, the way I feel like I am being thrust into real life faster than I ever imagined I would be, it is frightening. It is a monster of a thing.

And I think about how when I was a little girl and I would complain that I wanted to grow up, my mother would tell me how very fast time goes as you get older. I remember her saying how 17 feels like yesterday to her, how she remembers being in high school.

All that seems real now. If four years have gone so fast, how quickly will the rest fly by? When I am 70 it might feel like today, like sitting in my dorm room a month away from graduation writing a blog post instead of studying for finals, was months ago. When I think about that, life seems like some insurmountable challenge, like there couldn't be enough time. Sometimes it's frightening, and it makes me wish I could stop the spinning. I wish I could stop it because I remember four years ago, and four years before that, and before that, and before that. And things aren't simple anymore.

So this is a declaration, I suppose, of my Quarter Life Crisis.



Did you go through a quarter life crisis? How did you cope? Do you ever worry that time is going too quickly? Ohhhh boy.

Male Privilege and The Cat Call

hackney post

Every Tuesday at promptly 2 p.m., I pack up my things at my internship and call a cab back to my dorm. If it's nice out, I spend the five to 15 minute-wait on the sidewalk, which is most convenient for me anyway because my cab can't miss me. This is usually uneventful, unless you count the times during Snowmageddon that I had to wait over an hour to get a cab and nearly cried out of frustration.

Yesterday was frustrating for a completely different reason.

Yesterday, as I was heading toward my usual bit of sidewalk, I heard a wolf whistle. Instinctively, I turned to look in its direction and a disheveled middle-aged man was standing across the street. He waved both arms and cocked his chin.

"Hey, baby!" He was clearly approaching me, and quickly.

In a panic, I flipped open my cell phone and pretended to take a call as I rushed back toward the office building.

"Oh, hello? I just left, why-- I can come back!" I'm not sure why I thought this would help my situation.

When I got inside I hid behind the wall that juts out by the elevator and waited. He saw what door I went into, I thought nervously. He knows where I am. This door doesn't lock. If he wants to come get me, he can. I considered going back upstairs as if I'd forgot something to buy myself time, to lose him, but I decided against it. I scurried out to check if he was anywhere in sight. The coast was clear. I wasn't sure at this point if I missed my cab. I sent a text message to my boyfriend.

"A creepy guy just catcalled me and waved at me. I went back into the building to hide from him :("

":(" my boyfriend replied.

Of course, I got my cab several minutes later and I survived to write this post. And all things said, it wasn't that much of a terrible situation. I didn't get hurt. My office is in a busy-enough area that if this man had tried anything, someone would see-- and maybe that would have deterred him from going any further than calling to me. I tried all day to tell myself that this is no big deal. It's just a catcall, you might say.

But it isn't. When a stranger actively does something that makes you uncomfortable enough to question your safety, it is a pretty big deal. I don't see how any older man-- any man at all-- could imagine that whistling at, gesturing to, and swiftly approaching a young, solitary female would be a situation that wouldn't make her feel threatened, intimidated. I like to think I am tough and self-assured, but in those moments, I felt shaken, and I hid. I wasn't sure whether he would pursue me-- I didn't know that person, so there was no telling what he might do. Sometimes when you run you get caught.

You could call it paranoia, but I wouldn't go that far.

I would venture a guess that many women, especially women who live in cities, have been made to feel ill-at-ease by a male stranger's advances at one point or another. Sometimes, when I'm not alone, it's easy to brush off a "hey, baby!" from a passing car or a wink from a man on the street. When you're alone and it happens, you truly feel alone-- at least I did. Alone, and desperate, and trapped, not like the tough, independent woman I fancy myself to be.

What's problematic here is that this is a problem of privilege, one that favors men and victimizes women (and I'm taking the perspective of a heterosexual woman because that is the experience I can speak to-- but please share your perspective in the comments). If we were to switch roles, even if I were an older woman and this man a younger man, I doubt he would feel threatened by me hitting on him in public. I doubt that concern for his safety would take the forefront and he would hurry back inside. Whether men realize it or not in their everyday lives, they are privileged. 

My boyfriend is annoyed sometimes when I ask him to do things like walk me a few minutes across campus at night. He sometimes says that it won't make a difference for anyone's safety ("we'll just both get mugged!"), but I think that's just him being a man who hasn't quite realized his own privilege. When a woman is with a man, she is less likely to be harassed or attacked. As a woman, I do need to take my safety into account when going even short distances after dark. Is that letting the bad guys win? I don't think it is so much as it's realizing what could happen if I throw caution to the wind, and that, frankly, sucks. It shouldn't be this way.

I think men often take for granted the fact that they can, most of the time, go from Point A to Point B without being disturbed. For women, it's different. And maybe some of the men who catcall and try to approach women on the street don't realize that what they're doing, for many women under a variety of conditions, will make another person feel afraid. This isn't a challenge they have to face, and certainly one I don't like thinking about. When I think about days like yesterday, I wonder if I can make it going to and from work alone in the real world. I wonder if I can be brave enough to go on the train or the subway by myself. The minority-- and I do believe it's a minority-- of people out there who want to hurt or scare people like me make me doubt my abilities as a woman to be an effective member of society. 

We are asking ourselves frequently now "should we allow women in warzones?" and I have to ask "why should there be any reason not to?" But when I think of that much bigger issue-- the horrible things that have actually transpired-- together with the littler things we as woman face daily, like I faced yesterday, I see the problem. There are men in this world who feel on some level that women are objects, that it is okay to come on to them, to harass them, to hurt them, to grope them, to make them, by way of sexualization, feel powerless and less than. And it's not okay. Never. Not even when nothing comes of it, like what happened to me yesterday. Not even a little.

Privilege exerts itself in a lot of insidious ways, and this is one of them. If women feel unsafe walking down the street, how can they be leaders? How can they be journalists? How can they be taxi drivers? How can they be government officials? How can they be anything? Maybe they should just stay inside where it's safe.

I don't know about you, but I don't want that to be the only safe choice.

Have you ever been catcalled or otherwise harassed in the streets? How did it make you feel? Did it make you change your routine? 


[Check out the Hollaback! Movement, a group that's pushing to end street harassment. There are a lot of Hollaback blogs for different cities and countries-- you can start here to find some or Google "Hollaback" plus your city's name]

Forcible

 trapped inside a memory

[NOTE: This post discusses rape, so if this is triggering for you, I'd suggest you not read it.]

Some of you may have already heard the news. There's a new bill in town and it's on its way to the House. It's called the "No Taxpayer Funding for Abortion Act" (H.R.3). You can read the bill itself here, but to broadly sum it up, the bill aims to put a stop on health insurance-- really of any kind at all-- covering abortions. It's an insidious bill because by making abortion unobtainable, it will make it as good as illegal, but without every specifically doing so (it's an evil loophole). While, as a pro-choice woman, I see this as a terrible prospect in and of itself in this world where the right wing doesn't want sex education, either (gee, think of how many unwanted pregnancies might be avoided of people were educated about safe sex and how to use birth control!), the bill contains something else as sinister, if not moreso, than just the intention to erode a woman's right to choose.

Sec. 309 states that abortions will only be covered for women who are "the subject of an act of forcible rape, or, in a minor, an act of incest." It also goes on to say that women will be covered if death (but not other serious damages to health) is a serious risk if the pregnancy is continued, but did you see that? Did you see what they did there. Let me show you.

"Forcible rape."

If you're somewhat sane and educated, your first reaction that phrase is probably something like "but wait, Vanessa, all rape is forcible in that it is sexual intercourse with a person against his or her will, right?" Oh, well, see apparently you'd be wrong there. Apparently some people's trauma is more valid than others.

If we allow a bill like this-- with wording like this-- to pass, we will be a huge blow to rape survivors. Forcible rape does not include statutory rape, coercion, or intoxication. If you were drunk at a party and you had sex (you can't legally consent while under the influence) and regretted it, too bad. It's not enough. If an abuser threatens you to have sex with him and you give in, it's not enough. If he was 35 and you are 15, that's not enough, either. To boot, if you're 18 and a victim of incest, that's also not rape because you're legal. The only rape that counts is the "forcible" kind that you see on Law and Order: SVU where someone is holding you down and you fight back. If that wasn't how it happened, you don't count and your right to choose if you want any resulting children is gone.

But the abortion isn't the main issue to me. If we allow legislation like this to pass, we allow the government to decide whose pain is valid. We run the risk of even more rape survivors' experiences going unvalidated. We run the risk of rape cases being thrown out because they weren't harrowing enough. No one should have the right to take away what you feel.

If it feels like you were raped, you were raped. It doesn't matter how it happened. It isn't a contest. It doesn't matter if your experience wasn't as rough or life-threatening as the next person's. Rape is already a violation of a person's bodily autonomy. Rape, in all its forms, is a despicable act of violence. No one deserves rape. No one "asks for it." No one but you gets to decide if you wanted it or not. Abortion is an issue of bodily autonomy and so is rape. I believe that whether you support a woman's right to choose whether she wants to keep a pregnancy or not you should, as a decent human being, fight this bill.

Maybe John Boehner and the other representatives don't know someone who's been raped. Maybe they don't realize that no matter how it happened, it hurts, and what hurts even worse than the event itself is the cold world these survivors walk into. For many of these survivors, it still seems like their trauma was their fault somehow. It still seems like something they can't talk about, even with close friends. It's a source of shame. And some, surely, change their stances on abortion when faced with an unwanted pregnancy due to the attack. Maybe if Boehner and the rest of the representatives supporting this bill had a sister or wife or girlfriend or mother who had been raped-- even "non-forcibly"-- they would be more sympathetic. It's hard to tell.

This is the part where I tell you what you need to do.

Please, I beg of you, write or call your representative. That link will help you find out who yours is and how to get in touch. My boyfriend and I have already contacted ours.

On Twitter, people are using the hashtag #dearjohn to voice their disgust with H.R.3 (direct tweets to @johnboehner).

But mostly, contact your representative. I know talking to strangers can be scary-- I don't really like calling people I don't know, to be honest-- but it's necessary right now. Be polite and keep your cool. I know you're all very intelligent people and have plenty to say. Your voice really does matter, and maybe if there's an outpouring of concern about this bill, it will be stopped. Better yet, maybe that outpouring can help stop something like this from being proposed again.

We have the right to say "no," and that right should be honored.


EDIT: Feministing did a great post about this bill and its implications that you should check out if you're interested.

Dear Sugar Ants OR Antageddon

 can i get an anteater up in here?

Dear Sugar Ants,

Fuck you. Seriously. You are so goddam lucky I'm too much of a hippie to just want to smoosh you all out-right. Why are you here? What have a done to deserve an army of you hanging around on my desk? Probably you're here because I made the mistake of eating pineapple at my desk and now there are spots of delicious sustenance all over the place. Okay, my bad, but you'd best get the hell out of here before I clean my desk. I don't want to kill you, but if you leave me no choice, just know I'd rather be a murderer than wake up one day to find you inside my laptop or in my bed or something.

I guess this is why we can't have nice things.

xoxo,
Vanessa


On a serious note, how do you get rid of sugar ants?!

Letters to Maura Kelly

  museum of fat love

Dear Maura Kelly,

To try to curb my desire to combat vitriol with vitriol, let's take apart your demeaning, terrible article about how disgusted you are by fat people on your Marie Claire blog piece by piece. (Italics indicate text copied directly from the article).

The other day, my editor asked me, "Do you really think people feel uncomfortable when they see overweight people making out on television?"

Okay...

Because I can be kind of clueless — I'm not much of a TV person — I had no idea what she was talking about, so she steered me to this CNN article, about the CBS sitcom Mike & Molly. As CNN explains, "the show centers around a couple who meet at an Overeaters Anonymous group [and] has drawn complaints for its abundance of fat jokes [as well as] cries from some viewers who aren't comfortable watching intimacy between two plus-sized actors."

Still fine...

My initial response was: Hmm, being overweight is one thing — those people are downright obese! And while I think our country's obsession with physical perfection is unhealthy, I also think it's at least equally crazy, albeit in the other direction, to be implicitly promoting obesity! Yes, anorexia is sick, but at least some slim models are simply naturally skinny. No one who is as fat as Mike and Molly can be healthy. And obesity is costing our country far more in terms of all the related health problems we are paying for, by way of our insurance, than any other health problem, even cancer.

First of all, you cannot see health by just looking at weight, so you don't really have any idea of whether Mike and Molly are healthy or not. You don't get to see what they eat, watch them work out, or pour over their medical records. And may I add, you maintain in your "apology" that these actors are 100% over their healthy weight-- how in the fuck have you deduced that? Really, I want to know.

Let's just say that showing people who look like just regular people on TV is not promoting obesity. If we've learned anything from the media, it's that even promoting being thin-- which the media absolutely does and I can't see any legitimate argument otherwise-- has had just about zero effect on the rate of obesity. If you could shame people skinny, we would all fit into sample sizes. All the shaming has done is make people feel alienated and degraded, even the skinny ones. Promoting a single idea of what is aesthetically pleasing has damaged people at every point on the weight spectrum-- and I mention aesthetics because I have a damn hard time believing you care about my fat ass and how long I live (because living longer is just longer you have to look at me). Very few people genuinely care, and you're not one of them. And even those who do? It's none of their business what I want to do with my own health. If I want to eat pure lard breakfast, lunch, and dinner, it is no one's business but my own. Cut the crap.

So anyway, yes, I think I'd be grossed out if I had to watch two characters with rolls and rolls of fat kissing each other ... because I'd be grossed out if I had to watch them doing anything. To be brutally honest, even in real life, I find it aesthetically displeasing to watch a very, very fat person simply walk across a room — just like I'd find it distressing if I saw a very drunk person stumbling across a bar or a heroine addict slumping in a chair.

So you've revealed yourself. It isn't the health you care about-- it's your precious, precious eyes. Your delicate sensibilities, if you will. You're grossed out by fat people doing anything, from walking across a room to being intimate? And in expressing this disgust at these simple things like walking, things that make us animate beings at a very basic level, you are making a disgusting attempt at robbing fat people of their very humanity. So fat people cannot even exist in public space without making you "grossed out?" So what is a fat person to do? Protect you and stay inside all day? This is the irony of your disgust: people like you believe that larger people are lazy and disabled, encased in "rolls and rolls of fat" and claim you wish they'd just get off their asses and exercise, when this venomous rhetoric of revulsion only serves to discourage people from being seen, from moving, for fear that they'll hurt your fragile feelings. Maybe fat people wouldn't seem so different-- and maybe there would be less of them to offend you, who knows-- if you just let them goddam be and live their lives without being ridiculed for being walking freak shows at every turn? I just get the feeling you think of us that way. Just a hunch.

And, seriously, "heroine" addict? I should really stop paying you any attention here.


Now, don't go getting the wrong impression: I have a few friends who could be called plump. I'm not some size-ist jerk. And I also know how tough it can be for truly heavy people to psych themselves up for the long process of slimming down. (For instance, the overweight maintenance guy at my gym has talked to me a little bit about how it seems worthless for him to even try working out, because he's been heavy for as long as he can remember.)

I can't even believe what I'm reading. Pro-tip: if you feel the need to assure people you have friends of a certain demographic, you are a bigot.

But ... I think obesity is something that most people have a ton of control over. It's something they can change, if only they put their minds to it.

I love the deluded idea that fat is just something you choose to stop being all of a sudden. Honey, there are so many diet and exercise plans out there that if it really were that easy, there wouldn't be a fat person on God's green Earth. "If only they put their minds to it...." You show me a fat person who hasn't dieted-- not even once-- and I will eat my hat. Many fat people have lost a lot of weight over their lifetimes, but statistics tend to show that most people regain all that weight within several years of the loss. I have this sneaking suspicious that "yo-yo dieting" is less about self control and more about how our bodies actually work. It sure as hell doesn't have to do with your mind.

And might I add that this goes both ways. I have a best friend who is a size 00. She hates it. But her metabolism is such that she will often consume an entire box of Oreos in a day and not gain an ounce. She doesn't work out, she doesn't play sports. She has tried to gain weight many times, but her body doesn't seem to allow it. People tell her she's so lucky that she gets to eat whatever she wants, but it's certainly not healthy. If health, as you tried to imply before, is such a big concern, what about the unhealthy skinny people? Oh, right, they're perfectly fine because at least bones aren't jiggly and repulsive. (And this friend totally doesn't mind at all when strangers dare to walk up to her and ask if she has an eating disorder).

[AT THIS POINT KELLY GIVES A BUNCH OF UNSOLICITED DIET ADVICE].

...Because fat people don't know anything about diets.... 


Then again, I guess these characters are in Overeaters Anonymous. So ... points for trying? 

This reeks of sarcasm. Points for being a douche.

Then again, I tend to think most television shows are a kind of junk food for the mind and body. The boob tube gives us an excuse to turn off both our brains and our bodies and probably does a helluva lot to contribute to the obesity problem, over all. So ... I don't know. 

You don't seem to know anything-- and thanks for the "junk food is the reason for fatties lol" implication. That's not oversimplifying at all.

What do you guys think? Fat people making out on TV — are you cool with it? Do you think I'm being an insensitive jerk?

You know what? I do. And I'm not entirely sure what's worse: that you're holding onto the delusion that you're a decent human being or that you holding onto the notion that you're a writer or journalist of any kind. As someone who is working on breaking into the field of journalism, I am appalled to see someone as talentless and uncouth as you are being given a columnist position, even if the column is just a blog. You mention at some point in the comments that you posted this piece without editing, and that it was something you just did quickly-- that you would do something like that takes away any shred of credibility you possibly could have had. You could have written a piece that engaged in a conversation about aesthetics while utilizing research and something we call tact, but instead you opted to do this. And, really, as insulted as I am as a fat person, I am almost more insulted as a journalist. You have shown that you have no respect for your job or your audience. You are not a writer.


Honestly, this piece has me so angry that it's difficult to articulate how I feel. There is so much to say, but my blood is boiling and the words aren't coming so easily. Because what I see here is a woman who feels she has the right to take away the humanity of others based on her personal preferences. We are all entitled to find people unattractive. You don't have to find fat people beautiful or sexy, but that doesn't make them subhuman. That doesn't make them disgusting. Bullying has been such an important topic lately that few people would be able to deny that our cruelties can kill.

All love as good love, no matter what size package it comes in.

And now you'll have to excuse me-- this fatass has a make-out session to get to.

xoxo,
Vanessa


*Will you be in New York tomorrow? Take the day off work and join the kiss in protest!

Don't Semicolon and Drive

Last week, one of my professors asked us to do some peer-editing. We were put into group of three and were asked to exchange papers we had written in the past for other classes.

It started out innocent enough, that paper about mythopoetics. Everything was okay. I was learning about Wallace Stevens and about how he really likes poetry to the point of worshiping it... or something. It was interesting, even. I don't know a lot about Wallace Stevens. I was receiving an education just fine.

Until it came along.

Right there. Right in the middle of a sentence where it didn't belong.

A semicolon.

"He is the angel between human thought and its association with the world; traveling between the poetic imagination and reality."

It looked that big to me, I swear. I stared for a moment. The person who used this semicolon had made a bold move. I circled the semicolon. I drew an arrow pointing to the second part of the sentence and wrote "this is not an independent clause."

And then I crossed that out. What if I was wrong? To cover my ass, I scribbled in "incorrect use." It would be vague enough to work.

I'm not really sure why, but once a person declares an English major, it's like they're under the impression that they've been issued a Semicolon License or something. If you're an English major, you can just put them anywhere you like, because you are smart and you read books. I read a lot of books and I am pretty sure I am never confident about when and when not to use a semicolon. I never got the memo than my status as English major made me a godly user of semicolons.

Oh, wait, because it doesn't.

Kurt Vonnegut once said "Here is a lesson in creative writing. First rule: Do not use semicolons. They are transvestite hermaphrodites representing absolutely nothing. All they do is show you've been to college."

All a semicolon does is show that you are, or were, an English major, and that you feel that you have earned your Semicolon License. But that's a lie. Just don't do it. There is always a safer way.


And in conclusion, I give you The Oatmeal. Go there and learn.

The Meat Dress

 mtv.com

Lady Gaga wore a meat dress at the VMAs. I'm not sure I even need to say this. Most of you either saw it as it was happening or later on in the event coverage. What I do need to say, just briefly, is why we should all be recognizing a little something wrong and hypocritical here. A lot of this has probably been said, but I believe that people need to say their piece about stuff like this as often as possible. The fact is, we are the voices of the consumer-- of pop music and of meat-- and we have a chance to change the way people play the game if we lobby hard enough.

First, I applaud Gaga for her work with gay rights groups and for the statement she made by making victims of Don't Ask, Don't Tell her dates for the night. I think that's a really wonderful thing and despite the fact I'm not a general fan of hers, I can respect that kind of move. It's something I wish we saw being done more often by celebrities. However, the irony here is that on a night she rallied so hard in her own way for human rights, she managed to do something very ignorant of animal rights.

I was speaking to Worcester Polytechnic Institute's Professor John Sanbonmatsu the other day for a piece I'm doing with Pulse Magazine. It's about his work to get people to think about animal consumption in a new way. I'm going to paraphrase here since I don't know if quoting him violates some sort of policy, but he said that people often get offended by the idea of animal rights when it comes to food because confronting the realities of how food is produced involves actually placing some blame on yourself. People don't want to believe that eating a steak makes them complicit in a very cruel, destructive system (both to life and to the environment). He went on to say that it's also offensive because people are then required to ask themselves who really gave them the right-- according to him, no one-- to cause suffering to other animals on such a mass scale. While I am a vegetarian now, I do believe that eating meat is natural. I don't believe it's natural or humane the way we're obtaining it, and I believe that it undermines our idea of what it is to be human. If being human is somehow "better" than being another kind of animal, how do we justify mass cruelty to other sentient beings?

I'm getting a little away from the point, which is that Gaga, who seems to pride herself on being "the most judgement-free human being on the Earth" and doing so much work to try and this atmosphere of peace and freeness and equality, is taking a step backward. Though she claims this outfit wasn't meant to offend anyone vegan or vegetarian and was just a message about fighting for our rights we'll become as valueless as the meat on our bones. Whether she meant to or not, the combination of that statement and wearing real dead animals is truly telling of underlying disregard for life. If the "meat on our bones" have no rights and she's wearing animal meat to make the statement (she could have worn faux human limbs or something), it would follow those animals don't have rights.

The outfit's designer confirmed that this outfit is genuine meat. 50 pounds of it. The newest statistics I could locate (provided by the USDA in 2006) projected the 2006 per capita beef consumption in America at 66 pounds. That statistic may be different by now, but think of it. If that's true, Gaga was wearing close to one person's year supply of beef on her body. The designer said that the dress is meant to be worn once, then saved to dry up and eventually be displayed. 50 pounds of food. Obtained from a butcher. Meaning its original purpose was to feed someone, not clothe a billionaire. I know that people wear leather (personally, I do not), but leather is not food. Leather was not created to feed someone. And this world is full of people who are literally starving. Making a statement would be going to the VMAs in your underwear and explaining that you were going to wear a meat dress, but instead you sent 50 pounds of beef to an impoverished community so that children didn't go hungry for a few days. What I'm saying is this wasn't a little bit of beef. This was food that could have fed a lot of people. It's very First-Wold-centric to go around wearing food and then tossing it in a closet for a later date.

Not to mention, of course, as far as shocking statements go, the meat dress has been done to death. Even by Gaga herself. She just appeared on a magazine cover swathed in meat, after all. For a performer who prides herself on being new and interesting every time we see her, this was a major misstep. You can find plenty of meat clothes just by Google searching. Artist Jana Sterbak famously did a show on meat clothing. On top of the waste and the anti-animal rights message it flaunts, it's kind've cliche, and isn't Gaga supposed to be the exact opposite of that? (I would argue she really isn't, but then again I'm not a fan in general).

What I'm asking here is not for you to agree with me. And I'm certainly not attacking those of you who do eat meat. We can all choose what we want to eat and put into our bodies and what systems we want to buy into. What I ask, however, is that we take moments like these and really think about what they mean and ask ourselves hard questions. When I was much younger, I loved animals and my heart broke at the idea of eating them-- but I did it anyway because it was "too hard" to be vegetarian. As I got older I realized that we have to be honest with ourselves. I wanted to be the kind of person in practice as I was in theory. Being mature is sometimes admitting when we're wrong. We don't all have to go about things the same way, but we should really be actively thinking about how we live our lives.

Right isn't always easy. When I see Lady Gaga wearing 50 pounds of food that will never even fill the stomachs it was intended for in a world of starving people, I feel disgusted. And I feel like it's her way of taking the easy way out. Wearing meat was shocking, but not for the right reasons.

What are your thoughts on the meat dress? 

Dr. Laura OR I Will Explode if I Don't Rant About This

I wasn't really familiar with Dr. Laura until today. I saw an article on Jezebel claiming she was "reclaiming" her First Amendment rights by leaving radio after going off on a racist tirade. So, of course, I had to find out what all this business was about. Honestly, though, I'm far more disgusted than I ever anticipated being.

If you want to listen to this-- and you probably should if you want to actually read this post so you'll understand what I'm talking about-- remember it's NSFW due to language. You also may not want to be near anything that can be used as a weapon. You'll be angry, trust me.


DR. LAURA'S RACIST RANT

So I suppose I just want to make a few points.

1. Asking what "you [insert race here]" think or do is racist. There is an implication in these kinds of questions and in the way they are being asked (according to the caller) that people who are not White are in some way fundamentally different than White people. Non-Whites are not a freak alien race. People are people.

2. "Without giving much thought, a lot of Blacks voted for Obama simply because he was half-Black. Didn't matter what he was gonna do in office-- it was a Black thing! You gotta know that!" So if we're going with that assumption, wouldn't it also follow that White people who voted for McCain because he was White are misguided? I think we're all very aware of the fact that many of the lovely American people thought that it "didn't matter what [Obama] was gonna do in office"-- all that mattered was that he was of a different color (and we don't have to get into the whole debate of whether he is omg a Muslim oh the horror!) I'd like to add that I think one of the most crucial factors in Obama being elected was youth, not Black people. I'm pretty sure 98% of Clark University students (many of whom were White) voted for Obama because he seemed to be a force for hope and change, as well as because he was more young and vibrant than McCain.

3. The very idea that Obama being in office should have automatically meant America was "over" racism is ludicrous. Oh, have more Black people been complaining about racism lately, Dr. Laura? Maybe that's because it's still very much alive and well. Maybe it's because having a Black president probably means the head of our country is being judged based on the color of his skin. Maybe they feel now they have someone to back them or a motivation to rise above White privilege. Or maybe it's the same as always because not much really changed and now you notice it because you're delusional enough to have thought that okay now the oppressed people will be happy because look at Obama! Also, it's terribly ironic to hear a racist spewing racist hatred about how racism is supposed to be over now.

4. I know you've complained that you left your show because you've had your First Amendment rights usurped. You are one of the many people in this world who don't understand the First Amendment. First, it's ludicrous to be complaining that your speech is restricted when you have A RADIO SHOW TO VOICE YOUR OPINIONS and then you can GO ON LARRY KING AND SAY YOUR OPINIONS. Second, one of the great and terrible things about the First Amendment is that it protects everyone; meaning that you have your right to say racist awfulness as long as you follow certain rules and everyone else has the right to disagree with you (freedom of speech is NOT freedom from being disagreed with-- you can say whatever you like but remember that everyone else can say whatever they like right back). The reason why the KKK can still exist and spew ignorance is the First Amendment just as much as the reason liberals can protest their rallies is The First Amendment. If you're going to get to talk, everyone has to too. Even though I hate what you've said, I recognize that if we restrict you we have to restrict me, too. You can say whatever you want, but if you're going to claim that people hating you is infringing on your freedom of speech, I have the right to say you're an idiot that doesn't understand the Bill of Rights.


And I say these things, wonderful readers of mine, not because I think any of you need to hear it. I'm willing to bet that all of you are very civilized and kind and forward-thinking. I don't think you need to be reminded that people are people no matter what their skin color is. I think, though, that the only reason incidents like these should ever get any attention is for a wake-up call. I'm ranting about this on the Internet because I am asking all of you to remember at this moment that there are people out there who think these things and that they are the reason that the rest of us need to be strong and take up the cause of equal rights, love, and respect for all people. People like Dr. Laura are the reason that we should talk to our children about race and about how to love one another. People like Dr. Laura are the reason that we need to speak up when we hear or see injustice and try to be the voice of reason. People like Dr. Laura are the reason that we really should question things like our own White (if you are White) privilege and at the very least see it. If we see it, we can ask ourselves how to start to erase it. Moments like these, however terrible, are teachable moments. They are moments in which we have to look at ourselves honestly and ask if we are really doing enough.


EDIT: Anyone who's ever wondered why it's more okay for Black people to say the n-word watch this video (or even if you haven't-- it's really great). Or, at least, why any other race shouldn't get any real say in if they are allowed to say it. And why other races DO NOT get to say it.

Letters to People Who Are "So OCD"

here

Dear People Who Are "So OCD,"

I just wanted to inform you that you (probably) aren't. As someone who deals with an anxiety disorder, dermatophagia, and dermatillomania (little-studied disorders that are often considered OCD-spectrum) on a daily basis, it really pisses me off when you say this. Oh, wow, you like your house to be clean? That doesn't make you OCD. You like to keep your colored pencils in a certain order? That doesn't make you OCD either.

According to Wikipedia (which I know is a sucky source): "The phrase "obsessive–compulsive" has become part of the English lexicon, and is often used in an informal or caricatured manner to describe someone who is meticulous, perfectionistic, absorbed in a cause, or otherwise fixated on something or someone.^[3] Although these signs may be present in OCD, a person who exhibits them does not necessarily have OCD, and may instead have obsessive–compulsive personality disorder (OCPD), an autism spectrum disorder, or no clinical condition."

Megan Fox does not have OCD because she thinks public bathrooms and restaurant silverware are germy. Hearing her say she has OCD because of this was what ticked me off enough to start thinking about making this post. It pisses me off to no end when Very Public People decide to say something that in any way diminishes the seriousness of any kind of health-related condition. It's irresponsible to continue misconceptions about what Obsessive-Compulsive Disorder actually is, because it can in fact be very serious and heart-breaking and isn't some sort of novel phrase you throw into conversation to make yourself sound quirky-cool.

Here's what OCD is for me:

OCD is when you have intrusive thoughts about gruesome, horrifying situations in your everyday life. It's when you obsess, in detail, about what would happen if the roof fell in and who would live and who would die. It's when you imagine the trajectory of a bullet through the window every time you drive. It's when you have disturbing thoughts you can't control during sex to the point that being intimate scares you to death (dear Luke, you didn't know about this but it doesn't happen anymore). It's when you think of terrible, violent ways to die or get maimed as you cross campus because you truly believe that if you think of all the bad things you can imagine they can't happen because you were already expecting them. It's when you think you left the door unlocked and you spend several hours pacing in the living room in tears because even though you know it's safe your brain won't let go of the thought that there's someone with a crowbar or a gun or a knife hiding somewhere and he's going to do horrible things to you and mutilate your body but it's too late at night to call anyone about something you know isn't true and you check every nook and cranny several times before having a panic attack before going to sleep afraid and none of it makes sense because you know you're worried over nothing but something in your brain makes you paranoid in a way that feels so real. And in the morning you hate yourself and you feel crazy but you worry the next night, too, because what if the killer's just been waiting and really he's just waiting in the back of your brain.

OCD is like having a song stuck in your head. No matter how hard you try, you can't get the bad thoughts out. You just have to wait and feel nervous until everything magically becomes okay again. The worst part of OCD is that you know what's happening. You know you're being unreasonable. You know you're worried over nothing. You know the bad things you imagine won't happen. You know you're safe. You know you're being crazy. But the OCD makes it feel real and true, undeniably. What hurts most sometimes is that I know I can say this to anyone I want but unless the person has a brain that does the same thing they will never understand. Imagine, say, you're worried your mother was driving and got into an awful car accident. If you know your mother didn't leave her house and she doesn't drive. So you stop worrying. But if you're me, that doesn't matter. You know what you imagine couldn't have happened, but the emotional response and the anxiety are as if it did. It all feels painfully real though it isn't. It makes no sense, I know, but that's how it works.

OCD is when you tear your body apart with your teeth and nails because somehow the pain makes the anxiety disappear. I am never not in pain. My back and hairline and shoulders and chest and face are covered with small wounds, some of which have been there for literally years because I will never let them close because when they scab over I have to make the skin even or I feel nervous. My fingers are torn to shreds from biting the skin. When I dig too deep it hurts like hell and I know I should stop but I can't because I need whatever it is I'm digging for gone. One time my boyfriend physically held me back to prevent me from biting and the anxiety inside was so bad I could swear I would die. The discomfort is like nothing I can explain. But when I harm myself, I am like anyone else and it hurts and looks terrible and I feel incredible shame. There is no feeling in the world that's so confusing as being in incredible self-imposed pain and knowing you could stop but you can't because the compulsive part of you needs the pain. It needs the skin even. It loves the blood. It doesn't cry or hurt like I do. And I do.

This was once healthy skin. There was an "imperfection" on that spot that's protruding from my neck. It's protruding because I spent all day squeezing and picking at that spot until it was swollen and so sore I couldn't even sleep on that side. The disclorations on the chin area are (probably) permanent scars from skin-picking, also known as dermatillomania.

\

This another shot of the same welt I created in the last photo. The couple other red marks were also self-inflicted.

Looking back, these are my shoulders on a pretty good day. Most days my chest, shoulders, and the back of my neck are covered in marks like these.

These are how my hands look on a decently okay day. They're often much worse, occasionally much better. The very red, raw spots indicated bites that were too deep and caused a pretty excessive amount of bleeding. Spots like this will stay sore and make everyday tasks difficult for long periods of time, especially since as they begin healing I will feel compelled to reopen them. Compulsive biting is also known as dermatophagia.

I don't say this to start a pity parade in my honor. 

All I'm saying is that if you're "so OCD" because you really like to be clean and organized or you casually enjoy even numbers or something, please, for the love of God, stop and think for a second about what you're saying. This makes me feel how some people feel about saying "that's retarded" or "that's so gay"-- believe it or not, you're marginalizing real people. So yeah, for some people like you, OCD is a jokey colloquialism, but for some people it's the hellish world that their brain creates for them to live in.

xoxo,

Vanessa

On Dermatophagia
On Dermatophagia Part Two
On Dermatophagia Part Three

Judged Not By the Scent of Their Hair...

 afroholic

You may have heard that, recently, an 8-year-old biracial girl was removed from class because the smell of her hair made her white teacher sick. As far as has been reported, the teacher did not contact the parents (who did know the teacher had allergies) to use a different hair moisturizer, but simply singled the girl out-- the only "brown" student in her Accelerated Progress class-- and sent her to a lower-level class (which, incidentally, had more Black students, whattaya know).

According to Charles Mudede, the girl's father,

"If a white teacher—a person who is supposed to have a certain amount of education and knowledge of American history, and who teaches at a school named after the man who successfully argued before the court in Brown v. Board of Education for equal opportunities for racial minorities in public schools and went on to become the first African-American Supreme Court justice—removes a black student from a predominantly white class because of her hair, it is almost impossible not read the action as either racist or expressive of racial insensitivity, which amounts to the same thing for someone in that teacher’s position."

(read full statement here on Racialicious)

I'm absolutely appalled to be reading about a case like this in this day and age and supposedly civilized society, which just goes to show that racism is nowhere even close to dead.

Of course, maybe the removal wasn't really racially motivated-- not consciously. Still, the implications are very clear, especially when we consider that the 8-year-old was singled out and then sent to a lower level class instead of transferring her to another Advanced Progress program, if the school had one. And if not? The student should not have been removed; the teacher could have spoken with the parents to solve the problem.

I've studied quite a bit of African American literature, as well as taken a class on race and urban education, so I feel like I've seen what's going on here before.

Andrea Plaid at Racialicious breaks it down better than I could, however:

"The teacher employed, according to what Mudede’s and Drake’s daughter said, a very gendered racial rhetoric, namely the Delicate White Woman Frightened by the Negress’ Physical Being.  In stating to the daughter that 'she’s afraid and it’s [her] hair' evokes the stereotypes that:

"1) Black people (including mixed-race people who self-identity as Black—though, in this case, it’s the father who states his child is Black.  No reports so far say how the child identifies herself) are a constant physical threat to whites—like all we think about is how to inflict maximum bodily damage to them.

"2) that Black people (as well as other people of color and white ethnic people) smell bad, especially because they use “cultural products” that white USians aren’t used to.

"3) Black people’s hair is in a dormant or active state of 'fright wig,' which dovetails into the idea that Black natural hair is inherently ugly and the people possessing it as inherently unattractive, especially if the possessor is female.

"and

"4) the teacher implicated herself in an insidious stereotype about white women, namely that of a frail femininity that must be protected from any 'offending coloredness'–in this case, a Black girl with some hair-care products for her naturally curly head attending an accelerated class at a school named for a staunch legal defender of civil rights."

I think what we have here is furthermore a prime example of how racism damages "minority" students in the American educational system. We have a system where, unfortunately, a majority of the teachers are White, middle-class Americans who are already trying to overcome cultural barriers in trying to understand races and socio-economic classes they're not familiar with (socio-economic class not necessarily applying to this case). We have teachers who are taught, through their own experiences and sometimes the poor examples of their mentors, that students of color are less capable than White students, thus they treat them as such.

When I did classroom observations for my urban education course, I saw a population made up of 95% ethnic students and 100% white teachers. I saw White students being praised for their precociousness and a Black student yelled at for daring to read ahead. I was told that the English class I was observing was "the bad class" in front of the students, and that I might want to see the "better" class instead-- which was, by the way, far more White than the "bad" one. 

I heard a story in my class about a very young Hispanic boy who was misbehaving being told he wasn't going to go to college anyway.

I go to a college that runs a middle and high school of mainly "minority" children and has a nearly-100% graduation rate: far higher than most schools in the country. It's a school full of teachers that believe in these kids and empower them without giving a second thought to the color of their skin, if they come from the ghetto, and what is expected of them.

Children are impressionable, and when you throw them into a system that encourages the failure of students of color-- that genuinely believes in allowing "difficult" students to fall to the wayside rather than learn to relate to them-- you are going to get failure. If you tell a little boy from a young age that he won't go to college, and keep telling him and telling him and pointing to that glass ceiling above his head, you will likely get a kid who doesn't go to college. He won't even see it as a legitimate option. 

And you know what else? He'll hate school. He will see it as a place he does not belong, as a place where people are out to get him.

Our educational system is oppressive, and I truly believe that. I don't believe that the 8-year-old girl here was the only Black girl capable of being in an honors class. Perhaps if the students in the lower-level classes were held to the same standards as she was, told they're smart, forced to figure it out instead of being dismissed, they too would be in honors classes. Maybe then the teacher wouldn't have been so able to single out this little girl for her afro, for the thing that makes her different. 

Thurgood Marshall didn't want "separate but equal. Integrating Black students, no matter how goddam right it was to do, seems to have magnified the racism and hatred that exists within our teachers and our system. People aren't born more or less capable due to the color of their skin, but we treat them as if they are. And the longer we allow our educational system to treat them that way, the truer it will appear.

But it will never be true. 

Unfortunately for this little girl, this awful early experience with discrimination may shape her relationship with school forever.

On Blaming the Victim

NOTE: I'm going to preface this by saying that this post is about rape (generally, not a personal experience) and something I consider very ignorant that was said about it. If that will trigger any terrible emotions for you, please don't read this because I don't want to upset you. I'm just very angry about something that was said and wanted to bring it up here, but I don't want anyone who will be really hurt by reading about the subject matter if s/he doesn't want to.

******

It takes a lot to get me rip-roaring mad. I tend to get annoyed, yes. I get annoyed pretty easily sometimes. But angry? Like throw something and scream at the top of my lungs angry? That emotion is usually reserved for when my mother and I have a particularly heated argument. There are certain issues that will set me off, though.

One of them? People who think rape is the fault of the victim.

There is a story to this.

In my William Faulkner class, we read Sanctuary, which is, for the purposes of understanding this post, about a girl, Temple Drake, who made a bad decision to go out with this guy when she wasn't supposed to, and ended up getting raped with a corn cob. While the plot calls into question whether Temple could have escaped this awful event, the point still stands that she was brutally violated.

When we first read this text, a girl in our class actually decided to pipe in that since Temple had decided to go out at night with this boy when she wasn't supposed to, she had it coming to her. And furthermore, that if you act or dress like you're "easy," you deserve to be raped.

The word "deserve" was used.

Of course, the class went into an uproar because this is an extremely old-fashioned, ignorant way to view sexual violence, especially coming from a woman in the 21st century.

For awhile, we forgot about it.

We read another book about Temple, Requiem for a Nun, a couple weeks ago. I was making a comment in class that I found the character development disappointing. Temple is really not a great human being and does a lot of awful things, but I felt Faulkner could have made her a really inspirational character.

I forget exactly what I said, but the girl chimed in again.

"She got what she deserved," she said. Some of the girls in class let out shocked/exasperated noises.

"No one deserves to get raped," I replied. I was extremely angry at this point. The girl tried to continue arguing for the fact that, since Temple was basically a slut, she got what she asked for.

I hate any phrase used in the context of rape that involves the words "asking for it." No one (unless you are of a select group of people who are genuinely turned on by the idea of it, and even then most women who have these sexual fantasies are more likely to role play them actually seek out assault) asks for rape. No woman hopes that a man will enter her home and force her to have sex with him. No one wants to be walking home from work and be attacked by a stranger. No woman wants the man she's dating to coerce her into a sexual situation through violence. No one wants to be abused by a relative and told to keep quiet or else.

I don't care if you skirt is too short and your top is too low. I don't care if you wiggle your hips when you walk, if you wear heels, if you flirt too much. I don't care if you enjoy sleeping with as many men as possible because that's what pleases you.

No one deserves to be raped. No one is asking for it. If it happened to you, to anyone you know, I know it wasn't your fault. I don't believe it is ever the victim's "fault."

One can argue that you shouldn't walk around looking provocative or that you shouldn't get drunk at parties, and while I realize there are without a doubt times and places where you shouldn't do certain things, where you should be extra careful, rape should not have to be a consequence of a bad decision. No one should have to fear that what they say or do will result in being violated by another human being.

No matter what you did to "ask for it," no one should have given it to you.

I am too frustrated to put everything I feel about this into words. The very idea that anyone feels this way, would blame a person (fictional or not) for this, makes me sick to my stomach. It makes me wonder what the parents must have taught. I know I was taught that my breasts made me a prime target, that I should conceal them because showing them would be, essentially, asking for it. And on one hand, I have to say that there is some sad truth in there, but there shouldn't be. If I want to walk around in my bra, no one should rape me because that's just not okay. It's not okay no matter what, despite whatever rules of proper decorum exist. It makes me sick and sad to wonder what would happen to the girl in class if she were raped, what she would feel about herself, how she would question her own culpability in such a horrendous situation. And would she believe rape victims are "asking for it" then?

I guess what I wanted to do was just say I don't think any of you who may have been through an awful experience like this are to blame. No matter what you may have done "wrong," no one should have felt s/he had the right to take advantage of you.

Letters to Commenters at the New York Post

Dear Commenters at the New York Post,

I saw what you said about this advertisement, which ABC apparently refused to air because it's too racy.



I mean, for instance, just to select a few wise words:

"she'd be hot. if she dropped about 50 lbs! what a waste of a natural beauty. oiiiiiink! moped chick in this pic" (NOTE: a "moped chick" is a girl who "is a lot of fun, but you don't want to be seen in public with her" according to Urban Dictionary)
"...this chick would not fit into any medical categorization of having a 'healthy' weight. None. She's overweight, fat, plump, tubby, whatever. It's not something to aspire to. Stop fooling yourself and your kids into thinking when you're fat there's just more of you to love. That's not true. There's just more for the pallbearers to have to schlep up the stairs..."

"...Honestly, I am tired of all this "big beautiful women", "plus size" mumbo jumbo. They are over eating, and it is a problem..."

"Just what we need, more mainstream justification that it is ok to be fat. It is unhealthy, creates enormous health care system strain and is just plain vile to look at. For every one of these models that resemble an attractive female, there are 100,000,000 disgusting pigs running around that think it is now ok to be enormous. I applaud ABC if for no other reason than we should not glorify overeating. There is no such thing as an attractive fattie. Fat=ugly."

I just want to say thank you to each and every one of you for graciously sharing your wisdom. Because that's what fat chicks need, right? They need to be told they're fat and disgusting and unhealthy abominations and that they don't deserve to feel good about themselves.

I mean, you can tell it's helped. Since we starting shaming fat people, there have been far fewer in our society. Shaming just makes 'em stop eating and get "healthy!"

Oh, wait, there are more fat people than ever? But discrimination and hatred is a totally legitimate strategy to make people care about their health and their appearance!

The war on obesity is just as ineffective as the war on drugs, if you ask me.

I can tell you all one thing: if there weren't people like you, I wouldn't have felt the need to hide food when I was in middle school. I wouldn't have felt embarrassed to work out, like I still sometimes do. I wouldn't have felt the need to date just anyone who would take me because I didn't feel pretty if no one was telling me. I wouldn't struggle every day to accept my body.

There are things every single one of us can do to make our bodies healthier. There are plenty of skinny people who eat junk and don't work out, and plenty of chubby chicks who eat healthy and workout. There are skinny people who are healthy and fat people who are unhealthy. I truly believe that health is, for the most part, independent of weight-- and that (according that link) moderately overweight people may even be healthier than "normal" people as far as the dropping dead thing goes. There are plenty of factors that make a person unhealthy that don't necessarily have anything to do with weight, but their activity level, genetics, the food they eat, etc. It's not all about weight, so can we please stop accusing every woman over 115 pounds of being at death's door? I simply don't believe it.

(And by the way? One of the reasons fat people might tend to be unhealthy? Discrimination on the part of medical professionals).

I will admit, by the way, that most statistics state that those that are "morbidly obese" are indeed unhealthy, but I think we should also consider why people are getting so fat, why they make the food choices they do, and what comes into play emotionally aka the effect of constant shaming and bullying. If I wanted to lecture on this, I could write a zillion page book about it. But I do think, without a doubt, discrimination and hatred play a huge role in why some people become overweight.

A world full of hate doesn't support people getting better. I don't believe you, commenters, actually want fat people to get thin, because how would you judge your own bodies then? If everyone, like that Obviously Huge Dead-Soon Whale in the commercial, had the same height-to-weight ratio, well, my goodness! Then you'd have to worry about how much prettier a certain person is! Or-- shock!-- the quality of their character being better than yours! You wouldn't have that ace up your sleeves that is WELL SHE IS FAT AND I AM NOT SHE IS UGLY AND I AM THIN SO I AM PRETTY NAH NAH NAH-NAH NAH!

I think a lot of today's men and women would have an easier time being healthy if aesthetics weren't pushed on them so hard. If you were to tell a chubby kid who doesn't eat healthfully that she needs to eat better because she should grow up big and strong, you wouldn't be teaching her to hate herself. You would be teaching her to value her body and treat it well. That I can get on board with 100%.

If you take that same child and tell her she has to eat right or else she will be fat and ugly and unloved, you're handing her an idea that's incredibly damaging, that tells her she's not okay because others won't accept her. (For any of you who weren't fat children, this absolutely does happen. Parents mean the best with it, but it happens and it's wrong). It's not empowering, it's not healthy, it's not done out of any concern for her well-being. It perpetuates loathing and misogyny and makes me want to vomit and hug little chubby children who are perfectly happy until they're told they shouldn't be.

It's because of people like you. People who don't want to look at people who aren't "normal" because you're closed-minded intolerant douches.

And I say that with all due respect, of course.


XOXO,
Vanessa

On Cottage Cheese

Something made me angry today. I was looking through the pictures in a Facebook group about fake, orange tans. Fake, orange tans are silly because they are fake. And because people are not, in their natural state, orange. I don't really have a problem with thinking super orange tans a little bit ridiculous. Should I have been looking at a snarky Facebook group? I suppose it's not the nicest thing to do. But let's just set that matter aside and focus on a single picture I saw and the comments that followed.

I came across one picture of a skantily-clad girl on a guy's lap in a club. It was tagged with the label "cottage cheese" at the girl's thighs.

One comment read "c-e-l-l-u-l-i-t-e!"

One woman said "disgusting...really!!"

There was a comment saying "ew bitch sorry but i don't have cottage cheese thighs and i am very much a woman in the world. you need to get a pair of pants real talk."

Another, "he must be in pain! ):" in what seems to be reference to the girl's sheer hugeness.

This is the picture in question:

here

I want you all to put aside the whole issue of tans and pants and what it is to be a "proper" woman for a moment.

I don't know about you, but when I look at this girl, I see a pretty thin young woman. Is she wearing panties instead of pants? Yes. But is she fat? No, she's not. She's sitting on someone and her thighs are pressed against other thighs and don't look perfectly smooth. I feel like that's pretty expected. Are they smooth thighs? I think so. These legs are a lot slimmer than my own. And honestly? I see about one little spot of cellulite, which is a thing that most women have at least a little bit of. And is this dude in pain? No, I don't really think so because I highly doubt this slender woman is crushing him.

When I see things like this, it really gets me thinking about the vicious circle that people get into when it comes to body image. We feel poorly about ourselves because we get picked on, or because someone just like us is getting picked on. So to bring ourselves up, we become even more judgmental of other people. We lash out, because it's the way we think things work, I guess.

If I can't be pretty, no one can.

So that girl's a fatass and that girl's grossly skinny and that girl has a pizza face and that girl is a total fucking slut.

I'm not one to get all confrontational but grow the hell up.

The snarky comments people make to your face or behind you back or on the internet are sad. They're sad because every little bit of hate being thrown your way is-- more likely than not-- a way for that person to release some of their own pain. Women that hate on other women are women who feel guilty about their own bodies. Misery loves company. These girls hate because they hate themselves and seeing someone that makes them think of that emotional suffering makes them angry, and so they attack. And then the women who are attacked learn to hate themselves in turn.

I want to say that the answer is to just let nasty words go in one ear and out the other, but I know how hard that is. That takes years and years of practice, and still some people will never be able to do it-- I don't know if I will. I know I love my body more than I have in the past, but I doubt I will ever be unafraid to drink soda in front of my mom without fearing she'll tell me I'm fat. I'm afraid of being told I'm fat. I know I'm not skinny and I know I am not exactly my own ideal, but I'm learning to love myself. Only with love will I ever feel comfortable in my own skin and be fully equipped to take the absolute best care of my body possible. I know that loving myself and really, truly not caring what anyone has to say about me is a long way off. I wish it was easy. But it's not, so it's not the answer for most people.

I think we are the problem and we are the solution.

We are constantly being seen, and thus constantly being judged. I think many of us are, at least in part, so afraid on being judged because we know we judge. We know we talk about other women behind their backs. We know we might raise an eyebrow when we see a girl we don't think looks good. We may even be the anonymous commenter on the internet writing horrible remarks about someone we've never met. Maybe if we didn't have to fear this kind of ruthlessness from our peers, we'd all love ourselves more. Maybe our society would be one where people wouldn't be afraid to be who they are, to wear what they want, to speak their minds if we put aside the snark for one damn minute and remembered:

If you don't have anything nice to say, don't say anything at all.

EDIT: I looked back at the original photo just a moment ago and one comment caught my eye:

"What saddens me, is that this is what my body looks like.... and I didnt think it was to bad, until I read the comments...." 

What you say about other people, especially in a public forum, doesn't just hurt that individual. The girl who made this comment wasn't the one in the photo, yet seeing the girl in the photo bashed for her looks had an effect on her self-esteem. My heart broke a little.

Raunch Culture: A Rant

 

Like many people my age, I grew up with the internet. And sure, there were parental controls on my computer, but my mother was away a lot and I found a way to turn off the controls and do whatever I damn well pleased. I lied about my age in chat rooms and tested the limits of what I could bluff and what I couldn't: I didn't have sex until I was 17, but at 13 I had read and seen enough to convincingly write my own pornography and tease strangers. There were a couple times that I "phoned."

When I think back on my early teen years, I don't feel ashamed. I understand that a lot of it was cultural-- the internet was there and it was so accessible, especially with parents who didn't know how to use it. I also have a feeling that since I was so highly sexual, if I hadn't had some sort of outlet, I wouldn't be able to say I've had far, far fewer partners than most girls I know. And I won't lie to you and say that I don't love porn. However, now that I'm older and wiser, I realize I did a lot of really stupid things that could've got me killed.

I can't imagine the pressures that are out there today. I'm 21 and I'm far from a prude. I don't think there's anything wrong with doing any "perverted" thing you want to in the context of a consenting, trusting relationship. I'm not afraid of sexuality, but I'm disturbed by it when I see it everywhere and that few people are batting an eye.

One day I was driving to work and I turned on the radio-- rare for me-- and heard "Love Games" by Lady Gaga for the first time.

"Let's have fun, this beat is sick, I wanna take a ride on your disco stick." (Full lyrics)

I am 21, you guys. I have had sex. I am not a prude. I exposed myself of my own free will to plenty of things. But something about hearing this on the radio and knowing little kids are hearing it, singing it, disgusts me. And saddens me.

Or take a newer song, say, Ke$ha's "Blah Blah Blah" that goes something like:

"I don't really care where you live at, just turn around boy, let me hit that. Don't be a little bitch your chit chat, just show me where your dick's at." (Full lyrics)

I am 21. I am an adult. And this makes me feel all kinds of dirty. After the initial "oh, hell yeah, a song where a girl exploits a boy for once!" I start thinking, "wait, no, that's not what we want." Exploitation is no better in either direction. Plus, I have a real problem with the whole "shut up and fuck me, I don't give a shit about you" message-- I mean, don't women supposedly hate when men act like this?. It isn't feminism. That's turning all those misogynist ideas we're supposed to reject back around on men. So it's okay to treat men like sexual objects? People are people.

This is not what we should be teaching people to embrace.

I watched "Telephone" the other day. I saw Lady Gaga, half naked as usual, climbing bars in a jail and shoving her crotch toward the camera.

Today I read this article on "raunch culture," and I have to say I agree with a lot of what's being said here. Thus this rant.

Honestly, I'm sick of it. I'm sick of all the sex and the misogyny and the anti-man attitudes and basically porn being shown on my TV and in my ads. I'm sick of hearing stuff on the radio and thinking about how some mother is letting her 13-year-old go to the Britney Spears concert because she just loves "If You Seek Amy" --which, if you're not aware, is supposed to be a little hidden pun: "fuck me." I'm sick of seeing very little kids booty-dropping to "Diva" when they don't even know what their actions mean. Or maybe they do, and I think that's sadder. I'm sick of MTV.

I sound like an old lady by crying out "WHERE ARE OUR CHILDHOODS GOING?!" but I'm sick of wondering, of having to wonder. I don't hate sex-- it's a wonderful, beautiful, awesome part of life. I don't think people should be prudish. I don't think we shouldn't teach kids about safe sex, even if it means talking about oral sex, anal sex, and any other kind of sex that makes us uncomfortable to discuss. The culture and the human body are such that they will want to try things-- earlier and earlier, too-- and we are doing a disservice to our kids if we don't speak candidly and honestly.

We are doing a disservice to our kids by growing lax.

Yes, sex is out there, but we don't have to let our kids see and listen to whatever they want. Here, I take the stance that I take with videogames: if you're worried about what your kids are experiencing, experience it yourself, and then sit down and have a long talk about it. Ask kids what they think the message behind the songs they listen to are. Ask them what they think of movies, TV shows, porn. Sure they probably won't want to talk to you, but if you're a parent or any kind of guardian/mentor/whatever it is your job to talk to them, even if they don't seem to be listening. Is it embarrassing? Yes. Awkward? Yes. Important? Yes. Are they gonna tune you out? Less than you'd think.

I don't think we should go back to a culture where sex is unspeakably taboo, because I think that's wrong in its own way. I do think that we need to stop using sex so exlicitly to sell, because it's getting really out of control. Much of my problem with this hypersexual culture is that parents don't seem to want to be parents about it: they want to be cool. If your kid whines enough that she wants that mini-skirt, she'll get it, you know? And I know this isn't all parents, but when you see young children doing certain things, you can't help but wonder what the parenting was like.

The problem for me is that there's so much else that's even more damaging than porn, a form of entertainment that is what is, no mistakes. You look at porn because you want to see naked people, or laugh at a funny plot line, or get off. You know what you want out of it, so you seek it-- and parents should be talking about porn with their kids. A lot. But you watch a show because you like the characters-- but then you also see a sex scene every 10 minutes. You watch TV for the shows you like-- but then you also see highly sexual, often misogynistic ads every commercial break. You listen to music because you like the beats-- but you might not realize that the lyrics you're singing are encouraging some awful ideals. You watch the music video because you loved the song-- but the singer is half-naked and gyrating against someone.

The biggest problem is that it's so pervasive and parents just don't have enough ears or eyes to monitor their child every waking second and address every suspect encounter or bit of media.

People absorb messages almost subliminally. If you're told something or shown something or say something enough times, it becomes the norm. It becomes okay. But a lot of what I see in unavoidable places today are messages that I don't want to believe, that I don't think anyone should believe, especially not younger people who are still developing belief systems.

I am 21. I am not a prude. I love sex. But the culture I live in deeply, deeply concerns me.

What do you think about "raunch culture?"