This is a Woman

~TIAW on Tumblr and Pinterest.
~Where Louis CK gets me to want to marry him. (There is NOTHING hotter than a man who GETS it.)
~This is my new favorite website. Cervices! All the cervices! Goes well with 007 Breasts.
~This one keeps being shared on SOAM and TIAW Facebook walls and for good reason. It’s a beautifully written story of stretch marks.
~Seriously. I cannot WAIT for this next generation of strong, intelligent women and men to be in charge. Like this girl for example. Make her president right now!
~This has been a particularly awesome Awesome, but this is my favorite article. Things no one will tell fat girls.

source: haleymorriscafiero.com

So this thing started going around Tumblr last week (I can say that because I totally Tumbl now. How cool am I?). It’s a series of self portraits taken by a woman, Haley Morris-Cafiero, in public with the intent to collect reactions to her appearance. She is overweight and pretty, but seems otherwise unremarkable. In that she is not a freak show by any stretch of the imagination. In that, if I were to walk past her on the street, I wouldn’t notice her anymore than I’d notice anyone else. Except I might be jealous of her clothes because they’re pretty cute.

And yet, she feels that people react to her size. She feels the effects of fat discrimination and she wants to open up this for conversation in our culture. I’m down with that.

Only. Let’s back up for a minute and talk about something entirely different: bitchface.

A couple of weeks ago, I ran across this comic going around Facebook. I SO IDENTIFY WITH IT. I remember even way back in high school, struggling with chronic bitchface. I have a vivid memory of sitting at my locker feeling perfectly content, even happy, and having someone come up to me and ask with concern if I was ok. “Dude. I’m fine. That’s just my face.” My go-to thinking look is a frown. If I’m trying to remember what’s on my grocery list, I’m frowning. If I’m doing math, I’m frowning. If I’m thinking deeply about how to solve world problems and create a beautiful Earth, I’m probably frowning. I’m frowning right at this very minute as I try to think of other examples of frown-inducing thoughts I might have.

Thinking AND hugging my water bottle. It's how I roll.

On occasion, in public, I’ll find myself, lost in my own brain, making eye contact with a stranger. Just briefly. Just for a split second. But I sometimes wonder if, based on that split second, they think I’m angry with them. Or they judge me to be an angry person. Dude. That’s just my face.

One of the best lessons my friend Bethany has taught me is to never assume that someone is feeling a certain way or thinking a certain thing about you, because more often than not, they are dealing with something internal that has nothing to do with you at all. I find that following this philosophy not only makes my life simpler, but it also is usually correct. 99% of the time people aren’t thinking about me. As much as I like to believe I’m that awesome, it turns out that I’m just average. So, unless they tell me clearly that their issue is with me, I just assume it’s not. It works. Really.

Looking at these photographs, I see a bunch of people who are dealing with their own personal thoughts. Looking for a break in traffic to cross the road, glancing across the street, or talking with a friend about how best to pose. Even the photos which show people laughing provide no evidence that they are laughing at this woman’s body shape. Statistically it’s much more likely that they are laughing at something entirely different.

Are there people who publicly mock and humiliate overweight people? Of course. Unfortunately for us all, the world is full of assholes. Within the photo essay itself I question the motives of those two cops. Hopefully it was something innocent. But that’s the only picture that, without lack of other evidence, struck me as something that could be more sinister in intent. Morris-Cafiero wrote a piece over at Salon.com detailing what led her to start this project and some of her experiences while taking the self portraits. In one situation, she mentions that a girl stands beside her slapping her own belly while Morris-Cafiero stands next to her eating a gelato. I don’t know that that even counts as the evidence it’s presented as. People do lots of things with their own bodies that have nothing to do with anyone around them. Mouth noises, knuckle-cracking… I’ve certainly known people to have belly-smacking habits. I’m not convinced by that alone that it was commentary about this woman’s size. Overall I think that people on the street aren’t really paying attention to the people around them. And overall I think most people wouldn’t be cruel or bold enough to be that openly hateful.

In fact, in my almost seven years of listening to moms’ experiences on SOAM, I hear the opposite. When a woman who is overweight, or has stretchmarks, or any other unconventionally beautiful aspect to her finally finds the courage to wear shorts or put on a bikini at the beach, she usually finds that no one around her cares very much. That has certainly been my own personal experience.

I think that it is absolutely undeniable that there is significant fat discrimination in this culture. And I appreciate the effort to incite conversation about the subject. I just don’t think that making snap (pun not intended, but fully embraced) judgements about people and then posting those assumptions as facts on the internet for everyone to see is the right way to do it. Had these people been interviewed so we know what was really happening I would feel differently. As it is, I’m a little horrified at the project. I know that, if it were myself featured in one of her photos, I’d be so hurt to be labeled cruel, and so angry at the idea that the entire internet is talking about what a jerk they think I am.

So let’s keep talking about fat discrimination. Always. Talk loudly and often about it. But let’s figure out a way to do it without accusing possibly innocent people of bigotry.

I saw this today when I was out running errands. That’s my kind of graffiti. (Of course, I also like it when they put “HAMMERTIME” on stop signs. That is also my kind of graffiti.) Sometimes I think I live in this bubble of people who are more aware than the general public of the issues we discuss here at TIAW. So to come across something like this in the wild was heartening.

And after the tragedy earlier this week, I need heartening. You know what else helped me? Star Trek: The Next Generation. It’s so optimistic about humanity’s future. According to Gene Roddenberry, at some point we get our heads out of our asses and become reasonable and loving towards one another. Ultimately I am optimistic like that, too. But sometimes things get so shitty – like bombs at a marathon, or a string of girls committing suicide because they’ve been bullied about having been raped – that I need to turn to sources outside my head to remind me of the good in the world. And it is there. As Mr. Rogers said, “Look for the helpers.” They are there.

~TIAW on Pinterest and Tumblr.

~So this has been going around this week. A part of Dove’s Real Beauty campaign, a forensic artist was hired to draw women as they see themselves and then as seen by others. The comparisons are, unsurprisingly, quite contradictory. And then this post about Dove’s video has been going around. I’ve long had mixed feelings about this campaign by Dove. On the one hand they’re showing differently-sized women. On the other hand, they are still all nice and smooth and generally conventionally beautiful. And the thing is that Dove still has to sell a product. And the best way to sell a product is to make sure people feel like they need it. And for women to feel like they need it, they shouldn’t feel TOO good about themselves. Possibly more sinisterly, Dove is trying to make it look like they’re totally on your side. Because if you feel just the right amount of not-good-enough AND if you think Dove is on your side about all this media bullshit about how we’re told we have to look, then whose product will you reach for first?

I don’t know if I’m that skeptical, though. I like to believe that there are women who really do get it who are working their asses off on this project and doing the best they can within the parameters they are allowed to work (both from the corporation in charge and the patriarchy in charge). And then I also believe that the more types of bodies we see, the wider our view of beauty will become. And they are the only ones consistently showing differently-sized women. So there is a balance. As long as we can see it for what it actually is – a commercial – I think we can find goodness in it. But you guys? Don’t stop talking. Pick it all apart every time. It’s how we, as women, teach each other to really see what we are up against.

~I love that this woman makes no apologies for her body. I think the fact that this is one of the most embarrassing situations for women is the real problem. If fatness wasn’t so shameful, this wouldn’t be so embarrassing or hurtful. And that’s where I hope we can be someday.
~”I didn’t encourage tutus and tiaras… they just happened.”
~And on the flip side of that story: “You don’t think that will make him funny?” “I sure hope so.” BREAK ALL THE GENDER STEREOTYPES!!!
~Jen over at Epbot sums up bra fittings. Bookmarking all those links for next bra-buying trip.