Tag: fat
I have so many projects on the go, but I want to add some Adirondack chairs to the list. The commercially available ones are all extremely narrow and not accommodating to our large frames. If I’m going to lounge (what an odd verb… “lounge”) I want to do it in comfort, dagnabit.
Graphic evidence of my journey from morbid obesity to plain old everyday obesity. This morning I was *so* unhealthy. This afternoon I have a new lease on life according to a number of medical sources. I’m also a candidate for major reductions in health insurance premiums, and under various proposals for fat-tax legislation I’d save a bundle.
But only under one definition of morbid obesity. There are several. They change over time, too. If this was mid-1998 (before the NHI arbitrarily changed the standards for being overweight), everything would be different, as it would reflect on my BMI classification. But then, BMI charts don’t really have much to do with real world bodies -and neither BMI nor body size really tell you anything about health.
Then again, maybe half a pound changes everything?
Yesterday my wife brought home lunch from a local Tex-Mex place, and I was happy not to be cooking. She had a burrito, and she’d ordered me a burrito-bowl because I can’t eat the flour tortilla wrap. I opened it up to find about a third of a cup of food, mostly green peppers and the occasional grain of rice.
There’s an insidious thing that some restaurant staff do involving policing portion sizes. My wife (a fat woman of proportions similar to my own) places an order. Obviously she’s one of those hideous freaks with no self control and is getting two entrees, so let’s help her make “healthy choices”, right? Wrong. This doesn’t happen to me very often these days, partly because of a sex-based double-standard, and possibly because nobody wants to risk charging me $8 for $3 worth of food. I’ll use my outside voice and probably make you cry.
Thin privilege is never catching a complete stranger taking your photo or filming you without your consent, for purpose of ridicule.
Thin privilege is never seeing yourself on the evening news, with your head cropped off in a story about preventing/eradicating you and people like you.
Been there, done that! My pudgy 11 year-old self was photographed and used in materials promoting the Canada Fitness program. Canadians over 30 will remember the grueling tests and the shuttle run. I appeared headless, doing sit-ups (and on my way towards earning the silver badge, a patronizing pat on the back for the fat or uncoordinated). A skinny kid with a head, and freckles and smile, appeared opposite doing the torturous “flexed arm hang”. Good times.
I could start another blog about things my French-Canadian Grandmama said. She was a goldmine, living in a parallel universe that only had momentary crossovers with ours because of having children later in life. She was an actual runway model in 1930’s Montreal so she had valuable advice for a portly grandchild.
“You got to stan’ at a hangle to whatever is happening. Put one hand in your pocket and look over your shoulder wit’ your leg bent. Never put both hand in your pocket, ‘cus it gonna to make you look wide.”
Wow! Lost some followers over that one. Clarification? I believe everyone should dress how and when they want. I just get a little leery with the idea that a body reaches “acceptability” through acknowledged desirability. I’m not against admiration of the rotund human form! Obviously. Half the people I follow seem to be naked at odd hours. I have friends who explore the possibilities of the fat body in art and erotica. I think there’s a difference between self-directed body exposure and entering the public sphere where you *know* you are going to get hit with confrontation.
Trigger warning, etc, etc…
The other thing that deserves mention is that this was directed specifically to fat men. I wouldn’t comment otherwise. There are plenty of women and female-identifying people who document the shit they are subjected to. I have no personal experience of what childhood and adolescence is like for a fat girl. I can say that in my observation fat boys are often subjected to something more than verbal abuse. It’s not just a playful tug on some poor kid’s saggy boy-boobs. It more often manifests as some Lord of the Flies scenario where pudgy kid is being held down by half-a-dozen others trying to prove their manhood by attempting to sodomize him with a tennis racket. (That wasn’t me, I got let off by putting someone in a judo lock and pulling until they all knew I was serious about breaking his arm.)
Point being. Every guy who was a fat child who’s been able to open up to me has versions of these stories. Entering a public space naked, I think on a certain level it’s not about being called names, it’s “how many of them are there and can I fight them off…” Fat kids learn quickly that the flight in “fight or flight response” is never an option. They are going to outrun you.
Ugh. Sometimes I think I should start another tumblr devoted only to my thoughts on life as a fat person but I’m not sure I want all the grief from being a provocateur. I’m currently having a facebook debate with a woman who is legitimately the most intelligent person I’ve ever known on the topic of French parenting style vs. American and its relation to childhood obesity. We used to claw at each other for the highest marks in elementary school. Some things never change. Others do, as she’s now a professor at Rice and my debating skills are a little rusty.
Lachrimaestro 