An Angry, Angry Woman

On By MezzoSherriIn Flagrantly Feminist28 Comments

My iPod shuffled out a soothing 20-minute mantra for my morning drive to work. As soon as I started the iPod and that song began, I kind of wondered if this was Spirit’s little gift to me on account of me having a gut full of feminist rage this morning.

I’m sure that anyone with even a peripheral awareness of U.S. news has heard the basic details of the shooting at an LA Fitness club in Collier, PA. George Sodini entered a women’s-only aerobics class at around 8 PM last night, fumbled in his duffel bag for the multiple guns in his possession, then turned out the lights and started firing. Three women were killed and ten others injured before Sodini turned the gun on himself.

The picture I’ve seen emerge from the news coverage is that Sodini was conscious in his decision to target women. He blogged about his desire to commit this sort of massacre, and he justified this desire by expressing his frustrations at being lonely and not having a girlfriend for the last 25 years.

But I’m also seeing the inevitable media slants on things. I’ve heard Sodini’s blog described as something documenting “his descent into madness” — a convenient way to try and deflect the ways that his frustration, and the ease with which he could slip from sexual/romantic frustration to a plan to exact deadly “revenge” against desirable women, are deeply ingrained within the patriarchy. By casting Sodoni as a madman, no one has to examine the deeply uncomfortable truths about how in this rape culture, most (all?) men are trained receive training to expect women’s availability, to interpret their attractiveness as purely in service to the male gaze. [Trying to clarify my intended meaning as per Bob’s comment, below.]

I am haunted and infuriated by the premeditation indicated from Sodini’s choice to attack a women’s-only class at his own gym. Is it possible that part of the rage working through him was based in this assumptive loop that why would these women be gym members except to make themselves attractive for men, and with that as their purpose, then how dare they be unavailable to him?!?

I’m too furious and incoherent to unpack it all right now, but I know deep to my core that my growth towards self-esteem is deeply entwined with body acceptance and fat acceptance. And I know that body acceptance and fat acceptance are deeply entwined with questioning patriarchal norms about attractiveness, femininity, and the male gaze.*

I was in (women’s) college back when Marc Lepine murdered 14 woman at Montreal’s Ecole Polytechnique. There was a memorial service on campus, the usual candlelight vigil, some thoughtful hymn for everyone to sing together. And a minister who breathed the fire of feminist rage and turned over one of the hymns’ phrases into the proclamation: “We are angry, angry women!”

I’m ashamed to admit that back in 1989, I disapproved of that minister’s reaction. I thought it was inappropriate and disrespectful of the dead, that her anger took focus away from the grief and sorrow we should feel for these lives cut short by a gunman.

Today, as my stomach burns with feminist rage, I remember this minister so clearly, so vividly, so suddenly. And I offer a quiet apology up into the karmic phone network, in hopes she’ll feel touched by an extra little piece of gratitude today. Because it took me a while to understand, but I got there eventually. So now, two decades later, I’m better able to honor the example of strength and righteous indignation that she modeled for me all those years ago.

Today, as I ponder Sodini’s actions in Collier, and Lepine’s in Montreal, and all the great and small incidences of violence against women that have occurred in the 20 years between those two events, I can say without any hesitation:

I am an angry, angry woman.

* Among other topics.

—–

UPDATE: Jezebel has many insightful things to say about the misogyny in Sodini’s actions and the ways they are being culturally read. The succinct jewel of wisdom that blew me away:

Roissy’s contention that “anything is justified” to help men avoid celibacy is terrifying, but more subtly disturbing is his assumption that Sodini’s rampage was directly caused by women refusing to sleep with him. Like Sodini himself, Roissy assumes that Sodini shot up a gym because women rejected him, not that women rejected him because he was the kind of guy who would one day shoot up a gym.

In Case of Radio Silence

On By MezzoSherriIn Uncategorized2 Comments

I’m making a hairpin turn away from the normal subjects of this blog — can I even consider myself to have established a standard of what’s “normal” for here based in 6 posts? — just for the sake of laying some cards on the table.

My father died two months ago. We did a memorial service for him then, down south where he and Mom had retired. This coming Sunday we’ve got another memorial service for him — this one up in New England, where we have lots of history and family ties. I can feel the emotional big-ness of this approaching, so if I go underground any time during the next week, I’d chalk it up to this. ‘Cos there’s lots of times that the grief has caught me unawares*, and then there’s moments like this where I can just feel it wrapping around me like tendrils of fog.

The weird flip side of this is a brief errand we have set up for Saturday. Matt and I have decided to do our wedding up in New England next summer (see note above re: history and family ties). One prospective site is very near the memorial location, so we’ve planned a very quick site visit to evaluate the place.

And I don’t really have words to express the oddness of these two movements happening at the same time in my life. Losing a parent, learning about bereavement in a much more significant way than ever before, losing a huge anchor on which part of my self-hood and identity was formed. And, 180 degrees away form that, the whole process of planning a wedding, forming a new family center, making a lifelong heart-commitment to Matt.

In this week, in this moment, that simultaneity is kind of wearing me down, in a hazy-foggy quasi-depressed beyond-words kind of way.

I’m sure things will cycle and I can get back to being more purposeful and thematic about my writing here. Today, however, is not the day for that. And I’m not so sure about tomorrow, either.

* Like last weekend at the movies. Though if I’d been a bit more alert at the switch, I might have realized that going to see the film that contains the heart-breaking death of Harry Potter’s final remaining and all-along most significant father figure might just be a little bit hard for me to take.

Bridal Fatshion

On By MezzoSherriIn Don't you want to be thin?, Fat is Just an Adjective, The Pressure to Fix Myself4 Comments

Within the last week, the NYTimes had an article about the increasing sophistication and intrusiveness of Internet cookies for tracking a web surfer’s interests and demographic characteristics — thus resulting in that web-surfer receiving specially targeted offers when they visit a shopping site. (So, for example, someone with a “bargain shopper” profile might be offered discounts at a site that a “known full-price shopper” never ever even sees….)

However subtly Orwellian the scenario spelled out in this particular article, I find myself continually amused by the more ham-handed examples of that sort of “Internet profiling.”

Like the way Facebook has been pitching me “The Wedding Diet” ever since I changed my relationship status to read “Engaged.”

I don’t think the ad shows up every time I log into Facebook — even if it did, I’m not active enough over there to see the ad often enough to really piss me off.

It just amuses me. The headless picture of some bride with a deep v-neck dress,* a skinny little waist, and a hint of enough poufy skirt to fill a whole bakery with meringue. And then the usual ad copy:

Discover how brides to be everywhere fit into your dream dress with this amazing weightless solution!

Yes, it really says “weightless” solution. And I’m not really sure how I feel about brides everywhere fitting into my dream dress. If my wedding dress is supposed to be brand spanking new when I wear it for my ceremony, do I want it to have all the travel miles from these brides “everywhere” giving the dress a test run?

Then there’s the headless blond in a strapless dress (I know she’s blond ‘cos her long hair is still visible in the shot):

This weightloss program is helping engaged women everywhere lose weight for their weddings. Will you be next?

That’s an easy one. No, I will not.

I intend to buy a dress that fits me exactly as I am, and that makes me feel lovely exactly as I am. ‘Cos I’m lucky enough to have a fiancee who loves me exactly as I am — so no diet will be required for me to be “acceptable enough” to share vows with him.

If only I knew how to tell Facebook that so they could stop wasting their time advertising useless services to me.

* Halter, really, if my eyes do not deceive.

The Comparison Trap: When Blogging meets Life

On By MezzoSherriIn Meta-Blogging, Self-Acceptance, Spirituality, The Voices in My Head5 Comments

It’s interesting to me how my patterns of inadequacy and “not enoughness” can seep into so many corners of my life so subtly and so intractably.

Like here.

I started a blog because I wanted place to explore my own thoughts about self-acceptance. And yet I’ve found myself with a case of writer’s block these several days. Call it the Ecclesiastian block, a.k.a. the “nothing new under the sun” syndrome. Everywhere I look, it seems, there’s writers out in the blogosphere who are examining any topic I might, and they’re doing it with wit and thoughtfulness and profundity. In other words, they’re all doing it “better than I could” — at least, that’s what the voice in my head is telling me.

In other other words, I have fallen right into the comparison trap.

Comparison is just about the most effective self-esteem killer I know. After all, if self-esteem is intertwined with self-acceptance, what is the effect on self-acceptance when I look outside myself for the standards of how to be? Basically, it’s me stacking the deck against myself. Instead of honoring what is authentically Sherri, I judge my existence against someone else, which gets me into this loop where I beat up on myself for my inability to be someone else.

The absurdity of that logic should be evident in that last phrase I typed: beat up on myself because I can’t be someone else. Asking, expecting myself to be someone I’m not. And how fucked up is that expectation to put on myself?

After all, like Dave Matthews asked years ago, “Could I have been anyone other than me?”

Nope. And yet I so often fall into that trap of trying to be someone else, expecting to act like someone else, and then being bitterly disappointed and self-blaming when I (inevitably) fail in that project.

The road away from that habit has been a long one, and it’s not been an uninterrupted journey. But more and more I’m able to tap into an awareness of my authentic self, and the faith that I am authentically, uniquely perfect in my existence.

“Could I have been anyone other than me?” No, and that’s a reason to celebrate and to honor. And the beauty of that notion — and the fragility with which I am currently able to hold it — is likely the reason why that particular song always makes me tear up a little bit…

So in addition to Dave, I’m going to try and take a notion from my man Stephen Sondheim:

George: I’ve nothing to say

Dot: You have many things

George: Well, nothing that’s not been said

Dot: Said by you, though, George

“Said by you, though.” Things that have been said, things that are being said elsewhere, things that will be said differently by others — those things are still worth saying by me, if they’re things I want to explore and express. Because there is an essential difference between my voice and another writer’s. When I’ve fallen into the comparison trap, I fixate on that difference as the reason why my thoughts are “worse,” and why I shouldn’t bother saying them in public.

But when I separate myself from the habit of judgement, that same awareness of difference is the road to believing my words deserve their own airing. Not ‘cos they’re “better” than anyone else’s. Just because they are unique and strangely perfect in their own way, their own moment.

So I guess I fell into the black hole real fast, but at least I’ve come out of it pretty quickly.

More to Love: “Real Women” and Reality TV

On By MezzoSherriIn Fat is Just an Adjective, Pop Goes the CultureLeave a comment

My DVR has been somewhat on the fritz of late.  It’s still good with the recording what I want and with basic playback, but not so good with the fast forwarding*  The unexpected — one might even say unwelcome — side result is that I’ve been seeing a lot of commercials for Fox’s new reality dating series More to Love while I’ve been getting my obligatory So You Think You Can Dance fix.

More accurately, I’ve been seeing the same commercial over and over and over again…. It’s the one that starts by saying (to paraphrase) “The average woman is a size 14/16. The average female reality show contestant is a size 2. You call that reality?!?” Then the roast of the ad goes on to lay out the premise: 20 “real-sized” women will via for the affections of Luke Conley. In the clips from the initial meetin’ and greetin’, one of the contestants even goes so far as to express her pleasure that Luke likes “real women.”

Le sigh. How does this bug me?  Let me (incoherently) count the ways:

  1. However much the ex-grad-student in me appreciates the pomo/meta irony of a reality show ad commenting on the unreality of reality TV, I am still a bit galled at the disingenuousness of this opening.  Hey, here’s a wacky notion: if there has been a disproportionate representation of hollywood bods on reality TV, d’you think that might be because of the deliberate casting choices of those of you creating reality TV?
  2. Real woman, misspeaking. I get that fat bodies are usually troped as ugly, unattractive, desexualized — even how the discourse around fatness can be so dehumanizing that it makes sense to stand up and claim one’s humanity and womanhood. But to do so in a way that (intentionally or no) implies that skinnier women are unreal? Really not helpful. I understand that the contestant claiming her “real woman” status may well have taken a more nuanced position, so I’m not sure whether I’m frustrated with her or the magical editing elves. Either ay, I’m frustrated. Denigrating other body types just isn’t gonna help with the project of getting folks to stop denigrating fat body types.
  3. Real women, nitpicking. On my side of the TV screen, I’ve seen some people respond to this commercial with an argument that goes along these lines. “They say the average woman’s size 14 to 16. Well, these women look to be size 18 and up. What’s with all these disgusting fatties?” Way to miss the fucking point.

Is it really that hard to grasp? All women are real women. All women deserve love, and partnership if they so desire it. The skinnies, the fatties, the average 14-16s, the inbetweenies. Nothing about this whole tangle of fat acceptance, body acceptance, self-acceptance will be helped by finger pointing and denigrating, whether in a carefully edited soundbite on the television, or a clever-intending bit of snark on Teevision without Pity.

All that said, I have to admit I have a uneasy wonderment about how the show is actually going to go. I’ll likely have more to say once I’ve actually seen the premiere, rather than just a single commercial.

* And really, isn’t the capacity to ff through commercials the sine qua non of what makes DVR so great?

ETA: I’m not surprised to see so many other fatosphere writers taking on this topic. For full-on reviews, see Kate Harding’s over at Shapely Prose and Marianne Kirby’s over at The Daily Beast.

Straight to 101

On By MezzoSherriIn Fat is Just an AdjectiveLeave a comment

I’ve been aware of and somewhat plugged into the fat acceptance movement for about 15 months, give or take.

(Wow. It seems like it’s been a lot longer than that. But yeah, it’s really been only a little bit more than a year.)

So, for all that there are many times that I feel like I get this new way of seeing the world and seeing myself, I know that there’s a whole lot of basic-level learnin’ I need to do.

Therefore, part of what I’m going to use this space for is to do some reading and responding and thinking and blathering about “FA 101” kind of materials. I’m curious to see how much of it will look familiar to me from this recent year-and-a-smidge of low-level involvement in the community. I’m curious to see how much of it will be brand-new.

The books already in my possession to be read as part of this project:

  • Kate Harding & Marianne Kirby; Lessons from the Fat-O-Sphere
  • Gina Kolata; Rethinking Thin
  • Evelyn Tribole, Elyse Resch; Intuitive Eating
  • Marilynn Wann; Fat! So?

Any other suggestions, recommendations, or review copies will be gratefully appreciated.

See you in the classroom when it’s next book report day…..

Wrongness and Weight

On By MezzoSherriIn Fat is Just an Adjective, Self-Acceptance, SpiritualityLeave a comment

So, I’m cautiously interested in the conversation going on in the comments to this post by Roni Noone over at We are the Real Deal. (I say “cautiously,” because the some of the comments in the thread have been taking a bit of a turn towards anger and intolerance. We’ll have to see what happens.)

There’s certainly stuff that could be said regarding the assumptive slip Roni makes between “having a healthy conscious relationship with food” and losing weight — as if one were always to lead to the other. But the piece I’m keying in on right now is this series of semi-rhetorical questions from the opening of her post:

Aren’t I suppose to be spreading a message of self love and body contentment? I mean, I definitely shouldn’t be inspiring people to lose weight? That’s just plain wrong. Isn’t it?

The anxieties expressed in Roni’s questions are also forefronted in her chosen post title: Is it Wrong to Want to Lose Weight?

Wrongness. So many times this comes back to notions of wrongness.

Wrongness about appearance — too blond, too short, too fat, too skinny, too flat-chested, too red-headed, hips too big, figure too boyish, wrong facial shape, too “ethnic,” too “white bread.” Too just plain wrong because we don’t thread the needle of what is deemed attractive in a celebrity culture. (And here’s a familiar reminder that even celebrities don’t come up to the standards of celebrity beauty.)

A couple months ago, I was asked, in an FA context, if I saw myself as beautiful. And I admitted that I’m not quite There yet. But here’s the thing, I remember saying.

I never saw myself as beautiful when I was younger and thin, either. I grew up skinny and had a really awkward adolescence, in which I had physical characteristics (flat-chested, glasses, braces) that in my white, upper-middle-class high school marked me as unattractive. As far as I can guess, there may have been a magic week or two during my transition for “too skinny” to “too fat” where I hit the mark of what I “ought” to weigh. But I wouldn’t be surprised if during those magic weeks where I weighed the supposedly-right amount, I carried some other marker that kept me from being attractive — or, more accurately, from feeling attractive.

Because there’s so much judgement out there, and so much internalized self-judgement that stems from that. And — no shocker here — the judgements, the feelings of wrongness aren’t even remotely limited to questions of weight, or appearance, or the physical realm. There’s plenty of societal messages about the ways to act, to live, to be. Which plays into all the ways we feel wrong in our behaviors, our choices, our circumstances.

I truly believe that fat is a feminist issue. But for me, fat acceptance is part of the larger challenge of self-acceptance. And for me, self-acceptance and self-esteem are very much spiritual issues. Letting go of feeling wrong. Letting go of the self-protective, defensive instinct to make someone else wrong when I’m feeling judged and threatened. Opening my heart to the possibility that each and every person I encounter is 100% perfect in this moment.

So, do I think it’s wrong to want to lose weight? No, I don’t.* We want what we want, and none of it is wrong, and going into the self-beat-up for wanting the “wrong” thing is only going to perpetuate  the patterns of self-judgement that keep me feeling bad about myself.

Where Roni’s questions get a little tricky for me is when she asks about “inspiring” folks to lose weight. Because that will all very much depend on how she wants to go about inspiring people. If it’s a process of living her own choices and speaking openly about them, and letting people choose freely whether or not to follow her path, I’m pretty much on board. (Insofar as I fully believe in the perfection of Roni’s choices for Roni while choosing myself not to aspire towards weight loss.)

But if her version of “inspiring” includes blindness to the perfection of choice for those embracing HAES — and that assumptive slip I mentioned above gives me some reason to fear that sort of blindness — then I’m a bit more troubled about the potential for this to be yet another message about how the FA/HAES community is wrong in our choices and our beliefs.

So Roni isn’t wrong. And I’m not wrong.

When we’re able to tap into compassion for self and make heart-centered authentic choices for ourselves, each of us is wonderfully right.

* Not that anyone needs my approval anyways.

A Tale of Two Blogs

On By MezzoSherriIn Fat is Just an Adjective, Meta-Blogging1 Comment

Once upon a time, I was a stick-skinny girl.

Then (around age 20) I hit my second puberty and became a girl with an hourglass figure. And still pretty skinny.

Then (around age 30) my metabolism changed again and I became Officially Overweight. And I learned to diet. And I lost weight. And I gained weight. And some of that project is documented here on the blog I kept from 2004-2007. And then some of the self-loathing that accompanied the weight cycling carried over here into the blog I kept (sort of) during 2007.

But then I started to change the way I thought about my body and being overweight. And a teeny tiny bit of that made it over onto blog #2. And I thought about continuing the conversation there, but decided …… no.

So now (as I’m approaching 40) I’ve decided to open up a new space for my writing. Not because I want to wish away my history but simply because I chose to open up a new space.

So here I am. Making another change for myself.