10 – The Young and Curvaceous

It’s 9:11pm and I’m sitting here wondering where the evening went. I’m also thinking that I don’t have it in me—“it” being a blog entry. I have all the mental ability of a toddler right now and I’d crawl into bed in the next five minutes if I had my way. There is light at the end of the tunnel: 3:00pm on May 24, when I finish the courses I’m taking and hopefully have two new trainees at work up to speed; but that light seems very far away right now. I seriously can’t fathom how I’ll come up with two more posts in that time frame; as such, I’ve decided that I just won’t. I will be taking a six week blog hiatus so that (a) you aren’t subjected to crap writing and (b) I don’t become a crazy person. But I promise, it’s just a break, and I’ll be back with a vengeance mid-June. For now, however, read on.

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Last week a couple young ladies became finalists in the Miss England contest. Normally this wouldn’t register on my radar as I don’t go in for the whole “women are really being empowered by beauty contests” BS. Ultimately it’s a bunch of gals being judged, in great part, on their physical appearance. If contestants wore mumus and bags over their heads, then I’d believe it was about their talent. Until then I’m not convinced. So why did this register for me at all? Well one of the finalists, Chloe Marshall, is a size 14. Now that’s a European size 14, which translates to a size 10 or 12 here, so my excitement does dim somewhat. I mean really, size 10 or 12 is just normal people in my books, but I suppose in the face of a lot of size fours and sixes as the competition, that’s pretty cool. But that’s still not the reason that I even know about this girl.

The newly crowned Miss Surrey had a lot of support. Many people felt that it was a good thing to see such a lard ass (Kidding! I mean seriously, size 12 is a plus size now?) in a contest like this; they felt it was brave. Well, not former pageant judge, Monica Grenfell. No, she was outraged at Ms. Marshall’s inclusion in the contest at all. In the Daily Mail, she wrote (this is fucking comical): “Who does she think she’s kidding? What’s she’s demonstrating isn’t bravery but a shocking lack of self-control.” She went on to say “It makes me mad when people like Chloe are allowed to glamorize obesity.”

Bitch, are you for real?

Now just for some context, Ms. Marshall is all of 17 years old. And Ms. Grenfell is…well way too old to be slagging a teenager. To read the entire dip-shitty article, go to:
http://www.dailymail.co.uk/pages/live/femail/article.html?in_article_id=554870&in_page_id=1879 target=_blank

You’ll get to see pictures of the delicious Chloe and read the silly ravings of “her-career- depends-on-selling-books-to-make-people-thin” Ms. Marshall.

I’m reminded of another recent skirmish a little closer to home involving ’07 American Idol winner Jordin Sparks and National Action Against Obesity founder, Meme Roth. Just as in the first situation, a woman who had to be twice Jordin’s age set to picking on the then 17-year old, about 20 seconds after she won her dubious victory.

Now what both Chloe and Jordin will always have going for them is that they’re freaking cool and beautiful, whilst both Grenfell and Roth will always kind of come off like suspiciously angry older women in search of someone to attack. And frankly, in my books, that’s plenty of reason for both Roth and Grenfell to enjoy a big serving of STFU, but in the name of serious blogging, I’ll actually provide some other reasons for invoking a serious gag order on the two of them. There are five (add your own in the comment section of the blog at will): age, bullshit, success, gender and fear.

Age – Attacking Teenaged Girls Is Shitty and You Know It

This one is fast and dirty. Publicly attacking someone who is still too young to vote over their weight is tacky; doing so when you’re at least twice their age—tackier still. There’s nothing more to say really. Roth and Grenfell should know better.

Bullshit – Monica Grenfell Knows about a Fat-Friendly Fourth Dimension and She’s Not Sharing

Monica Grenfell would have us believe that teenaged girls today don’t just think that it’s okay to be heavy but are, in fact, being pressured to pack on the pounds. Really? I must soon find this parallel universe of which Grenfell speaks, where I will have the emotional space to perhaps work out my weight issues whilst accepting food being foisted upon me by envious thin people.

I have spent a significant amount of time with teenaged girls within the last six years and I can tell you, the ones that I’ve met are not thinking “Well since Chloe Marshall is heavy, I’m going to work towards that.” What I see more of is that the girls who will gladly accept a heavier role model are already struggling with their weight. And I’m not about to begrudge them the assurance that it’s okay to feel good about themselves while they work through it.

I’m not saying that there aren’t a shit load more heavy kids walking around today than there were twenty years ago, but I’m pretty damn sure it’s not because they saw someone fat on TV and decided that was the life they wanted to lead. I’m sure it had a lot more to do with the X-Box their guilt-ridden and divorced parents got suckered into buying, and the fact that their moms and dads work a job and a half each to keep the mortgage paid, and consequently haven’t fed their kid a home-cooked dinner since sometime in the early 90s. I’m really, really sure that Chloe Marshall, whose name I would probably never have known had Ms. Grenfell not written her dumbass article, had nothing to do with it. So are the six overweight women represented in our media making our girls fat—not fucking likely.

The idea that Grenfell and Roth feel they need to publicly open up a can of whupass on two teenaged girls in order to protect other teenaged girls from being pressured into becoming overweight is as ridiculous as it is disheartening.

Success – “We Hate It When Fatties Make Good!”

If Jordin Sparks hadn’t beaten out beat-boxing-Blake for the American Idol title, would Meme Roth have given a shit about the young lady’s weight? I think not. Would Ms. Grenfell be falling all over herself calling Chloe Marshall fat, lazy and deceitful (about her diet and exercise) if the teen hadn’t won the Miss Surrey crown and made it to the finals of the Miss England contest? I’m going to assume a big “no” on that score too. It’s only when a fat chick makes good that people like Roth and Grenfell get all hot under the collar. It’s like somehow, with all the discrimination overweight people face, it’s still not okay for us to have a victory here and there.

I get that Roth has a cause she’s fighting for but I don’t know when she got it in her head that attacking someone slightly overweight who has experienced 35 seconds of success makes her cause look good. Amusingly, the Fox News interview where she made the original comments about Sparks is not on the NAAO site and no longer appears on YouTube from what I can tell. You know, the one where she called Sparks the “vision of ‘unhealth.’” What is available on the NAAO site is the Inside Edition interview in which she does a bit of a back peddle. This would have been after the death threats, I guess.

As for Grenfell, it’s bizarre to me that a woman who’s entire success is predicated upon heavy folks buying her books, can’t manage to be nice in the face of a heavier woman’s success. I guess it’s only okay to be successful once you’ve lost the weight.

Gender – “What, Reuben Studdard, Fat?!”

So I’m late to this band wagon, but back when Meme Roth came out swinging at Jordin Sparks, every fat blogger in the world asked in shock, why she hadn’t burst a blood vessel when an even bigger role model, Reuben Studdard, took the American Idol crown back in season two. It does seem a wonder that she went out of her way to make an example of slightly overweight (another size 12-14 girl) Jordin, while undeniably quite overweight Studdard got a pass. I guess big boys don’t register on her radar.

But this is an old story and one that is not exclusive to Roth and Grenfell. The covers of US Weekly, People, Star et al rarely feature the weight issues of men in Hollywood. They’d have you believe that male celebrities don’t ever actually experience fluctuations in their weight. My sister and I used to laugh about the cast of Buffy the Vampire Slayer because as the women on the show got thinner the leading men (excepting James Marsden) all got heavier. To this day, Nicholas Brendon (recently guest spotting on Criminal Minds) remains a little soft around the middle. And frankly I wouldn’t care if all the men in Hollywood decided to put on thirty extra pounds if their female counterparts weren’t held to such a ridiculously stringent standard. What makes me peevish is the lack of equality.

It saddens me, given how much women are still objectified in the media and in their every day lives (some 100 years after universal suffrage), that two women make it their mission to objectify us all a touch further. Sometimes you just shut up for the sake of the team.

Fear – It’s Us or Them

Maybe I’m imagining it, but doesn’t there always seem to be, in an attack like this, an element of fear? Fear that if one does not clearly delineate who the enemy is, one might accidentally be associated with said enemy. It makes me wonder if Grenfell worries about putting on weight some day or if Roth was a chubby kid. I just think it takes a special something to launch an unprovoked attack. And I think that special something is usually fear.

I was on the train last night and a fella boarded who was built like a tank; he was frightening looking and kind of dirty, so I went back to my magazine and avoided eye contact. Well then he turned on this beaut, black, fledgling queen and started calling him a faggot. And not in a nice way. Said fledgling queen responded with questions about scary fella’s self-esteem (how cute is that) clearly putting his health and his kick-ass wardrobe in danger. That’s when said scary guy started screaming “you fucking nigger” over and over again. I can’t tell you how un-Canadian that is. Everyone just stopped dead in their tracks. While the queen did his bit standing up for himself I think we were all afraid it was going to get physical and very, very bad. Luckily it didn’t; big scary fella turned out to be way more interested in making his way home and probably avoiding getting picked up by the cops than he was in fighting the queen. Ultimately he was all incredibly offensive bark and no bite. I had a mind to do a drive by insult on my way out but his stop preceded mine.

The point of that aside though, is that it’s pretty clear that somewhere in big, scary guy’s heart is some sort of enormous fear of a young, black queen. Maybe it’s the enormous cock that he fears. I don’t know and I don’t really care, but it’s the fear that makes him act that way. It’s the fear that makes him think he’s being rational to boot. And I believe it’s the fear that makes Roth and Grenfell act the way they do and think they’re being reasonable while they do it.

To add grave insult to much, much injury, they do their crazy in the name of helping the heavy-weighted.

At one point in a back peddling interview, Roth spoke about how great it would be if we could “get [Jordin] more healthy,” as if she was offering help. Well if someone wanted to offer me help with my weight, the easiest way to do this would be to have a direct conversation with me. Going to Fox News and saying I shouldn’t have won American Idol based on my weight would be amongst the least likely ways to get me on board. This seems rudimentary. But Roth would have us believe that she is concerned about Jordin personally. Bullshit. She was never concerned about Jordin Sparks personally—and that is part of the problem.

Monica Grenfell must think that all the food Chloe Marshall allegedly eats insulates her from the insults of others (ah the irony). If Grenfell was really just disturbed about the inclusion plus-sized women in the beauty contest she could have privately spoken to the judging officials. It was absolutely unnecessary to launch an attack on Marshall in the Daily Mail. And ultimately that’s pretty damn unfeeling—especially when you’re talking about someone’s body.

The idea that Grenfell or Roth are really concerned about the thousands of overweight people that they claim to want to help is laughable, juxtaposed with the way they treat individual overweight people, people who would ostensibly fall within their cause. Instead, what Roth and Grenfell seem most interested in is shame—that tried and true method for shedding pounds. Apparently no one has informed either of them that the “shaming method” of weight loss usually comes with an emotional price tag that’s unfeasible for the long term. Instead of setting up an environment where Marshall or Sparks might seek out Grenfell or Roth if either ever felt like losing any weight, they’ve reinforced the adversarial relationship between fat and thin in our culture. And that’s not a dynamic that needs to be encouraged.

It is possible, Meme Roth, to talk about obesity without denigrating anyone. It is possible, Monica Grenfell, to encourage people to lose weight, without attacking a teenager who doesn’t want to do so. I have to be kind of grateful for them though—if their behavior wasn’t so terrible, I might have nothing to write about.

9 – Gainful Employment, Sickness and Men Hurt Us All (and the blog)

I’m going to talk about my method for a moment. In order to, some day, score that book deal based on my blog that’s going to lift me out of the pink collar ghetto in which I exist, I try to post entries consistently—in my world that means every two weeks. Week one is devoted to research (or in the case of “Big Lust” consolidating weeks of research) and week two is about writing, tweaking, editing, re-writing and then having that prince of a man, my proofreader/editor, take a looksie—at which point, I post (and for those of you combing entries for typos and misplaced commas, he's only been on board for two weeks). The problem is that last week—the research week—was a total write off. Here’s why.

On March 25^th one of my colleagues announced his impending departure for a new job. In the normal world this isn’t a big deal, but in my world it means that the one other person who’s been helping me hold down the fort at work just jumped shipped. To add insult to injury I’ve been job hunting since August of ’07—which is only about a month longer than he’s been looking, but I can be petty if I want to be. This announcement came after another colleague bailed just a week prior. In addition to the shock of being left alone, there was the feeling of crushing despair about being the first to sign on ten years ago and being, obviously, the last to leave. Frankly, given the spiral of depression into which I fell that day, it’s amazing the last blog entry was posted at all.

Then on the 28^th I missed my dear friend’s 30-something birthday because I started feeling nauseated. The nausea progressed into some unholy cold/flu-like sickness that left me with only some of my hearing for a period of time, a snot-filled head, horrible hacking cough, all the focus of an infant and the wakefulness of a sloth. I had to use up 1 ½ of my eight precious sick days per year to beat this thing.

And lastly—men. Need I say more? There have been skirmishes on that front in the last couple of weeks that make my brain tired. And unfortunately, unlike during puberty, this kind of stress doesn’t make me all angsty/creative and thus prolific—it drains me like an alkaline battery in a digital camera[i] because now there are shriveling ovaries and the understanding of my mortality in the mix.

Now I will admit, things at work are not as abysmal as they were last week because they can’t afford to lose me right now; hence on the 31^st concessions were made and demands were almost met resulting in a decent raise, my own cave-like office and a promise that once the new folk are trained I will never again have to speak to another ungrateful, lazy, snarky, illiterate, insipid, shit-eating customer.

Unfortunately, however, this still amounts to zero research. So today, I speak to you from the heart. (Why do I feel like Celine Dion right now?)

I was overjoyed to see the hoopla that my interview with “Greg” caused. In addition to helping me get a better of idea of what y’all want to read and giving me lots of ideas for future entries (when I’m not too sick or depressed to research them) I was forced to think about my own feelings on this issue of discrimination against the heavy weighted.

Now clearly, as disgruntled employee of the month, I’m in no position to make any decisions about anyone’s job prospects based on their weight, so no one need fear me on that level. But if I didn’t admit that I have mean old nasty thoughts about people who are overweight, it would be completely dishonest.

So full disclosure: sometimes I’m as big a hater as the people that I resent for being haters.

Firstly, it’s all part and parcel of my, so far, absolute inability to accept myself as I am in this body. There are certainly times when I think I’m hot but the bulk of those moments are tied to my sexuality. While I’m thrilled about the verging-on-ridiculous enormity of my breasts at my present size, they’re only really the main event when my clothes are off—which is not the bulk of my day (in fact, I’m dressed right now!). And frankly, I do feel more secure naked than I do clothed. But it’s when I have to get dressed and be compared to everyone else in the world that I lose my cool. And while we all have days when we just think we’re the ugliest creature to walk the earth (or am I the only one; or is it just a female thing?) my days like that—when they aren’t revolving around my hair—are completely bound up in my weight. So yes, I hate on people because I kinda hate me.

But I don’t hate on heavy people across the board. As one reader brought up last week, it seems to come down to how people carry themselves. It’s all about the “fat slob” syndrome. For some reason, in my head, skinny slobs get a pass of sorts. Don’t get me wrong, it’s not like I’m looking to make friends with a slim guy who looks like he hasn’t bathed in a few days, but the judgment that races through my head when I see a heavy person seemingly not making an effort, is scathing to say the least.

While I applaud the heavy woman or man who dresses impeccably, part of what I’m often thinking is “Well you’d better dress well—you can’t afford not to.” And the irony in all this is that I’ve convinced myself that I look stunning in sweatpants (well two people told me I did so I’m sticking with it). I don’t think I’m quite a slob but the days when I don’t make a concerted effort are certainly numerous. I work across from a transfer station for Pete’s sake[ii]. I’m the youngest of six kids and the other five have spent the better part of 32 years trying to get me to dress up a little more. So clearly I’m not really “representing” on behalf of heavy folks but for some reason I think I get a pass. It makes zero sense, I realize, but I think I know why my brain works this way. I’m a mid-ranger in denial. I’m certainly not average, (and I’ve been called “fat” in no uncertain terms by people before) but so far I can still squeeze with another person into those freaking small public transit seats and I can still choose a side of the escalator. The result—I think I’m closer to average than I am to “fat.” Though, if I’m clearly in a certain amount of denial now, I wonder, if I put on 50 more pounds, would I still think I wasn’t “fat?” Food for thought.

I have too many friends who carry extra weight to think that generally people who are overweight can’t get the job done or that they lack ambition or that they’re lazy or so many of the negatives that have been brought up in the last couple posts; and frankly I know myself and I’m not like that. But I’m more critical of the passing stranger who is heavy than of the one who is slim. And that’s not cool.

It occurs to me that I get sad when heavy celebrities lose weight because I feel I’ve lost an ally. It’s like if they just maintain their size, then maybe it’s okay that I do too; or it’s at least okay for me to be accepting of myself, whether I eventually lose weight or not. But on the flip side, I’m definitely one to applaud the average person who loses weight; I applaud their moving closer to “normal.” It’s the same me who’s green with envy when some old high school acquaintance befriends me on Facebook and I realize they’re a shadow of their former selves while I’ve become 1 ⅓ of what I was.

So in a bid for further self-acceptance, as promised, a candid photo is posted below. I had never planned when I would post this picture after I made the promise to do so, but now seems an appropriate time. When I’m feeling like even more of a champ I’ll post the side shot—right now I still feel like my back fat is too cringe-worthy. Actually scratch that—no promises there. Baby steps, baby steps.

Come back in two weeks. I’ll let you know if I’ve made any movement towards accepting myself and by extension my heavy brothers and sisters. And by then I may even have researched something interesting for you to read.

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[i] Yes the analogy sucks but this is what I do for a living—gimme a break

[ii] A transfer station, for those of you not in the know, is where regional trash is consolidated before it is taken to the landfill. Now imagine what it smells like walking in to work on a day when it’s 35 degrees with the humidex outside—yeah, sweet.