What Worked

At dinner with the family last night, when the talk turned, as it inevitably does, to how bad mom is being for ordering her one order of onion rings all year, and how dad wants to stop eating french fries, and you remember Super-Size Me? Fries are so bad, oh man, it's the fries that kill you...

"I'm not really interested in discussing food we're not eating, while we're eating."

Everyone sort of laughed, and magically, the subject changed. Not too confrontational, not a big fight, something that did what it was supposed to! Hurrah!

It Must be Dangerous to Work Here

So I found seasonal work for December - yay! It's in a chocolate store - double yay! All sorts of tasty things for me to taste on an employee discount, in the same amount of moderation that I always use. Which is to say, not chiding myself for wanting to take a piece, but also not eating entire bags of candy in one sitting.

So why does EVERYONE come into my store and tell me "oh, I couldn't work here. I'd weigh 800 pounds! I'd never stop! It must be hard to work here. It must be dangerous."

I'm on the clock, so of course, I nod and smile and try not to let it bother me. But it kind of does. Are they trying to say something about me? Is it a compliment, that I'm "stronger" than they think they are because I do work here without trouble? Is it an unconscious dig at the fat girl working at the chocolate shop? Why do so many people feel the need to say it? Why do they all use the same phrases?

For some reason, that bothers me more than the people who just turn down the free samples with "I can't, I shouldn't, I'm being good," or the ones who accept them with "I'm being bad," or "I just worked out." Maybe I expected to hear those, and it's understandable why someone comments when I've offered them something and started a conversation. I just don't get why so many people feel the need to tell me how difficult it would be for them to be surrounded by chocolate and not eat all of it.

I've been in that place. It was an unhealthy place. If I worked here during high school, I'd bet pretty good money I would end up stealing. I would have taken out of the samples box and snuck them away for myself instead of the customers. I would have bought up huge amounts of candy and eaten them all in the car so they could just be mine with no one else knowing I had them.

I'm not doing that now. I have constant access to tons of chocolate and.....shock and surprise, I don't want it. Well, I wouldn't turn it down if it were mine. But it's not mine, the bag I bought to take home and have a couple on the nights that I'm home is mine. And if I weren't working here, I'd be doing what I did over the summer, and buying chocolate in the drugstore, and having a couple on the nights I'm home and I want them. The only thing that's changed is it's cheaper. And better quality.

It's just chocolate. It's not dangerous.

Hark, a post? Indeed

Sorry, first of all, for unexplained major haitus - I still have a few things I want to write about, but finishing school + move to new state + 3-month job hunt + Temporary job + other writing projects = Forgot about blog. I've still been reading the people I've subscribed to, and I'm sure there'll be more to say in the future.

For now, I quickly present an ad that I didn't even catch the implications of at first - my friend did, and told me that he can't say anymore that he doesn't get offended by things, because people try really really hard these days.

http://www.youtube.com/embed/9Af6dipkAfc  (Blogger, please to embed youtube videos one of these days, love Sam)

In Ad-Speak: Don't jiggle it when you wiggle it!
Possible intended implication: Go ahead and move around, exercise, party, YAY!
Possible unintended implication: Just....don't go being fat at everyone while you're doing that, kay? Here's a girdle (Sorry...Compression Line)

I'm heartened to see the featured comment though:
"So, what's so bad about a woman's butt jiggling? Your commercials are very weird.
Why would a fit woman like the person in that commercial care about her but jiggling when she's doing some weird squat and frontal shoulder workout (with very bad form btw), why would she buy pants that specifically hinders butt jiggalige?"

In fact, a lot of comments are negative about the commercial, including "I jiggle it :(" and "I hate this commercial". (Granted, a lot of comments are also about how hot the models are, so take youtube with a grain of salt at all times.) Youtube comments aren't the right place to complain, so if you want to speak up to the company directly, try here!
http://oldnavy.gap.com/customerService/info.do?cid=3332

I Still Love Sam Tarly

I'm about 200 pages into A Dance with Dragons, so no spoilers ;) Minor ones for the books and show ahead.

I've been a big fan of the Song of Ice and Fire book series since late high school. For those of you who don't know, that's the series that begins with A Game of Thrones, which recently got an excellent adaptation into an HBO miniseries (that I still haven't seen all of, but what I have seen was excellent). It's a rather gritty high low fantasy concept, focused on character study and worldwide politics. The characters are every single one of them vibrant and well-thought, and varied enough that I can't imagine anyone reading the series without finding someone to root for. There are a few fan favorites, but while everyone seems to have the same top two, the third slot, and fourth and fifth can change around like crazy.

The series actually came up recently in something of a feminist debate, after a New York Times reviewer referred to the HBO show as "boy fiction" dressed up with sex for the ladies. Which, apart from getting the stereotype wrong anyway, is nonsensical when one stops to think of the sheer variety of women presented in the series. Granted, Martin’s universe is patriarchal and cruel to its women, but a good majority of their storylines show how they deal with the lack of power that they have. Catelyn Stark raises her children and tries not to let her sons be lost to her; Cersei Lannister manipulates the men around her until she can become Queen Regent; Daenerys Targaryan is thrust into power that she isn’t prepared for, and attempts to be both a fair Queen and a conqueror.

So there’s a lot that I love about the books. But the thing is, I don’t think I’ve read them through since I got into Fat Acceptance. None of what’s about to follow means that I think the books or bad, or that Martin should be hanged, or that he’s obligated in any way to change the characters, or even that I expect any fantasy author to do so.

But in this world, Fat is a signifier of character flaws. I’m reading the early chapters, and none of the characters can stop from commenting about how termendously fat Illiryo is - so fat that his shirts could double as ships’ sails, so fat that he’s constantly eating and has to be carried in a liter. And I realized that I can think of a grand total of three characters who were overtly described as Fat during the course of the series, all of whom embody particular character flaws that their fatness emphasizes.

Sam Tarly (a favorite of mine since he first showed up) is a very un-manly man, in a manly man’s world. He prefers books to swords, he loves music, he prefers to be inside than out, he’s shy and cowardly. And he’s fat. He’s a little tubby pig of a boy and roundly mocked for it by his peers. Sam’s fatness seems both to show him as someone who can’t be as active as the rest (even though Sam does become a pretty important fighter later on), and as a childish person. He isn’t a man the same way that his same-aged, muscular, non-fat peers are. I also have an image in my head of Tommen Baratheon as being a little bit of a butterball, but I can’t remember if that’s in the book or just in my head - but similarly, Tommen is a very young boy who can’t by any circumstances be considered a man, and is not meant to be taken seriously as a source of authority.

Magister Illiryo is our aforementioned fat man, a rich merchant depicted as both lazy and overindulgent. In his opening scenes in Dance with Dragons, he is almost constantly nibbling on something, and his fat is as much a signifier as his luxurious clothes and palace that he is a man with no drive to ‘control himself’. He might as well be a hedonist for the way he’s portrayed, and he moves people into place for his own gains with a sneaky and untrustworthy skill. Illiryo is a man meant to make people uneasy, and his “grotesque” figure is part of creating that effect.

Robert Baratheon used to be a mighty warrior, but as he has become King and let himself go, he grew fat and lazy. Robert I only think is a partial case of this, but I still can’t help thinking that if the fat weren’t symbolic, it wouldn’t be there on a man with Robert’s history. As he became a worse and worse king, and grew older, he got fatter. Like Tommen after him, Robert can not be taken as a serious source of power in the realm, and like Illiryo, he is shown as being overindulgent in other matters like wine and women.

When I saw Martin talk at a signing for his latest book, someone asked why he had aged the characters up so much for the TV show. Martin replied that although he had done a lot of research and worked to be historically accurate by having very young women married off (engagement at 11, marriage at 13), you obviously couldn’t do that on television with the amount of sex in the show. I wonder, then, whether it ever occurred to Martin that it would also be historically accurate for fatness, especially in women, to be a sign of good health and wealth, and something to be admired as beauty. There’s something telling about what sells in our world, when we can take it as a given that in the past, people valued things differently in regard to adolescence and the place of women  -  yet Cersei, Daenerys, Margery Tyrell, Sansa Stark, all paragons of beauty, are all slim.

Again, this isn’t me berating an author for using stereotypes and markers that society will read and understand. It just struck me all of a sudden on this reading the way that the fat characters do embody stereotypes and markers. If anyone has characters to add to this list, please add them in the comments, because I’d love to see what I forgot.

New House, Old Habits

Phrew! It's been a while. I've had my college graduation, followed closely by moving to a new city, and a lot of stuff has gone by the wayside a little bit.

But the move and my new home are actually going to be relevant for a new post, so there's that. 

I'm living with friends of mine, people who are older than me and more settled in their lives, so they have no worries about adding another person to their menu-planning. I'm paying a rent that includes all utilities and most of my food, and I'm super-lucky to have the situation. They know a little bit about my mom and my old situation, my love of baking and cooking, and the fact that I wasn't allowed free rein in my old home; I've been assured multiple times that anything I want to take out and play around with, I'm more than welcome. I broke in the kitchen this past weekend by baking the most awesome lemon bars ever, and I've been involved in helping my housemates pick out vegetables and herbs to grow in their garden. I've been assured that anything in the fridge besides someone else's lunchbag is free game, and just let them know if I'd like anything in particular and it'll go on the shopping list. So all in all, it's relaxed around here, I know I get even more freedom with my food than I did in my college dorm, and it's a wonderful place to be. 

And yet...

I'm finding myself slipping into a few old habits, and I’m not sure why. I’m finding myself getting self-conscious, if not secretive, about what and when I’m eating. It hasn’t been enough so far, really, to keep me from eating when I want, but it’s weighing on me somewhat. There’s no good reason for it - this isn’t my mother’s house, nobody cares what I’m eating. But I get self-conscious anyway.

My housemates have been eating on a different timetable from me, so a lot of the time I don’t want to wait as long as they do to have dinner. But I feel weird about eating apart from them; it doesn’t help that there isn’t a kitchen table or anything out-of-the-way where I could sit, I really have to be out in the open unless I squirrel my food away to my room - which I’m making a concentrated effort not to do, because THAT is certainly going to lead to bad places.

More concerning than that though, I’m starting to slip into not-quite-binging behaviors. This past weekend, I had the whole house to myself, and it was up to me to feed myself and to know that no one was around to watch or keep any kind of track. And alone in the house, I caught myself eating really fast. I caught myself dipping into containers in the fridge, stealing a few cold bites and hastily putting it back away - even knowing that nobody cares and in fact I’m expected to eat plenty of the food that’s in there, I found myself feeling like I had to be fast and stealthy like I used to. When my friends got home earlier than I anticipated after the weekend, I was stuck having to eat while they were busy unpacking from their trip and bustling around the house; not only was I the only one eating, but I felt like i would have been in the way. So I ate as fast as I could, standing in the kitchen, trying my best to still be friendly and chat with them and not let it actually stop me from having my dinner.

So far, it’s not something that’s stopping me, exactly. But it is something that’s weighing on me. I KNOW that this is not the same home I grew up in, I know that I’m safe and that no one is watching, that my friends will be happy that I’m enjoying the food they’ve made, that my schedule is just different and I need to take care of myself. I’m doing my best not to let it affect my behavior, especially now that I’ve noticed the attempts at stealth and secrecy. I can’t let that start happening again. 

(apologies for tiny font, cant' seem to figure out how to put it right) 

Okay so I'm fat. Now what?

(If you have trouble reading specific numbers of pounds, be aware that I mention them along with my own weight here)

So I'm having a lot of feelings that aren't really coming together into a coherent blog post, but I also kind of don't want to keep them to myself, especially in the time I have left in my parents' house. I don't want to find myself doing anything dangerous, like the time I basically refused to eat under my mom's watch after her comments about the potato thing, but I also don't want to be ignoring things that might need attention.

I knew I was getting bigger over the past year. I kept complaining about pants because they felt tighter than they used to, and I wasn't in such denial that I didn't know why. I don't think I was eating especially more than I ever did - at least, I wasn't eating much differently this last year of college than I think I did the previous three. And I was making a pretty good effort to exercise more, between yoga twice per week and walking 2-3 miles 3-4 other days out of the week.

I'm at home till Saturday after graduation, and finally had access to a scale, and decided it would at least be good to know. And somehow I gained 15 pounds.

I don't want to be that person who freaks out about relatively small amounts of weight. But. Maybe it's just that this is triggering a lot of hopeless memories. It's one thing to be 15 pounds overweight (at least according to the doctors who expect you to lose it) but it's quite another to be 50, or 80, or now near 100 over the 120 pounds that they told me I should be striving for my whole life. Even if I lost those new 15 again, there'd be more of them. Even if I lost 30 or 50 I'd still be considered overweight. I remember how hopeless I felt, especially as I continued to gain weight through puberty.

But maybe I've rationalized things the wrong way. I grew to accept cheerfully the idea that when I leveled my weight off in my late teens by not doing anything, it just meant I was done growing. I was 180-ish at that point. There was still a big part of me that said "well, at least you're not 200 pounds. Then you'd REALLY be fat!"

And then I got to college, and stopped being self-conscious about eating as much as I was. No one was commenting on my choices, and while I have worked to get more vegetables and fruit and new foods into my diet, I felt so freed by not thinking about it. I let myself have treats most nights. I let myself eat for comfort when I needed it. I started learning how big a difference it makes to use or drink whole milk than skim. I wonder now if I thought too little, instead of too much.

I don't know what the range of "normal" is, and I don't know whether it's a problem, or a normality or something to be aware of and watch out for if I went from ~180 to ~215 over the last four years. I look at myself, and I don't think I'm visibly that much bigger. In fact, a friend of mine complimented me the last time we saw each other that my arms were getting slimmer. Even as I had just gone out to buy bigger pants because I was tired of being squished into a size too small.

Should I be worrying? Should I not be having the daily desserts that I got used to? Should I just be keeping an eye to make sure something's not wrong with me? Is this just how big I am, is it normal to still be gaining at 21 years? Was the doctor right, and I really am going to just keep ballooning out for the rest of my life unless I actively lose weight? Is it possible I could go back to my size 16 and be comfortable in my old comfy jeans again?

I don't want to be freaked out, and I don't think I am. But I also am afraid of being in denial. I know that this is in no way, shape or form what Fat Acceptance is about, but I fear that the criticism is right - that this is an excuse not to think. That instead of exercising hard and eating right, I'm latching onto a movement that says I don't have to (even though FA and HAES strongly encourage healthful eating and regular movement). I'm afraid that I've been just plugging my ears and singing "la la la" instead of paying attention to my body, out of fear that it would do exactly this.

If anyone has any advice, I'd like it. Mostly, I just needed to get this out, so it can at least sit here on the blog and not be perched on my shoulder every time I try to have a meal in this house.

Chocolate Milk is Poison!

Ladies and Gentlemen, we have a serious problem.

Despite vigorous efforts to eliminate Childhood Obesity, despite stricter and stricter guidelines around what is allowed in a school lunch, how many calories are allowed to be eaten, what is and is not allowed to be brought from home, despite some of the most invasive attempts we've made,

There are still fat children!!!!

As such, we shouldn't try to think about why the programs aren't working. We shouldn't consider the possibility that not all bodies are meant to be exactly the same size, that having enough food to concentrate in school is worth the couple of pounds that it might- MIGHT - make a difference on, and we shouldn't try to see about overhauls in the school lunch system so that more nutritious, tastier, fresher food might be served.

We should just keep doing the same thing, only more.

Schools May Ban Chocolate Milk over Added Sugar

There's a lot of gems in here. There really are. I'm not sure I know enough to point out all of them but by all means, if anyone wants to add to it in the comments or blog yourself, please share. Let me see what I can pull out on my own, without an entire MST-ing of the entire article.

Well, first and all, this fricking demonization of chocolate milk. I've talked about this a little bit before but I really think it deserves its own post some day - this idea that there are Healthy and Unhealthy things to eat, and that you can entirely contradict the Healthiness of something by adding an Unhealthy thing to it. Milk is Healthy - no one is going to dispute this. Especially for young children, milk is a great way to get a whole host of essential vitamins and calcium and good growing nutrients. Sugar is Unhealthy - yes, fine, it doesn't do a whole lot on its own. It isn't POISON, but it's not the world's best source of either nutrients or energy.

Therefore, Milk plus Sugar is UNhealthy. Because it has Unhealthy sugar in it. Which cancels out the good part of being milk.

"When you're telling kids that drinking chocolate milk is a healthy choice, it's sending the wrong message." - Concerned Parent.

Oh look, a wild Jamie Oliver appears! Jamie Oliver used Invasive TV Program Credentials! Jamie Oliver used Stupid Oversimplification!

"If you have flavored milk, that's candy," he told The Associated Press.

It's not very effective.

People. Food tastes good. That's part of how our bodies recognize that it's healthful. Sugar and fat taste good because both fat and simple energy are vital to our survival. When well-prepared, thousands of other foods taste awesome. Broccoli, zuchinni, pasta, couscous, fruits of all shapes and sizes, sweet potato, white potato, corn, baby corn, carrots, mushrooms, celery, beans, rice....food OUGHT to taste amazing.

But this is what we're teaching these children: None of these foods are acceptably healthy if they become more palatable to a small child. Celery with peanut butter? Well, unless it's organic, peanut butter is all fatty and Unhealthy, so no go. Corn or potatoes with butter? of course not. Beans and rice with cheese on top? Fetch my smelling salts!

Milk with chocolate? Nope.

Here's one more thing that might actually make me angrier than the whole rest of the article though.

Concerned Parent used Ignore the Facts!

"But efforts by some other districts turned sour after children drank less milk. Milk consumption drops by 35 percent when flavored milks are removed, according to the Milk Processors Education Program.
Cabell County, W.Va., schools brought chocolate milk back at the recommendation of state officials, and Fairfax County, Va., did the same after its dairy provider came up with a version sweetened with beet sugar rather than high-fructose corn syrup...
Cooper and others argued children will drink plain milk if that's what's offered.
"We've taught them to drink chocolate milk, so we can unteach them that," Cooper said. "Our kids line up for milk."

Except, you have proof there. You have studies. Lots of children DON'T drink non-flavored milk. They just don't drink milk at all.

Maybe if you still offered them WHOLE milk they wouldn't hate it so much, too. Skim or 1% is all that's talked about in the whole article. Skim Chocolate, or Skim White milk. As someone who grew up on skim, let me tell you that whole milk is DELICIOUS.

But there's fat in it.

That makes it Unhealthy.

Really this all just makes me so glad to have missed the hysteria when I was in elementary school.

I shouldn't have gone back

Ugh. Internet. Why do you do this to me.

Why do you let me attempt to engage people and not then block me from reading the follow-up comments.

The following happened on a post on Sociological Images about a series of Klondike commercials where people under go horrible endurance challenges to win an ice cream. In the one under discussion, two big burly biker men had to - gasp - HOLD HANDS for five seconds!

So I go and read the discussion, and see this.

"Also, regardless of my sexuality, I wouldn’t want to hold the hand of someone that is obese and that doesn’t abide by basic hygiene. I wouldn’t even do that for a klondike."

A challenger appears:


"Why wouldn’t you want to hold the hand of an obese person? Are you afraid you might catch fat cooties or something? Your comment is hateful and dehumanizing."

The reply:

"I don’t find fat people attractive. It’s fine they’re fat, whatever, don’t care. I just find them physically repulsive. Others may find them sexy or whatever, but not me. The men in the vid are not attractive to me, and therefore I would not want to hold either of their hands, even if I was one of them.
So, do you want to apologize or am I supposed to get aroused to only fat people now?"

I stared at this for a while, totally baffled at how that comment even begins to be a reply to the challenge. Holding hands equals sex now? It's "fine that they're fat" but they're physically repulsive, and that's totally not a contradiction in attitude?

I couldn't help myself. All I said was "there’s a massive chasm of spectrum between “find sexually attractive” and “find physically repulsive”." I really didn't intend to go back to the post. I just wanted to leave that there. I really couldn't believe that those were the only two categories that this person put people into - fuckable, or repulsive.

Of course, I went back. The discussion was interesting and there were a lot more comments, and this was their reply:

"And I find obese people both sexually unattractive and physically repulsive. Particularly the fellow on the left in the commercial.
I know some people have the same feelings toward non-obese people. That’s their right and I don’t see anything wrong with either opinion."

I just.....what do you even say?

The original challenger had also replied in the meanwhile:

"Please show me the sentence in my comment where I said that you have to only be aroused by fat people. Please show me the part in my comment where I said that you had to be aroused by anyone.
There is a big difference between being sexually attracted to someone and holding their hand for five seconds. You don’t have to be sexually attracted to someone to touch them. Try replacing the word “fat” with the word “gay” or “Jewish” in your sentence and see if you don’t sound bigoted."

And the final reply in the chain:

"non-fat LGBT and/or Jewish people aren’t disgusting to me, so long as they aren’t fat. A person’s sexuality or ethnicity has nothing to do with their obesity. The mere thought of touching a portly hand is sickening to me. Now, what does your comment have to do with the video?"

POINT






























HEAD

I had to archive this. I can't really process it. How do you even? How do you get into that mindset? How do you so completely miss the point? How do you put no possible middle ground between sexual hunger and complete revulsion? How do you not understand that it hurts to be told so casually that my body or others like mine are so sickening to you that five seconds of touching a hand would be too much to ask? And how do you not see a problem with finding other people PHYSICALLY REPULSIVE based on one characteristic just because you think there are people who would do the same refusal to touch a skinny person?

I just don't even know what to say. I'm not even angry. I really can't be. I hope it's a troll. But my goodness if it isn't worth writing down just to have a record of.

Learning

The other night, I ate way too much food, and I was also still hungry.

I'd been planning all day for a party some friends and I were having to watch the premier of the new Game of Thrones show (I've been a fan of the books for years, liked the show a lot), so I was intentionally not munching during the day. I had french toast for breakfast/lunch somewhere around 1pm, and then didn't eat again until around 7. By then, everyone had gathered, and I was hungry enough that, after waiting a little while out of fear of seeming rude somehow, I just got up and opened up the snacks (cheese/crackers/pepperoni and such). At the reminder that we hadn't eaten yet, we decided to place our order for real dinner, which wouldn't arrive for another 45 minutes or so. I fixed myself some cheese and crackers and said that it was starting to feel like I'd fall over if I didn't eat something now.

When real dinner did arrive, I was absolutely famished. Before I knew it, my cheesesteak was halfway gone. I looked at the second half and had a decision to make: knowing that I had some french fries still to eat, and there were crackers and veggies and dip and the like aplenty, was I going to eat the other half, or wrap it up and fill the rest of the way on snacks? I had eaten the first half so quickly, I didn't have a chance to really feel full, and I decided to start in on the other half. Then that was gone, and I was uncomfortably stuffed. I was still full another half hour later when dessert arrived. I was still full when veggies and dip went out on the tables. I was still full hours and hours later, when it was getting time to stretch out and go to bed and I couldn't lie on my stomach comfortably.

But all that time, I kept snacking. My mouth wanted very badly to move. Something in my mind was still saying it wanted food, even when I had to lie propped up on the pillow so I could avoid squishing my stomach. I nibbled on carrot and celery sticks and more crackers and finally a cup of tea seemed to help settle me down a bit.

I think what I'm learning is that I need to pay as much attention to how OFTEN I'm eating as I do to how MUCH.

If I'd had a snack sometime during the day, or if I'd asked to open up the cracker tray when it arrived at 6 instead of waiting, I probably wouldn't have been so famished at 7:40-whenever when dinner arrived. I probably would have chosen to wrap up the other half and fill the rest of the way up comfortably on snacks and veggies and dessert. I wouldn't have had such a long time recovering from the night.  And I have a suspicion that, although I ate too much in that one sitting, I might not have gotten enough from the day overall. If I had been eating smaller snacks more regularly, and thus less, slower dinner, I suspect I would have been hungry enough later at night to have the third meal I'm used to, instead of just the unrelenting feeling that i wanted to eat although there wasn't any room.

This learning curve is gonna take some work still. But I know that I'm in a far better place to tackle it than I used to be - not that long ago I would have felt a lot guiltier about being even a little hungry after filling up so fast, and I don't think I'd have been able to tease out what went wrong and use it as a learning experience this way.

Things Fat People Are Told

I'm not on twitter, and am only slowly getting the hang of how it works, but I felt it would be good to share this hashtag, found from Brian at Red No. 3. At #thingsfatpeoplearetold, a whole host of important things are happening.

Fat people can come together and give each other the support of knowing that they aren't alone. The number of similar and repeat tweets coming from different people is staggering, and the patterns among things people say to them is evident.

It's also evidence. It's a document of the existence of fat stigma and the sheer rudeness of some people. If anyone ever needs proof that random thin people can be downright nasty to fat people, there's nothing else that's needed.

It's useful inside and outside the FA community, I think. So I'm passing it along.

ETA: For those who don't want to slog through the twitter feed itself, Brian put together a sampling of posts from the first 24 hours.