The airplane argument

I had some thoughts about the argument people love to make about fat people destroying them on airplanes.  I tweeted about it, but I wanted to save the thoughts before they disappeared down my timeline past Too Far To Scroll For.

So one of the most common "complaints" about fat people is that we take up too much space on airplanes, right?

First- The airlines keep making the seats smaller. If you feel like people are encroaching on your space more- it's because the seats keep getting smaller, not that my ass is that much bigger. The seats are reduced in width, which hurts fat women more, as we tend to have larger hips.

Second-- Economy plane travel is public transportation & should be viewed as such. I don't get a huge bubble of personal space on the train to work in Philly. People's expectations of space on the train and the bus are adjusted based on it being PUBLIC transportation.

If you only ever drive, you may not be used to the expectations of space on public transportation, so I invite you to readjust your expectations.

Third- Everyone fucking hates flying and everyone is annoying on a plane. But it's only the fat people who are targeted. I was on a flight where a child kicked the back of my seat for 3 hours. SOLID. It pissed me off really badly. There wasn't much I could do.

Crying babies aren't exactly the best on a flight. Are we talking about banning children from flying? No. Purchasing an economy plane ticket does not guarantee you the right to a fun and annoyance-free trip. If that's what you want, take the train or rent a fucking car.

Also, quit complaining so hard about the babies. There's no way to explain to them about what's happening and they cry. They're babies.

Get some earplugs and quit being such a jackass about everything. The world doesn't owe you an annoyance free life.

NO ONE LIKES FLYING. And that's the AIRLINES' FAULT.

Health at Every Size- A Clarification

When people want to have an arguments about fatness- they often dedicate themselves to arguing that Health at Every Size (HAES) is false or discredited or whatever.

The short version of HAES (as I understand it, and I am NOT an expert here) = Listen to your body and eat a variety of food. Do some exercise that you enjoy. You may lose weight or you may not.

But here's the thing- radical fatness and HAES are not the same thing. It's a Venn diagram with a lot of overlap, but you don't have to do HAES to be into fat liberation.

I have health habits in my own personal life. I am not interested in discussing them. This is because the fatphobic are constantly trying to make fats "prove" their worth via how healthy they are or how much they exercise.  And then the "discussion" is all goal post moving and redefining terms and calling fat people liars... blah blah. 

The only way to win that game is to refuse to play.

So here's what I'm about.  Radical fat pride.  The humanity of fat people is not up for debate. No one has to prove the un-provable by listing their health habits.  

I demand that we be treated with dignity and respect.  I demand that we be made visible in a world that seeks to erase us.

I have a political stance about this.  I am into body autonomy.  Your body is YOURS.  And you are the one who gets to make decisions about it.  

I don't care if people want to diet or lose weight. I really don't. I wish I didn't have to hear about it all the time. I wish people were more aware that the culture's constant diet talk and focus on weight loss can be very triggering for people struggling with eating disorders.

But am I mad at people for losing weight?  No. 

Am I mad at people who decide they want to get into shape or run a marathon?  NO.  

Jesus CHRIST, it's like I'm not even speaking the same language as the whole rest of the WORLD.

Here is my SUPER RADICAL proposal-- (to paraphrase a feminist line)

Fat people ARE PEOPLE.

We're not jokes or devils or evil.  We're not trying to stop you from doing anything. 

We're not taking more than our fair share of anything-- not any more than any person in any other developed country. We are all doing that. Because CAPITALISM.

Stop using us as object lessons or projecting all your fears onto us. We are just PEOPLE. Just treat us like PEOPLE.

And yes, I intend to scream and yell and fuck shit up and break stuff until the harmful attitudes change.  Want me to shut up? STOP YER FUCKERY THEN.


Art is life!

It's been a long, trolly few months.  Every time it dies down in one place, it springs back up in another- like a really unpleasant game of Horrible People Wack-A-Mole.

So, I'm taking a break.  I've been sick and between that and the setting people on fire on the internet- I haven't had as much time as I'd like to work on my art.

Being an artist is pretty much nothing like people think it is.  There is a lot more paperwork and updating webpages involved.  Less parties and being glamorous.  I'm glad glamor is not a required element, because I would fail that pretty hard. 

There are some required elements to be a fine artist that people don't normally think of.  Stubbornness.  Being willing to work incredibly fucking hard for something you believe in which may never actually "pan out" in the sense of making you enough money to live on. Being able to take a lot of people saying No to you. 

I'm sitting here, with my fingers lightly covered in the glue I couldn't quite get off, and I am happy.  I spent 2 hours in my studio- painting, gluing, wiring things and naming them.  I made plans for pieces I wanted to make, and I started stepping them forward.

I feel really happy.  I love working in my studio like I love swimming.  When everything is clicking, and I can just act in the moment- without my brain fidgeting and turning in and over on itself, picking at this or that detail.  

It's such a refuge for me.  I'll always be an artists because I will always feel compelled to make things, even if I can't get people interested in them.  I would still make something.  Making things is a way to soothe and comfort myself.  It's a way I make myself happy.

Hashtags, Reddit trolls, and very important man opinions

This week has been... surreal. 

A week ago, a fat positive hashtag was started on Twitter by @mazzie and @FatBodyPolitics called #notyourgoodfatty.  (TW on the hashtag- it has been invaded by trolls, so if you don't want to see a bunch of fat hatred and thinsplaining, it might be better to scroll down to the beginning.)

What does it mean to not be a good fatty?  It means that for fat people to get along in the world we have to constantly explain and apologize for ourselves.  

"I'm trying to lose weight."  "I go to the gym." "My blood work is good."  "I'm fat but I'm still healthy."  

Amanda Levitt of Fat Body Politics is absolutely correct when she refers to this as a performance.  It's the dance that fat people feel like they have to perform to deflect some of the judgement the world pushes down on them.

There's a couple of problems with being a "good fatty". One is that health is not an option for everyone. In fact, every single person is going to end up unhealthy at some point in their lives.  Hopefully, the ill health will pass, but for some it doesn't.  If we allow "health" to serve as a shield to protect us from fat stigma, what happens when we do get sick?  What about disabled fats or fats with chronic illness? Should we just hang those people out to dry- concede that they deserve to be harassed and punished?  Should we be assigning blame for sickness onto the sick?  (Mocking and policing around diabetes-- I am looking right at you.)

No.  I reject that completely.  I reject disclaimer-ing how much I exercise or how well I eat to deflect stigma. I reject the idea that we are going to separate out which people deserve to be accorded rights and dignity and which people don't.

And the second point is-- it doesn't even work. People who want to troll us around our weight and perceived health call us liars all the time.  Why bother to detail what you eat and how you exercise to someone who is just going to declare- in all their Troll Scientist Wisdom-- Nope. If you lived how you say you do, you wouldn't be fat, so I won't believe you.

This is what it means to not be a good fatty.  It means you don't participate in fat stigma by trying to bargain your way out of some of it.

I really enjoyed the hashtag.  I found it on a Friday (my day off), so I was able to really participate. I met and followed a lot of really awesome people I might not have known otherwise.  It's a beautiful thing--  fat people engaged in lifting each other up and sharing our struggles and stories.    

But then the inevitable happened. Trolls. Because heaven forbid a group of marginalized people have a place to talk to and find each other without The DudeBro Army jumping on it and harassing people.

Trolls can come from anywhere- anywhere someone is having a sad that they aren't getting the attention they feel they deserve (for doing fuck all). And Reddit especially is a hotbed for this kind of nastiness.  They have multiple message boards devoted to how much they hate fat people.  

It seems like a charming place.  I know every time I've interacted with Reddit users, I've been delighted by their wit and graceful manners.  I'm sure it's just a coincidence that something I tweeted got linked on Reddit and my Twitter was flooded with dudebros calling me a fat cunt.

Riiiight.

The notorious tweet. 

The notorious tweet. 

Ok. First I'm going to talk about plus size clothes, specifically women's clothing (since I don't know much about men's clothing). Then I'm going to address the Man Tears crowd.

(Note- "Women's clothing" is only meant to indicate clothing labeled and sold that way. I'm struggling w/ inclusive language since sizing and cost are so different between women's/men's/unisex clothes. Indicating the clothes as for "women" is not meant to indicate anything in reference to who is actually wearing them.  If you have an idea of better phrasing, please leave a comment.)

Clothing options for fat people are a problem. It's gotten better in the past few years, but that just means it's gone from almost nothing/worse than shitty to just kind of shitty.

People who wear straight sized clothing can go to any mall in America and come out with an outfit.  All thin people have to do is decide they want clothes, and they can go buy some.  If I want to buy clothes in a physical store, I have one option in most places- Lane Bryant.

And the clothes at Lane Bryant are expensive and not that great, fashion-wise.  Similar clothing at Old Navy or the Gap is significantly less expensive.  Target has very limited plus-size options, usually for more money.  And on and on.

If you have a limited income- this is a big problem.  If you don't want to present as femme, it can be a problem. If you need to dress in a certain way for your job- this can be a huge problem.  

The point is- the system is set up in such a way to not penalize people who wear women's clothing for having a range of body types, but only up to a certain size.  After that size- there is a penalty that has to be paid, and there is not a great way around it.

Example- When I bought my bridesmaid dress for my best friend's wedding- my dress cost an extra $50 more than everyone else's.  Is it $50 more of fabric?  I fucking doubt it.

So I make this statement and it becomes troll heaven.  I think the reason for this is because it's appears to have a simple answer.  "The clothes cost more because they use more fabric."

But as I said- the answer is not so simple, because if it was simply a matter of how much fabric is being used, then all clothing prices would be on a sliding scale- with the size 0 costing less than the size 10.

Here is a genius who thinks that's exactly what I said.

It's simple, y'all!

It's simple, y'all!

Nope. Anyone who wears women's clothing can tell you that a size small and a size medium cost the same amount of money.

The other 'arguments' basically amounted to- maybe there isn't enough demand for plus size clothes, so they don't make as many, which is why they cost more.

Well, they certainly don't make as many clothes, but it's not because there aren't very many of us.  According to this article from Business Insider- 67% of American women are size 14 or larger.  Last time I checked- 67% was a majority. 

That article is titled "Retailers can't ignore 100 million plus size American women forever", which is adorable, because they are doing their best to try.  There is money to be made, but the fashion industry doesn't seem to want our money.  It's fat stigma. They don't want fat people sullying their brands.

The other argument is that it's just too difficult for manufactures to lay out pattern pieces for plus size clothes in such a way that they can offer clothing at the same price because of the fabric waste.

I'm not a fashion designer, but I have made clothes. And there can be variation on how pattern pieces are laid out.  Honestly, I just don't buy this argument, because we put a fucking man on the moon- we can't figure out how to make larger clothes without a per piece $5 - $20 tax? Or more? We're talking fabric at wholesale here. It isn't made out of gold, for fuck's sake.

Manufacturing processes can be adjusted. Or a decision can be made to increase the cost of all items by a small amount to adjust for any increased cost in making clothing at inclusive sizes. 

There are online plus size retailers that manage to make clothes that cost roughly the same as straight sizes.  Eshakti goes from a size 0 to a 36 at the exact same price.  It can be done.

And let's be real- the prices we pay in America don't really reflect the cost of the materials.  When you buy cereal, very little of your money is going to pay for the corn.

The point here is that they choose not to do it.  Why do stores charge more for plus size clothes?  Because they can.

It's a complicated issue. But it sure was easy for the Reddit dudebros to let me know where I was failing with my dumb lady brain.  I started getting swamped with tweets about it being more fabric.  Tweets from tons of dudebros, telling me how stupid I am to express an opinion on the cost and sizing of WOMEN'S clothing.

(I am being very deliberate by using the word "dudebro" here. Dudebro = a white cis straight man who is being a complete asshole.) 

Because if you wear a size 0, you must only wear designer clothing.

Because if you wear a size 0, you must only wear designer clothing.

Heaven forbid you tell a white man to go away. Then you reap the whirlwind.

To all the people who harassed me for daring to call this white man A WHITE MAN, here's why I did it. (Enjoy being blocked, by the way.)

As a group, white cis straight men = White Men (tm). And White Men (tm) seem to think that they have the right to insert themselves into any situation, any conversation and offer their (very often) unwanted and frankly ridiculous advice/opinions.  This is why the word "mansplaining" exists.

Dudebros! Out there dispensing FACTS! 

Dudebros! Out there dispensing FACTS! 

If you needed to have a perfect example of mansplaining, surely a bunch of dudebros coming at me to explain how I don't understand how women's clothing works-- this would have to be it.

They got so mad at me "for asking a question and not liking the answer". Here's a clue. Someone who makes a statement that is not in any way directed at you is not "asking a question".  Did that tweet contain a question mark?  NO.  That's how you know it wasn't a question.

Every thing that comes out of someone else's mouth/mind is not a fucking invitation for a debate.  And I'm not required to give a damn about what you think.

It went on for a couple of days.  And this is the part where I want to be all punk rock, and go Yeah, fuck these assholes, but I want to be honest.  And honestly, it got to be too much, very quickly.

My phone's going bananas while I'm getting hundreds of notifications when I normally only get maybe 10 or 20 in a day.  I had to fight back a panic attack. And then this happened.

Being impersonated by a racist is...  hard to describe. It's upsetting. It's demeaning. It makes me afraid that people are going to think this account is me.

Apparently Twitter doesn't give a damn if someone steals your picture and your name and pretends to be you.  "Satire", you see.  Why someone should be allowed to "parody" a non-celebrity is beyond me, but it makes me glad Twitter didn't exist when I was in high school.

All this, for being visible as fat, for refusing to give in to the shamers. For telling a white man to go away and refusing to bend to his will, which is to shove into every space in the world and make it about him and his Very Important Man Opinions.

How dare I call him and his dudebro brethren out for their fuckery and astonishing ignorance?

And that's where it stands right now.  Everything has basically died down, although I expect a new influx of bullshit once I publish this.  (Hello, Reddit user who is monitoring my blog! Thanks for the page views!)

I feel a bit put through the wringer.  Josh and Mikkie both asked me if I wanted to lock my Twitter account.  And I thought about it.  I've met so many awesome people on Twitter that I don't want to, but I'm not ruling it out in the future.

I think the work that people do who are engaged in fat activism is very important work.  I feel like it saved me and gave me the ability to imagine a better life for myself- a life where I was worthy of love and respect.  I'm not going to give that up.

 

You look like you lost weight

... is not a compliment to me.

Shocking, I know.  Weight loss culture has poisoned our society so much that everyone just assumes that telling someone they look thinner is somehow the highest of compliments.  For a lot of people, it probably is.  

Because no matter what you do, how you try to educate yourself, the articles you write, the art you make, the relationships you nurture-- the most noble thing you can do is strive to keep yourself within the very narrow bounds of our beauty norms.  The narrow boundaries than narrow down further all the time.

Y'all.  That is sick.  Our culture says the greatest thing we can do- especially as women- is to NOT EAT.  Come the fuck on!!  

I reject this.  I reject it hard.

I've been really sick this past month.  I'm finally starting to feel a bit better.

People are asking me if I'm ok, am I better, etc.  And of course, someone says, "Well, you look like you lost some weight, so that's good, right?"

Because of course.  Of course that happened.

So... I was in the hospital for 4 days.  I was in horrible pain, dehydrated, had a temp over 102, and was really scared. I was so nauseated that for days, I couldn't eat anything at all.  I had to have a semi-permanent IV put into my arm so I could give myself infusions at home.  I couldn't shower or dress myself without help.  I could barely stand for days.

But I should be grateful.  For all that.  Because I lost a little weight.  Weight that, with my normal eating patterns, will be back with me shortly.

Because anything that makes a fat person thinner, no matter how temporary it is, no matter what the cost-- it's a good thing, right?

I knew this was coming.  It's happened to me before.

A few years ago, I was taking a medication that caused me to drop a lot of weight very quickly.  It was not fun.  The medicine affected my appetite and made it very hard to eat. I felt faint and sick all the time.  I had to spend a huge amount of money on clothes.  Money I didn't really have.

This was before I discovered fat acceptance.  I was just hoping I could keep the weight off forever.  I feel a little sad for myself then.  It seems pretty obvious now that there was no way this weight loss could be maintained.  And even though I was barely eating, I was still only a US size 16.  You could see my hip bones, and I was still plus sized.

People kept complimenting me for losing so much weight. As if this made me a more moral person.  "What did you do?", they asked me, over and over.

I tried to explain.  "I've been sick," I said.  "It's the medicine."

"I wish I could be sick too," they would say with a chuckle.

Even then, with my own fucked up weight loss issues still ongoing-- it pissed me off.

I was physically miserable.  How dare these people downplay my illness.  It happened over and over and over.  It made me want to scream.

While this was going on, I witnessed another conversation where someone "complimented" a woman for losing weight.  The woman tried to explain that she had been very sick with a gastric illness that would barely let her keep any food down.  She sounded exhausted and a little scared.

The response--  *Blink blink*  Does not compute. "Well, you look GREAT! Keep it up!"

When you're fat no one listens to you.

When you're fat, your pain means nothing.

When you're fat, you can show up looking like death warmed over, covered in bruises from IVs, and someone will always "compliment" you on losing weight.

In sickness

I've been wanting to write this out for a bit, because I haven't been able to be online as actively as I would like in the last couple of weeks.

I got sick on 4/12 with what turned out to be a bad kidney infection.  I had to go into the hospital on 4/16 and didn't get out until 4/19.

I was feeling great on that Wednesday.  Went to the pool and did my laps.  Made plans with friends to see the Veronica Mars movie.  Everything was looking good.  Then that night I got really sick.  Fever, chills, back pain.

I thought it was the flu and figured it would get better over the weekend.  It didn't.  And that's how I ended up in the hospital with too high blood pressure and a heart rate that was too fast.  Turns out I was dehydrated from the fever giving me the sweats.

This is scary, but apparently not unheard of.  The thing that makes it complicated is that I'm allergic to all the good antibiotics for this, so they had to do IV meds.  And since I had to keep taking the antibiotics for about 2 weeks, they had to put a more permanent IV in. 

My PICC line

My PICC line

That's how I ended up with a PICC line in my arm, which is this longer lasting IV that they thread up thru your arm vein into your chest to end up in a large vein near the heart.

Scary scary scary.  Those tubes just hanging out of my arm... *shudder*  It freaks me out a bit.

Now I'm doing my own IV antibiotic infusions every 8 hours.  And I'm on short term disability until they can take it out.  We're hoping this can happen next week, barring any complications.  Then I'll be back at work, and everything can get back to normal. **HOPE**

Usually, I like to write blog posts on Fridays and stay pretty active on Tumblr and Twitter, but this situation has put me out of commission pretty hard.  I'm still hanging out on Twitter (@Artists_Ali) but that's about all I'm capable of at the moment.

It's actually really nice to sit here and type this out, because I haven't felt able to sit at the computer long enough to do something like this until today.

I had a few other things I wanted to say about the experience. 

If you go into the emergency room for any reason-- TAKE OFF YOUR RINGS.  They put an IV in my hand that blew it up about 3 times it's normal size.  I couldn't even close my hand for 2 days.  I remembered in the ER that my mom had said to always take off your rings in the hospital, and I am very glad I did.  I would have lost my engagement ring.  I would have been so upset by that.

I can't even explain to you how amazing Josh has been through this entire ordeal.  I can't really lift anything.  I can't stand up long enough to do the dishes. I can't take laundry into the basement where the washer is.  I can't take a shower by myself. When I got back from the hospital, I couldn't even dress myself.

I would have been lost without Josh.  He is my heart and all my love, and I would always be lost without him.  But I would have been in much worse shape without his help.  

Even now, as I'm getting better every day, it's still a struggle.  The meds make me tired and mess with my emotions. 

I am also so thankful that I have health insurance.  I didn't have it for a very long time in my 20s, and I always think about how much things would cost me if I was still uninsured.  I would guess this whole thing would be somewhere at $300,000.  It's shocking.  

It's shocking that we let people go without health care in the US, and it sickens me.  I will never forget what it felt like to try to desperately postpone an ER visit because I knew the cost could wipe me out financially.  This is a fucked system we have.  We can do better.

It's also kind of stunning how much help is available once you are in a position not to be actually desperate for help.  I am very glad we won't lose out on the paycheck for the time I'm missing, but when I was in a position that missing one paycheck would have ruined me- I wasn't in a job where I was eligible for short term disability.  Funny how that works.  (Not really.)

I'm getting tired again, so I'm going to go back to the couch and watch Scandal.  I'll be back to my old self in no time, I'm sure.  I hope.  

Feel free to email me or catch up with me on Twitter.  Things are going to be a bit slower for a minute, but I'll see you all later.

Eleanor and Park


Have you ever loved a book so much that you were almost afraid to recommend it to people?  Because it meant so much to you that if someone else read it and wasn't moved by it, that would feel like being crushed.  Like being rejected.

That's how I feel about Eleanor and Park.  

I don't think I can do justice with a summary, so I'm just going to link to the Wikipedia entry.

The book contains references to abuse, so TW for that.  I'll also warn you that this book is a crying book.  If I had known how much of a crying book it was, I might have put off reading it for a bit.

Eleanor is fat.  And it's so rare to see a fat character in any medium, especially one who is the object of a love story.  It makes me feel invisible, that it's so unusual for fat girls to be portrayed at all.  If you do see fat people, they are almost always the butt of a joke.  But the way Rainbow Rowell talks about Eleanor's fatness rings so true to me.  True like being hit in the stomach, shocking and painful, where it's hard to even breathe.

"When Eleanor was around girls like that - like Park's mom, like Tina, like most of the girls in the neighborhood - she wondered where they put their organs. Like, how could you have a stomach and intestines and kidneys, and still wear such tiny jeans? Eleanor knew she was fat, but she didn't feel that fat. She could feel her bones and muscles just underneath all the chub, and they were big, too. Park's mom could wear Eleanor's rib cage like a roomy vest."

YES.  I want to scream YES at this, and it means so much to see it written down by someone else.  Like, we do exist.  We are here, and we exist.  

I think I needed this book when I was a teenager, but I don't know if I would have liked it then.  I didn't have much time for crying at that age.  I was too focused on just surviving.

I think I might have been angry at this book.  I might have been angry and hated it.  It would have been too painful, too close to my life.

I remember in high school, having a meeting with the school counselor where he asked me if I was having problems at home.  He asked me like he knew there was something wrong.  I just stared at him, slouching in my chair, this adult who couldn't help me.  

How could I ever explain what my life was like to him or anyone else?  The screaming and the threats.  The never ending church attendance which became more suffocating by the day.  The forced diets and forced exercising- past all bodily endurance.  The sister who hated me.

It was made clear that there would be no escape, no way out.   

It's hard to walk around dragged down by the things you can't tell people, that you know they would never understand.  It's exhausting.

I see myself in Eleanor.  I see myself in her so hard.  I didn't have it quite so bad as she does, but I see myself there, fighting to get myself away and fighting to become the person I wanted to be.  In the music that gave me a shot at imagining something more for myself.

Teenage me would not have had time for this book, but as an adult, it has cracked my heart open.