UNBREADED: Why I'm Doing This

Wednesday, July 21, 2010

Why I'm Doing This

I don't mind being fat most of the time. I'm pretty, I'm healthy, and I don't feel bad being in my body. I have plenty of really worthwhile friends who actually think I'm smart and funny and don't seem to mind that I'm overweight. If the world was just, I could eat what I want to and look how I do, and like my friends, no one would think anything of it. But the fact is that according to a big chunk of society, I'm not attractive simply because I'm fat.

And I wouldn't care what society thinks, except that I have a few very personal blogs that right now seem pretty impersonal to me, because I rarely post photos of myself in them. My friends and I gallivant all over New York City, dining at the best restaurants and vacationing in the Hamptons and drinking on rooftops, and I take literally hundreds of pictures a month on a really fine camera that I spent a whole hunk of a paycheck on, but almost none of them end up anywhere public. I don't want to be judged.

I'm hesitant to add my blog readers to Facebook, because my blog is full of photos I've carefully selected to show me at my best, while my Facebook albums are full of the life I actually live and the way I look living it. I don't want anyone who's read my writing and liked it to have a different opinion of me when they see I'm not "normal". I hate having to hide all of pictures my photographer friend took of me in 50s pinup poses on the beach that made everyone laugh. I hate not being able to be myself.

I want to look good in photos. That's my number one motivation for losing weight. I want to never have to worry about hiding a double chin or belly fat or sausage arms. You sometimes see these things on thin people in pictures, and you don't even think about them, because you know it's just the angle of the camera or some awkward lighting. I want that to be me.

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Tracey · 766 weeks ago

It's so interesting that we want so badly to feel like we LOOK "normal" when we think of "normal" pretty negatively when it comes to nearly everything else. It would be so great if different body types were embraced as evidence of our uniqueness rather than thought of as a mark of personal failure.

I'm of course dying to respond to this with the "anyone who would judge you for the way you look isn't worth wasting your time on" argument. But you know I feel the same way about myself most of the time, and even though I'm a rabid scrapbooker, there are events I will likely never commemorate in a scrapbook because I think I look too big in the pictures. And I live in total fear of all of the pictures of me I know friends and family members have taken of me on their own cameras that I have never seen and never will.

It's got to be a totally personal thing, though, right? I have never, EVER seen a picture of you that I thought you looked bad in. Never. And I don't think that's just because we're best friends and I'm biased.

1 reply · active 766 weeks ago

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plumpdumpling 64p · 766 weeks ago

OMG, I was JUST thinking about the "normal" thing yesterday. I have to blog about it!

I also appreciate your last paragraph, because I think the same about you. When I was going through our 4th of July photos, I tried to seriously take a critical eye to you to figure out what you wouldn't want to see on my blog, but in the end, I just couldn't find any that you looked bad in.

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Tracey · 766 weeks ago

Samesies! Unless I hear you specifically complain about a photo, I would never, EVER think it was bad or that you wouldn't want other people to see it, because I always think you look like you in pictures -- which is REALLY GOOD!

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Kim · 765 weeks ago

I'm one of those awful women who uses the term "fat" entirely arbitrarily because it is, to me and to so many women, the most scathing of insults. So I will fire it off in reference to some chick who couldn't possibly be larger than a size 8 (I do not actually think a size 8 is fat, universe) simply because I hate her, while legitimately not even registering someone I like who actually IS fat as being fat. I feel like that is somehow significant with regards to my obvious body issues, and I also think it straddles this absurd and not really okay line of being somehow both Team Fat Acceptance and completely horrid.

The bottom line, though, is that I definitely feel "fat" has been ingrained into my brain from conception as this hugely awful, unforgivable thing, which is of course both ridiculous and terrible. So hopefully reading this blog will make me a better person. Or give me some good diet tips. I need to lose 10 pounds. KIDDING (not really).

PS I want to see the pinup photoshoot. You're not fat.

8 replies · active 762 weeks ago

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plumpdumpling 64p · 765 weeks ago

Sorry if you got this comment twice. Something went wrong.

One of my co-workers says basically the same thing you did about not registering others' fatness. She's tiny to the point that others consider her TOO skinny, yet she constantly talks about working on her beach body or how she needs to lose 5 pounds. Yet she told me once that she doesn't see anything wrong with me, even though I must weigh–I don't know–twice? what she does. I guess it's the same way I don't notice any of the things Tracey hates about herself, as we were discussing above.

I'm definitely Team Acceptance when it comes to myself, but I find looking at other fat people almost unbearable. Isn't that awful? Like, I went to see Winter's Bone last night, as you know, and there was a woman in it with a big hanging belly, and all I could think about was how gross she is and how looking at her all of the time would be a great motivator for me. Yet I FEEL like I'M thin, because I like myself, and fat people must hate themselves, right?

P.S. I'll give you those pictures when you take me to Per Se. Thx.

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Ash · 765 weeks ago

I think part of the problem with the woman in Winter's Bone was that she was also ugly and creepy (to me at least). I find plenty of women considered 'fat' really attractive. Although I guess the word 'ugly' could probably create a parallel discussion.

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plumpdumpling 64p · 765 weeks ago

She did have nicely-curled hair, at least, but you're right–fat people aren't all bad. Watching "Mad Men" in particular, I notice how much more attractive the less-skinny dancers at the gentlemen's clubs they go to are than, say, the runway models of today. I guess I like a little extra meat if it's well-placed on hips or in boobs; the problem with the woman in Winter's Bone was that she was traditionally fat. Like, Ohio fat, where it's all in the stomach and thighs.

I'd be interested in knowing what fat people you think are attractive, though.

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Kim · 765 weeks ago

See, I knew Winter's Bone wouldn't be as good as Inception. There were no fatties in Inception.

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Tracey · 765 weeks ago

That's because everyone's dreams are filled with perfect-looking people?

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plumpdumpling 64p · 765 weeks ago

What there was were a lot of overdone special effects and a not-quite-realized plot, though, from what I've heard.

I'm still totally going to see it, but Winter's Bone was way better, I already know. You aren't even working these days, are you? Just go see it, jerk.

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Tracey · 765 weeks ago

The way you think about other fat people is, I think, where we get hung up when we try to talk about Fat Acceptance. If you were just a typical self-hating lady who felt like everyone else but you looked okay, it would be easy to use the stories of other people to convince you that fat isn't objectively bad. It's much harder to convince someone who actually finds it hideous everywhere she sees it.

Even though I don't live in a total vacuum, more often than not, I find fat pretty neutral, so when I start feeling bad about my own body, it comes as a total surprise, and I want to blame society and not the fat.

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plumpdumpling 64p · 762 weeks ago

It has to be that I just hate it because society tells me to, right? And because it's genetically ingrained in me, according to some. That makes me want to like it; I want to have power over subliminal and genetic messaging. Like, I WANT to think Beth Ditto is hot, but I can't. Fat people look like babies to me. And I don't want to have sex with babies.

Contrary to what I might have said to you on gmail chat yesterday.

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Tracey · 762 weeks ago

If we're genetically predisposed to find fat unattractive, as Jorge claims in the beginning of TBFC, how are we supposed to explain the cultures where women are force-fed in order to become more attractive to men? Or the full-figured ladies of classic artworks? Some of them even had stomachs and not just hourglass figures and they were apparently still considered sexy. Or there's the historical stuff about how fat's cultural association with wealth made fat an incredibly attractive thing in a mate. I don't buy the evolutionary biology argument that we seek out thin mates for all these reasons, but the cultural explanations make more sense to me. Because we now live in a culture where food is abundant, thinness is seen as a marker of status, indicating restraint, deprivation, and willpower.

I think the whole reason Beth Ditto is hot is because of her confidence. Someone with her body who dressed all drab and stayed out of the limelight would probably not strike me as super good-looking. I'd like to say it's the same with thin people -- that they get noticed based on their overall attractiveness and effort rather than their bodies, but sadly, we know that's not the case.

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Wednesday, July 21, 2010

Why I'm Doing This

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