Does it really need to be said?

My blog, my rules. To whit:

3. Concern Trolling
Any post that has even a faint whiff of Concern Trolling about it will be deleted. No questions asked. No appeal.

Why it’s all a bit too much right now.

This is why I am a bit silent on the blogging front:

1. My hours have been cut and my pay with it – and there is a real risk of further job cuts
2. John’s health is precarious, as he has some complications related to his kidney disease, and he cannot work full time.
3. Financially struggling with basics like rent, food and medications. We have long since used up any ’safety net’ we once had.
4. The house we rent is on the market, and we may have to move in the next 4-6 weeks. As the people inspecting the property seem to be mainly first home buyers, I think moving is pretty much a certainty.
5. My sister recently recovered memories of early childhood rape by a creepy uncle. Since he also abused me (although not to this degree), it’s somewhat triggering. I want to kill the cunt.
6. My step-father is terminally ill with brain cancer. He’s had surgery, but it’s not good. He’s deciding whether to cease treatment or not. (You may remember that I was estranged from him for various reasons. Of course, I’ve put grievances aside, and am there for him. )
7. Depression is once again rearing it’s ugly head. Not suprising considering the situational triggers.

Yes, I know this is a whingy, whiny, poor me post. My mother would have told me to be grateful for what I have. And she would have been right.

Blessings:

1. John
2. My cats
3. We aren’t on the street (yet!)
4. I still have a job
5. Family
6. The depression is still currently moderate, and I have managed to get through A LOT without falling into a non-functional void.

Fat women, self-denigration and social rituals

Sady at Tiger Beatdown has an interesting discussion about how female self-promotion (or lack of it) and the social practice of self-denigration (including Fat Talk) interplay with each other.

I have to wonder how these social rules intersect with the bullying and shaming of fat kids (and adults). Is it because we are too confident (not shamed enough) in our fat bodies? How does the social requirement to engage in the “naughty me, I want cheeseburger” request for permission ritual work for fat people? We certainly don’t get the conspiratorial “Go on. I will if you will” as often – and are more likely to feel pressured to have a salad or forego the cheeseburger. So if we have the cheeseburger without the socially condoned permission, are we then giving our women friends the big FUCK YOU?

Hmm.

But I will say that I have, recently, been reading a book called Odd Girl Out: The Hidden Culture of Aggression in Girls, by Rachel Simmons. One passage in this, which grabbed me and blew my mind and suddenly made about a thousand troubling incidents way more easy to understand, was about how female bullies pick their victims. The author interviewed a whole bunch of girls about this, and she came up with a really good, really obvious answer. So, do you want to know how they pick their victims?

They pick the girl who seems the most confident. [My emphasis]

Yes, that’s really it! In the particular seething cauldron of insecurity, unhappiness, and fear that is female adolescence, girls tend to feel shitty about themselves for about a million reasons, and to think that they need outside approval – from friends, from boys, from the culture at large – in order to be worthwhile. But if a girl seems not reliant enough on outside approval – if she doesn’t hate her body enough, if she’s too successful at getting guys to like her, if she’s not interested enough in getting guys to like her, if she thinks she’s smart or cool or worthwhile or pretty (or if she just is smart or cool or worthwhile or pretty, and it’s pronounced enough for the people around her to take notice) – then the wolves start circling. [My emphasis] Because they’ve all been bullied, too; they’ve all been undermined; they’ve all made the mistake of standing out, at one point or another, and they’ve been punished for it. And now, because they feel like shit about themselves, you have to feel like shit, too. A girl who doesn’t feel like shit is a threat to the entire social order, the extensively complicated and crappy system whereby women have to earn their way into a pretense of self-esteem by getting enough approval from other girls or from other outside sources in general.

and

Or: the Fat Talk. You know about the Fat Talk, right? Lots of people have written about the Fat Talk already. For years, I thought this was some grody stereotype that you only found in male stand-up comedians’ routines about how women are awful. But then I met women who actually did it: the thing where, before ordering dinner at a restaurant, you all talk about how you should order this and you absolutely cannot order that, because you are so disgusting and you cannot stick to your diet and eating a cheeseburger will literally send you right straight to hell, and if you are the girl who straight-up says she wants some nachos so covered in cheese and guacamole and various meats that they might as well not even have any chips involved – just a big mess of meats and milk fat and squished-up avocados, that is the experience for which you are aiming, and also it would help if the entire thing had sour cream all over it – well, you just might have earned yourself a Complinsult about how brave you are with your dietary habits, young lady.

The weird thing is that, in this scenario, it seems not to ultimately matter whether you get the cheeseburger or the nachos or whatever: what matters is the extensive ritual of saying bad things about yourself, and contradicting other ladies about the bad things they have said about themselves, and giving each other permission to order the nachos, before they’re ordered. And if you don’t get permission to order the nachos, if you’re the one girl at the table who doesn’t get contradicted when she says she’s fat and shouldn’t be allowed to eat what she wants, then you know something is up. You know someone at the table, or maybe everyone at the table, has a problem with you. Which is why you don’t place your order without doing it: for a long time, I thought I was just demonstrating my good body image by ordering a cheeseburger and not participating in the Fat Talk, and then I sort of figured out that I was straight-up declaring that I was so hot I got to do whatever I wanted and was too insensitive to appease the body insecurities of my friends, who were (my actions declared) less hot than myself. [My emphasis] I still think the Fat Talk is destructive and body-hating and stupid, and I don’t want to do it, but the way I get around it is to talk with the girls I have lunch with about why I think it’s destructive and body-hating. Not to just bypass it. Because that’s how self-esteem, and self-promotion, and social status, tend to work with girls: it’s a series of very subtle interactions in which you say you’re not good enough so that other girls can tell you that you are. [My emphasis]

Revisiting: Dieting and Fat Acceptance

Once again, it seems the discussion on the Fatosphere has reached the part of the cycle where it is questioned why, exactly, is the Fatosphere a ‘No Diet Talk’ space. Isn’t that, like, discrimination or something? Can’t we be Fat Accepting and talk about dieting?

In my opinion, no we can’t. I’ve written about this at length before and recommend that you check it out if only to decide whether you agree or disagree. Discuss away…

“If only Mrs Brown knew more about food…”

On the flip side of the vintage coin, ‘Cruel Kindness’ from 1967 features a sneering, classist doctor telling working class people that they are ignorant about food and if they just follow doctor’s orders and cease ‘over feeding’, their children will magically no longer be fat.

Oh, and it’s all the mother’s fault.