I got called a "cocktease slag1" today. I was standing outside Oakwood station with an unlit cigarette in my mouth, fumbling fruitlessly through my enormous handbag for a lighter (there are at LEAST five in there and I can NEVER find one). A man who had been standing nearby, also indulging in a pre-tube smoke, wandered over and offered me one. I accepted, thanked him, smiled, handed the lighter back. There was a pause. "You're very sexy." I said nothing. "Do you have a boyfriend? You've got great tits." I rolled my eyes, said "Fuck's sake. Thanks for the light, yeah?" (somewhat sarcastically, I confess) and slipped into the midst of a gaggle of people waiting at the nearby bus stop, leaving him to yell after me. I sat there till I could be pretty sure he'd have finished his fag, gone down to the platform and got on a train before I went to get one myself.
I do wonder, when things like this happen - which is often, extremely often - when did I commit the heinous crime of cockteasing? Was it when I thanked him and smiled? Was it when I accepted the light? Was it when I put on a v-neck top and a pair of heels this morning? Was it, perhaps, when I chose to perpetrate the shocking act of being Female In Public?
1Which is a bit of a contradiction in terms, surely?
Monday, 5 October 2009
Friday, 4 September 2009
A woman's right to choose...
Labels:
childhood,
memories,
yes I did say 'fat'
Anyone who has ever read or participated in an online (or offline, though IME it tends to happen more often on the internet) disscussion, flamewar or comment thread about obesity will have come across someone saying that "being fat is a choice".
Do me a favour and imagine something for a moment. Imagine that you are a small child, and you realise that your body looks different to those of the other children you know. You don't know why, but even at the age of three or four you have somehow picked up that this is a Bad Thing. You start school, and they don't know why you're fat any more than you do. They know that being fat is bad, though, because they've picked that much up already. So they start teasing you, all of these children whose bodies are smaller than yours, even before either of you understand why.
By six or seven, you know that the reason you are fat is because of food. You've picked up the idea of what is 'good' food and what is 'bad' food already and sit down one afternoon after school and make a list of all the things you aren't allowed to eat any more. Sweets, chocolate, crisps, jam, marmalade. At six, of course, you don't actually understand nutrition so really what the list is of is foods you think taste good; peas and bananas and raisins are on there alongside everything else. It doesn't help that the children at school have worked this out also - the teasing escalates to proper verbal and physical bullying. Already you've picked up that this problem is above all embarrasing.
By eight or nine you're making genuine attempts at dieting. You read every weight-loss article in your mother's magazines with a keen interest, you stare at your body in the mirror and poke at the bits that wobble. You look at your profile and think that your stomach - your nine year old stomach - sticks out and is revolting. But no kid of that age has much in the way of willpower, your attention span is short and what's more, you have little or no control over what you actually eat. You can't suddenly declare that you want to eat nothing but cabbage soup for the rest of your life. At ten, eleven you're making grandiose diet plans: you write out charts of how many calories you're allowed to eat in any given day, what exercise you should do, and stick them on your bedroom wall. When your parents see them there you want to die of shame.
At eleven you start secondary school. You have more autonomy now, more freedom. Everyone else buys crisps and sweets and chocolate and chips on the way to and from school, you can for the first time go into newsagents without parents and spend the few pounds you have on whatever you like. The bullying, of course, has grown up with your peers: playground shoving turns into real punches and kicks, verbal insults grow deeper and more painful. Your desperation to fit in leads you to do ridiculous things: you skip breakfast and lunch and then get so hungry that you eat crisps and chocolate, and then so angry with yourself for 'being weak' that you eat anything and everything you can get your hands on. You flinch every time you hear the word 'fat' in any context, and can't force yourself to say it at all. Writing it down, in secret diaries, is a way of punishing yourself - you write it over and over, that forbidden word, in scrawls and capitals and corpulent, blobular bubble letters.
Your secondary school life continues. The bullying gets worse. You learn to hate yourself: you know that you are disgusting and unlovable and weak and worthless and useless and fat. The evidence of these things is right there on your body, plain for all to see. You get better at starving yourself - you can go three or four days without eating at all now, though you have to practice some serious tricks and deception to get this past your parents. Other days you turn to food and wallow in it in despair, you go into every newsagent on your route to school and buy as many snacks as you think you can get away with in each. You know that the man behind the counter thinks you're disgusting too.
As your ability to starve increases, so does your tendency to binge. All of this is done in the utmost secrecy, you understand: you never finish any one package and you re-arrange biscuits in tins to look as though none have been taken. You bury packaging at the bottom of the bin and hide it in all sorts of places in your bedroom. You cry yourself to sleep at night. You are filled with loathing and disgust every time you look in the mirror or take a bath. You love the act of starving yourself, because you are doing something about this hideous and shameful deformity. Something drastic: at thirteen the idea of slow progress over several years is meaningless. Several years is a whole lifetime away and you will be a different person by then. A thin person. You hate yourself for binging, further proof that you are weak and blubbery and disgusting. One day it occurs to you that if you throw up after you binge the food won't be digested. This feels like freedom. You've been released from your shackles: no longer must you panic about everything that goes into your mouth, because it'll come out of it again before long. Everything you do, every moment of your life, is defined by being fat. You can't sit down without grabbing a cushion to hide your stomach. You practice yawning and coughing in front of the mirror so you know how to do it without accentuating your rounded cheeks and double chin.
This post could have been much, much, much longer. I've left out so much about the tricks you use to hide your eating habits - and your starving habits, and your purging habits - from everyone around you. I've left out so much of the minute detail of the self-hatred and the bullying and the pressure from the entire world. God, I've left out so much, for the sake of keeping this short and readable and not so mind-numbingly depressing that nobody would reach the end. Also, of course, this only covers up to about age sixteen - what comes after that is a seperate post, one that I promise to make soon :-)
What I'm asking, here, and I ask this in all seriousness, is this: where is the choice? At what point during all this did I choose to be fat? When did I make a concious decision, when did I think to myself "actually, I know what I'm going to do, I'm going to get fat"? Was it when I was a toddler, the first time I ate more of something than my body really needed because it tasted nice? Was it when I was seven, and my natural childish lack of attention span meant I couldn't restrict myself with any sucess? Was it when I was eleven, and first conciously began to use food to comfort myself and bury my problems?
When did I choose to be fat?
Do me a favour and imagine something for a moment. Imagine that you are a small child, and you realise that your body looks different to those of the other children you know. You don't know why, but even at the age of three or four you have somehow picked up that this is a Bad Thing. You start school, and they don't know why you're fat any more than you do. They know that being fat is bad, though, because they've picked that much up already. So they start teasing you, all of these children whose bodies are smaller than yours, even before either of you understand why.
By six or seven, you know that the reason you are fat is because of food. You've picked up the idea of what is 'good' food and what is 'bad' food already and sit down one afternoon after school and make a list of all the things you aren't allowed to eat any more. Sweets, chocolate, crisps, jam, marmalade. At six, of course, you don't actually understand nutrition so really what the list is of is foods you think taste good; peas and bananas and raisins are on there alongside everything else. It doesn't help that the children at school have worked this out also - the teasing escalates to proper verbal and physical bullying. Already you've picked up that this problem is above all embarrasing.
By eight or nine you're making genuine attempts at dieting. You read every weight-loss article in your mother's magazines with a keen interest, you stare at your body in the mirror and poke at the bits that wobble. You look at your profile and think that your stomach - your nine year old stomach - sticks out and is revolting. But no kid of that age has much in the way of willpower, your attention span is short and what's more, you have little or no control over what you actually eat. You can't suddenly declare that you want to eat nothing but cabbage soup for the rest of your life. At ten, eleven you're making grandiose diet plans: you write out charts of how many calories you're allowed to eat in any given day, what exercise you should do, and stick them on your bedroom wall. When your parents see them there you want to die of shame.
At eleven you start secondary school. You have more autonomy now, more freedom. Everyone else buys crisps and sweets and chocolate and chips on the way to and from school, you can for the first time go into newsagents without parents and spend the few pounds you have on whatever you like. The bullying, of course, has grown up with your peers: playground shoving turns into real punches and kicks, verbal insults grow deeper and more painful. Your desperation to fit in leads you to do ridiculous things: you skip breakfast and lunch and then get so hungry that you eat crisps and chocolate, and then so angry with yourself for 'being weak' that you eat anything and everything you can get your hands on. You flinch every time you hear the word 'fat' in any context, and can't force yourself to say it at all. Writing it down, in secret diaries, is a way of punishing yourself - you write it over and over, that forbidden word, in scrawls and capitals and corpulent, blobular bubble letters.
Your secondary school life continues. The bullying gets worse. You learn to hate yourself: you know that you are disgusting and unlovable and weak and worthless and useless and fat. The evidence of these things is right there on your body, plain for all to see. You get better at starving yourself - you can go three or four days without eating at all now, though you have to practice some serious tricks and deception to get this past your parents. Other days you turn to food and wallow in it in despair, you go into every newsagent on your route to school and buy as many snacks as you think you can get away with in each. You know that the man behind the counter thinks you're disgusting too.
As your ability to starve increases, so does your tendency to binge. All of this is done in the utmost secrecy, you understand: you never finish any one package and you re-arrange biscuits in tins to look as though none have been taken. You bury packaging at the bottom of the bin and hide it in all sorts of places in your bedroom. You cry yourself to sleep at night. You are filled with loathing and disgust every time you look in the mirror or take a bath. You love the act of starving yourself, because you are doing something about this hideous and shameful deformity. Something drastic: at thirteen the idea of slow progress over several years is meaningless. Several years is a whole lifetime away and you will be a different person by then. A thin person. You hate yourself for binging, further proof that you are weak and blubbery and disgusting. One day it occurs to you that if you throw up after you binge the food won't be digested. This feels like freedom. You've been released from your shackles: no longer must you panic about everything that goes into your mouth, because it'll come out of it again before long. Everything you do, every moment of your life, is defined by being fat. You can't sit down without grabbing a cushion to hide your stomach. You practice yawning and coughing in front of the mirror so you know how to do it without accentuating your rounded cheeks and double chin.
This post could have been much, much, much longer. I've left out so much about the tricks you use to hide your eating habits - and your starving habits, and your purging habits - from everyone around you. I've left out so much of the minute detail of the self-hatred and the bullying and the pressure from the entire world. God, I've left out so much, for the sake of keeping this short and readable and not so mind-numbingly depressing that nobody would reach the end. Also, of course, this only covers up to about age sixteen - what comes after that is a seperate post, one that I promise to make soon :-)
What I'm asking, here, and I ask this in all seriousness, is this: where is the choice? At what point during all this did I choose to be fat? When did I make a concious decision, when did I think to myself "actually, I know what I'm going to do, I'm going to get fat"? Was it when I was a toddler, the first time I ate more of something than my body really needed because it tasted nice? Was it when I was seven, and my natural childish lack of attention span meant I couldn't restrict myself with any sucess? Was it when I was eleven, and first conciously began to use food to comfort myself and bury my problems?
When did I choose to be fat?
Monday, 29 June 2009
Vegetarians Taste Better
Labels:
food,
vegetarianism
(originally posted elsewhere on Sep 30th 2008)
Here’s a thing that had never occurred to me until I was talking about it with a friend on Friday night: I have never really thought about the fact that I am a vegetarian. Well, of course I’ve thought about it, but I’ve never thought about it – not in the way that one thinks about one’s religious beliefs or political views. I just am. I am a vegetarian because I have always been a vegetarian; I have never eaten meat. My mother turned veggie when she was eighteen, so my sister and I were both brought up vegetarian. I don’t know anything about meat, I don’t know how to cook it or even really what the various different types look like.
Once, in a French lesson at school when I was about twelve, as part of learning different kinds of vocabulary we were given a list of French names of different kinds of food and a pile of little pictures to match them up to. You know the sort of thing, you find the little picture of an ice cream and pritt-stick it next to ‘une glace’ on the worksheet. I couldn’t finish it. I could translate ‘jambon’ as ‘ham’ and ‘boeuf’ as ‘beef’ just fine, but I couldn’t for the life of me figure out which of the drawings was supposed to represent ham and which beef (and which steak, and which pork, and which chicken). In the end, I wrote the English words down on the worksheet next to the French ones and left all my little squares of paper in a pile, which confused my teacher no end. (Being French and something of a foodie herself, she had a terribly hard time comprehending my explanation when I gave it to her!)
My mother always offered me a choice, I was never forced not to eat meat. It’s never appealed to me, though, and truth be told I find the whole idea rather disgusting. I don’t mind that other people do it, of course, but the whole idea of eating a corpse turns my stomach whichever way you put it. The tiny handful of ‘accidents’ I’ve had (when I was about fourteen my nan once got confused about which plate of mini quiches was which and I had a mouthful before we noticed her mistake, and a couple of years ago a shop once gave me a meat pasty when I’d ordered a veggie one and I took a huge bite out of it before realising) have all left me feeling extremely queasy, and I can’t say the taste appealed in the slightest.
It didn’t occur to me until I noticed that my aforementioned friend sounded slightly surprised that it was something I ought to have thought about at all, to be honest. I find the notion of actual me consuming actual meat with my actual mouth completely unthinkable, in the same way that while I do indeed possess the physical capability to go and get on a bus stark naked while singing ABBA songs at the top of my voice, the real, genuine act of doing so isn’t very high up on my To-Do list.
Here’s a thing that had never occurred to me until I was talking about it with a friend on Friday night: I have never really thought about the fact that I am a vegetarian. Well, of course I’ve thought about it, but I’ve never thought about it – not in the way that one thinks about one’s religious beliefs or political views. I just am. I am a vegetarian because I have always been a vegetarian; I have never eaten meat. My mother turned veggie when she was eighteen, so my sister and I were both brought up vegetarian. I don’t know anything about meat, I don’t know how to cook it or even really what the various different types look like.
Once, in a French lesson at school when I was about twelve, as part of learning different kinds of vocabulary we were given a list of French names of different kinds of food and a pile of little pictures to match them up to. You know the sort of thing, you find the little picture of an ice cream and pritt-stick it next to ‘une glace’ on the worksheet. I couldn’t finish it. I could translate ‘jambon’ as ‘ham’ and ‘boeuf’ as ‘beef’ just fine, but I couldn’t for the life of me figure out which of the drawings was supposed to represent ham and which beef (and which steak, and which pork, and which chicken). In the end, I wrote the English words down on the worksheet next to the French ones and left all my little squares of paper in a pile, which confused my teacher no end. (Being French and something of a foodie herself, she had a terribly hard time comprehending my explanation when I gave it to her!)
My mother always offered me a choice, I was never forced not to eat meat. It’s never appealed to me, though, and truth be told I find the whole idea rather disgusting. I don’t mind that other people do it, of course, but the whole idea of eating a corpse turns my stomach whichever way you put it. The tiny handful of ‘accidents’ I’ve had (when I was about fourteen my nan once got confused about which plate of mini quiches was which and I had a mouthful before we noticed her mistake, and a couple of years ago a shop once gave me a meat pasty when I’d ordered a veggie one and I took a huge bite out of it before realising) have all left me feeling extremely queasy, and I can’t say the taste appealed in the slightest.
It didn’t occur to me until I noticed that my aforementioned friend sounded slightly surprised that it was something I ought to have thought about at all, to be honest. I find the notion of actual me consuming actual meat with my actual mouth completely unthinkable, in the same way that while I do indeed possess the physical capability to go and get on a bus stark naked while singing ABBA songs at the top of my voice, the real, genuine act of doing so isn’t very high up on my To-Do list.
nature vs nurture
This article is very interesting - a Swedish couple are refusing to reveal the biological gender of their two-and-a-half year old child to anybody, the only people who know the nature of the toddler's genitals being those few who have bathed sie or changed hir nappy. I hope it doesn't all end in tears, though I suppose there's a very good chance that it will. My favourite comment, though many of them were predictably irritating, was this:
"I willingly admit that when I first read the article, my hetero bias took control and lead me down the path of, "these parents are very peculiar. Thank you to those brave enough to share your points of view. You have expanded my opinion and I no longer think the parents are bananas."
Eeeeee! Sensible person was wrong, realised why they were wrong, and changed their mind! LOVEIT.
My other favourite thing about it was the fact that they don't seem to have fallen foul of the most obvious fallacy: the kid sometimes wears skirts and dresses, not always just trousers. That struck me as both surprising and brilliant.
This, however, made me laugh:
"This is cruel on the child I think, it will haunt them later in life. The parents will prob be complaining when their child is gay, they are asking for it now tho!!...Sounds pretty gay to me!! Poor kid!"
AHAHAHHA STUPID PERSON IS STUPID.
Now, though, I'm wondering if hir actual biological gender made any difference to the parent's decision. I can see some very good arguments for a person being more likely to do this with a born-male child than with a born-female child, and also a couple the other way round.
Hmm. Further thoughts of the effect of socialisation on gender presentation to follow, I think. I must first call my mother...
"I willingly admit that when I first read the article, my hetero bias took control and lead me down the path of, "these parents are very peculiar. Thank you to those brave enough to share your points of view. You have expanded my opinion and I no longer think the parents are bananas."
Eeeeee! Sensible person was wrong, realised why they were wrong, and changed their mind! LOVEIT.
My other favourite thing about it was the fact that they don't seem to have fallen foul of the most obvious fallacy: the kid sometimes wears skirts and dresses, not always just trousers. That struck me as both surprising and brilliant.
This, however, made me laugh:
"This is cruel on the child I think, it will haunt them later in life. The parents will prob be complaining when their child is gay, they are asking for it now tho!!...Sounds pretty gay to me!! Poor kid!"
AHAHAHHA STUPID PERSON IS STUPID.
Now, though, I'm wondering if hir actual biological gender made any difference to the parent's decision. I can see some very good arguments for a person being more likely to do this with a born-male child than with a born-female child, and also a couple the other way round.
Hmm. Further thoughts of the effect of socialisation on gender presentation to follow, I think. I must first call my mother...
Tuesday, 23 June 2009
these strange and foreign lands
When I was a child, my favourite way to spend time (besides reading) was by what I called Doing A Story. This involved making up a story in my head and acting it out, complete with voices and scenery and props and costumes. I had an excellent dressing-up box that consisted of elaborate scarves and bits of lace that I assume my mother wore during her New Romantics phase some fifteen years earlier. Being an only child (my sister wasn't born till I was almost ten, and was of course A Baby for some years after that - she's only eleven now) and rather friendless for most of my childhood I spent hours this way, both in my bedroom and in the playground at school. There was a vast plethora of characters in these stories - rather a lot of princesses, as is only to be expected, but also not a few tavern wenches, creakingly glamorous millionairesses in their fifties (think Death Becomes Her or Joanna Lumley) and spunky rag-clad Victorian orphans.
The honest truth is that I never stopped. At some point - possibly when I started secondary school - they stayed entirely in my head and I didn't act them out or speak the words aloud any longer, but I still Do A Story to this day. I suspect the form first changed at the start of secondary school because that brought with it a mile-long walk either way, and to occupy myself during this time I would go somewhere in my head. Still I do this whenever I'm walking anywhere alone; I begin to set the scene as soon as I set foot outside of the front door and by the time I get wherever I'm going I have to haul myself back into the real world again and try to remember what I left the house for in the first place.
They have gone through phases, of course. In my early teens they were all long and vaguely eventless chronicles of my future life as a devoted wife (to a tall, dark-haired man called Richard Roseley), beloved mother to four children (the eldest of whom was a blonde, blue-eyed girl called Elizabeth) and excellent secondary school History teacher beloved by all her students (yes, this is truly what I wanted to do with my life when I was thirteen, fourteen - more than absolutely anything else. Ridiculous, I know!)
There are also recurring characters. Elisaveta is my ten year old mispronunciation and misspelling of the name of a European princess in a Chalet School novel who became the blonde-haired blue-eyed Mary Sue of every piece of fiction I wrote in my last year of primary school (of which there were many, we did a lot of Creative Writing in school that year). Diana is a black-haired American who appeared when they were building a new house in our road when I was about twelve. I walked past it every day on my journeys to and from school and installed a family there, Diana being the girl slightly older than myself who became by bosom best friend. I told everyone at school about her, and occasionally used to pretend to be her on the phone to people, using the NYC accent that either I was much better at then than I am now or, more likely, they were all too young to spot instantly as a terrible fake. I have no memory of when Ruby, the bombastic redheaded nurse from Yorkshire who calls everyone 'duck' and makes tea all the time, first made an appearance but I suspect I was six or seven and she particuarly has stayed with me in various ways ever since.
I'm sure I can't be the only one who did this as a child, nor the only one who has carried it with them into adulthood. These games and stories shaped me and molded me, fed my fertile imagination and gave me an oft-needed escape. I hope I shall always have them, and always have the ability to write about them afterwards.
The honest truth is that I never stopped. At some point - possibly when I started secondary school - they stayed entirely in my head and I didn't act them out or speak the words aloud any longer, but I still Do A Story to this day. I suspect the form first changed at the start of secondary school because that brought with it a mile-long walk either way, and to occupy myself during this time I would go somewhere in my head. Still I do this whenever I'm walking anywhere alone; I begin to set the scene as soon as I set foot outside of the front door and by the time I get wherever I'm going I have to haul myself back into the real world again and try to remember what I left the house for in the first place.
They have gone through phases, of course. In my early teens they were all long and vaguely eventless chronicles of my future life as a devoted wife (to a tall, dark-haired man called Richard Roseley), beloved mother to four children (the eldest of whom was a blonde, blue-eyed girl called Elizabeth) and excellent secondary school History teacher beloved by all her students (yes, this is truly what I wanted to do with my life when I was thirteen, fourteen - more than absolutely anything else. Ridiculous, I know!)
There are also recurring characters. Elisaveta is my ten year old mispronunciation and misspelling of the name of a European princess in a Chalet School novel who became the blonde-haired blue-eyed Mary Sue of every piece of fiction I wrote in my last year of primary school (of which there were many, we did a lot of Creative Writing in school that year). Diana is a black-haired American who appeared when they were building a new house in our road when I was about twelve. I walked past it every day on my journeys to and from school and installed a family there, Diana being the girl slightly older than myself who became by bosom best friend. I told everyone at school about her, and occasionally used to pretend to be her on the phone to people, using the NYC accent that either I was much better at then than I am now or, more likely, they were all too young to spot instantly as a terrible fake. I have no memory of when Ruby, the bombastic redheaded nurse from Yorkshire who calls everyone 'duck' and makes tea all the time, first made an appearance but I suspect I was six or seven and she particuarly has stayed with me in various ways ever since.
I'm sure I can't be the only one who did this as a child, nor the only one who has carried it with them into adulthood. These games and stories shaped me and molded me, fed my fertile imagination and gave me an oft-needed escape. I hope I shall always have them, and always have the ability to write about them afterwards.
Wednesday, 3 June 2009
Partito di Rifondazione Comunista - Partito dei Comunisti Italiani
Labels:
communism,
eu,
italy,
socialisim,
voting
That, my friends, is the rather promising-sounding name of the single political party in Europe running in tomorrow's elections who, according to this excellent profiler, most closely match my own opinions. At least I know who I'd vote for if I was Italian. People have told me that I look a bit Italian...
As it is, however, I don't have an Italian bone in my body1 and will have to choose one of our sorry lot instead. The Internet keeps telling me I want to vote Green (as did that profiler, when I restricted the answers to England only). I've never thought of myself as a Green, but perhaps I should reconsider. I'm certainly having a fair amount of trouble finding any good solid Reds.
1Any responses of "would you like one?" will receive a look of utter disdain, obviously.
As it is, however, I don't have an Italian bone in my body1 and will have to choose one of our sorry lot instead. The Internet keeps telling me I want to vote Green (as did that profiler, when I restricted the answers to England only). I've never thought of myself as a Green, but perhaps I should reconsider. I'm certainly having a fair amount of trouble finding any good solid Reds.
1Any responses of "would you like one?" will receive a look of utter disdain, obviously.
Wednesday, 14 January 2009
Standing up for my right to be a fattie
Labels:
fucking tories,
yes I did say 'fat'
"They're not talking about me, are they, in that fatty campaign thingy, the one done by the Wallace & Gromit people? I'm not obese. This new government weight campaign, the one with the Stone Age people modernising and growing flabby, is for the fatties, isn't it, and we all know who they are. It's not going to work either, is it? Because the very people the campaign is aimed at will ignore it, won't they?
Well, yes, probably. Because the people it is aimed at really is you and me. Public-health campaigns such as Change4Life, launched last week, have the greatest effect if a large number of low-risk people change their behaviour; far greater than if the smaller number of high-risk people do. So, yes, it is you and me they are talking to."
So said Alice Miles in The Times a few days ago. "You and me"? Cor blimey, Alice, anyone could start to suspect that in your eyes, "the fatties" aren't real people. "The fatties" aren't you and me, are they - they're that nameless, faceless other, the headless torso that wobbles over our television screens every night on the ten o' clock news.
I've got news for you, Alice. The fatties are real. They're your next door neighbor, the person who sells you your sexist right-wing magazines at the co-op and the teacher in your children's classroom. They are reading this article and agreeing with it because they too think of the fatties as 'them' rather than 'us', or crying over it because they can't bear the awfulness of being 'them', or raging with fury at your utter ignorance of the realities of 'obesity'.
She's not as bad as some of her commenters, mind. Rick Hepner of Salt Lake City, USA, adds that the "best use of government funds in this campaign is to put up full-length mirrors everywhere." Because obviously, fat people don't know that they're fat, because if they did they'd be thin. Obviously, the way to 'cure' somebody of something that they feel embarrased and ashamed of is to embarrass and shame them even further. I'll tell you what, Rick Hepner of Salt Lake City, USA, if people could be bullied into being thin I'd have been a beanpole from the age of five.
She finishes with the gloriously comforting line "Ministers should be ready to legislate to force a change in behaviour. Smoking only dipped sharply when it was banned in public places. Strict food labelling, sugar tax, treadmills...I don't know. The makers of Wallace & Gromit might be able to come up with an idea or two. Gromit doesn't have a mouth."
I shall look forward to being banned from eating on the street and having my mouth gaffer-taped shut by my GP. It's for the best, anyway - otherwise good, honest, hard-working thin people might see me eating and feel sick!
Christ. There really is no hope for the world. Even Susie Orbach's sold out.
Well, yes, probably. Because the people it is aimed at really is you and me. Public-health campaigns such as Change4Life, launched last week, have the greatest effect if a large number of low-risk people change their behaviour; far greater than if the smaller number of high-risk people do. So, yes, it is you and me they are talking to."
So said Alice Miles in The Times a few days ago. "You and me"? Cor blimey, Alice, anyone could start to suspect that in your eyes, "the fatties" aren't real people. "The fatties" aren't you and me, are they - they're that nameless, faceless other, the headless torso that wobbles over our television screens every night on the ten o' clock news.
I've got news for you, Alice. The fatties are real. They're your next door neighbor, the person who sells you your sexist right-wing magazines at the co-op and the teacher in your children's classroom. They are reading this article and agreeing with it because they too think of the fatties as 'them' rather than 'us', or crying over it because they can't bear the awfulness of being 'them', or raging with fury at your utter ignorance of the realities of 'obesity'.
She's not as bad as some of her commenters, mind. Rick Hepner of Salt Lake City, USA, adds that the "best use of government funds in this campaign is to put up full-length mirrors everywhere." Because obviously, fat people don't know that they're fat, because if they did they'd be thin. Obviously, the way to 'cure' somebody of something that they feel embarrased and ashamed of is to embarrass and shame them even further. I'll tell you what, Rick Hepner of Salt Lake City, USA, if people could be bullied into being thin I'd have been a beanpole from the age of five.
She finishes with the gloriously comforting line "Ministers should be ready to legislate to force a change in behaviour. Smoking only dipped sharply when it was banned in public places. Strict food labelling, sugar tax, treadmills...I don't know. The makers of Wallace & Gromit might be able to come up with an idea or two. Gromit doesn't have a mouth."
I shall look forward to being banned from eating on the street and having my mouth gaffer-taped shut by my GP. It's for the best, anyway - otherwise good, honest, hard-working thin people might see me eating and feel sick!
Christ. There really is no hope for the world. Even Susie Orbach's sold out.
"No-ternity"? No thanks...
Labels:
daily heil,
feminism,
france,
pregnancy and childbirth
Mme Dati, the French Justice minister, returned to work just five days after giving birth by cesarean section, the Daily Heil tells me. Anne Diamond frowns and tells her horror story of doing the same four times over, Laura Tenison cheers her on and regales us with rose-tinted memories of her own one-day maternity breaks.
Few think to entertain the radical notion that perhaps women should be allowed to make their own decisions about what is and isn't good for them. As she delivered by c-section I'd worry that perhaps one shouldn't be running around being a high-profile high-heeled politician quite so enthusiastically this soon after major abdominal surgery, but were a man to do the same he would be lauded for his dedication. Well, unless he too was doing it in high heels, which would give the Mail something else to boggle over and thus me something else to rant about.
I know nothing about this woman. I do not know if her politics are on the side of light, if she is going to enjoy motherhood or not, if she has left her baby with a husband or a nanny or a creche. What I do know about the undoubtedly chic Mme Dati, however, is that she is a woman and a human being and a politician and has, like any woman, the right to run her life howsoever she may choose - something that both the concerned Diamond *and* the congratulatory Tenison seem to have forgotten. The fact of her now being a mother does not make her body public property nor ought it to put her behavior up to even closer scrutiny than ever before. One you have conceived a child, it seems, your body and actions are there for all to poke, prod and comment upon. On behalf of Rachida Dati, would you all please kindly fuck off.
As a side note, one of the comments to the article made me laugh:
"Has anybody a thought for the baby? Where is the bonding? Where is the breastfeeding? Women give birth to humans, not cats."
Which is a terrible shame, really, as if the latter were true I'd probably be a lot more enthusiastic about the idea.
Few think to entertain the radical notion that perhaps women should be allowed to make their own decisions about what is and isn't good for them. As she delivered by c-section I'd worry that perhaps one shouldn't be running around being a high-profile high-heeled politician quite so enthusiastically this soon after major abdominal surgery, but were a man to do the same he would be lauded for his dedication. Well, unless he too was doing it in high heels, which would give the Mail something else to boggle over and thus me something else to rant about.
I know nothing about this woman. I do not know if her politics are on the side of light, if she is going to enjoy motherhood or not, if she has left her baby with a husband or a nanny or a creche. What I do know about the undoubtedly chic Mme Dati, however, is that she is a woman and a human being and a politician and has, like any woman, the right to run her life howsoever she may choose - something that both the concerned Diamond *and* the congratulatory Tenison seem to have forgotten. The fact of her now being a mother does not make her body public property nor ought it to put her behavior up to even closer scrutiny than ever before. One you have conceived a child, it seems, your body and actions are there for all to poke, prod and comment upon. On behalf of Rachida Dati, would you all please kindly fuck off.
As a side note, one of the comments to the article made me laugh:
"Has anybody a thought for the baby? Where is the bonding? Where is the breastfeeding? Women give birth to humans, not cats."
Which is a terrible shame, really, as if the latter were true I'd probably be a lot more enthusiastic about the idea.
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