And now I guess I -am- being clever

I want to preface this by saying that I am a huge fan of “Community”. It is easily my favorite show on television right now, and coming from someone who has a natural aversion to sitcoms that's saying quite a bit. It's satire at its best, and the writers have routinely shown impressive insight in previous episodes into matters like religious diversity, gender roles, and bullying. Plus, they had a zombie episode. Clearly this was a show I was destined to enjoy, and enjoy it I do.

This past week, continuing their theme of bringing us hilarity via pop-culture awareness, the minds behind “Community” came up with an episode centered around Dungeons & Dragons. As an avid D&D geek, I was over the moon. Two of my favorite things were intersecting, and clearly this was going to be the best thing ever. Come to find out, the impetus for this group of people playing this particular game is for the benefit of a previously-mentioned but never-before-seen character called Fat Neil, whose downwardly-spiraling emotional state draws the group's collective concern. Okay, I thought, the writers are clearly just pulling things straight out of my head to use in the show now. This is going to be the most amazing episode ever.

The reality is that after watching it twice since it aired on Thursday, February 3^rd, I'm no closer to sorting out how I felt about the episode as a whole.

I have to say, the D&D-specific parts were utterly inspired. Having started out gaming in a group where only one of us (the one actually running the game) had ever played before, I can say that the writers and actors brilliantly captured the uncertainty and slight embarrassment that I remember from that first session. Even more so, they managed to convey how absorbing a game like that can be, and how much fun can be had by those involved. To all of that, I give a very enthusiastic A+.

The rest of the episode engendered far more mixed feelings, enough so that I'm not entirely sure how to go about articulating my reaction. Let's break it down, shall we?

Good: I was excited to see some explicit attention being paid to harassment of those who are fat/overweight/People of Size. The damage done to Neil's confidence and self-worth is well articulated, as is the overwhelming despair that can swallow someone when they reach their adult life and realize that things have not, in fact, gotten better.

Not So Good: Which brings me to my next point. Something that struck me right away was the similarity between Neil's situation (I'm going to drop the 'Fat' part, even though the episode itself never did) to the bullying epidemic that's gotten so much recent national attention. Those cases, of course, involve children and young adults being tormented for being (or being suspected of being) gay, and this one is a matter of weight. Still, the parallel is so striking that I'm left feeling that it must have been intentional. But if that's the case, why make the substitution at all? Why make Neil fat instead gay? I'm willing to admit the possibility that it was so that they could avoid the “Very Special Episode” trope. What it felt like to this viewer, however, was a way to talk about a serious issue without requiring the full resolution that would be expected if they addressed a hot-button issue straight-on. It felt like they made him Fat Neil instead of Gay Neil because fatophobia doesn't carry the same stigma as homophobia, and therefore doesn't have to be taken as seriously. In our current political climate, making fun of homosexuality is dangerous; making fun of fat people is standard operating procedure.

Good: Neil's gradual re-engagement with the world and people around him is well-portrayed, and makes a convincing argument for this (admittedly ridiculous) rescue attempt actually working. He's not considering suicide because he's fat; he's considering it because he's isolated. That's what bullying and harassment and abuse do—they cut people off from the world, from those who might care about them, from the very things that make life worth living. He's not smiling because people are playing Dungeons & Dragons; he's smiling because they're playing with him. The more he feels like a part of the group (a part of the community, if you'll pardon the pun), the less mournful he becomes.

Not So Good: For all the sensitivity that most of the characters are trying to show, there's still a glaring moment of fatophobia and fat-for-laughs about midway through the episode. Isolated from the rest of the group, Pierce decides to cheat by acquiring a second copy of the game they're playing. (I won't go into detail about the gamer part of me that was FULL OF RAGE at this twist, but suffice it to say I was growling at Pierce through the screen.) He does this with the help of another fat character, Garrett, who brings him a crate full of AD&D materials and is subsequently distracted by Pierce literally waving a candy bar in front of his face and then throwing it down the hall. This is, I will freely admit, completely in-character for Pierce. However, by having it occur in isolation, the moderating voices of the other characters are absent and it becomes nothing more than a “fat people will act like animals for candy” joke. In the middle of an episode about the dangers of using people's weight to humiliate them. It's a jarring moment, to say the least.

Good: At the end of the episode Neil takes a stand, and he does so by empathizing with his attacker (Chevy Chase's character Pierce Hawthorne) rather than attacking back. It's a wonderful moment of realization, that the slurs and humiliation that have been lobbied against him throughout the episode have less to do with him than they do with Pierce's own insecurities. In realizing this and choosing empathy over antagonism, he manages to strip Pierce of his power, both in real life and in the game. That's an important lesson, and one that was conveyed with a wonderful kind of subtle strength.

Not So Good: There are no consequences. Pierce never apologizes for essentially trolling a young man on the verge of suicide, and the rest of the characters neither seem to expect him to nor seem particularly bothered by his silence. The episode even ends by saying that “Pierce Hawthorne saved the life of Fat Neil… while learning very, very little.” (Yeah, he's not the only one, narrator. Seriously, drop the 'Fat' part.) So . . . what's the moral here, exactly? That it's okay for him to have been grossly abusive to a suicidal man, because it totally helped in the end, really? Let me take this moment to say that, as someone who greatly enjoys tabletop RPGs, I have played in games before where someone has gone out of their way to be difficult, unhelpful, and an overall hindrance in the way that Pierce behaves in this episode. I wouldn't ever feel compelled to classify any of them as “the best game I've ever played in my life”, and that's without the personal attacks that Neil endured. That response is unbelievable to the point of being offensive. Perhaps it was meant to be Neil being deliberately kind to Pierce, but if that was the case I have to say that it fell short of its goal. The resolution felt tacked-on and disingenuous to me, and probably colored my opinion of large portions of the rest of the episode.

Now, I had originally intended to simply write a review of this episode and attempt to articulate why, even after two viewings, I'm still undecided on whether or not I actually liked it. However, something happened yesterday that I feel compelled to share, because if there's one thing this episode did do well it was emphasizing the fact that you can't just let bullies get away with the shit that they pull.

Before I went to work this morning I checked my Twitter feed where I was following (among others) Dan Harmon, the creator of “Community”. He had linked to an article discussing Thursday's episode that discussed many of the things that had concerned me. The article's view was overall positive, but I remained unconvinced. I still had concerns. So, perhaps unwisely, I decided to reply to the message that Harmon had posted. I said:

@danharmon @CleverCase I'm still not sure how I feel about the episode. The D&D parts were freakin' INSPIRED. The rest...not so sure.

Now, I wasn't expecting a response. I've replied to several people I follow on Twitter, and never receive any indication that they saw what I said. That's fine; after all, they have no idea who I am, and I'm sure most of them get countless replies from the myriad of random fans who follow their feed. So I was surprised when, mere minutes later, a response did in fact appear in my feed. This is what Mr. Harmon had to say:

@hungrylikewolf I have a similar dilemma: On one hand, who gives a fuck what you think, and on the other hand, shut up and eat shit.

To say that I was shocked would be a massive understatement. I couldn't see what, in what seemed to me to be a fairly innocuous statement of ambivalence, could have inspired such a furious and hateful response. I was incredibly shaken, unable to believe that someone I genuinely admired would say such a thing, especially in a response to my concern over an episode about bullying. On top of that, minutes after that someone else decided to weigh in and applaud Mr. Harmon for how he had “handled that Tweet”. Again, I was in shock. What was there to handle?

I started my workday (I have a job in retail) extremely shaken and distressed. Much as I wanted to, I couldn't seem to simply let this go. You don't actually know each other, I tried to tell myself. You're effectively strangers. His bullshit doesn't matter. Intellectually, I knew that, but it didn't make my stomach unknot or ease the burning behind my eyes. When I couldn't hold off crying anymore, I was glad that I had slipped on an icy patch on my way to my car and could blame the tears on my abraded hands if anyone asked.

Let me say that again: I was thankful that I had suffered physical pain because I didn't want to admit why I was really crying. I'm willing to bet that it's a situation that sounds familiar to at least a few of you. It sure as hell was to me. Still, it took me nearly half an hour of working to calm myself down before I was able to think clearly enough to realize why I was reacting so strongly. Put quite simply, I had been triggered.

It wasn't the first time this had ever happened to me, but it was the first time since the psychological meaning of the word “trigger” had entered my awareness, and the first time I've been able to name it. The fact that I could now let me focus enough to figure out precisely why Mr. Harmon's words had been so upsetting. (Beyond the fact that that's simply a horrible thing to say to anyone. I mean, really.)

I spent a good portion of my childhood and adolescence trying desperately to be invisible. In my experience, the attention of my peers was rarely positive, and a steady stream of taunts and ridicule sent my way for no other reason than that I was the fat girl and an easy target taught me very early on that it was better if I didn't try to stand out. Better that people forget I was there, so that they wouldn't remember that humiliating me was one of their favorite games. I was shy, I kept quiet more often than not, and I tried with all my might to simply blend into the background. Even when I started becoming more active online, I was still afraid to speak up because of that old certainty that I would be shouted down, told as I was so often early in life that my opinions didn't matter. Afraid that someone would simply sneer out an insult that I'd be unable to counter. I am fat, it's not like I can dispute it, and for so much of my life I believed that that made me less deserving.

Well, I'm sick of staying quiet. I'm sick of keeping my head down and letting people get away with the horrible things that they say and do. If no one else is going to do it, then by God I'll stand up and tell the Pierce Hawthornes of the world that their behavior is unacceptable, and that if they act deliberately hurtful then I have no interest in knowing them.

I don't expect Mr. Harmon to care that I'm no longer following him on Twitter; I don't anticipate that he'll care about any of this. I sincerely doubt, in fact, that he'll ever even be aware of this post's existence. But I want him and all the other Pierce Hawthornes out there to imagine, for just a moment, that those words had not been spoken to someone who's finally learned her own self-worth, but to a suicidal teenager who believes that she only exists at the sufferance of others. I'm standing up for her, and for everyone else who can't yet stand up for themselves.

Neil wasn't saved by Pierce being an insensitive jackass; he was saved by the realization that there were others willing to support him, and by the decision to give his support to someone else who needed it. That, at least, is a lesson worth passing on.

And to any who might be tempted to tell me to learn how to take a joke, let me assure you that I would be more than happy to do so, just as soon as you learn how to be funny.

Not dead, just making merry

Well, it's been a *coughcough*coupleofmonths*cough* while since my last post. Sorry about that; the holiday season starts early in retail, and it will suck the life right out of you. No joke.

Speaking of the holiday season, though, I have some things to say. Nothing, really, that I haven't thought before; but approaching things from a new perspective has--unsurprisingly--led me to think about things that I'd never really taken the time to consider before. I'll divide these into a couple of different posts, since the one topic has to do with the holidays and the other is just something that happened to occur to me during this time.

What I want to talk about here is the realization I had that the holidays are one of the most difficult times to maintain a steady fat-acceptance outlook. Ironically, the reason for this is the very spirit of freedom and overall tendency to throw caution to the winds that makes it seem as though it would be the easiest time of year. This might not make sense yet, but hear me out.

I've lost count of how many times over the past several weeks I heard some sort of variation on how "holiday calories don't count." I even caught myself saying it myself a time or two. Yes, I always said it as a joke; but doesn't everyone? No one actually believes that the food you eat between the middle of November and the beginning of January magically stops impacting your body in any way. But there's a sort of unspoken agreement among most adults to pretend that that's the case, or at least to pretend that for a month and a half everyone stops caring. For that stretch of time, most of society winks an eye at the consumption of foods that would, during most of the year, garner stern disapproval at best. The idea seems to be that during the holidays, that magical, wonderful time of the year, sensual pleasure--fleeting though it may be--is an acceptable goal. Want another cookie? Go ahead! A third piece of fudge? Why not! After all, it's the holidays!

Now, on the surface this all seems well and good. It's one of the few times of the year when a fatty like me can snack and munch and nibble without worrying about disapproving looks or people whispering behind her back. The problem, however, doesn't lie in what's actually said and done; it lies in what's lurking beneath the surface.

You see, every time I found myself saying, "Holiday calories don't count!" I was aware, in a way that I never had been before, of what I wasn't saying. I wasn't saying that calories do count during the rest of the year. I wasn't saying that we shouldn't eat these things for the 46 weeks between New Year's and Thanksgiving. I wasn't saying that once the new year hit I would remember that calories always count and going into overdrive trying to rid myself of the consequences of my excess. I wasn't saying any of those things; but I could hear them hanging in the air nevertheless, all of those implications that almost three decades in Western society have taught me go along with that one simple phrase. Holiday calories don't count during the holidays, but no one really thinks that they don't count at all.

Why is this a bad thing? It's not; at least, it's not absolutely and inherently so. It is, however, perilously close to diet-speak for my comfort. It is, let's say, the gateway phrase. It would be all too easy for me to go from saying, "Holiday calories don't count!" to sliding into a "Calories in, calories out; more calories are BAD" mindset. It's a slippery slope for me, and I'm guessing for quite a few of you out there in Internetland.

The real irony here is that I tend to eat better over the holidays than I do for most of the year. I'm at home with my family, and my mom is cooking and/or preparing most of the food. I'm not running out for something quick (and almost certainly unhealthy). There's usually a lovely selection of fresh fruit, which I almost unfailingly fall upon like a plague of locusts. (This Christmas sadly excepted, as I had a horrible cold start to hit me on Christmas Eve. Those pears were good too, damn it.) And for myself, the worry about extra calories didn't actually cross my mind. But with a mother and a sister who have likely never even heard of fat acceptance (no, I haven't brought it up, as that's a longer conversation than I feel up to having this early on), I was quite aware of that concern.

I came through more or less intact, but with New Year's and the accompanying resolutions yet to come, I know I'm not out of the woods yet. If anyone reading this has any tips to stay positive during this time of year, drop me a comment and let me know!

Calling Olsen, calling Memphis, I am calling, can you hear this?

So, as I mentioned, my sister's birthday was Saturday. Since we were going to the mall for pedicures anyway, and my bra was very clearly not fitting anymore, I decided that while she was getting her makeup done I would go to Lane Bryant and get some new bras. (Which I did, and oh dear lord, the difference is MIRACULOUS. I am wearing the one that didn't have to get shipped to me right now. Let me tell you, if it were possible to legally marry a piece of clothing, this bra might be it for me.) On the surface, this sounds like a simple enough thing. In reality, though, I knew before we even left the house what would happen, which was that I would walk into the store and either go, "Ugh, everything in here sucks," or else I'd find fifteen to twenty other things to try on. And since I've gone in one too many times thinking, "Oh, that's cute, I'll come back and try it on later," only to find when I do go back in that it is gone forever. This makes me a sad panda. So going in, I knew there was a good chance I'd be trying on clothes.

Thus, the day was already going to be stressful before the Evening Out even began. Because yes, shopping for clothes can be lots of fun, but it can also be absolutely horrifying. There's nothing quite like standing in a tiny room, all of a foot and a half away from the mirror, and trying on item after item that were clearly not designed with you in mind, to completely wreck your self-confidence. It's entirely too easy to see a shirt that looks absolutely adorable on the hanger, get it on only to find that it makes you look like you're pregnant or makes your arms look like a mad Dr. Frankenstein's mistakenly sewn a pair of legs in their place, and immediately start blaming your body. It was incredibly cute on the mannequin, after all; the problem is clearly you.

When this happens once, it's reasonably easy to push it aside. When it happens twice, it starts getting more difficult. When it happens with everything you try on (and yes, I have gone into a dressing room with three armloads of clothes only to come out with nothing) it's fucking devastating.

This shopping trip, as it turned out, was pretty much ideal. I tried on several things, and enough fit to make me feel good and confident and attractive; enough didn't fit, or didn't fit quite right, to keep me from spending way more money than I actually needed to. When something didn't fit, instead of dwelling on the parts of me it didn't flatter, I shrugged, decided it wasn't for me, and moved on.

It sounds simple, doesn't it? It's not. It was really fucking hard. For example, I tried on a pair of leggings that I pretty much already knew weren't going to work, because I figured "Why not?" They managed to highlight pretty much everything I dislike about my legs, and I barely got them all the way on before whipping them back off again. I got that sinking feeling in my gut that happens whenever a part of my body I particularly dislike is thrown into sharp relief. It would have been incredibly easy to let that feeling take me over, to spend the rest of the time looking at my thighs whenever I tried something else on and knowing that they were there, under my jeans, fat and lumpy and ugly. Instead I took a deep (mostly mental) breath and thought, Okay, maybe super-thin, skin-tight leggings aren't designed to flatter me. I just won't wear them. I moved on, and while I still have that image sort of burned into my brain (I've made progress, but I still have a long way to go, body/fat acceptance-wise) I don't find my eyes automatically drawn to or repelled from my thighs when I look in the mirror.

(Okay, I'm going to derail for a moment here to ask: does anyone else remember, in the eighties/early nineties, when "leggings" meant a pair of pants that were sort of thin and stretchy but not, y'know, TIGHTS? What happened there? Seriously.)

So the first hurdle of the day was cleared, and I got some new clothes, including some bras that make my boobs look FANTASTIC. For real, y'all. It's sort of epic. Plus I had soft feet and toes painted a pretty dark blue, and everything was going rather well.

But I still had to get through the part of the day that was tying my stomach into knots whenever I thought about it.

To explain this, it's first necessary for you to realize that though I love my sister dearly dearly dearly, we are two very different people.

I am, quite literally, a Big Damn Geek. I prefer to read books in the Sci-Fi/Fantasy genre; I have held discussions on why that entire genre should probably be more accurately titled Speculative Fiction; I play D&D; I am a Trekkie/Trekker/whatever the hell you want to call it, so clearly I'm not as fanatical as some because I really don't give a damn about the word itself; I read and write fanfic. (Shut up.) I also tend to be--and this may be somewhat unexpected, coming from someone who's decided to start her own blog and toss her opinions out into the often uncaring and hostile land of the internet--extremely introverted.

My sister, on the other hand, has always been one of the Popular Girls. She played soccer and was a cheerleader in high school. She was in a sorority in college. She just finished with esthetics school. (She is also a lovely, warm, wonderful person, and the reason why I will lay a heap of righteous vengeance on anyone who wants to categorically slam cheerleaders, sorority girls, and/or estheticians or cosmetologists. Fair warning.) Her friends are the same type of people; traditionally popular, attractive, and outgoing.

I have never had a bad experience with one of my sister's friends. But I have had bad experiences with people who fit into many of the same categories that they do, and my fear of social situations entirely surrounded by people like that borders on instinctive.

I wasn't afraid of being badly treated, or condescended to, or anything like that. What made me nervous was, quite simply, being out with a group of these women and having to eat in front of them.

I want to say that it's a ridiculous fear to have. I really, really want to. But based on my past experiences, I can emphatically say that it's not ridiculous. What it is, is infuriating. I am a human being. I need food to . . . what was that thing called . . . oh right, live. It's infuriating to me that our society conditions people (female-type people, in particular) to see food as dangerous, as an indulgence, as a handy moral yardstick. As a fat girl, I've spent more years than I care to count carefully monitoring not only my own public food consumption, but how it measured compared to that of every other person in the room. I have turned down food when I was hungry because I didn't want to wonder if I was being judged for saying yes. I've waited to get food until someone thinner than me did, and very carefully gotten only as much as they did, maximum. I've lived terrified to put anything in my mouth in public that wasn't a) liquid, b) visibly non/low-fat, or c) such a tiny amount that I thought it couldn't reasonably effect other people's opinions.

One of the most important things that I'm learning from fat acceptance and demand eating is the ability to say the following phrase. Are you paying attention? This is important. Ready? Okay.

FUCK. THAT.

I've already said it above, but I'll say it again in more inclusive language: We need food to live. Food is not a basis for moral judgment. It's fuel, and it's pleasure, and it's just fucking food. One of the hardest things I'm having to learn is how to actually listen to my body, to accept when I'm hungry and try to work out what it is I'm hungry for. And since I've started, guess what? I'm eating lots of fresh fruit. I'm starting to be able to recognize when I need protein, and when I need carbs, and when I need vitamins, and when I need calcium. I'm also enjoying food more. I accept it when I really, really want a bunch of fresh grapes. I also accept it when I really, really want some macaroni and cheese. This doesn't mean that I don't stop and think and question whether these are things I really do want. But if I decide that yes, my interpretation of what my body's trying to tell me is spot-on, I don't then try to talk myself out of what I want on the grounds that it's fatty or mostly carbs or a goddamned sometimes food.

So when I went out with my sister's friends (all of whom, in addition to being lovely and extroverted, are also quite thin, and I believe three of the four are on Weight Watchers right now), I took a careful look at the menu, took the time to think about what sounded good and what I thought would really satisfy me. I ordered a salad (switched from a house to a Caesar at the last minute because it sounded better, and resulted in me eating the whole thing rather than half or less) and an entree and dessert. I only ate a few bites of the latter, not because I was afraid of what people would think but because that was all I really wanted. And, it should be noted, I ordered the exact same amount of food as my sister despite having ordered first.

Now, I'm sure there's someone out there who's remembering the having fat friends makes you fat "study" and is triumphantly calling out, "Aha! See? She was influenced by your ordering ridiculous amounts of food, and now she's going to get fat and miserable and it will be all your fault." I have two main problems with that. First, I believe that my sister is smarter than that. Second, there were four other thin women there. Even assuming that their body type wasn't the one she consciously wanted to emulate, they outnumbered me four to one. (Five, if you count my sister.) The odds were so stacked against my influence that it would be a ridiculous assumption to make. I'm going to assume, therefore, that you're all too smart for that, as well.

The point here, which I seem to have gotten distracted from making, is that I went out, I was confident in my own choices, and I had fun. Granted, this was a very different environment than if these women had all been strangers who hadn't been pre-screened by my sister for non-douchery. Still, it was a step in the right direction.

If there's anyone out there reading, tell me about your own small steps. What have you done lately that's made you proud of yourself?

A day full of challenges

Today is my sister's birthday. Hooray, big sister! ^_^

She and my mom and I are about to head out to get pedicures (because my sister is definitely, unquestionably a girly girl), so I don't quite have time for a full post about all the reasons I'm apprehensive about today. I'll get to that later, probably after the fact, and break it all down for you. For now, I'll just mention my goals for today:

1. When shopping for clothes (I seriously need a new bra, if nothing else), I will not say things like, "I don't have the legs for that dress" or "My arms don't look good in this top." If something does not fit, or does not flatter me, I will instead say, "That dress does not flatter my legs" or "This top is not right for my arms." It's something I need to be better at: shifting the blame away from my body and onto the real issue, which is clothing that was not specifically designed with me in mind.
2. I will not assume that just because my sister and her friends look hot (which I'm certain they will), and I do not look like them, that I am therefore not hot, myself. I will remind myself that there are all different kinds of pretty in the world, and that damn it, I am one of them.
3. I will not drink so much that I can not drive us home after dinner.