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.

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?

Children can be cruel (though they're not the only ones)

As I mentioned earlier, part of this blog's purpose is to help me come to terms with some of my own issues. Sort of like a public therapy session, only without a licensed therapist and really just me talking and okay, so it's really not like a therapy session at all. Erm. Still, I have Things To Say and memories to rehash and work through and this is where I'm gonna do it. This is me checking some of my emotional baggage, so that I can deal with it and move on.

It's not going to be easy, but I'm going to do my best to be open and honest. I encourage you to do the same: if you have a story you want to share, leave a comment. (Or, if I can ever overcome my technology fail and figure out how to add a link to the sidebar, you can email me.)

Today I'm going to talk about elementary school.

I hated it. I mean, absolutely loathed it. Why? You know how most everyone remembers middle school as this two-(or three-)year stretch of unending torture and humiliation? That was elementary school for me. (By contrast, I actually rather enjoyed middle school. What, puberty, you think you can damage my self-esteem any further? You got NOTHIN'. BRING IT.) I theorize that this isn't because people become less cruel as they grow older, but because at that age most children have yet to develop their internal censors that keep them from actually saying what they're thinking out loud.

As a fat child ("Fat"? "Heavy"? Whatever the technically accurate term may have been, I was bigger than my peers and that was what mattered.) I'd always been teased. I hated my school uniform because . . . well, okay, mostly because it was hideous, but partially because the default uniform for girls involved some sort of skirt, and I was ashamed of exposing my legs. To put this in perspective for you: I attended that school through third grade. At younger than nine years old, I was ashamed of letting people see my fat legs.

One more time: I was ashamed of my body before I was nine years old. What the everloving fuck?

And the thing is, because I was ashamed of myself, I moved as little as possible. If you get called Thunder Thighs and hear earthquake and elephant and hippo jokes and people tell you the sight of you makes them sick; if you hear this every time you run, guess what? You stop running. You try to keep yourself still so you don't jiggle, don't draw attention to yourself. I was like some poor defenseless woodland creature, trying to become invisible* in the hopes that those predatory eyes would skate right over me. Of course, in the process, I'd stopped moving. And the longer that went on, the less easily I could move, which made me more inclined to hide, and the cycle continued. When I was little, I would move for the sheer pleasure of it, for the amazement of Look what my body can do! Isn't that cool? It's so cool! Then came shame, and then habit, until now I don't really move any more than absolutely necessary. (Though I do want to go roller skating. How does a college town not have a roller rink? I call shenanigans!)

In any case, things already pretty much sucked but weren't horrible until fourth grade, when we moved. I don't know why; maybe it was the shift from living mid-city to living in a much higher-income suburb. Maybe it was the combination of being fat and the new girl all at once. But for whatever reason, for that entire first year every day felt like running a gauntlet of insults and cruelty and sneering contempt. I had friends, yes, but they were the other childhood outcasts: girls who were smarter than average, or socially awkward, or not as well-off financially. Against the pretty and popular and rich we had no defense. And I was, if you'll pardon the pun, the biggest target of all. After all, I was all of those things and new, and fat. It was like shooting fish in a barrel.

The entirety of elementary school was more or less like that, but things started to improve a bit in fifth and sixth grade. Not because my fat became more acceptable--there were still insults, and jokes, and pranks. Mostly, I think, the novelty simply wore off. But one thing that did happen was a shift in my own behavior and attitude. I remember discovering, at some point in the fifth grade, that acting as though I was less made me more socially accepted. I was smart, but if I downplayed that by keeping my hand down more often than not and occasionally playing up not understanding things, my intelligence wasn't threatening. If I made it clear that I didn't expect anyone to find me attractive, my appearance was more likely to get a pass. If I sat down and shut up and did all the work in group projects with a smile and protested that I didn't understand, I didn't expect, I didn't want, then people would allow me to simply exist. And the worst thing about that wasn't that it worked. No, the really, truly horrible thing? I felt like I was getting a good deal. I was grateful.

I shouldn't have been grateful. I should have been furious. It was like I thought I had to compensate for my big body by making the rest of me as small as possible. How much of that was due to things that actually happened, and how much was due to what I thought would happen, what I thought people would think . . . honestly, I have no idea. But I look back now and I'm incensed for the little girl that I was, the one who was never so happy as when she was completely invisible because nothing good could possibly come of being noticed. How much more could I have accomplished if my weight had simply passed without comment? How much more would I have moved? How much healthier would I have been?

I don't know. I'll never know. And maybe it's useless to rehash and wonder about things that you can't change, even if you had a TARDIS because we all saw how that went, right? There's one thing I do know, though: what I went through isn't unique. And sometimes it helps just to know you're not alone. If you want to, tell me your story.







*Looking back on it, I'm surprised at how deep this fantasy went. When I'd daydream about the cute boy in class asking me out (We all did, right? Unless you were into girls, but I imagine there was a correlating fantasy there.) I'd slipped away from a party to be by myself and he'd found me out there. I distinctly remember having one of these daydreams leading up to our sixth grade graduation party. Would I have been allowed to slip off by myself? Hell no. But in my mind I could do it, because no one would notice I was gone. This was an integral part of the fantasy, allowing my crush to see me while remaining invisible and unnoticed by everyone else.