Saturday 2 March 2013

Thanks To Twiggy I'm An Old Fashioned Girl

Title of Post taken from this song-Twiggy from A Slice of Saturday Night-a fab musical set in a nightclub in the 60s. This song is sung by an overweight, insecure character. 

I get inspiration for my blog posts in all sorts of places, most often train stations when I don't have a pen, but not always, thankfully. The inspiration for this blog came from this video by Those Pesky Dames-awesome feminist ladies talking about important stuff on the internet. (Forgive me for not embedding it into my post  but it felt a little bit cheeky as I didn't make it.)
Before I begin I would like to make a couple of disclaimers:
  • This is in no way me hating on the Dames, I have a lot of respect and admiration for those ladies and think they speak a lot of sense and talk about a lot of important things. Whilst I can't say I watch every video, the ones I have seen have seemed very well put together and thought out, and are a good way for baby feminists like me to learn more about stuff that I might never have even thought about before. I think they're pretty awesome really.
  • Secondly I know that the video I have linked to is a very personal account and I have no intention of criticising or judging those personal issues. This is not intended to be a personal attack on her or any of the other Dames, and overall I completely agree with the content of the video, it's just a few niggly bits that drew my attention and made me a bit cross.
In case you don't want to watch the video, it outlines a personal account of dealing with body confidence and weight issues and talks about how that links to feminism and the reasons why she thinks that its currently on her mind. The message behind it is that women need to stop shaming themselves and others about their body size, about their eating habits, about the way they look or the size of clothes that they wear (which, lets face it, doesn't tell you a whole heap anyway!), which is a message I fully support-people should love their bodies a little more and care less about what they look like and how others judge them. 

My problem comes from the phrasing of a couple of key sentences that she uses:

"...you're human and you have tissue, and skin, and muscles and hair, that's just like a human body!..."
"...we're all just made up of "body things", fleshy things-we're fleshy creatures, we're bony creatures and cartilagey creatures..."

because I noticed that she never uses the word 'fat' at all, and it struck me as rather odd. If you're essentially describing humans as tissue and hair and cartilage it feels weird to me that you wouldn't use the word fat as well. 
I mean, let's face it, unless you're severely malnourished you have fat. Everyone has fat. Yes, some people have more of it, some people have less of it. Some people have it in different places than other people. Some people have a more socially acceptable distribution of that fat and some less so. But everybody has it. Some people are happy with the fact that they have fat, while others are desperately unhappy about it. 

Personally, I don't think that vilifying the word FAT solves any problems. I don't think omitting it from a description of "what normal people essentially are" helps anyone to accept the fact that people have fat and that is perfectly fine. I totally agree that people, women in particular, need to stop being ashamed because their bodies don't fit the presented norm, and also need to stop shaming other people who don't either. Judging someone because they're fat or feeling relieved that you're slimmer is pretty horrible really, it's just a body-and it's not yours to judge or to care about anyway. Having fat or being fat doesn't stop you from feeling self-confident, from being beautiful, from being loved, from being happy! (Although aren't we always shown that this is not the case?)

I'm always amused when I say something to my friends along the lines of "I'm fat but..." or whatever it might be and they respond with contradictions: "Oh no, you're not fat, don't be silly". Are they even looking at me? Hell yeah I'm fat, fat and fabulous. I'm not using it as a negative word, as an attention seeking word, I'm using it as an adjective to describe my body shape. Yeah, I'm curvy. Curvy and fat. I've not got a pillow stuffed up my jumper, what do they think is under my skin?

I just really like the negative connotations that are all put under the heading of 'FAT', when it's just another way society tells a woman (in particular, but men too) that she can't be beautiful. So I would like to add to the message in the video:
We're all humans. We're all different. We're bags of skin and muscle and bone and hair and FAT. Whatever your size is you have no more or less reasons to be ashamed of your body than anyone else in the world. Stop judging other people-and yourself-by the number printed in the back of your jeans and don't be scared of the word fat, of being called fat. If you want to be fat and happy then do so (Like me!) because there are worse things in life you could be. Having fat is not a reason to hate your body, and it's certainly no reason not to think of yourself as beautiful, but hating this fact of life is never going to let you love yourself as much as you should.

"Let's all eat and not feel ashamed and just be happy with each other." WHATEVER our shape and sizes are.

-Jenni-

3 comments:

  1. Good post! I totally agree that people shouldn't be so shy around the word fat--like you said, it's a descriptive word after all. And by purposely leaving it out, were giving it negative power. Keep blogging!

    ReplyDelete
  2. I see and agree with your opinion, though scientists like myself would much rather point out the fact that fat counts as "tissue".

    I do think that as long as one lives a healthy lifestyle, fat is irrelevant. I DON'T believe in promoting "fat" just because there are some whose health is in no condition to benefit from their embracing of their current bodies. They can embrace themselves in all other aspects, to enable them to live a healthier life.

    ReplyDelete
  3. since having kids, I gain wait in my stomach area so I can look a good five months prego. But lately I'm stressed enough that I don't eat so you can't tell that I'm (Not?) really pregnant (I'm not. Id' be a miracle 50 mom), so I've lost some tummy. Stress yourself out to lose weight unless stress leads you instead to the bag of chips. Nevermind.

    ReplyDelete

Don't be shy, say hello!