Friday, September 3, 2010

Would A Rose By Any Other Name Smell As Misogynist?


Okay, so. Rosie. We need to talk. On Facebook, you liked a group called Curvy girls do it better... only a dog wants a bone! By "needing to talk" I mean that I need write a blog post about this page that you clicked, probably mindlessly while you were at work or something. A blog post that you will most likely never read because we haven't talked since high school and because you have probably moved on to much loftier things in life than trawling your Facebook news feed like a pedant. But anyway.

Firstly, everybody 'wants a bone'. Or like, they want 206 bones because that is how many bones adult human beings have. If you want less bones than that, you might be a pedophile. If you don't want a bone at all, then you probably want to fuck an octopus. Yes, I realise that this group is actually just using the term 'bone' as an attack on thin women. We'll get to that. I just wanted to get my little quip about the octopus out of the way.

wantsabone

Secondly, curvy girls do WHAT better exactly? Write poetry? Swim triathlons? Make spinach and ricotta cannelloni? Oh. Right. I get it. They FUCK better. Because at the end of the day women are sexual objects. And the key word here is objects and not sexual, because this Facebook group is not about the innate power of female sexuality or even about masturbation. I wish it was, but it is about validating your body shape by your ability to fuck. Which is what counts, right, because women everywhere get paid less than men do and it doesn't even matter because a lady is always going to be defined by who and how and when and why and how often she fucks, and whether she gets paid for it and whether she is married and by what she does with the baby if she gets pregnant. And because the patriarchy hurts everyone, not just women, and if you are a straight man you best be putting on a show that you care most about the fucking and not about her poems or her cannelloni. This might be a generalisation, sure, but we have got to learn how to make positive statements about bodies without talking about how they are going to be shared by somebody else.

Thirdly, saying nasty things about thin women's bodies only justifies every single cruel thing that has ever been said about fat women. Loving your body does not have to be, and nor should it be, a competition. Because then nobody wins, apart from psychotherapists. And possibly Jenny Craig. Comparing thin women to 'bones' and the people who fuck them to 'dogs' just validates sizeism. It validates my being called a 'fat bitch' in the street that one time and it validates the pithy existence of the term 'chubby chaser'. Attacking men who like thin women just gives them the power to attack the sexual preferences of others, rather than something interesting like their political beliefs or whether or not they think Tony Soprano actually died at the end of the series. I know this is like the letter to James again, but there have got to be ways of being body positive without tearing other women down.This is not about whether or not it is okay to express your sexual preferences in a public forum, it is about body-fucking-solidarity. Fat acceptance is body acceptance. It is about accepting each and every body in its own right, no matter what it looks like or what gender it is or what colour or whether it fits into some kind of narrow societal mold of appropriate ability. Glorifying fat bodies through the vilification of thin ones only celebrates and cements a culture of body shame.


8 comments:

  1. Did you know that I love you dearly?? Or that I've read every single post just now???

    Let's never be apart again <3

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  2. Hello, I've read several of your posts now, and just thought I'd mention that I quite liked them. Thoughtful, yet angry, which has always been a favourite of mine. Thank you for sharing.

    (children actually have more bones than adults - some fuse as we get older - but you said fewer, not less, so all is forgiven)

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  3. Gosh, Oliver. Thanks for the backhanded compliment, Ha. I quite liked it, I guess.

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  4. just discovered your blog and wish i had done so earlier. i feel like this article said all the things i think but never quite put into words, and i probably would not have been able to do so as well as you did. i live in a place that (i feel) has the lowest level of body acceptance in all California and i look to the internet for support and reassurance of my self esteem almost everyday and you're blog is helping me do that. :)

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  5. Thank you so much Amanda! It is actually comments like yours that remind me why I love blogging about this stuff. We have got to be a community! Good luck on your personal journey! If you have a Tumblr there is a pretty awesome fat acceptance community on there, and a Fat Follow Friday has just been started up.

    http://melasaurus.tumblr.com/post/1374667893/fat-follow-friday

    xxx

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