Is this really the revolution?

In a nutshell, fat-acceptance is the idea that shaming people for the size or shape they are is Not Ok. And not going to make anyone any healthier or thinner. And also that size isn't the same as health. Fat-acceptance is closely connected to the idea of "Health At Every Size", which is the claim that health is best promoted not by pursuing a particular body size or shape, but rather by promoting healthy eating habits (not diets), regular exercise, etc, in a size-neutral manner. For more information on these ideas, check out the Shapely Prose Archive.

In this society we're brought up with massive pressures to be a certain size and shape, and for many people the psychological and medical consequences of that pressure are extremely serious. As well as shaming people for their bodies, it's not unreasonable to suggest that these pressures may contribute to eating disorders and other mental health issues and low self-esteem, as well as a number of physical health issues associated with dieting, or sudden weight gain/loss. As many people have remarked, this pressure is gendered. That's not to say that men do not experience body image issues -- of course they do. But rather that the standards to which women are held are often much more stringent, and more rigidly policed.

How to challenge these pressures is a difficult issue. But something I doubt very much will ever present an effective challenge is the practice of companies to who make a profit off of women's insecurities about their bodies. They may claim to care about self-esteem, but present no real challenge to the dominant narrative that causes those insecurities.

Don't get me wrong, I think it is important that companies have a sense of corporate responsibility. But The Body Shop's well-being campaign video explicitly holds that self esteem well-being is about "looking good" (sorry, no transcript because I can't work out how to replay bits of the video while transcribing). The Dove Campaign for Real Beauty shows a bunch of women in bras and underpants, because, um, apparently real beauty means being able to be objectified in order to sell more soap? Or something.

Feminist blogger Hugo Schwyzer has recently been promoting the Healthy is the New Skinny project, in which he is a participant. It's a project that aims to change the fashion industry to promote better self esteem and healthier body image in young women. Which sounds great, right? ...At least until you read the posts about why you should try eyelash extensions, some diet tips, and how fat is inherently bad. What part of telling women their bodies need improvement, need to be skinnier and prettier, is promoting healthy body image? What part of this is challenging the dominant pressures on women to be a particular size and shape?

There's a lot of room for feminists to disagree about what our response should be to these projects. Should we be involved in them, as Hugo Schwyzer is, trying to change them for the better? Should we condemn the projects and have nothing to do with them? Should we try to work on genuinely new projects that really do promote health at every size and fat-acceptance? Are there other options? Maybe it's not so straightforward -- I still remember Ruby, the "rubenesque" Barbie, made by The Body Shop, and how much people talked about the effect of Barbie on girls' body image when presented with Ruby's image.

But still, my own view is that as long as "body acceptance" campaigns are driven by the message that women should want to make themselves thinner, prettier, sexier, what we'll get is not self-esteem, but the same harmful messages that tell women that they are not good enough. That their bodies are not good enough. When those approaches are tied to commercial interests -- specifically, encouraging women to buy more fashion products in order to become skinnier, prettier, etc, then we run the risk of exploiting body image worries for profit. That's no revolution. A strong campaign for health at every size and fat-acceptance, though, I would like to see.

Thoughts?

--IP

Fat Talk Free Week

So apparently, it's Fat Talk Free Week. The aim is to shift towards a more constructive dialogue on body image, in order to challenge eating disorders and other harmful consequences of people being socialised to be dissatisfied with their bodies. So for Fat Talk Free Week, the idea is that you pledge not to engage in "fat talk" -- that is, in talk that reinforces the ultimately damaging idea that there is a "right" size and look. The webpage describes "fat talk" as:

Examples of fat talk may include: “I’m so fat,” “Do I look fat in this?” “I need to lose 10 pounds” and “She’s too fat to be wearing that swimsuit.” Statements that are considered fat talk don’t necessarily have to be negative; they can seem positive yet also reinforce the need to be thin – “You look great! Have you lost weight?”

This sounds just amazing, y'all. I'm totally signing up.

--IP

hair.

Hair or no hair, how much hair, what to do with it, what is read as good or bad hair - it's a never ending story. I cut my hair off a couple of weeks ago. It's great. But it's no big deal. For me, that is.

For other people, my hair seems to be traumatic. I have no other explanation for the e-mail I received from a friend. We went to school together, we're not very close (anymore), but she definitely qualifies as a friend. She informed me that she had noticed my short hair in my fb profile picture and wanted to know why I'd done that. My long hair was so pretty, she said, it had always looked so nice. There was no need to cut it off. I should have just changed the colour, that would have been a new look, but still feminine. Seriously, that's what she said. It was the first time I'd heard from her in months. I really wasn't expecting to be policed in this way by people who have known me for most of my life. Actually, I wasn't expecting be policed in this way by anyone. What she hoped to achieve with that e-mail is also a bit of a mystery to me. Sometimes, I forget how deeply most people seem to have internalised mainstream beauty standards. I'm not sure whether to be amused or annoyed. Might settle for both.

De-alienating bodies

The National Health Service informs me that 7 out of 10 people experience lower back pain at some point in their lives. 7 out of 10. I had no idea it was that many. In my line of work, it's extended sitting-still-time that can exacerbate conditions like these. So here we are, the majority of academics, who would benefit from the occasional stretch, but the work environment is such that those who do attract a lot of attention. It's a Big Deal to deviate from the norm by standing up. We think it's the management, not the institutional structures, that are the "choice".

So I can understand why people might be unable to stretch in meetings, and I don't want this post to be read as a criticism of the management strategies of people who can't negotiate their work environment in this way. For a really long time I felt awful and awkward standing. And obviously, lots of people can't stand up. The issue isn't the standing up itself, but rather inhabiting bodies in a different way, and using my body differently just happened to be how it happened for me.

I found
I like it.

I'm so used to thinking I mustn't be seen, mustn't be in the way, mustn't take up space, mustn't be a size 12, mustn't be needy, mustn't make my needs obvious, mustn't get angry, mustn't have a body that does messy feminine things, mustn't, mustn't, mustn't.

Stand up straight, and you can breathe longer, deeper breaths -- inhale the fire of your belly and push it into words -- and when you're breathing like that, you can talk a lot louder with virtually no effort. When you breathe like that you can feel the breath in your fingers, in the space between your cartilage, in your words, in your toes that are like roots

sucking up more
more
more
I'm still hungry
for all these words.

Projection. That's what it's called: when we get all the voice in our bodies and make words.

These questions don't just come from my mouth anymore, they come right out of the soles of my feet, out of the roots of my hair. It's not my mouth talking now, it's my whole body.

(When you're wrong, be wrong with conviction (but open to the new). When you're right, be right with hunger for more knowledge. Be hungry for more with your whole body.)

Turns out I like being louder. Well, being loud enough, anyway. That's all part of these words coming out of my belly, which is all full of voice.

I take up space in the world. This space, here, where I'm standing. This is the space I take up in the world. This is mine, just like these words are mine. They are both created by me.

I am my own method of production. De-alienated. This is the space I take up in the world. I didn't always know that.

--IP

[Cross-posted at Modus Dopens]

Bodies, essentialism and the shock factor - some thoughts on Femstruation week.

A note before I start... I come from a socialist background, where it's totally normal to write this kind of article – newspapers will usually publish critiques of themselves, and the atmosphere in discussion means that it's OK to do constructive criticism, (usually) without anyone taking it personally. I'm very aware that feminism in Edinburgh doesn't really have that same culture, particularly anarchafeminism,because it's based on more ad hoc groups, and doesn't really have the structure or media for it. My instinct when I realised just how uncomfortable I was with Femstruation week was to write it down, but I just wanted to write this proviso first: I write this out of respect – because I have huge respect for the organisers, and because feminism is a really big deal for me. This is not a personal attack, and the reason that I feel the need to write it is because it was so impressively organised, and the organisers so passionate and dedicated, that I think that it would do them a disservice not to write it. The point of it is to spark some discussion, so please comment!

Femstruation week was, as it was described to me, about breaking taboos around menstruation. The idea is that none of us should feel embarrassed or uncomfortable about our periods, and that we should all be comfortable with the fact that we bleed once a month, knowledgeable about how it works, and able to take care of ourselves effectively. It took the form of a series of workshops, art exhibitions and performance-orientated events. Their blog is here.

I guess my first question was, why a whole week? I agree that none of us should be freaked out by our periods, and that it would be nice not to have to whisper when asking to borrow a tampon, or, in my case, have people look at me like I'm crazy if I wash out my mooncup in a public bathroom. But the idea of a whole week seemed kind of strange to me. Why put all this effort into taboos about one bodily function when there are so many terrifying issues to be dealt with by feminism? I have to say, my period is not the worst thing about being female-bodied – the unfair pay; the possibility of domestic violence and rape; hell, even just being taken less seriously – they bother me much more. So I guess what I'm saying is, I'm all for these stated goals, but I wasn't sure why there had to be a whole week on them. Why not hold a week of feminist events, or even on a topic like body image, and have a day on menstruation?

As the planning process went on, though, I started to notice a different emphasis going on: the idea of celebrating being a women via menstruation. If this was that goal, then a week makes more sense – but this is the idea that makes me uncomfortable. I'm not sure that I want to celebrate being a woman as such. I mean, I'm not ashamed of it, and I damn well think that I'm as good as any male bodied person, but my aim is to get rid of the idea that we're defined by the sex that society has assigned us, not to perpetuate essentialist ideas about what it means to be a woman. I think the thing to celebrate is all the possibilties that we have, rather than any particular formation of femininity.

I think that maybe Femstruation week did end up essentialisng women, defining “woman” as“someone who menstruates”. On the one hand, this is exclusive because not everyone who is female bodied menstruates – pre-pubescent girls, people who've has the contraceptive injection, post-menopausal women, people with polycystic ovaries or another condition that means they don't menstruate. On the other hand (and as a queer person I think that this is a huge deal), it completely ignores those who identify as a woman without being female bodied, and those who are female bodied, but do not identify as a woman. This excludes a huge number of people who should be engaged with feminism, and it marginalises and alienates people who are already sidelined by society.

This idea comes dangerously close to defining women as mothers, as fertile, as closer to nature. While motherhood is brave and important, and while I value my fertility, our feminist forebears put a lot of effort into making sure the we precisely weren't defined as this. (And as for being closer to nature, I think men should probably be closer to nature as well, what with the threat from climate change.) What our bodies are like shouldn't define who we have to be. While I think it's important that the activities that have been traditionally devalued as female (like baking, or cleaning, or looking after kids) are appreciated for the necessities that they are, the clusters of actions and expressions that society has assigned the name “female” to are not essentially tied to our wombs; the ties are breakable, and I spend a lot of time trying to cut them. All genders should be able to be mechanics or nursery nurses depending on what they fancy doing; and all genders should pull their weight when it comes to childcare and cleaning and thinking about nature too.

I think that all this is worthy of discussion, for sure. It's true that we're made to feel rubbish about our bodies sometimes, but menstruation is by no means the only thing that's an issue. What's more, it's a topic that needs careful handling, in that shame is a pretty powerful emotion – if we're being made to feel ashamed of our bodies by society, we have to be careful about how we present discussions on that, to negotiate this feeling rather than just bulldozing it, because it's not so easily avoidable. I think that the explicitness of a lot of the art and publicity probably made people feel uncomfortable rather than engaging with them, and I object to playing with people's feelings for shock value. I think that, because of this, Femstruation week ended up attracting people who already feel relatively ok with their bodies. It became a celebration by these people of the way that they experience their womanhood, which is fine – but I'm not sure how radical that really is. For me, feminism is about reaching out and engaging people, and affecting change. The scope of Femstruation week was limited to a relatively exclusive set of people, and while it was fun in a lot of ways, it was a real shame that it couldn't engage a wider variety of people in discussion and activism.