Today while I was cashiering at my grocery story, a kind gentleman came through and tried to conspire jovially with me. He pointed to a magazine, purported to be a Healthy magazine, with a thin woman on the cover.
"Look at this!" He cried while I rung up his groceries, "Does she look healthy? It's sick! She's a skeleton!" I smiled kindly without engaging, neither agreeing nor disagreeing. A few things were happening in that moment, and it has taken me half the day to unpack it.
For one, the woman on the cover of the magazine was Giada de Laurentiis, a chef who I don't particularly like except for the fact that her recipes are sometimes really tasty. She's petite, she's Italian, she cooks for a living. The stress of that lifestyle, compacted by the stress of now being a celebrity chef (an a "sexy, skinny" one at that) are unimaginable. Most professional chefs suffer from overwork, alcoholism, poor eating habits, and myriad health problems. It is very easy to gain weight in a stressful kitchen.
Celebrity women, on the other hand, are required to be skinny and boney in order to be appealling. When they aren't, a great deal of attention is drawn to their avant garde, sometimes "political" statements (Adele, Christina Hendricks). Regardless of the shape of their body, it appears that we care first and foremost about their bodies. Even when these women struggle to keep their bodies sane, we critique their lines, puffy eyes, potential surgeries, and choice not to wear make-up during an errand. It is very easy for these women to suffer eating disorders.
I don't know Giada di Laurentiis personally, but I am sure that there is nothing she could do with her weight to satisfy everyone. To someone, she will always be too fat. To this man, she was too skinny.
I felt like he was personally attacking the woman on the magazine cover, not the publicists, photographers, or directors of that magazine. I'm no longer obese and I no longer pull the gaze of a room to my size, but I am still wary of how our society treats "fat" people. I'm not skinny either (though I think I'm plenty skinny) and so I think this man, also because of our circumstances, felt safe confiding in me that this woman was anorexically thin. Perhaps he felt I would agree with him, that as a woman I was tired of seeing all these skinny girls in their skinny jeans all over the media.
In that situation, my customer was blaming the women for being too thin and he was taking advantage of my position of service to agree with him (I cannot possible begin any true argument with a customer. I can be honest, have good conversations, and nod knowingly but in the end, you are still my customer and I still represent a company to you. I am no longer myself).
When I first re-wrote the Twilight series for myself, I re-contextualized Bella as fat. It was fantastic and liberating. I am still so proud of that work of fan fiction, even though I insisted on following the decrepit scaffolding of an inept writer. In the past ten years I have spent my waking consciousness becoming aware of the stories and oppression of my brothers and sisters. Every day I give thanks for being born a fat female, because without these two "knocks" against me I might have simply floated along in my white, middle-class American privilege. Only when I felt the first slap of judgment on my own body, only when I strained against the invisible binds of my so-called gender, did I find a language which would later become invaluable to me.
Mitt Romney will never be able to read Toni Morrison because he just can't relate.
When I began to notice the subtle and insidious nature of sexism and fat-shaming, I inherited a vocabulary. Later, when reading stories about racism, homophobia, gender normativity, and other restrictive labeling, I recognized some of the vocabulary and some of the experiences. This allowed me to give authority to those stories, and once they had authority I could really, truly listen. Because I finally believed them.
I wanted to write a story that would help with that, one which would pass on the vocabulary and allow others to open up to similar experiences of oppressed brethren. I don't know what it is like to be castigated for being underweight, I do not know what it is like to actually be anorexic or bulemic, but I am keenly aware of what it is like to be judged by my body first. I am daily aware that as a woman I am flesh first, sex second, and much further down the line (sometimes never) an autonomous being. I have been able (and still continue) to use that experience to empathize with others. Recently the challenge has been to recognize where I have been complicit in my own oppression as well as that of my brethren. And I hate to tell you this, but we are all complicit.
I chose to be complicit when I kept my job and my representation of the company rather than explaining to the man that he was again judging a woman by her body. I let him go without passing on the vocabulary or trying to share the experience. I would make the same decision again, but I have to live with the fact that somewhere, that man thinks I truly agreed with him.
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