Tag Archives: Fat is a feminist issue

NEWSFLASH! Fat People Get Pregnant, Need Clothes

NEWSFLASH!

Fat People Get Pregnant, Need Clothes

Manufacturers and local retailers incredulous

Portland, OR — It is supposed to be the “happiest time in a woman’s life”1, but for Portland resident and fat pregnant woman Arwyn Arising2, it has proved to be a time marked by frustration and frumpy clothes.

“Sure, there are plenty of fat chick clothing stores in the area — from national chains like Lane Bryant to upscale boutiques like Magical Creations to trendy thrift stores like Fat Fancy — and there are all the usual pregnancy clothing stores, but do any of the above stock maternity clothing that will fit someone like me? Not that I’ve found,” said Arising.

An example: what Arising has found is half a dozen local retailers who stock a brand of maternity tank which, “barely!” according to Arising, comes up to her size — but none of them carry the “curvalicious”3 sizes.

This journalist contacted several of the local retailers for their take. All of them wished to remain anonymous4.

“Oh! I didn’t even know they made them that big,”5 said one maternity store, demonstrating a typical surprise that plus-size women do not universally dress in muumuus.

“No, of course we don’t carry that size,” said a lactation specialist, who went on to wonder how obese women managed to breast-feed their infants without suffocating them “with all that unnecessary breast tissue.”

“We stopped stocking that brand when they moved their manufacturing to China, because it doesn’t matter whether anyone can afford our products or even have clothes to wear as long as our purity standards are met. But I don’t think we ever had that size,”6 said one particularly earnest employee at a “mama-baby boutique” which caters to the cloth-diapering, baby-wearing, too-much-money crowd.7

“Fat chicks get knocked up? By WHOM?? Don’t they know it’ll only make them fatter?”8 asked one maternity worker in response.

Many manufacturers, however, protest that they do, of course, make “fatty sizes”.

“We offer up to 3x! Only offered online,” said one.

Another, “Plus sizing to 24W! Not available in stores.”

“Like we’d want fatties cluttering up our shops,” said the most candid retailer representative, whom we’ll call Babs9.

“Don’t they, like, smell and stuff?” she continued.

Arising noted that part of the problem may be the way manufacturers label the larger sizes of clothing.

“Take this tank, for instance. 34 B/C through 40 D/E: all the same product, just different sizes. But jump to a 42, 44, or an F/G, and suddenly it’s a whole different product with a different product number — and they charge 20% more.”

“We can’t let them think it’s ok to be all fat and pregnant without paying for it,” said Babs when queried about price differentials.

She hastily added, “What I mean is, it takes extra fabric and stuff.”

Arising again: “They’ll tell you it’s for ‘extra’ fabric, but do they charge less for the 32 Bs? Do petites pay less? Not from what my short and thin friends have told me.”

Arising suggested the solution would be for maternity retailers to make all their sizes available in stores, and for plus-size retailers to reach out to independent maternity designers.

Babs, meanwhile, had her own solution: “They should just, like, stop getting pregnant. Or stay home. No one wants to see them, anyway.”

  1. Because of course all women, and only women, get pregnant with the intention of birthing baby(s), happily and intentionally and unambivalently. ↩
  2. Name changed for anonymity and because a newpaper article just isn’t the same without a surname to quote. ↩
  3. I wish I were making this up. ↩
  4. Translation: being blacklisted from all the local lactation-supportive stores would suck rocks. ↩
  5. Direct quote. Swear to gods. ↩
  6. It’s possible that everything after “China” in this quote has been added for dramatic effect. ↩
  7. Please don’t let these lovely people ever figure out they’re being referenced, or at least let them have a sense of humor. ↩
  8. Hat tip to Violetsouffle. ↩
  9. Bigoted Against Big Suckas. What? You try to do better. ↩
24 Comments | Posted on 11 May 2011 by Arwyn | Category: Body, Kyriarchy | Tags: , , , , , ,
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On the moral obligation to be healthy

I started this post in May 2010, shortly after the event I termed Backpocalypse 2010 (in an ill-disguised attempt to use humor to distance myself from the pain and terror I felt), in which I injured my back to the point of needing to take a hiatus from my course of study at massage school. But while the personal resonance mentioned below has lessened some, the questions and issues involved are still here, and still concern me — and ought, I would argue, concern you.

Should we strive to be healthy? Most people would say yes.

Do we have an obligation — to ourselves, our families, our community (or country, or world for that matter) — to maximize our health; by which we are supposed to understand to mean our ability to function (to be “productive”, preferably in an explicitly capitalist way), and the longevity thereof? Maybe you wouldn’t say yes to this, but it’s the same question as above, just explicated a little.

I say no. Why?

As it stands, the moral obligation to be “healthy” according to the above definition is what:

  • gives fatphobes the “right” to comment on my appearance, my diet, my activity level, my life (because, of course, everyone knows that fat is unhealthy).
  • creates pressure on a pregnant person to use every test available to determine whether her pregnancy is “healthy enough” to continue, whether or not she herself wishes to.
  • supports telling some people that they are not good enough to have children in the first place — because how dare they risk passing their disability, their atypicality, their ill health, their moral failing on to another generation?
  • allows us to shame women for not breastfeeding, rather than focusing on the ways we can help her meet her own breastfeeding goals.
  • defends forced-medication rulings for those whose thoughts and emotions don’t fit society’s expectations.
  • allows us to tsk-tsk “those people” for not eating “right”, for making “bad food choices”, ignoring the multitude of reasons why people (especially those without class privilege) might eat “suboptimal” food.

None of that is OK.

The idea of moral obligation to heath has a particular resonance right now, when I feel the sting of inability, when I question my worth as I possibly fail, again, at a goal I have set myself.

Long ago I gave up on trying to fit into office work. Then I gave up (or set aside) the idea of being an academic student in a traditional college (which hurt far more than giving up temping, as you can imagine). Now I’m facing the potential loss of practicing massage therapy1, while simultaneously finding myself unable to eke out enough time to write, either. And I wonder: what is the point of me? Am I ever going to be able to make a living? If not, what good am I?

And the assumption behind those fears is, of course, highly problematic. It is the idea that we are only valuable for what we earn or produce — a capitalistic definition of “value”.

Which is not to say I “shouldn’t” want health or productivity for itself — nor that I should. Let’s just toss out all “shoulds”. The simple fact is that I DO want to do these things for themselves (I chose massage because I love it), and I DO want to be “productive” because I, like almost everyone else on the planet, want to be part of something (my community, my movement, my tribe, my family). The problem isn’t the idea of health2 or productivity; the problem is when we make those things moral obligations, rather than recognizing that they have inherent value, and that, lacking outside pressure, people will still want them for themselves.

When we make health an obligation, we create a hierarchy of people, based often on things outside of their own control. We say that some people are better than others, because of chance or choice or circumstance. We say that if you’re not “healthy” (by whatever criteria the judger has decided to focus on, often related barely or not at all to my or your or science’s definition of “health”), you aren’t working hard enough, you don’t know enough, you aren’t buying the right things. We allow people the grace of bad luck old chap if they can prove that it’s not their fault (and please, dear reader, take a moment to contemplate the impossibility of proving a negative, and the burden of having to do it over, and over, and over again), but still, under that, is the sometimes unspoken yet always detectable question are you really doing everything you possibly could to get better?

The burden this places on people — is placing on me — makes a difficult situation so very much worse (or, for some, turns what is simply and joyfully their life into a trial — not the state of their health but the social conversation around it is what drags them down). It’s not enough that we may not have the health we want, that our bodies may not do what we wish of them, that we may be limited in our choices: the moral obligation to health means we are failing those around us. It’s not enough that we may struggle, that I struggle: the moral obligation to health means we struggle with our society’s disapproval as well.

So no, I do not believe there is a moral obligation to health in some imaginary “objective” sense, nor that we as a society should impose one. Rather, I would say, society has the moral obligation to assist each person to be as healthy as ze wants to be (including, as my culture so spectacularly fails at right now, removing barriers to health and health care), and to respect the intrinsic motivation and decision making of its members.

Health — in the fullest sense of an individual’s optimal wellness, whatever that means to them — is not something we need to bribe or shame or obligate each other into pursuing. And to try is not only futile but counterproductive and often, as I feel so acutely now, cruel.

In the nearly-year since I started writing this, I have spent hundreds of hours in many practitioners’ offices working to regain my ability to move and to perform massage safely and without pain; have graduated massage school; and just this week passed the written portion of my licensing exam. The imposition of a “should”, an obligation, toward health added a layer of anxiety to my initial period of injury that this post reflects — but it was out of my own desire, not out of obligation, that I worked so hard toward recovery and that I continue to work on my physical wellness. It was only after coming to some sort of peace with the idea that I might not be able to perform massage — might not be productive in the way I’d so long planned, might once again fail, or defy, the expectations and pressures society places on me — that I was able to be centered enough to move forward, and do it in a way that was healthy for all of me, body and mind.

  1. Not a certain thing, but my back is not yet healed enough to perform regular, full-length massage, and in my darker moments I despair that it ever will. ↩
  2. Though perhaps part of the problem is how we define health. ↩
19 Comments | Posted on 15 April 2011 by Arwyn | Category: Body, Kyriarchy | Tags: , , , , , , ,
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Fat and pregnant: week 13

First — the belly pics!

Week 13 -- belly has definitely "popped", breasts may be larger

Compare with week 10:

10 weeks. Subtle changes, but uterus hasn't yet risen out of pelvis.

Next: I talk technology and the (yes, I recognize the amusing juxtaposition here) invisible pregnant person.

Last weekend, we had our first prenatal visit. Our midwives come to our house, and we basically sit around and chat for an hour1 and it is pretty much The Best Way To Spend My Health Insurance Company’s Money Ever.

Also, we heard the heartbeat.

As a rule, unless indicated, I don’t do imaging ultrasound in pregnancy2, and besides the blood tests I get to monitor my thyroid (and the basic prenatal panel3 because hey, if I’m gonna get poked anyway…), the first Doppler search for the heartbeat is about as high tech as I hope to ever get in pregnancy.

And I gotta say — it was amazing. And awesome, in both colloquial and original meanings. When we tried at 12 weeks with the Boychick, the placenta was anterior and blocked us from getting at him, so we didn’t bother trying again, and didn’t hear his heartbeat until it was late enough we used the good old fashioned fetoscope. But this time, though it took a couple minutes as Child Number 2 kept giving us the slip and Child Number 1 kept trying to “help”, we heard the machine’s reproduction of the oh-so-fast thupathupthupathupthupathup of the little protoperson’s heartbeat.

As is typical for many people in I-would-bet-most pregnancies, I’ve been in something like denial about the reality of this. Or, more accurately, I go through phases where I’m convinced it’s all in my head, or really I have a tumor not a fetus, or the pregnancy died two months ago and my body just hasn’t flushed it yet, or, or, or… So hearing that heartbeat was Really Big, and made those crazy voices that much easier to ignore.

And yet…

Why?

I question a society that, rather than giving me space to voice my fears and let them go as I am able, expects me to use technology to “prove” myself wrong (or right). I question a society that says pregnancy isn’t really-real until the urine stick or the blood test or the ultrasound or the Doppler says it is. I question a society that demands direct access to information about the being I carry, through ultrasound and amniocentesis and even the fetoscope, rather than viewing me as whole and solid, as a person in my own right, and this pregnancy as a function of my body. I question the deification of the “objective” and the derision and dismissal of the “subjective”4.

I’m not questioning prenatal technology per se, nor anyone’s use of it: it, itself, is a tool, and as all tools is neutral, and capable of great benefit. There are times when a near-direct look at an embryo or fetus is exactly what is called for, and I am so grateful we have the technology available for those who need or desire it. Further, I am happy to celebrate with someone who is thrilled about the first ultrasound pictures, or benign amniocentesis results, or, yes, hearing the first Doppler-reproduced heartbeat. No curmudgeon, I, out to tell anyone Yer Doin It Rong.

But there’s an important, if subtle, difference between celebrating with a person, and exalting or idolizing the information. I experienced both, when I told others about hearing the heartbeat, and one felt great, as sharing good news with friends should, and the other felt… jarring. And erasing. What is the difference? Those celebrating with me were happy that I was happy; what my news was barely mattered, only that I found it something worth a grin or ten. The other comments focused on the information and what it “meant”: that — finally! — there was evidence that the pregnancy was healthy, that the fetus was fine, that my body, surprise!, hadn’t fallen down on its job. Because those things can’t be assumed, can’t be trusted based on my experience of nausea and exhaustion and food aversions and tightening waistlines.

Part of it, I know, is that some people have experienced losses, or difficulties conceiving, or risky and traumatic pregnancies, or undesired outcomes. Some people have learned not to trust the pregnant body, to rely on the outside look that technology offers. And I understand and sympathize with and am happy to hear and hold the space for that perspective, because it’s no less valid or worthy than any other experience of pregnancy.

But so many of us have, instead, been taught not to trust pregnant bodies, not to trust our own bodies, not to believe anything unless an MD or a machine says it is so. So many of us have learned not just to embrace the “objective” view, but to reject the “subjective” — and that’s what I have a problem with. That is the function-and-formation of kyriarchy, of a system that devalues women and women’s bodies and the typically-female role in pregnancy, that says my opinion and my experience is meaningless because it hasn’t been and can’t be confirmed or controlled by authority, by expertise, by privilege, by power.

I don’t want to reject technology wholesale. I really don’t wish to go back to a world without the options we have now. But I would give so much to exist in a world where a pregnant person was recognized universally as a person, capable of making the best choices for them given full information and uncoerced options; where the subjective was as valid and accepted as the objective; where technology was a tool available when called for; where we didn’t slice up the pregnant body into Vessel and Object, Uterus and Fetus but honored the breathtaking complexity, intricacy, and interdependence of the pregnant system.

I hide away in that world with my midwives for an hour once a month, but then I step out into the rest of humanity, barely-pregnant belly just beginning to jut before me, and I am reminded that what should be a fundamental right for all, regardless of desired place or mode of birth, is, in my society, the rarest of privileges.

  1. And then they take my blood pressure, whilst I’m sitting comfy in my favorite recliner. Anyone surprised it’s ten points lower than when perched on the exam table five minutes after defending my right to decline having my weight taken to my fatphobic primary care provider? Anyone? No? ↩
  2. Just because this is me and I have to, I’m going to take this moment to bust the myth that Doppler technology is somehow “less” intense than imaging sonography, for those concerned about ultrasonic radiation. Rather, Doppler uses continuous waves, compared to imaging ultrasound’s split-second waves. Although I couldn’t tell you which creates a more irritating uterine environment, the pulse or the constant, in purely number-of-waves terms, there’s probably about as much exposure in a minute of Doppler use as in a 20-30 minute imaging ultrasound. There are other reasons to avoid imaging sonography, not least because the American College of Radiology discourages its routine use in pregnancy without specific medical indication, but I gotta say I have to try not to roll my eyes when people avoid it over concerns about the long-term effects but happily use Doppler to hear the heartbeat at every appointment. ↩
  3. Not the tripple/quad screen or aught, just the “Do you have HIV?” stuff. ↩
  4. Both in scare-quotes here as every experience — including the act of observing — is inherently subjective to some extent. Though the subject/object duality is a sometimes useful shorthand, I reject the notion that there is any such state as “purely objective”. ↩
20 Comments | Posted on 24 February 2011 by Arwyn | Category: Body, Kyriarchy | Tags: , , , ,
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Dear Doods: I don’t care if you want to f*ck me

Dear Doods1,

This may be hard to hear, I know. In fact, I’m pretty sure that if you read this all the way through and don’t mutter “what a cunt” at the end, you are not, in fact, a dood2. But I’m going to say it anyway. (You might want to sit down for this part.)

I don’t care if you want to fuck me.

Shocking, but true! I don’t care if you want to fuck me. I don’t care if you WOULD fuck me, in some mythical realm where that was an option. I don’t care if you prefer to fuck women who look like me, I don’t care if you might fuck me if I were the only cunt available, I don’t care if you’re just saying that, abstractly, you find me not entirely unfuckable. I don’t care what you want to do with your dick (whatever form it comes in3).

You think it’s a compliment to say you prefer “plumper”4 women; you think it’s showing solidarity to call thin women “gross”. I think you don’t have any idea how to talk to or about women as though we were *gasp* people, and not objects awaiting your evaluation.

Wait, sorry: I’m trying to speak your language here. Let me try that last bit again, in a way you puppies can understand. I am not a fucking dog toy. I know you think some other dog’s got me, I know you want to bark your opinion, at least say whether you’d like to drool on me if you could (or that you never, ever would, not even if I were the last bone in the yard), but I am, in fact, a bitch, I ain’t never gonna be in heat for you, and I will bite your fucking, ahem, tail off if you don’t respect my teeth and my ability to bring down a 300lb carabou, and instead howl about how sleek and shapely my pelt is.5

(Perhaps that metaphor got away with me. Metaphors do that sometimes.)

Anyway! In conclusion: You can want to fuck me all you like. You can not want to fuck me all you like. You can, even, imagine fucking me6 all you like. What you can’t do, however, is expect me to care. Because I really, really don’t.

Not yours, truly,
Arwyn

PS If you actually know me? If we are, in some form, friends? If we’ve established a relationship of mutual respect? Flirting is my native language, dude: I welcome your brow wiggles and not-even-double entendres. But — and if we’re friends, you know this and are ok with it — I still don’t care if you want to fuck me, and will slap you down if you talk as though I do7. As your friend, of course. Your bitchy, bitchy friend.

  1. Dood, n.: a man who has been socialized by the kyriarchy to perform a specific type of “manhood” which is often characterized by actions based on the belief that women care about the opinions of what they wish to do with their genitalia. ↩
  2. It’s not that only men ever make comments on what I’m about to talk about, but it’s about 20 men for every woman who does. Which is quite remarkable, given that here on teh interwebz I talk to at least 20 women for every man. Now, I don’t have graduate degrees in mathematics-related fields like half my family do, but I’m thinking that makes the relative ratio something like 400-to-1. Thus, addressing this to doods. ↩
  3. “Comes in”; see whut I did thar? Ahhh, I slay me. ↩
  4. Plumper? Seriously? What the fuck am I, a peach? ↩
  5. Which, granted, it is. ↩
  6. Though A. EW! and 2. don’t tell me about it. ↩
  7. Raising My Boychick does not condone cruelty to animals. Doods, however… ↩
12 Comments | Posted on 4 February 2011 by Arwyn | Category: Body, Kyriarchy | Tags: , , , ,
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Fat and pregnant: 10 weeks

We were talking on Twitter today about the political and deeply personal nature of belly pics for those of us who are fat and pregnant1. There aren’t a lot of pictures of us — because we tend not to take them.

For most people in this culture — not only fat women — bellies are one of the, if not the, most stigmatized, most shame-laden part of our bodies. Add the all-over shame of existing in the world with a fat body, and it’s really, really hard for most of us to take and share photographs of our pregnant bellies.

There are a lot of reasons for this, each of which could be its own post, but briefly2:

  • Our bellies are fat, and, as is drummed into our heads and souls a thousand times a day in a thousand ways, fat is bad. And ugly. And bad! So even this place that nurtures the future, carries a wanted pregnancy, we cannot see as good and beautiful. (And then, even if, miracle!, we do, we are afraid of the reactions from others, afraid of the shaming and judgment and tsking and cruel comments.)
  • So often we spend years in fear of hearing “Are you pregnant?” when no, we’re just fat. Our bodies do not have the space to have “cute little pooches” in early pregnancy like people with very little abdominal adipose tissue. Our bellies are changing, but when we start out “already looking pregnant” (and told that is bad), we don’t want to take those early pictures.
  • Then, when we don’t have early pictures to compare to (because we’re “just fat”, and no one wants to see a fat belly!), we don’t want to take later pictures — because, again, we still look fat! Only a little more so! Our bodies may not look like what we expect mid-pregnancy bodies to look like, thanks to thin celebrities and Photoshop. Sometimes we look what we expect a very very pregnant person to look like very early on, and sometimes we hardly “show” at all. So we don’t take the pictures.
  • Finally, when we’re good and pregnant and really it’s quite obvious that’s a baby belly — we’re huge! We’ve may have gained weight all over, and there may be shockingly dark and purple stretchmarks bisecting all those old and silvery lines, and we think, that’s not what a pregnant belly is supposed to look like! And we don’t take the pictures.

The only way, the only way to overcome this is for more of us to take pictures. And to show them off. To say “this is what a fat and pregnant belly looks like”, and to know that not all fat and pregnant bellies look like that, because no two bellies, or bodies, are ever exactly the same. We don’t store fat the same, our uteruses don’t grow the same (betwixt multiple pregnancies, much less different people), our torsos and pelvises aren’t shaped the same. And yet — there is something amazingly uplifting about seeing a body that is like ours (even if not the same as ours), to see it celebrated and held up as beautiful and worthy of love and respect and, yes, photographs.

It is so very important for us to see3 people who look like us doing all manner of things in life so that we know we can do them too. It’s incredibly hard to be the first, or in the first generations, when we have so little to guide us, so little to let us know “yes, you can” and “yes, this is ‘normal’”, and “no, you are not alone”. And it’s scary, and hard, and often risky. So I’m not going to shame anyone for not taking or sharing pictures of themselves. But I am going to say please.

And you deserve to be seen.

And you are not alone.

And I’m going to post my pictures4. And you don’t have to like them, and you don’t have to gush over them5. But I hope you see them, and share them, and know that this is what a fat and pregnant belly looks like. And it deserves to be honored no less than any other belly.

10 weeks: the baseline. Subtle changes in shape, but my uterus hasn't yet risen out of my pelvis.

There’s a lot more I could say6, but instead I’ll leave you with some links, and a promise that this won’t be the last picture:

On body image, pregnancy, and BMI

Which lead me to: Feeling fat during pregnancy

and You’re Huge! Pregnancy and Size in a Thin-Centric World

Finally, no post on pregnancy and fat should be allowed without a link to Plus Size Pregnancy, which is an all-around amazing pregnancy and birth resource for everyone, but especially, obviously, for those of us who are fat and pregnant. It’s written by The Well Rounded Mama whose most recent post — sometimes I believe in serendipity — is Belly Thoughts.

We are out there, those of us willing to take pictures of and share our fat pregnant bellies. I’m hardly the first. But until it’s not rare enough to note, until we see bellies rounded from the start of pregnancy, stretch-marked going in to gestation, until whether one takes pregnancy pictures is only a question of “are you a picture person or a private person?” not “are you ‘beautiful’ enough or brave enough?” — it’s worth celebrating, these bellies of ours.

Did you blog about size and pregnancy, regardless of your weight? Did you take, whether or not you shared, pregnancy photos starting from early on? Was something holding you back that I didn’t discuss here? Please share your stories — and your links if you have them!

  1. You can follow the convo — and whatever other topics come up under that topic — on Twitter at #fatandpregnant. ↩
  2. Those of you who are regular readers are laughing right now. Don’t think just because I can’t hear you that I don’t know. I know. Oh yes. I know. ↩
  3. Which implies visual representations, but all forms of coming-to-know are meant to be included. ↩
  4. I’d say every week, but my regular readers haven’t recovered from laughing at “briefly”, and I wouldn’t want to cause you injury from further guffaws. ↩
  5. And for the love of all you hold dear please don’t say “but you don’t look fat!” ↩
  6. Why lying down? Why basically nude? When am I going to get a decent camera and not my crappy first-gen iPhone? Will I ever learn how to compose a decent shot, or even what that means? (Probably not.) And also: yes, this is scary for me. I’m doing it anyway, but it took quite a bit of ramping up to get here, and now I’m in midair, uncertain of my landing. As the Fat Nutritionist and I jointly said on Twitter, the difference between a fat activist and an “overweight” person isn’t that we don’t feel any shame, it’s that we know the shame is bullshit. ↩
73 Comments | Posted on 31 January 2011 by Arwyn | Category: Body, Kyriarchy | Tags: , , , ,
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