For shame...

My friend Dawn over at Inanity & the Girl posted about Fat Shaming on the internet today.  Now I appreciate that not everyone is fat (or perceives themselves as such), but Fatness is society's worst thing to be at the moment & the internet holds many horrors & much bile about it.  Unless you're on the receiving end of it or go out of your way to look for it, you might be unaware of how really, REALLY vile commenters are about the size of a body.

Please follow the link & read it for yourself.

Here is my comment;

Oh Dawnie, where to begin?! Speaking as someone who has heard it all, and often to my face, I can honestly say that FAT is THE most reviled & horrendous thing to be EVER. I think I'd go as far as to say that, by contemporary standards, it's even worse than being of colour. It's acceptable to be as thick as two short planks (& seemingly proud/blissfully ignorant of it judging by levels of literacy on the internet), but you must never be fat or you'll be pilloried mercilessly. I once appeared on a Youtube video of a very popular friend & the comments were vile. One particular one went on about 'how dare I PARADE myself & my fatness IN PUBLIC & subject innocent bystanders to said horror'. That one actually made me laugh & I replied, the gist being 'parade? Now there's an idea! Let me just research your IP address & me & all my fat friends will cone & have a glorious parade of plumpness down your street'. I have a thick skin though. Probably because of all the fat beneath it.

When you overhear children getting antsy you'll hear the word Fat. When folk on Jeremy Kyle get insulting they'll use the word Fat. When the upper classes of our country want to berate the plebs they use the word Fat. Fat has become far more than an issue of size; it's now an issue of control & fear & shame. Eight year olds are being treated for eating disorders because the shame of being PERCEIVED as fat is so horrendous that they'd rather starve themselves. 

I'll let you into a little secret of they male psyche when it comes to Fat. Men are terrified of the sensuality of a Fat Woman. Being fat has connotations of indulgence & letting yourself go & giving in to temptation & this immediately makes men think of sexy things. I've lost count of the times it's been assumed that my being nice to someone is a come on for some rumpy pumpy. Seriously! There's something SO appealing about a bit of jiggle that men are TERRIFIED of it. They'll say the most outrageously sexual things then try to make a 'joke' out of it.

We've come to a time when denial, self control & all it's associated misery are what women are expected to do to meet a body ideal which appeals to men. It's the equivalent of wearing a burka so as not to inflame the desires of men. 

Haters ARE gonna hate & it's fear that makes them do it. Real primeval fear. The shame of being fat, the shame of liking fat are simply too much for modern society. 

Fear & Shame coming soon to a body near you!

My advice? Be who you are, how you are & where you are & fuck 'em. Their opinion is ultimately meaningless and, in times to come, something else will be the epitome of shame. I don't give anyone the consent to make me feel ashamed of who I am. I KNOW they're afraid of me & what my body represents; all those sensual pleasures they deny themselves all their lives and for what? None of us get out of this alive.

There are so many pressures on women today about how we look, how we act, how we must be perceived by others.  Isn't it time we were just AUTHENTIC to ourselves?!  I personally see being unkind, hateful, dishonest, condescending, cruel, intolerant & a bully as far worse crimes than could ever be committed simply by the size of one's body.  I'll judge you on THAT, not what you look like.  

As an aside to this which is very relevant, a Twitter friend asked her cousin if he'd seen me when I was at CenterParcs (he works there).  How was I described?  Not as 'a fat woman on a mobility scooter' but as 'a glamorous woman on a mobility scooter'!  My glamour is obviously perceived as more evident than my size LOL.  THAT'S how we need to be thinking about people; by their QUALITIES & CHARACTER and not by their size.

ttfn
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