8.30.2010

a world gone mad

human beings are strange creatures. there i said it.

but still i am constantly surprised at people's lack of tolerance, the ability to dehumanize others until they are nothing but stripped-down labels and expectations, and all the ways that humans secretly hate each other because they have been conditioned to do so. and that there is not a moment for everyone when they can see with their own eyes, hearts, and brains, that most of what THEY have been telling you your entire life is ONE HUNDRED PERCENT PURE GRADE BULLSHITE.

i am lucky enough to live in a small universe made up of people whose eyes/hearts/brains are attuned to view the constructs of popular culture for what they are: templates designed by and for a very white, very rich, very conservative, classist, racist, homophobic, transphobic, fatphobic, and so on, demographic.

so it should be no surprise that so many of the humans i love best on the planet are people that by no means fit the mold of what we have been told we are supposed to be: we are not the demographic that TV wants to reveal.

i live in a beautifully crafted universe where not everyone looks the same, where not everyone eats the same way, where people like to have sex in different ways and with different types of people and with creativity and kink and power and equality, where to be a man doesn't only mean one thing and to be a woman doesn't only mean one thing, and to be in between or to go back and forth between two notions is just fine. is normal. is great.

where to be fat doesn't necessarily mean to be lazy or indulgent. where feminism isn't a dirty word and where people, by and large, try their best to be inclusive and full of empathy and interested in the rich, vast tapestry and potential that can abound in the human experience.

but. so.

there is a human i know whom i love beyond possible articulation. they are intelligent, sensitive, funny, generous, full of life, full of energy and dynamism and charm, creative, powerful, strong, wise, and SO ON. point blank: an awesome, awesome human whom i constantly feel lucky to know and who affirms to me some of the basest feelings of friendship, kinship, and relationship.

they have a blog called DON'T MIND IF I DO on tumblr. have a wee look here:

http://queerfathungry.tumblr.com/post/772737804/ice-cream-with-gummi-bears-in-it-and-one-super

it has to do with not having to apologize for being fat, for liking food, for ENJOYING food, for all of the above, and creating a space that represents their particular brand of being.

the ethos of the blog, along with the fabulous photography and glorious food and all-around life-affirming, positive feeling about the whole thing, resonates with me particularly, because fatness, body image, self-image, self-loathing, shitty relationships with food, and so on, are all things that have been a part of my life for as long as i remember having thoughts. in fact i recently found my first journal, given to me in 1991, on my ninth birthday.

the journal looks like this:


in it i wrote an entry about not wanting to go to a pool party someone was having because i didn't want anyone to see me in a bathing suit. there are entries in my little juvenile scrawl of just lists of things i could do to look more like the way i was apparently supposed to look:

wake up and do push-ups and sit-ups in the morning before school,
say a prayer before bed for my nose to shrink, my teeth to straighten out, my newly-mammoth breasts to shrink, my hair to darken to a nice rustic brown, to curl where once it was straight.

that was the same year i shaved my legs for the first time, to my mother's great disappointment. but i was the only girl in my class with breasts and leg and armpit hair, and the difference between us in pubescent progress was astronomical.

in pictures with my classmates that year i look more like a teacher's assistant than another fifth grader. towering over everyone else, blazingly red hair unruly and flowing down past my ass, massive breasts, hips and ass like the almost-woman that i was soon to be. i was bigger than everyone, different than everyone, the only red-head in the class, and so on.

anyway, the point of all this is to say: THIS SHIT WAS ENTRENCHED IN MY BRAIN so young, it breaks my heart. the feeling that i was just
WRONG
hung around my neck like an iron cape. too chubby, too different, crooked-toothed, redheaded, and later, the realization that i was also
QUEER
to add to the list of ways that i wasn't right.

i have a feminist, awesome, all-powerful, critically thinking, infinitely accepting mother, and my father was a man of incredible perspective, love, and respect and these two people, for all the ways that they created a beautiful, safe, loving universe for my brother and i, for their monitoring of the media we ingested and staunchly limiting the amount of television we watched and so on, and encouraging us to think intelligently and with our own minds about everything,

still couldn't stop my little spongy brain from listening to what pop culture aggressively wanted me to believe was real and unreal, was ok and not ok, was right and wrong. and it has been a deep chord of neuroses for me ever since, one that even now, with my mostly grown-up, educated, critical brain and heart, i still spend every day trying to eradicate in myself.

and today, in a weird and distant turn of fate, someone i vaguely knew, in a different time and place in my life, before the people who i love most on the planet knew what there truly was to know about me, when i was still more or less convinced that to reveal my true self to them would mean certain disaster. that no one would love me if they knew that i had secret eating disorders and some pretty serious depression and anxiety and last but not least that i was secretly queer,

this person whom i knew vaguely in a different life re-posted the below entry from DON'T MIND IF I DO on her own blog with this comment:

"like any self-respecting fashion-magazine-reading straight-girl i feel a little bit bulimic after seeing this picture of a deep-fried mars bar…"

---------------------------------------------

this statement says/implies a veritable miasma of things that i feel are just intrinsically wrong. i keep trying to make lists of my myriad deconstructions of its implications, but what it comes down to basically is just a lot of stupid, ignorant assumptions, prejudices and perpetuations of exactly the kind of mentality that has told me i am somehow wrong for who i am for my entire life.

and i suppose really the whole point of this rant is that it still intrinsically hurts a part of me deep down inside when people say things like the above. when human beings say stupid, narrow, insulting things. it makes me want to take some ropes and tie them up in an uncomfortable chair, and face them towards a black board on which is written their own little golden nugget of shitty observation, and then myself and a team of other interested and qualified parties would deconstruct their statement, stripping it of reason and tact, and revealing to the writer of the words, the thinker of the thoughts, just how wrong in every way they really are.

but i've been writing this, ranting about this, for more than an hour now, and as i sit in the slowly rising pile of dust left from churning all this stuff up, the emotion i'm left with is no longer vengeance or rage or shock or horror. instead, it's just plain old gratitude.

that shitty comment about that wondrous blog is like an embodiment of exactly what i have spent 28 years figuring out is wrong for me. in one poorly composed swoop her statement showed me how lucky i am to know so many humans on this planet who don't share those shitty sentiments. who 'get it', so to speak.

she doesn't get it. i imagine the writer of that shitty comment sitting down at her desk to draft a universal telegram, a communication to be dispatched to the very farthest reaches of space, time and existence, as the summation of her experience as a human being. i feel one hundred percent confident that it would read:

EVERYTHING I EVER SAW ON TELEVISION WAS ABSOLUTELY TRUE.

4 comments:

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  2. Wow!!! Not only have you intelligently argued against the saddening thoughts of many people in our society, especially that of said narrow-minded woman, I believe you have given great strength to the blogger of "Don't Mind If I Do" (who I happen to know and is an amazing friend to my younger brother). What a liberating thought it is to feel perfectly all right in our own bodies, to feel whatever form we come in should be a celebration, to be free from all the prejudices that society imposes on us, and to know that there are others who celebrate our diversity. I haven't accepted the shape and contours of my body in a long time (if ever) and in reading your blog and "Don't Mind If I Do"'s I am encouraged to accept the fabulousness of my life: body, food, good wine, friends, lover and family.
    Thank you for your words...they are truly what most women need to hear.

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  3. the ignorant poster said "like any fashion magazine reading, self respecting straight girl.." etc. etc.

    "fashion magazine reading" and "self respecting" often seem to be contradictory when dealing with cis females. and, the more i see, the more i realize that, in too many cases, so is "self respecting" and "straight female."

    i know this is a generalization, but the more i see, the more i realize that many straight cis females are every bit as sexist, cissexist, queerphobic, fatphobic, and misogynistic as the Dudebros that they spend their lives trying to please. Ick.

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