I'm Not the Woman at the Ballgame, But I Could Be

Recently, a hateful, fat-shaming photo surfaced on the internet.

OK, I'm going to have to be more specific.

A picture surfaced that showed a fat woman in the seats at a baseball game, taken from the back and clearly without her consent, with a caption that discussed how much she had eaten during the game, how many calories that was, and how "unhealthy" that made her. I'm not going to embed the appalling photo here and sully my blog, but if you really want to be enraged, you can view it on imgur.

To add insult to injury, a post was then released by "The Anti-Jared" claiming to be that woman, saying that she had lost a bunch of weight already and blah blah blah. But it actually turned out that that post was not written by the woman in the photo, it was written by this pathetic excuse for a blogger anti-Jared putting himself in her shoes.

This woman has been victimized and had her image used without consent not once, but twice now. As far as I know, she has not come forward or said anything, nor does she have any obligation to.

I'm writing this not to put any words in this woman's mouth -- enough others have already tried to do that -- but to point out that this could easily have been me.

I'm fat. Not curvy, chubby, plump, fluffy, or corpulent. Fat. If I were at a Cardinals game I would also be squished into the seats -- I know this because that's exactly what happens at Yankee Stadium. The seats are small and rigid and not made for fat butts. When I sit in them I squish uncomfortably, my belly and thighs forced out in different directions. If the human body wasn't somewhat malleable I wouldn't get in there at all.

I don't blame myself, I blame the stadium and those who designed it. I get that they want to put in as many seats as possible to sell, but there should be attention paid to human comfort. Yes, in case there's any question: fat people count as human.

I catch people staring at me on the regular. Before anyone jumps in and says "you're just saying that because you're self-conscious" or "you don't know what they're thinking" -- I know I don't. But I also know how the quantity and quality of stares change based on how fat I am (I have been varying degrees), what I'm doing, and how much I adhere to the arbitrary rules that say I should cover my body. I've had people take pictures (you're never as subtle as you think you are) and make comments to me. If I call out someone's lousy behavior (don't ride your bikes on the footpath, people!) the retort is always simply that I'm fat, as if that invalidates anything else about me.

So yes, you're damn right, I am self-conscious. I don't blame my fat for that, I blame the ways people respond to fat (mine and others'). I am very much conscious of the fact that people have bigoted notions about my body based on how much adipose tissue it contains and the way I feel and act about that. If I dare to eat, especially something that's deemed "bad," stares get worse. If I dare to sit down on the subway and my thighs touch another person, the stares get worse. If I dress in a way that makes me happy instead of wearing only muumuus in a black vertical stripe pattern, the stares get worse.

My fat is not the problem. Reactions to it are.

The woman at the baseball game is not the problem.

Whatever she was doing or eating is not the problem.

The fact that someone felt compelled to take her picture from behind, post it online with the express purpose of mocking it, and ascribe values and judgments to her entirely neutral behaviors is. The fact that someone else put a narrative in her mouth is a problem. Bigots who treat fat people as subhuman are the problem. Fat people are not. We have a right to exist in public, to eat what we want, to be as healthy or unhealthy as we want (or can be), to wear what we choose, and to live our own damn lives without input from anyone unless we ask for it. Our bodies are not an example to be made about some trumped-up issue plaguing the nation. They are our bodies. They are neutral. They deserve dignity and respect.

From the Archive: Price discrimination is never OK (an open letter to JC Penney)

"From the Archive" is a series of posts that I wrote on past, no-longer-updated blogs that I feel are good enough to need a new home.

This post was originally written in February 2011.

Dear JC Penney:

To the left is a photo I took over the summer, in one of your stores near Buffalo, NY. I believe it was in the Walden Galleria mall, but precise location doesn't really matter as you have consistent stock across the country.

What you see is the exact same style shirt, only one is taken from the misses department and the other is from the plus sizes. The most important thing to note is that the plus size shirt costs $14 more than the misses size.

This is not OK.

There is absolutely no logical reason a size 1X should be more expensive than a size XL. I know what the stock answers are - that plus size clothing requires more fabric or that it is more complicated to make and therefore requires more skilled (and costly) construction.

I will refrain from using profanity in this letter, but let me say that my gut reaction to that "explanation" generally involves the excrement of male cattle.

Especially in this case. See, this is a t-shirt with some non-functional decorative buttons sewn to the front. This is not an underwire bra, a metal corset, a wedding dress or some other item that must conform perfectly to the wearer's body to function properly. IT IS A T-SHIRT. It's made of cotton; intended to hang from the shoulders and maybe cling to the lumps and bumps of the person inside. The construction does not vary greatly with size.

The other common excuse - that plus sizes require more fabric - wouldn't hold much water, either. The two shirts pictured above are an XL and a 1X. Arguably, those are barely different sizes at all. Now, I tried both on and I can say that the 1X had a little bit more room in it, but it didn't feel like it was even a whole size bigger than the XL. If higher supply cost were truly the case, all clothing would have prices that grade up with size. I mean, it takes more fabric to make a medium or large than it does to make an extra small, and yet those are always the same price. The cutoff point at which your company is charging more is arbitrary - based on a pre-determined line between sizes that are considered normal and ones that are othered. But there is no real difference if you look at it objectively.

So why do you, as a company, feel compelled to contribute to the rampant discrimination that plus sized people (in the case of this shirt, plus size women) already face on a daily basis? Is it not enough that we encounter taunts from strangers, rude comments from family and "friends," are ostracized from most clothing stores, kicked off airplanes, and constantly treated like we are stupid, lazy, gluttonous or hideous? Is it not enough that doctors ignore our legitimate concerns or blame every little thing on fat? Since fat people are more likely to be discriminated against for employment and more likely to live in poverty, how does it even make sense to try and charge us more?

And did you really think we were too stupid to notice? Luckily, my body is on the cusp between plus sizes and misses, so I grabbed a shirt from each department. Someone who is slightly larger might not even know the shirt was made in misses sizes, and therefore wouldn't know she was being charged more simply because of her natural body type.

This price gouging and discriminatory practice must end. I realize that this particular shirt is probably no longer in stores, but I'm going to go out on a limb and say it's not the first or last time you've cheated your fatter customers out of some of their hard-earned money. Therefore I demand that styles be the same price across departments. If they are the same style, there is absolutely no legitimate reason for them to be more expensive in plus sizes. Comparable styles must be comparably priced. Otherwise, you are committing an egregious act of size discrimination. I, for one, will not buy another item from JC Penney until it is rectified, and I will encourage my family, friends, and internet followers (yes, I have some) to do the same.

I encourage you to do the right thing.

Pro-Selfie

I think selfies are great. There are always so many people talking about how annoying they are and how self-absorbed people who take them can be, but to me, they're great. They give people, especially young women, power.

Yeah, power.

The internet has democratized so many things -- music, publishing, art, etc -- and taken the gatekeeping away from the small number of outlets who used to hold it. This means that instead of relying on magazines and style sections to display the images of women, the control is now in the hands of the women themselves.

Look, here's a selfie of mine from this morning:

Seeing that picture makes me feel good. I am in control of my image, and I am choosing to share what I looked like at 8:30 this morning. I am also noticing that I need to Windex my mirror, but whatever.

The point is, there's nothing wrong with a little bit of self-pride (or even self-absorption) in a world that constantly demeans women and tells us we're not good enough. And it's empowering to see different people from different backgrounds, with different body types and personal styles showing off what they look like and what they're wearing. It's a celebration.

Pics of the Week -- August 14, 2013

Happy Wednesday! I'm bringing you a few memes and images I've come across this week that I enjoyed:

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The NYC subway in 1980 {via - more pictures at link}

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{© Kevin C. Downs/ News Pictures/WENN.com}

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