Nibbly Bits, Sweetie Darlings: Some Links
Still working on a final name for our Roundup feature, but in the meantime, here are some links for Wednesday!
1. Woman on a quest to become the world’s fattest woman.
‘My favourite food is sushi, but unlike others I can sit and eat 70 big pieces of sushi in one go,’ she said. ‘I do love cakes and sweet things, doughnuts are my favourite.’ Donna, who wears XXXXXXXL dresses, eats mounds of junk food and tries to move as little as possible… To fund the massive $750 weekly food shop, she runs a website where men pay her to watch her eat fast food.
I honestly don’t quite know what to say about this story!
2. “It’s never a good idea to comment on a woman’s figure”: an advice column:
Comments about a woman’s body, no matter how elegantly phrased, should be reserved until intimacy has been established. Far too many men treat women’s bodies as public property, to be commented on as though we exist only for their viewing pleasure. So don’t do this.
3. Harriet Brown’s article on fat prejudice for the New York Times:
Hallways were plastered with posters saying “Prevent teenage obesity.” After the posters went up, the girl said, schoolmates began taunting her in the halls, pointing at the obese girl on the posters and saying, “Look at the fat chick.”
4. Australian politician finds fat aboriginal dancers offensive:
I would suggest to Mr Tuckey that most Aboriginal people have more important things to consider other than their weight, incidental issues such as interpersonal and systemic racism for a start and that perhaps Mr Tuckey and his cohorts should be working to address those issues rather than being so offended that he has to see brown (and often not so brown) Aboriginal bellies bulging over the top of traditional style lap laps.
5. Why Gabby vs. Hollywood is annoying, from Big Fat Blog:
The idea of casting Gabby in a serious role where her confidence might shine through is probably unimaginable to most people in Hollywood. Instead, elite Hollywood women are “made ugly” in movies where a feel-good transformation is needed. And since Gabby is, according to Joy Behar, more than “full-figured” she cannot be transformed from ugly duckling to swan…without losing weight, that is.
By focusing on Gabby the media are subtly (or not-so-subtly) invoking a weight loss narrative because it’s the only narrative they know for a fat woman, the only way they see her having a possibility, they only way they see her existing. It’s why they are confounded by Gabby herself.
As always, if there is a ton of conversation about something, I’ll make it into a spinoff post. Happy reading!
Posted by mo pie
Filed under: Celebrities, Fat Positive, Fatism, Feminism, Gabby Sidibe, International, Links
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I love these sorts of posts — great way to find new sites and stories you may not have heard about. For your next one you might want to keep an eye on Shakesville. Melissa doesn’t wind up on FA feeds because her site is broader than that, but she has some of the best FA writing around, such as:
http://shakespearessister.blogspot.com/2010/03/proposed.html
Also, about names, I would appreciate it if you avoided the food references. Bri uses “Yummy bites” and it just seems to reinforce the whole “fatties love food” idea. How about “Fat Cells”? It indicates something small, like “Nibbly Bits” but has a hit of subversiveness, like we’re all organizing a guerilla campaign. Just a thought.
Hello I’m delurking here but have been a avid follower of yours and other blogs regarding FA for quite a while now. Having found them profoundly changed my view about myself and unlocked a self-confidence I never knew existed…great stuff!
The story about Donna Simpson’s quest to become the world’s fattest woman just disturbs me, on a pretty deep level; I’m trying to figure out why. I’m trying really hard to view it through the FA lens, that she has the right to bodily autonomy but nevertheless, I’m having a hard time understanding her mindset, the whole icky feederism website not withstanding. Maybe the biggest issue I have is understanding why someone would want to purposely give up mobility and independence. I also feel like she’s setting her child up to be a servant of sorts, I mean, when a person is too large to move under their own volition, someone else needs to tend to them, no? I’m also trying very hard not to make assumptions about her heath, but can gaining 400 lbs in 2 years and moving as little as possible be conducive? None of my business, of course but still has been rolling around in my head. How do other people feel?
The Fattest Woman story threw me too. A bunch of readers emailed me so I addressed it on the Manolo for the Big Girl blog, but it still just doesn’t sit right with me. Eventually I said I was of three minds about the whole thing, and I’m STILL not comfortable.
I love “Nibbly bits”. LOVE.
I think BirdyLuv said quite well what I thought when I heard that story. I’m having a hard time with it, though when I found myself in a heated discussion over it I took the stance of “her body, her choice” because I just couldn’t join the fat hatred that was being spewed from the other side. I certainly do feel that it’s her body, her choice, but still can’t quite grasp the concept that someone would so deliberately give up their independence as BirdyLuv stated. The website, men paying her to watch her eat is just… can’t put it into words without sounding hateful so maybe I should stop there.
Love the piece on Gabby. She is just phenomenal and after finally watching Precious, I’m even more blown away by her. She is everything anti-Hollywood and yet she knocked it out of the park with her very first role. She has no reason to not be confident. I just want to high-five her.
The Donna Simpson story disturbs me for the same reason that pro-ana websites disturb me. Here we have a woman who, because she doesn’t think that her body is acceptable at its natural size, has gone on an unhealthy diet in order to radically alter her size. Does she have the right to do that? Sure. Is it good for her, physically or psychologically? Most likely not. Should the people in her life who love her encourage her to accept the size her body wants to be and help her to take better care of herself? Absolutely. I just hate that this has become a media phenomenon to be gawked over and dissected, instead of a private expression of concern by loved ones for a woman who seems to have a distorted idea of what she needs to do in order to be acceptable.
I cannot support HAES and SA and also support a person not only whose actions contradict those practices, but who also claims to be associated with SA or FA in any way. I can accept her feederism compramise with her husband if it weren’t for the fact that she has children. That changes the situation.
This is not a woman whose dietary and eating habits are ambiguous and may in fact be passing good habits to her kids. This is a woman whose goals are clear: that she wants to destroy herself and become immobile, DESPITE the fact that she has children, and this is a woman who has spoken out as the “face of size acceptance” or something on television before.
And the woman as an individual disgusts me, and not because of her size. She was giving an interview and, at one point, has her daughter sitting on her belly while she actually describes out loud WHAT SHE DOES ON HER PORN SITE THAT HELPS GET HER FETISHISTS OFF TO HER. She was discussing the antics she reserves for porn WITH HER DAUGHTER NEXT TO HER. I mean, it’s not like she was talking about fellatio or facesitting, but STILL!
She should not be recieving the kind of attention she is. In my opinion, and I know others here share it, her antics are no different than those of someone in a Pro-Anorexia group.
Great Little roundup!
As for the story that everyone’s commenting on.. I.. Try as I might to get behind that woman’s right to do what she wants with her body, I can’t help but think that people aren’t really seeing it for what it is, an eating disorder. The reasoning is exactly the same; You could starve yourself to alter your body, or you could stuff yourself. Either way, it amounts to the same thing and both are bad for your health.
And.. honestly, and this probably sounds terrible, but I hate the whole idea of her. I feel like it’s just reinforcing people’s idea that fat people are all greedy, lazy, gluttonous pigs who just eat eat eat eat. She is not the woman I want on the face of fat acceptance, just like someone with Bulimia does not belong on a campaign for “healthy weight”
I don’t think we need to take the World’s Fattest Woman story very seriously. It’s a crafty ad for her feeder website, disguised as news.
I saw Donna Simpson on the Tyra show quite awhile ago and, to be honest, I was hoping so hard that it was not the same person in this story, but it is and I am appalled. I don’t feel the need to justify myself but I an avid FA supporter and proponent and I love LOVE zaftig beauties. But this woman and her life in general both disgusts and saddens me. I am all about a person’s right to do with their body and their life as they choose, as a polyamorous, pagan, queer fattie it would be hypocritical of me not to be anyway, but seeing Donna and her husband on Tyra made my skin crawl. She is sick, this is an eating disorder and the poor woman needs help, not encouragement. As for her husband, he is the part that disgusts me more, he doesn’t have the outward appearance of a man who loves his wife and adores her no matter what size she is, he just oozes the vibe of a lewd feeder who would be happy to see this woman destroy herself for his pleasure and perhaps for the recognition as well. Also, the Tyra appearance showed Donna doing some of the more “safe for TV” things that she does on her website, which includes crawling on all fours in a dog collar while drinking 4L ( I think that is a US gallon?) of milk at a time till she is almost vomiting… it almost brought tears to my eyes for the shame I felt on behalf of this woman i do not even know. In the article she flips between talking about the dangerous extremes she has gone to in order to lose weight and then in the next sentence she speaks of how happy she is fat and how she would never change. I grew up in a similar situation where there was very restrictive eating imposed on me and I , much the same as Donna, would steal food, hide food, and eat in secret. I can assure you, this gave me a very unhealthy relationship with food and a skewed understanding of what food meant to me. There is no way I can believe that she is coming at this endeavor from a place of happiness and health.
#3 is what I wanted to reply to. Do adults think that children don’t know we’re talking about them when we talk about the “childhood obesity epidemic”? I mean, with all the emphasis on weight loss in children, kids are BOUND to be singled out and ridiculed. Kids already single out the fat kids for teasing and bullying; why do we need to add fuel to the fire by targeting children with weight loss programs?
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I don’t know what to say about the woman trying to become the fattest woman in the world either. I guess I’ll just go with, whatever floats your boat as long as it doesn’t sink someone else’s ship on this one.