1. From Feed Me: Fat women are paid less than men in the workplace. So obviously, we should lose weight. Wait, what?

Fat women are paid less than women who aren’t fat; fat men, on average, earn comparable salaries to men who aren’t fat. So women are penalized by employers for being fat… All the young women who don’t identify as feminists because they don’t have to fly that flag anymore should take note of studies like this one. Gender discrimination is alive and well in 21st-century America.

But that’s not where the writer of this story went. No, her conclusion was quite different. She wrote, “It’s bad news, but maybe it will help fund better prevention strategies and new treatment methods for this growing scourge.”

Excuse me? Did I hear you right? The answer to discrimination is getting rid of the quality that’s being discriminated against?

2. From Already Pretty: the problem with “she shouldn’t wear that.”

[S]tylistic shoulds and shouldn’ts reinforce the idea that there are absolute rights and wrongs in clothing choices, tastes, and body shapes. Saying a woman “shouldn’t” wear something because of her figure supports the idea that there is one way to look good. And there isn’t. In fact, women who push social comfort levels with their stylistic choices may gradually force the observing public to accept that. Although some may prefer that women with cellulite conceal it, women with bony clavicles mask them, and women with zits apply cover-up, each woman is entitled to make her own choices.

3. The theme of the comp class I’m teaching this semester is feminism (actually, I told them it was unofficially called “F the Patriarchy”—it’s led to some terrific debate and discussion) and I shared this tidbit from Shakesville with them the other day. A headline reads “Man badly burned when girlfriend’s house set on fire” when, in actuality, he was her ex-boyfriend and stalker. And oh yeah, he set the fire.

[A]n amazing example of how violence against women is minimized in news reporting… the violent stalker is badly burned. His intended victims, who merely were doused with gasoline and terrorized, are OK.

4. From Womanist Musings: Gabourey Sidibe as “Mammy.”

There can be no denial that there are some people who will look at Gabourey and see mammy smiling back at them both consciously and unconsciously, yet that is not a function of her, but a function of Whiteness. When we use fat hatred to claim that her success is obscuring the talents of other Black women, we are only playing into the divisive strategy that Whiteness has long used to control people of colour. Even the Black women that some believe are deserving of greater accolades, are still perceived by Whiteness as fitting into either the jezebel or sapphire trope, and therefore; the way to divest ourselves of these horrible caricatures, is not to further demean another Black woman, but to defeat the idea that any of these labels are representative of Black womanhood. The entity that needs to disappear is mammy and not Gabourey.

5. Terrific satirical essay from Lesley about the importance of the “suffering ween.”

The sight of fat women is a heavy cross said men must bear every moment they step out into the public spaces where people congregate, be they city streets or shopping malls or public transportation or the dentist’s office. Their eyes burning as though filled with a raging fire, their inability to control their speech — the inescapable, uncontrollable need to instruct the offending woman on the pain she is selfishly causing them — this is hardly their fault! They must say something, in the hope that their words will drive the fat woman back into the shadows and thereby cause the unthinkable torture being imposed upon their enfeebled weens to finally relent. They cannot be responsible for the things they say and do while in such agony. We cannot rightly blame them when it is men, and the relative rigidity of their supremely important peckers, who are being attacked here, attacked by fat women who dare to allow themselves to be seen.

Pretty awesome collection of links, am I right? Let’s discuss in the comments!

2. Levi’s has come out with new “Curve ID” jeans, with different cuts similar to the Lane Bryant Right Fit concept. They go up to a size 24.

3. Making space for all kinds of bodies when we talk about body image, from Disabled Feminists. The post also addresses the idea of making space for those who don’t love their bodies at all. A thought-provoking read.

4. 500-pound teen dies in a fire when fire crews are unable to lift her. Heather, who sent in the article, pointed out how hateful the comments are in response to this tragedy, with references to her “eating herself to death.” Ugh.

5. Shapely Prose officially shuts its doors, and Kate Harding talks about her plans for the future. The end of an era!

Want to talk about any of this stuff? I know I do! Let’s take it to the comments!

• Entertainment Weekly
• L.A. Times
• ABC News
• MTV
• STLToday
• New York Times
• The Frisky

2. An awesome 18-year-old spent a month following Seventeen magazine dictates and blogging about it, calling it the Seventeen Magazine Project. Her intent was to draw more attention to the media’s ridiculous perception of women and teens and what they want, and are supposed to want. And now she’s decided to get even louder, putting together a community project called “Hey mainstream media.”

To participate in this project, all that you have to do is take a picture of yourself holding a sign with words finishing the statement, “Hey mainstream media! I am….”

Anyone can participate in this project. That is, anyone that at some point has felt misrepresented by or excluded from mainstream media. This project is NOT just for teens. Are you a black woman? Maybe you’re more than just a sassy best friend character. A straight man? Maybe you’re interested in more than just pictures of naked women. Unlike media, this project does not exclude or alienate any demographic.

You can add photos directly to the Flickr pool to participate. http://www.flickr.com/groups/heymainstreammedia/

3. The headline in this NYT article says it all: Plus-Size Revelation: Bigger Women Have Cash Too.

Corseted into a size 18 white denim dress, wearing heels that made her about 6-foot-2, Gwen DeVoe, a former model and fashion-show producer, stepped onto a runway in Manhattan this week and made a pitch to retailers for the plus-size woman.

Those stores that don’t carry bigger sizes? “Shame on you, baby, shame on you,” Ms. DeVoe said. “Every curvy girl that has a dollar is willing to spend that dollar.”

So retailers are realizing.

Just now? Just now they’re realizing? It feels like they’ve been realizing and poised to take on the plus-size market for about as long as I have been alive. Hey, maybe one day it’ll be a nice, ordinary fact, and not “news.”

4. A little late, but I just ran into this: Full-Figured Fashion Week happened, and it sounds like it was awesome. Sponsorship was up (7 sponsors last year, 35 this year!). My favorite part: how New York Magazine wistfully notes that everyone had a very swell time.

It’s a shame Full Figured Fashion Week has to be so separate from New York’s main Fashion Week. It’s also too bad the main Fashion Week doesn’t have model competitions or fun award ceremonies and a vibe that’s not life-or-death.

A popular (white) misconception is that fat is more acceptable in the black community. This is patently untrue. Hip-hop culture is often pointed to when one is making this argument. If you watch any hip-hop music videos at all, it’s clear to see that the fat on the women featured is in specific places. Booty, hips, tits. As the inimitable Sir Mix-A-Lot stated, “When a girl walks in with an itty-bitty waist and a round thing [booty] in your face, you get sprung.” (emphasis supplied) There is definitely a line between acceptable fat and unacceptable fat. Those fat women who are fortunate enough to be considered “thick” are subject to an even more extreme hypersexualization of their bodies than average sized or thin black women are. As the features considered sexually desirable not only by black men but also white men are exaggerated on a fat female body, these women are often portrayed as more sexually available, yet can also be portrayed as ghetto princess or hoochie — “Jezebel” and “Sapphire”. But cross that line dividing “thick fat” and “just fat” and you quickly enter the territory of the desexualized fat black woman: the Precious, the mammy. Let’s take the recent example of Gabourey Sidibe, who portrayed Precious, and who basically served as a dumping ground for all the issues people have with fat, specifically, black female fat. This is the type of fat black woman continually mocked by black men in drag. Namely, characters like Eddie Murphy’s Rasputia in Norbit, Tyler Perry’s Madea in any number of his movies, Martin Lawrence’s Shanaynay and Big Mama, and Jamie Foxx’s Wanda on In Living Color. These characters are either considered too old to be sexual and are subject to the mammy stereotype, or their sexuality is portrayed as a joke, something disgusting to be avoided. Clearly the black community is not the utopia of body acceptance white America often believes it to be.

I think it was a post by Snarky’s Machine that first got me to think about this issue (I can’t remember when, though; maybe she’ll drop by with a link) and realize that I’d had this misconception, and probably verbalized it back in the early days of this blog. But I think it’s good to be able to stand up and say, you know what? I was wrong. And I’m glad there are great blogs out there like Racialicious that make me stop and think and, as they say, check my privilege.

Thoughts?

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!

In the meantime, here’s the Fug Girls’ take on Gabby Sidibe’s dress at the Oscars. I have to say I don’t love it; I don’t love the color and I don’t love the applique business. On the other hand, I love this insane jumpsuit being worn by Beth Ditto, so I might just be crazy. I wouldn’t rule it out.

Speaking of the Oscars, Kate Harding wrote a piece for Salon in defense of Mo’Nique’s Oscar speech that I thought was very thought-provoking. And also, I am so happy that Kathryn Bigelow won. (Even if every recipient of a Scientific and Technical award appeared to be a white dude.) I hope she inspires other little girls to be directors. I really, really hope so.

Anyway, I’m going out of town this weekend and am teaching classes up until the very last minute, so posting may continue to be light until next week. In the meantime, here are some links for you! (I think there are a few potential juicy conversations in here, so I may pull out some comments and start spinoff posts if it seems like we want to talk more about something.)

The Oscars, cutting calories, Kirstie Alley, schisms in the fatosphere, and a feminist take on LOST coming right up…

1. The Oscars are on Sunday! I can’t wait to see what Gabby Sidibe and Mo’Nique decide to wear. Here they are at the NAACP Image Awards: Gabby in a short, sparkly gray dressand Mo’Nique in a bridal-looking white gown. The Rungay boys on Mo’Nique:

It’s a pretty dress and she looks good, but it’s the same effect that happened with Kate Winslet last year. She got nominated for an Oscar and sand blasted all her unique quirkiness away to make herself look like an Oscar nominee.

2. Urging “small caloric changes” to fight obesity is misleading.

[T]he “small changes” theory fails to take the body’s adaptive mechanisms into account. The rise in children’s obesity over the past few decades can’t be explained by an extra 100-calorie soda each day, or fewer physical education classes. Skipping a cookie or walking to school would barely make a dent in a calorie imbalance that goes “far beyond the ability of most individuals to address on a personal level,” the authors wrote — on the order of walking 5 to 10 miles a day for 10 years.”

“Instead of focusing on weight or appearance, focus on people’s health. There are things people can do to improve their health significantly that don’t require normalizing your weight.”

3. Kirstie Alley should stop trying to lose weight and just own the fat.

Some advice: if Kirstie Alley is going to do a show about being fat, she needs to go Ru-Paul on our asses and work it. Don’t use the word fat as a stand-in for disgusting. Fat is lots of things, but it is not gross. For every outspoken self-hating fat celebrity out there, there are a million fat chicks just trying to be okay with their bodies. Alley has the chance to be a champion for all the chubby girls in the house. How much fun would it be to watch her fabulous, slightly insane self walk around town being all, “I’m fat! What! Pass that cake!” Show her working out (News flash! Lots of fat people work out!), shopping (News flash! We want cute clothes too!), dating (News flash! Lots of dudes dig fat ladies! And thin ladies! Really, men just want to get with a lady!) and just being all about her fabulous fat self.

Jenfu said this very thing a few months ago! Thanks to Becca for the link.

4. Third-wave fat acceptance? An interesting conversation in the Fierce Fatties comments.

There are so many different perspectives in Fat Acceptance. And every time I’ve heard someone say that everyone in fat acceptance agrees on something, I end up thinking about all the instances where that is so not true.

We don’t have a single leader or a single idea that we follow in FA. Even the “big names” of fat acceptance say things like, “we don’t want fat acceptance to be monolithic”…

If fat acceptance is a smorgasbord of ideas, I think each of us needs to pick those things that work for us and discard the rest.

I feel like I’m so out of the loop on FA gossip and drama! I don’t even understand the thing with the three competing feeds; should BFD be on any other feeds? Or would BFD be shunned by the other feeds? I have no idea.

5. I won a Beautiful Blogger Award! Okay, it’s just a little graphic, but it reminds me of the day we won Diarist.net awards and pretended they meant things. (Oh man, Diarist.net is defunct now! Who knew.) Well, it is a lovely compliment to be on Rachel’s list… so thank you!

And in the spirit of the awards, I will point you to the awesome feminist blog Tiger Beatdown, which recently did a feminist analysis of LOST.

My problem with the “most interesting story lines” though, to be troublesomely ladybusiness for a moment, is this: Claire’s most interesting story line was having a baby and a boyfriend. Sun’s most interesting storyline is having a husband and a baby. Kate’s most interesting story line is having two potential boyfriends, between whom she cannot choose, and also a baby eventually. Juliet’s most important storyline was that her boyfriend might have thought for 1.5 seconds about liking another girl so she had to fall down a mine shaft and explode three times on screen.

Happy reading!

“No one in Hollywood told me they wanted to see a movie about a 350-pound black girl who had HIV,” Daniels blurted out during his acceptance speech, before realizing that he’d possibly embarrassed his full-figured star. Trying to cover up his mistake, the director stuttered at Sidibe and the audience, “She’s not 350 pounds. … Gabby… But the book says. … “

According to the article, this “mortified” and “noticeably upset” her, and it was a “stinging blow.”

“Daniels kept apologizing in front of the crowd, and even though Gabby was upset by his comment, she still accepted his apology. She was like, ‘Okay. I wanted that in there. Thank you,’ ” says a source. “It’s not like this was the first time someone has made a hurtful remark about her weight, even unintentionally.”

I guess I’m a little confused that this is seen as a “hurtful remark.” I have no idea how much Sidibe weighs or how tall she is, but does the number really matter? Maybe it’s just the automatic idea that 200+ pounds = enormously fat and 300+ pounds = immediate explosion and death. Which, as we all know, is crap. I wonder what a Gabourey Sidibe guessing game would look like.

The Wilson Phillips singer, who currently weighs 212 lbs. despite undergoing gastric bypass surgery in 1999, tells People Magazine, “I need help.”

I keep thinking of how celebrities are allowed to be fat if they’re also very apologetic about it. (At least we have Gabourey Sidibe on Team Unapologetic.) It’s the same dynamic behind The Biggest Loser: beat yourself up, and we’ll forgive you for being fat. If at first you don’t succeed, try, try again!

“I have to be a teacher to my daughters…Lola [her four-year-old daughter] started to notice commercials on TV with people who are trying to lose weight, and she looks at me. She’s thinking about this stuff, and it’s getting to her.”

Here’s where I want to shake her, because I’m afraid for this poor four-year-old of hers, watching weight loss commercials and hearing her mother constantly apologizing for her size. I don’t think you’re teaching your daughters the right thing unless you teach them to love themselves. Please, please, whatever else you do, teach them that.

And now, on to the things that are definitely not called “fattie quickies.”

1. Oscar-nominee Gabby Sidibe has an awesome designer.

What Hall is saying is something many women, regardless of the size, already know about fashion (high and otherwise): designers aren’t designing clothes to make women look good, they’re picking women to make their designs look good.

2. And speaking of Gabby Sidibe, she was left off of the cover of Vanity Fair’s “New Hollywood” issue, along with anyone else who isn’t thin, young, and white.

In the accompanying article, Vanity Fair writer Evgenia Peretz calls out the young cover stars by their best attributes: “downy-soft cheeks,” “button nose,” “patrician looks and celebrated pedigree,” “dewy, wide-eyed loveliness,” “Ivory-soap-girl features.” Roles for black, Asian, and Latin actors are scarce in Hollywood, but surely Sidibe, Zoe Saldana of “Avatar” and “Star Trek,” and Freida Pinto of “Slumdog Millionaire” are having their moment.

3. Adipositivity is doing a (NSFW) Valentine’s Day series in February. That’s right, pictures of couples getting it on in which at least one partner is fat.

Every day through Valentine’s Day you’ll see another Adiposer couple gettin’ at least semi for ya. But remember, most of ‘em are in pre-, mid-, or post-canoodle, so some photographs may be even more NSFW than usual. Hope they make you smile as much as they do me. Happy Valentine’s Day!

4. I really enjoyed Snarkysmachine’s post on Shapely Prose about black women and the beauty ideal.

I bought some of the, “Black women can be fat and still be desirable” snakeoil often peddled by white people, never seeing it as a form of subjugation. Not hearing, the rest of the sentence, “…for black women.” Not realizing my existence was still being framed as less than. And then there’s the Black Don’t Crack meme now utilized to sell botox and wrinkle creams to women of other races. Again from an unexamined perspective it feels like progress, but, of course, it’s not. It’s using the cult of youth to force women into obedience.

Also in the comments were links to If Black Women Were White Women and Extremely Flawed Social Experiment, both of which I also read with interest.

5. Thinner Whole Foods employees get higher employee discount. Um, gross. I will not be going to Whole Foods anymore, I guess!

By rewarding a BMI of 24 — a full point below what is considered the benchmark of “overweight” — Whole Foods is not-so-subtly indicating its preference that a lower BMI is better and ideal, thus contributing to an atmosphere in which employees who do not meet this standards are made to feel ostracized and targeted. These blanket standards also ignore genetic, gender, age and ethnic differences across groups, thereby directing this sense of corporate hostility, however passive, toward those employees who may already be among the most vulnerable in the workplace: minorities, women and senior citizens. Would we tolerate this kind of “incentive” if it were directed at other groups of workers?

Talk about any of these in the comments!