Totally fat positive weight loss!

I'm eternally puzzled at the drive to carve out some kind of fat positive weight loss niche. The explicitly contradictory nature of that never seems to really dissuade people from trying to insist on its possibility. I think it says a lot about how fat acceptance has not exactly been suppressed in our culture, so much as co-opted. Years of diet companies and professional fat baiters mimicking fat acceptance in an effort to disenfranchise it has evidently convinced a lot of people that weight-loss culture and fat acceptance aren't mutually exclusive.

Well, they are. Get used to it.

At which point we always here the righteous cries of inclusivity. Its always a curiously one-sided inclusivity, though. "Weight Loss Culture compromised by redefining FA to be fat negative, so the least FA can do is compromise by redefining fat acceptance to be fat negative."

Or some othr Weight Loss Culture talking point will take sway. "I don't hate my fat! I'm totally accepting of my body. Its just that the way it is right now is unacceptable so I need to change it. In a totally accepting way, though."

Nope, sorry. Doesn't work that way. If you're trying to lose weight, you're not being fat accepting. End of story.

Now, I'm not talking about having moments where you wished you weighed less. Given how overwhelming weight loss culture is, its impossible to avoid having moments of doubt, self-loathing, etc. Believe me, no one is that perfect. Myself included. The key point though is that perfection is only the goal in so far as its the theoretically ideal to progress towards. We don't have to expect to get there to not try to get there. Yet, that remains a top point raised to encourage people to give up fat acceptance. This notion that FA will not tolerate any lapses in positivity. Its just not the case.

Fat Acceptance will continue to be about, ya know, accepting fat. And that which is not accepting of fat will continue not being Fat Acceptance. Efforts to reconcile mutually exclusive ideals not withstanding, since, well, they won't withstand the fact that you can't reconcile mutually exclusive ideals.

A helpful reminder to politicians.

Just a helpful little reminder to any politicians looking to score points off fat bodies this election season. The world still really, really hates fat people. Tells them so every day. Reminds us in magazines, TV, newspapers. Reminds in ads and "news" alike. Reminds in fiction, too. Also has been known to seek us out on the street and in our home and even on our blogs. This world is not friendly to fat people. It is not even hands-off with fat people. Its decidedly hands-on in expressing its condemnation and intolerance for our bodies and expressing how we are a representation about countless things that are wrong in this world.

I say this, because John McCain, my friends, seems to not realize this. In discussing health care in an editorial this month, he explained how parent's need to teach their children "a sense of personal responsibility for their health, nutrition, and exercise" because such information has been "expelled from our schools". By what, you might ask? Political correctness, of course. Oh, political correctness. Is there nothing you can't be blamed for.

Evidently, fat acceptance (which I remind you, is still largely loathed and hated by progressives and conservatives alike) has been so successful it has now cowed our educators into supporting our point of view. Schools are not havens of fat tolerance and our childrens are suffering. Gone are the days of fat kids being berated by teaches and classmates alike. Gone are the gym class humiliations and public weighings. Gone are the days when children would be fat baited on their report cards. Except, of course, not.

This is a common theme among fat haters. So frustrated that the drum beat of their fat hatred has not made everyone skinny, that they decide the problem is that they aren't yelling loud enough. So they each think they are the first person telling us to hate our fat bodies. They must be, after all. If we had heard it before, we wouldn't be fat. Why haven't we heard it before? Well, obvious fat acceptance has come to dominant our life and society to such an insidious degree that we're keeping this information from the public to advance our political will.

So, just a reminder, fat acceptance does not control our educational system or anything else. Fat acceptance struggles at even holding sway in the FAT ACCEPTANCE. The suggestion that we are some sort of monolith of a political advocacy, imposing fatness on the American public is not a reality-based viewpoint. Its just an effort by fat hatred to disclaim responsibility for the fact that after decades of advancing their fat prejudice in every corner of our society, it simply has no productive results to show for it. Rather than acknowledge that their purpose has failed, they'd rather claim a loosely unorganized band of a few hundred activists are actually the most powerful force in matters of health in the nation.

So, just as a helpful reminder, we're not. You guys are still controlling the show. Fat people are still hated.

Princess Bashing

So, let's see. A week ago, I posted my apprehension about the newly announced "Fat Princess" video game. Then a few days later, Feminst Gamers (great site) picks up on the story as well its propeitor Mighty Ponygirl posts critically. A day later, it shows up on Big Fat Blog, where Paul McAleer also posts negatively about the game. And yesterday, Melissa McEwen of Shakesville discusses the game.

Now a predictable backlash has been brewing from defensive gamers. All very classy stuff I'm not going to bother quoting to save your sanity. Rest assured that a whole lot of fat hatred and woman hatred got spewed which justified the collective apprehension. Here's the thing, though. While Melissa and Mighty Ponygirl have gotten targeted by all this gamer backlash, Paul and I have not. Yeah, I know I don't have comments, but trust me I haven't seen a single email about the subject nor do Paul or I show up in any of the "ATTACK!" calls at gamer sites. Just Melissa and Mighty Ponygirl.

Now, I'd recognize that Shakesville is miles above in popularity and Feminist Gamers is at least a mile above. But Big Fat Blog is a fairly recognized site. So what else separates the blogs that have gotten backlash and those whose complaints have been ignored. See if you can figure it out and then ponder what this might tell us about those making the attacks.

Fat Princess? WTF?

I had been planning a post on video games and fat character creation, but then Sony goes and makes me post on a different video game subject. They've just announced a new game for the Playstation Network (essentially, you buy it online to download to a PS3 gaming console) called "Fat Princess". Which sounds like an awesome name, but you just know there is going to be a catch.

Yep, there is a catch.

Essentially, its a game of "Capture the Flag" where two teams fight to infiltrate the other's base, take their flag and bring it back to their own home base. Only instead of a flag, its a fat woman. Only, its not a fat woman so much as a feederist fantasy turned into a video game. See, the princess has been kept in a dungeon and has been fed until she is extremely fat. Ya know, to make it harder to rescue her and return her to her castle.

WTF?

The artwork of the game is weird in the first place. The characters are all designed in a very cutesy Nintendo-esque style, but there seems to be copious amounts of blood resulting from their battles to rescue their respective fat princesses. I'm sure the notion of "Capture the Fat Lady" was just another way to be quirky like that.

I'm trying to figure out a way to make this subversively positive, but I'm not seeing it. You could look at it as a game where the teams are fighting to protect a fat female ruler. I mean, that sorta sounds good. But, since this is team versus team, you are also a kidnapper and feeder. I could ignore the kidnapping thing since its riffing on fantasy archetypes, but the whole feederist thing is disturbing. And much like feederism tends to be, the purpose is really the degradation of fat people as the real consequence of this variation on capture the flag is that the flag is difficult to carry back to your home base. Cuz she's fat and stuff.

Sadly, the game seems to be actually executed well in terms of its game play so it might be popular. Well, as popular as a Playstation Network game can be, anyway. Maybe it won't be as bad as it seems like it might, but I'm definitely uneasy with what I'm seeing.

Rationalizing Wall-E

Fat hatred actually isn't a deal-breaker for me in pop entertainment. Oh, its a problem, absolutely. But this is a bigotry so wide-spread that I don't feel like I can fairly single out instances to condemn when they seep into popular culture. They merit criticism, certainly, but condemnation seems trickier. This a bigotry that virtually everyone simply takes for granted, after all. To be fair, I'd need to really condemn just about everyone. So, sometimes, I just note the fat hatred and consider an entertainment on its other merits.

What I hope I don't do is rationalize fat hatred. Its a temptation I know I've had in the past and fallen into. Al Franken is a good example. I love his writing and find him very funny. So I used to really try to rationalize his fat jokes at the expense of Rush Limbaugh. Its just parody, I'd say. He is mocking the mean-spirited (and indeed, often appearance based) insults of Limbaugh himself. Its just satire. Which it is. That was clearly Franken's intent with the fat jokes he told. But that didn't mean he wasn't also fat bigoted, and there was a point where I had to acknowledge that. He really is uncomfortable with fat people. Doesn't really set him apart, but I shouldn't be excuse him from it, either. But I can still find his writing enjoyable without defending, justifying, or rationalizing the fat hatred. I just have to be careful not to defend, justify, or rationalize that fat hatred. I should be aware of it, and critical of it if I really want to continue reading his work.

The surprisingly few emails I've gotten in response to my commentary on "Wall-E" have been falling into the very trap. They rationalize "Wall-E" because they liked the movie or like Pixar. I would say that I liked the movie and I certainly like Pixar. You can do that while still acknowledging the ways the film trades off fat hatred's cultural position. I do want to respond to a few specific rationalizations I've heard, though.

FAT PEOPLE AREN'T THE BAD GUYS
So? That doesn't mean they are positively portrayed. Indeed, I'd say a big problem is how they are crafted to be sympathetic, in that they are established as victims of fatness. That's not a positive representation of fat people. The movie very clearly depicts fat as a horrifying consequence, and that troubles me even if that fat characters aren't expressly blamed for it. Ultimately, this is condesending. I don't appreciate my body being used as a metaphor for the wrongs of the world. I don't care if an individual effort to do so doesn't blame me for being fat. If it still blames someone or something for my being fat, it is just perpetuating a culture of fat hatred. I'm sorry, but there is no needle to thread here. You cannot stigmatize "obesity" and not stigmatize "obese people". Even if you don't blame people for being fat, the stigmatization of fat will still effect fat individuals. You don't get to have it both ways. The prejudice will still harm people's lives.

THEY AREN'T ACTUALLY FAT
I gather the filmmakers themselves have been pushing this one. I'll cheritably call this naive, because irregardless of what sci-fi talk about bone density was snuck into the film, audiences took the characters to be fat and ultimately the audience interpration matters more culturally than the filmmakers intent. Intent is nice, but if that intent was not effectively communicated to the audience, it doesn't matter. Just look through what the reviews say. From professionals to amateurs, people talking about the film have consistantly identified the future humans as "obese". And of course they do, because that is the visual language the film is using, complete with cues about the characters' gluttony and inactivity. The notion that this would be taken by audiences as not a connection to fat people, but some ill-defined techno-babble result of space travel is naive at best, willfully ignorant at worst. The filmmakers have little reason not to know perfectly well how audiences will respond to the visuals. They are too good not to be aware. Irregardless, the take-away most people are taking away is that the movie's depiction of fatness does recall contemporary fat people. That's the reality of the movie's impact.

THE FILM'S LOGIC DEMANDED THEY BE FAT
"Of course they humans would be fat" is a rationalization that bases itself entirely on the internal logic of the film. The humans are sedentary, eat a high-caloric diet, have had centuries to evolve this way. Why, they have to be fat. This ignores a key point, though. The movie is fiction. Its internal logic is internal. Someone wrote the set of scenarios that make this result so "obvious". The question is not, "how could they not be fat". The question is why THIS scenario was written at all. One which plays into all cultural bigotries about fat people (further diminishing the, "they aren't fat" defense). The writer can and should be held accountable for the scenarios they construct. None of this had to be the way it was. A writer wrote it, and it is far to be critical of the decisions of the writers. This isn't a documentary or a true story. A writer created THIS future and the specific conditions that warranted the inclusion of the fat characters. And we also need to remember that while science fiction depicts a future, it is watched in the present. The internal rules of sci-fi should not shield it from contemporary criticism because that is where the movie is being seen. In OUR society and upon the reflection of our cultural bigotries. That is the world the film is being considered through. It is the world that produced the film, and the world that is watching the film. Science fiction is and will always be very much a product of the present, and we can't lose sight of that when assessing science fiction.

All of the messages of the film could have been made without the visual shorthand of fat humanity. The social disconnection, the polluting of our planet, the passive consumerism. You don't have to use fat people to represent the threat of these things to talk about them. Doing so just trades of contemporary bigotries about fat people and the expectations of a population which takes fat hatred for granted. Now, you can like everything else the movie did. Fat hatred is so taken for granted that being fat positive often leaves us unable to reconcile our beliefs with a popular culture that has no room for us. But we should let ourselves be unable to reconcile things some times. Its okay for entertainment we like to sometimes disappoint us. We have to let it disappoint us, though. Because I look around at all the people who felt head patted for their fat bigotry after seeing Wall-E, and it really concerns me.

Wall-E: Yeah, its as a bad as I suspected

So, I saw Wall-E last night and it was frustratingly bad. Frustrating, because it was SO unnecessary. The fat baiting was completely unnecessary and I do think it will be taken however the many different shades of fat bigotry choose to see it. Nevertheless, it is betraying one particular shade of fat of bigotry. That which views fat as a consequence.

See, fat people don't cause the problems in the film. They are the RESULT of the problems in the film. I tend to view this as "enlightened" fat bigotry. Enlightened only because those who harbor it feel quite confident that this is a polite, even fat friendly belief. It's not.

These are the people who saw Super Size Me and thought it made a great point. To them, fat people aren't bad, per se. We're just victims. Poor souls who've been subjected to being fat by evil corporations. That's definitely what they are getting at in Wall-E. That fat characters are sympathetic, but only in the sense that we are given to believe that their fatness is the result of the evil machinations of the films true villains.

Yeah, spare me the pity. Its not kind to a fat person to view their bodies as a horrible state for which you must pity and mourn. That's not fat positive. That's just an effort to justify your disgust with fat people without having to blame fat people for it. The core message is STILL that our bodies are disgusting and wrong, and that's just not something I will accept. This kind of "enlightened" fat bigotry is just a sham. A more "progressive" facade placed over the same old, "Ew, fatties". I'm not going to pat these "enlightened" fat bigots on the head just because they want to blame someone else for my fatness instead of blaming me. They still see my fat as something that needs to have blame assigned for it. That is unacceptable.

There are good and valid points to be made about the overconsumption of our natural resources. While not explicitly linked, its hard not to see the fat humanity as still a shorthand for that. There are also valid points to be made about the ways corporations are influencing our everyday lives or how technology can make us lose sight of simple pleasures. The film DOES make those points without using "OMG, FATNESS!" as a crutch. But yet, it still uses the crutch and I find that terribly disappointing. Because its otherwise a good film.

The imagery is striking in the first part of the film. Heart-breaking, even. The robot characters, without much speech at all, are some of the most richly developed characters I've ever seen on film. It is a testament to the skills of the Pixar crew that they can communicate so much about the inner lives of these robots with no substantive dialogue. They are absolutely wonderful characters who will have you on the edge of your seat anticipating their next move.

They just didn't need the fat baiting. Which was used more than symbolism of the fat as consequences but was also used for a series of dumb "ha, ha, fatty" sight gags. Which is what will really infuriate me in the long run. Because while the purpose of the fat characters was the promotion of "enlightened" fat bigotry, those sight gags will appeal just fine to the "unenlightened" fat bigots who will take away from this films that fat people are the cause of or at least symbolic of the world's problems. Even if that was definitely not the point the film was making, they still absolutely delivered for that kind of prejudice and it will just reinforce it. Which is really the whole deal with "enlightened" fat bigotry. They feel just the same horror and disgust at fat people as the rest. They just try to justify it. But its just a lame justification. In the end, they're still pointing and laughing. They just want to pretend that's not what they are doing.

I do have to say one thing in favor of the film, but its a bit spoilerish so stop reading if you're really concerned. During the credits, there is an epilogue of sorts that follows-up the happy ending of the movie. We see the humans through these vignettes and for the most part, they don't magically become thin as a result of the happy ending. THAT, I appreciated but its a small thing in the movie's favor in the context of the previous fat baiting. Still, it was a trick Comcast of all people couldn't keep themselves from doing in a recent PSA, so I'll give them credit for that. If you haven't seen it, Comcast as a cartoon ad touting their community rebuilding efforts where we see a downtrodden stoop transformed into a thriving community center. A black female character is also transformed in this sequence from fat to thin. It was powerful but also subtly fat negative and when the artistically rendered epilogue came on, I expected a reprise of Comcast's magical weight loss, but it didn't really come. The humans were all still fat in the happy ending. I don't think fat haters would notice that, but I did anyway. A spoilerish note against them, though, is the inexplicably, video of humanity in the past using actual live action. Both in scenes of "Hello, Dolly" that Wall-E watches and images of humans at the time when the Earth was become uninhabitable. This is a very odd choice that makes the cartoonish image of the fat humans that much more dehumanizing.

UPDATE: Check out my responses to Wall-E apologists in my follow-up post.

Pixar and the shorthand of Fat

So, the latest Pixar movie comes out today, Wall-E. I've been dreading this for a while as some plot points leaked out which sounded very fat negative. As we've gotten closer to release, those plot points have been increasingly confirmed and very disappointing. Because its not necessary. Its not a movie that needed fat hatred. They are just using fat as shorthand for something bad.

I first mentioned the phenomenon of shorthand fat in one of my first posts back in 2003. There, a movie uses a characters past fat self as a representation of his emotional problems at this time. When we see him in the present, he is thin, which is how we know he's better. I blasted this for being lazy film-making, and I'll blast Pixar for the same thing. It's lazy. Its playing into cultural prejudices to make a point.

Indeed, it seems like Pixar is actually being quite subtle and I suspect their use of fat shorthand will appeal to a variety of different fat prejudices. Essentially, fat is cautionary in the film. A sign of humanity's downfall in the future. But that's all it is. A sign, a symbol to represent something else. That can be useful sometimes, but here the effect is far more crass. Rather than making a complex point about consumerism or over-consumpsion of resources, they just rely on people's fear and disgust of fat. Forget all the valid complaints about those things. They'll make you FAT! That fear can be so base for people, that it doesn't matter if someone thinks of fat as a consequences of personal irresponsibility or corporate neglect. Both will feel the fear of fat and attach their own nuanced prejudices onto that.

The sad thing is, from the reviews, it sounds like the movie DID make its point before scaring us with the fatness. They really didn't need to fall back on using fat as shorthand for the dangers of modern society. But they did anyway, because for people who feel that way, its almost irresistible to draw that connection. Its such an obvious part of their fat prejudice that they feel they must make the point.

The thing to remember though is that there are a LOT of people who feel this way. Indeed, one of my disappoints with Pixar over this is that its so cliché to frightfully warn of the fattening of humanity. Its gotten boring even if you don't find it offensive. But still, its a message a lot of people will eat up because its what they want to hear and what the expect to hear. It really just serves to pat these people on the head for their fat hatred, justifying it to them with a horrifying view of fatness triumphant. It will inspire them to smug satisfaction in the face of the scary fatness. But again, the reality is that this is the culturally dominant position. Its a culturally coddled position. Pixar isn't unique in believing this ore suggesting it or promoting it. So I have trouble singling them out for shame for something that is a social problem. The sad reality is, they shouldn't know better. Not in this society, anyway. Not yet. Fat hatred enjoys such tremendous privilege in our culture that it simply is a non-issue for those who practice it. We need to change this, but if I hated everyone who thought that way, I'd hate darn near everyone and that doesn't feel very constructive to me.

So, I'll probably go see the movie anyway and try to ignore the point they are making. I made this point before, too. Its a frustration, but I feel its unfair to blame the person who says something everyone else is thinking. I have friends I know think the same things it sounds like Pixar is communicating in this movie. Heck, I have friends who consider themselves fat positive who'd probably agree with it. Its a very culturally dominant message and I don't feel like I can single out people for blame for something our society takes for granted. While we can change society one person at a time, its not going to be condemning society's views one individual at a time.

Its frustrating. I want a world where I don't have to deal with this. But we don't have that world yet. So I'll try to ignore the "OMG! Fatness!" side of Wall-E and hope the movie holds up without it. I suspect it will. Which is, again, why I really wish it wasn't there to begin with.

Actual atypical results

I saw this on a diet ad today. "Actual atypical results". We all know of the diet industry's Orwellian word play and their legally mandated "Results not typical" that gets attached to any suggestion that their product will do what they claim it will. Still, somehow this seems like a new low.

Its like they are dressing up a pig in a top hat and tails and hoping know one notices that its a pig. They are trying to get the "Actual results" in there, but decided that rather than just say that with the "Product doesn't work" fine print, they'd just do it all at once. Its a real live example of "Genuine Artificial". Its very slick, really. Trying to hide the "results not typical" in the middle of a boast of your snake oil's supposed effectiveness.

"Results actually atypical" might be a bit more of an honest construction, though. Just another bit of wordplay to add to the fat-hatred industry's repertoire of "Product doesn't work" disclaimers. Someone please show me another product which has to insert a disclaimer insisting it won't work as advertised. Please show me another product whose marketers are allowed to get away with this kind of slimy behavior. In the real world, this would never be allowed. Sadly, when the product being peddled is fat hatred, these are actually typical results.

For what its worth

A diet blog interviewing another diet blogger who wrote a diet book and which talks all about how dieting is awesome, fat is awful, and fat acceptance just as awful if not worse... well, that shouldn't be surprising. I get how some people were surprised, but there is really very little out of the ordinary about that. For what its worth.

WiiFat

So, my girlfriend owns a Wii. And its pretty fun. I never expected to like it, but the Wiimote controls are actually very easy to use and a lot of fun. One thing that's bothered me, though, is the way the Wii is often promoted as an "anti-obesity" tool. Ya know, cuz kids have to move and stuff and because video games had already been on the long list of things that are making kids teh fat.

Nintendo hasn't exactly stopped this talk and they are about the release the "Wii Fit" to really push their point. A more expressly fitness oriented accessory, its essentially just a balance board. Oh, but it doubles as a scale. With a weight limit, of course. In Japan it was around 300lbs, but I'm told its up to 330lbs for the American and European releases. This is actually a little higher than I thought, but obviously is still going to prevent a lot of fat people from using the product. The one being marketed as a weight loss tool.

Probably just as well. This story from Kotaku tells of a user in Japan who had the game tell her 10 year old daughter that she was fat. She was 4'9" and 92lbs at 10 years old. Which, for the record, is a "healthy" weight. Naturally, you've got no shortage of commentators taking the software's side and calling this unknown girl fat, so read the comments at your peril. The parent in the story told of how they had to reassure the girl who was devastated by the video games judgment of her. That's screwed up. We don't need video games expanding the threshold of who gets to hate their bodies. We don't need video games teaching children to hate their bodies. We already have too much of that as it is. Shame on Nintendo. For all their talk emphasizing "fitness" its seems clear that this is yet another effort to define fitness by fatness and nothing else.