the missing post

[quietann]

This was written early in the pirate party, when JB let me borrow his laptop:


I walk into a suspects party... and discover almost all the female guests discussing their gastric surgery, diets, exercise routines, etc.

Just over a year ago when we got married, my dad's wife commented about how nice it was to be in a community where large women were appreciated for what they are.

I want this not to hurt anymore.

Comments

[juliansinger.livejournal.com]

Mmmf.

As a Distinctly Large Person, I don't feel unwelcome/marginalized in Greater Elbonia (at least, not for /that/)... But I've also never had an eating disorder or eating issues. It really does make a difference.

[anotherjen.livejournal.com]

Huh.

Well, healthy eating and exercise aren't a bad thing in and of themselves. I know I don't eat well. My 20-30 extra pounds of weight is a symptom of a problem, not the problem itself. I hope that's at least the motivation for some of the women you're mentioning. If not, that is indeed unfortunate.

I can say that I've never felt unappreciated in our community, especially not for my bod, and I'm bigger than you are.

In some ways, I wish more of the men would get on a health kick. There are plenty of men in Suspoidom who eat crap and never exercise (especially considering that men are at greater risk for heart problems). But there's a fine line between adjusting one's diet and exercising more to get healthy, and doing so to conform to media standards of appearance that we've internalized.

[browngirl.livejournal.com]

Ah.

Yeah.

So far, people haven't seemed to translate their work on diets, etc, to getting on the cases of those of us who aren't dieting, but sometimes I worry.

[lyonesse.livejournal.com]

everybody's got a body, which they have to feed and move around. i guess some people have digestive tracts which require surgical intervention, too. it's something to talk about.

i don't think that any of these fails to translate into failure to appreciate large woemn for what they are.

i, for example, am somewhat hypersensitive to stuff regarding my own body. this is a common thing for people with somatiform disorder (the chronic pain part of my ptsd). most recently it's been taking the form of making me endlessly concerned with an ear infection i've been having; more typically i think (and talk, and write) about quantifiable stuff like how much i run.

but ya know, i don't think this means i fail to appreciate large women. my favorite running partner ever was a large woman. several of my gf's (incl. women i'm currently crushing on) are fat.

i'm sorry this hurts you, but i think what hurts you is a projection of your ideas into other people's heads. as another person (not one of the ones at this party, but certainly somebody who's talked about those subjects) i can say that i don't intend you (or anybody else) any harm or disappreciation. i'm mildly resentful that you'd imagine such malice in my head, but i guess the best i can do is to reassure you that it isn't actually there.

[hammercock.livejournal.com]

Fuck. I was just in the middle of writing a long response, and something weird happened with LJ and it disappeared into the ether. *grumble* Well, here's a distillation; please pardon me if it sounds terse (I'm at work).

I think one can accept fat people, be a fat person, and feel that being fat is imminently/presently unhealthy and wish to change this. I am probably twice your size, or close to it, and I count myself in this category. For a whole bunch of reasons, I think that I would be better off losing a large amount of weight, and I'm even mulling the pros and cons of lapband surgery (as opposed to gastric bypass, which is what Jeanie had).

I firmly believe this is is about me and not about anyone else. I don't judge other people for being fat or not, nor for their choice of diet or surgery (or lack thereof). What's right for me is not necessarily right for anyone else, and vice versa. I have enough issues of my own to deal with -- I don't need to take on other people's issues as well.

I don't mean this to sound harsh, but I think you're going to have to own this as your own issue and try to stop taking personally what other people choose to do about their own weight. It's not about you. It's about them. If you want it not to hurt, I'm afraid you're going to have to figure out how to deal with it so that it doesn't hurt you anymore.

[jim-p.livejournal.com]

{hug} I'm sorry you're going through this.

I think I know where you're coming from... I've been there myself. There's this creeping feeling that you are somehow broken and defective and the rest of the world is okay. So when you find yourself in one place and the "rest of the crowd" seems to be in another, it's not okay for you to be in your different place; it's yet another reminder that you're broken. And somehow, for some reason, a little voice inside tells you that they're doing it to you. That they're setting out to remind you, in case you might have forgotten, that You're Broken, and You Don't Belong.

I've been there, I still find myself there at times. Two things have helped me along the road to not being that way anymore: the first is realizing that they're not doing it to you; they're doing it among themselves. In other words, they didn't notice you and deliberately and loudly put themselves in a different place just to taunt you; they're just highly focused on where they are at the time. They may not even notice you're around. So they're not doing it to you.

The second thing that helped me was to go digging (with the help of my therapist) and figure out just where in my life this fundamental feeling that I Was Not Wanted came from. It's a deeply-rooted feeling that goes back literally to the time I was born (I came along at a very inconvenient time in my parents' lives; though they may have loved me I must have picked up on the vibe that said things would have been much better off if I didn't exist). All my life I would project this feeling onto people and situations around me even though 90% of the time it was totally unwarranted. I'm still digging out from under decades of its influence.

Just something to think about...

[maedbh7.livejournal.com]

I hear you, and I've seen that happen, too. And for no reason I can well express, it angers me more when Suspect-esque people do this than when Mundane-esque people do. I expect Mundanes to be size-ist, looks-ist, judgemental fashionistas; I expect Suspect people to be 'above that' or 'more enlightened' or just plain 'not into that'.

I think it says more about me and how I percieve people and events around me than it really says about the people. We live in a culture where beauty is idealized and where that ideal is idolized. Psychologically, it makes sense that any person living in this culture will be affected by that and thus will want/need to talk about how/much they are working toward achieving those ideals. I still think it both sucks and blows, but I understand where the impulse comes from, and I try to cut people some slack. IMO. YMMV. All standard disclaimers apply. -H...

[quietann.livejournal.com]

I think you get the issue as well as anyone. Thanks :)

[quietann.livejournal.com]

*cackle* tee-hee! That's very funny :) Luckily most of the people I know who have had the surgery are generally nice people, and don't need personality transplants :)

The surgery scares me. I *know* that the techniques have been improved, but a few years back I watched a neighbor in San Diego destroy her health by having this surgery. She was over 400 pounds (at 5'11"), and dropped down to below 100 and her bones started crumbling. She's been back for several "fixes" to correct the original surgery, and is finally in fairly good health, except for having a couple of rods in her back to replace the parts of her spine that broke.

oh, and did you know that they're doing the surgery on kids as young as 13 now? And that a lot of people who have the surgery *do* gain back a lot of weight?

Of course, the health problems associated with being Very Large also scare me. The number of Very Large people at the San Jose worldcon last year who were riding around in scooters because they couldn't walk very far was scary. And so on.

I just don't know what scares me more.

[marmota.livejournal.com]

Scooters? Ack, I hadn't heard about that. Okay, that squicks me. But then, my criterion has always been "ability". My personal criteria for judging lifestyle choices is "what options does this open up" being good, and "what options does this close off" being bad. I know a fair number of "out of shape" folks who lead considerably more active lives than I do, and even consider some of them attractive (there are far more considerations in play than ability and appearance). But too fat to WALK? Gaaaaack.

[tb]

Other people have given better feedback than I could on how to help make stuff hurt less. I don't think feeling disappointed, out-of-touch, or outside the norm can ever not hurt entirely.

Despite its rep of being a bunch of non-conformists, the Susboid crowd is mostly made up of people who grew up in 20th century America and so are all products of that culture. Also, since it's a large group, for any view "foo" on a topic, some set of folks will hold it.

I think it's fairly common for people who grew up as misfits to want the social group they finally find to be like them and share their views. Dealing with the crowd, I've had to get over myself regarding all sorts of issues: sports, TV, children, exercise, and yes, weight. Not everybody agrees with me or shares my tastes (the fools! -- whoops, was that my outside voice?), even if my default naive expectation was that somehow they would. I guess it's part of that "wanting to belong" thing. Now, over a decade after I found this crowd, I feel like more of a misfit than ever, but it bothers me less.

I wouldn't be surprised if the conversation you walk in on in ten years is about the equivalent of facelifts and botox. I also don't expect I'd be one of the people participating.

Luckily, party conversation topics tend to be short-lived. There have been times when I was frustrated that I couldn't explore an issue in-depth at a party, but there have been more times when I've been glad that the topic changed.

Lastly, don't forget the "water cooler syndrome": sometimes people will join in a conversation about a topic they don't really care about/agree with just to not feel left out.