Oct 28, 2009 NOTE FOR NEW VISITORS: Please visit this post first (it’s short). Thanks.

***

[The amazing abbyjean sent me annotations. Annotations! So now: Open Letter To Feministing With Links. We proceed.]

This includes the contributors and the commentariat.

We have a problem. We have had a problem for a long, long time.

You traffick in ableism. Your entire site reeks of it. I have spoken with many disabled feminists who find it impossible to read and participate in your community. They feel excluded. The culture is thick with unexamined ableism. We encounter common slurs and problematic cultural concepts at every turn, and are met with hostility when we bring it up. Some people have wasted energy on emailing you, requesting that you address it, so that they might safely participate in the community. You never bothered to respond. To any of them.

You’ve lost a lot of readers this way. But I’m sure, because that’s the way it usually goes, you lose less readers due to ableism than you gain due to same — because you never challenge their privilege, in fact defend it, passively and actively.

That’s nice for you and all, but the rest of us would, at best, like to play too. As for the worst — we would deeply appreciate it if you would stop deliberately (and don’t you dare say otherwise, you have heard our complaints and ignored them, making your actions deliberate) reinforcing a culture which marginalizes us, leaves us vulnerable to violence (including sexual violence), ostracization, institutionalization and death.¹

I viewed enough of this happening at your site — (years ago, when I was just getting into the feminist blogosphere; disappointingly, you haven’t changed a single bit in the intervening years) — that I never even bothered trying with your site. I’d love to have been able to. But your site has never felt like a safe space for me. Ever. Exactly the opposite. Your site has felt like a hostile and scary place to myself and other women.

W-O-M-E-N.

You can read, right? Spell it with me.

You cannot claim to care about my condition as a woman if you refuse to address the discrimination I face as a disabled woman.

As far as “what issues affect women”: I am a woman. Presumably, feminists care about the oppression women face.

But you cannot address the oppression I, a woman, face, without addressing the oppression so graciously given me on the basis of my disability.

For example, I face discrimination in the workplace. But if we are only to address the male-female pay gap, and ignore the obstacles I face because I am disabled, then you are not helping me as a woman. I am still left behind, still oppressed, as a woman. All you have done is alleviated the issues which affect you. Which means you aren’t helping women; you are helping healthy, abled women exclusively.

This is the basic framework I work from in my feminism. I am not helping women if I am not also out there addressing classism, transphobia, racism, homophobia, and all of the other oppressions that women face.

The reason “Sean Bell is a feminist issue” is because you must address the oppression which killed him to be able to address the oppression of women. If you cannot address that oppression — even though it affected a man this time — you cannot help the women who are also facing that oppression.

And if feminists are ok with not helping women on that level, then feminism isn’t about helping women, it is about helping white women. (me@tumblr)

And I am sick and fucking tired of having to explain this to the likes of all of you. If you are not there to help me in the problems I face because of my disability, you are not helping me as a woman. I am a whole person, not fragmented little bits. You have to help all of me to help any of me.

And if you aren’t all-in, for helping ALL of me, you are therefore declaring that you are only interested in helping ABLED WOMEN. You can cut out this bullshit about being “feminist,” as though you are working on behalf of “women.” Because you aren’t, at that point, working on the basis of gender: you are working on the basis of women with a certain ability status. Period.

A few days ago, meloukhia at this ain’t livin’ heard us complaining, and got sick of it herself. So she posted her Open Letter to Feministing and began promoting it. And it got some attention.

Apparently, Courtney has emailed her back, as of this writing. They are “in the generalities stage.”

I have absolutely zero interest in personally emailing with any of you, but I want to make sure people know that we — disabled feminists — aren’t stupid enough to be placated with a generic private apology. And I want you to know this. What it is that I, one particular disabled feminist, want from you.

1. Just posting about ableism-in-general, while a huge step for you (considering you never engage with disability in even a token capacity), IS NOT ENOUGH.²

2. Feminists have a long history of only ever speaking the dreaded d-word when it comes to reproductive rights, particularly (almost exclusively) the right to an abortion. Yeah, I know, you thought this would be easy. THAT WILL NOT BE ENOUGH.

3. As far as I’m concerned, you are dead to the cause if you never put up a post addressing your own ableism. Not ableism-in-general. THOSE POSTS ARE STILL NECESSARY. BUT THEY ARE NOT ENOUGH TO ANSWER OUR CRIES. You must put up a post examining your own personal ableism, and particularly the ableism you deliberately condone in your comments section.

In your comments section, a few disgusting, prejudiced, DANGEROUS memes are repeated with not an ounce of pushback:

* that health can be obtained by Doing The Right Things (eating right, exercising, being upper-class privileged enough to live the perfect little high-class life that is correlated with that definition of “health”) and that if you don’t Do The Right Things, any conditions that come up are Your Own Damn Fault, Don’t Come Crying To Us For Help

* attitudes expressed that fat people, smokers, and sick people should be paying more for healthcare because their illness is dragging the abled world down

* that disability is an awful tragedy and disabled people deserve only your pity, never your respect, and who knows why disabled people are segregated away in decrepit institutions, it couldn’t be connected to the way we regard disability as the end of meaningful life as we know it, nuh uh

* that having a disabled child would be such an abomination they must be screened out at all costs, and there is nothing at all problematic with this oh no oh no (DISCLAIMER, FOR GOD’S SAKE, I DO NOT PROPOSE LIMITING WOMEN’S REPRODUCTIVE FREEDOM, BUT I DO THINK YOUR PRIVILEGED ASSES NEED TO CONSIDER YOUR COMPLICITY IN OTHER PEOPLE’S SUFFERING) ³

* that Disability Is Objectively Bad, everyone knows that, duh, who would ever want a disability, of course life is going to be worse with one, and that is just because disability is (of course) inherently awful, and could never (of course) be because we make it worse by the way we treat disability[4.
* Even more frightening, the number of women who are on antidepressants ... why the hell are they having children anyway ... fuck if you can't cope with life, how the hell does one expect to raise a child! http://www.feministing.com/archives/005359.html#comment-47387

* I do think that for the sake of society, people who's severe disability roots from their genes should be prevented from reproduction. I'm not sure what that means, and I know the slippery slope that kind of thought can lead to, but I think somehow it's the most utilitarian thing to do. Not to put a blow against the I Am Sam or anything, but I think some people really don't have the capacity to raise their kids (certainly there are plenty of non-disabled parents who fit this description), but my main concern is that the children are more likely to have those same disabilities. I think society's attitude should be to respect and accept the disabled but not to encourage its increase. Certainly we don't want to always be making decisions for people who can't make them for themselves, right? http://www.feministing.com/archives/007889.html#comment-107733]

* words like “lame” and “retard” and “cripple” and “crazy” are totally ok to use — and their conceptual meanings as well — because disability is objectively bad so it makes sense to use something objectively bad to say that something else is bad, or because no one ever uses that word that way anymore (that I hear, because I as an abled person am the ultimate arbiter of how often certain things are said to certain people, the vast majority of whom I never encounter because they are segregated away from me) and it has lost its derogatory connotation, or that I have a cousin who’s retarded and I love him to death so that means I’m allowed to use the word because that totally eliminates my abled privilege, or it’s just too much of an imposition to change my language and have to lose that one concept to express that is based on harmful prejudice, or or…[5.
LAME

* God. Jennifer's body looks soooo lame. The stupidity dripping from the trailers is so overwhelming, I can't even imagine too many dumb and sexist stereotypical males going to see it. http://www.feministing.com/archives/017815.html#comment-298306

* lame. So fucking lame. http://www.feministing.com/archives/011318.html#comment-182734

* Samhita, 11/07: “Forget immigration, reproductive rights, health care or any other issue we feminists are reading up on for the upcoming election. It is all about getting a hot chick in the white house as first lady. Does that not count potential first dude, Bill? Forget you men.style.com, you are totally lame.

In that thread, someone raises the problem, and another commenter dismisses: “It's been so long since "lame" was used for people with disabilties that I really don't think it's an issue anymore. Besids, it's used as a synonym for "loser", not "defective" (which also isn't a synonym for people with disabilities anymore).” http://www.feministing.com/archives/008086.html#comment-114144

* 1/07, Courtney headlines an article “Can I Get a L-A-M-E”. again, someone calls it out in comments but no response from mods, although mods respond to other posts. http://www.feministing.com/archives/006368.html

* “LAME. Excuse me while I barf in the corner.” http://www.feministing.com/archives/015410.html

someone calls it out in comments and response: “Please don't spread prescriptivist poppycock on any site.” http://www.feministing.com/archives/015410.html#comment-257102

* “Lame-ass beer ads are a dime a dozen.” http://www.feministing.com/archives/017741.html

RETARDED

* Victoria Beckham is so retarded, I think she almost belongs in that shopping bag. http://www.feministing.com/archives/008985.html#comment-144542

* Commenter asks “Am I retarded, or can't you reverse a tubal ligation?”http://www.feministing.com/archives/007454.html#comment-93573

response is “No, you're not retarded. There are two types of ligations…” later in thread, commenter raises, no mod response though mods active in thread.

* One commenter uses the term: “It's like when you try to control a teenager and shelter them from reality - when they go into the real world, they often rebel and make a lot of retarded decisions.” http://www.feministing.com/archives/014575.html#comment-239116,
only response is another commenter pre-ridiculing any response: “Uh-oh, you said "retarded!" Get ready to duck the flying tomatoes! :P” http://www.feministing.com/archives/014575.html#comment-239125

* “Lindsay Lohan doesn't have curves like Marilyn Monroe did so to even do this shoot was a retarded idea in the first place.” http://www.feministing.com/archives/008637.html

* “So still being able to marry but being offended by something has the same impact as two gay people not being able to marry? What are they, retarded?” http://www.feministing.com/archives/011095.html#comment-179668

CRIPPLE

* “but the idea of marriage cripples my aspirations in life.”  http://community.feministing.com/2009/07/what-to-do-when-you-want-to-ma.html#comment-282211

* “When you use satire against powerless people, as Limbaugh does, it is not only cruel, it’s profoundly vulgar. It is like kicking a cripple.” http://www.feministing.com/archives/006861.html#comment-73327

* Canadian reactions are a little different from American ones, very negative or hostile actions can really ruin you (Do not make fun of a cripple, or call someone a Kitten Eater, for instance). http://community.feministing.com/2009/04/women-prefer-polite-politician.html#comment-244108

* “I'm not sure this guy built a robot just to sexually abuse. I think he's an emotionally crippled individual who can't relate to the opposite sex.” http://www.feministing.com/archives/012670.html

CRAZY

* Jessica titles post “Fun with feminist flickr (crazy billboard edition)” http://www.feministing.com/archives/006229.html

* Vanessa titles post “Randall Terry’s Crazy Road Show” http://www.feministing.com/archives/017413.html

* Vanessa titles post “Sen. Tom Coburn's chief of staff reaches new level of crazy” http://www.feministing.com/archives/017876.html

* Jessica titles post “What Double Standards Drive you Crazy?” http://www.feministing.com/archives/007551.html

* “I would be all for the feminists for life if they weren't so schizophrenic about their positions. They won't take a position on birth control but they don't want women to have abortions.” http://www.feministing.com/archives/002804.html#comment-13883

(amandaw's note: good Lord, I can only imagine what you'd find if you searched for "insane" "loony/loonytunes/etc." "unhinged" "psycho" and so forth - again, it's not just the word that's the problem)]

* that if one person, especially a person who has a disability, says something isn’t hurtful or problematic, you can call the whole thing off, because all those other people who DO have a problem with it and have suffered the consequences of it just cease to exist, poof!

* the sense of supremacy over others because you are (choose any or none, thin, abled, upper class, pretty, educated) and fully abled, which makes you totes better than everyone else, but you never CONSCIOUSLY think that so it’s totally ok that you still avoid Those People whenever possible because they scare you or squick you out, almost like they make you uncomfortable realizing your position in life is never as certain as you like to pretend it is? — nah, couldn’t be, just because they’re weird and gross and like, different and stuff

That’s just to start.

This is all shit that goes down in your comments regularly. And it makes women (spell it with me, W-O-M-E-N) feel uncomfortable and unwelcome, especially when they speak up and have other people jump back defending the exclusionary language and concepts, stating that they don’t have a problem with it and therefore there is no problem with it, saying or implying that the challenger must be oversensitive, have an agenda, looking for things to get angry about, or just doesn’t understand that the person committing the exclusionary behavior is a Good Person and that should be good enough.

Well. It’s not good enough. You are not good enough. Your whole site is not good enough. It is going to take some major changes. You are going to have to put yourself on the line, do some serious reading, reflecting, digesting, and actually change how you think and act (and not just by saying “I believe it now!” — we aren’t stupid, we can tell when there has been a true change). You are going to have to criticize yourself and your fellow writers. And –  this is the fun part –

4. you are going to have to change your comment section. You will moderate and fight back against ableism (which you will recognize, because you have actually been making an effort to learn more than you do now, right?) from your own commenters. You will delete offensive comments and tell commenters to stay the fuck in line. And not just once. Every time. EVERY FUCKING TIME.

And don’t you dare cry that it takes up so much time. Because you’re already spending that time watching your space to protect the abled women in it.

We would love it if you would give us the same fucking courtesy.

See also: meloukhia: Open Letter to Feministing; Anna: Dear Feministing: Answer your email; Annaham: Confessions of a Reluctant Young White Feminist; Anna again: Anti-Oppression Linkspam; Chally: Feminism that doesn’t advance women is no feminism at all.

All annotations abbyjean’s except where noted in parenthesis.

From the O-R: Khalil Young, 13, and his sisters Kiara, 9, and Khammeelah, 4, tend to their patch of tomatoes this afternoon at (the garden)… Khalil also is a garden guardian who waters all of the plants on a regular basis.

Look familiar? My thoughts are conflicted in that post, about the real root (so to speak) of our modern issues with connection to our earth, but make no mistake: this garden is an unequivocal positive for the people who use it, and it makes me inordinately happy that it is here.

There are two things going on here:

* Professor Gates, who has a cane so that he can move independently, could probably have made it down the stairs on his own. That’s not to say without pain or difficulty — but he wasn’t helpless. The reaction to this photo presupposes that the crippled man must be completely unable to help his own damn self, and that it is noble when the able-bodied officer presumes to “help” him. Do you see what this does? It removes Prof. Gates as an agent; it makes him, instead, an agency-less object, existing for the purpose of the able-bodied man: this time, as a signifier of character (taking on that noble burden).

* Speaking of noble burdens: the race of the men involved cannot be ignored. Sgt. Crowley is a white man helping a crippled man. In the right wing’s reading of this photo, Sgt. Crowley becomes a symbol of whiteness: an example of the way in which white men are Good, in which Good is defined as the way white men do things. Think boot straps: this fantastical myth is all about the inherent goodness of the white man, who does things the right way, in contrast with the minorities, who are too lazy, selfish, etc. to bother. Sgt. Crowley presuming to help Prof. Gates stands in contrast with President Obama, who is walking ahead, minding his own business. This shouldn’t be an issue, but it is seen directly in front of the white man taking on the noble burden, and thus becomes an indictment on the character of the shiftless, self-absorbed black man.

Who was it for?

Of course it was reported as a sort of reconciliation: a way to help Prof. Gates and Sgt. Crowley make up. But that wasn’t what it was.

To sum: Prof. Gates arrived home after a long and tiring flight, and couldn’t get in his house. Someone called the police, thinking that a stranger was breaking into his home. Police arrive when Prof. Gates was already in his home and calling a locksmith. Prof. Gates shows ID to Sgt. Crowley proving this is his home, may have been “belligerent” in doing so. Sgt. Crowley responds by luring him to his front porch, where he is handcuffed and arrested for disorderly conduct. Outrage ensues; charges are dropped. (Police insist the original caller reported that black men were breaking in; recordings prove that she said nothing about race at all.)

Journalist asks Obama about this during a health care press conference. Obama says a few predictable, innocuous things, then says that it is obvious that the police “acted stupidly” in arresting Prof. Gates in his own home for no crime committed, then makes a simple comment about the inarguable history of racial profiling in this country.

Sgt. Crowley objects loudly, saying the President is “way off base.” Sgt. Crowley is obviously very upset, and the police force is standing in solidarity with him. The country is beginning to criticize Obama for admitting the troublesome racial aspects of the story; the conventional wisdom is becoming that Obama bit off more than he could chew in “bringing race into this” — and white America will make sure that he is taken down a notch for it.

So Obama invites the two men to the White House for a beer. The country reacts with mild derision — but the attacks begin to fade. The issue is neutralized.

See what’s going on here? White man does something unfair to black man. Black man protests that this was unfair. White man’s sensibilities are offended at the accusation that he could ever be An Unfair-ist, makes this into an argument about whether or not he is a Good Man (being unfair would necessitate that he is a Bad Man). All his friends know that he is, in fact, a Good Man, and they stand up to say as much. Black man looks around, realizes that the numbers are not on his side. That everyone has ignored the unfair way he was treated, and his family and friends have been treated throughout history. That there is unrest among them, and he may face very real consequences if he presses the issue any further.

So the black man backs down. Makes conciliatory noises. To soothe the white man’s feelings. So that the white man won’t cause him any more trouble.

What was this beer summit about? Did Obama really think he was going to solve the issue of racial profiling and police officers behaving unethically by inviting two men out for a beer? Of course he didn’t. That wasn’t the purpose.

The purpose was to get the offended white man (and his white friends) to shut up and stop causing the black men trouble.

And I don’t blame him.

Quick, think of a disease or condition that affects only men and is considered by a large portion of the population to be fake, created by the pharmaceutical industry, or psychosomatic.  *Sound of crickets.*

An excellent look at the gendered construction of medical conditions at the Women’s Sports Blog.

Most of the language about credulous patients being duped by Big Pharma is directed at women and conditions they suffer from disproportionately.  Women are, after all, emotional and have the ability to create amazing physical symptoms solely from their minds.  At the same time, women’s bodies are considered to be in a constant state of abnormality relative to men’s bodies.  The word ‘hysteria’ is etymologically related to the Latin word for uterus, which was long considered to be the site of women’s mental health problems, and hence its removal is called a hysterectomy [...]

‘Just get out and exercise’ or ‘just change your diet’ is fairly lousy advice for anyone who hasn’t been able to get out of bed. But as a society we still maintain the illusion that changes in hormones, brain chemistry, or the like are failures of self-control or willpower.

She also discusses the disproportionate burden laid on mothers of disabled children. Read the whole thing.

Sissie quit taking her Insulin and went into almost a coma, she is so stupid, she said the Insulin was making her fat, so she quit.

Sigh.

Yet more bad news for the upper-class white liberals who are perpetually Concerned About Your Health(TM). Go figure.

even after death
they stuff our bodies into boxes …

– mscripchick

(Today is the Transgender Day of Remembrance. Click through for a short summary of those dead whose stories are known.)

I don’t know how you have a conversation with people for whom “because it’s right” is not enough of a reason to do something. I really don’t.

– commenter Isabel

… arguing with a doctor about weight is like arguing with a priest about whether you should be a Christian.

– commenter Eve

They’re waiting for the self-disclosure that explains why someone who seems so “normal” would identify with the disability community. They’re waiting to find out exactly why the friend who spoke up isn’t just like everyone else after all: The excuse that allows them to continue ignoring disability identity and culture. They’re waiting to be able to explain to each other, later, that:

“I don’t know anyone with Down’s. How was I supposed to know her sister had it?” [...]

The reason an able-bodied or able-looking person needs a reason to be a disability advocate is simple: So everybody else has a reason not to be. It’s “not their dog.” [...]

Disability culture (Deaf-Side debate notwithstanding) doesn’t require that you show your crip card, or your sister’s, mother’s, or brother’s, to be in favor of that which is right.

– Veralidaine

I write from San Francisco, where, in the months leading up the election, I saw a massive mobilization within the queer spaces in which I spend time to get people to vote no on 8, but I saw little or no public discourse among LGBT people about very important state propositions: 5, 6, and 9—all of which potentially impacted things like funding for prisons, drug crime sentencing, or the trying of minors as adults in this state….

– Adele Carpenter

Just take the other day. I was exiting a building in a stream of white people who had been able to afford the ticket to the show we had just seen. I was pushed off the path by two couples and a what looked like a father with his arm around his daughter. Wizard righted me. No one else came to help. They were too busy talking about the awesome Obama victory. Then, father ran down, literally, a poor black homeless woman who was trying to walk upstream. She kept saying “excuse me, excuse me.” Father pushed her aside; the white people on either side flooded around her. She was entirely invisible. I looked her in the eye and exchanged words with her. No one else seemed to see her. The Obama victory, you know.

– Wheelchair Dancer

My writing has fallen to the side as we go through something of a personal crisis. I hate declaring hiatus; closing off a door, any door, leaves me feeling cramped and constrained. But, yes, things are in a bit of upheaval at current time, and my participation in this amazing community will be limited for a time.

my body, and everything i use to take care of it.

Tomorrow is Love Your Body Day. The boundaries defining NOW, the sponsoring organization, are widely known to be drawn (conveniently) around the Western ideal of the financially privileged white life. But, much like feminism as a whole, I feel there is something of value at the core, something of use to all of us.

I find little use in campaigns and projects claiming to sprout from a respect and appreciation of the human body, which decry an unfair media ideal, but whose aim seems to be — not to deconstruct that ideal in an attempt to destroy any ideal whatsoever — but to deconstruct that ideal so as to replace it with one more conveniently molded to their own experience.

I do not want to replace the size zero ideal with a size six ideal. I do not want to look at the impossibly tiny waists and replace them with well-defined waists always significantly thinner than their accompanying hips and bosom. I don’t want to look at the airbrushed, overtanned, bleached blonde ideal and replace it with an ideal that includes pores and a range of hair color, but only on caucasian and white-skinned bodies, which are still skinny and perfectly toned, with smooth caucasian hair that’s allowed to be stick straight to a little wavy, and always the bright open eyes and blinding smile, always a smile.

Instead of an ideal, instead of merely shifted expectations — we need to blow that ideal to pieces, and in its place, put a purposeful lack of expectation, put a willingness to consider, put a confident knowledge that one may be faced with anything, anything, and put a curiosity, a sense of wonder, an ability to find beauty, rather than have it delivered.

Bodies, bodies, bodies. When we tell one person her body is beautiful because it is not this, or that, or that other thing, we tell another person whose body is one of those things that her body is not beautiful. When we tell one person her body is what we should be celebrating, we tell every other person whose body is different that they are still deficient — only in a different way.

(And as an aside: when we tell one person that real beauty is natural beauty, no modifications, no adaptations, no change whatsoever — we tell every other person on earth, every person who ever does any single thing to change their body, how it looks, what it does, how it feels — we tell them that they are not only deficient — they are committing a grave moral sin. Do you use mascara? Have you ever cut your hair? Why do you eat what you eat? Have you ever taken any sort of medication, for anything from a cold to cancer? Ever visited a doctor, therapist, or other practicioner? Ever injured yourself, and applied an antibiotic and bandage, or a set and cast, to make your body do something it would otherwise not do on its own? Do you wear glasses or contact lenses? Do you wear shoes? Do you shave? Well then.)

Instead, we should tell each person: you are a full, whole, valuable person. Look into yourself. Curl up deep within yourself, forsaking the outside world. And look around. What do you like? What feels good? What does good? What is it about your physical self that makes your life a little bit better?

Maybe it is how your body looks. Maybe it is what your body does. Maybe it is how your body feels. Maybe it is not any of these things. Maybe it is something else.

Look at your body, look at it, every day, look at it and think to yourself, and seek out that which is good. Good. Not good for them. Good for you.

What do you delight in?

What will you?

Body image is a question not only for just-under-average-sized upper class white girls and women. Body issue is a question for all of us. Women and men alike. People of color, mixed races, different cultures with different values. The fully abled, the disabled, the deformed, the deficient. Every one of us, as human beings, has to deal with the reality of our bodies as they are and how that conflicts with the expectations the rest of our society has of us. This is expressed in different ways for different persons and different society. But not one of us, not one, is unaffected.

So I invited everyone, even those who know they are not NOW’s target demographic — I invite you all to participate tomorrow. Seek peace with your body. After all, you can never escape it. But your body is not your adversary. Your body is you.

Love yourself.

This is a sign on the side of PA Route 19 heading south. First, an advertisement for McDonald’s desperate attempt to create a new product out of the same old ingredients. It is a considerable improvement over the ad formerly in that spot, featuring a giant cup of their lightly tea-flavored high fructose corn syrup water excuse me, sweet tea, which made me instinctively reach for the car door handle to spare myself the clean-up job when I vomited at the thought.

Second, a pair of legs. Legs that are: skinny, hairless, devoid of blemishes, white, shiny, and posed in an awkward and uncomfortable position. Oh, and don’t forget, as the photo doesn’t do the picture justice: airbrushed. Very much along the lines of something like this. (Or, of course, this.)

It’s hard for me to put into words exactly what the problem is with this billboard. Maybe it’s because varicose veins are used against women far more often than men. On a man, it is what it is, and who cares if it is? What’s it to you? Was he put on this good earth to make you feel a little wet? No, he exists for his own purposes, and if you have a problem with that you can kindly go fuck yourself.

But it’s understandable why a person would want treatment for them, much as I still wish I could get braces. I’ve had veins pop out on my hands at various times in my life, and it was always uncomfortable for me, and ultimately reinforced my sense of fragility — I was always afraid of how easily my bones might snap, or my veins ruptured severely by an otherwise mild cut or scrape. And, yeah, I was self-conscious.

But really: think of how you might possibly choose to advertise such a service. It’s not hard. We are positively soaked in marketing. Our economy exists on the back of advertisement. You’ve seen ads for similar services before. Stock photos don’t even need to come into the picture.

But they do. And what is the message it sends when this is the photo that is chosen?

Your legs should look this way.

But they don’t. Your calves have actual muscle to them. Or even fat. There is stubble, or considerable hair growth, which might be fine and downy and light, or might be red, or dark, coarse, frizzy, curly. Maybe your closest shave still leaves that slightly mottled look. Of course skin is not a single color; there is some mottling and mingling of different hues and shades; I can see a little blue and purple mixed in with a decidedly peachy color, but yours might trend more toward olive or plum. I have moles all over like freckles, little and flat, but dark and brown. Right now there are very deep red marks in about five places from shaving cuts over the last six months or so (my skin takes a long time to heal) and lines imprinted from the chair my leg was resting against — low circulation, low blood pressure will do that to do — and my bones stick out. My calves are rather skinny, but they’ve always been; even now that I have settled in at 175, my calves and forearms are like toothpicks — my wrist measurement is still 5″ rounded up. But there’s no muscle tone, so I still fall short of the photoshop standard.

So do you.

And when you look at that picture, you are keenly aware of this fact. You might not consciously think: “I don’t look like that.” But our minds are much more than what we consciously think. You are completely, mundanely aware of the fact that what you look like and what the ideal looks like are in two totally different realms.

You know that if you have varicose veins, and you receive treatment for them, and they subside, your legs will still not look like that. You may think they look better, but they aren’t going to look like that. Ever.

And that is the message you take away. You are not made of the right stuff for beauty. You are a totally different animal. You are fundamentally unfit. It doesn’t matter what you do. And that is a failure not of the standard, but of you, personally. You owe it to society to fit that standard. And because you don’t, you are personally slighting every person you ever come into contact with. Ever.

Just yesterday had to buy a size 4 to get a correct fit on top.

When are they going to standardize pant and basic shirt sizes for the other sex? I guess they wouldn’t make as much money if women didn’t have to make a trip to the fucking dressing room before being able to buy anything. Women might like being able to buy a size that fit accurately without the guesswork, and then they might actually be able to go in a store needing a specific basic item and pick it out and pay for it and walk out!

No, it’s much better for her to have to pick through a dressing rack, pulling out items of clothing in arbitrarily-assigned size numbers based on what looks approximately big enough to fit whatever their widest part is, shaped as though women were simply scaled replicas of some barbie doll basic: the exact same body, sized up or down with locked proportions at every point: no long torsos or tall legs or narrow hips or full bellies or racks of doom; women’s bodies as documents on a copy machine: you’re 108% the Ideal Woman? Great, you’re a size 12! Oh, no matter the inseam is too short or the straps are too long. The problem is with your body, not with our design practices. The burden is on you to seek out an alterationist and pay on top of our already marked-up cost just to get something that fits you correctly.

But just to make sure you don’t take it home and find out it clings too tight to your ass, let’s take it in the fitting room, and do let me know if you need a different size or color! Oh and honey, you’re rocking some major VPL — you need a good thong. They’re next to the shoes on the back wall. And don’t you think this shrug would go great with your outfit? You’ll need it to cover those scandalous top two inches of your arm, which aren’t quite covered by the just-slightly-see-through top, which you’ll need a good undershirt to wear without showing off your satin-and-lace demi bra to your coworkers.

And if you open a store brand credit card today, you’ll get 10% off your purchase!

Pretty please? I’m required to make a daily sales quota and the picking’s been rough. Apparently not every person can manage a new Visa for every retail store they ever visit, and if they did, why, there’d be no one left to sell the credit cards to! Sigh. This world today.

Welcome to the fatosphere, amandaw.

5′8″. 173lbs. BMI 26.3. Sizes 12 and 14 top and bottom. 38-34-44.

My habits have not changed. I eat the same shit I ate six months ago, and get the same amount of physical activity (trust me, that is carefully monitored). The only thing that’s changed is the shot in the ass I get once a month.

After my body settled down from puberty, I was 5′8″, 110lbs, 16.7 BMI, sizes 6 and 8, 32-25-36. I had no appetite and was visibly undernourished. Fending off accusations of anorexia, I would insist that “I’m not fat; I have fat.”

Just before I turned 19, I started on the Lyrica, which gave me a normal appetite. After about a year of slow and steady weight gain, my body settled in to 5′8″, 150lbs, 22.8 BMI, sizes 8 and 10, 34-30-40. And there my body stayed for just about three years.

Three years during which I lived a variety of lifestyles, to use the popular vernacular. I ran around college eating quite a bit; I ran around college eating almost nothing; I sat around my mother’s house eating fast food at least five times a week; I started working on my feet eating healthy portions of home-cooked family means (sandwiches, chicken, grains, pasta). And I stayed the same weight through all of that.

Last night, I went to a friend’s house to try on suits for an upcoming job interview. She used to work as a paralegal, so she had an abundance of suits. She is, well, the average American woman size-wise. She had several suits mostly in 10 and 12 but across a range of sizes.

I tried on every suit. I think there were seven or eight.

None of them fit.

OK — one fit… if I didn’t zip up the pants.

I was fucking humiliated.

I haven’t been able to fit my own jeans recently. I am fortunate that the only thing I’ve had to leave the house for recently has been physical therapy, so I’ve had official excuse to appear in public wearing sweat pants.

The friend was very helpful, and we ended up at Kohl’s where she bought me a fitting skirt, pair of pants, button-down top, and thong.

(Which makes her the first person to ever buy me underwear.)

I was not well. I had done far too much that day, to begin with: wake up early, physical therapy, driving to Canonsburg and back for aforementioned syringe in the ass, and shower, all without a single pain killer. I should have known to take one before going to the friend’s house, because trying on clothes always exhausts the hell out of me (I’d put it on the level of a long shower in terms of physical cost). But I didn’t until all the clothes-trying-on was done.

The physical consequences should be obvious, but something else happens when I’m in that kind of state. My brain goes blank. I am putting so much energy into staying awake, alert, upright, and minimally active that I don’t have any brain power to spare — to form coherent sentences, find the right word for the idea I am trying to express, offer responses that are relevant to the topic being discussed, or just plain make any sense.

Being social in this state is hard enough. It’s even harder when there’s the dark cloud of humiliation hovering over your head.

I looked myself in the mirror. I arched my back, sucked in my stomach, straightened my shoulders.

The gut didn’t go away.

God. I don’t know how to say this. It’s hard. It’s really hard. Up until recently I still saw myself as the skinny chick. My brain still thought it was stuck in the body I inhabited as a teenager.

And now? Now I’ve finally caught up: my brain feels like it’s stuck in the body I inhabited those three years prior to the Lupron.

I was OK, mostly, as I grew. I’ve been involved in fat acceptance for a while now, and body positivity has been a pet issue of mine for years and years; I trained myself to stop finding things to disparage, whether in myself or others, and instead find things to treasure. I accepted my fat rolls, and welcomed the substantiating of the tits. I admired my ass. I was building muscle; my thighs are thick and solid and I rather like them that way.

But now I can’t fit in my fucking clothes. And it’s fucking embarrassing.

***

I have a lot to deal with, personally. But right now I am fervently hoping that cessation of the Lupron will go hand-in-hand with shedding of the weight I’ve gained. I’m already damn sick  of it. The first month I suffered worse pain, dizziness and tremors and fainting spells; I had two months of reprieve after that, and in the last month the back pain came back like a boomerang and hit me in the ass, and brought with it cramping, nausea, and a scary amount of hair loss.

I have two months remaining. One more shot.

I’m scared. I’m scared I’m going to keep gaining. I’m scared there are some new and even more bizarre side effects in store. I’m scared that after the Lupron is done the pain will come right back. I’m scared it won’t have done anything.

I’m scared that all of this will be for nothing.

I’m scared that the Depo won’t do my body any better. I’m scared my periods are going to be as bad as ever when I come off the birth control. I’m scared we’ll end up running into trouble trying to conceive. I’m scared pregnancy is going to wreak havoc on my body. I’m scared of birth. I’m scared I won’t be able to keep up with kids once I have them. If I have them.

Most of all, I’m scared the pain is never going to go away. I’ll be thirty years old and living with the knowledge that I’m not even halfway done living and I’ve already exhausted all my options.

And when I look at that prospect, honestly? I want to die.

***

I meant this post to be about body dysmorphia. Fat. It ended up being something else.

I don’t know. I’ll be ok. But I’m struggling.

This shit makes me blood boil.

This morning I read (rather, viewed) Lauredhel’s documenting of the bullshit uni discrepancies for the Olympic athletes. Remember, these are athletes; there are surely performance advantages to skin-tight Lycra vs. baggy poly or vice-versa depending on the sport, but why then are women always mandated the Lycra and covering as little skin as possible (yes, this is in the rules) and men sometimes skintight, sometimes baggy, but always covering a modest amount and always far more skin than their counterpart women’s unis?

On that note, I was wandering around our discount store today after a job interview, grabbing some band-aids and bathroom products and a few more Fuji apples (divine!). I meandered by the sport care section, looking to replace my late shower chair and see if there was any sort of wrap to keep a heat pad on my back. I noted the name of the manufacturer of the products available there, and came home to print out a few product pages to discuss with my physical therapist.

While browsing the site, I curiously clicked on the “ Life Care™ for Her” link. This is the page that comes up:

What is wrong with this picture?

Oh yeah. The sexy vixen with smoky eyes trying to seduce you to come…tighten her knee brace.

WTF?

You’ll notice the pictures on the packaging, of course, includes more pictures of hairless poreless fatless pigmentless sssssexy chick. And they helpfully spotlight them in the middle of the page!

Mmmmm, check out my soft, silky, supple, b……races.
Why don’t you come support me, baby?

Targeted Support for Today’s Active Women. “Active,” huh! Smirk, wink, amirite amirite

I included the full first screen of the page to give a context as to the site it’s on. This is sports medicine. It’s hot/cold gel packs and creams, and tapes and wraps and braces. By contrast, here’s another picture of a woman on the site:

She’s wearing skin-tight midriff-bearing clothes, but at least she’s wearing any at all — and she’s up and active and at least her awkward position is actually doing something.

And here’s another page for one of their product series (as opposed to just a category of products). Notice that all but one of the pictures have been converted to grayscale and digitally edited to look like an understated grey model.

I don’t see why the same approach couldn’t have been taken with the women’s series of products — which appear to be designed so as to be better marketed, not so as to be a better product for women’s particular needs. They say they are thinner and sleeker so as to be less conspicuous under clothing, an advantage that I see no reason to be confined to women. Surely men in business suits would benefit from a non-bulky ankle brace too?

The message this sends to viewers is, simply put, even when you are injured or sick, you must always be sexy. What it tells women is that they need to shave their entire leg before they put on that knee brace. And white women should preferably tan, without tan lines. WOC need not apply, of course. Nor fat women.

There is quite simply no time that we, as women, are permitted to escape from the exacting standards set for us to be on-the-ready for any male passersby. Not when we are sick, not when we are injured, not when we are active or participating in sport, not even when we are altogether disabled. We must always be aware of our appearance, not in terms of presentability, but in terms of sexual attractiveness to a hypothetical mainstream white heterosexual male.

Even when no one can see us at all.

Chew on that for awhile.

Extra credit: The store had a different women’s-series set of products: they were “for her” and their distinguishing characteristic was that they were sized larger for a “plus-size” body. Apparently only women get fat.