October 2010

If it’s not one thing, it’s another.
Seriously.

First it’s me dispensing ill-informed Haterade to mothers breast-feeding in public.
Then it’s a rash of suicides by young gays and lesbians caused by the relentless, baseless, hateful bullying of ignorant people. (Thank goodness for purple hats.)
This week?
It’s a blog entry on Marie Claire‘s website, essentially saying fat people are disgusting and shouldn’t be shown on TV making out — or being otherwise happy or in love: Should “Fatties” Get a Room? (Even on TV?)

Palm to my face. Head to my desk.
Our collective cup runneth over with stupidity and hatred. (I’d like to think I am equal parts less stupid and less hateful after my personal episode, though…)

Maura. Kelly.
I know your plight. Obviously. I have been in your position very recently, albeit on a much smaller scale. I feel for you.
It’s a tough spot. But you are so dumb.
You are really dumb.
For real.

I’m sure there were a few commenters who chimed in to support her opinion. (Probably the kind of women who thought it was okay to play “Circle the Fat” with a soul-scarring Sharpie during their sororities’ hazing rituals.)
But most of the people who read the story — and had to sign up for an account, probably with their e-mail addresses, to leave a comment, which I resent — were infuriated. With good reason. And told her so. Some said really awful, equally baseless things about her as a person, which I don’t agree with.
But she wrote a diatribe against fat people, a demographic that’s been growing exponentially (no pun intended, I swear) in the past few years. What did she expect?

Her editors have let this piece run because they knew it would generate page views. They knew the shit storm was a-brewin’. They had to. And they let it explode. They let those words fly to help their publication stay relevant and rise to the top among a bunch of women’s magazines with absolutely no special qualities. (The same five stories run over and over in just about every magazine, with “___ Ways to Please Your Man” in the top position, so to speak.)
Some women have been enraged enough to take action, at least with their purse strings: The e-mail address of Marie Claire’s web editor, Kate Schweitzer, has been made known far and wide, and many women are writing in to let her know that they’ll cancel their subscriptions and stop buying the magazine if something isn’t done here. (To which I said: I had no idea, until yesterday, that Marie Claire was still in print. Which I guess was kind of the editors’ point.)

Maura Kelly is a woman who has dealt with anorexia and clearly has many body-image issues she is NOT OVER — she copped to both in the comments and her half-hearted retraction/apology — and who has been given an uncensored platform to talk about whatever she wants as she copes with them.
Someone who probably still cringes at what she sees when she looks in the mirror got free rein to hurt lord only knows how many other people.
What. POSSESSES. People?
The idea of compassion seems to have been lost on a big percentage of our population.
To spew such utter nonsense, show such complete disregard for fellow human beings… Especially when it comes from a totally uninformed place deep in their hearts or heads…
And people who had the power to stop it didn’t…
Really.

But, of course, there are bigger problems here than Marie Claire and its irresponsible editors.
The fact that obesity has actually reached epidemic proportions — the fact that it’s not just about the freshman 15 that never melted off, or eating one too many pints of Ben & Jerry’s but extends to government, education, economics — should be some kind of signal that we need to stop judging people for being fat and look at things a little more broadly. Support those people who are struggling. Try to change the way we all live.

I want a day of good news. Some triumph on a grand scale, the happiness equivalent of a suicide bombing in a crowded market. A day without mud-slinging political advertisements. (November 3, I’m looking at you.) I want to see someone else perform a random act of kindness instead of perpetuating the indifference that seems to rule our everyday lives.
I want a day where I can wake up, look in the mirror and not think to myself, “God, I’m so overweight.”
I weigh 190 pounds. I wear a size 12.
But I’m almost six feet tall. And I’ve been going to the gym almost every day for the past month. I’m running at least five miles every week. And I practically flog myself every time I indulge in something delicious — well, overindulge…it’s what I do. (I’m not made of stone.)
I’m not built to be thin, not genetically disposed to fit into skinny jeans.
But everything I see tells me it’s what I should do: I should be thin. I should wear skinny jeans. I should be able to eat what I want and still lose weight. (Someone should be sued for making those commercials, by the way.)
I put my scale away because those unflinching red numbers were making me hate myself. I refuse to go shopping because something about the mirrors and the lighting make me…well, they make me hate myself.
I’m a fairly proportional woman in her 20s. My body is fine. I know this in my most rational of brains.
If I struggle this much just to get through the day without thinking how awful I must look…

So really? I want a day where any woman can wake up and not think to herself, “God, I’m so overweight.” Or feel at least like she can go out in public without feeling ostracized beyond the self-loathing she likely already feels. To be able to take the steps she needs to start losing the weight, if she wishes, but carry on with her life in the meantime.

We’re all humans. (For God’s sake.) It would behoove us to remember that a lot more often than we do.

Exit soapbox.
Maybe actual writing next time.

23 comments

A guy at the door rolled a rubber stamp across the top of my clenched fist after I paid my cover.

I finally managed to decipher it after three beers, just before it washed off.
The smudged black ink read “BULLSHIT.”

This, in the end, means very little.

The Viaduct Theatre is located under the overpass between the express and local lanes of a Chicago street that never needed to be divided as such. The deserted stretch of Western Avenue was even more desolate last night; a steady rain was falling as I walked from the bus toward the theatre’s blinking red sign.
The door is solid metal, unmarked except for a meaningless swish of graffiti. I looked up to be sure I was walking in the right entrance, even though another woman had walked in not 15 seconds before me.
The bar was warm and dry, filled with vaguely familiar faces, some I would have recognized immediately this spring. But after four months of self-imposed exile, they were little more than hazy reminders of the life I’d run away from.
I grabbed my first beer, half for the taste and half to take the edge off, wondering how I’d explain myself when the time came to actually speak to someone. I’d worn clothes meant to help me blend in: jeans (not too tight), dark grey V-neck (not too deep), brown vest, modest jewelry. My necklace had sentimental value.
Saved by the opening of the concert hall doors. The audience plunged into the darkness and the lights went up on stage: drums, keyboard, bass, fiddle and a mess of guitars. The Knight picked up an electric — a sparkling blue Eastman that he’d saved for months to buy, shortly after our breakup — and finished tuning with the group.
The band had been assembled from the cream of the Old Town School crop to perform Van Morrison’s Astral Weeks in its entirety, in order: the realization of one of the Knight’s longtime dreams, done with a group talented enough to do the album justice.
He stepped to the microphone, tentatively, for the second track of side one, “Beside You.” It was one of the first Van songs he ever sent me – though it would be hard to say for sure, given the flurry of files I got in the first few months of our courtship – and his timidity quickly faded as he played the first brooding arpeggios that led into his lead vocals.
He couldn’t find me in the audience with the spotlights in his eyes, but he sang straight to me.
A muse once again.

I cried. Well, my lip quivered and tears welled in my eyes.
I couldn’t imagine having missed this. It’s strange being grateful for one’s own free will, but there it was: I was so thankful to have made that choice, to have rethought my decision and retraced my steps.

The band played through side one and flipped to side two with minimal chatter, and finished the show with a set of Van Morrison’s other songs.

The house lights came up; the music over the sound system was hollow and tinny after the rich blanket of sound that had warmed me for the past two hours. I stayed behind after the audience had filed out of the auditorium, long after midnight. The staff shuffled in to pick up leftover label-peeled beer bottles and plastic cups with melting ice and squeezed-out lime wedges, rearrange the tables and sweep the floors. The band gradually broke down the stage, unplugging amps and putting instruments back in their cases.
I’d steeled myself, during my two bus rides, for the explanations I would owe everyone I saw, who had known us as a couple. Where I’d been, what had happened. Why I was suddenly back as if nothing had happened. (As if.)
But it turns out I’m not nearly so consequential. My absence from this circle of friends had gone largely unnoticed, except, apparently, in the deadened twinkle in the Knight’s eyes.
People were surprised to see me, but they didn’t demand an explanation. The Michael Jackson dance moves and punch-drunk, beer-drunk jokes went on as if nothing had happened. (As if.)

Western Avenue was as desolate as it had been when I arrived, alone, but the rain had stopped and everything was different as I walked out with him, carrying a guitar case in each hand across the street to the Shining Camry.
Beside you.

Our own Summer of Silence broken, out in the open.
And I’m not sorry.

8 comments