Tattoos Secret Meanings

How to Get Shit Done

I made a zine called How to Get Shit Done. It's for the avoiders and procrastinators, the non-finishers, the inert, the moribund, and the people who dwell on fear and anxiety.

It's a sweary, punk, queer, critical and DIY take on self-help. It's not specifically about fat activism, but many fat activists would probably find it useful.

The first print run of How to Get Shit Done has nearly sold out and I don't know when or if I will get it re-printed. Better act now if you want a copy.

More information about the zine, and how to order it: How to Get Shit Done

Hipsters flogging fat hate in San Francisco

Oh look, a clothes shop in San Francisco is using fat abjection to sell their shit to sensitive hipsters. Pose with the ugly old fatty! The perfect seasonal InstagramTM! No plus sizes here!

I saw this mentioned on BoingBoing.net: Santa the Hutt: grotesque photo-op Santa. I don't know where the boxed text comes from, it's not on any of the links included in the article, perhaps it's a press release that BoingBoing has cut and pasted (oh, hello Churnalism). The fat Santa is referred to as grotesque, vile, gorged, too obese to move, slovenly, groaning, sweaty, a danger to elves! People are warned against getting too close to him and advised to disinfect and take penicillin afterwards.

Apparently the shop is trying to use disgusting deathfat to make an important and serious statement about overconsumption. Yeah chinstrokers, retailers on the make with cheap hate-gags know all about greed and overconsumption. If you find any of their fatphobic stereotyping offensive then you obviously have no sense of humour.

I'm wondering if there are any Bay Area fat activists who'd like to head over to this store, Betabrand on Valencia, and tell them where to shove their fat hatred.

By the way, for all the critical reporting they do about science, no-nonsense coverage of digital justice, and general championing of activism and weirdness, it's a shame that BoingBoing has never really got it together in their treatment of fat. You'd think they'd be gagging for a subject that frequently exposes shitty science, corporate greed, life-hacking and oddball subcultures. Sad.

TATTOO Todays Works

Horimitsu Style Customer

Horimitsu Style TATTOO

It's not just the doctor that dishes out the fat talk, now the vet does it too

This is Pip, also known as Mr Pip, Pippin, My Little Ginger Prince, Tiny Man and so on. My girlfriend and I are his people and he has many friends down the street. Sometimes he comes home smelling of old ladies' perfume. We adore the li'l fella, feed him, stroke him, play with him and sometimes we take him to the vet.

I first wrote about the pet diet industry in an article for the short-lived Yes! (a mainstream British women's mag about fat) in 1997. Don Kulick also wrote about this in 2009, and there may be others that I've missed since then. At the time I felt I was really avant garde in having identified this little niche, but this was before the Obesity EpidemicTM kicked in at the turn of the century and pets became an extension of weight loss industry rhetoric. Now you can't move at the vet's for charts, scales, special expensive food, and a general air of uneasiness about fat pets. I imagine there are TV programmes dedicated to this stuff too, and only a matter of time until some series like Emergency Obese Cat Weight Loss Surgery spawns its own z-list celebrity universe. This stuff is everywhere.

Last night it was time for the Furry Man's flea jab. The vet cooed over him and said that he was perfect. She gave him his jab and inspected his teeth. Then she weighed him and told us sternly that he is at his optimum weight now that he has fully grown and he mustn't put on any more. Then we packed him back in his hated travel carrier and took him home.

This is not the first time that a vet has given my fat girlfriend and I the stern talk. The last time Pip had his jab, a different vet at the same surgery expressed surprise that the cat wasn't fat. He'd assumed that because we were fat, we'd be bound to have a fat pet too. Even though Pip isn't a fat cat and looks unlikely to get fat any time soon, we still got an earful about the importance of maintaining a 'good' weight.

It's very weird witnessing how cultural anxiety about fat is enacted upon an animal. It's also very weird how that anxiety is transmitted to pet owners, especially fat owners like us, by vets. Do they see themselves as our doctors too? Should I relate to them as health care professionals? It makes me wonder what kind of treatment fat owners of fat pets get, and if this has already become a mirror of the grim experience of being fat in the (human) clinic more generally. It also echoes the rhetoric about fat parenting and fat children, exemplified over the past couple of days by a new witless wonder in the news opining that "parents are to blame for fat children."

These experiences with the vet highlight how unreal obesity epidemic rhetoric feels to me. It's a kind of going through the motions, a make-work project that has nothing to do with my cat's well-being, or my own, but which is reproduced in the strangest and most pernicious ways.

References

Cooper, C. (1997) 'Would You Put Your Best Friend on a Diet?', Yes!, June/July, 14-15.

Kulick, D. (2009) 'Fat Pets' in Tomrley, C. and Kaloski Naylor, A., eds., Fat Studies in the UK, York: Raw Nerve Books, 35-50.

PS. Yes indeed, I have peppered this post with cat pics in a brazen attempt to up my viewing stats. Busted!

Actual fat people in consultancy shock!

I've got – count 'em – two whole calls for participants about fat that want to hear from actual fat people.

As the three regular readers of this blog will know, I support the idea of nothing about us without us in terms of research on fat. I'm not holding my breath that academics are finally down with the radical notion that fat people are the ones who should be at the heart of knowledge production about fat, but you take your thrills where you can get them.

I may be excited about this because I've just downloaded another collective noun of dreary, unoriginal research articles by another thin career academic who has started to write Fat Studies-ish things about fat, sorry, 'the obese' without any apparent connection to, or knowledge of, fat people or fat community, and is doing very well out of it. There's a whole literature like this and it's growing like The Blob. I know this is part of generating a critical mass to help tip the discourse into less punitive terrain, and I know I'm supposed to be grateful for the attention, but I want more than crumbs like this.

Anyway, here are the calls:

Food, class and climate change bookI am writing a book about food, class and climate change, including a chapter on how arguments about fat people’s overconsumption end up with, as the BBC put it ‘Obese blamed for world’s ills.’ I want to include plenty of voices from people who have been opposing this discourse in whatever way, so I am looking for people to interview about their experiences of stigmatisation and fat activism. The interviews can be by email, by Skype or (geography permitting) in person, according to preference. If you think you might be interested, drop me a line at elaine@redpuffin.co.uk

Fat as disease journal articles

We currently have a call open for stories on Obesity. This narrative symposium was inspired by the American Medical Association decision to call obesity a disease. More details: http://www.nibjournal.org/authors/documents/Obesity_Call-final.pdf. Susan DuBois, Managing Editor of Narrative Inquiry in Bioethics

Japanese TATTOO

Japanese TATTOO Horimitsu Style Complete!! Congrats!!!

Japanese TATTOO Horimitsu Style A little bit more session.

I'm speaking in London, Belfast and Brussels

I'm delaying hibernation for a trio of presentations in November. Please come along if you can, it would be great to see you.

3 November 2013, London
I'm speaking on a panel at Plus London.

19 November, London
I'm talking about fat sexuality in a panel convened by Gender & Sexuality Talks.

23 November 2013, Belfast
I'm delivering a lecture called How to Stay Alive, Have A Laugh and Change the World at Outburst Arts Festival.

26 November 2013, Brussels
I'm doing a talk and a workshop for L Festival at Rainbow House, called Dr Fat's Show and Tell. We're going to make a Belgian queer and trans fat activist timeline together. Take a look at the project page.