The YMCA is campaigning on behalf of 'body confidence' in the UK and is supporting a number of meetings of the All Party Parliamentary Group on Body Image, which started in November and will continue through to the end of February. These meetings are open to the public and involve expert testimony from representatives of academia, mental health, youth and education services, media, fitness, fashion, health and cosmetic surgery industries.
Those not able to attend are invited to give written evidence to the All Party Parliamentary Group on Body Image via an online survey. I submitted my response to this yesterday and encourage others to do the same.
I support this campaign in vague and general terms, I'd rather it existed than not, but I have many misgivings about it. I'm offering this critique not because I think this work should go away, but because it could and should be very much stronger and more emancipatory. Here's a brief explanation of why I'm wary:
There will be no discussion with health professionals or representatives from the National Health Service other than psychiatrists and psychologists. The hectoring use of BMI charts, plans to encourage everyone from chiropodists to pharmacists to 'helpfully' enquire about your diet and exercise every time you pick up some medicine or get your bunions seen to, and the public-private partnerships being set up between the NHS and weight loss companies would suggest that this is a significant area that affects people's embodied self esteem.
I'm assuming that this group has been omitted because they don't represent the more faddish side of weight loss, but this sets up a false distinction between good and bad weight loss; some doctors advocate very low calorie diets for fat people, for example. The campaign's website talks about problematic 'quick fixes' for body image anxiety, including cosmetic surgery, steroids, and fad diets, but it does not attack weight loss in general as something that is likely to screw up your sense of body image. This echoes a previous attempt to use the British government to support an anti-diet agenda, which was tabled by Mary Evans Young in the early 1990s with the support of Alice Mahon MP. In that instance diets were attacked as detrimental to people's health and wellbeing, but weight loss was deemed acceptable for 'the obese'. Presumably dieting or poor body image is only a problem if you are normatively-sized, everyone else is fair game.
There's no mention in the campaign of alternative paradigms that are already well-established, including fat activism and Health At Every Size. No representatives of these models have been invited to speak, it is as though they don't exist when actually there's a wealth of material and expertise and experience to draw on. The lack of connection to a wider context for this sort of work makes the campaign appear superficial, ahistorical and self-aggrandising to me.
Similarly, the role of dominant ideologies are omitted. Capitalism and neoliberalism are prime reasons why so many of us do not feel at home in our bodies. Racism and oppression in general have a massive part to play in it too. Fatphobia is at the heart of why kids are measured and dieted before they've learned to tie their shoelaces. Governmentality and medicalisation are surely implicated. The broader picture is not being addressed in this campaign, instead there is a pathetic insistence that the red herrings of 'celebrity culture' or 'the media' (which is never defined, and around which we all become passive dupes rather than active consumers or producers, or involved in any other relationship to it - and yes, the bombarded by images cliché is invoked) are the problem.
The online survey through which stakeholders are invited to give written evidence to the All Party Parliamentary Group on Body Image is poorly designed and full of leading questions, sometimes you only get a line to answer a fantastically complicated question, for example, which hints at the campaign's lack of understanding of the issues involved. The language and assumptions behind some of the questions is fatphobic, for example "What are the links, if any, between obesity, eating disorders and poor body image?" implies that the three concepts are more than likely linked and stems from a particular popular discourse of fat as a product of compulsive eating, an immature coping mechanism. Because it's a government platform, and this particular government is all about a neoliberal reduction of state funding, there are many questions about the economic impact of negative body image, which can get quite wearing, as if that's the only kind of impact that matters.
The YMCA is synonymous with gym culture, are they really the best organisation to advise on developing stronger strategies around health and self-image? Gok Wan endorses the campaign, truly a turn-off for me given his own weight maintenance regime. The YMCA's interest in the campaign is to "reduce body image as a barrier to participation" which suggests that they are looking at a business case as a rationale for this work. But I don't want good body image to be a means of transforming me into a more eager consumer of gym memberships, that's not why I do the work I do, my activism is anti-capitalist! Likewise, although I see fat activism as a broad endeavour where many kinds of activities can be sustained, including All Party Parliamentary Groups, I am an anarchist and government lobbying is not my preferred location for social change.
And what does body image mean anyway? The campaign's website defines it as "our idea of how our body looks and is perceived by others" but this is so vague, faux-apolitical and unrooted as to be meaningless.
Finally, you know what? There's not a single fat person in the promotional imagery. Bah.
Showing posts with label BMI. Show all posts
Showing posts with label BMI. Show all posts
Fat Accessibility on São Paulo's Metro
Jenni has generously allowed me to use some of the commentary she gave on her LiveJournal. She says:
I was interested that the São Paulo Metro is so inclusive in ways that the London Underground mostly isn't – we've benefited from the enhanced accessibility ourselves, as the 'special needs' I meant include people with babies, people with luggage, older folks, pregnant women, and a range of others as well as wheelchair users. I'm not entirely sure whether the seats in question are intended as part of this accessibility (which might mean that the authorities are problematically treating fatness as a disability) or as part of some other initiative which might be being done in a more pro-different sizes way, but I was interested to see it precisely because of your fat activism writing, which makes me think about that sort of question. Brazil is in some ways a very body-fascist place – the breakfast in the hotel included calorie counts for all the foodstuffs, and the women are supposed to look chic and be skinny, to the extent that I once failed to buy some beach shorts because I couldn't get the supposedly large size any higher than my knees. At the same time though you see an amazing variety of body shapes on the street, on the telly, and on the beach, so I don't know how those pressures actually work out in everyday life, and I wonder about it.Jenni goes on to say:
The seats are weird and interesting. The state law in question is specifically to combat obesity and is part of 'Lighter São Paulo' (São Paulo Mais Leve) but I don't see how the seats work out as any sort of countermeasure. They fit into the same category as seats for elderly or pregnant people or those carrying children, in that the seat is not supposed to be used by people who aren't in that situation unless there is no-one around whom has a better right to it. There are fewer specific seats for fat folks than for old folks but otherwise it's supposed to work in the same sort of way as for categories of people who no-one would deny a right to preferential treatment, so arguably preferential treatment is here being given where it is normally withheld. There is a seat on the platform and a matching seat in the carriage that stops at that bit of platform – that's a carriage that also has space for bicycles, wheelchair users, and pregnant/old/baby-carrying folk (though the latter have lots of specific seats and not just in this carriage).Jenni posted some pictures on her Flickr and also pointed out this article São Paulo um cidade Chubby friendly*?. Here, too, is a news report in Portuguese 'Banco dos gordinhos' do metrô agrada também os magros.
On our various Metro trips in SP far, we have seen one fattish chap sat in one of the seats on the train – clearly he didn't mind sitting there whether or not he would officially 'count,' I mean he mustn't have been embarrassed by it or anything. On the seats on the platform we only saw a canoodling couple using it as a love seat (neither of them were skinny but they weren't fatties either – again they didn't seem embarrassed to be sat there so I suppose they weren't sensitive about their weight or anything) and a mother and young son, aged maybe 10 or so, just using it as an extra-wide seat.
I really love the contradiction that Jenni points out between anti-obesity initiatives, which tend to be about eradicating fat people, and these seats, which support the lives of fat people as we are. Installing seats across a large transport network is a public investment in fatness and suggests that fat people aren't going away any time soon. Where the seats are framed as some kind of response to 'obesogenic environments', ie getting fat people out and about and doing things, the rationale may be fatphobic but the outcome is about creating inclusive space.
Newspaper reports typically state that fat people are too stigmatised to use the seats, but the seats make me feel excited at the idea of confident fat people using them, which must surely happen. It would be amazing to see that.
I also like the way that the seats ally fatness, disability and accessibility. Firstly it shows that accessibility is more than disability, and secondly, although the relationship between fat and disability can be filled with tension (see my paper from 1997 Can A Fat Woman Call Herself Disabled?) I see them as very much intertwined.
These seats have blown my mind in all kinds of ways, which means I have questions that may not have answers: why have seating that delineates a body size at all? Why not go for bench-style seating in public space? Are thinner people required to relinquish a fat seat for someone fatter? What if there's more than one fat person, how is who uses the seat negotiated? What if fat seats are still too small for you? Have you used one of these seats?
Thanks Jenni!
Defiling BMI at The Carnival of Feminist Cultural Activism
The Carnival of Feminist Cultural Activism has just taken place at York University. It involved three days of presentations, panels, discussions, performance, workshops, films and a whole lot of talking and hanging out. The event was a lot of fun, as well as being challenging and thought-provoking. The organisers did a great job in creating a space where many different kinds of feminists could come together. I was there for four things: to participate in a bunch of presentations; to chair a couple of sessions; to see my friends and meet new folks; and to present the final plenary: Fightin' Dirty With The Chubsters.
I had an hour, so I showed my Chubsters short film, had a stab at introducing the concept, and got people to take part in some Chubsters skill-sharing. I thought that few would turn up to this final plenary, but I was wrong, it was busy, and I was worried that a feminist and largely academic crowd would be a little starchy, I was wrong about that too.
I offered four skill-sharing options:
Glaring
Participants were invited to use eyes, mouth, expression, hair and brains to attack with their faces. I nipped back into the room at one point, after being outside taking part in one of the other activities, to witness the glaring group standing in a neat circle practising their glaring at each other in silent aggressive rage.
Shooting
I drew some cans of Slim-Fast on a piece of card and invited people to do some target practise with the Chubsters' weapon of choice - spud guns. This was by far the most popular group. Social justice activists take note: people really like a spud gun.
Spitting
This was what I was most excited about, and daunted. I've wanted to be good at spitting ever since I saw Patti Smith accurately shoot a jet of saliva out of her mouth onstage and hit a spot to her side. I imagined that it would be great to see or be a Chubster spitting insolently at something. But spitting really is disgusting, and offensive to many, especially when done by women and I wondered if I was pushing people too far, though I also saw my role in the plenary as goading a group of over-tired, conferenced-out people into antisocial pleasure and risk-taking. Anyway, I drew a picture of a BMI (Body Mass Index) Chart because I thought that it would make a good target. I was delighted that people went for it. None of us had Patti Smith's technique, but we made up for it with gusto. My favourites involved the running spit, the up-close and phlegmy spit, and the crab spit, where a woman bent backwards into a crab and spat in a graceful arc onto the BMI Chart.
Freestyle
This was an anything goes option for people who didn't fancy any of the others. From what I gather it involved a lot of arm-wrestling and actual, down on the floor wrestling. It made my heart sing to see a pair of very serious feminist intellectual heavyweights rolling around on the floor of the lecture theatre in a leg grip.
Some people combined different skills, advanced Chubsterdom! Later we welcomed some new Chubsters into the gang, check out their names: Awesome Jonnie, Backwoods Bettie, Biscuits, Cat-Face, Chaos Flower, Count Fatula, Crab, Faye Bentos, Gorrilay, Grrrran, Grummel Pott, Hell's Granny, Junk, Myxt, Pinkie, Piseog Dubh, Rabid Fox, Raptor, Robin Hood, Rough, Round Robin, Rump-Shaker, Skiff, Southern Fried Chubbin', Stink-Eye, The Fixer, Thunder Domes, Toxic Pink Stuff, T-Rex, Twisted Stitch, and Von Vixen.
By the time I got the train home from York I was pretty exhausted and had that brain-buzzing feeling that I often get after some Chubsters action, or a really good Fat Studies event. I'm really grateful that the Carnival organisers enabled me to create this weird space for people to play in, and that people got it and were engaged.
There are more pics of the whole event in Evangeline Tsao's Facebook Album.
I kept coming back to the BMI Chart covered in spit, dripping with it. This chart is so oppressive, it's today's equivalent of phrenology and about as much use. Kate Harding's fantastic Illustrated BMI Project was one way of transforming it and reducing its power, I've seen others address it as activists too, and I saw the spit-fest as a extension of this approach. I felt so happy to see it defiled with the collective spit of a group of feminists! It perfectly captured my (our?) contempt for it. I thought about how great it was to have been able to facilitate the creation of this real life mental image, and I wondered if other people might remember it dripping with spit the next time they come across it in a doctor's office, or are being lectured about it, or whatver. It felt like I was spitting it out of myself and removing its power over my body. Maybe the next time people see a load of Slim-Fast for sale in a shop they might imagine having a pop at it with a spud gun.
It's made me think more about how, in my experience, The Chubsters is often a vehicle for creating unlikely yet enriching moments of real-life wildness, peculiar tableaux that stick with you later. These become like mental touchstones that stay with me and comfort, amuse, captivate, inspire me when I draw upon them. I'm sure a spit-covered drawing of a BMI Chart is not what many people would consider a treasured memory, but it is for me.
Full disclosure: some of my friends chose to withdraw from the Carnival last December, stating their position on Red Chidgey's blog Feminist Memory: Open letter of withdrawal from the Carnival of Feminist Cultural Activism (2011). Then as now my feelings about Raw Nerve are different to my friends', as is my understanding of what happened. I am mentioning this here because I don't want to pretend that this issue was not also a part of my Carnival experience.
I had an hour, so I showed my Chubsters short film, had a stab at introducing the concept, and got people to take part in some Chubsters skill-sharing. I thought that few would turn up to this final plenary, but I was wrong, it was busy, and I was worried that a feminist and largely academic crowd would be a little starchy, I was wrong about that too.
I offered four skill-sharing options:
Glaring
Participants were invited to use eyes, mouth, expression, hair and brains to attack with their faces. I nipped back into the room at one point, after being outside taking part in one of the other activities, to witness the glaring group standing in a neat circle practising their glaring at each other in silent aggressive rage.
Shooting
I drew some cans of Slim-Fast on a piece of card and invited people to do some target practise with the Chubsters' weapon of choice - spud guns. This was by far the most popular group. Social justice activists take note: people really like a spud gun.
Spitting
This was what I was most excited about, and daunted. I've wanted to be good at spitting ever since I saw Patti Smith accurately shoot a jet of saliva out of her mouth onstage and hit a spot to her side. I imagined that it would be great to see or be a Chubster spitting insolently at something. But spitting really is disgusting, and offensive to many, especially when done by women and I wondered if I was pushing people too far, though I also saw my role in the plenary as goading a group of over-tired, conferenced-out people into antisocial pleasure and risk-taking. Anyway, I drew a picture of a BMI (Body Mass Index) Chart because I thought that it would make a good target. I was delighted that people went for it. None of us had Patti Smith's technique, but we made up for it with gusto. My favourites involved the running spit, the up-close and phlegmy spit, and the crab spit, where a woman bent backwards into a crab and spat in a graceful arc onto the BMI Chart.
Freestyle
This was an anything goes option for people who didn't fancy any of the others. From what I gather it involved a lot of arm-wrestling and actual, down on the floor wrestling. It made my heart sing to see a pair of very serious feminist intellectual heavyweights rolling around on the floor of the lecture theatre in a leg grip.
Some people combined different skills, advanced Chubsterdom! Later we welcomed some new Chubsters into the gang, check out their names: Awesome Jonnie, Backwoods Bettie, Biscuits, Cat-Face, Chaos Flower, Count Fatula, Crab, Faye Bentos, Gorrilay, Grrrran, Grummel Pott, Hell's Granny, Junk, Myxt, Pinkie, Piseog Dubh, Rabid Fox, Raptor, Robin Hood, Rough, Round Robin, Rump-Shaker, Skiff, Southern Fried Chubbin', Stink-Eye, The Fixer, Thunder Domes, Toxic Pink Stuff, T-Rex, Twisted Stitch, and Von Vixen.
By the time I got the train home from York I was pretty exhausted and had that brain-buzzing feeling that I often get after some Chubsters action, or a really good Fat Studies event. I'm really grateful that the Carnival organisers enabled me to create this weird space for people to play in, and that people got it and were engaged.
There are more pics of the whole event in Evangeline Tsao's Facebook Album.
I kept coming back to the BMI Chart covered in spit, dripping with it. This chart is so oppressive, it's today's equivalent of phrenology and about as much use. Kate Harding's fantastic Illustrated BMI Project was one way of transforming it and reducing its power, I've seen others address it as activists too, and I saw the spit-fest as a extension of this approach. I felt so happy to see it defiled with the collective spit of a group of feminists! It perfectly captured my (our?) contempt for it. I thought about how great it was to have been able to facilitate the creation of this real life mental image, and I wondered if other people might remember it dripping with spit the next time they come across it in a doctor's office, or are being lectured about it, or whatver. It felt like I was spitting it out of myself and removing its power over my body. Maybe the next time people see a load of Slim-Fast for sale in a shop they might imagine having a pop at it with a spud gun.
It's made me think more about how, in my experience, The Chubsters is often a vehicle for creating unlikely yet enriching moments of real-life wildness, peculiar tableaux that stick with you later. These become like mental touchstones that stay with me and comfort, amuse, captivate, inspire me when I draw upon them. I'm sure a spit-covered drawing of a BMI Chart is not what many people would consider a treasured memory, but it is for me.
Full disclosure: some of my friends chose to withdraw from the Carnival last December, stating their position on Red Chidgey's blog Feminist Memory: Open letter of withdrawal from the Carnival of Feminist Cultural Activism (2011). Then as now my feelings about Raw Nerve are different to my friends', as is my understanding of what happened. I am mentioning this here because I don't want to pretend that this issue was not also a part of my Carnival experience.
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