Carrying my father's weight

My father died suddenly last week. He had been ill for some time, but it was still a surprise ending to his life, though not a painful or terrible death, as far as I know. I have been in the shock part of grief for a few days, and now this is shifting to a different set of feelings. To say we had a complicated relationship is the understatement of the century, so my grief, too, is complicated.

As a child I was told over and over again that I looked like my mum, but these days I see a lot more dad in me, and some of that is down to my fatness, my ginger colouring, and my sense of physical strength. I related to my dad as a fat man, but he was not always fat. This has implications for how I see my own body as a fat person; was I always fat too? What if I wasn't? Looking through old photographs, I can see that his body changed quite a bit, getting fatter and thinner at various times. In his thirties, he was sort of chunky, then the drinking took hold and he grew a belly and a double chin. Physical memories of my dad are about being a kid snuggled up to his big chest, invariably clothed in a rough, chunky jumper. I remember seeing him in hospital just over ten years ago and being shocked at how thin he had become with the cancer. But he had a strong body, he survived that cancer, he carried on, and although he was very ill when he died, he also drove a moped and gardened, and was relatively active up until the end.

When my mum died in 1987 I got scared that I would die if I didn't lose weight. I was 18 years old. I went on the last diet I would ever do, and because I was doing the cooking and cleaning and was basically keeping everything together, I also put dad on the same diet. On Monday, when I went to his place to pick up some photos and things, I saw that he'd got that same diet book on his bookshelf, he'd decided to do it again. He also had that creep Paul McKenna's I Can Make You Thin. My own book, Fat & Proud, wasn't there, he told me he'd ordered it when it came out in 1998, but that could have been a lie. In any case, we never really talked about it, or about fat, apart from in a video project I did for my Master's degree in 1994. To me it looks like my life's work passed him by.

Dad was cremated early on Tuesday morning. When the funeral director invited people to carry his coffin, I was one of those who stepped forward. I wasn't even sure that I was allowed, despite my feminism, and having attended many funerals, I've never seen a coffin carried by women. But no one stopped me, so I took my place and I helped carry my dad's body. It felt like a metaphor for the emotional carrying I've done in relation to him over the years. But it was also a very physical experience. He was heavy! I had to use all my strength to carry him, from my feet planted firmly on the ground, through my legs, arms and belly. As I carried him I thought: "I am a strong fat woman carrying my dad's body, I can feel the weight of him, this is a fat man's body, a body to which I am connected. I can do this, and I can see what I am doing." And then it was time to say goodbye.

Vintage weight loss kitsch: Fight the Flab with Terry Wogan

My boyfriend has been digging around in the secondary vinyl collection and brought this up from the basement for a spin. It's as terrible as you'd imagine, and proof that loveable Terry Wogan is a tool of The Man as well as being a fan of the firm control ladies undergarment. Anyway, here it is for your listening pleasure, it seems to go on for ages. Extra points to those who want to video themselves doing these exercises in an 18 hour bra, girdle or corselette.

Fight the Flab with Terry Wogan (.mp3, 3.1mb)

Diet Songs: Ayds

It's a box of sweets with added magic lovely and slim ingredient X. This turns out to be an anaesthetic, later replaced with a mild kind of speed of a type that was later withdrawn from over-the-counter products because it raises the risk of stroke in the young women who eat this stuff.

I'm stuck on the name, I can't get past the name. A weight loss product called Ayds which, when you say it aloud, sounds like AIDS. I associate dieting so strongly with drawn-looking emptied out bodies that when I hear Ayds I think of the wasting suffered by people with AIDS, and that famous photograph of David Kirby dying amidst his devastated folks. This is probably not the association that the makers of Ayds wanted to promote in the product's heyday, but it's certainly the association that led to Ayds' demise.

Just saying the name invokes a handful of feelings: schadenfreude, a longing for other similar diet crap to bite the dust, sadness and rage about HIV/AIDS, bemusement. Ayds is so exposed by its name and obvious quackery, if it can happen to that product, why not Slim Fast, LighterLife and the rest of them? Why must it fall to an unfortunate coincidence?

Would Ayds be a viable brand nowadays? I'm inclined to think that it would. I think the obesity epidemicTM has made many people more desperate than ever to try and lose weight. Associations with illness don't seem to matter, I know someone who was congratulated on her weight loss after a couple of months suffering amoebic dysentery. How does the stigma of AIDS or terminal illness compare to fat stigma? Would people be willing to be associated with one in place of the other? I really don't know.

We recorded this pretty straight because, really, what else are you going to do with gold like this? Simon's spidery track sounds like a virus in your blood.

Diet Songs: Ayds by Charlotte Cooper + Simon Murphy (.mp3, 840kb)

Diet Songs
New Project: Diet Songs
Nimble
Slim-Fast
Tab
Diet Pepsi
Nutrasweet
Diet Coke
Ryvita
Ayds
Special K

Look at this excellent fat sculpture

I don't have much of any substance to say today, mainly because I am still buzzing from the talk at King's College London last night. Thanks to everyone who contributed to that.

What I do have, however, is this amazing picture!

It's from the cover of the May 2011 issue of Museums Journal, the magazine of the Museums Association. It's there to illustrate an article about how science museums should get more hip and goes to show that a picture of a fat person or object perks up any old thing.

It turns out that the object is a sculpture that was exhibited in the Museum for the History of Science's Steampunk exhibition. I'm not much of a Steampunk aficionado so I haven't dug very deeply into the site and haven't been able to find much information about it other than that its title is Cosmonaute and it was made by Stéphane Halleux. There are more pictures on Stéphane's site.

The magazine image is accompanied by the headline 'Brave New World,' which I like because it subverts the notion that obesity heralds the end of the world. I've documented previous artistic explorations of fat that I think have failed dismally, but this object is different. I love it, from its tiny and cute three-digit hands to its truncated feet and blank/wonderous expression. Its apparent inflatedness reminds me of the lovely Horniman Walrus, which is no bad thing. I like the way it appears to hover lightly, as though gravity is no longer relevant.

The sculpture's shape recalls friends and acquaintances who look a bit like this. It makes me think that fat activists should have tool belts, gauges, dials and protective headgear as we navigate and explore the outer reaches of culture and embodiment.

One of the most extraordinary experiences of fat embodiment in my life

The Hot Bath, where I had my treatment

I had one of the most extraordinary experiences of fat embodiment in my life on Saturday afternoon.

I went to Thermae Bath. This is the thermal baths complex in Bath, in Somerset. I'll try and explain this without being too confusing. Bath is a town. There are remains of Roman baths there, you can visit them to look but you cannot bathe in them. For a long time you could bathe in other baths in Bath, but then they closed. A new bathing complex was opened a few years ago. This complex comprises an inside pool, an outside rooftop pool, some steam rooms, and a hot bath where treatments are given. There is a separate building with a smaller bath. The baths are the only place in the UK where you can bathe in water heated by geothermal activity. Bath is also Britain's most well-known spa town, but that's another story.

(Quick and grumpy aside: If you are fat, the robes at Thermae Bath will not fit you, but the receptionist will insist "You'll be okay" without listening to you when you ask what size they come in. Although people of many sizes come and bathe at the baths, the robes only come in one standard size that does not cover someone of my size. This is extremely annoying, especially given that the complex has otherwise really good access for disabled people. I don’t know why they don't have some larger robes available. I have been to bath houses in Japan, a country where people tend to be much smaller than me, and I have been adequately clothed there, but not at Bath. Tip for fat people: bring your own.)

Thermae Bath at peak visiting time is not relaxing in the way that the brochure pictures promise. It is heaving with people who do not know about spa etiquette. So there is a lot of loud chatter, dashing around, and people seem unable to switch off and just experience the heat, the water, the ambiance. My girlfriend and I let go of our fantasies of having the place to ourselves and bobbed around in the warm water with everyone else. It was not a holy experience, but it was fun and relaxing in its own way.

The baths are a great place to witness yourself amongst a spectrum of bodies, to see the myth of bodily normativity at first hand, and to treat your own body with gentle kindness. Bobbing, floating, sweating, napping, all feel good. Going to the baths is not the only way in which I have learned to feel okay in my own skin, but it's part of the story. I would love to see a fat activist reclamation of David Walliams and Matt Lucas' hate-filled Little Britain stereotype Bubbles DeVere. I resent that mean appropriation of my fat, naked, spa-loving self!

The hot bath from outside

I also find the idea of spa treatments interesting because they inhabit a quasi-medical, or para-medical space. Often practitioners will have a professional qualification and will wear a uniform. Sometimes the division between acting medical and being medical is blurred, especially with treatments like colonic irrigation and botox (no thanks), and spa treatments can look very much like possibly-discredited treatments of yesteryear, electrified and radon baths spring to mind here. Negotiating medicalised space when you're fat is generally a complex and fraught experience, and sometimes the space of the para-medical spa treatment is anxiety-provoking in similar ways. Will the gown fit? Will the equipment fit? How will my body be evaluated? But spa-space can also be a much more free space because the authority of the practitioner is not as powerful as a common or garden health professional, here there is room for negotiation, their status can be more easily questioned, and this can embolden one to refute passivity more easily when dealing with real doctors and medics. Anyway, I think messing around with your body is a way of claiming your body.

So I had a treatment whilst I was at Thermae Bath. I'm almost embarrassed to say it because the name of the treatment – Watsu – sounds like so much orientalist mumbo-jumbo. I've since found out that it's a portmanteau of water and Shiatsu, a type of massage that emphasises pressure points. The evidence that Shiatsu is effective treatment for disease is unconvincing, but it feels really good. Watsu was invented by who else but a California hippy called Harold Dull in 1980, fact fans. Few people offer it in the UK because there aren't many pools appropriate for it. It can be very pricey and my session was no different, though I didn’t pay for it, it was a belated xmas present. I chose to have a Watsu session not because I am diseased, but because I wanted to be swished around in the water for an hour and can just about handle its inherent bourgie woo. I knew that Watsu would feel nice and relaxing but I wasn't expecting the experience to be as intense and strange as it was.

My session took place in the Hot Bath, a stunning pool at the centre of the building. I've included pictures of it here. When I looked up I could see clouds and sky through the glass roof. There was some music playing in the distance, and gurgles and pops made by the water, but the setting was incredibly serene, almost like a virtual reality environment.

My therapist was called C. It was just us in the pool. She told me what she was going to do and tied some floats to my legs. Two didn’t fit but there was no fuss and I am plenty buoyant anyway.

We did some breathing together, our bodies rose and fell in the water as our lungs filled and emptied with air. C invited me to lean back into her arms when I was ready. She took my head and swished me around, pulling and turning me. I looked up at the sky and then closed my eyes for the rest of the session.

What I saw when I looked up

I felt like a tadpole, something evolving from the primordial soup. Sometimes I was bobbed up and down and tilted out of the water. I was in constant motion, feeling the water swoosh past my limbs. I concentrated on my breathing and letting go of tension in my body, and of the sensation of the water around me, and of C's hands. She advised me earlier to be like a piece of seaweed, so I tried to do that. As the session went on, C incorporated stretches that would be impossible for me to do on land. She used her hands and feet, her whole body. I don't know how she did it, perhaps she grew some extra limbs. It felt amazing. At one point she stuck my head in a floating bonnet type thing (I still had my eyes closed so have no idea what this looked like) and pressed pressure points in my feet, hands and shoulders. At the end of the session she placed me upright against a wall in the pool and massaged my face. She gave me some time to come round. I said goodbye to the pool and stepped into a fluffy towel and had a rest on a recliner, under a blanket.

The whole session felt extremely intimate and special. I felt changed by it. I don't know if this was because I had been able to relax and trust that I would be okay, I think it may have something to do with surrendering to vulnerability in the water and allowing myself to be cared for. I have various histories of abuse to my name, which I have been thinking about a lot lately, and it felt mind-blowing to be held physically in this way. There is something about the way this takes place in warm water, too, which feels very elemental, and is somewhere I feel at home.

I was aware of how close our bodies were during the treatment and this could be disturbing if you didn't trust the person doing it. C's head was close to mine, I was in her arms almost all of the time, and my hand brushed past her breast and her armpit at various stages. There was intense eye contact. I was aware that my magical moment was work to her, and I thought about the treatment as being on a spectrum of embodied work that includes other kinds of massage and sex work. I felt like a John of sorts, but perhaps this is the only way I can rationalise this kind of gendered, paid-for, embodied experience.

I felt very moved that C was able to handle me. There's something really amazing when young and pretties (my girlfriend's term for normatively embodied people, perhaps those who have never encountered non-normative embodiment, or fear or deride it) are able to treat people with bodies like mine with respect. Being old, unruly, hairy-legged, ungroomed, fat, scarred, wobbly, messy, and all the rest of it does not always send people running for the hills – who knew?! It is absolutely brilliant when people who may not be in the firing line themselves step up and show that they have done their work. C looked after me and modelled ways in which I might care for myself. Thank you!

I thought of the journey I've taken with my body, how many fat people, people, would not be able to do what I did, and not just because of financial or other practical access reasons either. It was almost too enormous to think about, and I still feel that I could become a big blubbering mess if I thought about it deeply, so maybe I'll come back to that in a while, or take my time in picking it apart.

How did this all end? I walked back to the pool to see Kay, grinning, full of wonder, and with a profound sense that I'm alright, really.

The Dodo Is My New Favourite Fat/Not Fat Animal

The other week I had to drive from Hartford, Connecticut, to Kennedy Airport in New York. As is my way I set off too early and ended up with some time to kill. I stopped off in New Haven to have a look at Yale (sites of preposterous privilege and power are so interesting, don't you think?), and I went to the university-affiliated Peabody Museum. I wasn't expecting much, I just wanted to stop driving for a bit and have a pee.

Museums of natural history don't tend to float my boat. You've seen one dusty taxidermied baboon, you've seen 'em all. I prefer nature to be explained to me in person, from behind a car's windshield, or on TV. No one could accuse The Peabody of being a cutting edge museum of 21st century best practise. Its centrepiece Black Holes exhibition looks like it was designed in 1987, and much of the collection has the reek of old skool natural science and colonial anthropology about it, the seamless segue between rocks, insects and animals, then mummies and 'primitive peoples' is especially problematic, for example.

However, in some areas of the museum, brave curators have drawn attention to these shortcomings. A notice points out that a giant model of a dinosaur, one of the museum's treasures, was put together wrongly by the 19th century scholar who supervised its assembly. He didn’t know any better and it was only when evidence surfaced years later that anybody realised the skull was a bit off, that there weren't enough vertebrae, and that the tail should have been in the air, not on the ground. I really enjoyed this admission because it exposed the myth that representations of natural science are pure and objective truths, it shows that they are as much a product of contemporary ideology as anything.

The exceptionally round Peabody Dodo

I don't know about you but I'm fascinated by Dodos and The Peabody has a little display devoted to these sweet and extinct creatures, featuring a skeleton and a model made of chicken and ostrich feathers. Again there is a note saying that more recent evidence suggests that the model is not an accurate representation of how a Dodo really looked.

This is where it gets interesting in terms of fat. The model Dodo is almost completely round, whereas the text display says that in real life they were probably leaner and "more athletic". The panel suggests that the Dodo was probably represented as being fat like this to emphasise the belief that it was stupid, helpless, basically a sitting target for hunters. This assertion is likely to represent present-day thinking on what fatness represents, rather than an objective truth.

I don't know when the model was built, or if this interpretation is what the model-makers intended but I'm really fascinated that the association between fat and abjection could be played out in the model of a Dodo. I think debates about the meaning of fat being transmitted by media, epidemics, fashion, or whatever, are commonplace, but using a Dodo to get the message across is jaw-dropping. The way fat people are typically represented within Obesity EpidemicTM rhetoric is also very Dodo-like; we herald extinction, we are useless beings, we are laughable, pointless and stupid. It's funny how the leaner interpretation of a Dodo is associated with more modern and enlightened thinking, the future is thin!

I don't have much with which to conclude other than that the reproduction of fat abjection moves in mysterious ways, and my interest in Dodos just got a lot geekier.

Bristol's very own fat Dodo

PS. I went to Bristol Museum and Art Gallery (in the UK) about a month after I wrote this post and I was excited to see they have a fat Dodo model there too, though with no explanatory text. Any more sightings?