Monday 7 January 2013

Not sympathetic

So it's a belated Happy New Year from me.

Better late than never.

I must admit that I feel a lot different from this time last year and not necessarily in a good way. It feels such a long time ago!

I feel strangely cantankerous about this but I feel like fresh change is afoot and that is to the good. So I'll accept it though it feels a bit cheesy, didn't last year.

One of the things I used to say way back when I started getting involved in the internet FA scene was, "Fat people just aren't sympathetic." Usually followed by, we're going to have to do for ourselves.

That's a bit like for the "party for one" thing Oprah used to go on about. Like some of her ideas, one cheered at the chutzpah, followed by an equal sense of doubt. That idea by the way was throw a spontaneous party for yourself, with music and dancing etc., Not the Bridget Jones weekend alcohol oblivion type for goodness sake.

Nevertheless, this must be overcome, fatz would sorta haveta throw a party for fatz and try to whoop it up. Rather than calling all allies, "We're oppressed/repressed". Basically we'll have to be our own allies.

What I meant was, not just did we not look sympathetic, for what that looks like, see Les Mis, we also did not behave"sympathetic" i.e. despite the fervent yearnings of some fat activists and along with everyone else, fat people simply are not committing suicide, having nervous breakdowns, getting strung out on hard drugs to the extent that would be expected from our status drop.

It should not need saying to those in the know that this is deeply offensive. Rather like a fat person engaging in physical activity without any interest in "weight loss", or not caring about being called fat.

Babbling aside, most of all, we are not sympa because...... well, we look grotesque (even to ourselves) behaving in ways that are perfectly understandable and would garner empathy if we we weren't fat.  

This poses a few possibilities.

We can just behave at a normal human level and look highly provocative, giving haters a chance to kick off wildly, not our fault, but we have to face it. We can behave ourselves i.e. behave better/repress ourselves.  Which plays into the hands of what we are trying to throw off. It keeps our consciousness under wraps and makes it hard to reconnect with that.

Or we can try something else altogether.

We can find a way to detoxify blame and try to lift the burden of it. Rather like we did and are doing with the meaning of the word "fat". Change the way we react to being held culpable, for our bodies, our health and so on. And just find ways to flagrantly not care whether we are blamed or not.

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