Saturday 25 April 2015

Pile-On Your Voice

Okay, enough of this Jamelia pile-on. This is later than it should have been and things have kind of moved on-in more ways than one- but I still felt the need to say it.

Jamelia was raring to go and didn't even catch the warning of the chair, Ruth Langsford when she mocked her suggesting segregating small and plus sizes out of the high street, into specialist backwaters. She felt otherwise was facilitating unhealthiness-if you are unhealthy, you should feel unhappy, said she.

I was enraged up to that. I'd imagined remonstrating with her and it wasn't nice. That last bit surprised me though, that's exactly what the @besity construct is for. To place and keep fat people in a state of permanent dis-ease. I usually dismiss whining about how difficult it is to broach this subject, but I'm begining to wonder whether there's too much of a contrast between the acceptance of medicalized notions of @besity and what that really means.

The social media pile-on changed the way I felt. It's one of those cases where you end up, not so much feeling sorry for the target, but recognizing they're taking too much flak for the wrong reasons, i.e. not a white coat.

That Jamelia could so accurately, however unwittingly depict the essence of a crusade, reminded me of the instigators and propagators of this whole canard. I'm not even sure I can say she's a bigot. A tool of the establishment, yes, but she did not stand on casting most of the usual aspersions about fat people being of bad character.

She even started with her belief that people should celebrate themselves, be able to look good etc., and yeah, I do believe that because it has a deep cultural underpinning, especially in resistance against racism's degradation of Black people's humanity. Along with meme of celebrating life.

Like everyone else though she ends up not being able to end the thought she started with and going back over it. That's caused by the inherent bankruptcy of the @besity construct. It's not compatible with humanism. When people eventually catch on that they're doing this. I doubt they'll be best pleased.

As I've spent a lot of time explaining how fat people are taking it for everyone's disappointment about the distance between their internalized abstraction of humanness and their actual humanness, you may get why my ire was stopped in its tracks.

To those who called her out I ask, where are you when all the usual bullshit is going down with so called 'scientific' findings? I don't ask that you take fat haters on directly, on the contrary, I see your reluctance/disinclination as a positive virtue. The exposure of their irrelevance is long overdue.

All I say is learn to keep making your presence felt and your voice heard in this way. Don't read comments that upset you. Just address your feelings to articles and do not be intimidated by any so-called bandying of science. Speak your mind, i.e. Where is my voice in this? Why am I continually shut down/ sidelined from my own life? How does this help me? When are you going to talk to actual people about how they feel/the effects of all this on them and their health? etc.,

I'm sure you can come up with waaaay better. Just whatever you feel you want to say or what you want to be heard. A couple of lines is more than good. Say something of your feelings. Maybe even how much those close to you are on at you.

How long they've been on and you. How long you've been on at yourself and what that has done to you.

Pile-on your real voices wherever cold dehumanizing @besity is banded about as if its some theoretical abstract. Make it impossible to forget this is an assault on real people. Make others hear from you. And try not to take @besity noise personally, or feel you have to answer any personal questions or justify yourself. Do not be on trial. You are not on the witness stand. You do not have to defend yourself. Say that if you want. "I'm not here to beg or plead or persuade you or any. Just to say my peace thank you, bye."

In fact, start asking other people questions. Ask them if they'd appreciate having to answer to everyone, justify their existence, whatever. Move it out of weight and on to other examples. And don't be discouraged if you run out of words or don't know what to say. Let go and come another time. Learn to put words to your feelings away from the heat, so that when its on, you can garner some thoughts.

For bit of context, here's virtually the whole conversation, ignited by this programme;



The whole discussion such as it was, was much of a muchness, consisting of participants repeatedly making points and going on to contradict them in the same breath/sentence that's a construct-related cognitive distortion -thought or sentence bending as I call it. 

i.e. "Diets don't work unless you keep on them." The end doesn't simply contradict, it jettisons the initial recognition that they don't actually work.

The slightly different tack here was to focus on "young girls" who were in their estimation, shockingly fat.  A grab-your-smelling-salts, size 20-22, as opposed to a size 14-16, so its not as if we're being unreasonable

On the one hand, it was recognized that this was about tapping an undeserved  market, on the other that the glamour images of beautiful women used to sell these clothes would hide the truth of 'obesity' which was physical infirmity and health breakdown years later on.
 
This may portend a slight shift in assault. That middle aged spread is one thing, but being fat at a young age is another. It's also increasing the concentration on the most visibility fat BMI 40 +. It's weird to see fat phobes trying to actually think. To recognize on some level that here are real human beings whom they have to attempt to persuade in some way.

Rather than their usual triumphalist rah, rah, rah obesitah. This represents a chink of vulnerability. A sense that things maybe slipping away from them. Now powerful forces, in the pursuit of lucre most filthy are threatening to bypass their tyranny of unthink.

They're not quite so cocky.

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