Fat kids and self-esteem

The Globe and Mail is reporting that overweight children suffer from anxiety as early as six years of age. I have no doubt that this is true -- but I'm going to object to the framing of the results in the report. Let's take this, for example:

Furthermore, as these children progressed from kindergarten to Grade 3, their negative feelings grew more pronounced, lead researcher Sara Gable says.

“They actually get worse, so you think about the mental health implications of that,” says Dr. Gable, an associate professor of human development and family studies. “It just adds to the body of research that we already have telling us the cost of the lifestyle problems apparent in the U.S. population.”

The clear implication is that negative feelings and poor self-esteem are a natural consequence of a 'lifestyle problem' -- rather than the result of others' reactions to one's body, or of messages that one receives about one's body. That is, fat kids have it coming, right? The bullying and social exclusion that these kids experience is simply the natural, predictable result of piggish, lazy living. A critical reading of Dr. Gable's next comment further suggests that this is her stance:

Overweight girls were especially affected by their heavy stature, Dr. Gable adds. Bigger girls had trouble getting along with their peers and exhibited other negative behaviours that emerged after kindergarten, including a lack of self control.

If overweight girls are "especially affected by their heavy stature", could it be because they are constrained yet more than boys by social norms about physical attractiveness? Could it be, perhaps, that we continue to value girls according to how they look -- and that perhaps being chronically devalued because of 'heavy stature' simply hurts? The vague reference to "lack of self control" suggests a tired association between fat and behavior, and also seems to correlate fat with undisciplined, and therefore unfeminine, conduct.

These results doesn't say to me that kids need to be put on diets: they say to me that fat prejudice starts incredibly early, and that it has the power to erode the sense of self of the young and vulnerable. They say to me that we need to stop looking at fat as a definitive marker of a 'lifestyle problem', and start focusing instead on the more complex business of talking about good health practices at any size. And they say to me that we have a collective responsibility to treat people with decency even if they're fat.

In the interest of disclosure: I was a fat kid, and I'm a fat woman. And of course I struggle with self esteem. But I stand firm on this point: if you devalue me because of my size, that's your failing, not mine. There is no natural relationship between size and self-esteem. This relationship is most transparently something that we construct in day-to-day interaction, in our media, in our culture. And while I'm all for research that explores this relationship, I am straight-up angry to see it reported as yet another reason to scold the hefty.

On that note: you know what's really lazy? Demanding that other people change their bodies to fit your aesthetic, rather than reframing your own perception. You know what's really a problem of self-control? Treating people -- especially children -- in a way that reinforces their low status, because it delights you to be so wonderfully superior. Give me the choice, and I'll own the sin of a big round belly or a wide lumpy ass over the sin of narrow-minded cruelty any day.

Another reason for the CBC to go commercial-free

Okay, I know it's late, but I'm watching The Hour on Newsworld. (I don't have TV in my house, let alone Canadian TV -- so when I visit my mom, I like to catch up.)

And then, I saw this:



Is that really necessary? I think not.

Working where they'd forgotten

I had a dream last night that I was in my old house, one my family had moved out of about fifteen years ago. Some of the rooms had been converted into offices, and I was sharing one with a bunch of highly distracting co-workers. And then I remembered: in the finished part of basement was the study, the actual office. Everybody had forgotten it but me, and so I very quietly went down there, and found a lovely space (lovelier than it had been in life) where I decided I'd work secretly, perhaps extending invitations to a few favoured friends to use the second desk.

That means something, I think: it's a call to work in an old space, in a corner in a basemet, perhaps forgotten and unnoticed for a time.

That's okay with me.

No really, what the hell IS wrong with Russell Smith?

From today's Globe and Mail: "Ladies, Don't Pad Your Resumés"

The column is full of Smith's usual hooey, exhorting women to dress for male pleasure. In particular, he'd like us to wear skimpy bras that allow for "natural sway" and -- oh joy, oh bliss! -- the breathtaking possibility that one might see the natural shape of a nipple, "surely the most erotic sight in clothed humans". Part of me wants to commend him for celebrating the female body. That part of me is far outbalanced by my queasiness at the (recurring) suggestion that a woman who does not dress to please men is somehow not doing her job.

Which brings us to the headline. I don't know if Mr. Smith writes his own headlines, but this one is simply nasty in its implications. If my breasts are my resumé, am I in fact applying for the 'job' of being sexually attractive to men? And being sexually attractive to men is my job, then are my breasts my primary qualification?

I can't help but take this kind of thinking personally. I realize so often that in this culture, it is my failings as an aesthetic object that define me for other people. And yet, there is so much about me that simply can't be seen.

(Can you hear it, at least?)

Attention menfolk!

You may be operating under the assumption that a magic fairy washes your dishes, picks up your socks, mops your floor, scrubs your toilet. Or you may be operating in a state of minimal awareness, where you believe that these things do not need to be done, and that your house will nonetheless remain liveable. Also, you may be convinced that your gender makes it somehow impossible for you to see dust.

This is NOT TRUE. And if you believe these things, and you are not living in squalor, it is probably because a woman who lives with you has learned that it is easier to play magic fairy than to get you to play domestic. And -- here's news -- you're not a feminist, buddy. You're not even close.

Ask my mom, for instance. Or, ask my dad, and he'll deny it, but might just admit that I explained to him how to empty the lint trap when he was forty-seven years old, and that he then spent the next nine years in court trying to prove that my mother had never done a thing for him. Hooray for heterosexual love.

What the hell is wrong with Russell Smith?

I'm often unsettled by Russell Smith's fashion columns. There's something incredibly creepy about the way he discusses women's wear -- and really, I can't be alone in thinking so. Take his most recent column, "Footwear for slave girls is oddly appealing":

Do guys like those strappy gladiator sandals for women?There is something oddly sexy about a lower leg bound in leather straps and buckles. Perhaps it's their suggestion of confinement. Perhaps it's that they remind us of all the impossibly beautiful "slave girls" in the series Rome, or mad Cleopatra and her smoky sexuality.

The problem with so many of these elaborate harnesses is that they can get a bit gaudy - they tend so often to metallic colours, to sparkles and spikes and studs, that they can look a little bit brassy, as if to suggest that the wearer should also have a pack of menthol smokes, platinum blonde hair and her house upholstered in leopard skin.

Luckily, most Canadian men aren't as sensitive to aesthetic connotation as this. All they are going to notice really is whether your shoes are flat-heeled or high - and even this we tend to register unconsciously, as a vaguely different shape to your leg.

Now the high-heeled variety of gladiator sandals are extremely flashy, indeed overtly fetishistic; they just scream high-maintenance, expensive gifts and uninhibited sex. We will certainly notice these.

No, really. I couldn't have made this up if I tried, could I? I'm sure that Smith thinks this kind of discussion of desire is a sign of enlightenment, a sign that he has transcended his provincial small-city Canadian past. I'm sure of this because I read his columns with faithful distaste, and because I too am a Haligonian expat. Clever as Smith always obviously thinks he is, knowing where he's from I can only see his attitude as the typical smugness of an Eastern Canadian who wants to sever all connection to his once-home. So much more sensitive to aesthetics than most men? Of course! So cutting towards women who dare not dress to arouse, and so vocal in his declarations of lust for those who do? How liberated he is from the backwards bourgeoisie of Nova Scotia.

I'm sure Smith is clever; obviously he's well-read. That makes his evocation of vague Orientalized objects of desire all the more offensive, because he should know better. And it makes his discussion of women -- arousing or not -- all the more tiresome. If he's so clever and liberated, why is he so desperate to prove it?

In response to his imagined retorts:
1) I have also lived in Paris. I live in New York now. Shut up.
2) I was very badly treated in Nova Scotia through much of my youth. I was also bored senseless. I'm quite sure I know what you felt. It's still home, even if I never live there again.
3) I'm sure that you'd be appalled by my summer footwear of choice. I pick it for the arch support, not for exotic sex appeal. Whatever. I make delightful company, even if I'm not fetching drinks for bulimic men in sheets, and even if there's no chance that I'll off myself with a poison asp.

Pfffffft.