Fat Studies in The New York Times, Librarything, and Side Show Press

[susanstinson]

• Yay for this article about fat studies in today's New York Times. Sheana Director, Stefanie Snider, Sondra Solovay (whose hair, by the way, looks quite good), Esther Rothblum, Katie LeBesco... it's an honor roll of folks doing excellent work in the field (some of whom are on my friendslist -- yayyyy! go team! take a bow in comments, if you're in the mood and would like to do us that honor!), and, I think, a fine article.
  
  I don't mind that there are highly dismissive quotes from other academics -- at least the consensus on fat is presented as open to question, not as unassailable truth -- but the graphic with the Fat Studies anthology presented as bulging instead of being shaped like other books annoys me. It's symptomatic of a kind of visual smirking that the mainstream media regularly indulges in when the subject is fat (cute puns in headlines are also chronic) that I find gratuitous and insulting.
  
  
• I started making a catalog of my books on Librarything, and I'm finding it weirdly fun and compelling. It's got great features, like an author gallery with pictures of some of the authors of my books, and it's really easy to use. I started with my own books -- the link takes you to a page about the elusive Belly Songs -- and a little pile of books my mom just sent me from Texas and childhood, which is why Anne of Green Gables and The Little Engine That Could are on there, and then I just started randomly thinking of books I have by people I know (not everybody! random!) and other books that those made me think of...
  
  I want to get systematic, though, and list and tag all of the books that I'm using to research Spider In A Tree, to help me keep track of that. And it's fun to see the people listing my books and to what else they have...



• Hey! toniamato is starting Side Show Press, which has just published its first chapbook. He had some very cool things to say at a warm and bountiful dinner last night (hi folks! thanks! that was fun...) about trying to figure out how to create a small press that truly supports writers, which makes me want to cheer.

Comments

[songquake.livejournal.com]

i've seen several postings of the times article, and finally wandered over to read it. i did groan, however, when i read this:

In 1973, a group of women formed the Fat Underground, a faction of the National Association to Advance Fat Acceptance, which was founded four years earlier. In 1983, they published “Shadow on a Tightrope,” a collection of essays, articles and memoirs on fat liberation that’s viewed as the seminal work in this field.

now, usually, i let words like "seminal" go (i happen to attend a "seminary," and prefer using that term to using "divinity school" on account of the fact that it shakes it up more to think of feminists and dykes in seminary), but... it just seems ooky here.

otherwise, i found the article to be unusually balanced and positive.

the article about the american diabetes association (also from yesterday's nytimes, i think), was also interesting in its nod to the ways in which fat-bashing leads to folks w/diabetes experiencing diabetes-bashing and therefore shying away from the medical establishment (an overlap beccawrites explored on queeringdiabetes.org a couple of years ago).

[susanstinson.livejournal.com]

"Seminal" seemed ooky because one of the meanings of that word is "related to semen"? I can see how going to a seminary/divinity school might make a person sensivity to those nuances, although, for me, "seminal work in the field" reads like a standard phrase of academic respect, and I like seeing Shadow on a Tightrope, which was and is a product of the women's press movement -- published by Aunt Lute Books, which was for a while merged with my first publisher as Spinsters/Aunt Lute -- and radical feminism, recognized and honored in this way.

The ways that fat-bashing leads to diabetes-bashing, and to intense experiences of shaming, humiliation and neglect around needing and seeking health care for fat people in general is such an enormous and rarely acknowledged cost of fat hatred, for sure.

[susanstinson.livejournal.com]

Aunt Lute Books (http://www.auntlute.com/)