ghosts and horror

[susanstinson]

I'm reading exquisite ghost stories: The Two Sams, by Glen Hirschberg. Very scary, technically brilliant and morally gripping. I'm going to review them for Strange Horizons.com

I think it's a very bad idea for the US government to run commercials that show children sticking a fat belly buried in the sand with a stick. The fact that it's supposed to be a detached belly that someone "lost" walking on the beach does not change the damage that kind of imagery does to people's relationships with their own, various, warm, living bellies. It's a macabre, nasty image supported by skewed statistics and presented, as so often, in the name of health. Makes me feel as if I were breathing sand.

Comments

[firecat]

I haven't seen those commercials, but they've been the subject of much discussion on my fat-acceptance lists. They sound completely hideous.

[susanstinson.livejournal.com]

If you like, you can see them here. (http://www.adcouncil.org/campaigns/healthy_lifestyles/)...

Walking on the beach is a lovely thing. Taking the stairs instead of the elevator, eating more vegetables, walking more, swimming: good things. Selling little stories about the fat parts of human bodies as inamimate, disposable objects that can be lost like a bag of trashed tossed on a beach -- stupid and cruel. Really. And measuring the good effects of exercise by whether or not a person ends up with no belly is a pretty foolish way to discourage fat people from moving.

[firecat]

Thanks, but I think I'll skip looking at them.

I agree 100%. Unfortunately, selling that story is also lucrative to those parts of the medical profession that benefit from people viewing their bodies as things separate from them and their body parts as things to chop off or otherwise rearrange to fit current fashion.

[susanstinson.livejournal.com]

I suspected we shared opinions about this.

And I waited this about a week to look at them, myself, although AOL posted the image of the belly in the sand being poked with the stick on the page I see everytime I sign on the day the ads came out. There's also something else nagging at me -- don't quite know how to articulate it, but something deeply disturbing about the US government pushing these images of body parts lightheartedly lost, that belly buried in sand to no one's dismay, when images of the dead in the war in the Iraq are being so stringently censored. And then the other deaths and injuries from bombings. It feels like some kind of very strange echo chamber of guilt and fear so intense that it has to be tightly, tightly controlled and offered as kind of a good-natured joke and good advice that everybody already knows...

[firecat]

Good point. I think all this shrieking about the "war on obesity" is partly designed to distract from the real wars going on.

I've also heard and agree with the notion that the US obsession with fat distracts us from the fact that the US consumes such a disproportionate share of the world's resources. The pursuit of thinness is a superficial and self-centered substitute for real ethics.

[susanstinson.livejournal.com]

Yes. I've written about that, and for a while I was thinking about doing a book about the relationship between economic greed and US overconsumption and the way fat people get used as scapegoats for all of that.

When I went looking for the ads this morning, I found all sorts of related stories, including a ban being passed on lawsuits against fast food restaurants and lots of rhetoric about people taking personal responsibility for being fat. It's something about that intense, focus on individual people's bodies, tapping into the strong stream of socially sanctioned fat hatred -- it sets off all kinds of internal noise that is SUCH an effective distraction from so many other things, including ways to try to take power. And the collective nature of our pain about this stuff -- how shared it is.

[firecat]

Yeah. Well said (of course!)

[charlottecooper.livejournal.com]

I was thinking about doing a book about the relationship between economic greed and US overconsumption and the way fat people get used as scapegoats for all of that.

I would looooove to read such a book.

[susanstinson.livejournal.com]

You know, I wrote an article about this that was published in The Women's Review of Books a couple of years ago. I'd be happy to email it to you, if you'd like to see it.

I'd email it to anybody else who's interested, too.

[charlottecooper.livejournal.com]

Oh yes please. Thanks.

[susanstinson.livejournal.com]

Done!

[reinventedmuse.livejournal.com]

just a random..happy note..if you will...

seeing you here has made me re-read my copies of Fat Girl Dances with Rocks and Martha Moody..and fall in love with your writing/charecters all over again. *dreamy sigh*

& I am gushing but you are such an amazing writer.

oh i totally agree about those commericals, its horrible. bellys are good warm things. lets all love our bellies.. *s*

[susanstinson.livejournal.com]

That's a happy note, for sure. Good to know that you got out the books again. Thank you.

[tuliptoe.livejournal.com]

I think I will skip looking at them as well. Just the description sounds really horrible.

I have been having some interesting "belly" stuff going on with me. I have always had a love/hate relationship with it. I got my belly button pierced so that I could have a tangible reminder of loving my belly whenever I looked at it. And that (for some reason) helped me a lot. I am now 5 months pregnant and having that belly be the place where my daughter is hanging out has made me very protective and in love with it. :) I never expected to have that kind of reaction. I really like loving the belly I have.

And I would really love to read a book about US consumerism and corralations to the demonization of fat in America. So write! ;)

[susanstinson.livejournal.com]

That's so great -- all praise to your joy in your belly in its various roles, including this one, holding protecting your baby. Such an amazing thing

The thing is, I have a vocation, passion and a gift for fiction and poetry. I struggle with them, but love writing them more than I love any other kind of work. Other people could do a very powerful job in examining these connections. But nobody else could write my novels and poems. I could write this book someday as a political commitment or as part of earning a living. But starting it made me realize that writing fiction let me explore complicated things with more power and in a way that feels more natural and satisfying to me than creating an empassioned, strongly argued work of nonfiction, no matter how aching the need.

Here's a link to an article I wrote a few years ago that refers to some aspects of this stuff, though.

Resisting Fat Hatred (http://www.resistingfathatred.netfirms.com/article.htm)

[tuliptoe.livejournal.com]

Great article!

Have you thought about fictionalizing? You could still examine the issues in a fiction format.

As someone who is NOT a writer I am always pushing the good ones to write stuff that I'm interested in! ;) I know exactly what you mean though. Making the art that you were born to do is such a fullfilling pursuit.

[susanstinson.livejournal.com]

Thanks -- glad you like the article.

Well, I've written three novels and a chapbook of short essays and poetry that center on complex fat women, so I've definitely explored some of this stuff in my fiction. And I probably am going to be writing more short nonfiction pieces related to body size, politics, literature and all soon. I'll definitely post here as those pieces get published.

But one unexpected place that writing and thinking and talking hard about this stuff has taken me has been to the stories and theology of eighteenth century folks on the cusp between puritanism and revolutionary culture in New England. The intense things that these folks believed about the body, the natural world, god, emotion, depravity, light, family, life still seem to me to be powerful forces in so much US culture today -- so that's what I'm working with in fiction right now. It's almost overwhelming, like getting too close to an energy source that so many things draw power from -- something. It feels like a root place to me, another way to uncover how all of this stuff connects.

[beccawrites.livejournal.com]

i'm nearly speechless.

and then, actually, in trying to pick myself up off the floor about this, it occurs to me that maybe we could have these discussions at nolose. last year lynn mcafee was talking about the fat movement needing to create fat theory that goes beyond simply "diets don't work" because eventually doctors will come up with a treatment that works. (i don't think that she was saying that diets-don't-work isn't a crucial message -- i mean, look at what she does with her time -- she just was saying where are we going as a movement and a community?)

and the ways in which fat oppression is intertwined with class oppression and with war and with ablism and with racism and... these seem like good places to start in developing that theory.

[susanstinson.livejournal.com]

Yeah, Becca -- that's a great idea. I'm running out the door now, but developing deeper, more complicated conversations about fat would be a great thing to do at Nolose.

[susanstinson.livejournal.com]

What made you speechless? The ads? Or something about what we said about them?