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.

[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*

[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! ;)

[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.