Fat Politics

I’ve long been a loyal and devoted follower of Dan Savage (a great sex columnist, and an even greater writer).  I came upon his column while perusing a Now Magazine during an unbearably long lunch break.  

Being a life-long suburbanite, I never had access to an alternative weekly before.  At home, the only papers to hit my doorstep are the Toronto Star and Mississauga News.  Neither publication spends much time discussing obscure sexual fetishes, or advertising for strip clubs and escort services.  I also went to a Catholic high school, where no such reading material was readily available.  So you can imagine my delight when attendance at a notoriously liberal university led to the discovery of salacious material embedded in innocuous newsprint.  

I fell in love with Dan instantly, and shared his divine insight with everyone I knew.  

One day, he wrote about complaints from disgruntled readers.  He had angered them by saying that larger girls look bad in too-tight pants.  Specifically, he was referring to the roll of fat that hangs over a snug waistband.  More specifically, he was commenting on the phenomenon of size 8 women trying to wear size 4 pants, and looking like ruptured sausages because of it.  Now, the sight of strangled skin struggling to free itself from the confines of hip-crushing pants is loveably referred to as “muffin-topping.”  The consensus of the people (fashion experts, casual observers, my mother, etc) is that this trend cannot continue.  Fashionable attire is supposed to make you look better, not worse.

However, the argument was not about what looks good, but rather the “right” to feel good in unflattering outfits.  It seems like that excess flesh is political, a “fuck you” statement to a world that values women’s bodies rather than their minds.  It’s not terribly out of line to wave the finger at the media.  Hollywood likes its women dirty-skinny (and it likes to deride them for it, too).  No two people are built the same, and not everyone is meant to slither underneath closed doors or have legs the width of a man’s wrist.

However, we must be able to agree that a 5′2 person should not weigh 400 pounds.  Yet we can’t.  According to outraged Savage Love readers, being fat is just like being gay – a permanent, unchangeable aspect of one’s being.  To advise a torn man to gently confront his wife about her 90 pound weight gain is to encourage hate and discrimination.  

People counter these arguments with offensive remarks.  They decry the existence of disgusting excess weight, and demand that the whiny fatties hit a gym and stop eating gallons of ice-cream.

Why, I wonder, can people not be reasonable?  Why must things become so political?

It seems to me like excess weight (as in weight that’s close to double what it should be) is not always a product of laziness (God knows that they’re are lazy and inactive skinny people), but rather a product of a culture that’s lost touch with basic health principles.  Our portions are enormous, our cheap food loaded with fat, and our favourite gourmet lattes filled with sugar.  A lot of jobs require nothing more than the use of fingers to punch numbers into a computer.  

It cannot be denied that obesity is linked to health problems, but not a lot is done to curb the problem at a national level.  People would be horrified if the government taxed sugary pops (or sodas, for any American people reading this) like it does cigarettes, or forced restaurants (fast food ones included) to abide by pre-determined health standards (and they wouldn’t, because franchises are generally good for the economy).  Instead, we (sort of) encourage people to make healthy choices.

“Eat an apple,” we say.  ”Go for a walk.”

There’s nothing wrong with making a personal decision to eat less and move more, but it seems like some people don’t know how much they truly eat or how little they actually move.  North Americans have grown so accustomed to platters of pasta and buckets of fries (I’m only using mild hyperbole here) that some would find anything smaller dissatisfying.  Also, does everyone know that one can of Coke contains up to eight teaspoons of sugar?  Do people know that a venti white mocha from Starbucks has almost as many calories as a quarter-pounder with cheese from McDonalds?  

When people hear the word “diet,” they think of deprivation – of raw vegetables and tiny cuts of skinless, boneless chicken breasts.  Really, it can be hard to tell how much is too much, and it’s harder still when the fries that make your hips swell seem to melt off of your skinny (but perhaps more sedentary) friend.  

So, if there was less fast-food, less pop and smaller portions, would people be smaller?  Yes, they absolutely would.  A plump figure was considered attractive in the 18th century because everyone was thin and hungry.  Now we’re more than satiated, and we have the muffin-tops to show for it.  

Instead of arguing over what looks good, and what should look good, and why thinking a certain person doesn’t look good is akin to a lynching, we should be trying to figure out why this debate exists.  Why do some people need two seats on an airplane?  Is it because they’re lazy wastes of life?  Drains on the medical system? Inconveniences in crowded areas?  Or is because we’re a culture that consumes and consumes and consumes?  A culture that wants more food and more TV shows and more electronics?  We want big houses and big cars and big walk-in closets.  We want instant food for low-prices.  We’re too busy to cook and go grocery shopping.  

It’s not right or just or fair to make a thicker person feel like a lazy slob – he or she is no such thing.  However, we cannot, as a culture, over-consume something and incur no ill effects.  Too little food will kill, and it seems too much will too.  

What’s to blame isn’t bigotry or intolerance, but rather ignorance.  It seems we don’t know why we are the way we are.  We’re bigger than we want to be (and much bigger than we’re told we should be).  It’s hard when you’re tired and busy and want a quick burger before bedtime.  It’s hard when every restaurant serves you a meal that could easily be shared with two other people.  It’s hard when high-fat foods are delicious.  It’s hard when many jobs require that we just sit and stare at a computer screen.  

The problem has more to do with a culture obsessed with size and convenience.  Perhaps we’d all be benefitted by caring less about both.

It Appears that the Devil is Talking out of Your Ass Again

I understand that it’s unwise – unacceptable, even – to make giant blanket statements about complicated social issues.  In life, there are few absolutes.  In the end, it’s all about context, theory and rhetoric.  If you can argue a point well enough, you’ll get supporters in your corner.  Someone else will get other supporters in theirs.  Then you can argue forever, which will make your life more interesting (if not exhausting).

 However, there are some arguments that cannot (and should not) ever hold H20.

 Such as the argument that God – yes, God – wants you spank the ever-living shit out of your wayward, irrational, child-like wife. 

Behold:

www.christiandomesticdiscipline.com

A site dedicated to affirming that it’s perfectly all right – desirable even – to institute an authoritative, dogmatic hierarchy in your household and allot one person (the old male person) the right to physically assault those who, like, give him dirty looks and refuse to smile when he farts at the dinner table. 

This “lifestyle” is for two types of people.

1) Kinky people

2) Abusive people

There’s no in between, make no mistake of that.  If you long to slap the naked ass of a grown woman for hours at a time, you’re either a run-of-the-mill S&M enthusiast or an asshole. 

If you’re a woman who loves the feel of a hard hand against your ass for hours on end, you’re a run-of-the-mill S&M enthusiast or a passive victim of domestic violence. 

If a woman feels that bad moods are manifestations of demonic possessions (or ungodliness) and decides that she needs the beasts expelled through a little over-the-knee “tough love”, she’s a kinky girl into submission.

Spanking is a common sexual practise (I wouldn’t even call it much of a fetish anymore).  People, generally fearful of finding themselves in humiliating and demoralizing situations (like corporal punishment), sometimes cope with their discomfort by eroticizing it.  If you like what’s being done to you, you haven’t relinquished your autonomy.  You’ve requested seemingly inhumane treatment, and therefore it’s titillating rather than mortifying.  Women are not the only people who do this, men do it too (that’s why there’s such a thing as a dominatrix). 

For most (I hope) of these spank-happy couples, their means of keeping the peace is probably more about obtaining sexual thrills – and there’s nothing wrong with that in and of itself.  What’s wrong is the pitiful, misogynistic posturing.

“God wants female subjugation, and the only way to achieve it is by instituting blatantly (but not admittedly) erotic punishments for derelict wives/girlfriends.”

I haven’t read the bible from cover to cover, but I doubt God, Moses, Matthew, Mark, Luke, John or Jesus every said any such thing. 

Religion is notoriously good that shaming its followers for having sexual desires, especially desires that stray off the rigid and narrow path of “normal.”  Though S&M (lighter aspects, of course) has become more and more popular, it’s still a fringe movement, practised in different ways by different people.  It’s not something everyone – particularly those closely associated with Christian denominations – would readily admit to dabbling in.  So how does a devout follower of a pure deity come to terms with his or her taste for painful foreplay? 

By cloaking their fetish in theological rhetoric.  They justify their kink by claiming it’s not inherently sexual, but innately spiritual.  Spanking is the best way a man and a woman can maintain the “natural” power imbalance in their marriage.  However, those intent on dominating their spouse would probably choose physical and emotional coercion over a relatively well-known sex act.  

Another argument could be that, in a case where one or both partners is not getting hard/wet at the prospect of a thorough “punishment”, the dominant partner is instituting a troublesome power imbalance sustained by genuinely painful “corrective procedures” that provide the abuser with a false sense of comfort.  If the punitive measures are approved by Christian domestic discipline enthusiasts, then they can’t be manifestations of one partner’s very real desire to threaten, frighten, and abuse the other.  So for people afraid to risk the legal/moral/philosophical/spiritual repercussions of routinely assaulting their spouse, they have some wiggle room with “consensual” anti-egalitarian power dynamics. 

Either way, there’s no pure motive for needing or wanting a defined and continuous sub/Dom relationship within a 21st century marriage.  You’re either kinky (which is cool), or you feel entitled to abusing your partner/feel you deserve abuse (not so cool, I don’t think). 

Perhaps this “lifestyle” has provided a safe haven for good Christian girls to act out desires they’ve had since adolescence without fear of social reprisal. I’ll bet a lot of them like to accidentally spray their husband with the garden hose when he’s on his way to work, and immediately blame Satan and claim they can feel him coiling up inside their pulsating nether regions when all they wanted to do was tend to their beautiful, feminine rose garden under the warm morning sunshine.  I’m sure they enjoy the warm morning sunshine beating against their bedroom windows while they promise to be “good girls” while rubbing against their godly man’s thigh. 

Their godly man no doubt likes his wife’s naked ass, or he just likes giving someone bruises.   

I hate to make a blanket statement, but there probably isn’t much in between. 

In case you think I might be mistaken, and that a desire to be closer to God is what compels couples to commit to spanking-filled marriage, check out this website:

http://lovingdd.blogspot.com

Once you sift through the user comments about the benefits of “forced” nudity, genital slaps and nipple pinches, you’ll see where I’m coming from.