Head In Hands – Alex E. Proimos.

I am going to state the following fact as calmly as I can:

This month, my alma mater’s book club is a dieting seminar.

Here are 5 reasons this is unacceptable.

1) The number of college students at risk for — or currently struggling with — eating disorders is astronomical.

The average age of onset for anorexia (the deadliest of all mental illnesses) is 19 years old. The average age of onset for bulimia is 20 years old.  As many as 44% of female students report severe binge eating habits, with the drive for thinness acting as a contributing factor. In this context, offering strategies to lose weight — and further insinuating that weight loss is always a laudable goal — is dangerously irresponsible.

2) Promoting dieting at an educational institution requires one to ignore actual research.

This book, like so many before it, aims to sell people on a “solution” to their bodies, despite the fact that studies (remember studies, academia?) repeatedly show diets fail. 95% of people who diet gain back the weight within five years, and people whose weight fluctuates dramatically (say, from yo-yo dieting) are less healthy than those who are overweight. Truth. So those health problems we’re supposedly fighting by taking on obesity? We’re actually contributing to them.

3) You know what else causes health problems? Stigma.

There is good evidence (research again!) to suggest that the problems currently correlated with obesity are not, in fact, caused by it. (Incidentally, “correlation is not causation” is a tenet of good research that I learned at Fontbonne University.) Instead, it’s increasingly suspected that the stress created by weight stigma is responsible for health problems. Moreover, that stigma makes it difficult for people who are fat — or perceived as fat — to seek and receive proper medical care. Proposing weight loss and reifying the thin ideal does not support anyone’s health. Shame, as a friend of mine so eloquently stated, is not a public health policy.

4) Shame is also not a strategy of social justice.

The foundation of Fontbonne University, and the aspect of its mission that I hold most dear, is the pursuit of social justice — originally practiced by our founding order, the Sisters of St. Joseph of Carondelet. The blurb for this Think And Grow Thin event acknowledges that D’Angelo, like so many others without thin privilege, experienced ongoing bullying as a fat youth. Using that story as the platform for a diet sales pitch fails to critically examine the social aspects of sizeism. Instead of interrogating society’s war on obesity, instead of recognizing that bodies come in diverse forms and that the BMI is not an indicator of health, instead of making any changes at the cultural level, this event puts the burden of change on the individual. It puts the burden of liberation on the oppressed. You want to stop being shamed and discriminated against? Just lose the weight, so you’re no longer in the group we’re oppressing! Gosh. Why haven’t more people got on board with that?

(Oh, I remember. See #2).

5) ____.

The last point is blank for a reason.  I want those of you who have a connection to this issue or this community to think for a moment about why it bothers you. Maybe it’s because you know what it’s like to struggle to make peace with your body. Maybe it’s because you’ve spent as much money on diet tricks and tips as you have toward your textbooks. Maybe it’s because you’ve lost someone to an eating disorder, or you encounter every day the kind of hatred that says “your body, as it is, burdens society, puts your health at risk, and — frankly — disgusts me.” Maybe you feel that a book based in pseudoscience and geared toward selling diet coaching degrades the integrity of an academic institution. Maybe it’s something else entirely. Whatever your reasons, I hope you will voice them.

Please. Tell Fontbonne and co-sponsor KMOX radio your reasons for not supporting ‘Think and Grow Thin.’

• Fontbonne on Facebook, on Twitter, or via e-mail*
• KMOX on Facebook, on Twitter, or via e-mail*

–

Please note: The book selection itself belongs to KMOX.  Regardless, I firmly believe  that Fontbonne remains culpable based on their decision to host this event on a university campus.

*Fontbonne e-mail contact is Elizabeth Hise, Senior Communications and Marketing Coordinator.  KMOX e-mail contact is Charles Brennan, host.

As a rule, I relegate my love of history to the pre-teen portion of my life, to Saturdays spent devouring Scott O’Dell novels or riding on the Orphan Train.  In later years, I enjoyed Emma Donoghue but balked at history, sans fiction.

Prior to college, history gained more ground with me through fiction than through schooling.  And now, in my late twenties, I’ve finally begun to wonder why.  I’ve begun to interrogate the way I learned history, to question why the subject that has become so dear to me felt so dry for so long.  The first criticism is, of course, the tired (but true) point of “too many dates and not enough action.” Too much regurgitation, not enough critical thought.  But I take issue with something beyond that, something deeper.  I take issue with one of the most dominant narratives in history education: the guiding understanding of why history matters.

Call it a crap curriculum or a selective memory, but I am pretty sure that every history class I took prior to college taught the same three periods: the Revolutionary War, American slavery, and the Holocaust. (The Oregon Trail was added briefly, at the height of the computer game’s popularity.) In two of these three cases, the “so what” factor  was continually summed up in that old Abe Lincoln standby: “those who don’t learn their history are doomed to repeat it.” Now, telling a bunch of grade-schoolers that their studies can prevent racism, genocide, and enslavement may seem like a powerful motivator.  Does anyone want Anne Frank and Abe Lincoln shaking their blessed heads at us, while we set this train of atrocities back in motion? I didn’t think so. So study up, kids.

But there’s a major issue with this “doomed to repeat it” rhetoric that I think most of my college history professors understood, although none referenced the quote, specifically. It’s an issue I doubt is beyond the grasp of grade-school minds, although they are rarely entrusted with it. In fact, the main problem with this quote is the main reason history finally became interesting to me. I realized something shocking: Far from being repeatable, history never ended in the first place.

The skipping through decades (and at times centuries) to focus on “units” like slavery and civil rights instills a fragmented narrative. It creates a story of America where the Emancipation Proclamation leads cleanly into the Civil Rights Movement, Abe hands his top hat to Martin, Harriet tags in Rosa, and the country moves on its merry way. Toward progress, of course. Because racism—like every other wrongdoing of the past—is something we are so totally over.

It infuriated me in college to hear the “post-racism” narrative repeated by classmates—of all races—with astounding frequency. But I also saw how easily they could come to that conclusion. My peers and I learned a very specific definition of racism growing up, a definition that involved slave quarters and separate water fountains. We learned racism as part of the prologue in America’s narrative of progress: Once upon a time, kids, we had these problems. Then heroes came along and fixed those problems. Choose one to write a biography on and work hard because we don’t want to make these mistakes again. See? Diversity. Problems unequivocally solved.

Having grown up in the generation when “multiculturalism” and “diversity” became the buzzwords of early childhood education, when Black History Month was a given, and every classroom (in my 99% White, racist-as-hell town) was adorned with the poster of multi-racial children holding hands around the globe, I secretly believe that when asked about racism, the majority of my peers unconsciously think drinking fountains, overseers, and backs of buses. And when, running down that checklist in our minds, we realize that indeed all is well now, we simply stop calculating.

History got interesting for me when I realized what a lie this is. When I learned about the century between Abe and Martin, when I first heard the phrase 40 acres and a mule.  History got interesting the day a friend of mine referred to the Fugitive Slave Act as an invitation to racial profiling.  It got interesting the first time someone asked if slavery “ended” or simply transformed into a criminal “justice” system that incarcerates Black and Brown people at a rate seven times that of White citizens.

In some ways, you can’t blame us for our education. For having grown up in an America that fell into the easiest trap of history: the sense that it has all been building to this moment, here, when all wrongs have been righted and we’re nationally, finally, on the Right Track. But I find myself appropriating that old For the Bible Tells Me So gem: there’s nothing wrong with a fifth-grade understanding of history, provided you’re in the fifth grade. And perhaps, in this case, our fifth-graders could handle going deeper than we trust them to go. And perhaps, they deserve the insight into their own experiences of race and racism that would come with that education.

We’ll need a new quote for the syllabi, of course, but I think we can manage that, too.  Personally, I vote for that old Utah Phillips line “The past didn’t go anywhere.”

Or, for the more concise among us, simply– history continues.

Thank you.  Thank you for crying so hard that your tears and snot and drool all pool into the tissue.  Thank you for the objects you have thrown at the wall. Thank you for the days that you have gotten out of bed, and the days you’ve slept through to stay safe. Thank you for the shallow breath that sustains you when you’re absolutely numb. Thank you for the crap food you eat because it takes so little effort to prepare. Thank you for surfing the Internet, when it’s less “surfing” and more “dead man’s float.”  Thank you for the times you spend on autopilot. For the times when you check-in. Thank you for screaming — and sobbing — so hard that the words you are screaming and sobbing out do not make an ounce of sense. Thank you for going to sleep when waking up is not something you are sure of. Thank you for your cries for attention. For your vague, unsettling status updates.  For the e-mails you send when you don’t trust your voice to function. For your mistakes.  For your unsettling drawings and your emo poetry, for your journal and the music blaring from your headphones.  For how hard you try when no one — yourself included — thinks you are trying.

Thank you for still being alive.

“Time Precinct” (Ant Smith).

I know you’re all sad that my melancholy holiday playlist is increasingly outdated, so I decided to hook you up with a New-Year’s-inspired mix.  Presenting 8 tracks about time and the passing of it.

~

It’s Time (Track Listing)

This Year – The Mountain Goats

I am gonna make it through this year if it kills me…

Time Flies – Melissa Ferrick

Time flies, just like you and I…

Red Letter Year – Ani DiFranco

New Year’s Eve, we dropped mushrooms and danced around the house…

That Year – Brandi Carlile

I must have been drinking; I haven’t been dreaming about you for years…

Baker Baker – Tori Amos

Time. Thought I’d make friends with time…

Pass in Time – Beth Orton (feat. Terry Callier)

Come on now, come on now, child. You’re here just awhile…

Time – Tori Amos (Tom Waits cover)

It’s time, time, time that you love. And it’s time, time, time…

Please, Please, Please Let Me Get What I Want – The Smiths

Haven’t had a dream in a long time…

You can listen to the full mix, for free, here. Just as you’ve been able to do every other, um,  time.

(Ba dump bump swish). Happy new year, kids.

I, personally, and basically everyone else I’ve met – do not fit either of these archetypes.   Personally, I’m inclined to listen to the occasional Christmas carol, but cannot stand hearing them on an endless loop. I’m inclined to decorate, but the silver photo tree that’s passing for an evergreen in my apartment is not, on this here eve of Christmas, fully decorated. Throughout December, I’ve occasionally considered making cookies. I watched a handful of Christmas specials on YouTube. When customers have wished me a happy holiday, I’ve not spit on their shoes.  But my Christmas this year is tending as consistently toward “meh” as it is toward magic. Come to think of it, that’s what it tends toward most years. And here’s the truly stunning part: the more time that passes, the more that feels ok.

So much of what unnerves me about the holiday is the pressure. The pressure to act like a character from a Hallmark special. The pressure to make this one day meet all of these standards for togetherness and cheer and generosity and satisfaction set aside during the rest of the year. The pressure to make “Christmas” live up to whatever “Christmas” specifically is supposed to be.  I do feel like there’s something sad about allowing the twenty-fifth to pass by as if it were any other day on the calendar. (The birth of Santa is not to be neglected.) But there’s also something freeing for me in admitting that, in fact, that’s enough for it to be.

Let’s be honest here. Christmas is fucking impossible for a lot of us. It’s painfully difficult. For some people, that’s about distance – geographically or otherwise – from the family that is so foundational to our culture’s Perfect Christmas narrative. (Marianne Kirby wrote a great piece on being estranged from family during the holidays, and seriously, I’m ok with you setting this entry aside to go read that. It’s phenomenal.). Even when we’re connected to families, we’re often suffering  from loss, or financial strain, or illness (including mental illness) that cannot be set aside for the holiday visits, despite the pressure to do just that.

For one reason or another, the holidays tend to be as challenging as they are awesome, if not decidedly more so. And the thing is, this is logical. This makes sense. This is reality. We are fucking human beings. Our lives are complex.  Our experiences do not follow a schedule; they do not align with ABC Family’s 25 Days of Christmas. They do not follow the comfortable timeline of a Lifetime original. They are real, messy, layered human lives.

And this is ok. It’s ok that you are spending parts of Christmas smiling at the snow flurries and other parts playing first-person shooters on your computer. It’s ok that you are brewing hot cocoa in one hour and throwing your mug against the wall the next. It’s ok that you love your family and you’re spending the night curled up in bed, wailing. It’s ok that you ‘re spending time with people, and it’s ok that you’re spending time away from them. It’s ok that you’re enjoying Christmas and that you aren’t. It’s ok that all of these things go together.

Down at the heart of things, this – right here — is the Christmas that is.

For me personally, the last three Christmases have included some combination of the following: illness, rash, appendicitis, heartbreak, grief, siblings trapped out of state, a father in ICU, and a niece in the hospital. They’ve also included laughing until my sides hurt, my great-aunt’s heavenly rye bread pizza squares, and dear moments with loved ones new and old. These were not separate Christmases. These were not, in most moments, separate hours. The coworker who sang carols at customers  yesterday was the same coworker who did racist impressions and harangued me about my non-existant boyfriend. Sometimes within the same minute.  So this is what I have to offer you: It is all the fucking same.

As my sister pointed out when I complained about the Somebody-Is-Always-Hospitalized-At-Christmas curse my family seems to have cornered the market on: this is actually just life.  This is how life goes.  When you love people, when you care about people, when you are a person, things get (and stay) messy.  And sometimes, in the same moment, you are enjoying the snow and wincing at your chapped knuckles. Sometimes in the same moment you are grateful and wracked with pain.

And that’s ok. You can be Buddy the Scrooge. You can be you. This day can be just as it is.

In fact, that’s all it can be.  So breathe a little, honeybuns. And let it.

Melancholy Holiday (Track Listing)

Brandi Carlile – The Heartache Can Wait

Silver bells and open fires/ and songs we used to sing/ one more chance to be inspired/ is what I’m offering…

Coleman Lindberg – 50 Yellow Tulips

Sometimes things are simple/ sometimes it’s enough/ to buy 50 yellow tulips/ for someone that you love…

Have Yourself a Merry Little Christmas – Tori Amos

Through the years, we all will be together, if the fates allow/ hang a shining star upon the highest bough…

Delicate December – Erin McKeown

Special for December, let’s pretend we’re all for one and one for all…

The Magi – Peter, Paul, and Mary

And the wise men spoke of peace on earth, of harmony and struggle…

Song of the Magi – Anais Mitchell

Wear we now our warmest coats, wear we now our walking shoes…

Christians and the Pagans – Dar Williams

You find magic from your god and we find magic everywhere…

Light one Candle – Peter, Paul, and Mary

This is the burden. This is the promise. This is why we will not fail…

You can — per the usual — give the full mix a listen here.

Number of words, as of this post: 28,796. (Being slightly behind is totes motivational, so hush.)

Line of dialogue I suggest incorporating into actual conversation: “That must’ve been a hell of a ring pop.”

Random objects highlighted in the action: Salt-and-pepper shakers, mood rings, and packets of fake-sugar.

Repurposed paper the Smithsonian will (inevitably) want to own some day, when I’m a big ole bookwritin’ star: receipts from my workplace, to-do list notepads I won in a college raffle, and crumpled, coffee-stained coloring pages (as found at the bottom of my backpack.)

Totally not-confusing quality of the first draft: its three narrators, who each (sporadically) start addressing a different person as “you.”

Important things I have discovered ’bout said characters: how they take their coffee. (Note: one of the three protagonists DOES NOT DRINK COFFEE. I’m not sure how we’ll do this, she and I. I thought we had stuff in common, but I was clearly mistaken.)

An incomplete list of things I’ve needed to do right now (instead of NaNoWriMo): make 8Tracks mixes, teach my new pet dragon to spell “NaNoWriMo,” and rediscover the entire catalog of Edna St. Vincent Millay. See below.

Fake plot I’ve invented to get through the “you’re writing a novel” small talk: “My novel is about two competing roller derby leagues, respectively headed by Madeleine Kahn and Madeleine Albright. Working title is Battle of the Madeleines. Neville Longbottom makes several brief appearances as a jeerleader.”*

Number of times Amy Poehler is mentioned: One. Shocking, a travesty, etc. Give it time.

Things what I recommend to my fellow NaNo-ers, during this final 11 days: Written? Kitten!, Ask Auntie MJ (particularly these two posts), and remembering to let it suck.

Things I recommend to the rest of you while there is (more or less) nothing to see here: Super-Mattachine is continuing to be made of awesome at his new blog home and hey, look, we’re still doing the 30 Days of Shamelessness. Also, I hear Fraggle Rock is on Netflix. If you’re a Netflix person.

If not, there’s always your free dose of Amy Poehler. (Totally counts as a second reference, by the way.)

–

*Feel free to actually write this novel. Just say something fuzzy about me in the acknowledgments and forward me a portion of the inevitably extensive royalties. Kthxbai.

So, you know I’m a fan of you.  Really and truly; I think we should always be friends.  But lately, we’ve been falling into this pattern.  And it just isn’t working for me.  So I thought maybe we could put it on the table and come up with something better.  Because we’re cool like that.

So here’s the pattern: Somebody — a person, a company, an organization — does something.   They create an advertisement, maybe, or they write a blog.  They tell a joke or they release a product.  Suffice it to say that somebody out there puts something out into the world.  Something that is racist or sexist or sizeist or ableist or otherwise oppressive.  Then, a second somebody — a person, a company, an organization — responds.  Maybe the second somebody spearheads a petition.  Maybe they start an international protest movement.  Maybe they form their own Twitter hashtag and just repeatedly tweet WTF, WTF, WTF until someone starts paying attention.  The point is, there’s this first group that missteps, and this second group that’s all, “social justice, you’re doing it wrong.”  Ok?  With me so far?

So, around the time the second somebody’s WTF hits its critical mass, the conversation becomes mainstream.  This is to say that big-name media picks up on the story and starts “covering” it and suddenly the entire conversation — in the blogs, on the Twitter feeds, on the radio, etc — shifts.  The links to the story become, “Do you think this is racist?” (or sexist or fatphobic or ableist.)  Because this is what we think unbiased coverage looks like:  Here, Internetz, I’ll present to you this Controversial Thing Someone Created, and you can decide for yourself whether Person Two Overreacted.

To recap: First person does. Second person [over?]reacts. Third person says, “Do you think this is an overreaction?”

And poof! — the whole thing becomes subjective.

Now, here’s the thing about me: I’m not a huge believer in objective truth.  Like basically at all.  I’m not saying that it’s easy, always, to look at something and say, “that is so clearly, clearly racist/ sexist/ fatphobic.”  I mean, not everything is that Psychology Today article, you know?  Meaning isn’t static.  It has nuance and it’s confusing and sometimes we aren’t sure what we’re dealing with.  But that’s not the conversation we have when we ask the question, “Do you think this is worth all the controversy?”

The conversation we’re having, inevitably, is “do you find this offensive?”

Do you find it offensive if someone suggests that girls suck at math but are good at boys?  Do you find it offensive if someone suggests Black women simply can’t be pretty?  Do you find it offensive if someone uses the word “lame“?  Do you?

Don’t get me wrong.  “Offensive” is an important conversation to have in certain contexts.  In terms of interpersonal relationships, for instance — “offensive” is a key point to consider.  It’s important for me, your pal, to discuss with you, my bud, whether I find the things you’re saying, stuff you’re doing, or way you’re treating me offensive.  But it’s those relationships — relationships among friends, family members, coworkers, and so forth — in which “offensive” matters.  Because when we’re talking about taking offense, we’re automatically talking about a personal, subjective experience of what took place.  This is how I felt about what you did.  And that “this is how I felt about what you did” — is a very different thing than “what you’re doing is racist/ sexist/ fatphobic” etc.

In the wake of “political correctness” (and the demonizing thereof) — we’ve managed to water down “racist” and its correlaries to “offensive,” “controversial,”and “politically incorrect.” But that is not actually what these words mean.

When I say, “that’s racist/ sexist/ ableist” etc — what I’m saying is that what you’re doing supports a system of oppression.  A system.  Meaning something at the social level, something that we are creating as a culture.  So, it’s not about whether you meant for me to have my feelings hurt.  It’s not even about whether my feelings were hurt.  I don’t actually give two shits, on a personal level, about whether JCPenney recognizes my math aptitude or whether some dude thinks it’s a good idea for small children to diet.  When I say, “this is sexist” or “this is sizeist” I’m not actually saying, “you rubbed me the wrong way.” I’m saying, “you are shoring up a system that does harm.”

This is, by the by, also why it doesn’t matter if your Latin@/ trans/ fat/ disabled friend told you that zie’s okay with whatever that thing is that you did.  Because it’s not about whether it hurts a person’s feelings.  It’s not about how you intend it to affect someone.  It’s about whether it reinforces systems that privilege certain groups of people by privileging others.  And if it reinforces systems like racism, sexism, and ableism?  Then, frankly, I am going to have a problem with it.

And I am going to have a problem with you turning my “STOP BEING RACIST” critique into “Is she right to be upset about this?” Because I am not talking about my feelings.  I am talking about our culture.  And, while there’s some subjectivity in whether this particular act reifies racism, there’s a lot less than there is in “is this over the line?”  I don’t care about the line, particularly.  I care about the oppression.  And there are standards by which we can measure whether certain actions support an oppressive status quo.  There are ways we can decide to opt out of them.

And, for the record,  when I call you out on an -ism, that is what I’m hoping you’ll do.

Sincerely,

Teh Mmax

Close-up of twisted kelp. Image Credit: Brett Coulstock.

I made a new playlist. Because that’s what I do during NaNoWriMo, apparently. In my defense – (because clearly this requires one) — I also passed 15,000 words last night. So, clearly this playlist thing is working for me.

This one is trauma-focused, so trigger warnings for abuse, bullying, and corresponding crap. Tread softly, fighters. Take care of you, etc.

Full mix available here.

Never Broken (Track Listing)

This Year – The Mountain Goats

I am gonna make it through this year, if it kills me…

Mercy – Melissa Ferrick

This is not my fault. This is not my fault. For this one, I need mercy.

Get Gone – Fiona Apple

How many times can it escalate til it elevates to a place I can’t breathe?

Sick Cycle Carousel – Lifehouse

I’ve got somebody else’s thoughts in my head; I want some of my own…

Flinch – Alanis Morissette

Soon I’ll grow up, and I won’t even flinch at your name…

When the Cards are Yours – Treva Blomquist

What do you do when the pain is yours but you’re not the one to blame?

Secrets of the Lotus – Stephanie Dosen

You’re under mountains now, but someday you will rise, like the tide…

You Were Cool – The Mountain Goats

You deserved better than you got; someone’s got to say it some time, ’cause it’s true…

~

Click here to listen.