The following is a guest post by Kelly Hogaboom who writes and tweets with great wit and candour about rad stuff like feminism, non-punitive parenting, body image, cooking and sewing, life and love (and much else besides).
These days I’m a pretty hearty soul. I have a fair degree of equanimity that has been hard-won. Still, I’m only human. And as I pen this I’ve just returned from a lunch date with old family friends. I found myself, quite suddenly, stuck in a corner (literally and figuratively) while these old friends argued toward me about
If you’ve spent any time in the social wellbeing or social justice spheres you might have a more nuanced view than the mainstream media regarding: obesity (childhood and “regular”, ha), “healthy” food, and epicurean snobbery waged against the most socioeconomically disadvantaged. I hardly blame anyone who might read Michelle Alison’s piece, linked above, and find their belief system challenged – after all, most conventional wisdom out there is full of ableism, orthorexia, classism, adultism and mommy-shaming -
and more important to me, at root really, a profound lack of compassion and open-mindedness.
This conversation was no different. Within seconds I heard about “personal responsibility”, people who “sit around all day feeling bad about themselves and playing video games”, and the cheapness of whole grains – all this and more by a group of middle-class people eating a fifteen-dollar-a-plate meal of cheesy pizza, salads loaded with ranch dressing, and pop. I should note the video game comment was uttered by a man who misheard my mention of the [US] “Farm Bill” as FarmVille – and who admitted he didn’t know what the Farm Bill is.
It would almost be funny if it wasn’t such tired, depressing, and well-trod ground.
Never lost on me is sameness of the script with which some of these parties speak. They will often cite a female ancestor who supposedly fed an entire family on just pennies and fed the neighborhood besides. They often require those the most marginalized or disadvantaged to eat and live a certain way, and be exposed to scrutiny and lectures they themselves do not practice nor endure. During one such conversation a friend of mine, a mother of one and an at-home wife to a man earning six figures, espoused the economy of beans and apples while slicing into the peanut butter pie made with full-fat organic ingredients and Gran Marnier (I shouldn’t have to tell you she underquoted the price of bulk beans and apples… because she doesn’t have to know those prices, naturally).
These conversations have thus far broken my heart but never more so than today, given I work quite regularly with recovering alcoholics and addicts and I see the hard work that goes into survival – and I hear the experiences of low-self worth they’ve often internalized. Many of those I work with got life’s start in the most profoundly disadvantaged circumstances (poverty, abuse of all horrific varieties, neglect from parent/carer, etc), and who today are working against many odds and in a temporary or semi-permanent state of Survival Mode – making the meetings that sustain them, shuffling court dates and problems with the law and job re-training, all while living on a fraction of what my partner earns and without an at-home partner (like myself) to soak those beans and slice those apples and knead that bread. (The confidentiality of this volunteer work is sacrosanct enough that, even writing off my home blog, the circumstances of my small-town dictates I don’t cite too many specifics.)
Suffice to say I am regularly exposed to and work hand-in-hand helping these individuals (I am a recovering alcoholic as well) – not all of whom can’t afford expensive food – and I see them as Human Beings doing their best – after all, longterm recovery from addiction and alcoholism is Personal Responsibility at a profoundly deep level. To think of the casual hate these people endure when standing in line with their packets of ten cent Top Ramen or with a bag of Arby’s for dinner just sucks.
Now, I’m not saying anyone at the table today was particularly hateful. It’s just, despite hearing these kinds of vitriolic arguments in public spaces and online I was still, somehow, caught off-guard to hear these thoughts echoed by my friends. I let myself get sucked into an argument I’ve in the past found deeply unproductive. Was it wrong I spoke up about my practice of compassion, and from my direct experiences working directly with those living on cheap food? No. Where I went wrong was to forget a lesson I’ve been served before: you cannot argue compassion into someone.
You cannot argue compassion into someone.
What can I do next time, besides committing this lesson to memory? Well, in my best self I would have retained a curiosity as to why these people felt so angry about those who “eat unhealthy”. I would have listened a bit more and been less quick to talk. Yes, I may think I know why these people said the same things I’ve heard so many times before, but today I didn’t ask questions but rather assumed The Usual Suspects: a buy-into the prevalent spiritual and emotional formations of Scarcity, the myth of the United States as a meritocracy, the desire to Other those less fortunate and therefore operate on a false sense of security, and perhaps the injudicious consumption of mainstream media with it’s obsessive and unproductive riverflow of War on Obesity rhetoric. Yeah, I might be most the way right about what I was hearing, but now I do not know if I was correct or incorrect – because I did not listen.
As an epilogue: I did end up feeling a bit better shortly after this lunch gone awry. Back in the car with just my own children I felt rattled for a moment as I turned over my engine. But sitting for a minute the deepest experience of gratitude washed over me, because I have a few assets: including my two children and the human beings they’ve evidenced themselves to be. They are, today, entirely generous, whip-smart, and so incredibly less likely than I to let others’ angst affect their values and their practice of love. It might sound like I’m veering into bragging about my parenting; I’m not. My children and their compassion aren’t supplied here to justify my performance as a mother – I am relating that they give me a great deal of hope. They are two human beings who evidence great intelligence, a desire for right speech, a commitment to friendship, and, often, a peace that passes human understanding.
Two human beings who, today, hug my drug-addict friends and my middle-class grouchy foodies – beings who all suffer in their own ways – with earnestness, deep affection, and a profound spiritual centeredness.
I might not always get it right. But I have some pretty good mentors to help me along.
I’d love to know how you talk to your kids about various isms when they come up. My son is 5 and just started Kindergarten and has learned a few new words.. like “lame”. We tried to explain to him why this hurts other people (he responded with the typical “but I’m not saying it about *them*). What’s the best kid friendly way to help him understand these concepts so that he takes them to heart and maybe even helps others understand?
@Heather
Your question about “lame” is perfect, as we went through the “lame” discussion about the same time our oldest was five. My husband and I have simply explained to our kids why we don’t say “lame” and some of the larger issues around abelism. We (the parents) operate with as kind speech as possible and we do not force our kids to say “nice” things nor punish them if they make a gaffe or whatever. The truth is, our children’s moral life is their own. In other words: talk kindly and openly about this stuff often with your partner (if you have one), live ethically as possible, gently share with your children. If your child utters something offensive in front of someone else, with great kindness and delicacy deal with the person(s) involved and your child, taking great care to not shame nor pressure your child. Do not apologize for your child’s behavior (it’s not yours, after all), but speak up frankly and immediately in the moment. A clumsy attempt is better than silence or heavy-handed lectures.
My children do not go to school, and I’m aware that is a major factor to why they don’t say “lame”, “f*ggot”, “gay” (as pejorative), “retard”, etc. Discussing these “isms” happens more often because I’m with them a lot (so does discussing all sorts of non-political/social stuff). One result is my kids have an awareness about some bigger picture stuff, even though they are little – my son the other day walked through the room and said, “My Lego sets have no dark-skinned people in them, and I find that offensive”, LOL. I am also aware that if a child is in an environs for six to eight hours a day most weekedays it’s going to affect his or her speech or values. Given the circumstances of school environments, taking the long view about this stuff is paramount.
Does that make sense and/or help?
Just wanted to say how much I adore this post. You are one kickass lady, Kelly.
Hey you! Cool to see you here. Thanks for the compliment.
Thank you! You couldn’t have said it better. There’s a lady at my church who argues that income doesn’t matter, that you can still buy healthy food and that it’s why so many people are obese. That’s not her only topic either. I’ve just started shutting down when she does this because no matter what I say it just won’t hit her. It’s so frustrating. Obesity is so much more than diet and the food industry itself doesn’t help when it comes to pricing food either.
Not everyone opts to get WIC or food stamps or even qualifies for it either (one of her arguments why they should be able to get fresh fruit and veggies). Even with those you don’t get enough stamps or checks to cover a whole lot of fresh fruit and veggies and depending on family size it doesn’t last long.
Anwyay, I could go on and on. I will have to remind myself next time that “you cannot argue compassion into someone.”
Great post, great points. It’s good to see this out there….I feel really passionately about food and it is both a great joy and a great sadness to me for many of the reasons you have cited here.
I believe that food is a the biggest medicine for a human being and just like herbs, pharmaceuticals, etc…it is used and misused by those with ‘power’ to control those without. (So is water now, but that’s another topic…). There is a lot of miseducation, or simply lack of education, around food and how to use it – and just like all other things where ignorance plays such a huge role, a little information becomes misconstrued by it’s holder as the end-all-be-all of the situation and judgements start rolling in. Even “experts” in nutrition argue with each other, often their theories are 180 degrees from each other, but they hold on with all their might and I can’t quite figure out the psychology behind it either.
Perhaps the world did used to work in such a way that you could walk out to the field and grab some healthy veggies “for free”, etc (and we also took care of those who were less fortunate or ill) but people also worked very hard with their time, regardless of a monetary measurement for it, to collect and create quite expensive food items to maintain health – such as bone marrow, rare shellfish, fermented dairy and other products, organ meats, alchemical spice combinations, etc. To provide this type of traditional diet that meets the actual requirements for our body is so expensive that I currently don’t know anybody who can afford to do that – not only in money, but in time. As you said here, you can soak the beans, cut the apples and knead the bread, but even there…the process of grinding grains freshly as needed, fermenting foods, procuring and storing raw dairy, finding safe and clean organ meats, etc is beyond the capability of one stay at home partner. Even more than income, it requires a group process – one in which people are cooperating and gifting their time and I don’t even know if that type of situation can work within the capitalist system we have going.
I work with a population of homeless teens and mentally diverse individuals and it’s often funny to hear the diets that have been recommended to them by their MDs, or worse, NDs…a daily ration of which wouldn’t be affordable or available to these people with a month of their resources. As long as we continue to treat food as a commodity – we will be unable to use it as the medicine it is. Food is not a commodity. It is a gift, and only in recognizing that will anything ever change.
As for the judgement, whenever I hear a judgement out of somebody’s mouth, I assume that it is a judgement on themselves…and in this case, I would assume that these people had a whole lot of guilt about their own dietary habits…but who knows.
Thanks so much for your awesome post. Sorry to go to town in the comment box, but it is a seriously huge issue for which I have no solution and am constantly bummed to see that something so necessary for our survival is so hoarded and made unavailable by those in control.
“As for the judgement, whenever I hear a judgement out of somebody’s mouth, I assume that it is a judgement on themselves…and in this case, I would assume that these people had a whole lot of guilt about their own dietary habits…but who knows.”
Well, that’s a good point! In my experience guilt is as much of a USian value as anything else… plenty to go around. Guilt has never motivated me in a long-lasting, positive way, so I attempt as much as possible not to indulge in it nor spread it.
I really loved this blog post, thank you. It chimed with my feelings so much and has helped me think about recent painful conversations I’ve had with friends, loved ones and people who I thought of as allies about various social justice issues. You cannot argue compassion into someone, it’s true.
Thanks, Andrea. I try to remember when people are lathered up about subjects they are usually hurting, angry, anxious, judgmental, self-critical and exacting, etc. I try to exercise compassion for all!
I’m grateful for the internet and lots of community to have more constructive conversation than the mainstream: “Fat/poor/etc. people are bad”. Etc.
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