Breastfeeding support: less is not more

It’s been a bad weekend for media representations of breastfeeding.

Saturday’s Age and SMH ran a feature in the Good Weekend supplement detailing French feminist Elisabeth Badinter’s opposition to what she sees as the tyranny of motherhood, especially physically demanding practices like breastfeeding. Like Hanna Rosin’s, Badinter’s views on breastfeeding have been carefully deconstructed over the past few years by other writers. Take this piece by blue milk:

But then you can’t entirely blame feminists like Badinter for being nervous about any ambitions to elevate motherhood either. They haven’t seen much good come out of the institution of motherhood for women – servitude, guilt, martyrdom, rampant biological determinism and invisibility. Still, given that most women end up being mothers, and given that a good deal of us even strongly desire motherhood there is no point throwing that particular baby out with the bath water. We won’t elevate women anytime soon by denigrating motherhood.

Make no mistake — denigrating physiologically normal (though by no means universal) processes of motherhood, like the physical changes of pregnancy and birth and the work of breastfeeding, is denigrating motherhood. It is also, I think, a mistake to underestimate the level of maternal desire driving some of our choices. But more than this; assuming that the holy grail of feminism is solely an ability to centre paid work, alternative achievements and other relationships in women’s lives (as men have always been able to under patriarchy) is extremely limiting. Why not instead seek new ways of working, earning, living, doing mothering and making families which enable choices to stretch beyond the starkness of:  A) bottle feeding and long daycare or B) long unrewarded hours at home in an isolated mother–child dyad?

Those long hours alone can be devastating for a new mother’s mental health; I know this from experience. Even when a parent has company of some kind, they may feel figuratively alone if their actions are not supported with both compassionate reassurance and practical assistance. This is the concern raised by Beyond Blue’s deputy chief executive Nicole Highet who was quoted in The Mercury today. Dr Highet isn’t wrong in saying that breastfeeding difficulties and anxiety about feeding choices can contribute to the stress and even despair felt by many new mothers. In the early days and weeks breastfeeding is difficult for most (impossible for some) and severely overworked (because that is what they usually are!) post-partum women are particularly vulnerable to feelings of inadequacy. The physical pain of cracked nipples, mastitis, thrush or engorgement is all too real. So is the emotional pain of being confronted with choices which seem patently unfair and yet take on the importance of life-or-death decisions. Mothers in our culture are bombarded with all manner of ‘expert opinions’ and given the distinct impression that everyone — health professional or self-styled baby whisperer or mother in law — knows our babies’ needs better than we do and yet, somehow, when it comes down to getting the actual work of mothering done the buck stops with us. And when it comes to taking the fall for choices that are made, it’s all mothers all the time.

When was the last time you saw the mainstream media ask for fathers to step up and do something about low breastfeeding rates?  (Research shows that a male partner’s attitudes towards and willigness to assist with breastfeeding is the single biggest determinant of whether a woman will continue to exclusively breastfeed once she has left hospital, but strangely it’s mothers who are always targeted when feeding choices have to be accounted for.)

Although I completely deplore the employment of the term ‘Breastapo’ in that inflammatory Mercury piece, it’s important to acknowledge that the trend Beyond Blue has picked up on is real. Some women are, for whatever reason, experiencing pressure or negative attitudes about their feeding choices and that is harmful, both to those individual women and to the cause of lactivism generally.

Dr Highet and many others (including Leslie Cannold who tweeted the Mercury piece this morning) seem to take the experiences of women who felt that breastfeeding advocacy or advice given in hospital was shaming in some way as evidence that the ‘breast is best’ message has gone too far. I tend to draw the opposite conclusion.

At the moment, mothers (and actually when I say this, I mean mothers in the ‘Western’ world) seem to experience a particularly insidious form of blame-shifting. Women are told, usually repeatedly, by health professionals that breastfeeding is the best ‘choice’, and the vast majority believe it. (Over 90 % of Australian women choose to initiate breastfeeding). Breastfeeding advice, in many cases, seems to constitute little more than a bit of information about how to do it and a very clear intimation that it’s what good mothers do. What it all too often doesn’t include is sensitive, individualised, and knowledgable information delivered in a mother-centred way. What it definitely doesn’t come with (if it’s being delivered by a health professional or, well, just about anyone) is actual real-life support to achieve the mother’s breastfeeding goals.

In short: most women hope to breastfeed. Most women are let down by a lack of practical support.

Complicating the picture is marketing from formula companies and ingrained cultural practices (like expecting babies to ‘sleep through’ or feed by the clock and expecting mothers not to feed openly in public) which make breastfeeding seem like perhaps the ‘best’ but not at all the ‘normal’ choice to make.

By the time a woman has been ground down by the sheer exhaustion of birth and her first week of overworked parenthood, ‘normal’ can seem pretty good. ‘Normal’ can seem attainable.

This makes me sad not because I am a genocidal fascist who wants to see mothers suffer through mastitis (for crying out loud, can we just stop with the Boob Nazi slurs?) Rather, I feel saddened by the alarming regularity at which women give up their desire to breastfeed because breastfeeding is not the ‘best’ way to feed babies. It’s the normal way.

The idea that breastfeeding is somehow extraordinary persists because we live in a culture where very limited paternity leave is normal, where an expectation to continue cooking and cleaning and exercising and socialising in the post partum weeks and months is normal, and where a perception that unpaid work (especially if it is physical and monotonous) is pointless drugdgery is normal.

What good breastfeeding advocacy has to offer mothers is more than admonishments and informational pamphlets. Breastfeeding advocacy is at its core advocacy for mothers and babies, and although many of the people doing it do not identify as feminists, their organisations frequently do work which could be described as feminist.

I find it odd when people choose to promote women’s choices by standing against grass roots lactivism. Organisations such as the Australian Breastfeeding Association and La Leche League are run by mothers, for mothers. They grew out of a need, identified by women who were living in the era of Betty Friedan, for woman-to-woman support. Volunteers run them, they do not make profits, and they can’t pay for the kind of lobbying and marketing that formula manufacturers buy each day before breakfast. In short; I don’t think they’re the enemy.

If mothers are experiencing pain and anguish from ‘all the pressure to breastfeed’ I think we need to be asking why, and certainly, we need to ensure that any breastfeeding advocacy is sensitive and shame-free. But I have a feeling that less support for and information about breastfeeding is not what will help Beyond Blue’s cause. (And not only because breastfeeding hormones can sometimes help stave off depression, although this was my experience.)

What we need are real choices, not rock-and-hard-place compromises. And for that to be possible, much more needs to change than the message they put on posters in the maternity ward waiting room.

Panic over pretty

At almost four years of age, Bean is developing a keen sense of how to determine which are socially appropriate expressions of gender. She already has a clear idea of some fashion ‘rules’, and she is beginning to notice differences in bodies and style of dress with astute regularity. I have no doubt that much of this socialisation into appearance-based judgement is coming from daycare, with its school-yard-like hiearchy systems and proto-cliques.

Bean has been bullied over her hairstyle. She loves to express herself through her clothing choices but I know that very often she considers whether her friends would approve of an outfit before venturing out in it.

All of these things are no doubt familiar to other parents and I am not the first or last feminist mother to wish that there was a picture book version of The Beauty Myth distributed to every small child. Although it hurts me that bullying behaviours focused on looks are hitting my daughter so young, I am also conscious of the need for perspective. I don’t want to squash her enjoyment of clothes or criticise her desire to ‘dress up’ or think about colour combinations or choose, sometimes, to be frivolous. My own explorations of fashion and style were laughed at and squashed and this didn’t have the intended effect; I didn’t learn that clothing doesn’t matter. I learned that it really does matter, but that only ‘pretty’ girls get to fully partake.

Is it possible that fear of ‘pinkification’ could also backfire on girls?

Lately I’ve noticed a lot of commentary promoting the idea that girls must strive for goals more worthy than prettiness; that instead of aiming for a celebrity look or a certain body weight, girls should be focusing on meaningful aims like career achievement and wholesome personality attributes. It’s well meaning and often exactly right.

But I fear there’s an underlying failure of understanding in some of this commentary.

Celebrity culture, weight consciousness, ‘sexy’ fashions, beauty ideals — these all impact upon young people. We know this — many of us revile this, and yearn for better role models and more diverse options, particularly for girls (although it is clear that all genders suffer from pressure to attain some superficial standard of acceptability).

But I simply do not believe that conventionally attractive is all that girls want to be.

Bean wants to be pretty — she wants to fit in, she wants praise for how she looks. But she doesn’t state ‘pretty’ as an ambition. She wants to drive a fire truck. She wants to be a doctor. She wants to be a mother.

I am frustrated by platitudes urging girls (or rather, urging mothers with daughters) to aim beyond pretty mainly because I don’t think pretty is actually viewed as a viable lifestyle choice. It’s viewed as a prerequisite for, or an easy route to, where girls actually want to go.

The fantasy of being thin (so beautifully explained in Screw Inner Beauty) is a familiar concept around the fatosphere. At its core, the fantasy of being thin is about denying the possiblities (and limitations) of the present reality in favour of (often literally) buying the rhetoric around what weight loss can bring. It’s the idea that if only something magical happened, all those other things could be possible. For those caught in the thrall of the fantasy of being thin, it’s not so much about the weight loss as it is about the new job, the new relationship, the overseas holiday, the devoted lover/s, the fabulous wardrobe, the one-day-I-will-be-worthy-of-all-this achievement. Very few people want to lose weight because they believe that a smaller dress size will, in itself, make them happy. They want what has been co-opted to sell them the diet shakes in the first place; they want their dreams.

The push to be pretty is not so different.

Girls are lead to believe that pretty finishes first. That attractiveness will help them gain popularity. That success comes with a bright smile and a fashionable haircut and definitely without acne or wonky teeth or stretchmarks or ill-fitting hand-me-down clothes.

Beauty is, perhaps, its own reward. I wouldn’t know.

But I do know that young people are not so vacuous and shallow. They don’t often have the extreme gullibility actually required to discount goals like career and family in favour of the pursuit of prettiness. Rather, they know, perhaps instinctively, perhaps because the teasing starts as soon as their peers are verbal, that what they actually desire may be easier to grasp if they can master the feat of being aesthetically pleasing whilst doing it.

I agree with Pigtail Pals that we need to show girls that they can be scientists, gymnasts, doctors, builders, writers. I agree with the amazing John Darnielle that Lego does girls a disservice when it regurgitates marketing hype about what girls want instead of catering to their needs as individual children unfettered by rigid gender roles.

It’s important to advocate for a rejection of the limitations of ‘pink’ and ‘pretty’ without patronising young people.

Like the fantasy of being thin, the desire to be pretty is backed by a multi-billion dollar industry and untold numbers of daily encounters with people who’ve swallowed the social pressures whole and made them their own mission to prescribe. Girls who desire a piece of the pretty pie aren’t misguided, inherently frivolous or lacking in ambition. They want to do stuff; it’s just they’ve internalised the message that they must look good doing it for it to count for anything.

And that is why the right to be ugly — the right to do and be without being gazed upon and always found wanting — is worth defending.

The right to be ugly

If you haven’t yet read this wonderful piece from Masterchef winner Julie Goodwin in response to mean-spirited tabloid critiques of her body, go read it now. I’ll wait.

With her defence of ‘broader people’, Julie Goodwin has set herself apart from other media personalities who are all too often keen to self-flagellate about their failure to attain physical perfection. This is delightfully sensible and refreshing; I hope the huge support she seems to have received is reflective of a tiny shift in consciousness about both body image and health.

Even so, I heartily wish that there was no imperative for women to do the magazine-covershoot-swimsuit-reveal in the first place. When can a woman get a break from being judged on whether she looks fuckable in her bathers? How is her body shape even relevant to what Goodwin does, and who she is? But we are still in thrall of the suffering ween, apparently (sigh), as well as the stand-in scrutiny provided by other women.

This profoundly-felt obligation to be pretty, this imperative to commit time and money and energy towards some ever-shifting and always unattainable (because not even models look like models) beauty ideal — it isn’t going away. I’m already noticing its toxic effects on Bean, and that’s heartbreaking.

Unfortunately, what passes for commentary on body image issues in popular media generally takes for granted the scrutiny of women’s appearance as right and proper, if inconvenient. I used to indulge in a little Oprah from time to time, and I sometimes liked it, too. If there was one thing that Oprah was good at it was the promotion of public displays of emotional vulnerability. But every time Oprah was about to well up, she’d make some crack about ‘the ugly cry’. When the cameras are rolling, one can’t be ugly. No matter how ‘real’ and raw the moment is supposed to be, we can’t have any screwed-up-face-mascara-running ugliness, at least not without self-deprecation thrown up as a shield. Emotions are good, seemed to be the message, but women can never, ever, let up on themselves when it comes to appearance.

It’s okay to have confronting feelings so long as you stay cute, folks.

I’ve been thinking about the ugly cry a lot lately; it’s a pernicious example of how women’s behaviour is constrained by the imperative to ‘look good’, as well as by ingrained notions of feminine conduct. Grooming protocols and fashion policing, it seems to me, are closely related to decorum and manners and, well, come along with a whole lot of sexist (and racist, ableist, classist) baggage. They also rely upon a false dichotomy between beauty and ugliness and fail to allow space for interrogating the very notion that appearance matters.

A lot of fat activism centres around fat visibility; the message that fat people exist and have the right to take up space is pivotal. More than that, the notion that a fat body can be beautiful and desirable is at the core of some body positive work. And these things are important. But there is, I think, a deeper cultural problem here that can’t be solved just by widening (literally, even!) the definition of beauty.

Sometimes, frequently, I have no interest in attaining any standard of beauty. It’s not churlishness: yeah, I don’t meet any aesthetic ideal and I’ve been derided often over the years for exhibiting various forms of ugliness. And sometimes that has hurt. But my interest in exploring the potential for the reclamation of ugly is not merely personal.

I can’t remember a time when I didn’t feel that I had some kind of obligation to be, if not pretty, then passable. Palatable. And if not that, then invisible.

In taking a kinder, more accepting disposition towards my physical self, I am finding that I feel rather invested in my right to be ugly. And I am far less critical of others. Letting go of any judgement about ugliness means it can start to look kinda beautiful, too.

That’s why I’ve enjoyed Definatalie’s explorations of Ugly Cute.

Sometimes, refusing to hide (or hide from) my ugly might be about finding a safe space in invisibility, or it might be about nothing more than pleasing my own damn self by privileging comfort over appearance or prioritising self-expression over fashion. Or sometimes, it’s political. It’s here I am, don’t erase me. Here I am, don’t judge me. Interrogating one’s own choices with regard to personal presentation is a little exhausting and it can be excruciatingly boring, too. But I think it’s important work for feminists — for anyone — to undertake from time to time.

None of us has an obligation to be conventionally attractive. We all have the right to let go of, if only briefly, the imperative to strive.

Letting yourself be enough, just as you are; now that is a beautiful thing.

What ‘childhood obesity’ is really doing to kids

Cross-posted at Feministe

‘Gosh, she’s sooo heavy!’ is not really an exclamation you want to hear uttered by someone as they lift your child onto their lap. Especially if that someone is loved and respected by your child and in a position to influence her. And when you are a fat mother, and a feminist, and that person is a relative (whom you love, but don’t always understand), it makes for a pretty tense moment. Which is fucked up, I realise, because my kid is heavy, and remarking on it shouldn’t be any different to remarking on her eye colour. But it is.

My daughter, for the record, is not ‘obese’ or fat. Not that I should have to state that here, since it’s not anyone’s business nor particularly relevant. (Really, I shouldn’t have to, and I’ve written and deleted that sentence multiple times, but I do state it because I know some of you are wondering and I know that, sadly, in this ridiculous climate of obesity panic and parent-blaming, it’s just going to be that way). She is, however, tall for her age and she has a large head and solid limbs. She’s strong; she has heft.

I was like that as a kid. I thought I was hu-ugely fat by the time I was a pre-teen but photographic evidence shows me that I was not. The fat came later, long after the bullying began.

People who comment on my daughter’s solidity don’t necessarily see her as fat, with all the judgement and stigma that unfortunately implies, but we know that young children are becoming increasingly vulnerable to experiencing weight messaging as a hit to their self esteem . And I know that as a fat parent, I am doubly scrutinised. The shape and weight of my child is, for some, tied directly to the strength of both my morality and my parenting skills. It’s also true that as she grows, my child will comprehend the stigma that is attached to having a body like mine and, because stigma is awful, she may fear it falling on her. Whatever kind of body she grows into, she may suffer because of other people’s lack of sensitivity and compassion, as well as the general public’s lack of real knowledge of the relationship between fat and health. That hurts to know.

I was once told that I had an obligation to become thin (as if I could just choose to be and, voila!) because my kid will grow up looking at me and thinking that fat is a way to be. As if, somehow, she would catch my fat, no matter how our family lives and eats and moves and no matter what her genetic predispositions. (This person assumed, as many do, that thin is objectively healthier and ‘better’ than fat.) Some people think children should be kept from the terrible knowledge that contented fat people exist because that would, by some sorcery, mean that the notion of fatness would never occur to them and they would always remain thin. Some people just don’t believe fat parents can possibly provide a healthy home. Some people think parents of fat children are by definition lazy or incompetent or unloving. Some people are ignorant. Some people are arseholes.

Some of those people have been in the media this past week talking about a study which, it has been widely reported, recommends that very fat children be removed from their parents and put into foster care. One of the problems with this is that the study has been widely misrepresented: have a read of this break-down by Dr Samantha Thomas if you’re interested. I’m not in the least surprised that the media haven’t been more accurate and sensitive in their handling of this ‘news story’. That’s par for the course when it comes to ‘obesity’ and they do love to parade us fatties as cautionary tales. Unfortunately, what could have been an opportunity for some serious discussions about systemic barriers to good health and the ethical problems with performing gastric banding surgery on minors, became a great big festival of fat hate with a large helping of mother blaming. Especially poor mothers, cause they’re really easy to hate on, apparently.

Opportunities for bonus misogyny aside, childhood obesity is a juicy story, but that doesn’t mean it’s okay to conveniently forget the facts. In Australia at least, rates of ‘childhood obesity’ have plateaued and we’ve known that for a few years now. On the other hand, rates of body dissatisfaction and unhealthy behaviours like yo-yo dieting are increasing in young people. But it’s far easier to scapegoat parents — most often mothers who are more typically charged with cooking and shopping — than to consider some of the nuance here. There is a strong case to make for changing the story from one about ‘childhood obesity’ to one about ‘childhood poverty’ (because yeah, fat kids can be undernourished kids) but that would involve facing up to some ugly social inequality and who wants to hear about food deserts when we could see a glossy grab about how Happy Meals are killing our children, amirite?

Hyper-awareness of childhood ‘obesity’ leads to shit like the absolute violation of privacy and trust that is public weigh-ins and fat shaming in educational settings. It increases the stigmatisation and bullying of fat kids but apparently not even prominent anti-bullying advocates give a shit about that, so would should the media?. Unless the bullied fat kid ends up in a viral video, and then the mainstream media will run stories about how he responded to that bullying the wrong way.

I know some readers may see this as contradictory: one minute I’m saying that kids are everyone’s responsibility and then the next I’m saying that we shouldn’t subject them and their families to undue scrutiny! Oh my!

But actually, I ask people to care about children and young people and about mothers and parents, and that implies reserving snap judgements. I ask people to approach parents with compassion, to educate themselves enough to understand the pressures that families face, to realise that individual circumstances vary, and to recognise that systemic barriers to ‘good parenting’ and ‘lifestyle choices’ exist. This complements an acknowledgement that children have the right to live free from abuse and bullying, from undue coercion and from deprivation. And it makes it harder to keep foisting the responsibility for society-wide health concerns onto individuals.

Whatever your beliefs about fat and health (and hey, I know you’ve got ‘em), you’ve got to acknowledge that stigma is harmful. There is no value from a health-promotion perspective in further stigmatising fat people, and certainly not fat children. Most people can’t self-loathe their way to permanent thinness (and certainly not to good health). Fat hate won’t amount to a positive contribution to society, no matter how many ‘reality’ TV shows imply otherwise.

My kid is three years old and she’s already learning what it means to have a heavy body in the midst of ‘obesity’ panic. You cannot tell me that’s for her own good.

Dads, not designed to help

You know what shits me to tears? (You know that’s a great colloquialism right there, up there with ‘flat out like a lizard drinking, amirite?)

Anyway, you know what really, really does?

The devaluing, infantilising and otherwise off-the-hook-letting of fathers. The implication that notions of equal parenting and dads mucking in to do their share around the house are silly feminist pipe-dreams dreamed up by silly women who really should have better things to do. Like have babies. Because in Advertising Land at least, women who’ve had babies know to stop faffing around with such fantasies and just accept the reality that menfolk are rubbish at housework so they might as well knuckle down and do it all themselves. Otherwise, when the dreaded question is posed, they’ll come up wanting. (The most pressing of dreaded questions, of course, is ‘what does your loo say about you?’ in Advertising Land. And we don’t want it to say ‘relies too heavily on a naturally-incompetent male’ now do we, ladies. Amirite?)

Here’s a particularly execrable tourist brochure from Advertising Land.

(The ‘Designed to Help’ ad campaign for Sunbeam appliances. Features fathers and bonus! teenaged boy being unhelpful around the house by variously: leaving the fridge door open, ironing flat the pleats in a little girls’ skirt, and opening the oven when a souffle is baking. The featured people are all pale-skinned, thin, conventionally attractive, and their homes are modern and spookily clean. The women have long-suffering, patronising expressions. The menfolk are infuriatingly clueless. The little girl is hopeful, then devastated. Clearly she should learn to iron herself, I mean, skirts are too much for dads to manage.)

And just in case you were thinking you could avoid this crap by avoiding commercial TV, here’s an actually published book which people are allegedly paying actual money for. That’s from the Real World, people.

Be afraid.

When loathing feels normal, don’t buy it.

I had a haircut for the first time in months yesterday, and that meant sitting in the feminized space that is a suburban hair salon and being offered dog-eared magazines.

I’ve never been a major consumer of women’s magazines but I was relatively familiar with them in the past; at school we shared issues of Girlfriend and Cosmopolitan around the dorms, and later I had the spare change for a glossy, gossipy bit of escapism from time to time. Even after I became so fed-up with the sexism and sizeism (and the bunch of other isms) underpinning mainstream magazines that I no longer spent money on them, I still had regular hair appointments and colleagues who’d bring stuff to thumb at lunchtime. The fashion, body, health and behavioural coding in these publications was familiar and, though I actively questioned it, insidiously normalized.

What I mean is, even though I thought it was demeaning to be presented with yet another ‘article’ on some famous woman’s weight fluctuations, on some level I accepted that kind of discourse as normal. Ubiquity lent it a sense of inevitability.

Lately there has been less time for haircuts but also, thanks to the paths blogging has led me down, an even keener media literacy when it comes to body policing and misogyny.

And I have to say, when I was confronted with publications where every cover story is – surprise! – about a woman’s weight ‘battle’, I realized how thoroughly I have moved beyond the normalization of such commentary. In fact the word that sprang to mind was ‘alien’ — these images and articles are alienating, yes, but now they also strike me as foolish, disturbing and truly bizarre.

Hyper-vigilance about the weight of not only ourselves but complete strangers is not, and happily does not need to be, normal. It is disappointing that celebrities continue to answer invasive and pointless questions about their weight, eating and exercise habits but downright infuriating that media outlets continue to demand these responses as fodder for their body-obsessed publications. And, to once again employ a word that I try to use sparingly, it is bizarre that in 2011 we accept the submission to such scrutiny as a normal part of a famous woman’s job.

I used to flick through those magazines with either disdain, vague envy or mild annoyance. Yesterday I chose not to even glance through more than a few pages. I was bored by the same old conflicting and constraining messages. Excluded by the homogeneity. Confused by the failure of the media to find new, modern discourses.

But mostly I felt happy. I no longer need to perform the standard magazine flick-through as part of my engagement with femininity or fashion. I know what those publications are offering, I know I don’t want it, and I know where to look for what I do want.

This doesn’t mean I don’t consider the media to have a responsibility to represent diversity and consider body image concerns (they do, and they’re failing to live up to it much of the time). We need change. Saying ‘if you don’t like it don’t buy it!’ is a pretty disingenuous approach to the problems of sexist and body-shaming media.

But yesterday was a reminder that I personally don’t like it, so I don’t buy it. I don’t emulate it by policing the bodies of others, famous or otherwise. And that feels pretty good, actually.

Blaming a child for her own rape: it’s just journalism

Trigger warning.

Is it really too much to ask of the media that rape be reported with sensitivity, accuracy, and care? Is it really too much to ask of a journalist employed by one of the most respected news outlets in the world, to be mindful that minimising rape by barely even using the word and failing to consider the perspective of the victim, or uncritically reporting victim blaming, is harmful? Is it really that unreasonable to ask that journalists and editors consider who hears them when they speak about rape?

Apparently, it is too much to ask.

There has already been much written in response to this appalling article from the New York Times, ostensibly reporting on the horrific rape of an eleven year old child by up to eighteen men and boys in Texas (but really reporting on how rough it is on the small town in which this occurred with little consideration given to the devastating effects of such an attack on the child who survived it.)

It’s worth reading this piece at Mother Jones which demonstrates just how shitty this excuse for journalism is.

And check out this piece at Shakesville which shows how instructive such articles are as examples of rape culture.

I’ve been suffering from gastro the last few days but I have to tell you, nothing made me feel as violently ill as reading that an eleven year old girl was fond of wearing make-up as if that was even a partial explanation for why almost twenty men and boys allegedly chose to abuse her so horrifically, take video of their actions for posterity (and then share it around, presumably also traumatising the elementary school girls who were exposed to it). I’ve signed this petition to ask The New York Times to apologise but it’s going to take more than that to get the bad taste out of my mouth.

I am not your cautionary tale

In some ways fat bodies are our current culture’s dumping ground for fear and loathing: we are the go-to places for thrashing out anxiety about consumption and excess, death and disease, work ethic and individual responsibility, boundaries and restraint, ugliness and beauty. Fat bodies are politicised — even politicians literally use fat as short-hand for bad, wrong, excessive. Fat bodies are ridiculed, dehumanised, demonised and charged with meaning.

All of this is, perhaps, largely academic. I’m a fat activist, of sorts, but most days I’m not overtly doing activism. Most days I’m buying bread and milk and taking my daughter to playdates and watching Dexter and, you know, living.

Except my life is lived in this body, which is fat, and when I am buying my bread and milk etc. I am visibly fat and when I am existing I am inhabiting a politicised body.

Today writer John Birmingham had a column in the Brisbane Times about The Biggest Loser. He gave this nod to fat acceptance:

Obesity is an intensely politicised topic… Traducing someone’s character, or mocking them for their weight, isn’t far removed from doing the same things on the basis of their skin color or ethnic background. Grown-ups should be above it.

He also mischaracterised the fat acceptance movement, I think, as angry and somehow ‘dangerous’ as well as misguided about health. But that’s not what I want to write about. What struck me most about his piece was the admission that he views the “freakshow” elements of The Biggest Loser as useful parenting tools.

I wanted [my kids] to feel disgust at the carefully calibrated circus presented for us by the program’s producers. Why? Because as a parent fresh fruit, oatmeal for breakfast, drinking lots of water, and playing sport rather than Nintendo DS, is a hell of a hard sell. The grotesque obesity on display in Biggest Loser makes explaining the benefits of good nutrition and exercise that much easier. Harsh and ugly, but true.

You know, I have some sympathy for Birmingham’s position as a parent who is trying to instill healthful habits in children who are presumably bombarded with “junk food” advertising and the lure of screen time, like the rest of us. Bean is very active, in touch with her natural appetite, and in love with the existence of fresh fruit but she is also not-yet-three and so I willingly accept that what has been a breeze for me may require more conscious effort in coming years (although I am of course hoping that our early approach will continue to help Bean have a healthy and peaceful relationship with food and activity as she grows). I certainly don’t feel that modeling any kind of body-shaming — of her body or others’ — will ever form part of my parenting strategy. Fat-shaming children is harmful and I know I could never be convinced otherwise, despite how hard I work not to be overly judgmental about the parenting decisions of others.

But, to be frank, I find it quite chilling that the “grotesque obesity” played up for the cameras on ‘reality’ TV could be masquerading as a fable for children in homes across the world. Look kids, you don’t want to be so big and wobbly and disgusting that they put you on television, do you? Chilling because it normalises fat stigma and body shame (wouldn’t it be better to normalise diversity and acceptance?) but also because it is a reminder, to me, that some people are looking at me and feeling grateful that they aren’t like me and fearful that they could be.

I am a walking cautionary tale.

When I raised this concern with John Birmingham on Twitter, his response was

Maybe it’s not about you.

Obviously, his piece was about The Biggest Loser, a particular kind of “freakshow”. Me going to the shops to buy my bread and milk? Not so freakshowish, admittedly. But I am still there, I am still visible, I still jiggle, I still have a double chin, I still look fat enough to be a folk devil.

Fatshion bloggers sometimes find their images reblogged as thinspiration by people who are engaging in disordered eating and looking for fodder to increase their fears of becoming fat. People in public places like swimming pools snark and gossip about fat bodies around them and barely feel the need to disguise their disgust. A friend on Twitter, Jennifer Gearing, mentioned this afternoon that Birmingham’s article “reminds me of time stranger told his 5-6yo she didn’t want Maccas or she’d look like me.” That’s right, children, fear and pity that fatty over there, and thank your lucky stars it’s not you.

There are so many problems with taking that approach with children. (I shan’t list them all but, um, how about these: what if your child grows up fat? what if your child develops an eating disorder? what if your child becomes a rude and judgemental body-snarker?) One really big loser of a problem is that the fatty over there is a human being. The fatty on your television screen is a human being. Human beings have emotions and a need to be treated with respect. We also have diverse histories and reasons for being the sizes that we are; we have individual stories that you can’t read from just looking at us.

My fat body is not your punch line, it is not your entertainment, it is not your grotesque freakshow, it is not your life-lesson.

I happen to think that many kids could learn a thing or two from people like me, beyond a cautionary tale. But until our culture starts valuing people for what they have to give and not what they (apparently) have to lose, a lot of people will fail to see that.

And exploiting that failure to see human beings instead of “the obese” isn’t edgy and it isn’t even productive. It just hurts.

Quick rant: waistlines and other excuses

The existence of the ‘obesity epidemic’ and the typical ‘solutions’ for it help to prop up a number of industries. Obviously, the weight loss diet industry is a huge winner here, especially since research shows that even when fat people know that crash diets don’t work they still end up seeking help from companies who take their hard-earned money for little gain (or loss) simply because official government and medical information lacks optimism, usefulness or ongoing support. (More on that another day).

But the ‘diet industry’ are not the only winners. All kinds of economic imperatives are tied up in wanting people to worry about their weight or ‘battle the bulge’. The net result of this is that fat-hate is everywhere. Today I was flicking through the paper whilst enjoying my post-workout coffee at the gym (yes, I did just have to throw that in there) when I came across this article. It seems Canberra Uni are taking the (in my view, quite sensible) step of no longer selling bottled water on campus. Instead, students and staff will have access to more free water taps for their own refill purposes, or the option of buying chilled mineral water to decant into reusable bottles. Given the impact of bottled water sales on the environment and how easy it is to just reuse a bottle over and over, I think more campuses and businesses should be heading down this route.

Unsurprisingly, the Australasian Bottled Water Institute (Institute? Are they kidding? Is that located next to the Ponds Institute?) don’t like the idea. They need to push product. And the easy way to do that? Invoke the folk terror of the day, OBESITY BOOGA BOOGA. This is a flimsy argument at best (where is the evidence to say that people will pay money for a soft drink instead of water when there is cheaper water than before?) and a cynical one to boot. People who already drink soft drink will continue to do so. People who already choose water over the array of other drinks on offer will probably continue to do so. And guess what? Some thin people drink only sugary drinks and some fat people drink only water and a whole lot of people drink a mixture of both depending on mood and hunger and time of day and what colour socks they are wearing.

I know. Incredible stuff.

Even so, the Institute is Concerned about this Very Serious Business.

”The University of Canberra needs to be thinking about what this means for the waistlines of its students,” Mr Parker said.

No, Mr Parker, just no. I think tertiary-level students are more than capable of considering their own waistlines, or not, all on their own. They say that a waist is a terrible thing to mind. I say, someone else’s waist is… none of your fucking business.

Good morning, fat-shaming and mother-blaming

Check out this article on the website for Good Morning America. Apparently, parents are panicking so much about ZOMG OBESITY CRISIS BOOGA BOOGA that they are putting their infants on diets. Says the chair of the nutrition committee of the American Academy of Pediatrics:

I have seen parents putting their infant and 1 year old on diets because of history in one parent or another

and Dr Blair Hammond, another peadiatrician, laments

There’s some parents who are very pleased when their children are thin…A lot of fathers, even, they’re like, ‘Yes, my daughter’s thin,’ when the daughter’s like 5 or 6 months old. [this is pretty much the only part of the article that mentions male caregivers as having any influence on infant nutrition, by the way].

None of this surprises me in the least — I posted about the fact that fear of baby-fat and fat babies is an inevitable and dangerous by-product of obesity panic back in April.

What I want to point out here is the way that this issue is being framed. Parents (mostly mothers) are at risk of depriving their children because they are projecting their own body image fears onto them. Some extreme and disturbing examples are quoted and it is very clear that this ‘trend’ (if you can call it that, I hope it’s not truly an accurate description) is harmful and in many ways an example of parental vanity. Certainly in the quote above, fathers’ expectations of slimness are presented as problematic. And they are problematic, for sure! But, um, whose fault is all this weight scrutiny?

Is it really any wonder that in a weight-obsessed, fat-phobic world where thinness is almost universally equated with health and happiness in mainstream media and even by medical discourse, that parents are increasingly anxious about their infants’ weight? Is it any surprise that when plumpness in babies and children is no longer aligned with prosperity and good nutrition but actually seen as a sign of weakness, lower social class, ill-health and early death, that our previously-held beliefs about the healthy-glow of chubby baby cheeks and the squishy reassurance of roly-poly limbs have been replaced with fear?

I’d be angry and saddened by the actions of a mother who feeds her 7 month old water in order to keep his weight down, too. But the real culprit in that equation is clearly our weight-obsessed society, where disordered eating is normalised and adipose tissue pathologised.

You only need to check out the Good Morning America link itself to see what I mean — look at the titles for the other videos linked to this particular page. They are

• Overweight babies
• More than just baby fat
• Dangers of childhood obesity
• I fear for my obese kid’s self esteem

And these people are surprised that parents worry about weight gain in children? This is so disingenuous it seems like a joke, except that I’m not laughing.

(h/t to @FreeChildhood)