Book Review: Shadow on a Tightrope

As part of my summer of freedom, I have decided to try to read as many books as I possibly can, probably a book a week until September.  I have a list started that includes my favorite authors (Paul Auster and Margaret Atwood), works of feminism, works about fat acceptance/liberation and maybe a few sex books, classics and new authors to consider.  I'm really looking forward to reading some of the literature about Fat Acceptance, since so far, all of my knowledge comes from blogs.

In terms of FA, I decided to start with a book called Shadow on a Tightrope.  I chose the book because it included both factual information and stories of fat women, so it seemed like a good way to ease myself into more heady, intellectual books.  As it turns out, it was a great place to start because it seems that it may the first Fat Liberation book published, or it is often where people start reading.

The book is organized into several different parts which cover:  Exposing fat myths, memories of fat women, the struggle to exercise or participate in sports because of ridicule, living with embarrassment and isolation, medical crimes, and fat women as survivors.  I thought it was well organized because it built some factual basis in the first chapter and then showed the grave injustices that fat women face and go more for the emotional from there, and then bring it back to more intellectual prose by talking about politics towards the end.

It was a very intense read for me, especially because it is an outdated book (1983).  I know that seems counter-intuitive, but I guess I had just imagined that FA was relatively new and that was the reason why I had just discovered it recently.  To find out that people have known about the dangers of diets since the 80's and maybe earlier and still all we see on TV is Jenny Craig ads and Michelle Obama's bullying is horrifying.

It was also really grueling to read about the many accounts of intestinal bypass, which for those who don't know, was done before gastric bypass and involved removing most of the intestine so that food passed through people without it ever being digested.  To read about what so many women went through, and what was considered to be "normal" healing from the procedure-- painful diarrhea, hair lost, pain, vomiting, nutritional deficiencies, infection, fever-- not to mention the complications which often arose, was staggering.  The worst part was that these women were healthy to begin with (it was often a requirement for the surgery) and they were extremely unhealthy and many died, after.  I can't think of  more obvious proof that thin and health are not the same thing!

In terms of sexuality, I thought it was interesting to note that most of the women in the book identified themselves as lesbians.  I suppose that it makes sense because these particular Fat Lib people had come from a feminism perspective and many feminists at that time were lesbians.  I was a little put out by it, to be honest, because I hate the idea that you can't be attracted to men and be a feminist at the same time.  However, it was also very interesting to hear of women who considered themselves lesbian feminists and then followed men's conventional beauty standards and how upset this contradiction made fat lesbians.  People can learn to be so critical about everything, expect fat hate for some reason.  Why this is was explored in the book but I think there is lots of room for more studies and theories about this contradiction.

There was one essay about fat sexuality, and the author identified that she was attracted to males.  The essay was painful to read.  It demonstrates how interconnected body image is with other aspects of sexuality and shows first-hand how dangerous fat-hate can be to all other aspects of a person's life.  The things that fat women are expected to sacrifice for sex or a relationship are mind-boggling once you really start to think about it.  There are always conditions that must be followed, or else you will wind-up alone.  You must learn to be grateful for any kind of attention, because you are not deserving.  Furthermore,  fat women are pushed into the Eve/Mary dichotomy perhaps even more than women in general.  We are either supersexual and willing to sleep with anyone or we are asexual, jolly, fat women who provide comic relief and little else.

Overall, the book was a great read and one I would definitely recommend for people new to Fat Acceptance or for those who would like to know more about the history of Fat Acceptance.  We need to educate people about this, it has been nearly 30 years since this book was written and almost no one knows about the truths it contains.  We need to end the suffering!

~Mrs. Sprat

You Can't Take That Away From Me

How do those in power stay in power?  How do they control the masses?  By using laws?  With money?  By being persuasive?  Maybe.  But they also use sex.

Those in power use sex to control.  Throughout our history the only kind of sanctioned sex was marital intercourse.  So people who were too poor to marry, couldn't have sex.  Those who loved a member of the same sex, couldn't have sex.  Those who had no partner, couldn't have sex.  Those who were too young or too old to reproduce, couldn't have sex.  The institution of heterosexual marriage is the classic example, but there are many others.

Margaret Sanger, the founder of Planned Parenthood?  She was a firm believer in the Eugenics Movement here in the United States, whereby many people who were deemed unfit to reproduce were sterilized without their consent.  These included people who were "feeble-minded," epileptics, people with syphilis, among others.  Mostly the Eugenics Movement sought to keep "undesirables" from reproducing, which for many included people of color and the poor.  In order to keep rich, white men in power, they felt it was necessary to keep anyone else from reproducing.

Of course, sexuality has been used as a tool to keep women in their place for as long as men have been aware of their role in reproduction.  Many cultures throughout the world have had the same double-standard as we do in the Western World, wherein men are expected to have sex outside of and before marriage and women are supposed to be virgins.  Even the Roman Catholic Church went through a period of sanctioning the use of prostitutes for men in order to avoid other "more serious" crimes.

Medicine has practiced similar forms of control, claiming that because women menstruated, college would cause undue strain on them and could cause them to become sterile.  Later, the vibrator was invented to help cure "hysteria" a disorder in women in which their uteri floated around their bodies looking for a baby.  Hysteria was caused by a lack of reproductive sexual intercourse and was most often found in "passionate" women.  So women need to get more sex, but not too much either. They needed to get married and have children and everything would be okay.  Religion played a role in this idea as well.  Women are born like Eve but need to meet the impossible standard of being like Mary.

Of course medicine has also brought men down, saying that masturbation would cause a number of illnesses and eventually death and that the loss of too much semen would wreak havoc on the body causing everything from TB and gonorrhea to hairy palms and blindness.  And more recently, the medicalization of every last sexual desire and "problem" from foot fetishes to premature ejaculation, exerts control over everyone who doesn't want 8 minutes of missionary-style heterosexual intercourse 3 times per week.

I am going to leave the media out of this discussion because I think that it is very easy to make the media a scapegoat for all the worlds ills.  I believe the real problem is education.  A lack of education sends people to look at TV for the answers.  TV is fantasy (granted much of it is not my fantasy) but with better education people would be better able to tell that TV is not real.  Just as Spongebob Squarepants is no way to learn about marine biology, pornography (or sitcoms for that matter) is no way to learn about sex.

Which leaves us with the school system.  Sex Education, for years, has controlled people's sexuality.  For years-- and I believe still today, in some districts-- anatomy models remove or cover the clitoris.  In one fell swoop, these curricula remove the importance of female sexuality.  Many are defined in heterosexist language, many promote abstinence, removing children and adolescents (as well as gays and lesbians) from their sexuality.  Many don't discuss sex for people with disabilities.  And nearly all feature thin, white models with so-called perfect figures.

As fat people (and especially fat women), we are told that we don't matter.  We are told that we don't need sex and that we shouldn't want sex.  Books on sex positions and advice, no matter how progressive, rarely have fat people in their diagrams.  Fat women are robbed of their femininity because they are fat.  We "eat like men," or we "must be dykes."  When we have been raped we are told we should be grateful that anyone was willing to sleep with us.  When we want sex or relationships we are told we much lose weight first.  When we are attracted to someone and we tell others about it, they laugh at us.  When we want to buy pretty clothes to impress someone, we can't.

The worst part is, it's effective.  Sex is a great means of control.  But what we have to remember is that sex is just an act, it's what we do.  Sexuality is who we are.  No amount of laws or rules will change who we are.  It may change how we express ourselves or how we present ourselves, but our sexuality is our own, it is built into us.  No amount of medicalization will make people stop masturbating, and no amount of thin sexuality models in our classrooms will make fat people stop having sex.  We need to always remember that they can't take that away from us.  And one day, just as women are slowly being allowed to want and enjoy sex, and people of color are slowly being considered and taught about, one day we too will be in the sex manuals.  We must tap into our denied sexuality and demand equality, for it will set us free.