fattypatties

Happy Birthday Pattie!
Hope this is a brilliant year full of all the things you want and need to make life something to celebrate.
I don't know if you can decide to have fun ... but ... I hope you do have fun today!

My mom and my brother are coming to visit and I'm going to have a vacation. I'm going to have a great vacation, I've decided. Can one decide to have fun? I'm overwhelmed by it all.

Tish wrote about "W" today. W scares me. You can't win when you think about him. He's either (a) the most stupid man ever to hold the position of president (of course, I don't know my presidents very well so he may be the most stupid man in my memory instead of the whole history -- now that's a question, how stupid have presidents been over history?) or (b) he is an evil genius who is lulling us all into believing he is stupid so he can blow up the world with impunity or (c) he is so arrogant that he really believes his bullshit and he thinks he can do things without consequence simply because he decides it is okay to do them. Dumb, evil or arrogant -- what a choice.

To tell you the truth, who is president isn't as important to me as it is to many people. Since I believe that much of government is owned de facto by multi-national corporations, I tend to worry more about what they are up to. And they are freaking out right now. I want to believe that their unsustainability has finally come home and it will be obvious to everyone that allowing these oligopolies to exist is an open invitation to greed and corruption. I want to believe that Alan Greenspan means it when he says something has to be done, but I hear spin already. I have found that no matter how cynical I become, I am always surprised at the depth of ignorance and arrogance and evil these corporations can demonstrate.

So we continue to do our part in our little paradise of a world here in Victoria and next week I'm going to be a tourist and enjoy myself. I am going to enjoy myself by fiat because I deserve it and because on Sunday, I turn 45. Life is half done now. I'm going to enjoy the rest of it and try to do my best to leave a mark but not a heavy footprint.

It's 9 am and my apartment is already hot. I hate heat. It is not hot outside. But I don't think my apartment has cooled down since Monday when it was hot outside. I'm writing a letter to the committee.

Pardon the pun, but I'm burned out. I haven't visited Gab Cafe in about a week because I just can't handle the intensity there, or at times, the lack of it. We've been trying to catch up on radio production since our July 4th episode, which was a nice piece of politics, maybe a too intense piece of radio and certainly a too intense production. It became a full-time job with overtime and it got us behind on productioin of future shows. I'm behind schedule on my regular job as well. I feel like the last-place runner watching the pack getting further and further ahead and not being able to muster the energy it would take to catch up. Ironically, the best thing to do would probably be to simply stop. Declare myself out of the race. Because I swear they are moving the finish line further away from me more rapidly than I can get to it.

Next week I get to stop for awhile. I love Canadian respect for "holidays." I thought for sure that since I was behind in my work that I would be told, "well, you are going to have to do some work next week." But it was taken in stride. I'm still testing the waters a bit -- reminding the others on the team that I won't be available next week -- but the attitude is always, "Well, of course you need a break -- your holidays are important."

So Sunday is my 45th birthday. My mom and my brother are arriving Saturday and from the point of their arrival to the point of their departure, I plan to play with only a couple of exceptions. Let's hope that's enough to put me back in the race.

I got some sleep last night. That is a rare and beautiful thing. Yesterday should have been a horrible day -- it was hot for me (over 30 celsius, which isn't as bad a Florida, but in Florida everyone has air conditioning -- in Victoria, no one does). I had to be out in the heat and sun, which aggrevates lupus symptoms. I had to go get insurance that lapsed on my van because the day before I got caught driving without insurance (a very expensive ticket).

So yesterday should have been a bad day, but somehow it wasn't. I found out I could pay the big ticket over time. I listened to my body and called a cab rather than walking to the bus stop and it turned out to not be that expensive. My paycheck was waiting for me as arranged with no bureaucratic entanglements. I got to subsequent bus stops just at the right times and had very little waiting. I was able to make it to the bank in time to deposit my check. I found an insurance outlet right next to the bank. The insurance company okayed payments over time, which worked out great. Got back a full hour before I thought I would. Went out to dinner and went swimming. Then I slept 9 hours.

All this time, my wonderful husband shared in the experiences. Maybe Carl made the difference. Maybe the lack of hostility in bureaucracy made the difference. Maybe the universe just smiled on me. I don't know, but then why question it. It was a good day.

I was just watching Manufacturing Consent about Noam Chomsky and he was asked about his childhood. He told of a story of when he was a first grader and he walked out onto the playground to see some bullies rallying around a fat boy, teasing and harassing him. Noam said that he wanted to stand up for the fat boy, but he got scared and ran away. Later he felt ashamed and he promised himself that he would never abandon the underdog again. I don't know why but that really got to me. It made me think about all the people who walk away, who don't feel any shame. It made me feel good about Noam. It made me feel.

I have been neglecting this greatly. Nearly a month now.

Kell has been posting in her blog about jiggle porn and Tish raised some issues on her site today. I offered some thoughts in the Gab Cafe, butI thought I'd offer my 2 cents here.

Pornography is a difficult concept for me and I have trouble seeing it with black/white clarity. I think this is because I come from a working-class background where men and women had few choices and being sexual for a living was one of the more lucractive choices.

I often find feminist discussions of pornography in the absense of class just one more example of upper-middle-class white women deciding that they understand all women's experiences. I probably know about 20 women who dance or have danced in front of men to earn a living. They don't have a lot of options. The fact that their bodies conform to a type that makes money from idiotic men is not their fault any more than my being fat is not my fault.

Many of the dancers I've known have children. Dancing, posing, and, on occassion, some prostitution on the side pay the bills in a way that allows them to be with their kids often and with quality. It is a paradox that many of these dancers do what they do in order to have the kind of family life that the middle-class suggests that they should. In an era of "workfare" single mothers have to balance a lot of pressures. If they work all the time, they might lose their kids. If they stay home all the time, they are called "cheats" by society. Now comes along another group of women who suggest that when they find a way to take care of their families and keep the government out of their lives, they are now bringing all women down by degrading their bodies.

If upper-middle-class white women really wanted to stop pornography, they'd work harder to get day care for poor women, they'd support welfare efforts to give supports to single mothers, they'd work on holding father's responsible for their children and they'd demand equal pay. Pornography is not only a symptom of what is wrong between men and women sexually, it is a symptom of the whole class/gender/race inequality. The reason that it is exploitive is because relationships between men and women at most levels remains exploitive of women. To hold the women who pose or dance responsible for this is one more way to blame the victim.

Of course, none of this precludes that other women pose or dance because they choose to do so, with no societal pressures pushing them towards it. Not every dancer is a victim. Som may even do pose or dance because they enjoy it. It is hard to know how much of what we enjoy comes from what we are taught to enjoy. It is hard for any of us to know this. As a fat woman, I am acutely aware of how reinforcing certain bodies as "desirable" hurts other women. But I'm not sure that the answer is to announce that no bodies should be desirable or gazed upon. Desire is complex in a world where it is manipulated constantly.

None of this rant (and I know I am ranting) has anything to do with Catay's site. I like Tish's critique of the site better than some of the stuff I saw in the cafe. I am uncomfortable with the division of body parts as well. I think I see what Cat is trying to do in terms of taking pictures that are normally reserved for thin women -- she is breaking down a lot of stereotypes in her work. I think we are meant to be uncomfortable with the results. We are meant to examine our uncomfortability. I question, however, if she is simply "playing to men." I think she is playing with sexism. Fat bodies posed like thin bodies suggests something different, uncovers the manipulations and the cultural resources used to sell bodies. I think she is making fun of the whole thing. The problem with parodies always is that they can be so close to the real thing that they can be mistaken for them.

What is art and what is pornography? It is a matter of taste in one sense. It is a matter of context in another. I know of an Irish pub that has a replica of Giorgione's "Sleeping Venus" above the bar in a large frame, overpowering the room. Next to it along both sides are a bunch of other scantily clothed women in various poses meant to provoke the male gaze. Anywhere else this painting would be a classical nude, in this particular bar, it is one more nudie picture. I'm sure Giorgione is rolling over in his grave, but maybe not. Maybe Giorgione was just painting a sexually charged picture of his girlfriend and had the good taste to give it a fancy name. All representations are objectifications of the subject they are depicting. It is not possible in language or art to capture the authentic subject. That's just the nature of representations.

I think the best we can do is to take the time to critique what we see, to ask ourselves how we are being manipulated, what cultural resources does the creator of the image draw upon to create meaning in the image, what are we bringing to the image to influence how we perceive the image. I also think "pornography" has become a loaded label like "terrorist" or "fascist" and that it is used rhetorically to shut down discussion rather than open it up. These are words that should be used carefully and yet they are slung around with ease. I think Catay's site opens up discussion. It certainly has in blog-land and in the gab cafe.