From: avery@netcom.com (Avery Ray Colter)
Subject: Re: (Fat) girls just wanna have...what?
Date: Fri, 14 Aug 92 07:56:22 GMT
Organization: Netcom - Online Communication Services  (408 241-9760 guest) 

nsv@heifetz.msen.com (Naomi S. Valentine) writes:

>>>     On that day                    Fat women
>>>     Ripples will spread,           Are not few.
>>>     Fat will undulate,             When we rise
>>>     Swell, sprawl,                 The earth will shake.
>>>     Rampant,                             - Christine Donald
>>>     Surging, insurgent.                    from "Dies Irae"
>>> 

>>And on that day,
>>The few fierce/angry/joyous/sensuous males
>>Whose minds and bodies and spirits were made for the purpose
>>Will revel in that rampant surge,
>>Will take up the spread in their arms,
>>Will dive headlong into the swell,
>>Will purr to the undulations.

>>When you rise,
>>You carry their heartfelt dreams
>>Betwixt every rolling wave.

>>- Avery Ray Colter
>>  on the spur of the moment.

>Avery's post set me to thinking about several issues, which I'd like to 
>explore with the clear understanding that this is absolutely not a 
>personal attack on him.  In fact, I enjoyed his post/poem very much. 

Caught me red-handed! Well, as I said, it was on the spur of the moment.
It wasn't one of those poems I've taken and cooked for awhile to distill
out the subtleties. In a way, subtlety was really not my intention this time.
But the original poem doesn't really pull any punches either. It presents
the physical imagery right there, "in your face" as it were. And after all,
being a basically typical male - albeit with some reverse polarities in some
issues - giving me an "in your face" with the imagery of the female physique
is likely to draw a pretty basic reaction.

>I've sometimes been distressed that when I describe to thin men (and 
>some thin women, and some fat men and women) the problems that fat women 
>face, they very often respond by telling me how attractive they've found 
>(certain) fat women.  Part of this is probably part of our culture's 
>Hollywood obsession with romantic love, as if that were the only thing 
>in life with the capacity to make people happy or unhappy.  

It is also, I'm certain, due to an overdrawn emphasis on the perception
of much of the other kinds of suffering being corollary to the perception
of unattractiveness. In addition, it is very like to one thing my Taijiquan
teacher stated during class this evening, that the first feedback between
people tends to be on the raw physical level first, and next on the level
of the mind-body interface, and from there progressively inward.

So it's not necessarily that someone reacting on physical levels first
considers that the most important level. In fact, ultimately it could
be the least important. It's just that, almost by virtue of being less
critical than "what is inside", it is also more accessible to another
person than "what is inside".

>But to the 
>fat woman who faces job discrimination, familial persecution in one form 
>or another, hunger, self-hatred, and general hostility from random 
>people on the street, the fact that her conversation partner has found 
>fat women attractive does not always comfort her.  In fact, sometimes it 
>sounds suspiciously similar to a white person saying, "Some of my best 
>friends are black" - a rather defensive way of attempting to exempt 
>oneself from any oppressor group.  

I suppose it could be partly that. But then, to speak from my own experience,
that would put me in a fairly precarious position, because "oppressor groups"
tend to be very close-knit, and to say the kind of things I have said marks
one as a traitor in the eyes of such a group. Those of my fellow thin people
who expect me to share their hostility toward fat people often either withdraw
from me outright, naming me as someone who doesn't "get with the program", or
make attempts at drawing out whatever remnant prejudices from earlier
indoctrination are still left lurking in my mind.

One of the reasons I have spent as much of my time in NAAFA in the more
difficult workshops and the activist core as I have with the sexuality
discussions is that I've always felt like going beyond just the fact of
physical attraction and finding out what the deeper issues are. Some of the
men I see there and elsewhere are content to just stick to the kind of
mentality you saw in my counterpoem and go no further. But to me, it always
feels like there's something deeper, some unfinished business which,
if I can go beyond the sex and learn how to assist in this deeper empowerment,
will ultimately not only have me in on a lot more important level of healing
with a given woman, but ironically enough is likely to make the sexual level
of this person a lot more creative place than it was when I first saw it
going in.

That idea - going beyond the physical but regarding the physical still -
seems itself to be a "between factions" idea, not quite meshing either with
the "just have the sex, fun and games" crowd or the "ignore the physical
completely and only regard what's inside" crowd. Well, of course,
radical centrists tend to invoke the wrath of the extremists to either side.

>And, in fact, to the fat woman, such a statement may be completely 
>irrelevant - after all, some fat women form romantic attractions to men 
>- but just like thin women, some don't--and may not care whether men 
>find them attractive.  Like thin women, some fat women form romantic 
>attractions to other women, or are bi-sexual - or remain celibate.

Yes, that is true. That's more endemic to men in general, the assumption
of relevance. One tends to write freehand stuff from one's own experience:
heterosexuals will freehand in het style, homosexuals will freehand in
gay style, asexuals will freehand in asexual style. It is true that the
styles don't always mesh. That's partly why some tolerance of assumption
on the part of others is useful, as is following that up with some feedback
about what might be a more relevant frame of mind for the case at hand.

>Romantic love is often used both as the incentive for fat women to lose 
>weight and as a means of pacifying or controlling them both during and 
>after weight loss.  And while I think it's commendable that some men 
>(and women) refuse to let cultural biases deter them from their romantic 
>or sexual attractions to fat women, I am highly suspicious of the idea 
>of romantic love as the solution to all of a fat woman's problems - 
>especially when we live in a culture where male/female power relations 
>are what they are.  

Well, again, that's why I feel the need to do other things than just
express the attraction. That is one of the first things I tend to do,
however, and I worry about the assumption I see on the part of some 
that the first topic expressed is the only topic or even the primary one.
Long conversations span over several levels usually, so the first few
things are generally more of a "vorspeiss" than anything else.
Of course romantic love is not the whole solution. It's just one part
of a whole range of therapeutic activities. I know that might sound a
little strange to some, but as anyone who studies Asian health sciences
will tell you, the Vedic, Tantric Buddhist, and Taoist philosophies all
regard romantic and sexual activities as interactive meditation and
potentially as powerful subsets of the energy-raising exercises and
touch-healing repertoires for which these systems are well known. Emphasis
is on the word SUBSET however, an important one sometimes, but certainly
not the only one by any means.

>I have to say that I did find this problematic in 
>the movie _Zuckerbaby/Sugarbaby_ (which I described in the post that 
>started this discussion).  I'm glad that Saegebrecht gets her man and 
>improves her self-image along the way, but I got very uneasy at certain 
>highly symbolic scenes - for example, when she buys her first pair of 
>high heels.  I suspect this uneasiness is about the questionable 
>validity of abandoning size stereotypes only to happily assume sex 
>stereotypes.

That is indeed a questionable shift, the question being whether that's
what a person really wants. If someone near you is attempting to offer
healing energy, but it's not being directed in the right way, they won't
likely figure out the right way for you on their own; they'll need some
feedback, first about whether you even want to be in healing at that
moment, and if so, what the particulars are.

>Well, that's certainly enough for an initial post on the subject.  I'm 
>interested in what folks think about this.  By the way, I left out the 
>middle stanza of Christine Donald's poem in my sig. file originally - 
>here it is:

>	No recanting then,
>	No mealy-mouthed forgiveness.
>	Our vengeance is curved,
>	Compact and keen.

Just try to leave your friends alive, OK?
Vengeance has a knack for "friendly fire" if not meticulously cultivated.

As their angry curves rise up
To smash the walls of hatred,
I can only crouch and wonder,
Have I done right?
Will I be left alive to see
The soothing billowy clouds in their wake?
Or am I to drown with the others,
In the wreckage of the storm,
My own doings in vain?

-- 
Avery Ray Colter ("Elfcat") - 	avery@netcom.netcom.com (IP 192.100.81.100)
(510) 656-1902          	"A R Colter" on America Online
"Heaviness is the root of lightness; calmness is the controller of haste"
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