Posted Just 'Coz I Love the Image

A classic postcard from Dutch artist Arthur Thiele:

A Small Thought on Cultural Bias

So we're watching a Discovery Channel documentary on the "The Science of Sex Appeal," and we get to a part where they're discussing the 7/10 ratio – that magical ration between waist and hips that are alleged by cultural anthropologists to represent the maximum ideal of female sexual attractiveness. Using computer images, recently, scientists presented an "average group" of men with a variety of different ratios, though, and came up with one that was sparked even more arousal in their subject's lizard brains: a 5/10 ratio. This Barbie doll-styled ratio isn't even natural, the show asserted, and it showed a doll-like figure with an unnaturally pinched waist to illustrate this point.

Naturally, the FA in me thought to protest: "You're keeping the butt the same size and shrinking the waist. Why not increase the butt and keep the waist close to its old measurement?" Now we're talkin' ancient goddess figures, right? Think I saw one of those, pushing a cart at Thriftee just the other day . . .

Detrimentality

Foolishly got myself pulled into a thread on one of the Dimensions boards this weekend. One of the board regulars, taking several WG fantasy images by two FA artists and posting them out of context, asked if these images were "detrimental to size acceptance." It's a loaded question, and it drew out the inevitable responses: posts by fat women and men who were offended by the images, slamming both their creators and those who find them appealing; expressions of "concern" for those innocent newcomers to the site who come upon these images for the first time; corollary statements about what mainstream America might think if they saw the images, and so on.

Some of this grew pretty nasty (and, to be honest, I wouldn't be surprised if the original poster, a self-described "shit-stirrer," hadn't intended it that way), but it was also depressingly familiar. This isn't the first time that self-proclaimed size-acceptance advocates have taken umbrage over outlandish fantasy imagery, and it won't be the last. I do feel badly for those writing and drawing fanta-sizers who wander into this discussion for the first time. Ideally, all artists would be thick-skinned enough to withstand the nattering nabobs of negativism (to pull out an old Agnew-ism), but, of course, that's not the case.

My own belief is that fantasy shouldn't be bound by questions about "What's good for the movement," but, then, I would believe that, wouldn't I? I do think that the basic ideals of size acceptance run so counter to the mainstream (I'm writing this in the middle of the annual New Year's Diet advertizing blitz, after all) that even if there weren't the works of a bunch of active fanta-sizers out there, the Dimensions community of fat women & men and their admirers would be viewed as just plain aberrant . . .

A Quick Thought from the Tabloids

Nope, don't believe that current Oprah is only 200 pounds.

The Divine Miss L.

For those of you who haven't seen a picture of Klaus Nordling's comic book fat lady Lena, here's a panel of her:


(For the record, this is from the 1948 Spring Issue of Quality Comics' The Barker, issue #7.)

A New Tale for Xmas

Posted my first new Wilson Barbers (as opposed to "Lewis Baird") WG story for the year on the Dimensions site: "One of Us" is a story that I've probably worked my way toward writing for several years, combining as it does my long-standing fascination with old-fashioned circus and sideshow fat ladies, in particular. The piece originally was created two years ago as a script for a proposed web comic to be illustrated by the FA artist BeakerFA, who provided some feedback on my plotting as I worked on it. Unfortunately, other commitments kept Beak' from being able illustrate the 75-episode strip, so last summer I started the task of transforming script into a full text story. Beaker contributed three illustrations to the new version, the first of which should give you an idea of what we were going for:


I love this graphic for the way it captures my rapturously singin' heroine and her soon-to-be lover Earl (the name was inspired by movie midget actor Harry Earle) and the ten-in-one tent show setting. Gotta admit, though, the first time I saw it, my initial response was a picky technical one. In the story, there's a moment where I mention Betty's lower belly knocking off an audience member's hat with her belly (it's meant to anticipate a story action that occurs a bit later). Looking at the graphic, I had to wonder whether that was even possible. Describing the ten-in-one, I was originally thinking of a somewhat lower platform on the level of this 'un (from the movie The Unholy Three):


It's a small point, but it does illustrate how differently two minds can visualize the same moment. I added a descriptor indicating that the hatless Rube was very very tall to the story, so mebbe it doesn't matter. In any event, the results of both our work can be found here.

Fat Magic Moments

Took me longer to "edit the original ms." than I expected, but I've posted the third "Lewis Baird story" on the Dimensions website this weekend. Entitled "Rachel's Story," it's a longish piece narrated by the wife of the unnamed mystery man who tells the first two Baird tales, "Marianne/Mare" and "Patricia/Pat/Patti," and it provides a skosh more background info about this inexplicably powerful figure. I enjoyed working on the Baird finale, even though it took much longer for me to wind it up satisfactorily than I originally expected.

Some readers (including Dim publisher Conrad Blickenstorfer) aren't much fond of the political themes imbedded in the first two stories, but to my eyes they needed to be there. One of the original impetuses behind this trilogy was my desire to work a theme that appears in a lot of Internet WG stories (perhaps best repped by the prolific Matt L.) of fatness being connected with lower class status. When more than one study shows a clear correlation between size and income levels (with fat workers frequently making less than their equally qualified thinner peers), this strikes me as legitimate material for fanta-sizer fiction. Once you start talking about class, it's a short step into writing about politics.

Reading some of my fellow fanta-sizers' offerings - where the initially haughty heroines' weight gain was tied into their dropping down in social status - I've long been struck by the writers' ambivalent attitude toward class. On the one hand, we're meant to see the character's weight gain as sexy, but, on the other, their diminution in class is treated with a clear measure of scorn. With the Baird stories, I tried to wrestle with this very American inner conflict, and I think I finally got it right in the third 'un . . .

317.51 Kg.

Karl Neidershuh, a scholarly fatabiliac of long standing and original author of the frequently swiped 900 Club on Dimensions Online, hipped me onto a newish weblog devoted to The World's Heaviest People. Though proprietor Johnny C primarily appears to be more interested in the very very tall and very very short, his Blogspot fat collection contains both classic (e.g., the once-seen/never-forgotten photo of sideshow great Baby Ruth Pontico) and less familiar photos of the super-super-sized. Striving to document every recorded woman and man weighing 700 pounds or higher, the blog's a good primer for budding fat history buffs. Can't help personally wishing that the male pics didn't outnumber the female 'uns, tho . . .

Back in the Saddle Again

No, I haven’t gone away for good: it’s just that the joys of full-scale relocation (from Illinois to Arizona), a new job and subsequent financial stressors involved from trying to sell our old house in a doom-laden market have kept me from this blog for too darn long. But if I offered you a link to the story I posted on the Dimensions Online site over the holidays, would you forgive me? It’s the tale I was selling in last summer’s Wilson Barbers Newsletter, ”Fat Manga,” though as is usual with me, I’ve since made a few small revisions to the tale. You five readers who bought a copy of the newsletter: why not compare and contrast both versions of the story – and see where I’ve fiddled with the text!

My life is a towering slush pile, stacked with endless re-drafts . . .

More Adipositivity

One of my favorite images from Substantia Jones’ Adipositivity Project (click on it to get to the full foto):

“Fat Meat Is Good Meat”

Ever since this humble blogger returned from the NAAFA Con, singer Kristie Agee’s Use What You Got (Old King Records) has been in regular rotation on the study boombox. The mid-sized singer made a memorable appearance (her second at a NAAFA Con, I'm told), singing some of Use’s songs at NAAFA’s fashion show, but, of course, that singer-w./-backing-tracks performance could only suggest the more full-bodied fun to be had on a recording that blends her voice more fully into a big band r-&-b environment. Bet that Kristie and her band (known as Big Potential) would really sound hot on a smoky club dance floor.

The bulk of Use is devoted to Kristie’s take – abetted by husband hornman Roy – on classic risqué rhythms, many of which explicitly promote the glories of full-figured lovers. Bullmoose Jackson’s “Big Fat Mamas Are Back in Style” (a song also memorably covered by Buster Poindexter) is the model, though other treats like Howlin’ Wolf’s bluesy bit of self-promotion, “Built for Comfort,” are just as compelling. Agee has the right vocal instrument for this kind of material: strong & earthy & provocative. If she doesn’t quite hit the same levels of aching sexuality that a Dinah Washington brought to a track like album opener “Big Long Slidin’ Thing” (a tribute to a trombone player – what’d you think it was about?), well, it’s not for want of trying. Mebbe if she spent more time away from her own trombonist hubby?

Still, this is a great disc for lovers of the old-fashioned horn-based blues sound. Only duff track, to these ears, is a mercifully brief instrumental entitled “Roy’s Blow.” Elsewhere, Kristie and the boys introduced me to “Big Red Caboose” (a funky tribute to a bottom-heavy beauty striding down the street) and “Meat on Their Bones,” which celebrates small-town BHMs with just as much vim-&-vigor as the big fat mama songs. And to prove she’s more than just about plus-size celebration, Agee also folds two convincing renditions of “My Funny Valentine” and “When You Wish Upon A Star” into the mix for a sweet change of pace.

But, of course, the big fat draw remains Kristie’s kovers of them rollicking BFMama tracks. In a liner note to the Bullmoose Jackson song, the singer notes that she first discovered “Mamas” being used as the backing track on one of those dumb little fat-bashing sites that have been part of the Internet for as long as there’ve been online troglodytes with marginal html skills. Which only goes to show even the more bigoted strands of the web can occasionally – if inadvertently – yield some strong size-positive material if you keep your ears open . . .

Odds & Sods from the Con

(To start at Day One, go here.)
(For Day Two, go here.)
(For Day Three, click here.)
(For Day Four, go here.)

Some isolated moments and observations from the NAAFA convention that I’d most likely put within their proper days, if only I could remember which days they were:

• Introducing myself to Randi (a.k.a. SoVerySoft), a longtime fixture in both NAAFA and East Coast size acceptance groups. (Here’s Derrick Fish’s devilwoman version of SVS.) We meet outside the elevator, chat briefly and then head for different floors. The rest of the night, whenever I move from one space to another, it seems like I run into Randi along the way. She notices the same thing, says somp’n about it, and I reply by declaring that “I’m ubiquitous!” The convention dynamic: once you have an interaction with a person – no matter how brief it may be – they pop out at you, even within a crowd.
  
  
• Happily watching my wife work and talk to customers as they pick through the bead bowl for their made-to-order “branklets.” She’s definitely in her element here.
  
  
• My wife telling me about the dismayed looks some of the convention attendees display when they scan our vendor’s table and ask about the fiction in the Wilson Barbers Newsletter. Near the end of the con, a young SSBBW who has bought a newsletter comes up to me and sez she found the writing “elegant,” though she doesn’t understand the disclaimer (“Despite what some hypocritically self-righteous types may say, the preceding material has been produced for entertainment purposes only.”) that appears at the bottom of the last page. I mutter something vague about how some folks out there have difficulty with fantasy.
  
  
• Me chatting with NAAFA newsletter editor Bill Weitze and telling him our history with NAAFA: how my wife and I’d once been active members and then later dropped out for a while during a period of upper level weirdness. Bill tells me that he came to the organization after all the in-house trauma, and as he briefly describes the period from his PoV, it quickly becomes clear to me that we’re talking about two different moments in the organization’s history.
  
  
• Sitting in the FA workshop, an event that at earlier cons has sometimes been listed as “for men only,” and hearing plus-sized Chicago chapter president Lisa identify herself as a fat admirer.
  
  
• Realizing for the umpteenth time that no matter how much I try to open my eyes to ‘em, I just don’t dig tattoos. Think I might’ve read Ray Bradbury’s The Illustrated Man one too many times. . .
  
  
• Me dealing with being more than one name. Because my convention nametag is under my real-life birth name and not my writer’s nom de plume, I’ve penned an “a.k.a. Wilson” beneath the printed name. Not everybody recognizes me – or cares to recognize me – as “Wilson Barbers,” however. Near the end of the con I run into New York BBW social club legend Nancy Goddess, who I remember from a variety of 90’s pictorials. But I don’t identify myself as the writer Barbers because I honestly can’t imagine her caring. I’m just some middle-aged FA who the woman briefly chitchats with while waiting for a friend to come out of the bathroom.
  
  
• A comment about hotel rooms in general: I loath the bathroom toilet seats. They always seem to come with a flimsy cover, so when you try to sit down on ‘em to put on yer shoes, say, after spiffing up with the bathroom mirror, they make that distressing popping noise and force you to bounce back up immediately. Damn cheap-ass toilet seats . . .

And that’s about it, folks.

Notes from the Con – Day Four

(To start at Day One, go here.)
(For Day Two, go here.)
(For Day Three, click here.)

Sunday

Last day of the convention, and we’re planning on leaving early to get back to hearth and pets. (Blinkin’ on our hotel phone when we returned from the dance was a message from one of the folks pet-sitting part of our menagerie that one of our ferrets wasn’t doing too well.) Because I’m habitually an early riser – whether it makes sense to be one or not – I wander downstairs for a cup of overpriced hotel cappuccino. Don’t see a lot of anybody walking around at 8:30 a.m., so I just sit back with a manga paperback in hand and read. At one point, David, a convention volunteer who snapped a photo of me and the spouse on our way into last night’s dance, asks me if I’ve seen Josh, the guy who was filming the YouTube material Friday, since some of David’s pics will be used in a brunch slideshow. I wonder if we’ll be in it.

The brunch is set to start at 11:00, so I eventually head back upstairs to rouse my still-sleeping wife. Sunday brunch is a buffet, and, while I’m in line, I can’t help taking note of what the NAAFA women put on their plates. Per Becky J. – who has had experience with size acceptance cons in the past – despite all the clichés, NAAFAns as a group don’t eat more than any other group of conventioneers. At least one hotel person, she states, has told her that the amount of food returned from buffets is frequently greater than it is at other events. Though anecdotal and probably unverifiable, Becky's words are believable when you look at the size of the servings that even the largest women are spooning out for themselves. I mean, I’ve got a larger pile of scrambled eggs on my plate.

Wish that the hotel had provided some Dannon yoghurt that wasn’t “light & fit,” tho. Splenda®, bluccch!

We leave before the brunch speech, so we kin get on the road. But before we’ve snuck away from our table, we hear the second of two size discrimination stories that have been floating around the convention. The first concerns a child in New Mexico who was removed from her family for being too fat: though details are sketchy (was this the sole rationale presented by the state’s child protection agency?), it brings up an earlier case where that state removed young Anamarie Martinez-Regino from her family because one of her doctors claimed that her caretakers weren't doing enough to help the girl lose weight. That case was eventually overturned by the courts, but not before the child herself had to spend time in the New Mexico foster care system.

Second outrage revolves on a woman in Florida who recently died because an ambulance helicopter reportedly refused to carry her approximately four-hundred pound body to the hospital. This is the kinda horror story that understandably connects to many super-sized adults’ fears: of being fatally turned away by a medical community ill-equipped to treat them – which will later claim that the cause of the fat patient’s death was their “morbid obesity,” not a lack of life-saving treatment. Again, the details on this particular case are sketchy, but you can really see the group taking notice as they hear the basics.

Both stories underline one basic fact about the size acceptance movement: this is not just a matter of a few oversensitive fat folk getting their feelings over a few dumb fat jokes on the teevee. People are having their lives destroyed by a culture and a system that promotes fat hatred on a daily basis. As we leave the convention, we can’t help realizing that the same ol’ world of stupidity and bigotry still lies outside the 2007 NAAFA Con . . .

Notes from the Con – Day Three

(To start at Day One, go here.)
(For Day Two, go here.)

Saturday Morning/Afternoon

Second day at ye vendor’s table. From our place we can turn around and look at the hotel pool below where a Water Aerobics workshop is in session. Speaking as an unabashed sexist, it’s fun to occasionally turn around and watch.

In the afternoon, my lovely wife heads for the convention coffeehouse where she’ll be reading one of the four short stories she’s selling under the title, Zaftly, My Love. The stories are romance fiction (or, as she puts it, “girly stuff”), and the work she’s picked is a short piece that originally appeared in the print mag Dimensions. While she’s there, I hold the vendor’s table by myself. It’s pretty quiet: I’m just not as magnetic as my wife. I while away the time perusing a Tek Jansen comic book. The story reading, I later hear, went well.

We have a better afternoon at our table. Because she’s brought her beads and jewelry-making paraphernalia, my wife is able to make bracelets and anklets to order – and she’s kept fairly busy. A few attendees from yesterday’s FA Workshop also show up to buy a newsletter, having realized who I was midway into the workshop. “This is for all the pleasure you’ve provided over the years” is a regular refrain, and every time I hear it, a small part of me wants to say, “Well, I hope you’re gonna read the newsletter today!”

I later chat with a fat FA who turns out to be a fellow blogger: he gives me his URL (which I've added to the blogroll), and I promise to take a look when I get home. Here at the hotel, connection to the Internet comes with a price – and since we’re here on the cheap, I’ve already gone close to three days w/o any web surfing. Hard to believe, actually . . .

Saturday Night

We attend the Awards Banquet and Dinner Dance. The awards are handed out to NAAFA volunteers who’ve distinguished themselves over the past year. During flusher days, the association had an office, paid office help and a salaried spokesperson, but these days, all the work is done by volunteers. By now, we recognized all the identified volunteers from the last two days in the hotel.

After last night’s seventies kitsch-a-thon, tonight’s event is for dressing to the nines. See a lotta gorgeous fat women in gorgeous ensembles tonight. I’ve heard it said more than once (usually at events like these) that you can tell a lot about a fat woman’s self-confidence level by how much of her upper arms she allows you to see. Looks like there are plenty of confident women in the room.

Finally get my spouse on the dance floor for two slow ones tonight: in these small moments, all the shit and stressors and struggles that we’ve face over the last year abate. One of the long-standing components of the size acceptance movement has been dances, and, though some more activist members look down on ‘em, the experience remains a powerful one. Wasn’t it Emma Goldman who once stated that she didn’t want to be part of any revolution that wouldn’t allow you to dance? Holding my wife in my arms, I can’t help but agree.

That said, I more than half wish the dee-jay had a more varied musical array – I’m hearing songs tonight that I also heard on Friday. At least we escape before he gets to “Baby Got Back.”

The rest of the night is none of yer bizness, thank you.