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 . . .
(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 . . .
posted by Wilson B. at 11:35 AM
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