Vintage Anger: Norbit Rant

(This is a repost from my personal journal)

Isn’t it funny how whenever there’s a fat man in a movie, he is sweet, genuine, a ‘nice guy’, and always gets the girl in the end because “what matters is what’s on the inside!!!!!”?Even if he is used as comic relief (the steotype of the jolly fat man) at least he is still seen as a good person.

But whenever there’s a fat woman, she’s a raging bitch, completely immoral, and the male characters do all they can to get away from her. NEVERMIND the fact that a fat male character can be played by a fat male actor, but a fat woman–well GOSH! They couldn’t put a real fat actress on screen, that’s just GROSS. It’s much more acceptable to just shove Eddie Murphy into a fucking fat suit.

There are so many levels on which this shit is offensive, I have to deal with it in list form.

1. It reduces black women to predictable characters that may fall into 2 categories, and 2 only: evil, domineering, jealous bitches OR submissive, sweet, ’seen-but-not-heard’ sex kittens, ready to do anything for your man. Better pick one now.

2. Apparently it’s the funniest thing EVER when a man wears women’s clothing. How ridiculous! How novel! HAHAHA am I right?!?! Instead of having to write witty dialogue or snappy jokes, just put a man in a dress and you have a comedy.

3. Women are shown as 2D cardboard cutouts with static personalities.

4. Fat women are ridiculed for having dominant or commanding personalities, are not allowed to be sexual, are not allowed to wear bathing suits or anything revealing; Fat women are supposed to be invisible.

And in my opinion, fat issues are ALL women’s issues. If we weren’t so afraid of OMG!TEHFAT, maybe we could be happy with ourselves, stop torturing our bodies with starvation, dangerous, herat-stopping pills and unpleasant, compulsory excercise. Maybe if we stopped trying to meet a completely STUPID beauty standard, one that so few women may ever fit into, and were just ourselves, men wouldn’t have so much power over us. We’d have time to get on with our lives.

Maybe if we got out from under the oppressive blanket of body shame society puts over us we could finally fucking breathe. And eat another cupcake.

AHHHHHH!

Last week in archaeology we watched a film about an underwater excavation seeking to find pieces of the Lighthouse of Alexandria. Involved in the dive was an archaeologist who had worked at the site 30 years earlier- in her 3o’s. She was absolutely brilliant, widely respected, fluent in at least 3 languages and still an active diver. At one point in the film she is in her wetsuit, which she has rolled down over her torso under the hot Egyptian sun, exposing a sports bra and a couple inches of stomach skin.

From the other side of the room floats a sarcastic male voice, “Wow, that’s hot.”

I apologize, but from here on out is where I will become so angry as to be completely inarticulate.

Are you fucking kidding me? Is she a model? A pornstar? No? Then being sexy is not part of her job description. She is 75 years old and a respected academic; she has no obligation to be attractive to you. Would you have it that any women who didn’t make you instantly pop a boner be locked up somewhere out of the light of day? Who the fuck are you to demand that every female in your line of site be up to your standards? Some snot-nosed freshman without any field experience at all? You’d be lucky if she sneezed on you. You are less than dirt.

And so ends my angry ranting for the day. Keep in mind that this is the edited version of my thoughts. At the time of occurrence I just replied, loudly, “Why the fuck does she owe you ‘hot’?”

Asswipe.

Fallen From Where?

The other day, a girl quipped to me, “Why is it always ‘fallen woman’? Why do you never hear the term ‘fallen man’?”

“Easy,” I answered, “men have nowhere to fall from.”

The term “Fallen Woman” is one that’s always bothered me, and I’ve only recently gathered the words to explain why. It has various connotations, the most common of which are prostitute, criminal or adulteress, but can also expand to include drug addict, homeless woman, porn actress- basically any woman who has a lifestyle that offends the mainstream, whether she has chosen it or not.

The Victorians, and even their predecessors, passed down to us a ridiculous romantic notion of what it is to be a ‘woman’. A woman is a pure, beautiful, untouchable thing to be won or bought, prized and treasured for her aesthetic value. In other words, a woman is supposed to be no more than a vase perched on a pedestal.

A vase can useful, in a domestic way, as it could potentially hold liquids for some practical purpose, but largely it’s use is only decorative. The vase has one main purpos, and that is to be attractive to the viewer. The more ornate or fine the vase, the more expensive, the more highly it is prized. You buy the vase from it’s maker and you own it, and because it is yours you can control where it goes and what it is filled with. A vase is an empty vessel; you may fill it with whatever you like.

If the vase should topple from the pedestal of decorative domesticity, the owner has 2 options. Patch up the vase and make it look shiny and new, or throw it away and forget about it. It is no longer a vase, it is a pile of broken ceramic.

Likewise, when a woman ‘falls’ from the perfect pink pedestal of womanhood, she is no longer a woman. She becomes another creature entirely; a slut, whore, degenerate, cunt- a fallen woman. A man cannot be fallen because he has nowhere to fall from, he is considered fully human, not some kind of ornate possession.

Bullshit. Let’s tear down these fucking pedestals.

I am human, godammit

Let me tell you, internets, today was a fun day to be in Physical Anthropology. The men in my class just keep coming out with these bewildering statements that display an astounding ignorance towards female humans and their magical, mystical ways. Today I got 3 gems from 3 different dudes, informing me that this is going to be one hell of a term.

We began the class by talking about how it is impossible to absolutely groups of humans by race because race is actually on a continuum, rather than being divided into nice little categories. To illustrate this in simple terms, the prof used the example of natural hair colour, and how it is better measured on a scale going from white blonde to black. A hand shot up in the back of the room, and this is what emits from the mouth belonging to that hand: “Isn’t it true that women are predisposed to be blonde, like, biologically to attract males in the wild?”

Ah yes, we’ve all heard about those feral blondes, stalking the countryside, using their brightly coloured hair as bait to capture unsuspecting males of the species. WTF?

Later on, we were talking about osteology, which, I’ve gotta say, I’m a big nerd and really looking forward to. The prof was asking the class to name information one could infer from human skeletal remains, and a guy stuck up his hand and replied sex. When questioned on how one could differentiate the sexes, he said, no lies, “Women have different bones than men. Like, more ribs and stuff.”

That’s right, even now in the fucking 2000’s, men who get into universities are still dumb enough to believe that women are strange, mythical alien beasts with 2 heads, 3 hearts and 25 ribs.

Luckily, another genius jumped right in there to correct him: “No, no, women have differently shaped pelvises!”

Now, this guy is right, in a sense. Women generally have a pelvis that is wide enough and set at the right angle so that they are able to bear and give birth to offspring. Men’s pelvises are narrower and not angled in the same way. But that isn’t how he said it, he didn’t say “Men and women have differently shaped pelvises.” What he said, the basic statement behind it, is at the basis of the sexist patriarchal society we live in-

Women are different.

There is a basic standard for being an average human, and that is male. Women are, then, not normal, not really human, but rather some kind of deviation or perversion of the norm. Men are the default, we are a second thought. How is it that 51% of the earth’s population can be considered “abnormal”?

Fuck the patriarchy.