in the world of twitter veganism and instagram flat tummy tea, it has become almost impossible for a thick bitch like me to get online without someone telling me what my body should look like. although my blackness is quite used to being casually and conveniently left out of conversations on conventional beauty, a bitch has intersectional oppressions, and today they are all sitting down to chat about “skinny shaming”, which, much like “reverse racism” and any other claim that socially acceptable bodies are oppressed because of their privilege, is full of shit. let’s dora the explore that for a second.
i think we’re all familiar with the age old game “is he hot, or is he white?”, but get ready for it’s millennial cousin, “are they hot, or are they skinny?”. newsflash bitch, the answer is almost always white and skinny, but let’s focus on that last part for today, because if i start talking about whiteness this shit will turn into a dissertation with swiftness. but we before get into it, we should first break down the term “skinny shaming” and attempt to understand the politics of shame.
skinny shaming [skɪni ʃeɪmɪŋ] verb, 1. Shaming someone who is naturally thin by always pointing it out, or making little comments based on their weight with the intention of making them feel shameful about their naturally thin size. -urban dictionary
ok so shame, as a concept, exists as tool of ostracization, but only really succeeds (like most things) when spearheaded from people in places of power. and we know we live in an inherently fatphobic society (if you don’t believe this stop reading and go ahead and block me rn) that thrives on the idea a human’s value is based solely on their ability to be sexualized by cismen. now that’s not to say folx often sexualized by cismen are treated well, because we’ve learned that’s a thing they’re barely even capable of, but what it does mean is that the most “desirable” bodies are given a sort of vicarious power (see: white femininity). it goes without saying this power is also inherently racialized and built to benefit the least people of color possible, but the point is, it is not only white and cisgendered bodies that benefit from a system that values cismale sexualization and heteronormativity, it’s also skinny bodies.
“but nyfe, i’m skinny and cis men shit on my body all the time! i too deal with body shame!”
well, every art hoe from my liberal arts college, i’m sure cis men do shit on your body because, as we remember from last week, cis men are trash. i’m also sure you do deal with body shame, but that’s not the same as skinny shame. in fact, let’s introduce another fun game into the mix called “are they shaming you because you’re skinny, or because they’re (trans)misogynistic?”. and bitch you guessed it, it’s the last one! don’t get it twisted, cismale entitlement to the bodies of womxn and femmes is disgusting, yes, and results in many of them shaming you for not being their sexual ideal, but the idea that you exist to make them horny in the first place, is just good old fashioned default factory issued (trans)misogyny.
for those of you still lost and terrified of being called racist, let’s throw in an analogy. ok so there are, undoubtedly, white people living in poverty and white people considered “underprivileged” by the government, right? but does that mean then that those white people are not still benefitting from white privilege and are capable of being victims of racism? fuck no. they aren’t poor because they are white, they are just poor in addition to being white. and suggesting their whiteness isn’t actively improving their quality of life would be to deny the existence of systematic racism and would probably get you blocked by your fave social media influencer. and you wouldn’t want that, would you?
all of this is to say: skinniness and whiteness can often mimic each other in the way they disproportionately allocate power.
“but nyfe, i’m a mxn and people are always telling me i’m too skinny and making fun of the fact that i’m small. that’s skinny shaming!”
well, every english major from my liberal arts college, believe it or not, that too, is just misogyny. first of all, side note, the patriarchy tells you not to moan during sex or get your ass ate and you’re still listening? toxic masculinity doesn’t want you to cum and you trust that bitch? i digress; all you’re really saying is misogyny hurts us all. and honestly, the idea that skinniness on more masculine bodies is unattractive makes the same gross assumption that you exist only as a tool for sexual attraction. ALSO that type of body shame is directly comparative to a transmisogynistic idea of femininity. the real reason the patriarchy thinks you shouldn’t be skinny is not because being skinny is a quality capable of victimization, but because “skinniness is for womxn”, and god forbid you be like a womxn in any way.
but i’m done talking about y’all. because at the end of the day, all of this is simple. just fucking listen to chubby, thick, chunky, and fat people. if you’ve ever lived in a body that takes up more space than the patriarchy thinks you should, you know skinny shaming is bullshit. the mere fact i’ve even had to have this conversation so many times is proof that people are incapable of valuing the work and perspectives of fat folx and are desperate to be oppressed enough for a good twitter thread. talk to fat folx about their experience with the term “skinny shaming” (if they consent to do so) and dead the term altogether. because on top of having to fight for space in this world to exist without harassment, we also have to deal with your skinny ass shitting out that “just as bad” rhetoric.
softboy [sɑft bɔɪ] noun, 1. Similar to a fuckboy but without the cocky attitude. The Softboy will butter a girl up by appealing to her emotions and showing a “sensitive” side long enough for her to sleep with him, whether or not he actually cares about her or not. -urban dictionary
ok so i show up at the poetry slam like i always do, wade through the cesspool of unchecked ego and unresolved trauma to bask in a blissful 3 minutes and 30 seconds of my own raw humorless vulnerability. and don’t get me wrong, i love this shit. these are my people after all. but when i get off the stage, some boy with cuffed pants and a beard less connected than my phone to the shitty WiFi in this black box theater tells me he thinks i’m so interesting and would love to pick my brain about some pseudo-intellectual 2am twitter bullshit. and so, i entertain him, partly because i’m bored, but mainly because underneath all this black femme cynicism, i really do love talking about corny shit, even to the eager oversimplifies and not nice Nice Guys™.
cut to about 3 months later, after my self deprecation isn’t funny or deep anymore and he’s gotten a couple good songs out of the 3 times we’ve had sex, Owen or Patrick or James (or any other white boy name that should enable my fight or flight, but his hair was nice) tells me i’ve changed. for the next 2 weeks he assures me how much he values our relationship and regularly hits me up for validation, advice, or any other conjugation of unpaid emotional labor. he tells me he has never met a mind like mine and not to forget him when i’m famous as if i haven’t already forgotten him right now.
and i don’t know when i stopped being a person and started being a mind, but when you’re a 20 something poet who looks like an art hoe even in pajamas, you come to expect these kinds of gross assumptions. i guess what i’m trying to say is, i’m almost uncomfortably used to being used as a muse for mxn who value my art and perspective more than they value me. now of course, to value me in the way that counts, they would first have to put in the effort to know me in the first place, but because I’m shit at asking for what I need, here’s what usually happens:
softboy™ sees my expressionless face and mistakes me for a vessel
softboy™ challenges himself to fix my unbroken heart with his magical lofi dick
sexually transmitted accountability
softboy™ realizes I am virtually unchanged by his being here and is offended by the very thought he didn’t change my life
softboy™ goes on his way with a moleskine thick with my performative complexity
it’s pretty easy to get burned up when you exist as cannon fodder for someone else’s self proclaimed revolutionary art. and because it’s 2017, and we all know the manic pixie dream narrative is tired and reeks of a certain unflushable misogyny in even the cleanest masculine toilets, these mxn, with their watered down perspective and mediocre execution, get surprisingly creative with how best to dehumanize you. lucky for them, a walled-up guarded bitch like me finds it marginally easier to lean into other folx’ projections of who i am than be vulnerable in any substantial way.
so why do i do this, right? why do i let them leech off my waning life force and fleeting youth? what could i possibly gain from giving these mxn access to my so called unparalleled creative energy? well for starters, i’ve always wanted to be a thespian and this is some of the most quality hands-on free acting training my poor ass can afford. but mainly, there’s just something so satisfying about watching mxn slowly hate their own ideas almost as much as i hate their ideas.
you see, when a softboy™ decides what (not who) i am, he becomes some shitty bootleg fortune teller dreaming up all the ways he can love my flaws and romanticize my emotional apathy. perhaps it’s the unholy marriage of sadism and white savior complexes, or the maybe it’s a complete inability to view femmes as multidimensional humans, that contribute to the frequency at which this shit happens to me. but either way, at this point, i am so fluent in the language of being troped i could write choose your own adventures novels about all the ways i have disappointed disappointing mxn simply by existing outside of their ideas of me.
although being a blank canvas can be a truly liberating experience, it, like all things, is really only healthy if all parties present have agreed to be a part of it. i’ve had to learn how often and in what ways i can lend myself to what feels like the least appreciated charity of inspiring uninspiring mxn without completely exhausting myself or, god forbid, believing their alleged expert analysis of what i must change in order to be loved.
it goes without saying, that mxn in general are universally trash, but if you find yourself crying under fairy lights wondering why Jonathan is ghosting you after saying you were the most beautiful person he has ever met, please know it is not your fault art spaces are failing irrefutably at producing mxn capable of maintaining non sexual relationships, especially when we frequent spaces that applaud performative emotional articulation while doing almost nothing to ensure that vulnerability and respect exists off stage.
how best can we hold ourselves and others accountable to a base level of human decency in the venn diagram intersection of art and intimacy? how can we begin to demand being seen as more than just the consumable ways we present? what does it mean to be vulnerable in real and consensual ways?
You can’t allow yourself to look at your life like a pattern. I know that once you’ve been constantly rejected it seems like you’ll always be rejected. You can’t know that. Life is erratic. Things will happen when you least expect it and you have to have faith in that. You have to remember that life is unpredictable and sometimes that’s to your disadvantage but other times that will be your saving grace.
Shoutout to all those people that have jobs like cleaning the bathrooms in rest areas or gas stations, to the people that take out the trash and wash dishes in restaurants, school janitors, house maids. You’re doing jobs that don’t get much recognition but are some of the toughest. stay awesome
