Godammit, I’m Mad!

When I’m not thinking about death, I’m thinking about my fat thighs. My brain bounces between the two subjects like a ping-pong ball. I hate these preoccupations but I feel helpless against the tyranny of my depression. Obviously, I am looking for a new medication.

Fat thighs have always been one of my deepest, most elemental dreads. Fat thighs are loaded with significance for me, all negative. They represent weakness of the worst sort, a moral and aesthetic crime. It means being Female, in the most self-loathing and sexist definition of the word. God knows how this started, but my father hated fat and he hated women, so we might not need Einstein to figure it out. Years ago, I would cringe at the line from Master Song by Leonard Cohen:

and your thighs are a ruin, you want too much
let’s say you came back some time too soon

Leonard Cohen may have been talking about Mary Magdalene but I still take it personally.

How many women hate their thighs? I know the number is vast and most of you didn’t know my father. If you hate your thighs, can you recall the genesis of the hatred?

When I sit down, I see my thighs spread outward like a sea of blubber. I whine and complain and apologize to my husband for my fat thighs. He has demonstrated again and again his reverence for my thighs, but I feel they are a blight verging on deformity.

Out in the Fact-based Community, my thighs are probably slimmer than average but that has no bearing on my problem.  Fat Thighs are a state of mind, a state of being, a Feminist Issue, and a way to externalize anxiety and shame.

Plus, I can’t go out wearing shorts, even though it’s been a trillion degrees all summer and my house has become an Indian sweat lodge.

Thoughts, advice, insults, anyone?

Looking for photos by Serge Lutens, I came across a beautiful blog, Strawberige.   It’s a wonderland of lovely images.   No blogger crap, just pleasure.

Then, I ended up at a blog called Fashion Heroines, by someone who says she loves being a woman and hates feminism. Hmm. The photos are arresting, like the ones of Liu Wen below:

Feminism sheminism. If it transports me from the hell of Sarah Palin and sentences that begin with “Umm,” I am grateful.

One thing I’ve learned since joining Twitter is that feminism isn’t dead. It’s alive and really irritable.

A post at frockwriter about American Apparel seemed perfectly reasonable to me, but caused quite a commotion among super-sensitive feminist tweeters. Frockwriter author Patty Huntington decried American Apparel‘s use of mannequins posed bent over, or spreadeagled in slutty positions.   But the word “slutty” caused offense.

I watched Ms. Huntington patiently reply to the outraged tweets. Someone demanded that she retract the word slutty, arguing that it’s part of a larger offensive social dynamic called “slut-shaming.”

The angry word-prohibitionist got her friends involved. I discovered that many of the angered women were self-described fat women, and presumably they are more sensitized to name-calling.

But the preachy comments triggered by Huntington’s post were so annoying that I jumped in and called one of the prohibitionists “an ignorant slut.” GET IT?!? I thought it was funny, and figured everyone knew the reference to be a catchphrase from Saturday Night Live.

Well, all the irritable feminists went nuts. They got together to slam Huntington, over at a boring blog by Dr. Samantha Thomas, who refused to publish my very calm comment in defense of Patty Huntington. Read the comments though if you enjoy womyn congratulating each other for being mad.

Today, feminist’s launched a twitter attack on Michael Moore after a comment he made about rape victims was repeated out of context. Michael Moore is a tireless liberal activist who deserves better. I will let him speak for himself.

Finally, a miniwar broke out over a pillow needlepointed with the words of Kate Moss: Nothing tastes as good as skinny feels. Feminist tweeters flipped out. Those pillows were “pro-ana!”

Here’s what I think.   The December issue of Bazaar has an article about a woman getting a facial for her vulva. She goes into great detail but I couldn’t take it. It’s so stupid and depressing. It’s bullshit. It’s anti-pussy and it’s anti-woman.   It’s a million times worse than the word slut or a fucking pillow.

Thoughts?

Watching the SAG awards on TV, I laughed each time an award was given to a “female actor.” When did award shows become so pretentious?! Women who  refer to themselves as  “actors” seem much sillier than they need to be.

If you’re an actress but you find that term denigrating, doesn’t that mean you feel inferior to a male in the same profession? Why don’t actresses just insist that men call themselves “actresses” too?

I’m wondering whether anyone considers herself a ‘waitress’ anymore. There is a recent, critically acclaimed movie called “Waitress,” right? And you know why it wasn’t called “Waiter?” Because the eponymous person is a goddamned female, that’s why!

I see from a list of suggested gender-neutral words that “hostess” and “heiress” are not okay, and neither is “bondsman.” This is too much bad news for me to take. It is very, very upsetting. You’re not even supposed to say “bachelor’s degree!” I can only assume that “dominatrix” is out, as well. One would need to call a “dominator” instead, and who really wants that?

Ugh! I plan to continue calling actresses “actresses”, and to be polite to busboys and handymen. Anything else would be the kind of bullshit up with which I would  never put.