Do You Love Your Body?

When most folks think of NOW (National Organization for Women) they generally think of political actions and then a whole bunch of stereotypes that have little reality.  NOW has also maintained a few radical feminist ideas as well even though they are very much a liberal organization.  Don't know the difference between liberal and radical feminism?  I'll talk about that in a bit; I have a minor in women's studies so I've studied the differences.

Official Poster for 2013 Love Your Body

One of the more radical things they do is urge an internal change of major importance.  They urge women to love their bodies with an annual event called "Love Your Body" that I have tried to observe for a few years now even though the campaign has been going on for over a decade now. Part of this campaign this year is a new project called "Let's Talk About It" inspired by the National Eating Disorder Awareness Week.  As a radical feminist, as a survivor of eating disorder, and as a woman this event means a lot to me but as you'll discover below it is also a very huge challenge for me.

I've been losing weight and some might wonder if I can say that I love my body and still be losing as much weight as I have -- currently I'm down 50 pounds for 2013.  The fact is that I've always struggled with my weight and I don't mean that I've always been big but that I've never known what I should weigh, what is healthy.  I saw a nutritionist for several years and she told me to ignore all those charts because they never considered the individual, the ethnic background, the bone structure, and the rest of the physical and emotional health of the person. She took all of that into consideration and told me if I ever got below 145 pounds again she'd put me in the hospital.  But when I started to have troubling walking a few blocks after eating a full meal, I decided I needed to loss a bit... I've just kept going but I am consulting with my doctor and using a very stable and slow approach.

But my post isn't about weight as much as it is about how I've never been able to trust or love my body and I'm struggling to learn to do so.

You see I'm a survivor of childhood sexual abuse and emotional/psychological abuse.  My body was something that was constantly used against me by males larger than I and by females who wanted to feel more powerful themselves by sending me conflicting messages.

My mother was the number one attacker. By the time I was in high school I don't think there was a day that I didn't hear "you are getting too fat" in the morning before I left for school and then hearing "you need to eat, you are getting too thin" at dinner that same night.

Can you imagine how confused that made me?

My body was unknown to me as a positive thing, it was unknowable to me even in terms of the basic idea of what I should look like or weigh.

Instead my body betrayed me constantly.

Getting sick often; too often it seems according to letters I received with my medical records many years back. Did my mother do something to me to make me sick because she got sympathy for being my caregiver?  I know she herself got sick a lot and it is no coincidence that she went into a wheelchair right after I started therapy to recover from my childhood abuse.  I do know that tests have shown doctors and I that I have a very weak immune system not because I'm ill but probably since before I was born.  Of course my mother almost died within a few years of my birth and she (and my father) told me that her doctors had suggested an abortion for her health -- she CHOSE not to do that.  (That is why I am pro-choice so strongly.)

My body was what was molested and raped three times by the age of six.  The memories, both conscious and unconscious damaged my ability to have healthy sex for years and years.  I think that part of my being fat or having eating disorders was an attempt to conquer my body, get control over what seemed utterly out of my control.

My body simply wasn't safe so I invested far more in my mind as a student then scholar and as an author and storyteller.  In my mind I could be in control, I could be free of this shell that tormented me from my earliest memories.

I can't say that I love my body.

I can say I am trying and NOW's campaign reassures me that I am not alone.

Too Easy to Use Violence

The Good Men Project recently had an article by Joseph Kerr that really made me reflect on domestic violence and the ease with which we can turn violent against those we love.  This is not a new topic for me, I had an article in the book you can see in the image to the right about this same topic.  Let me be clear that the book to the right is not about abuse, it is about BDSM, however I and one other author talked about the line between the sexuality and kink versus domestic violence and abuse.  I recall that my even writing about it shocked people but I was and am grateful that Laura Antoniou included it because it was honest.  But I wrote that years ago and I wanted to update my thoughts and life on this subject.

Domestic violence and abuse are often portrayed as male on female transgressions.  It is true that the majority of reported domestic and dating violence is male on female.  However this ignores several cultural facts such as abuse is not only sexual or physical and that when men or boys are the victims even of male on male violence they are often hesitate to report it let alone if their attacker is female.  

None of what I'm saying is to belittle the violence against women and girls; I'm a survivor myself.  But since I have been down that road into becoming the abuser until I learned to get control of myself and deal with my past I have empathy in all directions on the topic of violence.  I also have a partner who was abused as a young teen and a child and have known other male survivors so I have partner empathy, too.

It is easy to forget that violence happens against men when the abuser is female because it goes against a lot of our cultural messages... or does it?

Anyone reading this not know about the "Blurred Lines" video from Robin Thicke that was called out for sexist and threats of violence against women?   Much has been written about it that I don't want to repeat but there have also been a string of parodies ranging from even more sexist to reverse-sexist and everything in between.  Parody can be a wonderful political and social tool but only if the reader/watcher understands the problem you are commenting upon and can be encouraged to think a bit differently about it.

On Huffington Post this parody was called "feminist" and I want to comment on it as a feminist who believes that all violence – against kids, women, men, etc – needs to be questioned at the very least and ideally stopped.  I've included the video below so you can see it before reading my comments.


Many, many parts of this video I think are great parody ranging from the dancers and their behaviors to the singers and theirs.  There are also powerful social and political statements about the law which is would I would expect from the people who put this out.  However there are also lyric about castration and I have to wonder why they were necessary.  Yes, I agree that the original video had some violent lines and actions as well but does that make it acceptable for this parody to mention violence?

Violence against men by women is often shown as amusing or justified on TV, in movies, books, and in other mass media.  If you are defending yourself most of us would say that you may have to do something violent but not all of these acts against men that we are shown over and over are defense.

It is more rare for violence against men by women to get serious play but it does happen.  The first serious treatment I saw on the subject was in the 1993 TV movie Men Don't Tell starring Peter Strauss and Judith Light.  The exact same questions are asked in this film as in the Joseph Kerry article.

It is correct to say that the fact that we are covering the same points indicates we have made little in terms of social, cultural, and personal development when it comes to domestic violence.  The same is true for male on female violence given the need for continued legal actions and parodies of sexist attitudes and behaviors.

That's the real problem here – violence is accepted by us.

Accepting it makes it too easy for anyone to use.

The real change comes inside of each of us – female or male – when we work on pausing for just a second or two when we feel the things that encourage us to act in violence.  That's an ongoing fight given what we see and hear around us, it is even more challenging if you have survived violence yourself.

It's a challenge I consciously decided to take on years ago and I'm still fighting today.

I hope you'll also accept this challenge.

Non-Heroic Attitudes on "Heroes of Cosplay"

I'm a science fiction, fantasy, horror, etc fan and author so I had to check out the new SyFy series "Heroes of Cosplay" even though I don't normally watch competition shows.  I've seen some episodes of a few other art competition shows in the past and thought may this might also have commentary on geek culture and conventions that have been getting so much attention on the Net this year especially in regards to women in the subculture. After three episodes I feel that I need to express some of my thoughts.

Episode one made it clear that this was not a regular competition series.  This isn't "Face Off" (SyFy), "Design Star" (HGTV), or "Top Chef" (Bravo) where a group of competitors have specific tasks they most complete and then a winner or loser is declared for each episode.  Thank goodness!  I find so many of those shows contrived and I get bored after awhile as the artists and chefs start arguing while they are supposed to be creating.  No, "Heroes of Cosplay" follows eight artists who compete in the cosplay category at science fiction, anime, and related conventions around the USA. The ninth "hero" is Yaya Han who has turned her own cosplay and competing in contests at convention into a career.  Given that only one man is a "hero" on this show, though there are support male staff, assistants, and lovers of some of the other "heroes" I hoped this show would address some of the fandom problems that have be getting Net attention this year.

My hopes were almost dashed in episode two when our cosplay competitors get together at the convention to welcome the newest member Chloe Dykstra.  Up until this point in the show I had been impressed with the helpful advice and commentary from Yaya Han .  However during this dinner the other cosplayer competitors there, the vast majority of whom are female with only a few supportive males at this dinner, start making comments about how certain body types should not be doing cosplay and when Chloe objects they basically tell her that she is naive and they are trying to protect people from rude comments in person and online.

STOP!

What?

One of the threads in this episode before this dinner was Yaya telling us and Monika Lee (whom she sees as a good friend and protégé) that sexy shouldn't be the focus for cosplay.  Yaya is the "Ambassador of Cosplay" and at first I thought the "sexy isn't the point" was a pretty cool statement to make.  Yaya's own career shows that she tries to make the characters she is playing come alive, yes, some of them, many of them, let's be honest, are sexy because this is how women have been shown in much of geek culture.  I thought she might be making a comment about how anyone who wants to cosplay should and that promoting just the sexual spin is undermining the point of cosplay.

Until she and the rest of the cosplay competitors used that old excuse of caring about overweight people's feelings as a reason they shouldn't cosplay as certain characters.

Had the group at dinner been discussing competing in cosplay competitions their weight comment would have made perfect sense.  In the competitions you are judged on the quality of the costume and the quality of your acting like the character.  If you being an existing character it makes perfect sense that you want your body type to match as closely as possible the character.  But they didn't say they were only talking about the competitions, they made a blanket statement about who should and how they should cosplay.

Some reviews online of this episode and the previous one have pointed out that Becky Young, another competitor, said that she picks characters that fit her body type and are attempting to make the dinner conversation and her state equivalent.  They are not the same and this is why.

Becky's comment was about her choices as a cosplay competitor, someone who does contests for money and to promote her career.  She was not making a comment about how other people, especially non-contest cosplayers, should be dressed.  One comment is personal, the other comments are presented as a group acceptance of some universal standard for anyone who wants to cosplay in public.

Note that the sexy isn't the point idea is also presented as Yaya's vision not an ideal embraced by the group of competitors on the show.

Yes, people can be cruel but telling others how to dress because you don't want their feelings hurt is really just empowering that cruelty to continue. It is really just promoting the stereotypes about geek culture and not confronting them.

But then again is this show about confronting stereotypes and promoting cosplay for a wider audience?  Given that so many of our competitors are trying to make careers out of this not just as cosplayers but as prop and costume makers I'd think they'd want to maximize their potential buyers circle.  You don't do that by saying who can and can't pretend to be a particular character for fun. You do that by making a wide range of sizes or opening up the custom made aspect but you also do that by speaking up for every geek's right to embody their favorite characters without cruelty.

Episode three seemed to happen in a vacuum with only a few of our previous competitors showing up for Megacon.  The episode fell back on the relationship between competitors and their supportive lovers and friends or in this case the potential break up of the Jessica and Holly team who have been friends for even longer than they've been business partners.  I suppose this relationship stuff is interesting but given that we don't know how the cast was chosen for this series I'm not as invested in them as individuals as I am in their approach to cosplay as potential career versus fun hobby, buying into the stereotypes of fandom versus expanding the audience and customers of cosplay.  On the up side I wasn't turn off or inflamed by this episode so I'll watch again and see if the bugaboo of sexism and sizism rears up again.