 Hello there. It's Thursday at noon. I know it is. Do you remember our arrangement? Thursdays at noon on CFUV. Are you ready to get started? What do you have in mind? What I want to do now is called First Person Plural. You make it sound excessively attractive. That's what I have in mind. Jennifer Portnick loves aerobics. 38-year-old San Francisco resident stood out in her Jazzercise class. Performing routines so well, her instructor asked her to audition for a position with the company. Portnick did so, but was not initially accepted by Jazzercise as an instructor. It wasn't her skill, her stamina, her techniques, her sense of rhythm, or her talent that kept her from acceptance. It was how she looked. At 240 pounds, the 5'8", Portnick was told by Jazzercise that she should go on a diet and aim for a, quote, more fit appearance, close quote. If she lost the required weight in six months, she could work for Jazzercise. Portnick told Jazzercise that such a goal was unrealistic. Then she did not take no for an answer. In September of 2001, Portnick filed a complaint with San Francisco's Human Rights Commission, alleging a violation of the city's, quote, fat and short, close quote, provision that bans discrimination based on size. What has followed has been a flurry of debates in the press and international boundaries about the truth of the fatness-fitness dichotomy. Can one be fat and fit? On May 6, 2002, International No Diet Day, Portnick's attorney, Sandra Sauvane, announced that Portnick and Jazzercise had reached a satisfactory agreement with the Human Rights Commission acting as mediator. The provisions of the agreement are not made public, and the press has released a statement that they have abandoned their, quote, fit appearance, close quote requirement, stating, quote, recent studies document that it may be possible for people of varying weights to be fit. Jazzercise has determined that the value of fit appearance as a standard is debatable, close quote. This arbitration and its controversy has come at a time when fatness is being hailed as the leading health concern in Western countries such as the United States, Canada, Great Britain, and Australia. Research about the effects of fatness on health remains controversial and incomplete, but mainstream media and government agencies encouraged by diet companies, pharmaceutical companies, and bariatric physicians are painting a dismal picture. The mainstream media does not report studies about weight not being a factor in health, such as a 2000 study by Blair indicating it is a lack of exercise that leads to the traditional problems associated with fatness and that these health problems exist in thin people who do not exercise at the same rates as fat people who do not exercise. Nor does the mainstream media report about the uselessness of dieting, such as a 1999 study by Heatherton and Tickle, who report that chronic dieting actually leads to large and more efficient fat storage. Nor does the mainstream media report about the problems with dieting, such as Innsberger's study which reported that dieting and weight loss not only did not have long-term effects on such diseases as hypertension and type 2 diabetes, but that it led to more serious health problems, especially when the dieting includes and dieting included drugs. While these research stories get buried or not reported at all, fat bashing is back in vogue. Recently, a University of Central Florida school newspaper ran a column written by a restaurant hostess who called for the banning of fat people from public places because she found them too gross to watch while they ate. Both Forbes Magazine and Global Globe ran columns quote exposing close quote supposed costs of fatness to society, relying upon the controversial research statistics cited by mainstream news sources and faulty logic to conclude that quote passive fat close quote meant to parallel passive smoking was endangering everyone's health. Movies like Shallow Howl and Big Mama's House rely upon worn out stereotypes of fat people for lame sight gags. Even debates about Portnick's specific case have deteriorated into fat bashing. CNN's Crossfire couldn't find anyone better than US shock jock Neil Burtz to take up jazzercise's position in a so called debate that featured Burtz calling Portnick a quote lard butt close quote and suggesting that hiring her would be like a cosmetic company hiring a woman whose quote face looks like it caught fire and they put it out with a fork close quote. The stigma of being fat has increased in the latter half of the 20th century as thinness became the beauty icon of the time and it looks like the 21st century is going in full gear towards demonizing fatness even while most of us are getting fatter. A number of people have made connections between these impossible standards of beauty and women's rights eating disorders and discrimination based upon appearance. Human and civil rights laws do not explicitly protect fat people in all but a few places in the western world. Michigan San Francisco Seattle Santa Cruz California and Washington DC have laws banning women explicitly. Size is not mentioned in the Canadian Charter or the Canadian Human Rights Act. In British Columbia in March 2000 Dionne Rogel won a discrimination suit before the BC Human Rights Commission stating that he had been turned down for a job because of his size. However, like American with Disabilities Act cases in the US Rogel won on the basis of protection for the disabled not on the basis of how he looked. This is a mixed victory among fat activists because they maintain that fat is not always disabling. This brings us back to Jennifer Portnick's story. You can read about her philosophy on the net at www.feelinggoodfitness.com She took time to talk to us when she was in San Francisco home. Basically, your Jazzercise instructor said, wow, you really know how to do this and started the paperwork. She came to me and said, yes, wow, you really know how to do this and I also think she said to me that I would be good for her business because I would attract a clientele that she doesn't already have so as a result of that I started working out six days a week and I just was getting in the best shape and I was like, well, but you are going to be great. You are going to be fabulous but you need to work on your fit appearance and then I was prescribed dietary changes and various other things I needed to do that had nothing to do with my strength or endurance or skill level. Did you attempt any of these things? Did you try to comply with them? I did not. I responded to the district manager and I thanked her for her interest and her support that it would be unrealistic of me to commit that I would work to change my body by January 1st or anytime. Were you aware of the law in San Francisco when you received this letter or is this stuff that you learned about in the last year? I vaguely knew in the back of my mind that something had happened related to fat in the city of San Francisco but I wasn't clear on the law. First of all, I didn't know for sure that there was one and secondly, that it would apply to me, I had no idea. Well, I went to a meeting of size-accepting professionals here in the Bay Area. We call ourselves the Think Tank. One of the people at the meeting was Sandra Salovey who is, as far as we know, the only attorney in the country or maybe in the world who practices weight-based discrimination law and she heard my story and pulled me aside and said, Jennifer, I don't know if you know this but there is a law recently passed in the city of San Francisco that dismissed the possibility of taking some sort of action which at that time I was just going to let it go, honestly. So the way that you found out about this information and met the attorney who eventually helped you fight this was because you were involved, you said at Think Tank, is this a regular meeting that you have? It is a group that formed in the Bay Area and some of the lead and founding members are people like Pat Lyons and the Health at Any Size movement and other people who do size acceptance full-time like Marilyn Juan and Sandra Salovey and their nutritionists and therapists and all kinds of different people who make this a mission in their everyday lives. So this network was a size acceptance network? Yes, and it was in place and I happened to call Pat Lyons who had written an article on working with the large size in a study guide that I had been given and I burst into tears on the phone and we talked for a long time and she said, you should come to this meeting and it was one of the very best things I've ever done. So you met Sandra and you decided to pursue the complaint? I did. It wasn't an easy decision to pursue it. I talked about it with Sandra and I talked about it with my husband and my family. You always have to weigh if the potential positive outcome worth what is going to certainly be the impact on my life. So I did. I thought about it for a while and I decided that I did think that it was worth pursuing and that's exactly what I did. What were some of the negatives about pursuing it that you anticipated? Well, being called fat in public not something I normally desire to do but certainly it has happened as a result of this. I didn't want time and attention to be taken away from very important relationships in my life, whether it be my husband, my friends, my family. I didn't want to be seen as someone who is a rabble rouser because I don't know if you know this I'm from the south and we like everybody to get along. And so for me this was really stepping outside of my cultural box. I knew when I took this on that everyone was not going to be happy. I hopefully was driven by the thought that there could be some positive change. Yes. Have you experienced some negative vibes? Some. It's by far not the predominant response. People spot me on the street and say, go girl, congratulations. That's 90% of what I hear but there is the element of for example I was talked about on Crossfire and John was on one side and the radio shock on the other said I was a large butt and there is film of me and he is saying what I would have purchased if he were following me around during a grocery store trip. Things like that that seem like personal attacks rather than about the issues. He was trying to if I understand his positions is trying to upset people to the point of taking a position rather than really talking about the issues. Tell me about your journey to self acceptance and size acceptance in your life. Is this something you have worked on for a long time? I never thought of it as size acceptance. I started dieting as a small child. I have always perceived myself to be a fat person even when in high school I weighed 145 pounds and I thought that was huge. I started dieting as a small child that was 9 and over the years I did all kinds of things whether it be diet pills. I took them all, not at one time but I have done all the diet pills and various diets and worked with nutritionists and all with the goal of somehow changing my size. It was about the time that I got married in 1998 and I don't think that is a coincidence. I think that having a loving supportive amazing partner as I have in my husband and to say the things that I have been doing and investing in enormous amount of energy are not effective. Secondly, they are degrading to me and to anyone else I feel who is made to feel that somehow they have to change themselves to fit into society's standard of what is okay. That was about five years ago that I stopped dieting. I have never been somebody who as I say I am not a rabble rouser but I felt this is just you don't have to be a rat in a psychology experiment to get that this is not effective. In fact I think it is counterproductive. My own personal experience with dieting has been that not only at the end of the diet did I gain back everything but my health was a little worse for the wear as well. I think that you came to your conclusion probably about ten years before I did in terms of age but I do understand would you agree with me that there is a lot of pressure in society on women to do this? Oh my God. Pressure. It's pervasive. It's the Weight Watchers meeting that happened on the hallway where my office is. It's the comments that people make in a very innocent way. Many of them. You look great. You've lost weight. When I first became aware of the message in that comment I would say to anyone who from my point of view I didn't foist it on anyone but if someone asked me I would say you know that really suggests that first of all I didn't look so great before and secondly that somehow being slimmer is the only way that I can look more attractive and I reject that. The interesting thing is you don't know by looking at someone how they relate to this issue and I've heard more slim people and average and larger sized people say to me oh my gosh this means so much to me to hear this. Tell me a little bit about how you came to think of aerobics and thinking of aerobics more than just weight loss terms. I've been doing aerobics for 15 years. I started in my early 20s and to me it was always fun. I felt like I didn't look like everybody else in the class and some classes I felt more comfortable in than others but I was continually lured in by the mix of music and motion and to me that was just the most appealing combination. I didn't feel many times that I was even exercising and when Christy who was my instructor a year ago when she approached me I thought you know this is an opportunity to make fitness appealing and hopefully non-threatening and non-judgemental for people like me and like me doesn't mean necessarily my size but people who feel that somehow they have been left out of the fitness industry and the best society in general and they want to feel good in their bodies and feel accepted and comfortable for who they are and that's what I try to offer in my classes. My own experience with Jazzercise was nearly the back row. I remember feeling extremely embarrassed to have anybody standing behind me while I did it and the back row was made up. I mean I have a good rhythm. I enjoyed dancing but the back row was made up of either bigger women or women who had no rhythm and we would all just kind of cower in the back row and hope nobody paid attention to us and when you have a class I've heard people from your classes who I also talked to them quite a bit talk about how much fun it is you have a certain philosophy about doing the class tell me a little bit about it. Yeah well I mean there are a couple things that I really operate. One is that I make myself very accessible to people in the class before and after and in between. I don't set myself up as the person on the stage who is better at doing all these things than you will ever be. I'm very communal with my class and I communicate with them quite a bit by email I take musical requests and I listen to their comments and I consider us a community as much as anything else. What's different is I don't ever speak of of course weight loss but also of you know somehow altering or removing body parts as Marilyn one would say I like my thighs I don't want to get rid of them I don't want anybody to get rid of their thighs either I might like if they got stronger and if they felt more energetic and you know to me when someone comes to me and says Jennifer I didn't feel like taking a nap today I really I got through my whole day and I felt really good and I was like oh great okay we're a match made in heaven and then the other thing is I don't push people to go past what is their I don't want to say comfort zone I like to say mild discomfort is okay pain is not okay if you are in pain whatever you are doing please stop and take breaks people are doing the best that they can I don't think that my hollering and saying push harder is encouraged when they can be comfortable doing what is within their zone and know that they're not being judged because of it whatever that may be do you know any of the history of the San Francisco well I know a little bit of it I know that there was I believe about two years ago there was an ad campaign by a major health club in this country and on the billboard as part of the ad campaign it said when they come they'll eat the fat ones they either eat or take the fat ones first oh my god and this was not well received in the city of San Francisco in particular and the outrage that was generated caused Maryland to lead a demonstration of people doing aerobics in front of city hall and that was part of the momentum that led to the law being drafted and then passed have you decided to go ahead and become a jazzercise instructor you know I'm not going to reapply and that's not a comment on their program at all I applaud them for what they have done I think it was very forward thinking thing to do and I support them in their business and I hope that I'll get to work a jazzercise class into my schedule and I go as a participant but I discovered when I started doing my own classes back in January that first of all I like creating choreography and I like doing my own music and also I feel that I've created something of a niche that is rather unique to me and I'm going to continue to do that but I wish all the jazzercise folks the very best I really appreciate you being willing to do this Patty it's a pleasure I'm an admirer of yours and I'm just delighted we had a chance to talk I am too well you take care and I do appreciate it your fee 101.9 FM Victoria why are we even discussing fat i.e. as opposed to health why we being the society why are we discussing fat as if it were given that we could be discussing health instead issue two if we can see that health is an issue and it is why would we then discuss fat given that health is an issue why would we discuss it is it an opposition or the second makes it more of a nest in design I think is the term does anyone really think that heroin chic is healthy for instance there's lots of studies that have shown that people who are very very thin and old age are more frail because if you don't have a certain amount of body fat by the time that you begin to have illnesses that are associated with old age if you don't have the energy your immune system doesn't have enough energy to fight it off so question one boils down to why are we discussing fat as opposed to health and question two boils down to given that we're discussing health why are we discussing fat at all and I've never heard a satisfactory answer to either one of those questions well I think there's a capitalist answer to it really that's hard to believe okay well there's a concept of a sociologist which is what my specialty training was in the idea behind the social construction of diseases is that some diseases end up not being called diseases at all they get changed into something else through the social negotiation of what they are or what they are not they get redefined and reconstructed with each diagnosis they get redefined and reconstructed with each study that comes out they get redefined and reconstructed with each support of a group that shows up and starts saying this is real it gets negotiated out in public discourse between different interested parties all the time and some things that we have called diseases in the past are no longer thought of as diseases now for instance in the 19th century there was a disease called dropsy and dropsy had symptoms and among the symptoms was that you drop things that you couldn't hang on to things that you were letting them fall down and it was considered a disease that was mostly contracted I don't know whether the contractors are right but affected women and it was a disease that had something to do with the menstrual cycle and it was effectively defined as demonstrating that women didn't have any brain power I think that there is a very good possibility that obesity is going to be one of those things that falls by the wayside eventually that obesity is a constructed disease that really is not quite doesn't quite fit the medical model and I know how radical that statement is right now there are a lot of people with a lot invested in fatness being a disease called obesity and it equals an expansion of power in the medical system anything that can become medicalized extends medical power in society and the extension of medical power in both Canada and the United States though in different with different routes equals more money to certain people I mean in the United States it means probably a lot more money than it does in Canada but in either direction it means more money it means more money going into the healthcare industry more created need yes now that doesn't mean that it isn't valid sometimes let's not suggest here that nothing should be medicalized but we can suggest and there is ample historic context to this suggestion that a lot of things get medicalized that have no business being medicalized phrenology comes to mind right now I wanted to be a phrenologist when I was in high school for those people who don't know what a phrenology is why don't you explain it well for those people who don't know what sarcasm is I've just used it in case you're thinking I hope he isn't serious about that phrenology is basically studying phenotypes there's a little way around it it's phenotype without regard for anything else thus one has the criminal phenotype and various others one studies facial features especially to determine what sort of personality lies behind them and this has a very racist history yeah this was used to prove although it has never become as prominent again as it was in the 19th century this has been used to prove that people of color are stupid it's been used to prove that people of color are more promiscuous when you think about it talking about body size is a type of phrenology we really are identifying a phenotype here and we're saying a fat body and a fat body is filled in the blank when in fact there's a wide variety of fat bodies with a wide variety of health issues not to mention a wide variety of intellectual levels a wide variety of talents a wide variety of personalities and so forth and yet fat prejudice suggests that all fat people are dumb all fat people are ugly all fat people are sickly and it brings out the notion of fat as assigned i.e. not self identified or negotiated social role you can't opt out just by telling people I'm not fat they're going to say oh yeah you are you're fat we know all about the logical implications of assigned social roles I don't think the assigned social role is fat I think the assigned social role is obese being fat is an adjective brown eyes or flaxen hair there are bodies that are fatter than other bodies but what makes it a social role and what medicalizes it is the word obese or overweight overweight but what makes it a social role is when you point to it and you say because they are large they are also this it's not a social role to have dark skin I would say that it's assigned suffices I would say that it is an assigned role suffices that is not negotiated it's not self identification if you can assign social roles you can assign anything else as well you can assign quote objective close quote behavior characteristics to that person you can assign additional social roles to them based on the quote logical implications close quote of the assigned social role you can do just about anything at that point the assignation is what makes that clear who is the you in this I'm getting confused whoever does the assignment of the social role it can be one person, it can be hierarchical or it can be collaborative it can be everybody but the fat kid standing around calling them names on the playground that's the case of the latter the hierarchical is easy enough to visualize and I will bore you with repeating my description of what's wrong with hierarchies here I deliberately put it in passive voice because for once I don't think the object is the issue but not in the specific case it can be one person or one hierarchical connection of people or it can be something that everyone just decides one day I'd say indeed the latter is more robust than the former for indeed the former exists only with the consensus of the latter when Goffman talks about stigma he is suggesting that there are physical attributes of people that have social meanings and that those social meanings are powerful clues for the ways in which people decide to treat you if you have a certain physical attribute that has a negative social meaning to it other people pick up on that queue and they will treat you in negative ways and because they treat you in those negative ways you start having a sense of self that is negative you are treated poorly and you begin to internalize that poor treatment if you're a man with long hair you're going to get beaten up more often than a man with short hair that starts the world yes and after a while you're going to start internalizing that you're going to interpret that as a part of yourself because you because the factors are confounded you can't quote no close quote or you don't understand the extent to which is because of the social symbol therefore you have to come up with various ways to cope with this negativity that's going on in your social relationships and there are lots of ways in which people cope as people start to compensate that often becomes part of the stigma there is a kind of stigmatization about exercising in public and so fat people tend to try not to be out in public riding a bike or running or walking or whatever because they will get teased or given grief about it and so therefore they become inactive and then everybody points at them and says look at that, that person's inactive and when I said a science social role I meant that I didn't mean that they pass out name tags and say okay you're on the blue team this week the red team the way they pass out the temporary jerseys, the pennies I think they're called a phys-ed when you're playing when you're playing soccer if you're a fat person now riding a bike so that cold people tease you and you're less likely to ride a bike in the future which in turn carries into the stigmatization that fat people don't ride bikes so it becomes a self fulfilling prophecy the fat people being jolly it's not because they are jolly in some metaphysical way in some metaphysical sense of the word it's because they get pressured into playing the jolly role because people think they're jolly it's the agency of the other right, if you laugh at yourself first it diffuses the situation where other people will laugh at you so making fun of your own stigma is a way of diffusing the painful stigma of others sometimes the only way that is not grounded metaphysically people are jolly although it may be generally valid although I don't think it is it does not mean that it's universally valid you can call it scapegoating if you like there are other names for it but the mechanisms have been similar throughout history sometimes that sort of thing is deliberate sometimes someone says let's go out and really stick it to those guys more often than not it's just intellectual sloppiness it's people who refuse to take a look at what they're doing and don't really care what the implications are if they're refusing to look at what they're doing it's repeating something often times I mean we keep coming back we might not have subtitled this show first person plural in examination of memes but it does it becomes a mean that gets repeated and fat is unhealthy is a meme right now yes it is it's a very strong meme I mean it's amazing to me how much people cling to that and what rights it gives them in conversation they know that fat people need to be corrected and since they know that they know it's okay for them personally to do so I think it's not even a mind thing sometimes I think it's a compassion thing oh maybe I should say something they never look at the basic premise is that it yes they never look at it whether it's compassionate or controlling they think of it in terms of helping someone out people have a tendency to believe that they are doing something nice for the fat person by saying something to them not that there aren't people who are mean but both of these kind of things come from the same misconception about what fat is and what it isn't and what the fat person is and isn't and they both have the same effect of stigmatization even though they're motivated by two different things I mean you have the bully who picks on people because of their weight but you also have the very well-meaning people who walk up and offer diet tips and so forth as if this person has never seen a mirror I have another theory about why people correct people who are fat I think that body issues are the most emotional of all we need to feel good about our bodies in order to feel good about ourselves that if we're not comfortable in our own skins we have a hard time being comfortable with the world around us and we are taught very young to not be comfortable with our bodies and I think that the whole dieting issue taps into that it is a way of trying to control who we are in order to make ourselves more socially acceptable to others in order to feel comfortable in our skin people are not willing to examine it they're afraid to examine it if they examine it it becomes almost physically painful to think about bodies in socially unacceptable ways so the fat person reminds us that we are flesh and blood after all they prod our memory and make it difficult for us to ignore the physical aspects of our own being and a fat person who's comfortable in their body is even more disturbing similarly I would say with sexuality that we try to deny our sexuality but have you that other people have is trying to deny our sexuality and the person with an eye toward the sensuous in dressing provoke in us the knowledge that this is not who we are that we are not disjointed cerebral creatures that we're physical creatures if you caught us doing not bleed and so forth and that reminder makes us angry at them for throwing us off which would explain why women have been comfortable with their sexuality women have been called all sorts of nasty names who display their sexuality one way or the other instead of trying to conceal it you might make a similar argument for men I had a class in a college and the professor invited the homosexuals to come speak to us I'm not kidding you and two of them showed up one man one woman and one of them opined that one of the things that the anti homosexual crowd displayed was a sort of disdain for sexuality in general we like to think in western society that we are more brain than we are body and I think that being fat and having a fat person who is comfortable taps into those to that body yeah I like to raise the issue of stigmatization of people who marry fat people rarely does anyone say anything directly to me about your weight it's very rare that it happens but we have the feeling that there are people who think less of me because I'm married to you because you're fat I can't tell you in no specific case do I have enough to up to press this but after about 100 different incidents or little half noticed incidents one begins to suspect a pattern that's the thing about prejudice you never really know in the specific case unless someone comes right out and says it did you ever play ghost as a kid if you talk to a ghost you become a ghost well they did that with communism in the 50s you talk to a communist you must be a communist likewise for homosexuals I would say just after that if you're talking with a homosexual then you must be one too if you have the same sex as them if you have the other sex then there are additional interesting appellations they apply to you and it's with whom you associate that largely determines how do I put it that's the social symbol as well the cool kids not wanting to be seen with the geeks because quote people close quote I think that their geeks do instead of cool people right I think that applies in a lot of areas I wonder if fatism hasn't reared its ugly head in this area as well as the others you mentioned I'm sure that it has one doesn't like to ever generalize but is it fair to say that fat people have to be brave sometimes yes I think so well I think you do a good job of being brave being fat means being hated the dictionary of sociology defines stigma as quote any physical or social attribute or sign that so devalues an actor's social identity as to disqualify him from full social acceptance different applications follow for the stigmatized person according to whether the stigma is visible the individual is obviously discredited or hidden the individual is potentially discreditable the latter allows a greater number of options to the stigmatized person to manage his or her stigma but in both cases the actor's problems lie in finding a means of limiting or even turning to some advantage the damaging effects of the stigma close quote Garfman the social psychologist who wrote extensively about stigma writes that stigmas allow people to think of others as less than human quote the attitudes we normals have toward a person with a stigma and the actions we take in regard to him are well known since these responses are what nevolent social action is designed to soften and ameliorate by definition of course we believe the person with a stigma is not quite human close quote fatness is one such stigma in the western world it is a marking that allows people to poke fun at the fat person to be mean to the fat person without much misgiving to give the fat person paternalistic and unsolicited advice and to regard the fat person as lazy, ugly or stupid fat stigmatization leads to discrimination in jobs, in medicine and in the marketplace many fat people feel shame some fat people find ways to cope with the shame goffman writes quote during mixed contacts the stigmatized individual is likely to feel like he is on having to be self-conscious and calculating about the impression he is making to a degree and in areas of conduct which he assumes others are not the stigmatized individual is likely to feel that the usual scheme of interpretation from everyday events has been undermined his minor accomplishments, he feels may be assessed as signs of remarkable and noteworthy capacities in the circumstance persons who have a particular stigma tend to have similar learning experiences regarding their plight and similar changes in conception of self a similar moral career that is both cause and effect of commitment to a similar sequence of personal adjustments close quote fat people aren't supposed to talk about fat until after they have lost the weight before and after before when I was a child they told me I was only a girl I talked like a child too much they said shut up I thought like a child why why why why I reasoned like a child it must be me I'm not enough when I became a woman a good girl I put childish things behind me and knew my place now we see through a glass darkly for I am lost even to my own reflection but then we shall see face to face how will I reclaim my image and now these three childlike things remain faith in who I am hope in who I can become love the most childlike thing of all but the greatest of these is love I learned to love me again and I did not express angers my black woman's anger is a molten pond at the core of me my most fiercely guarded secret I know how much of my life is a power-feeling woman is laced through with this net of rage how to train that anger with accuracy rather than deny it has been one of the major tasks of my life close quote come a time when you won't even be ashamed if you are fat Frank Zappa I was 16 in 1969 my family had moved from Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania to Wheaton Marrow there were hippies in my school major culture shock I heard all the early hippie revolution feminist movement ideals with an open and excited heart and I believed shaving my armpits and legs I stopped spending an hour every morning putting on makeup and I stopped dieting I cast off the patriarchy and the establishment and I believed in the Woodstock nation my early decisions to accept my body were political and hopeful the mechanics of living in a world not quite keeping up with those ideals were awkward as a fat person I can feel invisible walking through the world at the same time I can feel like a target who can at any time inadvertently walk into a shooting range I learned how to move through the streets ignoring stairs and jeers I lived and clenched strange people on the street shooting slurs at me seemed inevitable on the culture I experienced them with as much distance as I could sustain but people whose politics or spiritual pursuits I respected asked me well intended inept questions about when was I going to lose the weight or didn't I think it would be easier to love if I lost the weight or although they loved me for who I was and didn't mind if I was fat they often worried about my health didn't I want the healthy never getting that being fat was a part of who I am not separate from everything else that influenced my awareness or experience and not necessarily a bad thing the dismissive quality of these conversations escaped these friends since they so unconsciously accepted the paradigm of that is ugly that is bad, that is wrong all the while trying to expand their awareness lose their preconceptions grow into authentic original minded big souls I was in a new age hippy self-help group once charming them with my humor a man decided to confront me about my weight his confront was in the form of telling me that he was not attracted to me suddenly I felt like I was in a sports bar I went from affable entertaining sweet loving earnest into flame I could feel myself becoming a torch I was contempt, murderous enraged I was completely uncomfortable with the feeling it seemed out of context with the proposed spiritual meter of the day my attention about losing the weight was that it happened as a natural function of my quest for wholeness I have lost and gained weight relative to changes in lifestyle but I have never been that this is my body to live in this body requires a posture I have to stand firm in my self-acceptance sometimes it is a peaceful stance but more often I burn I use the outreach I feel over anyone's disapproval of anything I am to fuel me energetically especially in those conversations when I think I can have my guard down and I am taken by surprise I reject the idea that being thin is the body of realization or awareness or beauty it is an act of rejection not because I need to put energy into it but because I live in a culture so help-end when selling me into the slavery of clients to have to fight to accept something as elemental as the size of your past is crazy making the thought of it makes me want to explode I want to stand naked in the streets screaming take this shame that you try to feed me and swallow it back into where you created the misbegotten notion of what a body is for my preference would be grace my effort is toward a posture of dominion of owning all of who I am I am no longer uncomfortable with my rage but I occasionally grow weary of it I hear the joke by the late night talk show host I see the advertisement for the weight loss program presented with an angelical zeal I sit uncomfortable in the two small seats in the public space I hear the giggling jokes of teenagers on a corner I rage ticked off anger boils within me steaming, simmering too hot to touch I'm sure pressure is building like my mother's steam cooker it ticks off chattering erratically, rhythmatically I am afraid afraid of what? if I get angry I won't be loved do I destroy with my feelings? anxiety worry I don't know what to do do there must be something I can do I find myself these days not only feeling but insisting on my right to feel like brown rice in a slow cooker I fill my spaces in fluffy swells from hard grains I puff up to soft chewiness somehow I stopped regarding my pain as something to fight to avoid pressure built up like a steam cooker ticking off, chattering erratically I am mad no longer crazy but angry Audrey Lord also wrote quote the white fathers told us I think therefore I am the black mother within each of us the poet whispers in our dreams I feel therefore I can be free poetry coins the language to express and charter this revolutionary demand the implementation of that freedom close quote my sighs newspaper ink on my fingers mourning milky taste in my mouth from wet sidewalk to hot department store up the escalator I pass beds that aren't beds the lingerie department has gone white wicker unmentionable garden I search for my usual rack a sales lady ignores me wraps lacy purchases crisply pulls carbons from a credit card receipt she says we don't carry your size so I said my size does not need to be carried my size danced all night then swam in the gulf all morning I'm like you lady from marrow to eyelash but more so and I don't apologize for my size a special thank you to Tish Parmalin who wrote rage and recorded it for this show and to Debra Ile who wrote my size and allowed us to record it for this show before and after and ticked off were written and performed by Patty Thomas Tish's website is www.fatshadow.com Debra's website is www.iyall.com You have been listening to First Person Plural because how people get along with each other still matters First Person Plural is a show created for community radio by Carl Wilkerson and Dr. Patty Thomas to examine social and organizational issues Music for First Person Plural is performed, composed and produced by Carl Wilkerson except where noted For more information about First Person Plural Dr. Patty Thomas or Carl Wilkerson visit our website www.culturalconstructioncompany.com or email us at fpp at culturalconstructioncompany.com