Shrill: Notes from a Loud Woman(33)

Here’s an excerpt from that totally reasonable and not-at-all-bigoted-because-fatphobia-isn’t-a-real-thing reaction to my article ([sic] throughout):


Is this who we want having influence in our country? Society must realize there are consequences to fat feminist beliefs. They range from the concrete (not fitting on airplanes) to creating a class of perennial female victims-seekers who have no notion of personality responsibility. Instead of focusing on self-improvement, they seek to blame everyone else for their problems, even innocent men on airplanes who have their property damaged from the canckled legs of deranged women.



On a different site, a commenter wrote: “Man FUCK HER. I wouldn’t want to stoop to feminist levels and wish bodily harm—castration/acid burning her face, etc.—on her, but if I did, then I’d say I wish that Buffalo Bill taught her a lesson or two.”

And another: “My god, what a putrid and deluded fucking cunt. I’m so glad that her health decisions that are none of my business will see her in an early grave. I’m sure when she loses her legs from diabetes or has a heart attack at forty due to lard clogged arteries that will be the patriarchy’s fault too. Bitch.”

Very astute, boys. I was probably just imagining the whole thing. I’m certainly not an adult human being who’s been successfully reading social cues for thirty years. And we certainly don’t have any evidence of general animosity toward fat people, particularly fat people on planes.

Before the day I didn’t fit, this conversation was largely an abstraction for me. My stance was the same as it is now (if people pay for a service, it’s the seller’s obligation to accommodate those people and provide the service they paid for), but I didn’t understand what that panicky, uncertain walk down the aisle actually felt like. How inhumane it is.

I’m telling you this not to garner sympathy or pity, or even to change your opinion about how airplanes should accommodate larger passengers. I’m just telling you, human to human, that life is complicated and fat people are trying to live. Same as you. Reasons I have had to fly within the past five years: For work (often). To see beloved friends get married. To speak to college students about rape culture and body image. To hold my father’s hand while he died. I’m sorry, but I’m not constraining and rearranging my life just because no one cares enough to make flying accessible to all bodies.

Airlines have no incentive to fix this problem until we, collectively, as a society, demand it. We don’t insist on a solution because it’s still culturally acceptable to be cruel to fat people. When even pointing out the problem—saying, “my body does not fit in these seats that I pay for”—returns nothing but abuse and scorn, how can we ever expect that problem to be addressed? The real issue here isn’t money, it’s bigotry. We don’t care about fat people because it is okay not to care about them, and we don’t take care of them because we think they don’t deserve care.

It’s the same lack of care that sees fat people dying from substandard medical attention, being hired at lower rates and convicted at higher ones, and being accused of child abuse for feeding their children as best they can.

You can’t fix a problem by targeting its victims. Even if you hate fat people with all your heart, if you actually want to get us out of “your” armrest space, defending our humanity is the only pragmatic solution. Because no matter how magnificently you resent them, you cannot turn a fat person into a thin person in time for the final boarding call (nor a full bladder into an empty one, nor a crying baby into a baked potato). The only answer is to decide we’re worth helping.





Chuckletown, USA, Population: Jokes


For my junior year English requirement in high school, I took a class called “Autobiography,” because it was taught by my favorite teacher. I didn’t have anything remotely noteworthy to say about myself (Today after Basketball I Tried Red Powerade Instead of Blue Powerade but I Think I’ll Switch Back Tomorrow, I Don’t Know, I Am Also Considering Mandarin Blast: A Life, by Lindy West), nor was I particularly interested, at the time, in reading the memoirs of others (I Read This Entire Book about Florence Griffith Joyner and It Did Not Contain a Single Gryphon, Chimera, or Riddling Sphinx, BOOOOOOOO: A Life, by Lindy West). My friends and I signed up for all of Ms. Harper’s classes religiously, though, so “Autobiography” it was.

Ms. Harper was one of those young, cool teachers who understood jokes and wore normal clothes, and you could tell she still had a social life and probably went to bar trivia and maybe even a Tori Amos concert once in a while for a fun gals’ night. We were mildly infatuated with her because she was a relatable human being in the alienating, chaotic landscape of public high school—unlike, say, the primordial Spanish teacher who seemed to be carved out of desk, whose favorite lesson plan was to turn on Lambada: The Forbidden Dance* and doze off. Ms. Harper was the kind of baby-showers-and-brunch friend I imagined myself having mimosas with when I was, like, thirty-two. (Coincidentally, I ran into Ms. Harper at a movie theater when I was thirty-two, moved to giddily embrace her, and she did not remember me. FINE. IT’S FINE.)

For the final exam, we were supposed to make a presentation, ten or fifteen minutes long, about anything we wanted. Any hobby or interest that we felt made us unique—whatever our thing was. One guy showed us his scuba gear and talked about why he liked scuba diving. (I don’t remember, but “fish,” probably?) A quiet, unassuming dude brought in a massive easel, on which he displayed his painstakingly detailed step-by-step guide to “Gettin’ Dipped,” which was a kind of proto–Tom Haverford swagger manual (“Step One: Get Money”). The band kids showed off their spit valves, and the outdoor ed kids bragged about their search and rescue pagers and someone served pupusas that she made with her mom.