maybe my ass is angry at you, too.
Apr. 12th, 2006 09:01 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
keryxWhile at the conference, at least 5 people said things to me that made it obvious they equated bellydance with sexuality and that this was bad. It disappointed me, even though I kindof understand. The juxtaposition of the tribal style with drag performance was intriguing - you know, two different takes on variously sized bodies being comfortable, present and powerful. And also two ways of performing gender. I'm thinking we need drag kings in every show we do from now on, personally - to bring home the gender/body thing. That, or leaflets.
Yes, in my mind, drag kings are apparently equivalent to leaflets.
There is a place between obsession and apathy, and there is also a place, whatever your feelings about sex work/porn/objectification, between dissociation from the body and hypersexualization or commodification of that. You can show and celebrate your body without selling it (assuming selling it is even negative). I like to think that the Friday night show was shining a flashlight down a dark wooded path of approaching the body from the body. This is my contribution to the movement, the area I can illuminate - function as a vehicle for defining form and defying external ideas of form.
It's a route, you know? It's what![[livejournal.com profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/external/lj-userinfo.gif)
mermeydele touched on (or rather touched on someone else touching on) - the idea of propriaception, the feeling of the body in space, understanding from inside and out, as a vehicle for empowerment or distance from stereotype and prejudice. Our cultural fixation on the fat body tends towards dissociation of all bodies as a vessel you inhabit, as not-you. The route I took to my political stance was all about integrating [I want to live! Where soul meets body!] from the physical to the political to the personal.
So. I feel the same way about the porn v. bellydance/drag/naked strap-on pictures in a fat zine (heh, the coining of a new phrase "rock on with your cock on" being inspired by that), except somewhat complicatedly. I believe these three things are all vehicles of travelling inward and outward, of using the body as passage. They have the power to transform individuals.
I also think, though, that as activists - and particularly as largely women activists who are, in part, fighting against anyone's attempt to treat us only as unacceptable bodies - it's easy to slip into trying to justify our acceptability rather than challenging the idea that the (particularly female) body and appearance are central. There's a lot of "pride in your body" and "fat is beautiful" rhetoric surrounding fat acceptance and not a lot of questioning about why I have to be proud and beautiful. The rhetoric of bellydance is very similar - and complicated by some weird exoticism, even in the tribal style that's so distant from actual North African culture. Both start from the cultural assumption that beauty is even important.
And images of people having sex are still pornography by most definitions, attached to whatever your feelings about that may be - and those feelings probably have a fair amount to do with what's 'hot' or defined as attractive in whatever way you subscribe to. Stef's treatment of what I think most people would call porn through an art history lens intrigued me, because I'm accustomed to the feminist discussion of is/is not porn (and is/is not damaging/objectifying/just plain bad). I like the idea of at least attempting to place radical fat porn in a cultural context as political art (it would also be interesting to see it critiqued as art), but a complete view of political art - to me - means evaluating its politics. One aspect of the politics of Fat Girl and Size Queen is that, because of its medium, any political or body-reclaiming message it conveys is inaccessible to members of the audience whose associations with mainstream pornography are overwhelmingly negative.
I said already that I was surprised no one reacted that way to Stef's presentation. I was also a little disappointed, not because I wanted to get into another passionate porn debate, but because I think that might have brought out the important idea that the fat movement shouldn't just reclaim the beauty of the fat body [leaving aside the legislative aims of ending discrimination for the moment] but also question why fat people's defiance of a physical ideal pisses people off so much. Why are fat bodies so offensive? Why is fat queer porn political or shocking? Why are people so angry at my ass?
And I'm not rhetorical about that "why"; I think it's something we (including those outside the fat movement) need to talk about.
[Editor's note: I should warn y'all that this is probably one of many long and ranty posts gazing at the navel of fat. I have several tiny pages of cryptic note sentences, and every sentence is the germ for a post like this.]
Yes, in my mind, drag kings are apparently equivalent to leaflets.
There is a place between obsession and apathy, and there is also a place, whatever your feelings about sex work/porn/objectification, between dissociation from the body and hypersexualization or commodification of that. You can show and celebrate your body without selling it (assuming selling it is even negative). I like to think that the Friday night show was shining a flashlight down a dark wooded path of approaching the body from the body. This is my contribution to the movement, the area I can illuminate - function as a vehicle for defining form and defying external ideas of form.
It's a route, you know? It's what
mermeydele touched on (or rather touched on someone else touching on) - the idea of propriaception, the feeling of the body in space, understanding from inside and out, as a vehicle for empowerment or distance from stereotype and prejudice. Our cultural fixation on the fat body tends towards dissociation of all bodies as a vessel you inhabit, as not-you. The route I took to my political stance was all about integrating [I want to live! Where soul meets body!] from the physical to the political to the personal. So. I feel the same way about the porn v. bellydance/drag/naked strap-on pictures in a fat zine (heh, the coining of a new phrase "rock on with your cock on" being inspired by that), except somewhat complicatedly. I believe these three things are all vehicles of travelling inward and outward, of using the body as passage. They have the power to transform individuals.
I also think, though, that as activists - and particularly as largely women activists who are, in part, fighting against anyone's attempt to treat us only as unacceptable bodies - it's easy to slip into trying to justify our acceptability rather than challenging the idea that the (particularly female) body and appearance are central. There's a lot of "pride in your body" and "fat is beautiful" rhetoric surrounding fat acceptance and not a lot of questioning about why I have to be proud and beautiful. The rhetoric of bellydance is very similar - and complicated by some weird exoticism, even in the tribal style that's so distant from actual North African culture. Both start from the cultural assumption that beauty is even important.
And images of people having sex are still pornography by most definitions, attached to whatever your feelings about that may be - and those feelings probably have a fair amount to do with what's 'hot' or defined as attractive in whatever way you subscribe to. Stef's treatment of what I think most people would call porn through an art history lens intrigued me, because I'm accustomed to the feminist discussion of is/is not porn (and is/is not damaging/objectifying/just plain bad). I like the idea of at least attempting to place radical fat porn in a cultural context as political art (it would also be interesting to see it critiqued as art), but a complete view of political art - to me - means evaluating its politics. One aspect of the politics of Fat Girl and Size Queen is that, because of its medium, any political or body-reclaiming message it conveys is inaccessible to members of the audience whose associations with mainstream pornography are overwhelmingly negative.
I said already that I was surprised no one reacted that way to Stef's presentation. I was also a little disappointed, not because I wanted to get into another passionate porn debate, but because I think that might have brought out the important idea that the fat movement shouldn't just reclaim the beauty of the fat body [leaving aside the legislative aims of ending discrimination for the moment] but also question why fat people's defiance of a physical ideal pisses people off so much. Why are fat bodies so offensive? Why is fat queer porn political or shocking? Why are people so angry at my ass?
And I'm not rhetorical about that "why"; I think it's something we (including those outside the fat movement) need to talk about.
[Editor's note: I should warn y'all that this is probably one of many long and ranty posts gazing at the navel of fat. I have several tiny pages of cryptic note sentences, and every sentence is the germ for a post like this.]
![[identity profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/openid.png){kind=small}
(no subject)
Date: 2006-04-12 07:35 am (UTC)I asked my "When do I get to be ugly?" question over at Laurie Toby Edison's and got a level of cluelessness in return that made me kinda angry and kinda sad.
You've been cited over there... so I hope she sees this post, because you hit the nail on the head, whereas I maybe ought to be kept away from hammers. :)
(no subject)
Date: 2006-04-12 12:35 pm (UTC)I made a comment myself, fwiw.
(no subject)
Date: 2006-04-12 08:17 am (UTC)Right on. It still amazes me that this never occurs to the vast majority of people I know.
Not that I don't ever forget to ask those questions when it comes to myself.
(no subject)
Date: 2006-04-12 12:36 pm (UTC)