political phases
Jul. 18th, 2006 11:17 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
keryxHave y'all noticed that I haven't been doing as much fat and gender blogging lately?
I mean, sure, I've been self-obsessed with the apartment hunting and work and my personal life, but it's still rare for me to go even a few days without talking much about size or sexism.
I think this is why: I'm entering (or maybe have already entered) a different phase in my relationship to fat. This occurred to me in the context of our dance troupe's many inherent politicizations - we are almost de facto fat, queer & disability advocates just because we're performers. I find myself lately thinking "I'm fat, so what?" when it's called out to me & not really identifying with Fat in the ways I'm accustomed to. In my head, I might even be living (temporarily, I imagine) in a world where fat isn't a signifier of anything other than, ya know, size. My glances in the mirror have been more about how I move and balance and while I still register people as fat and not-fat, it feels more like counting off men and women or blue-eyed vs. brown-eyed.
Interesting, neh? It's as if I'm managing, off and on, to think in the ways I've hoped people in general could think.
My political leanings have often gone this kind of path - not marching straight to victory, but winding through various spots as I integrate them into a worldview. It seems pretty common. Like, my early ZOMG I Don't Need A Scale days are analogous to the process of coming out - I'm sure most of you have been or known someone who went through a period of identifying say, Disney characters as queer and not-queer, right? - where suddenly all fat people were komrades. And there was a period when it made me really sadangry that so many fat people and feminists really weren't komrades. So this is something different.
I mean, sure, I've been self-obsessed with the apartment hunting and work and my personal life, but it's still rare for me to go even a few days without talking much about size or sexism.
I think this is why: I'm entering (or maybe have already entered) a different phase in my relationship to fat. This occurred to me in the context of our dance troupe's many inherent politicizations - we are almost de facto fat, queer & disability advocates just because we're performers. I find myself lately thinking "I'm fat, so what?" when it's called out to me & not really identifying with Fat in the ways I'm accustomed to. In my head, I might even be living (temporarily, I imagine) in a world where fat isn't a signifier of anything other than, ya know, size. My glances in the mirror have been more about how I move and balance and while I still register people as fat and not-fat, it feels more like counting off men and women or blue-eyed vs. brown-eyed.
Interesting, neh? It's as if I'm managing, off and on, to think in the ways I've hoped people in general could think.
My political leanings have often gone this kind of path - not marching straight to victory, but winding through various spots as I integrate them into a worldview. It seems pretty common. Like, my early ZOMG I Don't Need A Scale days are analogous to the process of coming out - I'm sure most of you have been or known someone who went through a period of identifying say, Disney characters as queer and not-queer, right? - where suddenly all fat people were komrades. And there was a period when it made me really sadangry that so many fat people and feminists really weren't komrades. So this is something different.