There’s a brand of tights and pantyhose in Australia called Size Wise. They are for the ‘full-figured’ woman. I used to surreptitiously buy them, and I remember my horror at Coles one day when they had to do a price check for them because the barcode wasn’t scanning. The whole supermarket would know I wore plus-size pantyhose. The horror. Sure, my arse size might have tipped them off anyway, but having it said out loud was gut-wrenchingly embarrassing.
(this is a loooooong size rant, I’m warning you up front)
It seems like I had quite an influx of visitors today from The Punch, where I had a piece up about fat hate in the weight debate. Read it here, if you like.
So, if you’re newly visiting my blog, thanks for dropping by! I write about all sorts of things… travel, food, Indonesian life, random silly stuff, etc. I also love photography… and comments!
Keeping with the theme of ‘random’… here’s a shot I took of Bundaran HI in Jakarta last night at Social House, where we were having a celebration for a friend’s birthday.
There’s been quite a controversy brewing back in Oz over the ABC banning part of a segment on, IMO, one of the most interesting TV shows to come out of Australia in the last couple of years — The Gruen Transfer.
For those unfamiliar with the show, it is essentially a humorous panel-style production which analyzes the media, advertising and marketing industries and how advertising is constructed. That description doesn’t really do it justice… they have basically managed to take a media analysis course from university and turn it into something that is enjoyed widely by a mainstream audience. Quite a feat.
One of the segments on the show is called “The Pitch”, where creatives from two opposing advertising agencies are given a difficult product or message to try and sell to the audience. In the past, they have had to sell all sorts of funny and silly things… one I can particularly remember included selling the idea for Australia to go to war with New Zealand. It caused a lot of controversy, but was also pretty hilarious. Here’s one of the ads from that “Pitch”, which took the same format as the New Zealand tourism ads and turned them around…
But this week, the ABC banned one of the pitches from being shown. I’ve obviously missed a lot of the media coverage about it, not being in Oz and all, but have seen a fair bit online. This week, the challenge presented to the pitchers was to create an ad to promote size acceptance.
The ad that was not banned, by JWT Melbourne, was IMO, the kinda offensive one. It was somewhat amusing, and in the fairly flippant style of Gruen, fitted in… but essentially the message it delivered was “fat people eat more, so they are helping the economy, so we should love them”, which harks back to that same old “fat people as gluttons” stereotype… it doesn’t do fat people any favors to perpetuate those stereotypes.
The ad that was banned, created by a freelancer working for The Foundry agency, was released online, at its own special website, to get around the ABC ban. I’m glad that Gruen didn’t just chicken out from making it available, and set something up that worked within the strict strict content guidelines the national broadcaster has to adhere to.
Anyway, here’s the ad. Obviously, since it was banned from the ABC and all, if you have a delicate disposition, don’t view it. It’s quite full on.
This ad is the far more effective campaign for the pitch this week, I believe. It shows that all discrimination is ugly, and it finally puts size discrimination up there on the same level as all those other horrible forms of discrimination that we now all know are socially unacceptable, even though, of course, those forms of discrimination still exist.
I can understand why the ABC banned it though, because being the government-and-hence-taxpayer-funded network, it has strong strong policies about airing things which are racist, homophobic, etc. Funnily enough, I bet there’s nothing in the innapropriate content policy about airing things which are fattist…
But the banning of this ad has also sparked debate about the size issue… everywhere. And unfortunately, for a nation where apparently most of us are overweight or obese now according to questionably BMI-based statistics, the debate seems to be heavily dominated by people saying fat people are lazy scum… a popular argument against this ad is that being overweight is a choice, while one’s race or religion is not a choice.
Well, I could choose to starve myself just as someone could choose to convert to Christianity or have sex with someone of the opposite sex. But if those choices are not happy ones, then what is the fucking point?
The creative behind the ad, Adam Hunt, has written a fantastic piece about why he produced it for the Mumberella blog, which you can read here. There’s also a great interview between Wil Anderson, the Gruen panel and Adam on the ad’s site. Just keep watching after the ad to see the debate.
I mean, obviously, this kind of ad could never really be screened on a commercial or government television network. But I think the tone in which the offensive “jokes” are presented makes it clear that HEY, this is an ad about unacceptable behavior.
But ultimately, the Pitch is about experimentation. And I feel glad that someone has finally had the balls to put this into the mainstream and say that fat discrimination is not OK. It’s an issue that never gets discussion in the mainstream media, particularly not in Australia where there isn’t the emerging size acceptance movement that is starting to have an impact in the States.
So what’s your take on it? Effective? Gone too far? Should I not even be typing this entry and spend eight hours a day on a treadmill until I can fit into a size 8?
I’m not normally one to whinge about being fat and obsess about it, at least not publicly. But I’ve been going to the gym a fair bit the last few months. Also, going on adventures out of town where walking consumes a lot of my time. But I haven’t seen much physical result from this. Normally, eating same amount of food paired with increase in physical activity should equal weight loss. It’s basic math. But it hasn’t really.
That’s frustrating. And its the same frustration that has led me to throw away going to the gym a number of other times.
I have blown the dust off my notebook, sneezed profusely, found a pen suitable for my psychotically fussy shorthand tastes passed on from my fanatical Teeline teacher and then gone out and done a story for the first time in a while.
Shopping malls are horrible horrible places. They trap you with their convoluted carparking, convoluted floor plans and lifts and escalators filled with convulsing tantrum-throwing children. Not to mention the flickering fluorescent lighting.
But being a PWINAAS (person who is not at all small), it is even more depressing than whatever existential crisis is making little Skye/Gwynne/Georges throw a spat in the lift.
Why, despite shopping malls often being filled with fellow PWINAASes, despite the constant hype about the obesity crisis, why are there barely any clothes for us fatties to wear?
Shopping for fashionable clothes for anyone above size 14 is a nightmarish exercise.
Step one often involves going out to the suburbs… because the only chance you have of finding suitably sized clothing is to go somewhere where most women have reproduced already. In the inner city, where most people have dogs rather than children enrolled in private school and hence have figuratively not "lost their figure", the pickings for generously sized garments are slim (get it?). So a journey to the ‘burbs is often in order.
Step two then involves trawling through stores to find things in the right size. The range is always limited, and usually really ugly.
Step three usually involves being disappointed. Either you like it and it’s not in your size, or you hate it and it’s the only thing in your size.
I have been looking for tights (don’t get me started on the blatant sizing lies on tights packaging… how come my weight and height is well within the specified range for the pair of tights purchased and then I get home and find they are way way way too small? so much wasted money), a nice cut pair of black pants, good fitting jeans and a nice black pencil skirt for MONTHS and MONTHS and MONTHS. You wouldn’t think it would be so hard to find these basic wardrobe items. But no. They either don’t fit well, are made of shitty material and are way overpriced or are just generally shit.
So very much of my weekend time (and my money) is spent trying to find respectable, fashionable, flattering, affordable clothes that don’t make me look decades older than my 23 years. And so often I fail.
Is this some sort of cruel punishment for enjoying too much chocolate-related decadence? Is it like the anti-smoking lobby, hoping more people will quit by pushing them outside…. hoping more people will join Fitness First instead of either walking around naked or in printed sacks that look like they have been made from the offcuts of RSL club carpet?
Anywhere that does sell stuff that is ok and bigger charges through the nose for it because they know that the clothing will send the fatties into such a flutter of excitement they won’t even bother looking at the price tag. It’s true. I have so many items of clothing made from flimsy crap material that I could have picked up for $10 if I was a size 10, but have paid $50 or more for just because I am desperate for something nice to wear.
While wandering around looking at the floral sacks available for the low price of $120 each in Myer, the boringness and shapelessness of the clothes on offer made my mind wander…
The fashionistas are in their drawing room, putting together the new designs for winter 2008… Jennifer Hawkins is inexplicably in the corner in a half sewn garment (I really doubt models have to deal with that)… a group of sharply dressed men with a few scrawny ladies running to and fro with bits of flimsy fabric and sketch drawings are in the middle of a floodlit warehouse. I don’t know why this is so, but clearly this is how fashions are made.
"All done, except for hemming Jen’s skirt… now, what shall we design for the fatties this year?" a man in a pink shirt quips.
"Well, the sacks always sell well. The fatties love the sacks. They fly off the shelves. Let’s just use some of the extra bits of fabric we have lying around and sew it into sacks!"
Suddenly the warehouse doors burst open and there, chunky thighs silhouetted by some sort of backlight of unknown origin, stands the one to save them all. This is dream me.
"Nooooooo" I scream, dashing for the design table, doing some fully sick aerial acrobatics along the way.
"They only buy the sacks because you scrawny bastards don’t make anything else for them to wear," I scream, while pinning down a designer and holding a set of pinking shears at his throat.
With my free hand, I grab a glam dress off the table and shove it in his face.
"Make this three sizes bigger or die a slow death through ineffectual zig zag shaped cuts to your neck!" I scream.
"But the integrity of the fashion… I…. I…. just won’t. You… can’t…" he splutters.
"Do it," I demand, while pressing the pinking shears closer to his pretentiously groomed facial hair.
The saleswoman snapped me out of my daydream by asking if I wanted to try on a hideous satin top I had been gazing at for five minutes with a delirious look of glee on my face.
All jokes aside, it’s pretty damn annoying. The most hilarious catch-22 of today was the difficulty I had finding a sports bra. You would think the slim army would only sell sportswear for the fatties (no after 5 wear until you lose 15 kilos… get jogging!) but it seems I must be too fat to do sports. I am beyond hope.
So after a day where I managed to spend money but not have much to show for it, I came home to try and look if I could find the objects of my desire by dipping my toes into the hit and miss world of online shopping.
The postage and chance of stuff not fitting was just too much risk. But while looking around I discovered that designer Leona Edmiston is expanding her range to big sizes, which is exciting, cos her stuff is glam (damn expensive though).
But then I found a blog post about it at the Daily Terror where the comments just made my blood boil. Crap about how people shouldn’t whinge about not having plus sized clothes they should just go to the gym and stop being fat and a burden on society and all of that or should learn to sew. There are also things posted by other people that underline how shit it is trying to find clothes that fit well. (Note, there are also some anti-skinny people comments that I also think are offensive and petty and unnecessary. I’m no skinny person hater.)
Sigh. It’s enough to make a girl write an angry blog post while rewatching Skins on a Saturday night.
I try and refrain from posting photos of myself on here. I try and refrain from having many of myself on the internetz (people thwart that all the time on the book of face though… so many bad ones). I try to refrain from being in too many photos really. I prefer taking them. But exception was made today.
So anyway, today I was feeling a bit shitty. A bit like "why, despite having walked a massive amount in the past few weeks, nay month or so, having moved heavy furniture up and down stairs, having been sick and not eating for a period of time, having gone swimming reasonably regularly, having used public transport which means a 15 minute uphill walk every morning and inevitably a run through central station to avoid missing bus, not eating too much junk, cooking at home, booty dancing in my new oversized bedroom… WHY, OH WHY, DOES THIS NOT MAKE ONE IOTA OF DIFFERENCE TO MY LARD ASS/THIGHS/ARMS/TUM/CHINS?". Ya know, one of those days. They do come around fairly frequently, really. It’s pretty much part and parcel with the whole female thing.
But today I decided I wasn’t allowed to be like this, because it’s International Womens’ Day. And it’s supposed to be all "power to the sisterhood, screw you all, my lard ass is ok, I shouldn’t have to feel bad about the way I look AND THE REASON I DO IS BECAUSE OF EVIL MEN and that’s why WE ALL GET PAID LESS TOO YOU CHAUVINISTIC BASTARDS" day. Maybe not how all people are interpreting it, but I was in a crappy mood.
So my method for turning the frown upside down was to take some self portrait shots (well they are all pretty pouty). I couldn’t go out and drink copious amounts of cheap wine (another simple way to give the self esteem a boost) because I am pretty broke this week. And just like alcohol, photography can go two ways… you can either end up jubilant if you get some good results, or you can end up crying into your viewfinder and blubbering "why me".
But I wanted to play some more with my tripod anyway, plus the Ikea bedside light I bought when I moved was also purchased because I thought it would work as a good fake studio light to bounce off my white walls for photos.
So yeah, took some shots to stick it to the haters. (Shame the biggest hater is often me).
And one in colour in dodgy Lomo style (need photoshop!), just for good measure.
Today, very hungover with no dark sunglasses to conceal my dark circles because I have broken yet another pair of cheapie shades, I went for breakfast with my ladeez… at midday. Somewhere in the hangover haze, we decided to go shopping (because I have a very important GROWN UP thing on next week and need some grown up attire to wear)… and for some reason, we decided to go to Westfield Bondi Junction (no… I was not swayed by my fashion horror-scope discussed below, though Oroton did have some luxe leather looks…).
It was so hideous. Love my friends as I do, I actually dislike shopping with others. It’s a self preservation thing. I don’t really like shopping at all most of the time. The whole process seems like self torture.
Shopping centres are full of mockery… shoes that don’t fit my wide feet, clothes that don’t fit my wide frame, handbags that don’t fit my modest budget. Everywhere I turn, some inanimate object is jeering me for not being more successful, more genetically fortunate and more capable at starving myself.
This dilemma is only exascerbated in the glitzy eastern suburbs, where tanned hotties strut around draped in the trappings of their own privilege, often with an attractive henpecked manbag in tow to carry new purchases… we even saw Megan Gale looking at some $70 hair clip at Mimco that looked the same as something you could pick up at the $2 shop. Jealous much?
Everything was so expensive and alienating. My self esteem was kicked around so much that I felt like an awkward high schooler again. It was almost enough to turn me emo… bring on the My Chemical Romance and piercings.
So, like the tormented high schooler I had hoped I had moved beyond, myself and my ladeez turned to an old friend… being bitches to validate ourselves.
We decided to play a little game. This season, dresses that are so short that I would rightly consider them to be a shirt seem to be in fashion. As do all things flimsy and floaty and pretty much see through. So sitting on a bench outside Westfield, opposite an ‘Irish Grocer and Tobacconist’ shop that sold nothing Irish, we invented a little game called ‘Punch Ninny’.
It works the same as Punch Buggy, except that instead of declaring when you see a V-Dub, we would declare when we saw a ‘V’ (for which the word ninny is a crass euphamism used amongst my group of friends).
So every time a girl’s sheer or short choice of clothing made put her lady parts on public display, we would wisper ‘ninny’ under our breaths and dissolve into cackles.
So grown up. But the only way to survive such a traumatic and soul destroying exercise as braving the Junction.
Sitting there on the bench, haphazardly plonked in the middle of the Junction’s Manhattan-esque glossy streetscape, the four of us caught sight of ourselves reflected in the window of the non-Irish Irish Grocer.
“We’re like the dodgy inner west version of Sex in the City,” one of my friends remarked.
And it was very true (as long as we are talking about one of the episodes where most of them are single). Some of us hungover, others smoking, dressed in indie chic clothing ransacked from op shops, we would have looked normal on the streets of Newtown or Glebe… but at the Junction, it felt like all we needed to do was stick a hat or used coffee cup out in front of us and people would start tossing us spare change while avoiding eye contact.
Luckily, someone with a visable ninny strutted past, breaking my train of self destructive thought and sending is cackling like the crazy old hobo ladies we were slowly starting to resemble.
So instead of exiting the glass and steel Westfield monolith a broke women (which is what the whole thing is designed for, isn’t it?), I just left broken. No impulse purchase could restore the sense of self worth Westfield had stripped from me. But our little game meant I didn’t leave broken and blubbering.
Beth Ditto, lead singer of rock outfit The Gossip, has appeared totally starkers on the front cover of the NME.
Beth has gained notoriety not just for her music, but for having notoriety and not being skinny.
But looking at the image on the cover, despite her arguments that she is smashing typical notions of female beauty, I can’t help but ponder… has this been photoshopped?
She is a curvy girl, yet there is not a stretch mark in sight. Not any sign of cellulite on her thighs or bum. Maybe she is extremely fortunate… but it makes me think that this image has been airbrushed.
Don’t get me wrong, I think it’s cool that she is confident enough to do this and that something like this is getting on the front cover of a music press institution like the NME, but if we are going to smash the idea that beauty fits certain ideals, shouldn’t we down the digital paintbrush as well?
There is an interesting post about it on this blog, and some varied comments (some insightful, some highly immature), so check it out. I agree with what is said in the post there in a way…. a photo of Beth Ditto with her kit on might have meant more in terms of trying to defy the idea of conventional beauty… but the shock value of the nude photo also brings greater publicity to the cause, and possibly sparks more public debate on the issue. A clothed shot might not have got people talking so much. So I’m not sure what I think about it.
I’m glad though that her size hasn’t stopped her getting recognition for her music though… but her band is pretty alternative, so I doubt we will be seeing anyone like this appearing in the pop charts soon. But the indie scene is pretty skinnycentric as well (just look at all those guys in skinny jeans and tight shirts at your local indie venue…), so I guess this is refreshing.
And the other thing that springs to mind is whether Australia would be willing to support Casey Donovan in a career relaunch. Would they go for a cover like this on the front of the TV Week? Apparently she is trying to lose weight with the help of ironman Guy Richie before relaunching her career… because I guess fat girls can’t sing or something like that…
I'm Ashlee, an Australian journalist-type obsessed with travel, food and photography. After spending 21 months living and working in Indonesia, I'm back in Australia for a while. From August, I will be a graduate student at American University's School of International Service in Washington D.C.
Sometimes I do serious work, but not usually on this blog.
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