Body Positive Film Review - The Heat

I adore movies, and have had something of a love-hate relationship with Hollywood (Hollyweird?) for some time now.  Obsessive nerds like me will argue endlessly over the merits and flaws of our entertainment pursuits in a way that is understandably baffling to mundies, but being obsessive and a bit bonkers over the things we love is, in my opinion, what makes us nerds.

That being said it’s become more difficult over time to get me physically into a movie theatre when a film is first released.  It’s spendy to see a film in theatres, so I reserve my movie-going dollars for films with special effects that make the big screen experience worth it.  Big explosions, aliens, winged creatures, anything with “Trek” in the title, that sort of thing.

For this reason, despite being interested when it first opened, I did not see the movie The Heat until this past weekend.

To give credit where its rightfully due: The Heat is in many ways exactly the movie I’ve been asking (okay maybe yelling at and begging for) Hollywood to make for some time now.

But first, the negatives:

1)      The film has a well deserved ‘R’ rating due to profanity.  I’m not a fan of cursing, but I understand the writer’s desire to make tough, Boston cops sound like tough, Boston cops.

2)      The movie has a high level of casual, comedic (non-gory) violence.  Not quite slapstick, more like the way Lt. Riggs would bash a bad guy over the head (repeatedly) in one of the Lethal Weapon movies in order to obtain the information he was looking for.  There’s a lot of pulling firearms on people for highly unnecessary reasons.

If any of those things will bother you this is not the film for you.

Now for what they got right:

1)      I believe this is the first ever female-lead action hero with a body shape and size that is atypical from the Hollywood standard.

2)      The plot and every character in it make absolutely zero reference to the aforementioned hero’s body shape and size.  This film contains a fat character with no fat humor or angst whatsoever, and from all evidence presented the character has a positive self-image and is not dieting.

And that is exactly the thing I’ve been asking for.  Overweight characters have been in movies for almost as long as there have been movies, but their plots inevitably revolve around stereotypes regarding their body shape and size.  Some examples:

·         She’s beautiful and sexy… despite being fat.

·         She’s completely hideous… because she’s fat.

·         All fat girls are funny!

·         She’s fat so she must be freakishly strong too.

·         She’s fat so she’s desperate for sex with anyone who will have her.

·         Of course she’s trying to lose weight!

·         Of course she has bad self-esteem!

·         You think she’s just a silly fat girl but no, she’s smart and likable too!

·         She’s obsessed with food… because she’s fat.

·         She will eat any and every food available… because she’s fat.

·         She’s unhealthy by default, inherently lazy, and can’t perform physical tasks well.

·         And my personal least favorite – let’s all laugh at the fatty’s expense.

A lot of these tropes are negative, but some are positive too.  Regardless, they have one thing in common: they make characters with non-Hollywood-standard body shapes into walking plot points that revolve entirely around their non-Hollywood-standard body shapes.  They aren’t people, they’re FAT people.  This adds to the pervasive and dehumanizing cultural mentality that a fat body is abnormal, non-standard, and a thing to be reviled, ridiculed, constantly focused on, and most importantly brought under control.

Melissa McCarthy’s character in The Heat is both tough and strong, but it’s because she’s a cop, not because of her weight.  She is physically capable, ready and willing to run after a suspect, vault over a fence and climb right out the window of an offending vehicle.  Far from lagging behind slimmer characters she is portrayed throughout the movie as charging fearlessly ahead of them.  Although the bad guys do insult both her and her partner (played with nerdy gusto by the always delightful Sandra Bullock) there isn’t a single insult or joke that’s directed at her weight.    She isn’t seen eating or obsessing about food a single time, and she is portrayed as attractive to men, sought after, and not desperate for any attention.

As a comedic action hero, I’m not going to say the character is an accurate representation of a normal person, but everything abnormal about her has nothing whatsoever to do with her weight.

This movie was so funny it gave my husband a laughter-induced asthma attack.  It had an interesting plot, strong supporting cast, and the chemistry between McCarthy and Bullock was really fantastic.  If you enjoy humorous buddy/cop films like Beverly Hills Cop, Lethal Weapon and Rush Hour, you will like The Heat.

My Shopping Dollar Vote

A few years back I expressed my um… irritation, with the advertising practices of the Victoria’s Secret Corporation and posted my ensuing email to them expressing this displeasure.  An email which, it became quickly and abundantly clear, no one at the company bothered to read before sending me a stock, kiss-off reply.  They continue their unfortunate advertising choices with the below ad, featuring women who are beautiful to begin with being photo shopped to the point where “perfect” bodies like theirs only exist in computer pixels.

Due to the understandable backlash, VS quickly revised the ad to this:

 

I guess it’s good that they’re capable of responding to the public’s wishes in some ways.

That being said, I have a confession.  A year ago when they were having their big annual sale, I bought some of their underwear.  As products go I have no complaint with it.  So long as your lower half can squeeze into a size 18, you can wear their product and it feels good, is cute, fits comfortably and stays where it’s supposed to.  However shopping there left a bad taste in my mouth that remains to this day.  I don’t like myself much for financially supporting a company whose ideas about which bodies are allowed to be called “perfect” I so fundamentally disagree with.

So this year comes around, and once again VS is having their big annual sale.  And I once again need some new underwear.

A friend of mine awhile back recommended Aerie to me.  Although as a 36 DDDD bra size I stand virtually no chance any longer of being able to shop in any brick and mortar store for bras, I figured their underpants would probably fit somewhat similar to VS’s and suit my size 18-20 bum.

On top of that, I remembered Aerie for this ad campaign…

Don’t get me wrong, that is still a beautiful woman with a figure the vast majority of us can only dream of having, but I absolutely love their no-retouching advertising.  “The real you is sexy”?   Yes please.

So today, I checked out the store.

The sale that Aerie had going on was quite comparable to VS’s annual one, and I was able to get 8 pairs for a very reasonable $3.75 / pair.  The staff was friendly and helpful, and gave me absolutely no side-eye glances whatsoever for being an obese, 40 year old woman in a store with lithe, teenaged models plastered all over the walls.

My only complaint is that they don’t carry briefs (my favored style).  So I got boy shorts because they offered the most coverage.  Trying them on at home, I can tell you that although the fit is perfect, the low rise of these in the back is something I’m going to have to get used to.  I think they're designed that way so that your underwear can’t say, “hello!” to the world in the back when you sit down.  Since I’m paranoid as heck over that happening, I can get behind the design concept, I’m just going to have to get used to the sensation.

The sales staff told me that the company is very open to consumer suggestions, so I’m going to email them requesting they start making briefs and carrying size quad-D bras too (although I don’t hold out too much hope on the second request, too niche of a market).

Still, it was an overall really positive and pleasant experience.  And most importantly, I don’t feel like a traitor to my cause for having shopped there.

Conquering One Shame, Still Living With Another

The other day I was listening to two people discuss the benefit of smaller apples because the bigger ones are difficult to finish.  I gave what has become my usual response to such conversations, “not being able to finish my food is really never a problem for me.”

Which caused me to realize, much to my delight, that I am no longer ashamed of my appetite.

I’ve written before about how admitting to any hunger whatsoever, let alone the substantial size of mine, has caused me great shame and embarrassment throughout childhood and young adulthood, persisting even into last year.  Although it's true that a big appetite in women is sometimes considered sexy, it is only so if the woman in question is also very slender and/or athletic.  If it's a bigger girl with an appetite she's just gluttonous/lazy/undisciplined, etc.  I'm still trying to figure out the cultural thought process going on behind that one.  When I was younger, even saying the word ‘hungry’ caused me embarrassment and I hid away in private to eat my lunch at school.  Despite still not fitting the body type for sexy women with big appetites the shame over having one has gone away.

I don’t know if it’s being a grown up that did it (ie. old enough not to care so much what other people think), or if it happened through desensitization.  Whenever I’m in a conversation with someone who is elaborating about their tiny, delicate appetite (I’ve only ever met women who do this, but I would imagine there are men who do too) I’m always quick to point out that my appetite would probably be more appropriate for an NFL linebacker than an average woman, but it is what it is.  It’s what I was born with and what I’m working with.  I certainly didn’t choose it, so being ashamed of it is very silly.

I think I reiterate this to other people so often because I want both them and particularly myself to embrace the idea that having an appetite, being hungry, and even (gasp!) eating are okay things for us to be and do.  The sense of morality that’s been assigned to food choices and eating in our culture is both ridiculous and incredibly harmful.  Although I’ve conquered my shame over possessing a big appetite and feeling hunger, I still suffer from awful feelings of self-hatred and failure when I tip over eating 2,000 calories per day.  If I eat 1,200 I feel virtuous and triumphant and if I eat over 2,000 I feel like a horrible person.  If I fall somewhere in between (which I usually do) I’m morally neutral that day.  That is incredibly messed up.  I can see it going on intellectually and get how stupid it is, and yet I’m still helpless to keep that tidal wave of shame from washing over me at the end of a day when I’ve succumbed to a binge.

I guess I just have to keep repeating these things to myself over and over until I get them to sink in too.

And hot dang… I’ve managed to lose 75 lbs. while dealing with the voracious appetite of an NFL linebacker on a daily basis.  It doesn’t make me more moral or virtuous than the next person, but it is a pretty awesome accomplishment.

The Disappearing People

We live in a society which teaches us daily that one of the highest accomplishments people can achieve is to essentially disappear.

Recently I was having a conversation with my Mom-in-law about weight loss and something occurred to me; I cannot say that I’m losing weight, “for my health.”  I can’t do that because it’s a straight up lie.  Yes, the functionality of my joints has absolutely improved with weight loss, that makes simple mechanical sense – something load bearing which bears less of a load is going to last longer.  Other than that I had no health issues whatsoever when I was 75 lbs. heavier, and in fact in one very real way the year of persistent starvation conditions have made me less healthy.  I always had very slight heart arrhythmia issues, now it’s something I have to live with daily (yes, my Doctor is monitoring the situation).  Also, I used to have perfect blood pressure and now I do not.  Now it's slightly high.

The more I research, the more I learn how many of the studies detailing the health benefits of weight loss are created and funded by people who financially benefit from the weight loss industry.  It's looking more and more credible that the reason many people have health problems is because they have spent a lifetime yo-yo dieting which is, demonstrably, quite extremely bad for you.  To say I'm feeling lied to and disillusioned by the whole thing, not to mention beyond fed up with the supposed "obesity epidemic" would be something of an understatement.  The reason I want so badly to get to my goal weight at the moment is so that I can stop starving my body and let it finally recover from this awful roller coaster.

I've said it before and I will again: except for people on either extreme end of the scale, I believe that being a stable body weight, regardless of where you fall on the BMI, is always healthier than losing or gaining significant amounts of weight.  Bodies hate change.  Bodies will fight you, punish you and give out on you attempting to maintain homeostasis because homeostasis is precisely what is the most effective at keeping you alive.

I know the obvious answer here is to stop.  Stop right where I am.  But I can’t.  I cannot let go of the ingrained, conditioned, social desire to keep on disappearing.  The rewards are too intoxicating, too deeply written in the roots of my psyche since the day I was born.  I want more and more of beautiful clothes, compliments, and fitting effortlessly into everywhere and anywhere.  I am beyond ashamed to admit this, but even the smug, idiotic feeling of superiority that comes from turning down desserts over and over and over again – I am addicted to all these things.

This week a lovely, loving woman I know said to me that her best motivation for weight loss is having to look at herself naked in her full length mirror when she gets dressed in the morning.  I could have cried.  Not just cried, but sobbed.  This is a woman who has told me over and over how beautiful I am (and she absolutely meant it), and who is currently at her goal weight.  Meaning she weighs at least 50 lbs. less than me.  In her eyes, I’m beautiful and she’s essentially monstrous because she still hasn't disappeared enough.

When will it ever be enough?

I wish I had some happy, hopeful note to end this on, but that’s just not the head space I’m in at the moment.  I want to tell my friend over and over that she’s beautiful just as she is, and just as she was before she lost 100 lbs.  I want to tell her that it doesn't matter what anyone anywhere thinks of her appearance so long as she is content with it.  I want her to believe me, but I know that she won’t.

We can believe that for each other but no one ever does for themselves.  Not even me.

Packing on the Pounds

Think about that phrase for a moment.  What does it do to you?  Does some part of you inwardly cringe when you hear it?  When it’s applied to a person, what do you think of that person?

I really dislike the phrase, “pack on the pounds.”

It crops up often in news media.  Gossip magazines will squeal with delight over celebrities who have gained a little weight, possibly because they’ve had a baby or some other silly little life altering event, screaming out headlines like: “so-and-so is visibly fatter, they’ve really packed on the pounds!”

The other place I frequently notice it buried is in articles about the obesity “epidemic” or how life changes and the passage of time can cause our body weight to increase.  For example articles that say things like, “women over 40 can really pack on the pounds,” or, “after women get married, they really let themselves go and pack on the pounds.”

The phrase itself brings to mind something I used to do on the beach as a child.  I would sit in the sand and pack it all around me until my legs and the lower half of my body was encased in it.  Then if I’d struck water in one of the holes I had dug, I’d make dribble castles all over my thighs.  I did this because the sand felt cool and good and because it was fun – I was packing on the sand all around myself.

Here’s why I have a problem with it in regards to weight gain: “packing on the pounds” implies an intentional, deliberate action.  I was deliberately packing sand around my body because it was fun, and using the phrase with regards to weight says that the person doing it is trying as hard as they can to gain as much weight as they can.  It brings to mind mental images of people gleefully grabbing up globby, greasy handfuls of fat and smacking them onto their own thighs and stomach in an effort to see just how big they can intentionally make themselves.

With very few exceptions, people don’t gain weight on purpose.  Most of us don’t even fully realize when it’s happening.

I got up to 290 lbs. very gradually over the course of thirty-some years.  Even though I’ve been suffering from binge eating disorder since I was around twelve or thirteen (I think it began around the time I began my first calorie restrictive dieting effort) I have never put on weight very quickly.

Since I journal everything I eat I now have a good working knowledge of how many calories a lot of foods contain, but I believe that most people do not.  A single tablespoon of butter or mayonnaise contains 100.  A tablespoon of olive oil is 120.  On top of that, when someone is eyeballing a portion instead of measuring, they don’t really have a clear understanding of just how small a tablespoon or even a cup of something actually is.  It is not difficult to gain weight in a culture of convenience food and vehicular travel, and you don’t have to be a lazy glutton to make it happen. A few high energy food choices or a single cup of full fat hot chocolate a day is more than adequate to do the trick.

Pervasive and negative language choices like this are another facet that I believe contributes to fat hatred and bias in the United States.  Much like my previous post about the way overweight actors are used and portrayed, this is another subtle negativity that works its insidious way into people’s brains.  It teaches us to see a fat stranger or even a friend who’s gained some weight and automatically think, “woah – they’ve really packed on the pounds!”

It implies deliberate self-neglect, a slovenly nature, and lack of care for personal health that is in most cases both unfair and untrue.

Coming Clean

The reason there have not been steady status updates in a while is because it has now been officially a quarter of a year (three months) since I lost any significant weight.  I’m not gaining, I’m holding steady at around a 75 lb. loss.  I go up a pound, I lose two, I gain three, I lose one a week for two weeks, I gain one, etc. etc. ad infinitum.

I’m not quite ready to call it a day and decide that life at just over 200 lbs. is good enough, but I also haven’t yet cracked the code for shedding that final 45 to achieve my goal weight.  After losing as much as I have, it feels tantalizingly close, and yet as stubbornly slow as my metabolism has become it also feels endlessly out of reach at the same time.

Sometimes I’m highly motivated for three or four days at a time, sometimes I’m spending three or four days firmly wedged back in my old habits.  The problem is half metabolic slowdown due to extended starvation conditions, and half a motivational loss.

I haven’t found the secret to getting back on track, but I am glad that I’m maintaining and protecting the investment of all the work I’ve done so far.

If anybody has a suggestion for getting things moving again, I am all ears.

The Real Danger of Fat Stereotypes

If you’re not watching The Blacklist let me offer a sincere recommendation that you check it out.  It’s both well written and well-acted with interesting storytelling and exceptional character development.  It takes a lot to get me to watch a show that doesn’t have aliens, fantasy creatures or superheroes in it, so the fact that I was pulled out of my preferred genre by this one is saying something.

That was the good.  Now here’s the bad:

A recent episode featured a doctor who was selling internal organs to wealthy (and unscrupulous) people who were ill but for whatever reason weren’t eligible or couldn’t wait to be on a legal list for a transplant.

Right away I knew what was coming.  Queue the negative fat stereotyping.

Sure enough, the show soon cut to a shot of an obese man portrayed sitting at table in a restaurant scarfing down piles of what I believe were chicken wings in a slovenly fashion – covered in sauce and practically grunting like a pig, with an oxygen tube in his nose to boot.

Why does he have to purchase a new heart?  Because he doesn’t deserve one, of course.  He’s fat!  He eats chicken wings non-stop (seriously – there wasn’t a single shot of this character where he wasn’t at the table with obscene piles of food in front of him).  Obviously putting a new heart in him would amount to throwing it away because he’s slovenly and disgusting and undisciplined, so he’s got to buy one on the black market.

This character managed to portray, in only about ten minutes of screen time, almost every negative stereotype about fat people there is.  Here’s a list:

1)      Fat people never stop eating and rarely move, and that’s the sole reason they are fat.

2)      Fat people are disgusting, sloppy, and pig like.

3)      Fat people do not deserve medical intervention and treatment for the reasons listed above.

4)      Only a pervert would find a fat person attractive (there was a slim, beautiful blonde who never spoke seated beside the fat character.  The main character remarked with dismayed awe on how she could possibly stand to get anywhere near him – the subtext being that only piles of money can trump fat where women are concerned.  Negative stereotypes for all!)

As I stated up front I do generally love this show, but this episode obviously left me pretty cold.

My husband is about six feet tall and falls into the perfectly normal range on the BMI scale.  I fall into the obese 1 range, right on the border of merely being overweight, even after shedding 75 lbs.  Ironically once I enter the overweight range I will be in the group with the longest expected life span since statistics show that overweights tend to live longer than normals.  We both exercise regularly and can hike four or five miles with no problem.  Of the two of us, he’s the one that is likely to consume twenty chicken wings in a sitting.  He orders cheese steaks while I dine on spinach and romaine sandwiches with roasted red pepper, mozzarella and balsamic.  He’s pre-diabetic and I am not.

In truth, both of us are pretty healthy.  Although my husband’s dreadfully inefficient metabolism allows him to eat like that while quite simply refusing to hang onto any excess calories, he’s also great at remembering to eat his servings of vegetables every day.  But of the two of us I absolutely work at it harder – I cut up veggies, buy fruits, and plan every lunch down to the calorie and fat gram at the beginning of every week while he casually heads over to Subway or Wendy’s whenever he gets around to noticing he’s hungry.  If I ate the same diet he did my extraordinarily calorie-efficient metabolism would store pounds of fat at a truly terrifying rate.  I can manage not to starve to death on far, far less calories than he can (bring it on, nuclear winter!)  But because society has had it drilled into them over and over and over that our eyeballs are the only diagnostic tool needed, if strangers were asked to look at us both and point to which of us lived a healthier lifestyle – I would bet every penny I own that the majority of people would point at my husband and not at me.  I am the one in danger of experiencing poor and neglectful medical care (though thankfully this has only happened to me once) on account of my appearance, and he is not.

Over the years I’ve read story after story after story about fat people dying from medical neglect.  Either because coming into a doctor’s office with a head cold and being told to lose weight caused them to avoid preventive care for years, or because doctors dismiss them and their symptoms due to a deeply ingrained bias and fat hatred.  The media that we consume, both entertainment media and through news stories – is basically the transfer method by which fat hatred and bias filters into the public consciousness.

People are fat for a myriad of different reasons.  In fact I would go so far as to say the reason for being fat is probably 100% unique to each fat person.  Yet the thing we most often see portrayed in entertainment are images like the one illustrated above: the fat person is an undisciplined, disgusting hog who deserves to die, who can only be loved if they pay someone to love them.

That is why this is important.  The constant streaming reinforcement of these negative and incorrect stereotypes into our brains via the media isn’t just the annoyance of TV being its usual, stupid, shallow self.  It could literally be costing some people their lives.