Laurie and Debbie say:

We had a completely fun post planned for this afternoon, but it has been pushed aside by an urgent public service announcement (which has Debbie literally shaking with rage).

You may have read studies that say that fat people have shorter lifespans after certain cancers and chemo treatments.

Want to guess why?

Because chemo doses are based on “ideal weight,” that’s why. And SURPRISE! When chemo doses are calculated based on actual weight,

Obese and non-obese patients had similar progression-free survival (17 versus 11 months, P=0.14) and overall survival (48 versus 40 months, P=0.37) following primary cytoreductive surgery that resulted in similar rates of optimal debulking, Kellie Matthews, M.D., of the University of Alabama at Birmingham, and colleagues reported online in Gynecologic Oncology.

(This study is limited to ovarian cancer, and included 304 people. Some of the results, like why underweight women didn’t live as long, are not statistically significant. Nothing about other cancers was involved. At the same time, it’s not a 15-person junk study either.)

In plain English, this means that in general the doctors decide what you “should” weigh and calculate your chemo accordingly. Most likely, this means that they take your height and calculate your non-overweight BMI, but there are lots of other things it could mean. It may well mean that tall people are underdosed as well as fat people, and that short people get chemo overdoses. It may well mean that men and women get dosed differently regardless of their body weight. And you can bet that this applies to other cancers as well.

What it clearly means is that people die.

It means that, on the long list of ways you have to defend yourself in the doctor’s office (or get a family member or friend to do it for you), you have to add “Is this chemo dosage based on my actual weight?” and then you have to fight dauntlessly to make sure that it is. And you have to tell every one of your friends and relations to do the same. And you have to watch out for the people you know who might be less skilled at protecting themselves in the doctor’s office due to personality, or class, or education level, or anything else, and do that for them.

And you have no choice, because the medical system is not there to protect you on this, it’s there to decide what you should be like and medicate that person instead of you.

Debbie says: I’m deeply sick of having to carry all these burdens. I want to hand them off to the people who get paid inordinate sums of money to take care of me and mine. But that’s not happening any time soon, now is it?

Very very wry thanks to bearsir (S. Bear Bergman) for the pointer.

Debbie says:

The list of blogs that made the finalists list for the 2008 Weblog Awards is very long indeed, and of course most of them are blogs I’ve never heard of (and some of the ones I’ve heard of I’ve never read).

However, not one but two blogs which I really respect and appreciate are nominated in the Best Health Blog category.

Junk Food Science by Sandy Szwarc is a blog that Laurie and I frequently link to and quote. No one does a better job of taking apart the health headlines, digging into the numbers, and revealing the truth than Sandy. I’d love to see her win.

Kristina Chew’s Autism Vox has been a voice for the confluence of science and compassion in autism. She’s closing down the blog even as the votes are being counted, moving over to a new autism blog at change.org, where I’m sure she’ll continue her clear-sighted big-hearted work.

Either one is well deserving of a “best” award. I’m not even going to tell you which one I voted for.

Other nominated blogs that Body Impolitic has taken good stuff from include The Bilerico Project, Susie Bright’s Journal (both in the best LGBT blog category), plus Majikthise, where Lindsay Beyerstein is nominated for Best Individual Blogger.

As usual, the finalists in most categories are overwhelmingly blogs by men, which is another good reason to drop by and vote if you get a chance.

Debbie says:

The holidays are over and Body Impolitic is back. Laurie and I have lots o’ stuff to blog about, and a guest blog from the lovely Lynne Murray as well, so there’s lots to look forward to.

To kick off the year, I got permission to share a rare pregnancy-in-pictures. My friend Lori gave birth to twins on September 30 (and they are really fun to have in my life!). Her partner took a picture of her in the same place in the same position almost every day from the day they knew she was pregnant until the day she gave birth. Then he built the photographs into a stop-motion video story of how her body changed.

Photography by Guy Gayle, proud dad.

Laurie says:

Just a quick note to remind folks that the final day of the Holiday Sale for Women En Large:Images of Fat Nudes and Familiar Men:A Book of Nudes is New Years Day.  I like the idea of “nudes for the new year”.

Thanks again to everyone who has ordered the book.  The number of international sales continues to surprise me.  I just got an order for two more from Australia.

Very best wishes to everyone in 2009!

o

Laurie and Debbie say:

If you love the holidays, love your family, and are looking forward to the next ten days, you don’t need this list.

If you’re still reading:

1) To the extent possible, do as much or as little holiday stuff as you want; it’s supposed to a celebration, not an obligation.
2) If you have enough to give to someone who has less, this is a good year for it.
3) Eat what you enjoy. Desserts are not sinful, they’re just desserts. If other people want to tell you what to eat or not to eat, that’s their problem.
4) Wear what you think you look terrific in.
5) Spend time with people you love and who are good to you.
6) If you must spend time with awful people, remind yourself three times (out loud) before you walk in the door that they are awful people. Then do something really nice for yourself the minute you can walk out the door.
7) Plan your responses to inevitable comments beforehand. For example, if you know that your mother will overfeed you and then, just as dessert is being cleared off the table, say “You look like you’ve gained weight,” try, “That was really a fabulous meal. Excuse me, I haven’t had a minute to talk with Aunt Mabel.”
8) If the holidays make you sad, or you just hate them, you’re not alone. Participate as little as possible. They’ll be over soon.
9) If you enjoy the kids, they’re a great escape from the adult follies. If they drive you crazy, be as patient with them as you can: they didn’t overstimulate themselves with sugar and toys–they had help.
10) You have a right to enjoy things in your own way.
11) Be effusive about every gift you get; then be rude about the awful ones later to your friends. If they’re really awful, throw them off a bridge in the middle of the night.

If these aren’t your holidays, have a great Chinese meal and enjoy the movie!

We’ll be back in the beginning of the New Year.

Laurie says:

Debbie, Mika Kobayashi and I (with help and advice from Rebecca Jennison at Kyoto Seika University) are writing an article on body image in Japan and the United States for the online academic journal, Asia-Pacific Journal:Japan Focus.  The article will include both text and images.  The images will be photographs from all three of my projects (Women En Large, Familiar Men and Women of Japan), along with examples from media and other sources illustrating various cultural attitudes toward body image. We’re excited about writing it, since it gives us a chance to explore these issues complexly and at length.

We sent this set of questions to our Japanese mailing list and I thought some folks would find them interesting.

The questions were structured and written for people whose first language is Japanese and who read English.  Unfortunately we couldn’t arrange for either the time or the resources to translate Japanese language responses.

If you would like to answer these questions from your own cultural background and experience, please feel free to do so.  Instead of answering them in the comments, email your answers to me at lte@laurietobyedison.com

All questions refer to both either women or men, or both.

Answers can be as brief or as long as you like. Please answer as many or as few questions as you want.

The phrase “body image” refers to the way we feel about and perceive our physical bodies.  It also refers to how the way we look is reflected in the eyes of other people and Japanese culture.

1. In general, what are the most important aspects of body image in Japanese culture and how do you feel about it?

2. What aspects of your perception of body image comes from Japanese culture and what aspects come from Western or other influences?

3. How do you imagine body image is different in Japan and the United States?

4. How are body images different for minority people?  For example, hisabetsu buraku, disabled, Okinawans, and zainichi gaikoku-jin?  How is it for people from different economic or social classes?  How are majority people’s perception of body image different for these groups
than for themselves.

5. How do people develop a sense of their body image?  How do they learn about it? Please give examples of how you learned about your body image.

6. What are the most important things  to you about your body image? What would you change?

7. Is there anything else you’d like to say?

Laurie and Debbie say:

If you’ve been living under a rock somewhere, you might have missed the fact that legendary sex symbol Bettie Page died last week.

We both noted her death as of mild interest, and would simply have moved on if Laurie hadn’t read this New York Times article by Manohla Dargis. Dargis clearly cares about Page:

Whether entirely bare or decked out in garters, stockings and heels, a ball gag tucked in her mouth, [Page] always appeared to be having a swell time. With her encouraging smile, she didn’t just look as if she enjoyed being photographed; she looked as if she enjoyed your looking at her too. That smile and the ease of her poses — the way she seemed comfortable even when trussed up in rope so intricately knotted that it would have made an Eagle Scout gasp or take up new habits — were invitations to a party that I suspect most of her admirers were too fainthearted to attend.

and it’s a good article until the last graf, in which Dargis says:

To look at these photographs is to enter another world. I don’t think for a minute it was a more innocent world, but it was one in which sexualized images of women, even trussed up in rope, seemed somehow, well, charming. I’m sure there are plenty of women and some men who would disagree, saying that one generation’s erotica is another’s pornographic exploitation. But the sheer volume of images that wash over us now have blunted our sensibilities, I think, and made us less alive to the beauty, the poetry and the mysteries of the naked body. We are surrounded by visuals that are far more explicit than any Bettie Page pinup, images of oiled and sculptured flesh that promise the universe and deliver so little.

She is wrong. Yes, Page did manage to be charming and welcoming in most (not all) of her S&M pictures, as well as her pin-ups. In some of the pictures with whips, for example, she looks downright dangerous. But people pick their icons for a reason, and Page is not emblematic of 1950s porn, which was neither “charming” nor focused on “beauty, poetry and mysteries.”

The 1950s were not the hopeful and prosperous era that they are often painted to be. In the United States, they were dominated by fear of the atomic bomb and the spectre of Senator Joe McCarthy, which left people aware that there was no such thing as free speech. An enormous amount of effort was devoted to continuous re-creation of the happy suburban family myth, pushing anything which might undermine that image into the depths of secrecy.

In an era which is afraid of free speech, sexually repressed, and expecting doom around the corner, pornography is not going to be joyous. The creation of porn was completely illegal (and not eyes-closed-go-ahead illegal either), which meant that the women who were photographed had absolutely no rights–much, much worse off than women who make porn movies now. What’s more, the basic cultural assumption that all sex (except perhaps for unadventurous sex between two married people) both was and should be degrading. Of course, women were more affected by that than men. When pornography is degrading by definition, the real women will be treated like shit and their representations will generally be degrading.

Laurie’s first job, in the late 1950s, was in a society band-leader’s office next to a pornographer’s office. She saw the occasional picture, and found them to be anything but joyous.

Page is so famous sixty years later because she doesn’t represent the norm of 1950s porn. Her cheerfulness and seeming delight is called into question by her history after her career, which included thirty years of bad marriages, mental health treatments, and seclusion. But even if she was, in fact, having the time of her life when these pictures were taken, she should never be mistaken for a typical 1950s porn model. That was not a time when people were “alive to the beauty, power, and mystery of the naked body.”

Debbie says:

It’s a slow news week at Body Impolitic, which got me to surfing around the blogrolls of blogs I enjoy. The Rotund led me to My Ecdysis, which in turn led me to this disturbing story by guest blogger Louisa Hill at The Bilerico Project.

Agnes Scott College is a women’s college in Decatur, Georgia. It’s been named one of the two most LGBTQ-friendly colleges in Georgia, and it’s mission is “to educate women to “live honorably, think deeply, and engage in the intellectual and social challenges of their times.”

It also makes ends meet by making the campus home to the barrel-scrapings of the American movie industry, and (no surprise!) that means juvenile objectification of women for “fun” and profit. This time, it’s (I kid you not!) Road Trip II: Beer Pong. (Agnes Scott is a dry campus.) (The original Road Trip is “rated R for strong sexual content, crude humor, language and drug use.”)

… students eating dinner were recruited in the cafeteria to be extras in the film’s derisive “Lesbians until Graduation” scene. The recruiter assured us that the only requirement was “acting like lesbians.” But in case we were interested, they welcomed same-sex “background kissers.”

Apparently the main premise of the scene involved the male protagonists stumbling upon the room full of these “making-out lesbians” (to presumably “convert” them?). When we expressed offense, the recruiter said she was warned about encountering uncooperative students who were “really into being women” (versus into being objects?).

Agnes Scott women already face the insulting stereotype of girls pillow fighting in silky pajamas. How are we supposed to be taken serious as an academic institution when the production team won’t let us in the library because they’re filming barely dressed women running around on our quad? We, with our backpacks and winter coats, surely would disrupt their intended portrayal of women.

And, of course, body image and fatphobia are not absent from this story:

“… the movie’s Craigslist ad states “primarily seeking White” and “Attractive Female Model Type” extras, valued at $7.17/hr (be sure to send in your weight!) … The [movie's] flier shows a headless white woman’s body, focusing on her large breasts, barely covered by a shirt that says “Nice Rack.” Her pelvis is in front of a triangle of shot glasses. The tagline? “Get your balls wet.”

The school’s justification for this abomination? “As our college president wrote in an email to the student body, ‘if we restricted ourselves to films that fully reflect Agnes Scott’s culture and promote our mission, we would drastically reduce film-shoot revenues.’”

But that story doesn’t hold water: “Our school is netting $30,000 for the filming of this movie on campus. This amount is just about one year’s tuition, which means that if only one student stopped coming here because of this film, the school would lose money.”

The Agnes Scott administration is caught in a nasty loop: without knowing the back story, it seems very likely that they started opening up the campus to film shoots as a way to make ends meet (many cities do the same thing) and now they have a budget line for film income, which they believe they have to meet every year. It saves them from having to strategize other ways to balance the budget (the degree to which colleges and universities have to bend and spread to bring in the money they need to educate our college students is one on a long list of national shames and embarrassments). The administrators tell themselves that the movies aren’t as bad as the students say, and that the things the students are being subjected to are either “just clean fun” or “one of those things you have to go through.” They don’t look at the details because they can’t bear to.

This time, though, maybe the students will force the powers-that-be into some of that “living honorably” stuff they claim to be imparting to their students. And if not this time, next time. I just hope the students have the strength to keep fighting until this grimy little battle is won.

Laurie says:

The second collection of ” Can I Sit With You? ” stories is just out.

I went to a reading last year of stories from the first volume, and was impressed by the quality of the work, and the way it expressed the loneliness of childhood, with intensity, compassion, and often with humor. It’s edited by Shannon Des Roches Rosa and Jennifer Byde Myers. I’m going to buy the new one, but obviously haven’t read it yet.

Can I Sit With You Too? is the second collection of stories from the Can I Sit With You? project. The stories tell the authors’ social experiences at school, from the good to the the truly awful. The new tales represent an even  wider range of schoolyard experiences then the first book, including best friend disappointments, new kid fears, harsh discrimination, living with disabilities, and emerging sexuality. By sharing moments from kindergarten through high school, these stories once again remind us that we are not alone: chances are, if it happened to you, it happened to someone else, too. The Can I Sit With You? project has been featured on NPR, and in live shows and readings from Seattle’s Annex Theatre to the San Francisco Bay Area’s Book Passage.

I would have loved this book anytime in my childhood. It would definitely have made me feel less alone.  Anyone who found childhood solace in books would appreciate the stories. You’ll probably want to read it to younger children so you can share it with them (some of the stories are quite intense).

Proceeds from this book benefit SEPTAR,  Special Education PTA that Jennifer and Shannon helped found in 2007.  It provides important help to the local special needs community, and provides support, education, and community to families of special needs children.  It’s in  Shannon’s and her son’s hometown of Redwood City.  SEPTAR is a great example of doing powerful effective local work.

The  Can I Sit With You project always welcomes new stories {ciswysubmissions@gmail.com}, and publishes them weekly online.

The book is available online. It will also be available shortly at Amazon.com, and in-hand at Main Street Coffee Roasting Company  and Canyon Coffee Roastery, both in Redwood City.

Check it out!

Laurie and Debbie say:

We see an interesting synergy between two posts from excellent blogs. First is this Alas, A Blog post by Ampersand:

I’m pretty sure I’ve never said that fat people are “the last safe target,” because I loathe that phrase.

Everyone thinks they’re the last safe target.

Second is Melissa McEwen at Shakesville, “A Perfect Example, Unfortunately”

the cover of a prominent national gay magazine reading “Gay is the New Black: The last great civil rights struggle” exceedingly, uh, unproductive. Suffice it to say, if The Advocate’s idea of outreach to people of color, whether queer or not, is to declare racism done and dusted, they needn’t be surprised when POC give them the finger.

Calling the gay rights movement “the last great civil rights struggle” is exactly what I was talking about in comments yesterday: When you relegate any rights movement to the dustbin of history, as if everything has been tied into a neat little bow of perfect equality, instead of regarding the movement as the ongoing, living, breathing, still-significant, still-necessary struggle that it is, it’s effectively a declaration of not being your ally, because if there’s “nothing left to accomplish,” if there’s no struggle, there’s no need for allies.

Ampersand and Melissa are making two different points, which are nonetheless closely related.

If you read Ampersand’s piece, he goes on to list a wide variety of both oppressed groups and whiny majority subcultures who claim to be “the last safe target,” as well as a longer list of groups who claim “the last acceptable prejudice.”

Nothing is to be gained by placing oppressions in competition. There’s a reasonably clear line between groups which have lost (or perceive that they may be losing) some degree of entitlement or privileged treatment, and groups which face social oppression and unfair treatment based on who they are. We’ll leave you to draw that line wherever you think it belongs.

Lots of groups face unfair barriers and social limitations, often similar and sometimes very different from each other. The crucially important choice in fighting for social justice is the choice to recognize all of these oppressions. Sometimes they can be fought jointly; sometimes they need to be fought individually. But fighting oppression demands the honesty to acknowledge that the oppressions you are not fighting are still there. Disability access issues don’t magically disappear while you’re fighting for the rights of welfare mothers; gay marriage doesn’t get handed down from the sky on a platter while you’re organizing for national health care. We can’t do everything, but we can acknowledge everything. We can remember other injustices while fighting a particular one.

That’s why the guest blog post by Shaker rrp that Melissa McEwen points to is so important.

I’ve been really mulling over the story of civil rights for African Americans, because there’s been a struggle about this on the blogosphere and even out away from computers. There’s a triumphant narrative to this piece of American history. Africans brought here in chains, the horrors of the slave trade and slavery, the Civil War, Reconstruction and the backlash of Jim Crow, lynching and the anti-lynching work, then come the 50s and 60s and there seems to be a happy ending. Discrimination is illegal (though far from gone) in the USA.

… the narrative says that ancient wrongs were righted, that justice did triumph and that right was done. The narrative suggests that since it happened once it can happen again. That things that are wrong now can be fixed, that rights that are denied now can be had sometime, some time soon.

And so it makes perfect sense to me that when some LGBT people talk about our rights, they invoke the African American civil rights movement as a model. It’s a perfect shorthand and it gives hope.

But when this happens something in me tightens up. As an African American who was a kid in the 50s, who knew that the story that was happening on tv was about me and about people like me, who was the same age as the four girls who died in that blown-up church, I feel like that story is mine.

But it can’t belong to me, because once it’s become narrative, it’s off to do whatever work people can make it do. It’s not a story any more and it really can’t be mine. But doesn’t stop me from feeling that I belong to it, that it owns me in a way that other people can never understand and it’s that knowledge which gives me an unease about its casual and careless use that I just can’t get myself over.

Shaker rrp is so right about the power of narrative, and the justice narratives have to be true. We can’t ever take up a standard claiming that we’re taking it up because other battles are won; we can’t base our social justice struggles on lies.