Flying the Fat Skies

Posted on February 23, 2010 by lisafindley

Dearest fellow travelers, let’s get uncomfortable. Not oops-I-mispronounced-your-name uncomfortable or we’re-both-trying-to-go-the-same-direction-from-opposite-directions-and-keep-walking-into-each-other uncomfortable. No, I’m talking about roll-your-eyes, let-out-a-long-sigh, grumble-loudly-about-the-inconsideration-of-SOME-PEOPLE uncomfortable.

I refer, naturally, to the discomfort a thin person feels when seated next to a fat person on an airplane. The encroachment of sweaty, flabby, smelly flesh on your space, which you paid a damned good portion of your paycheck for, thankyouverymuch.

Oh wait. No, I’m not. Your discomfort sure is too bad, but it is by no means the only discomfort experienced in that situation. As the sweaty, flabby, smelly lump of flesh oozing into your seat, I can promise that you are not the only uncomfortable one here.

When I’m in an airplane seat, I am squeezed in on all sides — by the small seats that barely contain people with bikini-model bodies, let alone anyone else; by the low overhead compartment that I invariably bump into when standing up/sitting down as I try to fold up my tall 5’10” frame to fit; by the fully extended seat in front of me bruising my knees with every readjustment; and by the endless succession of passengers lurching down the aisle into my head on their way to the can and flight attendants rattling drink carts into my elbow. These are all complaints that everyone who has ever boarded an airplane has voiced (except for maybe the tall stuff — that just adds to it).

Now add to that the claustrophobia of total disapproval and condemnation. The resentful glances every time you shift in your seat, the looks of contempt every time you dare put food in your mouth, the pinched face of the flight attendant as she holds out a seatbelt extender at arm’s length. In daily life, but especially in the cramped confines of an airplane, I’m crowded in by people’s disapproval of my own body and the way I inhabit that body. Not only am I a walking moral failure, too weak to resist overeating, but other people have to see that, and that’s just offensive. On top of which, people seem to think that if they get too close, if they physically touch me, they’ll catch my fat. It sure isn’t my job to disabuse people of these totally false notions, and I’m quite content with the body I have and the way I live in it, but that isn’t a comfort when I’m hemmed in by judgment and I just want to get to my destination in peace.

Of course, not everyone is so unpleasant. A couple years ago, I sat next to a petite college-aged woman who was able to curl up in her seat and rest her head against the window. She was fine with me moving the arm rest up, and didn’t glance over with disgust when I ate the unappetizing meal of limp chicken and rice. She didn’t care what I did, so long as she could sleep for the eight-hour flight. Last year, a flight attendant held out a seatbelt extender to me with an apologetic look and said, “Oh these are old PanAm planes, and their belts are shorter.” Condescending, sure, but sweet. The remarkable thing about these women — and I shouldn’t have to remark on it at all — is that they simply treated me as another human being. I got no special treatment, just the simple courtesy you afford others when you’re all packed in like sardines and eager for a smooth journey. I don’t see why that should be so hard for people to do.

I’m going on a plane on Wednesday, and I’m not looking forward to it. I’m flying United, which last year joined Southwest as one of the major airlines that is very public about its anti-fat people policy. They received a whole 700 complaints from people who felt infringed upon by their fat neighbors (I’m guessing their fat neighbors number far more than 700). I gotta say, I feel pretty infringed upon by this policy, which states that if a flight attendant finds a passenger too large (unable to put the arm rests down “comfortably”), that passenger will be asked to buy another seat, buy a seat in first class, or if those aren’t options, get off the damn plane they’re already on and wait for another flight that has one of those options available. This policy has been covered in a lot of fat acceptance blogs, but I’ll just add to the chorus of “oh no you didn’t”; everyone is uncomfortable on a plane, nobody can afford two seats, and making the decision up to the whim of a harried flight attendant is icing on this particularly tasteless cake. Not to mention, as that Shapely Prose post details, it’s all one-sided; if those 700 people who wrote United are so upset about their comfort level, how about THEY buy the extra seat or first class ticket?

In anticipation of my impending flight, I bought a seat extender in the hopes that I could avoid the nasty looks of other passengers and the very real possibility of a humiliating encounter with a flight attendant who finds my substantial hips to be a “safety issue.” (I promise you, if the plane crashes, I will be moving off it plenty fast enough.) I spent $55 on this precaution, and then asked my friend T. to embroider my name on the extender so TSA agents and flight attendants won’t accuse me of stealing theirs. Isn’t it pretty?

my embroidered seatbelt extender -- thanks, T!

But for all that, it might not work. I might be delayed by more than a day as I wait for a flight that has two free spots, I might drain my checking account to pay for those two spots, I might miss my cousin’s confirmation (which is the main purpose of my visit to England), or any number of things could go wrong. I shelled out an extra $55 just in case my body might cause someone else to freak out, because their freak-out could very easily turn into my punishment in the form of humiliation, inconvenience, and a huge outlay of even more money. Flying is a stressful enough activity without adding these worries, and I shouldn’t have to consider them when booking a flight.

I think it’s clear to anyone reading this blog that travel means a great deal to me. It’s a freeing feeling to soar above the clouds in a giant metal bird, but lately I’ve been feeling more and more constricted by airline rules, passenger comments, and the attendant anxiety, to the point that I hesitate before booking a flight, and I find that terribly sad. I strongly encourage you to read Kate Harding’s piece in Broadsheet last week about the Kevin Smith/Southwest debacle, and bring a Kleenex, because she gets personal and very moving. She gets to the heart of why these airline policies are wrong, and why people who argue in favor of them are heartless.

For those who think the policies are reasonable and fat people need to pay for the sin of inhabiting their own bodies, just remember that however uncomfortable you may be with that mound of flesh next to you oozing into your seat, that mound of flesh is working every day to maintain a sense of dignity in a world that reduces her to just such a characterization. I am constantly re-humanizing myself in a society that doggedly works to forget how human I am, and I promise it doesn’t get much more uncomfortable than that.

Valentine’s Day 2010

Posted on February 12, 2010 by lisafindley

For the past couple years, I’ve made my friends a Valentine’s Day mix CD. I am not attached to the “holiday” as such, so instead of anxiously hunting around town for a man to date so I have someone to buy me chocolates and flowers, I spend that time putting together a great mix of tunes instead. Past years have included a mix of all happy songs, and then a dual set of happy and sad love songs. I’ll post them another time.

But this year! Ladies and gents, I may not buy into Valentine’s Day as a special day for love and material possessions, but I am always willing to celebrate a day devoted to the S, the E, and the X. So I give you a mix that is devoted entirely to having a verrrry good time. Yes, it includes not only Barry White but also “Let’s Get It On,” and yes, it is as awesome and mood-setting as it seems. Enjoy!

BODIES: a sensual experience
Valentine’s Day 2010

Stay – Maurice & the Zendaks
Rockin’ Chair – Gwen McCrae
Can’t Take My Eyes Off of You – Lauryn Hill
Never Never Gonna Give You Up – Barry White
Feel Like Makin’ Love – Roberta Flack
Shake That Ass on the Dance Floor – Vicious Vicious
Let’s Get It On – Marvin Gaye
Your Love is King – Sade
So in Love – Curtis Mayfield
A Long Walk – Jill Scott
I’m Still in Love with You – Al Green
Your Ship – Enders Room
4 Leaf Clover – Erykah Badu
Inside My Love – Minnie Riperton
Smooth Operator – Sade
Didn’t I Blow Your Mind this Time – The Delfonics

Happy Valentine's Day! image courtesy of a Google image search

Book Report: Australia

Posted on February 9, 2010 by lisafindley

Greetings, dearest fellow travelers! How’s your winter wanderlust? Mine usually gets extra-itchy when it’s icy and cold outside, so it’s a good thing I have a big trip planned at the end of this month. In the meantime, I can get my fix by researching future travels.

Today: thoughts on Stuart Macintyre’s A Concise History of Australia, through the first few chapters.

I’m really enjoying the Macintyre history, although his discussion of the “females” is a bit grating. Still, it’s early days yet. What I am finding interesting though, and what I hope to write more about in the future, is what the national narrative is for Australia. What stories do Australians tell about themselves? Who are their heroes, their folktales and popular myths, their national qualities and values? I’m especially interested in the ways the Australian narrative intersects with and diverges from the American narrative.

We have a really strong story of brave pioneers setting up a new country of religious freedom and self-governing independence; we gloss over some messy relations with the people who were already quite comfortable living here, thankyouverymuch, and now they get to be our friends in grade school Thanksgiving plays; and we have a big war full of homegrown heroes who thought up a new way to run a country that no one had ever tried before. In reality, of course, the Puritans who came over here were religious zealots who wanted to use this new land to make their religion the only way to live (and make money while doing it), and anyone who didn’t agree was literally cast out into the wilderness; there were many nations of Native Americans living here who responded to the invaders in various ways, including with violent resistance, treaties, assimilation, and appeasement, and the colonial settlements were by no means an inevitable or righteous undertaking; and the Founding Fathers (oof, loaded term!), who were vocal in their callbacks to Greek democracy when declaring independence from Britain, were slaveowners who needed the French to bail them out.

So that’s the American origins narrative; what’s the Australian narrative? I’m getting a sense of it from this Macintyre book, but it’s a very different thing when the invaders are convicts explicitly exiled from their homeland and ordered to work off their sentence for the good of the country they wronged. (Imagine my surprise when I found out that there was actually quite a bit of this going on in New England, and the American Revolution is what put an end to that and forced the British government to consider Australia as a dumping ground for convicts!) Here, the hardy pioneer is just as important as he (yes, always he) was in the American story, but there are two extra elements — the Australian landscape was wholly, harshly different from the English one, and the Australian pioneers were mainly made up of subjects of the British crown who had been deemed unworthy of being full citizens of that crown. They were expected to settle this new continent for the benefit of a government and upper class citizenry that took their free labor and gave them tiny amounts of unfarmable land in return. I imagine that involves some bitterness and resentment, and I wonder how that works in the Australian story.

Which doesn’t even touch on the bitterness and resentment of Aborigines, who were of course on the continent for over 40,000 years before the British showed up and said, “This looks like a nice vacation spot.” I know there’s a lot of similarities between the British treatment of Aborigines and the British/American treatment of Native Americans — land theft, broken treaties, raped women, stolen children, forced resettlements. It’s interesting, and depressing, to see what those similarities are. Despite the fairly rapid British takeover of the Eastern part of the continent, the Aborigines didn’t just give up their land and way of life, as seen in the story of Pemulwuy, an Aboriginal man known as the Rainbow Warrior for his work uniting various Aboriginal peoples. He organized various groups of Aborigines (the term “tribe” is no longer in use, I’ve learned) to resist the British settlements, and was the first to show the British that the Aborigines weren’t going to take the invasion without a fight. He was killed in battle and his son carried on the fight. His name is left out of the definitive Australian Dictionary of Biography, since as late as the 1960s, Aborigines were considered by the dominant white class to only get in the way of the progress of the country and thus didn’t merit mention in the history books. Happily, he is now recognized as a rebel hero, and his name is getting more recognition in mainstream (yes, white) Australia.

Research update: I’m barely into the 1800s in this Macintyre book, and I have yet to read some fiction or Aborigine dreamwalking tales, but those are next. Also, the food and music, yes. I’m fairly up to date on films; I’ve seen The Piano, Muriel’s Wedding, Mad Max, The Road Warrior, Strictly Ballroom, and now Love Serenade.

My schedule for the next few weeks involves hosting a couchsurfer, hosting my sisters, and going to England for 12 days. Let’s just say Australia is a freakin’ continent and not just a country, and therefore gets two months. I’ll try to finish up what I can before my England trip, and then when I’m back in March we can talk New Zealand.

What I Do When I Read

Posted on February 2, 2010 by lisafindley

I am now in the middle of a couple good books, and I’m realizing that the editor’s voice in the back of my mind can never be fully turned off. I find bad word choices jarring, I cringe at stilted dialogue, and I just about pass out when I find a spelling error. As a former lowly worker in the publishing industry, I know how little editors are paid and appreciated, but every time I wince while reading a new novel, I want to call up the editor in charge and offer my services gratis.

Of course, some of this impulse to edit on the go comes from being a voracious reader, and I know many bookish non-editor types who confess to the same reading habits. I was an English major in college, trained to read closely and carefully, looking for broad themes, detailed characterization, and turns of phrase. I was also a Women’s Studies minor, which means that I read everything closely and carefully in an entirely different manner — not looking for the artistic merit of the work, but rather for the politics at play in the writing, the subject matter, what is omitted and what is left in. The former kind of reading is often best suited for fiction and poetry, but a feminist lens can be trained on fiction and nonfiction alike. As I referenced in my post and comments a couple weeks ago, I love reading any kind of media critically. I feel much more involved in whatever I’m reading/viewing/consuming.

I’m currently tearing through Suzanne Collins’ The Hunger Games, the first in a popular YA series of novels about a post-American-apocalypse society that requires 24 kids a year to fight to the death in the wilderness, on camera. It’s like Death Race 2000, but with teenagers and no speedy cars. It’s an engrossing read, as you might imagine, and the main character, Katniss, is easy to like and also easy to sympathize with as she makes rash decisions, hurts people who care for her, and generally behaves like a teenager, albeit one faced with the horrifying task of hunting and killing her peers before they kill her.

Nifty cover design on The Hunger Games

When I’m reading this book, I am first and foremost looking to have fun, to immerse myself in a strange-but-scarily-not-so-strange world, and eagerly anticipate what happens next. I’m reading for tight plotting, characters who change in interesting ways, and, uh, brutal deaths. I’m two-thirds of the way through, and so far I’m not disappointed, but I did have to put the book down and huff about “these editors today” when I read a line about a noise that PROCEEDED a certain action. No, it did not. It quite possibly CAME BEFORE, in a PRE kind of way, like maybe it PRECEDED that action. I never took a single Latin class, but I’ve read enough to understand the basics of prefixes and suffixes, and how they fit into words we use on a pretty regular basis. An editor should be a reader first, and the other necessary skills follow. If you’ve read enough, and paid enough attention to the words themselves as you’re reading (and not just the story), and you don’t have a problem with spelling in general (I know that’s a real thing) or another learning disability, you will start to notice that things like “The gong proceeded the announcer arriving” are ridiculous, and you will open your red pen with a flourish as you go to work. Ahem. Anyway. Get off my lawn.

The other book I’m reading is A Concise History of Australia by Stuart Macintyre. (I know, right? Finally! Get on that ACAM project, already, Lisa!) I am only 10 pages in, and it is already leagues better than A Traveller’s History of Australia by John Chambers. Both books start off with some discussion of the Aborigines’ arrival in Australia and way of life there for thousands of years before Cook showed up in 1770. But Chambers’ book starts with Cook, fills in the Aborigines for a couple of pages, writes them off basically as uncivilized savages, and then gets back to the white people. Macintyre, on the other hand, starts with Cook, describes that popular history timeline, then introduces the Aboriginal arrival as the more accurate starting point, and delves into what this means for history and the national Australian story.

I’m ditching Chambers for Macintyre, no question. His whole worldview is more comprehensive and more complex than Chambers’, and that is the kind of worldview I’m looking for when learning about new places. Every record of history will have its own perspective, prejudices, and problems, but I’m going to seek out those histories that at least acknowledge that fact and engage with the challenges in recording history — what you leave in, what you leave out, whose point of view you use (let’s be clear that third person does not equal objectivity; everyone has a specific point of view), what conclusions you draw, etc.

Which I suppose brings me back to the two kinds of reading I do — the literary and the analytical. The truth is that good analytical thinking is applicable to any kind of writing, and literary analysis can be applied to even dry nonfiction (does the writer return to her themes? does she use clear, concise language — or, if she’s experimenting with a different form, does she use that form to good effect?).

A good reader uses different tools for reading different types of writing, but the basics are the same. In my case, being a good reader (of this Macintyre book but also of the Collins book) means reading not just for style and content, but also for context, intent, and implications. Learning about new countries is useless if that knowledge is based on faulty logic, privileged premises, and shortsighted analysis. When readers insist on seeing books that go beyond this limited, damaging writing to writing that engages in complex, challenging concepts and discussions, we’ll see more of such writing. The writing will improve, the discussions centered around that writing will improve, and eventually the social and political mindset will improve. Yes, art is that powerful.

I once told my English professor that I wished I were a better writer. “All I’m good at,” I told him morosely, “is reading.” He looked right at me and said, “Actually, I think being a good reader is just as important as being a good writer.” I’m beginning to see what he meant.