Navelgazing

[olivermoss]

I have a few long, very rambly posts regarding weight I've been meaning to make. This is one of them.

Talking about weight, dieting or getting fit is a very, very touchy subject in most of the social spaces I've been in. I feel vaguely guilty posting here at all, even though I am so strict about cutting the entries. Is me posting at all upsetting people?

One reason I have so few pictures of myself is that when I'd ask friends to take pictures of me at events most of them wouldn't even touch the camera. Their body issues were so severe that me even having a camera on me made them uncomfortable.

I knew one person who would take a picture of me, but she would only take them in one way. She was adamant that the most flattering way to take a picture of someone 'of size' was to center the lens in the middle of the body with the camera tilted slightly up. Basically, the opposite of a MySpace Angle. Not only is that super unflattering, but in the only pictures I have of myself dressed up for 80s Night at The Crystal Ballroom or ready for some nerd event you can literally see up my nose.

Unless you have a specific lens, the perspective distortion of cameras makes the middle of the image wider*. Cell phone selfies have lead to a rhinoplasty boom because most camera phones makes the nose look 30% bigger than it is. Some plastic surgeons were reporting that clients were coming in asking to look exactly how they actually look, but their shitty selfies had replaced their mental self image. So, yeah, taking a picture centered on my belly button makes me look 50% heavier than I was because both the center is distorted bigger and the edges distorted smaller.

(* In the Wide Angle to Normal focal range. Long range zooms make the center of a image disproportionately small. I use 90mm equiv primes to shoot people, which is just shy of the ideal focal length.)

For the life of me I cannot figure out why she was so dead set on centering the camera on my belly button and why I couldn't convince her to hold the camera to her face like a normal person just once. Did she really think this was the best way? Was this some weird passive aggression towards the fact that I felt confident enough to want pictures?

Every time I look back at those images I debate deleting them. On one hand, they look horrible and remind me of how weird everyone in that group was about pictures. On the other hand, those are the only pictures I've got of me going to certain events.

If you think that is being touchy about weight, buckle up. This next anecdote is a doozy.

In my local LGBTQIA+ community I know there are a lot of people who want to lose weight. Sometimes people ask about finding walking partners but the conversation quickly gets derailed into talking about medical fatphobia and conforming to societal expectations. Medical fatphobia is a big problem. I probably lost a few years of my life to it. I had a very, very easy to diagnose and treat digestive disorder but doctors wouldn't take me seriously. Media pressure and medical fatphobia are serious issues. More in that in later overly-long blog posts, but I just wanted to point out that I do take those issues seriously and am not being dismissive of them.

With the pandemic going on, the local community switched to Discord. I had an idea! Talking about fitness in person lead to people getting upset. Ditto Zoom support group sessions. Posting to the group's Facebook lead to major drama. But on Discord a channel could be made and everyone who didn't want to see it could mute it and hide it. Being Discord based could give us a way to actually find walking partners and talk weight loss and stuff without upsetting people. I talked to the mod and he agreed!

Then someone had a complete meltdown at me. He accused me of triggering him and ... worse than that. He hurled a lot of utter garbage at me in anger. He's someone who has been spending the last few months of Covid looking for online fights. Anyway, the entire point of the channel was to not upset him and other people. I don't want to upset people, but at some point people need to take personal responsibility for their own online experience and this was one of them.

Some people in the group need to lose weight to qualify for gender confirmation surgery. Some have weight gain from depression or body issues. I was aware that a lot of people wanted to talk about these topics, but couldn't find a place to actually talk about them. Every time it came up, drama, but Discord features would allow for a hidden channel for just those okay with talking about it. The channel was left on, but most people were too freaked out to use it after I got chewed out for looking for a walking partner.

I've, um, since left that discord. Which sucks because it was the only discord I was on with people who live in this city who I know IRL, but ... yeah. It's become a scary place full of people looking for internet fights to let off steam during the pandemic and I don't need any part of that.

Previously when the group was still in person, I had someone in the group say they were glad I was so fat because they found it validating. They felt less awkward not being a typical skinny queer in skinny jeans because I was bigger than them. I'm not anymore, though! They don't know that and they might never know that. I might never see them again and that would be awesome.

I've had a lot of people pressure me to stay big. I once had someone upset at me for not finishing a pint of ice cream because it made them feel awkward. Since I'm non-dairy most of the ice cream I eat is cashew based and I can't get through a pint if I tried! It's delicious, but it's also very, very rich. But she said I was trying to ... I forget what she said but she took my not finishing the pint as an attack on her somehow.

I have an actual portrait lens by the way. It's not a perfect 1:1 of a face, but the distortion is negligible. It's hard to even measure. I got it because I wanted to learn how to do good pictures of people and maybe also get good pictures of me. Lockdown hit like the week it arrived.

Comments

[mistressofmuses]

Weight is an extremely touchy subject in SO many places, and that makes it hard to talk about, which honestly seems like the opposite of what body-positivity and anti-fatphobic places should want... it so often tips over into yet another type of shame.

There should be a freedom to talk about wanting to lose weight or get into better shape in a non-shaming/body-positive way, and it frustrates me that that's so difficult to find.

As glad as I am that fatphobia is more well-recognized, and that more queer and other spaces are working to combat it... I hate how vicious the response gets to anyone who does want to lose weight is.

[olivermoss]

It's really harmful how hard it is to talk about. Queer people should be able to talk health in queer spaces because there are a lot of intersections involving depression, lack of access to medical care, the rates of homeless and hunger and how that can impact eating later in life, body dysphoria, etc.

It's harmful for everyone how hard it is to talk about, I am just particularly pissed at how shit the situation is in the queer spaces I've been in. I've seen so much BS and people freaking out at even very mild things like 'time to start getting ready for hiking season' cause people to freak out over trigger warning when other topics, topics that I don't even want to mention here, are treated casually.

The reactions are vicious, they are so vicious I didn't even get into the worst of it in my posts.

[mistressofmuses]

YES EXACTLY THIS.

Yes, there are a lot of fatphobic issues in queer spaces (especially in the less leftist ones), and yes there's certainly a lot of complex issues relating to weight for a lot of queer people. (You could write several dissertations, and plenty of people probably have, about queer people having issues with alienation from their/our bodies, and how that impacts health and weight and self-image.)

Refusing to allow people to talk about it is EXTREMELY harmful. How is shaming people (and outright attacking them) for even hinting at something adjacent to the topic helpful? I'm a fan of body positivity, but that does not (should not) mean "and you MUST be 100% happy with your body, whatever it looks and feels like, and if you aren't or even think about wanting to change it, you're a TRAITOR."

Those reactions haven't been directed at me, but I've watched them be directed at other people in the queer+ spaces I've inhabited, and it scared me off from even daring to mention anything related. (Even just a positive mention of having gone hiking can get those kinds of nasty responses.)

I don't want to feel like I have to lower my voice and meet up in a dark alley to discuss wanting to go walking more, for fear that someone might overhear me.

[luthienberen]

I'm so sorry you have had such trouble discussing weight issues. I can understand why it's a touchy subject, but it's scary how recently especially so many are looking for fights online. I do hope you find a positive forum to share your concerns and progress without those problems.

[olivermoss]

Joining Weight Watchers has helped a bit. It's not as social as I would like, and I missed my usual virtual meeting because Philosophy Tube was premiering a new video... but it's at least added some balance :)

[luthienberen]

Oh I'm glad you found another option and that Weight Watchers helps a bit :) Hopefully, that social and relaxing aspect can be found soon!