Man, I love that movie! I could not tell you how many times I’ve seen it if I tried. And I was a valley girl, still am I guess. I mean, if I get particularly excited about something, I slip right back into the verbiage and everything. Just need to Aquanet my bangs, put on the jelly bracelets and I am there! Ha! I had wanted to be a hair stylist back then, too. Though I also was convinced I’d be the greatest Pop star ever “Blaze” was going to be my stage name. Ugh! *bows head in shame*

The movie was about a gal whose relationship is falling apart after she catches her doctor boyfriend sleeping with a female nurse. And hilarity ensues, but then it doesn’t. This movie is truly about a girl who has been betrayed by the man she loves and at first she wants him back, that is until she meets three fine strangers who distract her and show her that there’s more to life than some jerk of a boyfriend. Her BFF played by Julie Brown (not the “Downtown” one, either, the Original!) is there to help her along the way and give the three strangers a brilliant valley-esque makeover. The result? More hilarity but also a slowly brewing romance.

One could easily compare the “aliens” to fats in this plot. You see, a fat in a valley dating scenario would easily be considered alien. And certainly any salon-a-tron would jump at the chance to makeover a fatty! Always seems to be someone around to transform a fatty, be it on t.v. or movies or what have you. There was nothing wrong with the strangers when they arrived, but in this valley world they simply don’t fit in. So they emerge as the salon-a-tron’s ultimate success as these hairless, hipster dorks (in my opinion). Suddenly the main gal played by Geena Davis in full glam valley-osity, sees them in a whole new light! Suddenly these strangers/aliens/fatties are A-OK because they fit in her version of the norm.

This film makes no bones about the fact that the women in this “valley” are quick to bed only the hottest of hotties and thus you see many a scene of flirtation and so on. Everything seems to revolve around sex, even when it doesn’t. While Geena Davis’ character seems a bit on the light-headed side, she does “get it” eventually and beds Jeff Goldblum’s character. After which she is of course in love and cannot be without him. Because, of course, sex = love for ladies, right? Um, not exactly.

Here’s the thing, everyone is an individual. Every person is a multi-faceted personality with varying emotions and experiences and thoughts. Amazingly, this applies to fatties, too! Yep! Incredibly, just like “normal” gals, fatties, too have different ideas and experiences and feelings on any given subject. And when it comes to sex? Yeah, we’re not all the same in that arena either. I have actually been both the prude and the slut in my lifetime and now fall somewhere in between. I’m a unique individual. Fun! I get to have my own ideas and opinions and go about my life in a different way (than most).

So, when I heard this “Fat Girls Are Easy” thing again I thought about it awhile. And just like a lot of people think that blonds are dumb and redheads are feisty (I so f-ing hate that stereotype, yo!) fatties are not necessarily easy. YOU GUYS!!! Fatties are unique individuals, too! Being fat is no more or less a descriptor than being tall or having long hair. Yet somewhere along the way in our civilization (or more to the point U.S. society) fatties have become the aliens and must be changed! They must fit into some pre-labeled concept of we just can’t deal as a society.

Well, FUCK THAT! I refuse to fit into any category. Wait! Unless Bad-Ass-Punk-Fat-Awesome is a category? No? Okay, then FUCK THAT! Ha-ha! I won’t compare anyone to a fucking snow flake, but dude! DUDE! We are all unique, no two are alike and while we may have some traits in common with someone else, just being fat does not make me or anyone else a slut by proxy! Yes, I’ve been treated like a one night stand when all I was looking for was love. Yes, I’ve treated guys like a one night stand when they just wanted to get to know me better. This doesn’t mean anything about anyone else but me. I hate to keep harping on this, buy you guys? This stereotype won’t kill itself. We have to actively remind people that not only are we human, but we are our own people and can make our own choices. DAMN!

Thanks for hanging in there for my “Earth Girls Are Easy” comparison. Hopefully it came across as intended.

IMDB info on the film: http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0097257/

Okay, so I’ve been married 6 years and my husband and I have been together for over 12 years…so it’s been awhile since I’ve dated (if you can even call it that). Back then it was just AOL and chat rooms. Ha-ha! Oh man, so much time chatting with all sorts of people. I found myself in an San Francisco based one even though that wasn’t where I lived. Made some friends, but mostly just found drama. Today there’s a ton of dating specific sites, not to mention the usual ones like I mentioned above. Back then I would simply identify as full figured. Funny, I would never say this now. I prefer FAT! I remember a specific instance that turned out alright after all was said and done, but the guy in question when answering his door for our “date” (he was going to make me dinner, oh yeah!), “Um, you’re more full figured than I thought.” and I responded unflinchingly, “Yeah, you’re a lot skinner and shorter than I thought.” but we got along so well over the phone it seemed silly to let this get in the way. We eventually became friends, but then life happened and we lost touch.

It makes me wonder about fats in the dating scene today. Especially online? I mean, your employer can look you up for free so it’s best to keep these things low-key, right? When MySpace was at the height of it’s popularity it seemed to be full of nothing but wannabe porn stars mugging for (or showing other things very close to) the camera. Now it seems like only comedians and aspiring musicians use it. I don’t see much of that sort of thing on Facebook, I wonder why. Or maybe it’s there and just not in my circle of friends. At any rate I was thinking on this and wondering how one presents themselves in the dating environments of the interwebz. I think if for whatever reason I found myself “out there” again (like what, in the cold & rain? Ha-ha!) I’d be much more willing to identify as fat and think it would be a great jerk filter simply by using that word.

Certainly there are fat specific communities and events. I’ve seen many a BBW night at local clubs/bars, meet up groups and such…I’ve never been to one, being that I am married, but have wondered what that’s like. Is it a bunch of sleezeballs on the prowl for their next fat-lay? Because it does seem to be an accepted (although mega-wrong) concept of a fat woman being easy. I don’t think I ever hat to beat them off with a stick (as my uncles all warned when I was a little girl), but I was hardly in want of a lover, for sure. I just can’t wrap my head around how technology has taken over that part of our social interactions.

I have always been one for more spontaneous human interactions, preferably in a public place. Do blind dates still happen? Do successful relationships ever start at a bar? I met my husband by hiring him for x-mas help at a music store, so that was easy. He came to me. Ha! Prior to that though I would usually meet guys at music shows or goth clubs or through friends or at parties, just whenever wherever, ya know? Ugh!

I know it’s rough on the old self-esteem no matter how you find dates, but with the amount of control you have over your profiles and images online, is it easier? Are people photo shopping and glamor shooting themselves into an unrecognizable fantasy? I guess it’s pretty dang random of me to even care, but hey I just think about stuff!

I would love LOVE to hear from anyone who has some first hand experience on the subject. Speak up! I wanna talk!
Thanks for reading as always, darlings.

=0)

Her fabulously written post (and seriously, y’all should just be reading this): http://www.therotund.com/?p=861

How to explain this simply? Well, this Pediatric Urologist basically surgically removes part of little girls’ clits that are larger than average. This is an elective surgery that is performed with the parents permission. The girls are very young (5 or 6 years old) and thus have not fully developed, so who knows if their clits will eventually be larger than average or not. What’s more shocking is this doctor’s follow-up procedures and testing. I’d rather not get into it, but please go to one or both links for a better and fuller description. I’m far too disgusted at the moment to reiterate it here. Ugh! Vile sack of human filth I think that this “doctor” is. I cannot imagine in what situation a parent would think that this is the right thing to do. I feel for these little girls and hope that someone will stop this guy sooner rather than later!

And the directory for Cornell University with the Dr’s info as well as the Dean’s: http://www.med.cornell.edu/cgi-bin/phf

It’s true! A double standard like no other it seems.

“ABC and Fox have made the decision to define beauty for you by denying our new, groundbreaking Cacique commercial from airing freely on their networks,” Lane Bryant says.

“Yes, these are the same networks that have scantily clad housewives so desperate they seduce every man on the block — and don’t forget Bart Simpson, who has shown us the moon more often than NASA, all in what they call ‘family hour.’

Well, see for yourself what these networks thought you shouldn’t see:

Returning to my first maxim and its corollary, it’s obvious that cosmetic products cannot be curative and are, in most cases, useless. The inevitable question ensues: What’s the point of any beauty routine; what’s the point of even maintaining personal hygiene? Is it all just a programmed habit that can be unlearned? Is it all a great waste of time, money, and energy?

I believe that our seemingly narcissistic habits do contain a few redeeming qualities. Through our habits we express the need for sensuality and the need for ritual. These dual needs are a valuable part of human nature and should not be suppressed or ignored.

We seem to long for an understanding of our corporeal existence, how our bodies function, what purpose, if any, they serve, how we stand in relation to the mostly physical universe that we perceive, and how we can enhance our body’s performance and sensual experience. Our reason and our more abstract notions cannot exist without our senses. The senses, as detectors and creators of perception, are all that we have at our disposal in ascertaining any kind of truth. While we may have rejected sensual experience in favor of the presumption that our intellect or our so-called “soul” can exist separately, and that our body may just be a container for these precious intangibles, we undoubtedly have always had an intuitive understanding of how crucial our corporeality is; in the end we instinctively strive to protect and preserve the body above all else. We’ve demonstrated that bodily experience is paramount through our indulgence, and sometimes overindulgence, in various sensual experiences. The body needs to feel itself, to know others like it, and to distinguish between itself and the rest of the natural world. This is what sets us apart from those other potentially sentient beings, sophisticated computers and machines, which are projected to supersede us in the evolutionary scheme. No amount of programming could replicate the nuance of perception, experience, and the elaborate weaving together of emotion that the human senses, even with all of their limitations, are capable of producing. Evolution does not mean that the form is improved; it only means that the form is adapted to the environment. If the environment is harsh, the form is crude and so are its senses as, no doubt, the age of the computer machine will demonstrate.

Surely, then, our sensuality is not the cause of our foibles. If anything, it’s our attempted detachment from sensuality and the rejection of our natural instincts that’s the root of our self-destruction. A large portion of the human race has, for some reason, desensitized itself. Perhaps we are overwhelmed by the complexity of our capacities. Like the unflinching hand on the stove, a hand whose pain receptors have been damaged, we will get burned if we deaden the safe-guards that we have in place to detect imminent danger to our species. Moreover when we are unable to detect any danger we increasingly pursue empty pleasures, experiences that fulfill temporary desires at the expense of more lasting contentment. Here too our sensuality is not to blame because the sensual experience is not, by itself, the cause of insatiable and ultimately unsatisfying desires. If that were true, then other animals that also exist in the corporeal and that have similar capacities of sensory perception would be plagued with similar human miseries.

Desire stems from a refined misinterpretation of the senses, a notion that the passing experience can be contained and therefore made permanent. Our desires are ultimately thwarted by the impossibility of permanence, leading to a profound sense of loss and pain. Desire is rooted in that higher order of thinking that we’ve separated and elevated above the senses. If we were to give in to our senses, we would immediately recognize that we are giving in to a moment, knowing that the moment passes. But in following the flow of our senses we would engage with each moment as if it were the only one, and the notion of permanence would vanish, as would the notion of time itself. The opportunity for this organic exercise has been dulled by the legacy of our cultural history in the West, the Age of Enlightenment, in which the mind and body were viewed as separate entities (recall Descartes infamous “I think therefore I am”), the mind being vastly superior. This legacy continues, at least in spirit. It’s clear, however, that the parts of the organism cannot be separated meaningfully at the same time that the organism is constructed from a network of microorganisms, seemingly autonomous in function. This symbiosis between the parts and the whole is analogous to the relationship between reason and feeling – it’s impossible to separate and compartmentalize the two. There is no such thing as pure reason, devoid of feeling, and vice versa. If human beings are by nature sensual creatures, then a denial or suppression of the senses does us more harm than an indulgence in them.

Human beings are likewise prone to ritual. Ritual is the codification of sensual experience into cultural terms. By virtue of their repetition, rituals serve to produce and maintain a collective memory within specific social groupings, and thus they become a form of self-preservation for the collective organism. If sensuality is the expression of the individual engaging with itself and its environment, in ritual this form of expression is replicated on the social scale.

Bathing is a good example, as it is, more often than not, a ritual. In these postmodern times, when many of us sit at a desk in front of a computer all day, most of us hardly engage in activities that justify daily bathing. And yet most of us do take that daily shower or bath. Perhaps this practice is in reference to a collective cultural memory whose origins have been forgotten, at least on the conscious level.

It was not that long ago that bathing was a social activity. The masses did not have the luxury of a private bath and many routinely visiting public baths. Whether people convened at naturally occurring sources of water or whether they visited opulent bathhouses, it seems that the need to transform public repose into ritual preceded the need for hygiene. Indeed some bathhouses were far from hygienic, and the need for sanitation as well as the extent to which it has been pursued has varied with the times. Nonetheless, the association between health and mankind’s submersion into water is demonstrated in enduring practices, right down to the routine prescription of sending patients to healing resorts built around the locale of natural springs and the modern day spa.

The notion of health in this context is something more than the prevention or elimination of sickness. The spiritual undertones of the practice of bathing are evident. Submersion into water as baptism is a common rite of membership – whether it be into the tradition or into the institution of a particular faith – that unifies a specific group of people. Thus the need to access an unknown, seemingly pure and divine order is fulfilled on the human scale by combining attentiveness to the bodily self with social custom and interaction. Cleanliness, the ancient proverb tells us, is next to godliness. The sentiment may have been appropriated puritanically at times, but the fact that this expression remains in the cultural memory is a testament to the ardent manner in which we strive, with all of our senses, to understand that which is beyond them, and beyond our being.