![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
tvordljIt's so great to see an article like this in the newspaper. It was in our Daily News but the columnist writes for the Montreal Gazette
Column is here But since it won't be there for more than a few days,
By Lisa Fitterman
CanWest News Service
Meet Abi Slone and Tracy Tidgwell, two chicks who are frank, fat and funky-in-your-face about it.
Call them self-styled fatty activists who want you to know that they're not happy when they can't find hot clothes in extra-large sizes - and that fashion boots are a fat girl's worst grunting and yanking nightmare.
I met with Slone and Tidgwell when they were here last week as guests at a seminar that is part of a series dealing with feminist issues. See, they're members of a small, Toronto-based troupe called Pretty, Porky and Pissed Off, which is into body love and acceptance, no matter whether you are a skinny ninny, mere chubette or wear a Size 24 polyester pant with panels.
Their slogan? "Of course you look fat in those pants, and damn fine, too!"
Right. With a wink, a nudge and a whole lot of attitude, Pretty, Porky and PO'ed are taking back all the fat jokes and insults they have heard in their lifetimes and turning them into their own.
Fatty. Thunder Thighs. Porky. Pig Face. Tub o' Lard. Jiggle Booty. Cow.
Fat jokes are the last bastion of political incorrectness, something that people feel they have permission to do even though they're reluctant to say something equally insulting to gays or people of a different skin colour. It's as if common wisdom dictates that fat people are out of control and lazy, therefore contemptible.
I noted during our conversation that when I was 15, I overheard a male classmate express surprise that one of his buddies had been making out with me. "You kissed that fat cow?" he asked. (And here you, dear readers, have been probably thinking that I blame my poor mother for all my problems.)
I lost about 15 pounds that summer while living on a diet of bread crusts and lettuce; it was beginning of a vicious cycle that would last 15 years.
Slone nodded. "I know," she said. "Unfortunately, my name rhymes with you-know-what. I was called Flabby Abi throughout school."
Many of us still struggle with similar traumas. The very idea of being fat is a totally conceivable nightmare, and come on - how many of you really have said to yourself that you'd rather die than be as big as some anonymous person you saw on the street?
Why is it that the media, including this newspaper, is (poly)saturated with stories about diets, non-diets, health risks for fat people and obesity epidemics among the young and the sedentary? Did someone here have an impish sense of humour last week when they made up the front page that had a photo of a doughnut taste-test right above a headline that read: "There's no magic way to shed fat."
Slone and Tidgwell say nuts to all that - and empanadas, brownies, fruit and several daily servings of vegetables. They eat normally, and they wonder why reports on childhood obesity gloss over the fact that gym classes have been cut as a cost-saving measure.
"And how much does the stress of living as a fat person in North America have to do with it, too?" wondered Tidgwell.
The troupe began as a "queen-sized" street protest on Toronto's Queen St. and has since morphed into performance art. Their routines include La Vida Porka and a burlesque satire of nubile women leaping out of cakes. They wear bodysuits that hide nary a roll and, rather than jump, they sit on the things and slowly grind their behinds into the icing.
Mm-mm good - not. But Pretty, Porky and PO'ed provides a much needed counter to popular culture that marveled when Renée Zellweger gained all that weight for Bridget Jones, lauded Julia Roberts for wearing a fat suit in a 2001 movie and uses Size 10 models for plus-size clothing.
While I may quibble with their message that no fat is bad fat, it's time that it was put out there. As Marie-Antoinette might say: Let them squish cake, and preconceptions, too.
Lisafitt@yahoo.com
Column is here But since it won't be there for more than a few days,
By Lisa Fitterman
CanWest News Service
Meet Abi Slone and Tracy Tidgwell, two chicks who are frank, fat and funky-in-your-face about it.
Call them self-styled fatty activists who want you to know that they're not happy when they can't find hot clothes in extra-large sizes - and that fashion boots are a fat girl's worst grunting and yanking nightmare.
I met with Slone and Tidgwell when they were here last week as guests at a seminar that is part of a series dealing with feminist issues. See, they're members of a small, Toronto-based troupe called Pretty, Porky and Pissed Off, which is into body love and acceptance, no matter whether you are a skinny ninny, mere chubette or wear a Size 24 polyester pant with panels.
Their slogan? "Of course you look fat in those pants, and damn fine, too!"
Right. With a wink, a nudge and a whole lot of attitude, Pretty, Porky and PO'ed are taking back all the fat jokes and insults they have heard in their lifetimes and turning them into their own.
Fatty. Thunder Thighs. Porky. Pig Face. Tub o' Lard. Jiggle Booty. Cow.
Fat jokes are the last bastion of political incorrectness, something that people feel they have permission to do even though they're reluctant to say something equally insulting to gays or people of a different skin colour. It's as if common wisdom dictates that fat people are out of control and lazy, therefore contemptible.
I noted during our conversation that when I was 15, I overheard a male classmate express surprise that one of his buddies had been making out with me. "You kissed that fat cow?" he asked. (And here you, dear readers, have been probably thinking that I blame my poor mother for all my problems.)
I lost about 15 pounds that summer while living on a diet of bread crusts and lettuce; it was beginning of a vicious cycle that would last 15 years.
Slone nodded. "I know," she said. "Unfortunately, my name rhymes with you-know-what. I was called Flabby Abi throughout school."
Many of us still struggle with similar traumas. The very idea of being fat is a totally conceivable nightmare, and come on - how many of you really have said to yourself that you'd rather die than be as big as some anonymous person you saw on the street?
Why is it that the media, including this newspaper, is (poly)saturated with stories about diets, non-diets, health risks for fat people and obesity epidemics among the young and the sedentary? Did someone here have an impish sense of humour last week when they made up the front page that had a photo of a doughnut taste-test right above a headline that read: "There's no magic way to shed fat."
Slone and Tidgwell say nuts to all that - and empanadas, brownies, fruit and several daily servings of vegetables. They eat normally, and they wonder why reports on childhood obesity gloss over the fact that gym classes have been cut as a cost-saving measure.
"And how much does the stress of living as a fat person in North America have to do with it, too?" wondered Tidgwell.
The troupe began as a "queen-sized" street protest on Toronto's Queen St. and has since morphed into performance art. Their routines include La Vida Porka and a burlesque satire of nubile women leaping out of cakes. They wear bodysuits that hide nary a roll and, rather than jump, they sit on the things and slowly grind their behinds into the icing.
Mm-mm good - not. But Pretty, Porky and PO'ed provides a much needed counter to popular culture that marveled when Renée Zellweger gained all that weight for Bridget Jones, lauded Julia Roberts for wearing a fat suit in a 2001 movie and uses Size 10 models for plus-size clothing.
While I may quibble with their message that no fat is bad fat, it's time that it was put out there. As Marie-Antoinette might say: Let them squish cake, and preconceptions, too.
Lisafitt@yahoo.com
