i'm alive

Just a quick post to say "I'm alive." My temperature has remained normal for a couple of days so that is really good. I am, however, still really wiped out. This was just a nasty virus.

I haven't been up to much at all except trying to recover in time for labor which should happen anytime in the next 3-4 weeks.

Oh, I am happy to announce that my first sunflowers are blooming (yay!) and my tomato plants are setting fruit like mad. These are very good things.

missing the point

vito_excalibur posted an interesting, if infuriating, excerpt of an interview Erica Jong did with Judith Thurman about Thurman's "Secrets Of The Flesh: A Life of Colette." (thanks Vito!) In the excerpt, Jong focuses on Colette's weight (180lbs) and calls her obese, and continues to seem mystified by a sexy fat woman. Several other people here on LJ have pointed to vito's post and there have been a number of comments on the original post and on the referring ones. I have read many of them and am now halfway to crankypants land.

Why?

Because the point is not whether or not Colette was obese/fat/overweight, etc., damnit! The point is that it is infuriating that a woman's weight is considered so damned important, regardless of her size. The point is that a woman like Jong cannot get past the subject's weight.

I have seen several comments (not all to Vito's post) essentially saying "180lbs--that's not obese!" (actually, if you are a woman of average height, 180lbs is considered obese) and getting into discussions of what is obese and what is not, which is not very body-positive at all and is, quite frankly, bordering on the type of fat-phobia seen in Jong's initial comments.

Others have stated that Colette looked "healthy" not "obese". Really. Why the dichotomy? What exactly do people think "obese" is, other than an arbitrary label used for people above a certain weight for their height? I've got news for you folks--the label of "obese" has nothing to do with health or anything else except height to weight ratio. Arguing about what is considered obese is a losing battle, and in the end just continues to engender fat-phobia and facilitate the use of meaningless medical language in our everyday lives.

I am suprised more people couldn't get past the numbers and be horrified at what Jong was actually saying, rather than focusing on Jong's perception of Colette as "obese." And it makes me wonder if Colette had been, say, 380 lbs, and Jong had said the same things, what would the reaction be? Would Jong's comments have been more widely accepted in the extended circles here on LJ?

Arguing about whether or not someone is fat/obese/overweight does us all a disservice when we are talking about fat-phobia, body acceptance and weight diversity. Who is "fat" or "obese" or what constitutes those things is so not the point. The point is that it is so sad, frustrating and downright infuriating that it still matters far too much to far too many people, and Jong is just one of the culprits.