Basically, an obese woman sets up a very “look at me” situation in public whereby she draws attention to herself by having an accomplice train a camera on her. Of course people then glance at her, curious about who is being photographed. :rolleyes: Using the camera’s rapid-fire option, a photo is taken every nanosecond or whatever.
The woman then pores through the photos looking for any that purport to show any strangers looking at her, or in her direction, with what she perceives as negative or judgmental expressions. This is taken as proof that she is being “mocked” for being fat.
Finally, she publishes an article headlined "For years, strangers have made fun of me for being fat. But I got my power back – by turning the camera on them"
Is it just me, or is this an utterly attention-whoring stunt? And how does she “get power back” by convincing herself that “yup, strangers really do stare at me mockingly cuz I’m a fat slob”?
BTW, here is her website: http://haleymorriscafiero.com/ Note that she never includes any photos where people are paying no attention to her. She clearly admits that she cherry-picks only the ones that happen to show people looking in her general direction.
The photographer is very upfront about her process, which is somewhat necessarily artificial in order to get the results she’s looking for. I don’t really have a problem with it, and think her self-portraits are lovely and interesting.
And just because she blatantly sets up a photo shoot, and sometimes does things like “eat gelato” in order to provoke reactions, that’s still no excuse for people to make fun of her. I suppose one could disbelieve her when she says she’s mocked, but it seems more likely she’s being genuine.
I dunno. It feels more like performance art than a social commentary. I am certain that, if enough photos were taken of me during the course of a day, I could find a few shots of people looking towards me with a disapproving expression. This would not indicate that they are actually being disgusted by me; just that they are looking in my general direction with a bitch face on (for the moment the snapshot was taken).
(Disclaimer: I am at work and have not clicked through to see the photos.)
If I could get funding I might be tempted to pursue this experiment.
She didn’t start taking pictures in order to get negative reactions. She got negative reactions and started taking pictures of them. She also isn’t just hoping to catch a random negative reaction. In one of the gelato pictures, the girl next to her was slapping her belly while she watched the artist eat.
In the article, she states outright that she has hypothyroidism - a condition that causes weight gain and water retention. So she has an uncommon pattern of adipose distribution.
I agree that it works better as performance art than as social commentary. But I can understand how she gets power from her photography – rather than receive abuse and do nothing, she starts to control the situations through art making. That can feel incredibly empowering.
The article said she has hypothyroidism. I believe it can cause edema and swelling.
Stupid. She’s not even that obese compared to some other people. Nothing more than a stunt designed to garner attention and make some kind of point. However, it’s not quite clear what that may be.
Your posts on this matter are a little confusing. Which of these statements would you say most closely mirrors your central thesis?
“I bet these pictures don’t even really show anybody making fun of this woman. She is just an attention whore who wants people to think people are making fun of her.”
“Of course people are making fun of this woman! She is a fat slob and her legs look like a pudding!”
Hard to tell. Looking at that article, a few things went through my mind:
Well, yeah. She is fat. Nothing that warrants staring, though. The first thing I noticed about her wasn’t her weight, it was her hellaciously bad posture and very poor carriage. Standing with a straight spine, chin up and shoulders back can make a big difference in how people see you.
It’d be nice if she’d get over herself. “Look at me - see how I’m fat and persecuted?” Jeez - move the fuck on. (And I completely admit that this was a very uncharitable thought, but that’s what went through my head.)
On the flip side, yup, it sucks. Most people will walk by you and spare maybe a passing glance - they’re too busy worrying about what others think of them - but there are some who will stare and be assholes. And she captured some of those assholes on camera. That really blows that those people exist.
So, yeah - she’s overweight and some people probably take offense at that for whatever stupid reason. Those people are assholes. We know that. And it’s interesting how assholes behave, if by interesting you mean maddening, sanctimonious and judgmental. And now you’ve got proof. Congratulations. Now chin up, stand up straight and move on.
People are looking at her with negative and judgmental expressions because she looks like shit, not because she’s fat.
She has an atrocious haircut, “hellaciously bad posture”, bad makeup, thrift-store clothes, and automatically assumes that it’s her weight, not her abominable lack of concern about her appearance that make people look at her like they do.
She looks like she has no confidence and no self-esteem. That’s just as repellent to most people as confidence and self-esteem are to most people.
The fact that she ascribes it to being fat makes me wonder if maybe I’m onto something with this line of thought.
I glanced through the pictures. Honestly I didn’t see how most of the pictures really indicated someone looking at disgust at her. For all we know a lot of the cases they were looking off camera and just in her direction. Or listening to bluetooth. Or in the case of the photo with the cops, they were good-naturedly joking with her.
Put me down for “yep, attention whore”. Yea, fat people may not have charmed lives, but she even admits she’s data mining for bad pictures, and then attributing them to her weight when it could be a number of other things. Really, she’s just making it more difficult for overweight people because they’re going to get a stigma of “well, I’m fat and if you don’t think I’m beautiful anyway you’re a bad person.”.
I very much agree. Being fat gets a lot taken away from it if you stand up straight, dress flatteringly, smile, look in people’s eyes, and have confidence. And I know that stuff isn’t always easy, but you fake it until you make it.
It could just be that I’m really bad at reading faces, but that picture of the guy who’s getting his picture taken by the blond chick looks to me like he could just be blinking. And that preteen/teen looks like she could just be zoning out and absentmindedly smacking her stomach. (Probably still in reaction to seeing the photographer, but in more of a clueless un-self-aware way than a making-fun-of way, if that makes sense. I’ve caught myself zoning out with my face a little scrunched up doing repetitive physical movements when I was tired. A couple of times, I’ve happened to be staring at someone when it happened*.) Or maybe I’m just reaching.
I guess the photographer’s assistant would be a better judge than I would, but it would help her cause a lot more if she only used pictures that were obviously her getting a disgusted reaction. As it is, it just gives the impression that she might just be overly sensitive or reaching.
It actually makes me feel a little uncomfortable on behalf of her subjects - they’re getting publicly smeared with no way to defend or explain themselves when it’s not clear they were even doing something wrong.
Except for those cops. That pisses me off. I’m all for people being publicly shamed for behaving like that.
*I feel the need to confess: one time I did that while staring at a large mole on a check out clerk’s upper chest. I honestly wasn’t disgusted or anything, just found it visually interesting and was zone-out tired. I felt so bad when I realized and I’m still ashamed of it. I’m sorry, check out woman, you look fine, honest!
I agree with yellowjacketcoder - it wasn’t clear from most of the pictures that anyone was looking at her. In the first picture, it looked like the guy behind her on the steps was smiling because his girlfriend was taking his picture. Maybe he said something to indicate that he was laughing at her, but I couldn’t see that in the photo.
Or maybe she was doing something more to piss people off besides being fat in public. I can’t tell that either.
I have no doubt that being a large woman is tough, and she is probably not the subject of a lot of admiring glances. If she is trying to shame people for that by taking their pictures, I doubt it is going to work.
Seriously? I agree with the rest of that paragraph, but I can’t really see how they were doing that. At best, they *might have been making fun of themselves, but I think that’s a really forgiving interpretation. And even if that was the case, it’s still inappropriate and insulting to her. The way I see it, the social contract goes: you don’t point out other people’s physical flaws in front of them, and they don’t do it to you, unless you have a relationship with them that makes it appropriate (close friend, doctor, etc). And even then, you don’t publicly embarrass them doing it. Well, the kind social contract, anyway.
*exception: when you know the person isn’t sensitive about it and can take the joke. Sorry, I always explain too much.
I think, as un-tactful as it sounds, that she is not so unusual looking as to attract a lot of the negative attention which she resents. I mean, yes, she’s obese, but she is not grotesque. And she doesn’t seem to take a lot of care about her appearance. Not that she is under any obligation to do so for my sake, but I probably wouldn’t be staring at her anyway.
Yeah, I don’t see the stuff she sees, either. Most of those pictures could very well just be people looking in her general directions with weird looks on their faces. I’m guessing just about anyone could get the same kinds of pics if they tried.
As far as the woman herself, sure, she’s overweight, but I know women her size or larger who dress fashionably, have stylish haircuts, and who generally look about a million times better. She could do a lot to make herself more presentable. I’m not saying she needs to or should, but if she’s holding herself up as some sort of pariah because of her weight, that’s only part of the issue.
Regardless, I just don’t believe people have that strong of reaction to people of her size. Honestly, people that large or larger are everywhere nowadays; she’s far from alone.
