I’m not sure how to break it to you but there are women in the world besides just your wife?
What?
The photo looks staged because I don’t think a pair of cops would jump into someone’s photo with their floating hat gag and I especially don’t think they’d do it to a person who looks mildly mentally retarded.
I think they asked permission beforehand and I think she encouraged them to do something silly. And then I know she put those pictures on the Internet and claimed they were making fun of her for being fat.
No other scenario makes any sense.
The cops were photobombing. It’s a thing.
I just read through the whole thread. I love how everybody’s(by and…large) dissing the woman and/or her project, but colander keeps trying to fan the flames of outrage every few posts. It’s surprisingly funny.
Digs twinky out of garbage, can’t let that go to waste
No other scenario, huh? And yet, hours earlier, you posted this:
[QUOTE=Justin_Bailey;]
First of all, huh? But I think I get what you’re saying, that the police officers wouldn’t jump in her picture without asking first. They probably thought they were making the picture better by being funny.
That said, she definitely gives off a “handicapped adult” vibe and her experiment falls flat on its face because of it. When you’re trying to gauge a reaction to one part of yourself, you don’t go out and purposely play up another part of your appearance that would actually cause people to stare.
[/QUOTE]
So, again: initially you posted-out-loud to yourself, "Hey, big deal! So the police just figured it’d be fun to pick out a disheveled-looking woman with whom to play a rousing round of “i’m-a-retard, hat-me-do.”
Several posts later, this formerly fun prank meant to cheer up a sad-looking mental invalid transformed in your mind into such a rude thing to do to a stranger that you are convinced the woman must have staged it and lied about the whole thing. Your train of thought ran all the way from “just harmless fun” to “obviously fake” and only ever made a brief stop at the “some police officers can be real assholes” station to spit out the lone passenger, the distinguished Sir But She Kind of Asked For It Because Just Look At Her.
Many other people have given similarly nonparsimonious and derogatory objections to the photograph’s story as stated by the photographer–“maybe it’s photoshopped!”–“well, she looks like she smells!”–and, of course, my all-time favorite, “i bet nobody is thinking anything bad about her at all! she is just too self-conscious and insecure!”
People seem to be willing to resort to any number of desperate, disparate hypotheses–sometimes even entertaining multiple mutually exclusive ones simultaneously!–to avoid having to concede that the artist is correct about what are, to me, two trivially obvious facts: 1) lots of people like to make fun of people who look funny, and 2) the fatter you are, the funnier you look to people. Are there other ways you could interpret these photos? Sure, make a list: maybe people are grimacing at her because she’s wearing funny clothes, or she’s foreign-looking, or her hair looks shit, or because she’s taking up too much space, or because she looks poor, or because they fancy people who film themselves to be “attention whores”… you can interpret this piece through many different lenses and use it to support many points, but that hardly makes it bad art. Certainly it has prompted this discussion, which many people have found enlightening (if not particularly encouraging.)
and almost every woman in this thread:rolleyes:
Jesus christ, colander, she’s trolling. Look at her in that swing. Look at her!
Dear April R.
In case you haven’t noticed, “this thread” is not exactly a high-powered anonymous randomized survey. It is actually an acrid, contentious discussion on the internet wherein a woman who reports feeling marginalized because of her weight is ridiculed for several pages for, among other things, being oversensitive (and also “dumpy”, and also fat.) Most people who’ve felt similarly demeaned at some point in their lives probably threw up their hands and stopped reading many posts ago. If you’re sincerely confused about whether or not there exists a stigma to obesity, I politely recommend you do some reading.
I just don’t think Haley made her point honestly, is all. What you said earlier is true: overweight women are subjected to an disproportionate amount of judgement than both overweight men and average sized women. But so are very thin people, very tall people, very short people, etc. Extremes are interesting, and those extremes which most of us have control over i.e. tattoos, technicolor hair, clothing choices and weight are especially tempting to judge.
But at least some of the negative attention and rude stares can be alleviated by some display of self-confidence. My favorite friend is incredibly beautiful, very overweight and shaped, unfortunately, like a fertility goddess. Though she dresses very modestly her curves are extreme and follow the proportions of Hottentot. (Not an exaggeration. Her waist is tiny, and I would guess her measurements at 46 28 46.) She’s awfully shy and is very uncomfortable with the attention she receives and it shows. She avoids eye contact, shuffles her feet, fidgets with her clothing; just does whatever she can to attempt to minimize the staring without actively doing anything to call people out on their forward behavior. Which practically gives them permission to stare and often elbow a friend to call even more attention to her figure, and her features are breathtaking enough that most people probably expect her to be accustomed to a certain level of attention. It’s hard to get her out of the house sometimes because she’s so uncomfortable with the scrutiny. I’m not sure if the overtly sexual attention from men or the weird combination of envy and appraisal from women is worse for her, but I feel like waving a stick around in her defense sometimes. But I also want her to buck up and own it, and gaze cooly back at her admirers in order to let them know what the limits are. It will never happen though because she’s far too shy and kind to risk a confrontation.
And she shouldn’t have to. When I was skinny, hugely pregnant with the obscene curves to match at nearly 6 feet tall, I was stared at constantly and I had no trouble matching a rude stare and that usually put a stop to the unwelcome attention.
But no one should have to engage in a stare down in order to stop rude behavior, so maybe Haley’s experiment will start a dialogue about respecting others and being considerate to strangers. Or maybe some people who feel marginalized will stand a little straighter and demand a little more respect. I can see some value in the discussion of her project even if I feel the project itself was poorly executed.
“Trolling,” huh? A funny accusation. I have seen many of the posters in this very thread accused of it at some time or another. It’s an insult, not an argument.
She hardly has to make any point at all. Her detractors largely make it for her.
No offense, but that is just about the most pudding-headed comparison imaginable. Although I am sure that your friend finds this attention uncomfortable, you might stop to realize that attention paid to a woman for qualities the onlooker considers attractive is fundamentally different in character and in intent to attention paid to a woman for being unattractive. I am sure confidence greatly helped your friend to turn uncomfortable moments into affirming ones… but have you considered that assuming an appearance of “poise and confidence” might not be such a panacea for women who aren’t receiving attention because of what onlookers consider to be their startling beauty?
None taken, seriously. I’m certain that she receives such intense scrutiny because she’s overweight and obviously shy and is clearly reluctant to deal with it. How many times have people stated they hate to hear statements like “You have such a pretty face, if only you would lose weight, blah blah…” The looks she gets are favorable from a few men, but are mostly critical and frankly gross in the amount of lingering and focus on her shape. It’s cool if you don’t see a parallel between an overweight, ordinary looking woman and an overweight attractive woman, but those features which we appear to have control over give certain people license to judge.
I don’t think the woman is necessarily oversensitive or making shit up. I generally accept people at their word when they have a tale or tales of woe.
However, that does not mean I have to pretend to like her work.
Most artists do not make themselves the inspiring subject of their own social commentary–portraying themselves as an empowering figure in a world full of villains. If an artist is going to be this ambitious, there can’t be any room for doubt. A statement that condemns society must be sure-footed and convincing. I say she fails with this, if this was her goal.
But maybe I need to allow for the possibility that this wasn’t her intention at all. Maybe we’re supposed to take this as an opportunity to walk in the shoes of someone who is very self-conscious. When an individual is self-conscious, they have the same back-and-forth in their minds as we are having in this thread. “Are they scowling at me or something else?” “Is it because I’m fat or because I’m a woman or because I’m an albino or because I’m in the way?” Each picture of her gallery represents a moment of heightened self-consciousness–some justified and some not. If you have similar life experiences as hers, maybe you will find most of them justified. If not, then maybe none of them are. So definitely on this level, the art is effective.
I still find the whole thing off-putting, though. I’m not saying I’m right to feel this way…it just is what it is.
I said no such thing you [REDACTED BECAUSE THIS ISN’T THE PIT]
You know, this certainly seems to be hitting some of colander’s personal buttons.
This isn’t allowed either, so don’t do it again.
Sure, there’s a parallel. But it’s a bit like comparing the plight of a British colonist in India who gets set upon by gawkers and beggars whenever he goes to market to the plight of the poor leprous shit-shoveller when he goes to the same market. They both get stared at, but their troubles stem from very different sources and chirpily claiming that perhaps what worked for the dandy will work for the leper strikes me as obtuse, at best.
Incidentally: did you know that in America, black women are socially penalized considerably less for being overweight than are their white counterparts? This effect is seen for both black and non-black observers, although it is of considerably greater magnitude when the observer is black.
Post 144 
Not in the mood to trade snark with you, but I’ll wager that ordinary and unattractive people are far more likely to* crave* being noticed than to worry about being stared at too much or too often.
Ordinary people in plain dress just don’t attract attention unless or until they stop in the middle of a busy sidewalk and pose for a camera. So Haley’s biggest problem is looking ordinary and creating an artificial environment to get attention. She’s not especially fat, she’s not particularly ugly, she’s just… plain. If she weren’t posing and obstructing traffic, she wouldn’t really attract much notice at all, so she hires fake paparazzi, publishes a blog, goes after media coverage, and then complains that people are staring at her. The name of her study/art piece/editorial should be “Please look at me!!”
Her motive couldn’t be more transparent.
Yo! Thick black girls, colander is calling you out. Any takers?