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Acceptance and Change Through Contradiction

In “What Fullness Is”, Roxanne Gay touches on a number of topics including body positivity, romanticisation of surgery, and how obesity is viewed by society. However, what I found most interesting throughout this piece is how Gay uses contradictions to show her struggle with mental health.

This use of contradiction first notably appears when Gay talks about both loving and hating her body. Gay states that she is “sometimes fine” and “sometimes hates” her appearance, showing a fluidity on how she feels towards her body. What follows this is then an unequivocal disdain in how she views herself in pictures. “…there are pictures and videos of me everywhere. I hate these images, cringe when I see them, and then hate myself for cringing, for not seeing myself with kindness.” While previous paragraphs have Gay showing a conflicted yet well defined description of how she feels towards her body, this last quote completely contradicts her previous statements by making the blanket claim that she is never content in her appearance in these pictures. This suggests that Gay feels a deeper level of self loathing towards her appearance than a simple “sometimes hates” implies. Gay’s hatred for how she reacts to these images further implies the existence of this underlying loathing that Gay does not explicitly acknowledge.

Another contradictory moment comes right after Gay’s surgery. After being complemented by her surgeon for losing weight before the surgery, Gay “felt a swell of pride and then hated myself for that swell, for being so pedestrian as to take pleasure in the sort of validation that goes against so much of what I believe about how bodies should be allowed to be.” The conflicted emotions here show that Gay stills has this deep seeded hostility towards herself. Despite committing to losing weight and undergoing surgery, she is upset that she feels joy in her decision to lose weight.

What Gay shows is a disconnect she feels from herself. She is unable to understand how or why she feels certain ways, resulting in growing anger and frustration. Gay is upset that she feels unhappy in her appearance in pictures, and she is also upset that she feels pride in getting complemented on losing weight.

What Gay’s piece tells is less a story on weight loss and more a story on the slow gradual change of improving her mental health. The conflicted and contradicting feelings Gay feels towards herself show an internal conflict that weight loss cannot fix. However, Gay begins going to therapy wherein her therapist is “forcing me to face uncomfortable truths, forcing me to get comfortable with feeling my feelings — something I’ve avoided for most of my life.” It is after this point where Gay’s descriptions of herself begin to change. Rather than feeling conflicted towards herself, Gay feels nothing. “When I look in the mirror, I see no difference — none at all.” Although this is not a conclusion of complete self acceptance, it shows an improvement towards how she felt towards herself earlier in the piece. The change Gay has undergone is slow, but it is certainly noticeable.

Class, Wed, 10/09

Of Interest

Sports as a Contact Zone: Tweeting in the NBA

Questions About Proposals

Conferences Next Week

We’ll have 15 minutes to talk together. I’ll have, maybe, a 3 or 4 minute response to your proposal. What else do you want to ask me about your project as you begin work on it? What other texts have you found to read or watch? How have you narrowed and define the sorts of field research (observation or memoir) that you hope to do?

Roxane Gay: Writing About Unruly Bodies

Official Trailer, Shrill, Hulu (2018)
Fastwrite

I offer this trailer for the (I think, quite good) Hulu adaptation of Lindy West’s Shrill as a way of putting this question: We all know that fat-shaming is bad. So what else is Roxane Gay saying (or not)?

To Do

  1. Mon, 10/14, or Wed, 10/16: Come to my office in 134 Memorial ready to make good use of your 15-minute conference with me. Bring any drafts, notes, books, or other materials you’s like to share.
  2. Thurs, 10/17, 10:00 am: Post a text from your project that you feel will interest the other members of this class. Provide bibliographic info. Write a “teaser” summary that will entice other people in the room into reading or viewing it.

Degrading Views of Public

Roxane Gay’s piece “fullness” was very moving and a piece that I enjoyed reading. This piece sided with issues that we have in our society of public discrimination, judging others for looks, and overall lack of self confidence. After reading this piece I couldn’t do anything but feel bad for Roxanne Gay and her experiences with others while she was in public. No one should ever feel as if they are afraid to go in public because they will be called degrading things or belittled because of their physical representation. This being said its very hard to fathom that people are like this but it is the world we live in, insecure low life people have the urge to make fun of other to protect their insecurities. This reminded me of how people can be put in contact zones as we talked about earlier in the semester. Roxane Gay’s piece does a good job in touching on being silenced for her looks, put down, and beat up. At one point she states,

“The truth is that my desire for weight loss has long been about satisfying other people more than myself, finding a way to fit more peacefully into a world that is not at all interested in accommodating a body like mine.”

This quote right here stuck out to me when I was reading her piece. This is because this seen to be a big problem in our world today. Others are so focused on what other people think about them that they need to change their body, change the way the act and do certain things in order to fit in to society. I have never really understood this and this is something that so many people are doing nowadays, so many are following this trend of making others happy first and not finding happiness within. This trend has lead many in our nation to be left lonely, depressed, and overall unwanted by society. Although this is a common theme I still feel bad for people like Roxane Gay, I feel bad and empathize for them because they constantly have people critiquing them, making fun of them, and telling them how to get better. I can side with this and understand how it would lead someone to want to alter their body. Nowadays people are so ready to critique someone else first but when they are critiqued all hell breaks lose. Why is this? Are people nowadays more insecure? Are they looking for power?

Another quote that I found to be very powerful is when she states,

“I had to face the extent of my unhappiness and how much of that unhappiness was connected to my body. I had to accept that I could change my fat body faster than this culture will change how it views, treats, and accommodates fat bodies. And I had to do so while recognizing that losing weight wasn’t actually going to make me happier — which may have been the bitterest part of all.”

This stood out to me because of the way she frazes this, it put it into perspective for me, she states that she had to move her fat body faster than this culture will change how it views, treats, and accommodates fat bodies. As she describes through her text our culture is not the one to be accepting and accommodating of overweight humans in the U.S. I feel as if people are losing the ability to accept people for who they are nowadays and pre judge by looks rather than getting to know someone’s story first.

A Little Empathy Can Go A Long Way

Roxane Gay’s piece “Fullness” and her interview with Trevor Noah were both very interesting, and both addressed a topic most people would consider a difficult subject. I decided to begin with watching the interview with Trevor Noah and then read Gay’s writing, which I believe, for various reasons, helped me better understand her work. By watching the interview first, I was able to personify Gay’s work which allowed me to empathize with her experience. In addition, watching the interview first, instilled in me a sense of understanding with her experience; that I feel I likely would not have if I had read her piece first. 

In the interview, Gay explains how so many people hold misconceptions and prejudice towards people who are over-weight, while disregarding their struggles or feelings. These misconceptions and prejudice create a culture in which over-weight people are shamed, dehumanized, considered outcasts, and also considered abnormal. Furthermore, it is shown as the interview progresses and in “Fullness,” that Gay clearly states that her “craving is for more than what is just on a plate.” This craving is to be accepted in society, not feel ashamed for her weight, and to not feel the many pressures associated with being over-weight. Some of these pressures can be very burdensome, for example, Gay explains how she is constantly berated for her weight and regardless of what she does, it is difficult to fit in. Even booking an airline ticket can become an arduous task. If she buys one ticket, she is berated for invading people’s space; but if she buys two tickets people question why she needs two tickets. This mentality towards over-weight people creates an environment in which people like Gay, face constant lose-lose situations, such as the airline ticket dilemma. 

As a result of these pressures, people like Gay are more susceptible to being convinced that they need to change their body and that she’s abnormal because of her weight. This notion is absurd; and it made me much more empathetic with her experience, one that she has been dealing with her entire life. For example, Gay was pressured for years to undergo weight lose surgery and finally capitulated. When speaking about herself post-weight lost surgery, she says “I am depressed and miserable. I am cold all the time and exhausted because I’m only eating between 1,200 and 1,500 calories. I am filled with regrets because everything has changed, but everything is exactly the same.” I feel that this quote is more of a metaphor than a quote in which Gay is talking about the physical changes accompanied with weight loss surgery. What Gay truly craves, in my opinion, is not to lose weight but for society to accept her and her body for what it is; and for society to not create unfair and ridiculous social standards regarding weight.  

Appearing to Disappear: Roxane Gay’s Response to Society’s Aggression Towards Fatness

In What Fullness Is, Roxane Gay’s self-application to the disorienting toll of societally influenced weight loss approaches the different ways being overweight in today’s society is accompanied by exclusion and being ostracized. Gay focuses on just how unaccommodating the world is for individuals who don’t fit today’s typical body standards. That pressure along with the pressure of having to appear to be interested in “disciplining” her eating habits emphasizes the problem area which is in the fact that her decision to go forward with weight-reduction surgery was at the pleasure of everyone but herself.

“The truth is that my desire for weight loss has long been about satisfying other people more than myself, finding a way to fit more peacefully into a world that is not at all interested in accommodating a body like mine. “

Gay attributes much of her weight gain to disordered eating that erupted due to an unhealthy relationship with food and the swirling warnings of others who insist she needs to lose weight. These suggestive words came from sources as familiar as her father to some as distant as passersby aware of nothing more than Gay’s physical appearance. The comfort a stranger must feel to insult and belittle Gay for her weight is perpetuated by fat-phobic culture that due to ignorance relies on the notion that fatness alone makes an individual medically unfit. Not only is this inaccurate, there are several downfalls within diet culture. Restricting your body from ingesting the nutrients it requires from certain foods  can cause deficiencies, weaken the body’s immune system, and heighten the potential for irregular cell metabolism.

“They told me that this surgery will save my life, and that if I didn’t get the surgery, I wouldn’t live until 40. When I turned 40, they told me that if I didn’t get the surgery, I wouldn’t live until 50.”

Gay reveals in her interview with Trevor Noah that her relationship with food became irregular as a result of attempting to cope with trauma. Having normalized these eating habits and treating food like armor, her body became unfamiliar with anything else which triggered dramatic reactions such as extreme coldness when she ate less or intermittently. What the average person couldn’t and wouldn’t realize simply from laying their eyes on her is the comfortability Gay feels in her body when there is no worry of external interferences. Gay emphasizes in both the interview and essay how it is practically impossible to be happy with or in a fat body amidst constant reminders that one is not meant to “fit” in certain spaces.

“I am, however, sometimes fine with my body. I am fine with my curves, the solidity of me. I am strong and tall. I enjoy the way I take up space, that I have presence.”

Behind the incessant implications that she needed to undergo weight reduction surgery was even more hindrance. Waiting periods, food logs, expensive psyche evaluations and other financial burdens are all part of what the average overweight person would have to endure to receive weight reduction surgery. Although a portion of these were omitted thanks to Gay being financially well-off, she acknowledges that these simply reinforce the restricting “ills of capitalism.”

Gay also adheres to the concept of the mind body connection potentially hindering the “success” of weight loss surgery. This inclusion is imperative to any conversation rooted in the matter of eating disorders. The lack of mental control felt by the individual is often ignored in regard to people who overeat. Even in those individuals that have total control, discarding of hundreds of pounds of body-fat does not take place overnight.

“I had to accept that I could change my fat body faster than this culture will change how it views, treats, and accommodates fat bodies.”

With consideration of someone who has an eating disorder that entails overeating, in many cases the part of their body that should indicate to their brain that they are full is not doing it’s job. This impairment alongside the mental and emotional impact of feeling like an outsider is more than most people with eating disorders can mentally handle. The unburdening Gay felt upon making the decision to go through with the weight reduction surgery is only worth anything because of the way the world made her feel prior to it.

The Opinions of Others Control Our Lives

“What Fullness Is” is an extremely powerful piece in which Roxanne Gay vulnerably takes us through her journey of gastric bypass surgery and exposes her inner struggles. Gays effectively connects to her audience, America as a whole, with her use of pathos throughout the entire piece. Everyone can relate to worrying about what the opinions of others, which is a big theme in Gay’s piece. 

“And the moment I step outside the safety of my home, I hate how visible I am, how people treat me, how they stare and comment both loudly and under their breath, how rude children remind me I’m fat and their rude parents say nothing, how I have to think and overthink where I go and how I will fit into any given space. I do not know how to carry myself with confidence when I go out into the world. Any sense of self I have is often shattered within minutes, and then I am all insecurities and fears, wishing myself into a more socially acceptable form.”

Here, we can see the extent to which the opinion of others controls Gay’s life. She lives day to day distracted and unable to focus on anything besides her image in the eyes of others. Without the negative cultural attitudes toward fatness, it is safe to say that Gay would be comfortable with her body:

“I am, however, sometimes fine with my body. I am fine with my curves, the solidity of me. I am strong and tall. I enjoy the way I take up space, that I have presence”.

These particular few sentences are so emotionally powerful because this is the one time that we hear Gay accepting herself. It exposes the extent of how powerful the opinions of others are. What is even more eye opening is that Gay is being told by society that she is supposed to be wanting to work on her body. Society tells her that it is a crazy notion that she should ever feel satisfied with her fatness. Gay is pushed to conform after the humiliating incident in the grocery store parking lot. The opinion of others wins in the competition with self-acceptance. 

Once she undergoes surgery, Gay’ sense of self is destroyed and the psychological effects are shocking. Gay has always been told that surgery is the solution to all of her problems and that she should be fully happy after it. 

“And I had to do so while recognizing that losing weight wasn’t actually going to make me happier — which may have been the bitterest part of all.”

Realizing this is not true is part of the depressing side effects of the surgery, and is something Gay has to cope with forever. After the surgery, Gay says she feels as if nothing has changed. She cannot seem to comprehend the enormous life changing event she has just endured. The mind are body are strongly connected, which is a big reason why she develops body dysmorphia. 

Although many people will never know what it is like to have gastric bypass surgery, Gay does a wonderful job in putting the audience in her own shoes. This piece effectively makes the reader uncomfortable in order to imagine how agonizing this journey must have been.

Class, Mon, 10/07

Defining a Project

An Example: Fat Shaming

You could read or watch any combination of:

  • Roxane Gay, Hunger
  • Kiese Laymon, Heavy
  • Lindy West, Shrill
  • The Hulu series, Shrill, with Aidy Bryant
  • Other writers and artists who discuss body size
  • Reviews of any of these texts
  • Interviews with any of the writers/artists

And you could also observe/listen to people talking about body size while at school, home, work, shopping, etc.

Crowdsourcing

What issues are you thinking of exploring? What texts will you look at?

Jamaica Kincaid, Natives and Tourists

The thing you have always suspected about yourself the minute you become a tourist is true: A tourist is an ugly human being.

Kincaid, p. 14
Fastwrite

In responding to Rebecca Solnit we talked a good bit about tone, about the worries that many of us had that her criticisms were too sweeping and severe. So what do you make of Jamaica Kinkaid’s angry tone here, of her willingness to accuse you, her reader, at least in those moments when you are a tourist, of being willing to turn the “banality and boredom” of others “into a source of pleasure for yourself” (19).

Of Interest

Some Thoughts From Jamaica Kincaid Collected on Lithub 2017)

To Do

  1. Tues, 10/08, 11:00 am: Group C posts responses to Roxane Gay. The rest of us read and respond to them by 11:00 pm.
  2. Wed, 10/09, class: Discuss Gay. Questions about project proposals.
  3. Thurs, 10/10, 11:00 pm: Email me your project proposal as a Word document. Title your document “First Name Last Initial Proposal”.
  4. Fri, 10/11: No Class. Fall Break.
  5. Mon, 10/14, and Wed, 10/16: No Class. Conferences with Joe about proposals.
  6. Thurs, 10/17, 4:00 pm: Post Project Reading to this site. We will discuss them the following week.

“I’m Rarely Hungry, But I Am Ravenous”

Roxane Gay goes in depth about what it’s like to undergo weight loss surgery, how she felt before the surgery, and what her life was like after the surgery that (kinda didn’t) change her life.

Gay admits that,

“I had a desire to lose weight but an inability – or, perhaps, unwillingness – to force myself towards the deprivation required for the significant weight loss the world told me I needed”

She points out that the main reasoning for her wanting to get weight loss surgery was society shaming her and telling her that she needed to get it done because her body was ugly, unattractive, and not good enough.

I think everyone can agree that the idea of weight loss is all over the media we absorb, even if we aren’t personally concerned with it and aren’t always paying attention to it. Our society is so focused on maintaining certain body types for males and females (and everyone in-between) that I’ve literally seen completely healthy people worry about their weight and try to lose weight that they don’t need to be losing, all to fit into their prom dresses or look like their favorite models or singers. It’s awful and toxic how people are made to feel about their bodies.

I understand that sometimes people who are severely overweight need to do something about it because it could be life threatening and detrimental if they don’t. But what I cannot accept is fat shaming from people who know nothing about the people they are discussing, simply throwing harmful words in their direction because they feel like they have the right to tell them what to do with their body. If someone needs to lose weight, they have the ability and autonomy to go to their healthcare provider and choose to do something about it. They do not need random people coming up to them in school or on the street or on the internet telling them that the way they look is disgusting and that they should “really see someone about that” because “it’s in my genuine interest and for your sake as well”.

You do not have the right to tell anyone what to do with their body. Enough said.

In her interview with Trevor Noah, I found myself nodding my head to a lot of what Gay was saying, such as when she mentioned that people tend to give fat people unsolicited advice, they tell them that since they’re fat they’re going to die early (why do you care anyway?), and she discussed how the world doesn’t tend to accommodate to fat people because they don’t see them as deserving to belong there and that it isn’t their job to make fat people’s lives just a little bit easier.

What is especially heartbreaking about this piece is how Gay isn’t 100% sure of anything she signs up for and agrees to in this process. No matter what she does, she is always doubtful and scared of what could happen or could not happen after she makes a decision. For example, she states that,

“I don’t want any weight loss to be acknowledged (or worse, celebrated), but I also very much do”

indicating that she is constantly insecure, even after the weight loss surgery, about if people will say anything or not say anything about it. Her life has been a constant struggle of overthinking, over-planning, worrying, and stressing about things that she cannot always control. She mentions that she has “replaced one set of anxieties with another”, something that for me was truly heartbreaking. She made this massive financial decision mainly for society’s approval, and she may never truly approve of herself and her body image. She is rarely physically hungry, but she is constantly ravenous for self-acceptance and to feel whole, beautiful, and accepted by others.

Societies all over the world shame fat people for what they are and many of them will refuse to act differently. Like Roxane’s article, this response doesn’t have a very happy ending, because I don’t know myself if there will ever be a solution to fat shaming in our society and other societies over the world. I want to preach about autonomy and self-love, but I feel as though people on the shaming side of this issue constantly refuse to see being fat as anything other than ugly and needing to be fixed.

 

Class, Fri, 10/04

Explaining Rebecca Solnit

Fastwrite

Please locate a passage in “Men Explain Things to Me” that you either especially admire or find especially provoking. Write a few sentences explaining why.

Proposals

Of Interest

To Do

  1. Mon, 10/07, class: Read the first section (pp. 1–19) of Jamaica Kinkaid’s A Small Place. I will lead our discussion. I am especially interested in the distinction she makes between tourist and native.
  2. Mon, 10/07, class: Come to class with two possible ideas for a project you might propose on Thursday. Be able to connect the project you are proposing to at least one of the readings we’ve discussed so far.
  3. Tues, 10/08, 11:00 am: Group C posts responses to Roxane Gay. Everyone else reads them and posts comments on at least two by 11:00 pm.
  4. Wed, 10/09, class: Discuss “Fullness” and Trevor Noah Interview”.
  5. Thurs, 10/10, 4:00 pm: Email me your proposal for your long project.
  6. Fri, 10/11: No class, fall break.
  7. Mon, 10/14, and Wed, 10/16: No class, individual conferences instead.

Solnit Response

Solnit’s piece, called Men Explain Things to Me, explores the theme of the arrogance of men in society. Through her examples, we can see how men have oppressed and overlooked women when it comes to a multitude of different topics. 

“Yes, guys like this pick on other men’s books too, and people of both genders pop up at events to hold forth on irrelevant things and conspiracy theories, but the out-and-out confrontational confidence of the totally ignorant is, in my experience, gendered.” I feel that this statement is very true for many men in society. I feel that this might not be the case for most men, I feel that this can be said for close to the majority. When we are passionate about something, sometimes we can get blinded by our own attempt at proving our points. I feel that this article is pretty different from the ones we have read so far this semester. Besides for the Baldwin and Buckley debate, I feel that this article has taken the strongest stance towards their topic. Solnit takes strong stances and she uses strong examples to prove her points. 

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