On the Internet, Everyone’s Skinny
2/20/10 6:38am ~ Blah blah blahI seem to be beneath rejection these days, as in, I am hearing nothing from those places where my work is under consideration. I need to send another batch of stories out soon. I have a submission at a Very Challenging Fiction Market. It has been there for 200 days, long past when other submissions have been rejected. Duotrope is poisonous in this way. If this story is rejected, it is going to hurt even more than it normally would because I’m well into the maybe this story is going to be accepted phase of the writer process. I am actually fantasizing that the story is going to be accepted. Out of control. I admit the story is good;it has received very nice rejections which are kind of like acceptances for sad writers like me. I have a story out at the New Yorker; it has been there for 178 days in which time work sent after mine has been rejected. I think this means they want my writing and I’m going to be famous!
I love Kevin Smith. He is funny and smart. He got booted off a plane for being too fat and I’m pretty sure every fat person around the world was profoundly depressed for the rest of the week because if an overweight famous person is going to be treated like chattel, the rest of us are pretty much screwed. I made the mistake of reading the comments on the Southwest blog post wherein they tried to explain their abominable behavior and I was, once again, reminded of how much skinny people hate fat people. I sort of get it. Skinny people are hungry and no one behaves well when they’re hungry but still… there’s just no call for some of the things I read.
I travel a lot and I’m 6′3″ or 6′4″ depending on the day and I’m fat so I’ve long been aware of airlines and their BS policies which I resent but I also hate people so I’m not going to engage in nonsense and I’m never going to put myself in a position where some asshole in a polyester uniform is going to humiliate me. Unless I’m traveling with someone, I’ll buy two coach tickets or I’ll fly first class because I’m not interested in getting into drama at the airport. This is what pisses me off even more than a culture that has made me so paranoid I spend twice as much as everyone else to travel. Even when you are pre-emptive, airlines are completely ill-equipped. You show up with two boarding passes and it throws the gate robots into a panic. Anything even slightly beyond the norm confuses their little minds. They ask why you’ve purchased the second seat and say it’s not necessary or they forget to scan one of the passes OR THEY BOOK YOUR SEATS IN THE BULKHEAD and they do all this without a modicum of discretion. It’s a clusterfuck from top to bottom and I find it ridiculous because they want to be able to force overweight people to buy two tickets but then don’t take the time to train their employees on how to handle it gracefully when passengers actually do as they ask. Even worse, you only get mileage credit for one seat. I wrote Northwest a scathing letter about this and their response was basically, “your fat ass is not our problem and we allocate mileage per person not per seat.” I cannot discuss this mileage situation further or I’ll give myself a stroke. It makes me that angry. Like right now, my heart is beating super fast.
This is what makes me even angrier—skinny people sitting in the aisle seat try to put their belongings in MY EMPTY SEAT. Now, if I hadn’t bought that seat, you would be mad that you had to sit next to me even if I wasn’t touching you but you see my PAID EMPTY SEAT and think that’s an appropriate receptacle for your shitty mystery novel and your iPod and your water bottle? I don’t think so. I am, I think, a fairly generous person but I am the biggest bitch in the world when it comes to my empty airplane seat. I have gotten quite nasty about skinny people even looking at my empty seat. That’s right, mofos. That seat right there? My imaginary friend is sitting there and my imaginary friend hates your face. If there’s a rotund person in the aisle seat, though, I tell them feel free to relax and raise your armrest for in this row, we are kings.
I wrote an essay about being fat for a creative nonfiction class four years ago, called Fat Girl’s Rhapsody. The teacher of that class, a great guy but more into masculine prose, was pretty uncomfortable so I enjoyed that. I was in a very different place when I wrote the essay but I took a look at it recently and I think it’s not terrible. I tried shopping it around and met with a lot of rejection. I don’t think literary magazines want to read about the neuroses of fat people and I also don’t feel like revisiting the essay to maybe make into something workable because a. I’m lazy and b. I kind of worked through everything I needed to work through the first time around. So. This week, I thought, I have a blog. I don’t need no stinkin’ magazine. SO I’m putting a PDF of the essay up for a while because I think more fat people should pull a Kevin Smith and talk openly about fat. See how I brought that full circle?
Absolutely brilliant! Thanks for sharing. I loved the end section especially since it ties everything together in such a left-field, abstract way.
Thanks, very much. I’ve thought through the ending a lot and I continue to mess with it but I’m glad it made sense to you, how it ties things together.
Holy hell, that essay is amazing. That bit about the exercise bike stand-off? Wow.
Don’t mess with me on an exercise bike. I will smoke you. Thanks!
yes. what they said. and the anorexia section. whoah. powerful shizz man.
Thanks, very much.
The word that comes to my mind is “heartbreaking”.
Also, cathartic. Sometimes, something needs to be broken before it can heal.
holy shit roxane. that essay is very powerful. that was seriously incredible. ahem. thank you for sharing that.
You’re welcome and thanks for reading + the kind words.
FANTASTIC essay, Roxane. Thank you.
And thank YOU!
I loved that essay. Especially towards the end I could relate it to other types of consumption problems too. “Life is safer this way….” Yes.
It means a lot to know there was something you could relate to in this essay; I think there’s a lot about these issues that is universal.
Oh this line made me laugh happily “That’s right, mofos. That seat right there? My imaginary friend is sitting there and my imaginary friend hates your face.”
Your essay is so good. Sad. True. Excellent. Thank you.
My imaginary friend is downright evil but I like her a lot. Thanks.
I only have access to the Internet via a phone that can’t handle PDFs so I will read your essay when I’m back tomorrow, but wanted to make sure to at least say thanks for this post. I have some idea of how difficult both things were to write well, and to send out into the world. You are right that more fat people should pull a Kevin Smith. When I’m back at a monitor that’s not the size of a postage stamp, I will take a shot at one myself.
I will read when you write!
I can’t wait to read this essay…
Oh, Roxane…I love you. Thanks for sharing that essay.
Thank you, Cate. I’m glad the work spoke to you.
This essay is wonderful, Roxane…
Thanks, Eric.
I read it. Very good stuff, Roxane, big congrats. It reminded me of this-
http://www.thesunmagazine.org/issues/321/the_love_of_my_life
Paula its crazy you mention that essay. I love it love it love it. Such intense, naked writing.
Yes! I don’t know how your brain has produced all these amazing words but it has and I love it. Also, since like 30 percent of the US is overweight, why is a)it still okay to piss on fat people and b)still okay not to accomodate them in anyway? I mean, I’m an average-sized person and I can barely fit into one of those teensy little seats comfortably–why can’t we get some bigger seats up in these airlines? Probably for the same reason I feel like I’ve been anally raped every time I have to fly anymore. And I can’t believe you don’t even get double airline miles when you buy that second seat!! WTF?! What is their justification for that? Now you’ve got my heart beating all fast. Damn good essay though.
I stumbled on your blog while doing something related to Weave magazine (what it was exactly I’m not sure, so don’t press for details on how this jump was made!), or maybe it was airline stories. In any case, I just read the essay you wrote, and I can’t deny that it made me tear up a bit. I have been attempting a similar project, but have been discouraged–that it is likely a hard sale to any kind of publication. I think it is amusing that fatness must prove itself sale-worthy to be worthy of others consumption.
I am currently a college student. Life as a fat college student is a continuous standoff in which I am a foreign transgressor, and there is nothing I can do to excuse my own spatial occupancy. I am fat, but I am not of the size that is mostly depicted in the media. I don’t know how to say this without coming off as the fellow fatty that has to relate that they’re not THAT big–although I suppose that’s exactly what it is. Despite what most people think, I have close friends and I have relationships. I work out, though not with the frequency that some can afford. I love vegetables, I love healthy cooking, and I would if I could. College is a breeding ground for obesity, I think. Dining halls that swear by standards of health and nutrition serve tasteless mixed-vegetable brews alongside expertly and freshly prepared double-cheeseburgers, and are astonished when students thin and fat pick a burger or pizza. I have campaigned for better food preparation and the utilization of local vegetables in dining halls; after all, I attend a university which is renown for their status as an agricultural school. The rewards for this crusade, which was joined by many others, was an upgrade in the frozen pizza used, a new flavor of soup to be watered down, and wheat bread on the sandwich bar.
Since this has already become a rant, I guess I’ll get to a point or something. People don’t realize that every day is a battle we face with anxious social calculation, that our lives are ruled so often by the frequency of those slightly-off-look faces and how exposed the sweat line down our back is. People don’t realize that we often want and try to lose weight, and further still that we have other aspirations entirely! People FORGET that we are often just as disgusted with ourselves, that we try and hide the shame, that we are anything but arrogant or comfortable in our “consumption”. It irks me, as I’m sure it irks many.
I enjoyed your essay and I’ve shown it to a few others. I don’t expect us to make a lot of headway on how we’re perceived by the general public, but I’ll be damned if it’s not worth saying anyway.
Hi Benjamin. Thanks for your comment. You should write about your experiences as a fat college student. I do think there’s room for those stories and I absolutely agree–college positively encourages obesity and/or disordered eating. People do forget that fat people think the same things as everyone else but writers like you can remind them.