VIRGIE TOVAR
  • ABOUT
  • BOOKS
  • COURSES
  • Corporate Training
  • PODCAST
  • Trips
  • Camp Thunder Thighs
  • CONTACT
  • LINKS
  • blog
  • ABOUT
  • BOOKS
  • COURSES
  • Corporate Training
  • PODCAST
  • Trips
  • Camp Thunder Thighs
  • CONTACT
  • LINKS
  • blog

Gaga, This Isn't a "Revolution." It's Fat Talk.

9/28/2012

 
Picture
This blog was edited from the original version on 9/28/12, 4:15pm.
NB: I got some fantastic feedback from two people related to this blog, and I want to thank them for taking the time to write and also for their ideas about how to make this blog/my ideas engage even more critically with systems of oppression! As a writer I find the process of feedback so important, and I don't always get a second pair of eyes before publishing. Some minor edits have been made to the original post, but the premise/thesis of this piece has not changed.

Lady Gaga’s recent response to being called “meaty” is one in a relatively long line of (indisputably) thin women spouting the rhetoric of body revolution while being deeply involved in the machine that churns out impossibly arbitrary beauty standards. Yes, Gaga, I give you props for putting yourself and your body out there because I realize it likely felt vulnerable. But really? It’s taken you this long to realize that these standards exist and that they affect you too?

Women all over the United States affirm and reaffirm body standards through a kind of confessional process, referred to in popular culture and by some fat/gender studies scholars as "fat talk." A confession might begin with something like "I hate my thighs!," followed by a reciprocal outpouring/confession meant to bond us women in our mutual, dogged pursuit of the "perfect" body. In the book Fat Talk, MiMi Nichter notes: "The statement 'I'm so fat' is actually much more than an observation about how a girl looks or feels. It is a call for support from her peers." Another emanation of fat talk is a meme with which we are all familiar: “You look like you’ve gained a little weight,” often followed quickly by “You look great no matter what!” This confusing criticism-comfort model is part of this long-time feminine pastime.

Women engage in this kind of conversation publicly and privately: What did you eat? How much fat does that have? Did you lose weight?! It’s what scholars have deemed a “uniquely feminine” conversation tendency. Sometimes we’re expected to offer tough love and other times we know that a dose of unconditional adulation is what’s called for. The outpouring of earnest replies from fans fits perfectly with this conversation pattern. The thin Lady Gaga has been called fat and engages with this by launching the "Body Revolution" campaign. In so doing she begins the chain of reactions women have been taught, from our baby days, to enact. Her fans comfort her. Her fans resonate with her and the campaign, but will this campaign be the fix to our feminine body woes - or even the start of a new conversation? My bet’s on no.

It doesn’t engage with women and our bodies in a fundamentally different way. The conversation – and the way it’s playing out – follows all the trappings of fat talk and makes this body revolution a lot more like high school mirror talk redux.

Because “fat talk” isn’t about change. It’s about reaffirming body policing. It’s about keeping the conversation fundamentally about our focus on the female body and not on liberation ―  and certainly not on revolution. This Body Revolution campaign is not a new idea. Upper class women have found the concept of system overhaul titillating for centuries. Furthermore, the campaign's phraseology borrows from fat positive ideology that's been around for several decades. Lady Gaga’s show of near-nudity becomes an invitation to commiserate and comfort; remind her that she does, in fact, have an “enviably” thin body. We become her best friends in that moment, engaging in the ritual that feels familiar. Her exposed body becomes a thing that we are supposed to pity and envy. We play out the roles; we derive pleasure from playing out the roles, and once everyone is suitably fulfilled and reassured we go back to counting calories.

I’m a firm believer in the politics of size. Hell, I’m a fat activist. And if we were at a different point in the history of fat, women, feminism, whatever, I think it would be obvious that the the Body Revolution campaign is a problematic attempt. But we’re not at a different point. We’re still at this one: where fat is considered an act of personal failure, where women bear the moral brunt for body “aberrance,” where women are mostly just bodies to be approved and gawked at or loved or loathed depending on the camera angle or the Instagramonomics, and where we all live in fear of that one little word: F.A.T.  

Gaga’s campaign is not a method to unravel an oppressive, obsessive system of body rules that has us reeling. It’s the same old ethics misleadingly packaged in body-positive language.
Dee
9/28/2012 07:33:37 am

Thank you for the work that you do. I support fat acceptance and fat positivity, and I am very grateful for activists and thinkers such as yourself.

I urge you - no, plead you - to examine the (internalized?) misogyny woven throughout your piece. Throughout your article, you speak of Gaga with patronizing language (e.g. she "gets a gold star", we are meant to "remind her that she's pretty"); you outright judge her and her thinking abilities: "But really? It’s taken you this long to realize that these standards exist and that they affect you too?" And your closing statement, "It’s the same old ethics parading around in a new bikini," is misogynistic, femmephobic, whorephobic and slut-shaming.

We can hold powerful figures like Lady Gaga accountable for their privilege without resorting to misogyny and patriarchal tactics. I'm sure you are anti-oppressive so I won't belabour the point. We all have blind spots and we always have forms of internalized oppression to work on. I humbly ask you to consider yours.

Love and solidarity,

Dee

cdubz111
9/29/2012 02:14:01 am

hi Virgie, I came here from a friend's posting on facebook, and the Gaga weight comments and pictures have been a large part of my news the past week. This is a really different perspective that I hadn't considered, especially from the point of view of what kind of performance she is giving and what she's requesting in return. Thanks for posting on it.

I read her decision to bare her body much differently, as a statement that it doesn't matter what weight you are - you will be shamed/commented upon because we live in that kind of society. Much like it doesn't matter what you are wearing when sexually assaulted - because you can be, while wearing anything, and people will always ask what you were wearing - because we live in that kind of culture. I saw Gaga's decision as a gesture similar to slutwalk. Some women who walk wear head-to-toe covering and some wear fishnet bodystockings because the point isn't other people's judgments of slutty/modest enough, it's about freedom to wear what you want and still be respected as a person. I didn't think this was about being affirmed as 'actually thin' or 'actually fat', but about being a /person/ regardless of weight. Also, I thought I remembered Gaga saying she had struggled with bulimia and anorexia as a teen? To say there are beauty and weight standards and *newsflash* they might affect her too sounded a bit...reductive?...for someone who calls herself a survivor of eating disorders.

She already fits within the ideal bounds of weight. That she's white. Able-bodied. cis. rich. There's the tension of 'reclaiming' something that can be still misread or shunned. Like calling yourself fat and people rushing to say no, you're not fat and thus missing the entire point of claiming 'fat'. In this case, I think one could argue she's reclaiming her body, through photography. Maybe she was co-opting language of body revolution by using it to describe her mostly in-bounds body from a position of extraordinary privilege. There may be many ways she falls short of fat activism or even body acceptance activism, not least because of the reasons above. And, in how she is received, it may be devolving into a chorus of feminine comfort or objectification that ultimately reinforces the shaming that led to this point in the first place.

But...I would like to think there are ways to read her initial decision beyond a middle school 'are too' 'are not'. I doubt this move will dramatically alter what her critics or fans say about her...but can't a willingness to bare all, regardless of the firestorm it will unleash, be a call for others to do the same?

Virgie Tovar link
9/29/2012 03:58:11 pm

Hi cdubz111!

Thanks for writing. To answer your question. Yes, definitely "a willingness to bare all, regardless of the firestorm it will unleash" can be a "call for others to do the same." And I think Lady Gaga's willingness to bare all has done that for many people. This campaign has and will inevitably have different effects on whoever comes into contact with it. I was writing about my experience of her campaign and offering a critique of the campaign that may or may not resonate with people who read this blog. And that's ok because critiques are mostly theories and interpretations of cultural artifacts.

My statement regarding her perhaps not knowing about these standards and that they affect her too was perhaps "flippant," but I wouldn't call it "reductive." The fact that she shared a very personal detail about disordered eating does not change the fact that this was her first attempt at critiquing oppressive body image ideals (directly following being called fat). The campaign had a very reactive and confessional tone to me, which, as I write in the blog, is in keeping with patterns of fat talk.

transfag
10/6/2012 01:36:18 pm

Lady Gaga is an egregious hypocrite, a fatphobe, a misogynist, a lesbophobe, and a transmalephobe. she acts as though people born as male are the only queers out there, and i have hated her for this for a long long time. this fat suit stuff just makes me wish she'd disappear even more.


Comments are closed.
    Picture
    Picture
    Picture

    Virgie Tovar

    Virgie Tovar, MA is one of the nation's leading experts and lecturers on fat discrimination and body image. She is the founder of Babecamp (a 4 week online course focused on helping people break up with diet culture) and the editor of Hot & Heavy: Fierce Fat Girls on Life, Love and Fashion (Seal Press, 2012). She writes about the intersections of size, identity, sexuality and politics. See more updates on Facebook.

    WHY IS THERE NO COMMENTS SECTION?
    I have permanently closed the comment section on my blog as of 8/20/15 so that I can better utilize the time I had previously dedicated to moderating comments. I encourage folks who have thoughts about my work to go out and have a conversation with someone about what you loved (or hated.. boo) about my writing over coffee.    

    Archives

    April 2021
    June 2020
    May 2020
    May 2019
    February 2019
    February 2018
    June 2017
    May 2017
    August 2016
    July 2016
    June 2016
    December 2015
    October 2015
    September 2015
    August 2015
    July 2015
    June 2015
    May 2015
    April 2015
    March 2015
    February 2015
    December 2014
    November 2014
    October 2014
    September 2014
    August 2014
    July 2014
    June 2014
    May 2014
    April 2014
    March 2014
    February 2014
    January 2014
    December 2013
    November 2013
    October 2013
    September 2013
    August 2013
    July 2013
    June 2013
    May 2013
    April 2013
    March 2013
    February 2013
    December 2012
    November 2012
    October 2012
    September 2012
    August 2012
    July 2012
    June 2012
    May 2012

    Categories

    All
    Body Liberation
    Bullying
    Fat Activism
    Fat Activist
    Fat Clothing Swaps
    Fat Fashion
    Fat Positive
    Fat Sex
    Fatshion
    Fat Studies
    Fierce Fat
    Good Vibrations
    Jen Larsen
    Jennifer Livingston
    Kim Kardashian
    Plus Size
    Plus-size
    Plus Size Fashion
    Seal Press
    Sexuality
    Stranger Here
    Thiswaraintabouthealth
    Virgie Tovar
    War On Obesity
    Weight Loss Surgery
    Wls

    RSS Feed

Powered by Create your own unique website with customizable templates.