VIRGIE TOVAR
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Kinky Salon: Is This San Francisco?

3/17/2013

 
I'm having... a moment.

Normally I would wait a day. Let it simmer. But I'm having a moment and I want to write about it. A moment of anger, frustration, rage, confusion... No, no, it's not confusion. It's that cognitive dissonance that keeps coming up again and again. This is the city I live in, the one that's 17 miles from where I grew up, the one that's the sanctuary city, filled with people of all class backgrounds, of people with differing citizenship statuses, sizes, ages, colors, abilities, and that city continuously seems at odds with the kind of gathering I find myself in this evening: Kinky Salon at Mission Control.

Having spent an afternoon in the company of a bunch of fabulous folk- sipping champagne, choking a little on that chocolate flavored and carbonated red wine, switching between Spanish and English, laughing, being amazed by Dick van Dick's Air Jordan shoe purse (DvD, btw, recently won a trophy in the Femme Queen Realness category at an SF ball) - I literally walked out of that house on South Van Ness into a totally different side of San Francisco, the side I keep trying to close my eyes, hold 'em real tight and hope is gone when I open them. And if not gone, transformed beyond recognition. But that side seems to get bigger and bigger, and the city seems to cater to its growth.

These are the specifically bohemian bourgeois burner variety of San Franciscan, the middle class thin white heterosexuals who congregate in homogeneous groups and think of themselves as liberals because they wear faux fur chaps and have 8 songs by James Brown on their iPod. Their progressive politics cluster around sexuality and recreational drug use, and they imagine themselves a reviled minority because they want to watch other middle class thin white heterosexuals fuck each other while high on coke.

Tonight I was reminded of what it feels like to be invisible, something I haven't felt in so long it actually felt strange and a bit absurd. Mind you: I was in a neon yellow dress, ghurl. It takes COMMITMENT to making a fat girl in a neon yellow dress feel invisible. I was unapologetically bumped into, passed up, ignored, and greeted with an indifference I'd nearly forgotten people were capable of feeling toward me. I was particularly outraged that the volunteers who held the party together tonight - making sure that hallways aren't stopped up by couples who feel the absolute, impossible-to-fight need to make out right in front of the bathroom door, keeping the toilet tidy, making sure that people aren't passed out or (in my case) having a fucking miserable time - all seemed to be fat girls, and there didn't seem to be much love, appreciation or respect for any fat girls in that place in my estimation.

There are these moments when I wish with all my heart that I didn't know that when in the company of this kind of people that my brownness and my fatness render my body as undesirable. And it's been a minute since I felt like my body was undesirable. I have intentionally avoided spaces that feel like Kinky Salon for a long time because there is no room for a person of color if you don't fall into a narrowly defined part of their fetish landscape. And there's definitely no room for fatties.
 
My friends - and even complete strangers - keep telling me that San Francisco is uniquely fucked. The dating scene is dead if you're a brown girl with a politic who fancies boys, they keep telling me. San Francisco is a bunch of Peter Pan complex having, Polo wearing misogynists. Forget it, they say. But goddammit, I live here. I like living here. And I'm not migrating in the name of some dick pilgrimage. So, will the real San Francisco please stand up?

And please, please, let it not be some dude named Tod from Noe Valley.
Sekani Moyenda
3/17/2013 05:07:24 am

I date online and usually with men OUTSIDE San Francisco. Not until I read your article was I aware that this was pretty typical for a straight woman OF COLOR WHO LIVES OUTSIDE THE MAINSTREAM. I KNOW my size DOES MATTER in this city and my frame is too MUCH for the fashion conscious upwardly mobile. I try to keep in mind that I have my biases too. I don't find white skinny guys attractive either. What is the point in having to hunt a man down in your own bed. I might as well hug my magic wanda...at least it vibrates and doesn't complain when I drop it on the floor and start snoring. As for politics and sexuality. That is the biggest reason I can't get next to most white guys in SF. I'm the woman you bring home as punishment to your parents for raising you to enjoy your white privilege...I am also the woman you sneak to Oakland to meet in a safely mixed bar where you can go to her house, really enjoy that big African booty, then drop some money and be left with a memory to share with the boys at clubs when you drink too much on St. Patty's Day. I am the successful Black woman you work with and respect because she makes you call her by her last name and she reminds you of the mother you secretly WISH you had because she is smarter than every other female in your entire family combined. I am the Black woman you want by your side in the zombie apocalypse because I can PROTECT YOU...but you don't want to be seen in public with me; let alone accord me the same level of respect you THINK you give your wife.

You don't need to worry about these people. They create a narrow box where they get to set up the people like furniture in their safe place where like the blind they can maneuver around it without stubbing their toes on facts, civil rights, or cross-cultural competence. They need their white privilege to survive and the truth is if they opened themselves up to you - then they would stop the illusion they need to prop up with booze and coke.

We, in the real world, fat and all- will momentarily get pissed off! For example, after having a good day on your own terms with people who see "us" as we really are....you just forgot what girdles really feel like. These people wear them all the time and you accidentally put one on to get into a party where hours earlier you were running free and naked on the ocean... OF COURSE IT HURT....your HEALTHY!!!

Invisibleank link
3/17/2013 08:36:52 am

Hear! Hear!

Chris Hall link
3/17/2013 10:34:35 am

Well, crap. It sounds like you wandered right into the dot-com boom. Or maybe there's just that part of San Francisco that never fucking changes.

There's a certain amount of your experience that I can't really speak to, since I'm a white boy. The general sensation, though, of feeling like you're on the outside looking in at a sex party, is really familiar to me, and I'm sorry you had to go through it.

Sekani Moyenda
3/17/2013 03:06:22 pm

I think I accidently unsubscribed myself. What do I do to get back in? Sorry...

Fierce Passion link
4/9/2013 01:48:22 pm

Yeah, this is why I have never ventured to Mission Control. The people who tell me about it over & over are alway white, usually straight, and mostly thin. I haven't even ventured over fr the women's night.

Neil
5/23/2013 07:35:35 pm

I've seen fat people having the time of their lives at Mission Control many times, and lots of them. In fact, I'm consistently impressed by how fat folk are accepted in the kink community as a whole, and there's no denying that they form a substantial part of the fetish landscape. While not a chubby chaser myself, I know people who frequent Mission Control who are. Is it possible you were projecting ingrained hostility to the middle class thin white heterosexuals you encountered there?

No hostility intended here, just puzzling on your reaction ...


Comments are closed.
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    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.    

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