the mitchells vs the machines really said “family relationships are still relationships and they require effort to maintain from all involved” rather than “stick by family no matter what” and said “technology has opened doors for communication, creativity, and knowledge, but corporations abuse the power technology gives them” rather than “technology bad and evil” and it’s very transparent with these distinctions between morals and that’s extremely refreshing
We don’t talk enough about the systemic health effects of casual fatphobia and how much they fucking skew the data to the point where we literally cannot know how much outcomes are actually related to fatness and how much they are related to society not being designed for fat people, like literal design.
My best friend cannot find a bra.
She’s fat. We won’t get into the ~why~ here because it honestly wouldn’t matter whether it was “all her fault” or whether it was a result of outside forces like genes and such, she still deserves a goddamn fucking bra that fits.
And she cannot find a bra.
She’s short and fat, and Fat Bras are usually full cup, but because she’s short the full cups are usually too tall, or the armbands around them are too tall, to the point where what’ll fit around her chest and over her boobs will also dig up into her arms or have such high coverage that she literally cannot wear a shirt with a neckline high enough. Any bra that goes out enough goes too high.
This affects her ability to find clothing, impacting her ability to go outside sometimes, because she has this tiny selection of bras and she constantly has to wash them and when they’re gone she has no idea when she’ll next be able to find another unicorn bra. They appear in a flash usually in startups that die soon after, and COVID has killed most the small businesses remaining where she had even a hint of a chance of finding a fitting bra.
So she wears bras that don’t fit. Or she doesn’t leave the house. One gives her back pain. The other is, obviously, not very active. She likes to be active.
If she brings it up, people suggest breast reduction surgery.
But the thing is, with a good bra, she does not get back pain.
But if it’s that hard to find a good bra, they say, wouldn’t a reduction just be easier?
Wouldn’t it be easier for you to chop off part of your flesh, they say, then for us to cut fabric and underwire to more sizes? As if that is normal. As if that isn’t horrifying.
It’s not just bras. It’s chairs. It’s benches. It’s goddamn shoes. It’s seatbelts. It’s exercise equipment - I just got an exercise bike for Christmas. I had to shop around to find an affordable one that was also rated to take my level of fat. If I were 100 pounds heavier, which some people are? I don’t think any equipment would have existed in a price range that any working person could expect to afford. I don’t think most people even look at the weight ratings on chairs and couches and furniture. Once you start? They are lower than you think. There are absolutely 100% people you love in your life - whether really tall men or just average kinda overweight fat people - who should not be using the things they are using. Who are not getting support from their mattress, their footwear, their office chair. It might be you! You might be thinking “but I am average size!”, but the amount of furniture out there that’s only weighted to about 200lbs? Or 175??? It’s SO MUCH MORE THAN YOU REALIZE. Get into the Proper Fat? The 350lb, 400lb, 500lb fat? There’s virtually nothing.
Seatbelts are not tested for fat bodies and seatbelt extenders aren’t regulated.
We know about the problems with too small a blood pressure cuff. With too low a medicine dose. With no MRI a really fat body can fit in for a thousand miles.
We know, from multiple studies on multiple oppressed communities, that social bias by itself, with zero other compounding factors, can give people worse health outcomes.
Now add up
+ one of the social biases with the least pushback even from the educated liberal set with
+ having a world that is literally not made for you. Where you cannot get clothes, furniture, or transportation in a way that will actually accommodate you,
+ where society is constantly blaming you for this. And even if you somehow (and if you know how, please tell me) manage to retain some sense of self worth and optimism and determination despite all that
+ that’s not gonna magically give you access to the daily supplies a person needs in their home and out in public that’ll make living safe and healthy life literally physically possible.
If you’re really so concerned about fat people’s health start a bra company. If you’re really so concerned about fat people’s health mandate changes to seatbelt requirements. If you’re really so concerned about fat people’s health have a variety of chairs in your waiting room with at least some being properly Fat Rated. If you’re really so concerned about fat people’s health, make it easier for fat people to be active by making exercise equipment that fits them, swimwear that’ll actually stay on them, athletic shoes that can bear them. If you’re really so concerned about fat people’s health ask they be included in more medical trials. If you’re really so concerned about fat people’s health, promote fat visibility and fat people loving their bodies - because hating yourself has literally never been good for anyone’s health.
If you’re using “concern for health” as a shield to allow you to judge and criticize strangers, you don’t give a fuck about anyone’s health. You’re just an asshole who prefers a veneer of respectability when you bully people. You’re hateful and we can see right through you.
But fatphobia isn’t just bullying. It isn’t just judgment from strangers. It isn’t just medical neglect and medical bias. Even if we could wave a wand and make all that go away, my best friend still wouldn’t have a bra that fits, people still wouldn’t have a chair that supports them, a seatbelt that protects them. It’s literally engineered in. And it slowly kills people day by day by day.
To add to this amazing post: many of the health issues that are often correlated (correlation = two things happen at the same time, which is Not the same as causation = one thing causes the other) with being fat are also correlated with discrimination. So the discrimination fat people experience, the stigma that comes from being fat in a fatphobic society, is also linked in some way (again correlation, so I’m not claiming it causes it) to the very health conditions fat people are shamed for having.
None of this gets into how poorly the medical industry treats fat people or the increased risks for those with multiple marginalizations.
What I love about The Good Place is that Eleanor was proven right. In the first two episodes, Eleanor declared that the system by which the afterlife runs - one in a million going to heaven while everyone else, even the morally okay people, face eternal torture - is not fair. At the moment it just looks like she’s complaining to justify her being in the Good Place, even if the viewer agrees with her.
But the narrative proves that Eleanor was completely right. Even if the audience agrees with Eleanor, that means nothing unless the narrative agrees as well, and it does. It shows that the elitist method by which the afterlife is run is so corrupt that no one has gotten into the good place for over five hundred years. It shows that holding people to ridiculously high moral standards, like how Tahani was deemed bad despite her good deeds just because she didn’t do anything for the right reasons, is not right, and it isn’t fair for people to be tormented for eternity just because they didn’t have the means to do some incredible thing such as ending slavery, or because they were just an average person, or because they were born in a certain place (those throwaway lines about Florida and France are funny but deeply disturbing).
The narrative begins with Chidi responding to Eleanor’s complaint with “Apparently, that’s not the way things work around here,” essentially saying “The system isn’t fair but this is just how it is.” The narrative is now saying “The system isn’t fair, so we have to change it.”
being an avid fanfiction reader is a wild ride in itself. being an avid fanfiction reader in a public setting is a completely different thing
smut - straight face
fluff - nearly screams out loud
you can't change my mind
- harold, they’re lesbians
- people are gay, steven
- i’m a lesbian, carl
- don’t be a transphobe, chad
- we support the gays, david
- i’m not jealous, flavio. i’m gay
ah, the extended edition
OMG I LOVE THESE
opens a google document that’s enough for today
Thinking about getting into roller skating... hnngh but the frickin gear is so expensive.. even just a pair of Impalas is MINIMUM nearly 100 buckaroos. Moxis would be better, but TWO HUNDRED DOLLARS, HELP *SOB* And that doesn't even include important shit like KNEE PADS and wrist guards and uuuugh decent knee pads are $45... Y3 key is like 15, need one of those to make sure your wheels and bearings are properly adjusted. All'a that doesn't even include shipping, assuming I can't hobble my fat ass down to a 'local' skate shop. Tbh tho, Moxi skates WOULD be worth the drive to Long Beach just to get a proper fitting and to test the difference between lolly and jack boot. Hmm. HMMMMMM.
Yeahidunno either 😭 I COULD possibly try just getting a buncha cheap shit on AliExpress but as a bigger girl I'm scared I'd be at an even larger risk of injury by going with cheapies. Jeez... this hobby is NOT accessible to start getting into 😭 I should just stick to my couch and tablet lmao
There comes a time when fandom becomes less of an escape from anxiety to being the source of anxiety. Sometimes I need to remind myself what’s important to focus on, and I made this chart to help me with that.
(Posting this at the request of a few people. The design/concept was inspired by an instagram post about covid-19 located here).
Me: WRATHION IS BACK BABEY AAAA
brain: you know blizzard loves to hide/kill their gays tho so wrathion and anduin wont interact or worse it'll be negative
me:
Warcraft exists for like 10000000 years and to this day we only have:
- two already dead lesbians
- one maaaayyybe bisexual ocr but maybe he just thought that that elf guy was a girl haha classic
- one Paladin Marcus who tried it all but c’mon that only one ass in entire Azeroth
Blizzard is killing me
Give us wranduin and raventrust bitches! Give us cool lesbians in action! Have you seen Garona and Valeera in comics? That would be some quality shit! Lorna and Tess? I’d drink to that! Troll bisexual orgy? Ocrs gay unions? Blood elf fancy gay weddings?
WE WAITED TOO LONG. WE DESERVE ALL THAT AND EVEN MORE!
The full series of my floral self portraits are now on my etsy as a series of prints! I asked if anyone would want this as a print series and y’all were pretty positive about the idea, so here they are! I hope you like them.
meeting Her at the river
man this piece has really been through the ringer! i’ve painted and repainted pretty much every part of it. process images incoming for my $5+ patrons!
patreon.com/mayakern
Jesus X-man Christ
My first biology professor had an ‘inadequacy drawer’ full of things to remind him he wasn’t, in fact, the dumbest and laziest person to ever exist. It was mostly Darwin, notably these two bits:
‘But I am very poorly today and very stupid and hate everybody and everything.’
‘I am going to write a little Book for Murray on orchids and today I hate them worse than everything.’
“I am at work on the second vol. of the Cirripedia, of which creatures I am wonderfully tired: I hate a Barnacle as no man ever did before, not even a Sailor in a slow-sailing ship.”
-Charles Darwin on a letter to his cousin
Charles Darwin: unexpected depression hero.
I knew about “I am very poorly and very stupid and hate everybody and everything,” but not the others.
“I hate myself, I hate clover, and I hate bees” is A Mood.
My favorite Darwinism: “I am dying by inches, from not having any body to talk to about insects”. Hits me right at the center of my hyperfixated soul.
being weird together is a love language
me, catching myself sharing something i wouldn't say to just anyone because i wouldn't want them to think i'm not "normal" with someone i love without any hesitation because i'm not worried they'll judge me for it: oh... intimacy
New meme format
I guess I have to do everything myself
I like this format