women-shaming

On high heels and stupid choices by @glosswitch

February 19, 2015

Why do women wear high heels? It’s a question men can ask but feminists can’t. When men ask it they’re being light-hearted and humorous, expressing jovial bafflement at the strange ways of womankind. When feminists ask it they’re being judgemental bullies, dismissing the choice and agency of their Louboutin-loving sisters. So it is that Ally Fogg can get away with writing a piece for the Guardian on why he, Fogg, does not like women wearing heels (I defy any woman to do this without being considered a raging femmephobe – just ask Charlotte Raven).

In said piece, Fogg tells the story of a female friend – a kind of Everywoman in stilettoes – “grumbling about the blisters and bruises being caused by her latest proud purchase”:

I muttered something about taking more care when trying things on in the shop and she looked at me as if I had started speaking fluent Martian. “I’d never not buy a nice pair of shoes just because they didn’t fit!” she exclaimed, then we sat gawping at each other while silent mutual incomprehension calcified the air.

It’s a real Mars and Venus moment, suggesting that when it comes to shoes women are a bit, well, irrational (bless ‘em). Fogg later comments that he is “more attracted to a woman who looks like she can drink me under the table then carry me home, making a sturdy pair of DMs just the ticket”

I live in hope that one day the human race will view high heels with the same horror with which we view foot-binding. Women would be spared innumerable podiatric agonies and men would, I think, just about cope. Until then I shall content myself with the knowledge that I’m right and the rest of the human race is a bit daft.

I can see the good intent here. No one wants women to have ruined feet (unless it’s feminists who are making that point, in which case ruined feet become empowering). But “a bit daft”? Really? Femininity, and the way in which it shapes women’s supposed free choices, is a little more complex than that.

The truth is, I’m really, really sick of women’s “daft” fashion preferences being mocked. Sick, too, of the way in which things which cause women pain – high heels, cosmetic surgery, excessive dieting – are treated as choices which feminists cannot analyse but which men are free to ridicule once the damage is done. For a feminist to say “you can do this but I wish you didn’t have to” is considered a terrible denial of agency. For a man to make light of what femininity does to women is, on the other hand, totally fine. We’d rather be viewed as stupid and irrational (“girly”) than not in control of our own lives. Yet the truth is we’re not in control. We live under patriarchy and we shouldn’t be ashamed of what it makes us do. We don’t make choices in a vacuum. What we should be seeking is not the illusion of agency, but freedom from the hierarchy which dehumanises us to begin with.

Every day women have to make decisions in a world that hates women. Moreover, since the maintenance of such a world requires that everyone pretends the hatred does not exist, it’s no wonder that the rational choices women make can end up seeming foolish. “Silly” women don’t ask for pay rises because they know that they are far more likely than male colleagues to suffer negative consequences.  “Unambitious” women don’t seek promotions because they know that the cost of being seen as a powerful woman can outweigh the benefits. “Vain” women starve themselves or binge and vomit, fully aware of fully aware of the social and financial costs of having “excess” flesh. “Stupid” women stay with men who abuse them, knowing that trying to leave would put them at greater risk of violence. “Daft” women wear shoes that damage their feet because they know that wearing their vulnerability on their sleeve might attract less male hostility. These are all sensible decisions in the circumstances, but they’re also decisions which allow anyone ignorant of misogyny (and plenty of people are) to portray women as their own worst enemies.

Last month the press reported on how Mark Zuckerberg and Barack Obama have “pared down” wardrobes so they can concentrate on “the important things”. Good for them, but would a woman ever be able to do the same? As we also found out, a male newscaster can wear the same outfit every day for a year and no one even notices. The world does not work like this for women. As Cordelia Fine writes, “the same career entails greater sacrifices for her than for him”, but these are sacrifices we don’t acknowledge. Would a woman going to work dressed like Mark Zuckerberg be seen as ambitious, focussed and unfussy? Or would people be more inclined to see her as at best lazy, at worst unnatural?

Most of the time it’s just easier to play the femininity game so why fight it? Even within feminism a failure to be sufficiently feminine is treated with suspicion, particularly given the trend for replacing the identification of structural oppression with a far woollier, non-challenging accusation of “femmephobia”. From the way some women defend their right to be “a girly girl” and wear #feministheels you’d think that second-wave feminism had forced all women to walk around barefoot in hessian sacks. Websites such as Transadvocate delight in portraying “TERFs” as ageing, short-haired, drab, flat-shoed “ugly” women (basically no different to the “masculine women” of anti-suffragette propaganda a century ago). I’ve seen women complain about “the Birkenstock tendency” of older feminists, a neat way of combining antipathy towards lesbians with a dig about the “wrong” shoes. Basically, if you are a feminist it is far, far easier not to be vilified by the mainstream if you aren’t too butch. This is treated as a form of bravery – look at me! I wear lipstick and dresses and you can’t say I’m not fighting the patriarchy! – but it’s really a piece of piss (I do it all the time and have never once felt the cold, hard grip of femmephobia upon me). Being a “feminine feminist” isn’t a contradiction in terms; it’s not even hypocrisy. It’s just a sensible thing to do given that you’ve got serious battles to fight. Who has time to be mocked for their sandals and accused of bigotry just because she thinks footwear that causes actual physical harm might, you know, be a bad idea?

That said, I don’t think appearing “femme” is always that much of a sacrifice. High heels are a total pain (which is why I rarely wear them) but dresses – particularly stretchy, non-tailored ones – can be pretty convenient. It’s only one item of clothing to worry about and there’s no pesky waistband if you happen to stuff yourself over lunch. Putting on a simple dress is no more effort than putting on a t-shirt and yet no one ever asks “why does Mark Zuckerberg bother with trousers? If he’s so bloody efficient, why doesn’t he just make his top longer, say, down to his knees?” It’s taken as read that men have to dress in whatever a particular culture deems to be a “masculine” way. Unlike women, men are not believed to make “irrational” clothing choices at all. They might occasionally indulge in a little self-pity over the fact that their choices are more restricted but they never actually doanything about it. Whereas women are pressured to be feminine and then mocked for it, men’s complicity in the maintenance of masculinity is rarely questioned. We know that men who present in a feminine way do so at a high cost yet this doesn’t lead us to see “masculine” men as the dress-up dolls that they, too, are being.  We don’t see “masculine” men as foolish because we accept that under patriarchy, it’s safer for a man to present that way. But this is also true for women and femininity.

Men aren’t more practical or less vain than women. They’re just more respected and valued, and their decisions are not subject to constant scrutiny and mockery. They play the gender game just as much as we do only because they’re the winners, no one cares (unless they actively reject masculinity – then they, too, get to fail, and we notice). Women, meanwhile, always are forced to play a game they’re destined to lose and then ridiculed for having taken part at all. Wear heels or don’t wear heels. Ask for equal pay or don’t. Stay with him or leave. Be femme, butch or anything in between. Declare yourself cis, non-binary, agender. Whatever you do, you won’t win and you won’t be permitted to sit it out, and it’s not your footwear – or your choices – that are causing the problem.

 

Victoria Smith  Humourless Mummy, Cuddly Feminist [@glosswitch]

 

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Busy Body at Head in Books

February 17, 2015

(cross-posted from Head in Books)

A few years ago there was a Christmas advert for Boots, which featured two women bumping into each other in the street, laden with bags and notes, sneezing into hankies as they exchanged tales of busy-ness and feckless menfolk home abed with man-flu. I think the message was supposed to be celebratory: wonderful mums, carrying on to make Christmas happen when all around them are slacking off. Thank God Boots is there, with its 3 for 2 selections of mugs and socks and dubious celebrity aftershave to help them out.

It stuck in my mind, though, as a perfect example of how many women do interact with each other. We have these daily fencing matches of words:

“How are you?”

“Oh, fine, you know, busy. You? “

“Oh, manic, you know…”

It’s a contest, although I think often we don’t think of it as such. It’s a subtle, barbed duel of to-do lists and daily chores, competitive references to work and activities and commitments.

We all say we’re too busy, and often we are, but why are we so bloody proud of it? Has having too much to do, being in a constant state of stress and worry and overload come to represent our value to ourselves and others?

It might just be me, it might be a reaction to the “hard-working” rhetoric that abounds at the moment, but I feel an increasing pressure to justify what I do with my time now that I’m not in employment. I reel off voluntary commitments and help lent to friends, cringing as I do so, in a kind of validation of my life. I feel forever on the back foot in conversations with friends who have jobs, even those who have enormous amounts of family support around them. I simultaneously resent the implication that I have endless amounts of free time to do things, even while recognising that I do have more hours at my disposal at present than most.

There are endless articles about de-stressing, about simplifying one’s life. Practising mindfulness, not being subsumed into the overwhelm of our cluttered daily existences. Finding time for oneself, being able to focus on the essentials. Yet when these are possible; when, like now, I do have time to cook from scratch and walk the children to school and spend time during the day writing for no other purpose than my own pleasure, it feels somehow like a cop-out, not a worthwhile end achieved. If I’m not demonstrably busy, then I’m somehow less.

Does it matter? Even I can find few tears for the existential crises of a pampered, privileged woman who has had the luck to choose how to spend this portion of her life. At a broader level, though, I think it does: if we equate a person’s activity with their value, we risk losing sight of all the different contributions that make up our society, all the different ways in which a person can be of worth. That so many people have no choice but to live at a frenetic pace shouldn’t be a badge of honour.

Head in Books: I write about politics, predominantly on issues which affect parenting, children and education.

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Woman Shaming: the scourge of the public eater

January 8, 2015

(Cross-posted from Slave of the Passions)

In the days following my first ever lecture to an audience of several hundred students, I was struck by an unsettling realisation. Suddenly, there were people living and walking in my city that knew who I was and would recognise me, while I would not be able to do the same. This was entirely new to me. Up until that point, I had always taught small seminar groups, so if I bumped into one of my students at the pub, I would know who they were, and could modify my behaviour accordingly (or, more likely, go to another pub). But then after one of my lectures, a student I didn’t recognise said hello to me in the street, and it occurred to me that now that I was lecturing to such a large group, things had changed. I felt a bit exposed, and unpleasantly visible. I couldn’t possibly know who they all were; but they would all know me. It felt like a tiny, microcosmic glimpse into what it must be like to be famous. For a few days, I walked around town slightly warily, wondering if the people who made eye contact when I passed by them had been in my lecture.

Almost the first thing I felt self-conscious about, and decided I would now need to be more vigilant about, was public eating. My main concern about being recognised by my students was not that they might witness me being drunk and rowdy, or that I might inadvertently push them out of the way to get served at the bar. The thing that made me really uncomfortable was the idea that they might spot me walking down the High Street stuffing a packet of pickled onion Monster Munch into my mouth. I got over it, of course. Despite this initial flurry of unwarranted vanity and self-importance, I quickly realised that the likelihood of any of them caring enough about my snack choices to take to Facebook to discuss them was very slim indeed. But that my first concern was with being observed – no, caught – eating in public reflects something I have long suspected and have now had confirmed: women are not supposed to be seen eating. Because really, they are not supposed to eat.

I’ve just read this interesting piece by Sophie Wilkinson about the relatively new trend of ‘stranger shaming’ – taking photos of people in public spaces, in order to mock, embarrass or humiliate them. Sophie herself has been the victim of this, having undertaken the provocative and threatening gesture of eating a pasta salad on the tube, and subsequently finding a photo of her taken without her consent on Facebook. Naturally, the picture was accompanied by a range of derisory and vicious comments, many of them suggesting that Sophie’s public eating displayed a lack of etiquette or decorum: “I would like the name of her finishing school”, said one particularly droll commenter.

Of course women aren’t the only victims of stranger shaming, and I find the practice extremely disturbing whoever is the target. It’s nasty, bullying behaviour to mock strangers who are innocently and obliviously going about their lives, and a huge violation of someone’s privacy to take a photo of someone without their consent and publish it online. I think this is a pernicious trend that needs to stop, whoever the target, and whatever their alleged misdemeanour. But we can learn a lot about the kinds of behaviour our society considers unacceptable, and therefore deserving of public ridicule and humiliation, by observing the types of behaviour that will leave you vulnerable to stranger shaming. One of the most noteworthy stranger shaming sites is Men Taking Up Too Much Space on Trains, the content of which is self-explanatory. In the interests of full disclosure, I should confess that I was once sat next to one of these men, whose legs were so far apart that I was basically pressed up against the window to avoid our thighs touching; and in my annoyance, I did take a photo of him with my phone, which yes, I then tweeted. In my defence, the photo was only of the man’s legs, so that he was not in any way identifiable from the picture. And I hadn’t given this issue as much thought back then. I probably wouldn’t do the same now. But the reason I felt this behaviour was so outrageous as to be worth sharing with my friends was because he was, objectively, taking up more than his fair share of the space. I was squashed into the wall, while his legs were splayed at a ninety degree angle, as are those of many of the men who feature on the website. While I don’t condone these men’s pictures being published without their consent, especially those whose faces are clearly visible and who are therefore identifiable, it’s interesting to note that the kind of bad behaviour that gets men publicly shamed is, arguably, objectively objectionable behaviour. The men in question are taking up more space than they are entitled to, and in so doing, causing inconvenience and discomfort to others.

But as the Facebook group that Sophie’s picture appeared on tells us, for women, one of the biggest crimes is to be observed eating in public.  Perhaps you didn’t already know this. But I had clearly absorbed this message somewhere along the way, because I knew I didn’t want my students to witness me eating. I think I have absorbed the message particularly effectively because I went to an all girls’ school that had a rule to the effect that sixth formers in the town at lunch time must not eat as they walked, because that would present a bad impression of the school. But this is clearly a rule that many people endorse on some level, or the Facebook group would not have thirteen thousand members, and many hundreds of photographs submitted.

As a currently slightly overweight woman, I am especially aware of the social unacceptability of being seen to eat in public. Women should not be seen eating, because women are not supposed to eat. Whatever else they are, and whatever else they do, women must first and foremost be beautiful. What it means to be beautiful is to be thin; and to be thin, one must not eat. Therefore, the woman who eats in public is flouting not only a convention of etiquette. She is also brazenly, shamelessly showing her disregard and contempt for the rules governing women’s proper social conduct and appearance.

Of course, the woman who should be shamed for her public eating must still be objectified and treated as a target of sexual aggression. Because food isn’t the only thing women can put in their mouths, amirite guys? By daring to satisfy her hunger, the woman who eats in public has shown herself to possess lascivious and insatiable bodily appetites of other kinds too, and has thereby invited all the inevitable “open wide, gobble down on this, she looks like she enjoys swallowing, the greedy bitch” comments. Moreover, many of the comments on the Facebook group show their thinly-veiled disgust and contempt for women’s bodies: witness their being likened to animals, engaged in “feeding frenzies”, or, as happened to Sophie, her mouth described as a “gaping orifice”. Just by existing in a public space and daring to nourish herself, a woman apparently makes her animal nature and the material reality of her body too visible, too real to be ignored. And this, as we know only too well from our societal fear and disgust of menstruation and lactation, is immensely disturbing for many people, and must therefore be discouraged through the use of social sanction – such as the stranger shaming Facebook group or Tumblr.

This is a profoundly depressing and dispiriting conclusion to arrive at. But the upside is that by simply daring to walk down the street while feeding ourselves, it turns out we are doing something surprisingly rebellious and transgressive. I hadn’t realised radical political action could be achieved so easily. So on that note, I’m off to buy a packet of Monster Munch and walk down the High Street.

 

Slave of the Passions: Adding to the background noise with thoughts on academia, philosophy, politics, feminism, and other miscellaneous nonsense.

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On Fake Hair and African Liberation by @EstellaMz

December 20, 2014

(Cross-posted from Uncultured Sisterhood)

Recently I came across a comment along the line,

Africa would be better off if the money spent on fake hair was spent on books.

It caught my interest for reasons; as an African, a woman, and someone who finds great pleasure in books. While I agree with the sentiment that spending on resources such as books provides an enduring return, the statement left a bitter taste. There is a fair amount of unflattering commentary about ‘fake hair’ – at one point the subject of a popular song here in Uganda. But is ‘fake hair’ the most trivial expenditure in Africa? Are there no pursuits on which money is vacuously spent by African men to the detriment of their families and communities? Or is it Africa as mythical Eden; the bastion of success only to fall at the arrival of women and their ‘fake hair’?

Seriously though, is money spent by women on face, hair, body ‘wasted’ in a society in which keeping up with the strict ever-evolving requirements of beauty, as fake as they may be, is life as many know it? Where beauty practices are considered (by women and men) a normal aspect of womanhood?

We are bombarded on a daily basis with images of ‘ideal beauty’. For black women on the continent and in the diaspora, concepts based on whiteness as the standard, such as light skin and straight, flowing hair, are in our faces 24/7. Whereas the reality of a vast number of female bodies, those classified ‘typically African’, are largely disapproved of, boxed in the ugly – except in some circumstances, and that’s when on a white woman.

In one of the several online articles explaining why Africans have ‘larger’ lips, a writer begins with the disclaimer: there is nothing racist about this post or the topic.

That caution is necessary because in a western-dominant world where features and cultural expressions categorized as African (of black people) are considered inferior by default, big lips are undesirable.

But hey, they are sexy when on Angelina Jolie.

In the same way that “bold braids” were taken to a “new epic level” by Kendall Jenner.

This month Vogue magazine caught itself at crossroads with women, in particular western black women, after it ran a story proclaiming that ‘We are officially in the era of the big booty’. The article is a roll call of white women – the liberators of booty. Backlash was inevitable due to the fact that international fashion magazines have historically portrayed women’s beauty in mostly white, thin, big-booty-free bodies. The mainstream effectively marginalized the booty’d body, long celebrated in black/African culture. Until now; because some valuable people are embracing their behinds. Yet it remains a thing of caricature for performers like Katy Perry.

And going back in time, we are reminded of the enslavement of Sarah Baartman, a Khoikhoi woman from South Africa. She was transported to England and taken across Europe on display under the stage name Hottentot Venus. It was tagged a freak show starring her body, with special focus on her  buttocks and labia; dehumanized to feed the curiosity of the European eye. As an object of African femininity, considered abnormal (white women being ‘the normal’ according to white supremacist nonsense), her body was prodded and gawked at, in addition to suffering poor upkeep and disease. Sarah died in 1815 at the age of 25. But even in death, the inhumane use of her body prevailed; consumed as a museum exhibit in France. Only after condemnation in South Africa, and at the behest of then-president Nelson Mandela for her remains to be released, did France relent. It was not until 2002 that what was left of Sarah Baartman was repatriated.

Suddenly, now that the gods of vanity have given the green light, women must reconsider the dimensions of their derrières, as cosmetic surgeons sharpen their scalpels ready to mutilate more female bodies, and vendors of butt implants (‘fake butts’?) prepare for a business boom.

Fake hair is one of many must-haves directed at women. Reasons as to why we buy into it include to look good, for convenience, to protect natural hair, confidence issues, and so on. This fuss is inevitable when an otherwise  neutral feature like hair is politicized into a marker of difference between women and men, sexualized into a symbol of beauty among women, and commercialized as a pathway for the individual woman to gain advantage over another. It follows that we are told hair is a woman’s crowning glory. Who determined this?

In the final analysis, beauty practices are taught, policed, and have been normalized in different cultures for women’s survival in a male-dominant world.

And men are the topmost beneficiaries.

Women are under considerable pressure to look good in order to attract men, hold on to men, or get back at men, and other women – over men. We are objectified, subdivided, and pitted against each other by men and fellow women; white/black, light/dark, fat/thin, beautiful/ugly, old/young, fertile/infertile, womanly/not, sexy/not, hot/not. And it is men who benefit from the tension.

We are on our toes in service to the visual interests of the supreme sex. Sweating under layers of chemicals. Heels tormenting feet. Restless about what to wear tomorrow. Broke in the process.

Is ‘choosing’ these discomforts that we have somehow learned to bear really choice?

Just because some women claim not to have any problem whatsoever with living under the demands of beauty qualification, that it is a ‘normal’ part of a woman’s life, or an exercise of agency – my choice, doesn’t strip the pressure or desire to look good of its oppressiveness to women as a class.

Women’s freedom to do with their bodies what they want, when they want, is a core tenet of women’s movement toward liberation from the evil that is sexism. But in a male-dominant society where ‘femininity’ is constructed in deference to men, and the pursuit of beauty, and maintenance of it, enforced as ‘rituals’ of womanhood, women are constrained in the options from which to choose. There is an unwritten requirement to choose wisely in order to be found worthy under the male gaze. And there are penalties for non-compliance.

Looking good in accordance with patriarchal dictates of beauty can be, in some situations, the difference between securing employment and being jobless. It is the currency through which many women access shelter, food, and clothing. Add the culturally-prized husband to this list. We need to be honest about the politics of looking good to see the hypocrisy in one-sided, (often) male, criticism of women’s adherence to beauty practices, and the oppressive reality of these demands on women.

Moreover even from a shillings perspective, many of the major beneficiaries in the global industry, from beauty products to media, to hair-dressing to clothes etc, also happen to be men.

On the Forbes list of Top 10 Beauty Brands  only Estée Lauder was established by a woman. In Uganda, these are firms like Movit and Samona – the latter set up by a man, maybe even both. While in Taihe in China, home to hundreds of companies in the billion-dollar business of hair extensions, Fu Quanguao, the man who ‘pioneered the trade in the 1970s’, waxes about the money-maker that is women’s hair issues.

Growing up in the eighties, it was to Loy that my mother and I, as did several others within the neighborhood, made the pilgrimage to have my hair plaited – black African hair, no extensions. Today, walk into a hair salon in Kampala; many of the celebrated fake hair implanters are men. Men who, like Fu, with extensions in tow, are cannibalizing the business of hair plaiting – one of the few professions in Africa for women, by women (predominantly), and through which many African women not only earned a living, but also built community with their sisters. Loy is no longer her vibrant self; the income source from which she raised her children, one of whom had followed in the profession, almost a thing of the past. Her frustrations drove her into the neocolonial hellhole of second-hand clothes hawking.

That men benefit greatly from this beauty stuff is evident without even going into the matter of chest-thumping dudes heaping endless praise on their gorgeous-when-beweaved; directly or indirectly putting pressure on women to keep up with the performance of beauty.

Therefore, in the age of viagra, for men to be the ones constantly picking ‘fake hair’ as this major money-drain, one powerful enough to hold back a continent, is intellectually dishonest. It is akin to blaming a slave for their fate; and for sure many are enslaved by the fashion-beauty complex. Crucially, it ignores the vast wealth lost via theft committed mostly by men at all levels of power across Africa.

It isn’t women’s fake hair rendering our hospitals drugless. It isn’t fake hair causing deaths from hunger and disease. Fake hair isn’t robbing Africa of its natural resources. And it is definitely not fuelling these endless wars. That there is a need for fake hair is unfortunate, but we mustn’t ignore the entire picture.

No group can be liberated if some of its members are trudging along under the heel of oppression – a good chunk of it dished out in the name of ‘preserving’ African culture.

It is easy to focus on fake hair and in effect throw jabs at women whilst ignoring the system which demands conformity to beauty standards. Perhaps a more productive exercise would be to objectively critique all the different systems holding us in a cycle of poverty and perpetual dependence. In doing so, we must examine our own complicity in keeping these ideologies in play. And ultimately, put into action those revolutionary measures which will deliver us, as individuals and society, from the grip of the forces draining us – women and men – of our wellbeing and wealth.

Uncultured Sisterhood:  I am a Ugandan feminist, based in Uganda. The blog, unculturedsisterhood, started out of extreme personal frustration with the state of affairs for women in my country, outside of it, in pretty much every area of life. From a feminist theory perspective, I critique topical, community, and cultural issues in Uganda (and the wider continent) as they relate to women. Hoping one or two sisters read/engage and join in as we work toward liberation. Category: Feminism; AfroFeminism; Radical Feminism Twitter: @EstellaMz

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Fat woman and testing times by Fat Woman Fit

December 9, 2014

(Cross-posted by Fat Woman Fit)

Now that Fat Woman has Small Baby on board she is being treated by the NHS as an unexploded bomb. Rather than being regarded as an expectant mother Fat Woman is looked upon as a series of problems waiting to happen that must be managed in the most heavy-handed way possible. Fat Woman knew she was going to be in for it when practically the first thing she was given by the community midwife was a leaflet specially written for pregnant women with a BMI greater than 30. Fat Woman has said it before and will say it again: BMI is a statistical tool that is completely unsuitable for individual case management and unless you are going to talk body fat percentage with her she doesn’t care to hear it. Fat Woman scores very badly on the BMI scale thanks to all the weight lifting. Thin Husband delights in referring to Fat Woman as his dense wife. Fat Woman has actually read the policies held by the local NHS trust on dealing with fat pregnant women and is deeply unimpressed with the blinkered and frankly bigoted attitudes displayed. All this is covered in a veneer of “It’s for your own good” and topped with a good slice of “But think of the baaaaaby!” Fat Woman was most unimpressed by the decision that she should be on blood thinners. This was done purely because Fat Woman is fairly old for a first time mother and fat. Fat Woman then went through a huge palaver of getting the drugs, learning how to inject them, having horrendous allergic reactions, having to try two more brands in case she was allergic to the carrying solution and not the actual heparin, trying antihistamines to alleviate the effects, and then disposing of three lots of needles. Fat Woman was deeply annoyed at the hours she sunk into this only to find out that “double the risk” of blood clots meant the risk went from one in 6000 with the drugs to one in 3000. It turns out that exercise is a much more effective predictor of danger, but of course everyone assumes that fat women are lazy greedy couch potatoes.

Fat Woman would love to be a lazy greedy couch potato but can’t seem to get the hang of it.

One thing that came out of Fat Woman’s visit to the obstetric consultant was the request for a hospital administered glucose tolerance test. All pregnant women get a glucose test at their doctor’s surgery, but in the hospital they make you fast, give you a glucose solution and then make you sit down for two hours whilst they take blood at intervals. Fat Woman was rather pissed off at the form letter which said “You have been invited to take this test because you have shown signs of high blood sugar” because that was absolutely not true. Diabetes is the sword of Damocles that doctors and the media like to hold of the heads of fat people. It’s true that being fat and diabetic is a health issue that leads to complications but there is a convenient mis-thinking of the situation that means instead of referring to “fat people who have diabetes and who drink and smoke and take no exercise” as being a drain on the health system the media and the medical establishment have shortened that to “fat people”. Being fat in and of itself does not mean you have these problems, and if you are fat, have a healthy diet and take exercise you are going to be much more healthy than someone in with a lower body fat percentage who doesn’t look after themselves. Fat Woman has been mostly eating a diabetic diet for years because she eats food that is low on the Glycaemic Index. This mostly affects what carbohydrates you use- whole wheat everything, and brown basmati rice instead of any other – but also affects your choice of vegetables. Fat Woman doesn’t consider sweetcorn a useful vegetable because of it’s high sugar content and low fibre content. Fat Woman reckons that you might as well eat a boiled sweet and take a fibre pill as eat sweetcorn, This also means that Fat Woman doesn’t eat a lot of fruit usually, and certainly doesn’t drink fruit juice or smoothies on a regular basis. Fat Woman has managing her blood sugar down to an art, especially since she gave up Diet Coke, which was really fucking with her blood sugars, leaving crashing into sudden hypoglycaemia. Fat Woman hasn’t felt that awful, desperately empty feeling or the rage and fury that would come with it, since before Lent 2012, and is in no hurry to experience it again. Fat Woman is fairly sure that Thin Husband is grateful not to have seen it for a while as well.

Fat Woman consulted with her midwife and decided that she would take the Glucose Tolerance test at the hospital on the grounds that at least it could be properly measured whereas the one at the doctors’ surgery is rather hit and miss. The thing that Fat Woman was most worried about on the Glucose Tolerance Test was drinking the dextrose mix. Fat Woman can’t remember ever having had to do so before, but she really hates chemical drinks. It has been nearly fifteen years since Fat Woman was convinced that an electrolyte replacement packet (for diarrhoea sufferers) was a good cure for a hangover. Fat Woman was thoroughly ill after trying to drink the horrible stuff and avoids anything similar. There are numerous shared stories of women being similarly ill after drinking the dextrose solution at Glucose Tolerance Tests so Fat Woman was incredibly relieved when the blood tech gave her a bottle and a bit of Lucozade and said she had to drink that instead. Fat Woman fails to see the point of Lucozade as a drink in its own right, but it is at least reasonably inoffensive and doesn’t make her ill.

Fat Woman had to hang out in the hospital for two hour and get three blood tests in total, but despite feeling desperately hungry by half past ten she didn’t suffer too much and nor did those around her. Fat Woman had been briefed on the need to take food with her and had a careful schedule of eating and sleeping planned for the rest of the day so she could turn be functional at her shooting lesson. Fat Woman has found that low blood sugar means her shooting goes to utter shit.

Today Fat Woman got the results of her Glucose Tolerance Test. Fat Woman has learned to check the laboratory ranges for blood tests. Sometimes you can be told that you are “normal” when you are actually only just inside “normal” and will be left feeling utterly terrible when actually you could be greatly helped if your levels were considered as low or high in conjunction with how you actually feel. This is called “treating the patient clinically” rather than relying on laboratory results associated with a statistical distribution called “normal”. The lab print out stated that gestational diabetes millitus in pregancy is diagnosed by one or more results at or above the following:

Fasting 5.3 mmol/l
1 hour  10.0 mmol/l
2 hour 8.5 mmol/l

“mmol/l” stands for millimoles per litre. Fat Woman had to look this up, but her grasp of chemistry isn’t going much further than that so suggests you check out the wikipedia page if you want to know more.

Fat Woman’s actual results:

Plasma Glucose Fasting 4.2 mmol/l
Plasma Glucose 1 hour  5.4 mmol/l
Plasma Glucose 2 hour  3.9 mmol/l

What Fat Woman didn’t realise at the time was that the old blood sugar percentages are no longer used. Thankfully Diabetes UK provides a handy conversion form at http://www.diabetes.org.uk/Guide-to-diabetes/Monitoring/Testing/#HbA1c.

Plasma Glucose Fasting 2.5%
Plasma Glucose 1 hour  2.6%
Plasma Glucose 2 hour  2.5%

Fat Woman’s Glucose Tolerance Test results were so amazingly good that someone has actually written “Good result” in pen on the print out sent to her, with a little asterisk alerting her to the “normal range.”

Fat Woman was so pleased at this validation of her healthiness and the news that she is not any kind of diabetic that she ate a Rolo cookie and a piece of shortbread, partly because she likes cookies and shortbread but mostly because she could.

FatWomanFit: Fat Woman is a person. A fat person. A fat person who happens to be a woman. Fat Woman was the fattest person at the gym. Then Fat Woman met Personal Trainer. Now Fat Woman is an intellectual in a world where looks and lifts matter.

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