Hurricane I

It's been a long while since Slate has produced something that I enjoyed reading, but an article on Feminists Paranoid About Being Fat is definitely interesting. As I learned from the oh so academically challenging Nutrition class I took last year, I am a fatist (though not as bad as some people). However, I'm also a chick and a feminist, and I totally understand the clashes between trying to look good and trying to not care. Slate says:

Women here may pant, "I'm doing it for myself" while strapped to their treadmills, but the fact is that the beauty culture is a heterosexual institution, and to the extent that women participate in its rituals, they, too, are propping up a heterosexual society and its norms. The problem for a feminist is that historically speaking such norms have worked out far less advantageously for women than for men.

I'm not sure I agree, as I watched three episodes of Queer Eye yesterday, not to believe a stereotype or anything. Plus, I'm reading more and more about guys with body and self image problems (homo and hetero), I really don't think it's a one way street. Women do not have this market cornered, though we've had more practice bitching about it longer. I think the real issue is that is used to be un-manly to care about how you looked, and we can thank femiminism for that reversal. See, when women weren't allowed to have opinions, then men didn't know that we had them. Now that we're allowed to talk about that nice set of shoulders over there, suddenly everyone's going to the gym. Body image problems for everyone!

Best quote from the article:

Fat connotes very different things in different cultures or in subcultures like fat activism, gay male chubby-chasers, and hip hop.

Oh, Sir Mixalot, what an impression you've made. I salute you.