P.S. Sad thing

[fflo]

"Huge" was cancelled today. Those kids'll always be in midsummer, their conflicts and the adults', too, ever unresolved.

Comments

[fflo.livejournal.com]

Wasn't it? I'm bummed.

I was just today looking at this pie chart info-graphic (or something like that) illustrating who was---and wasn't--- in Michelle O's anti-fat study gang, and its point (and slogan--- "Nothing about us without us") reminded me how rare the POV of the fatties ourselves, living in the cultural milieu so full of hatred for fat (and the fat), is in mass/mainstream media. "Huge" was an exception. It was daring partly because it showed so much of the complexity of what we negotiate, and complexity like that is practically transgressive in itself. Funny how art/lit for youth get away with it more sometimes. Anyhow, there was a lot of honesty in that show, of the for-real sort.

I'm gonna go hear Linda Bacon tomorrow. That'll be a boost that way. Cuz that chart, and thinking about the combo of how we're marginalized in the larger discussion of our own lives, plus how there's industry heavily invested in the status quo, I wonder how much pressure that show was under to decry fat loudly, simply, evilly, or how much its failure may relate to it's existence way outside that mold. I did see online commentary about it supposedly daring to say, omg omg omg, it's okay to be fat, or fat is okay, or stuff like that.

All the calling for sympathy for queer youth that's going in lately--- being queer in this culture, for me, has been nowhere near the spiritual challenge being fat has been.

[paperkingdoms]

I think the updates, and general Huge fannishness on Fatshionista.com really hit that part hard -- how incredibly rare fat bodies on TV are. And how normalizing it is -- people talked about how skinny people on other shows seem after watching Huge. That suddenly seeing TV reflecting reality -- a wide diversity of bodies -- is radical.

And the real super honesty, and the diversity not just of bodies, but of the places everyone was with coping with their bodies, and the parts that aren't about bodies at all but just about being teenagers... it's a fabulous show. [And they're all so damn lovable.]

I'm reading Linda Bacon's book now. Trying to decide if it is a good choice of books to give to my mom, if I actually go through with giving such a book to my mom. It might be. I haven't come to a really firm decision. [Not that I expect it to change her, but she communicates a good bit by "book that I think you should read", and so it seems like a reasonable way to try to reach back to her.]

It's really sort of interesting to me that Savannah Dooley sort of found the whole fat movement as she was getting into this project, and that ABC brought it to her in the first place (although from what I hear about the book that's the source material, the book is pretty hideous stuff). Umm... interview here. It's kind of neat that thoughtful person + even barely useful source material is what got us to Huge. Like -- it didn't take some fundamentally radical person breaking her way into television to get this made. Not that it isn't revolutionary. I don't know that I'm articulating it well. Just... interesting.

I haven't really thought about the two side by side like that before. I think they were very different sort of challenges for me... probably, in part, because my version of queer is that optional-to-disclose sort. That might merit more pondering at some point.

[I don't know if you've seen Lesley & Marianne's podcast, but I love them together, and their Huge episodes are lots of fun.]