Normal people do not lie awake wondering whether they did pique turns en dedans instead of step-over turns in Friday’s class.
Just sayin’.
Author Archives: asher
Ballet Squid Chronicles: I’m Not Dead Yet
I’m still kind of processing the amazing experience that was my first ADTA conference.
In three sentences:
So very awesome. So welcoming. So made me feel that I’m on the right path.
I missed the opening ceremony to hit up class at the Joffrey, where I tied for first in the Great A La Seconde Jump-Off of 2014 and got to do some really pretty choreography. Cool stuff!
When we came home or was straight back to school, and today back to ballet at Louisville Ballet School. Fun class tonight, though I have looked better doing adagio.
I am both rather proud of myself and rather amazed because I managed to keep on top of my homework while at the conference. That was probably the learniest I’ve been this semester!
So that’s it for the moment. Going home to eat pizza and relax.
Gnight, everybody!
Life Management: Two Bills Every Day
The Problem
In high school, after my life went off the rails and before it got back on the rails, I spent some time going to a private school for, shall we say, kids with Life Challenges(1).
At said school, we had a class called “Life Management.” Since we were Kids With Life Challenges, one of the goals of the program was to try to teach us, insofar as it was possible, the skills we would eventually need to move out of our parents’ basements live independently. Skills like grocery shopping, balancing checkbooks, and paying bills.
This should have been a Really Good Thing.
Unfortunately, like many Life Skills curricula written by people who do not have Life Challenges and thus cannot actually imagine what it’s like to live with them, our Life Management curriculum was not very effective in helping us to develop mechanisms for coping with our actual difficulties.
Like, I’m pretty sure most of us came into that class knowing that we would eventually have bills, that it was a good idea to pay them, and that it would probably help to keep them all organized somehow and come up with some kind of system for making all that happen — and, yet, those were the ideas the course focused on.
What the course did not account for was the reality that, for many of us, actually making that happen was a way more complicated ball of wax than it was for the average Jane or Joe. It wasn’t that we didn’t get the basic concept (“You will have bills, and you should pay them.”). It was more the details of the concept that were the problem (“Okay, but how do I put together a system to keep it all organized that’s so simple a Golden Retriever could do it?”).
By way of analogy, it was kind of like going to a watch-making class in which the curriculum demonstrates of a bunch of working watches, reveals how to wind old-fashioned pocket watches, and informs you that you need to build watches … but then doesn’t tell you how. You graduate and are installed in your seat at a watch shop, and suddenly you have this pile of gears and minute screws and casings and goodness only knows what else, and somehow you are expected to turn all this stuff into a real, working watch.
If you’re like most people with ADHD, you wade in, do your best. Often you turn out semi-working watches, with parts left over. Just as often, you turn out failures. Amazingly, you sometimes even turn out a working watch or two (in fact, if you’re like most people with ADHD, you do so more often than chance alone would predict — but not often enough).
Then the next batch of watch parts comes in, and they’re for watches built on a different plan, and no instructions are included. Oh, and did I mention that no two watches in the set ever use exactly the same plan? Instead, there are minute variations from watch to watch — and it’s up to you to figure out what they are based on the jumble of parts at hand.
So you’re back to square one. Perhaps you even try to design a “system” for building watches, only to discover that the system you design is horrendously over-complicated, or doesn’t account for exceptions, or is inflexible ad absurdum.
That was pretty much my experience with Life Management.
In short, I arrived at the threshold of Adulthood (such as it is) with a clear understanding of the fact that I needed to pay bills and keep my life organized (lessons I had already learned anyway both from previous schools and from my Mom, who is amazingly good at things like paying bills and being organized), but no clear concept of how to do so in a way that I — a person with ADHD and the time-sense of a not-very-bright Golden Retriever(2) — could handle.
Flash forward to now. I’ve tried everything, pretty much. I have designed so many overly-complicated watch-building systems it’s not even funny. And yet I still get confused and screw up. All the time. Because, you know: ADHD plus Golden Retriever Time.
The Idea
So this month I’ve decided to try a new non-system. I’ve decided, simply put, that every day I will try to pay two bills. Right now, I’m not even going to worry about which ones. If they’re on the top of the pile, they get paid … or maybe I should pay the ones at the bottom of the pile, to create a First-In, First-Out flow — wait, you know what? That’s too much complexity. I’m just going to grab any two bills from the pile and pay them. Et voila.
The idea is that this will make sure the bills get paid on time, and also that I don’t get completely overwhelmed by a giant stack of bills when too many bills arrive at once. (Sometimes, you guys, life is weirdly hard in ways that are, frankly, kind of annoying and stupid.)
The reality is that some days I will forget. That’s fine. There are thirty days in any given month, and we do not (amazingly enough) have sixty recurring bills.
I’m hoping that the act of sitting down in the office to pay two bills will also remind me to enter recurring auto-payments into the checkbook and Quicken. Maybe it will, maybe it won’t. We’ll see.
So there you have it. A zillion words about a topic that should have taken, like, seven: “I will pay two bills every day.”
I’ll keep you posted on how it works.
That’s it for now. Pre-emptive make-up math class today (because I’m missing my class tomorrow); tomorrow I’mma hop on the Megabus and roll off to Chi-town for the 2014 ADTA Conference. Woooooot!
Notes
- In retrospect, I’m glad that I did. Some of us loved that school; some hated it. For me, it wound up being a good thing in many ways: it was there that I figured out how I learn; how to be the extremely hyper, textbook-case-of-ADHD kid that I was (and, I guess, am?) and still make good grades. It was also tiny, even compared to my previous school (which was pretty small), and that worked for me.
- Dogs seem to kind of understand time in terms of “Now” and “Not Now.” If it isn’t happening Now, it either happened or will happen Not Now. The concept of “a week from now” or “three hours from now” is, to a greater or lesser extent, lost on them (except in the sense that they can tell how long ago their people left home, quite possibly because the dwindling scent of their people acts as a sort of “clock” for them).
Most dogs are actually a little better at time than I am — they’re like, “Ohai, dinar alweyz hapin arond dis taimz, Ai go sit at bowl nao.” Meanwhile, I am like, “Oh, crap! It’s 7:30 PM and I’m starving and I haven’t thawed anything!” Unfortunately, since I am not actually a dog, I am forced to be responsible for things, like feeding myself and my husband.
Ballet Squid Chronicles: In Which Your Humble Ballet Squid Puts On The Splotchy Purple Tights and Rocks Them
Denis has splotchy purple tights that he bought on clearance when one of our local K-Marts was closing. I think they’re Joe Boxer brand leggings, really.
I’ve never worn them before because, quite frankly, I figured they probably wouldn’t fit me. This morning, though, I didn’t feel like going down to the Costume Department (AKA the storage room in the basement) and digging out my foil leopard tights. I grabbed Denis’ purple splotchy tights instead.
Turns out that they fit rather beautifully. Better than my usual tights. So I wore them to class.
Denis, meanwhile, wore his sparkly, star-splashed multicolored tights — which, by the way, was why I didn’t want to wear plain old black tights. Denis (who usually does class in pre-pro regulation black tights and white t-shirt) wanted to kick it up a notch because it was Hallowe’en weekend, and I wasn’t about to miss out on an opportunity!
You might remember these from an earlier episode 😀
Claire was teaching Essentials today, and when she arrived she said, “Thank you for wearing those tights!”
Apparently, she really gets a kick out of people who bring a little color into the studio. Well, today, Denis and I brought the color (though I did wear my usual black t-shirt).
I was surprised to find that I really liked the way the purple tights looked. And I was also surprised how solidly everything came together at the barre and at center — including the chaines allllllllll the way across the studio, going both directions. I guess I don’t get to make excuses about sucking at chaines anymore.
Denis did some nice jumps today. Claire’s amazing corrections — which are forever making my life as a dancer easier — apparently work for Denis just as well as they work for me.
After, we did lunch at Whole Foods with B & N, and then sat and chatted for ever and ever and ever(1), which was great. Our plans to take over the world will soon be complete.
So there we go. It was an excellent day, all told.
Oh, and my strap updates seem to have sorted my Capezio Romeos well enough. They didn’t peel off in class even after I took my socks off.
Notes
- Among other things, B and I discussed body size diversity in ballet. The more I talk about it with other dancers, the more it seems like we all really like the idea of getting a more diverse array of bodies into the studio. Something to think about!
Ballet Squid Chronicles: Friday Frustration
I did intermediate class today. Survived but was a total mess at Barre. At center, I did alright on some nifty choreography, and then we did little jumps with beats, which I totally killed. It was nice to be able to do something at least!
My lungs protested, though. I am definitely feeling the lack of class. Incentive to get on top of my maths, I guess.
Interestingly, our class was a little more diverse in terms of body types today than it usually is. That was cool. I hope everyone who was here today will keep coming!
Speaking of diversity, it seems that I missed Brian teaching Monday morning class. I couldn’t have done Monday AM class in the first place, but I wish I could have. I would’ve enjoyed seeing how he teaches.
It occurs to me that I have never yet taken a ballet class with a male teacher. It would be dishonest to say that I don’t wonder if taking class with a male teacher would feel different somehow.
Gentle readers, what do you think? Does it feel different to take class with a teacher of the same sex than it does to take class with one of the opposite sex? Or does taking class with a male teacher feel weird somehow because there are fewer male ballet teachers currently teaching? Or is it just, you know, still ballet?
That is one of the things I love about ballet. Different schools and teachers bring different elements to the table, but in the end, ballet is ballet is ballet.
—
Ha, just realized I left out the frustration part. I am way frustrated by not getting to class as often. I feel like I’m losing ground. I’m trying not to ler it get to me, but you know how it is. You love what you love, and when you feel like you’re slipping at the thing you love doing… Yeah. Frustration.
Body Types, Flexibility, and Ballet
Or, more accurately, somatotypes.
You’re probably familiar with the concept of the three basic somatotypes — ectomorph, mesomorph, and endomorph — first proposed by William Sheldon in the 1950s.
Anyway, I’ve been reading a bit about the whole idea (in part because I’m not sure it’s really based on empirical evidence, and I’m trying to find out if it actually plays out as it’s supposed to), and I’ve run across an interesting hypothesis.
In a few places (here’s one that might be a useful resource for dancers in general), I’ve read that ectomorphs tend to be the most flexible, mesomorphs the least flexible, and endomorphs somewhere in between.
I was surprised by that.
I fall somewhere between the mesomorph and ectomorph types — I’m inclined to call myself a mesomorph with ectomorphic tendencies(1), if I have to describe myself in those terms at all — but I definitely possess the classic mesomorphic traits of explosive power and relative ease in building muscle(2). However, I’ve historically been among the most flexible people I’ve known. Even now, with my lower-body flexibility relatively reduced by the effects of cycling, I’m still among the most flexible people in my ballet classes.
That said, I can’t speak to the flexibility of mesomorphs in general because, frankly, I haven’t known many, and those I have known I’ve known in contexts (hello, gymnastics) that both select for and develop high degrees of flexibility. Out of everyone I know, Brian (aka PDG the First) has the build most like my own, although he’s actually a classic mesomorph (heavier-boned and much more muscular in the upper body than I am) with an extremely low body fat percentage. He’s pretty flexible, but he’s also a professional dancer, which complicates things.
Meanwhile, true ectomorphs in my life have often been fairly inflexible. Denis, for example, is definitely an ectomorph, with the classic “stringy muscles and narrow shoulders” build, and he’s really quite inflexible. My second boyfriend was also an ectomorph, but was probably just about average in the flexibility department. My father was arguably an ectomorph, though one with mesomorphic tendencies (he had a broad-shouldered, narrow-hipped build like mine), and I don’t think he was any more flexible than the average man. Then again, how would I know? Dad kind of hated all sports and, while I think he enjoyed watching ballet, he wasn’t a dancer.
T, from ballet, is decidedly an ectomorph (and a beautiful one) and he’s really quite flexible, but like me he has a gymnastics background. Jim, the other ballet-class ectomorph, seems to be about average in the flexibility department, but he’s also probably in his 70s, and people tend to lose flexibility as they age. It seems like it might be impolite to buttonhole him and say, “Hey, when you were twenty, could you do splits?” There are a host of female ectomorphs in my ballet classes, meanwhile, and most of them seem to be about average in terms of flexibility.
The endomorphs I’ve known, meanwhile, have largely tracked with Sheldon’s theory — they’ve often been fairly flexible, and some of them have been very flexible,
I’m not actually contending, here, that mesomorphs are really the most flexible body type, and I’m not even contending that I’m a good example. I meet the criteria for benign hypermobility joint syndrome(3) and I’ve been involved with gymnastics and dance off and on since pre-school and first grade, respectively. Both of these conditions would probably behave as confounds if I were attempting to do some kind of scientific study, here.
But I’m not. I’m just curious.
What do you think? Where do you fit on Sheldon’s spectrum? Do you find that you adhere to his ideas about flexibility?
~
This whole thought process has also led me to think about ballet, and how dancers self-select. Louisville is a Midwestern city, prone to Midwestern girth lines (though non-scientific observation suggests that Louisvillians tend to be a bit leaner than is typical for the region). With a few brave exceptions, however, my fellow ballet students are overwhelmingly very much leaner than is typical of our region, and indeed leaner than is typical, period.
I wouldn’t be at all surprised by this if I was taking pre-pro track classes, since there are powerful selection pressures involved there, and I am less surprised that my fellow intermediate students tend to be leaner — again, we are subject to a degree of selection pressure, since, presumably, those of us who choose to advance to that level probably have performance-oriented aspirations(4).
What surprises me is that even the Ballet Essentials class tends towards a very lean physique. Given our location, I would expect new adult dancers to be significantly larger. I wonder, though, whether our overwhelmingly-lean class average scares off bigger dancers, or whether perhaps our affiliation with a professional company is intimidating somehow?
I haven’t looked at the adult classes in other local dance schools, for the most part, but I have seen pictures of a couple of the adult groups from other schools, and I would say that their average overall body size was larger.
This makes me wonder how classes already populated with very slim dancers can make bigger dancers feel more welcome. Any ideas? Obviously, just buttonholing people on the way out of class and saying, “Hi! Did you enjoy class? I hope we’ll see you next time!” might help, but are there other, proactive ways to make classes feel more welcoming to people of diverse body sizes?
~
Also, one more semi-related thing: is it just me, or is ballet seriously a harbor for small guys? I’ve noticed that, of the guys in class, most of us are on the small end of average. Some of us are even smaller than that. Even Brian is small (he’s about my height; maybe 5’8″). I want to say that PDG II is a little taller, but not by much. Our two exceptions are T (who isn’t super-tall) and N, who is pretty darned tall.
So, dancers out there — if there are guys in your classes, do they tend to be small? And if so, do you think it’s a selection-pressure thing, or maybe a deselection-pressure thing (since many other sports tend to favor taller guys, maybe smaller guys are more likely to be free to stumble into ballet)?
There’s definitely a selection pressure thing in favor of smaller guys in cycling, for what it’s worth. The same holds true for long-distance running. I would actually expect selection pressures in ballet to select for taller guys (and it does seem to do so at the highest professional levels), but ballet is subject to such complex selection pressures in the US that being tall might actually rather wash out. It’s more important, really, to be brave and confident in one’s own masculinity, and being small is good preparation for that sort of thing. But that, as they say, is “a whole ‘nother” post.
Notes
- In case you’re wondering, I have the broad shoulders and relatively narrow hips of a mesomorph coupled with the fine bones of an ectomorph (especially up top; the bones in my legs definitely show the influence of a lifetime of high-impact activity). Some of my joints are the small, flat joins of an ectomorph; others are the whacking great knobs of a mesomorph (I’m looking at you, knees). My musculature falls somewhere in between as well; my legs fairly shout “mesomorph!” while my arms are squarely (or lithely, perhaps?) in the ectomorph camp. I somehow have rather defined pectoral muscles even though I don’t work on them at all at this juncture, and that’s a mesomorph trait; however, if I wrap my fingers around my wrists, the thumb and middle finger overlap — an ectomorph trait. So, there you have it. As always, I refuse to be one thing or the other. Nyah. 😛
- Curiously, and contrary to what our culture might lead one to expect, I would contend that I inherited these traits from my Mom. Mom is definitely a mesomorph; she has a medium frame and builds muscle easily. She’s put together like a gymnast — small and strong. Her personality, meanwhile, is best explained in terms of the sport she played in high school: Mom’s 5’3″, but her chosen sport was basketball, and apparently she was pretty good! Mom is the kind of person who everyone thinks is taller until they see her in pictures (especially with my step-Dad, who is almost a foot taller than Mom). I’m guessing she probably just intimidated her way around the court with her towering willpower 😀
I’ve never bothered, before, to really sit down and think about where my parents fall on the continuum of somatotypes, but it’s interesting to do so. I find myself feeling really quite grateful for the genes I inherited. Both my Dad’s family and my Mom’s family tend to be healthy and long-lived (with the exception of those on Dad’s side who have succumbed to the deleterious effects of alcoholism), and I seem to have dodged the hypothyroidism bullet. I won’t claim that I dodged the “addictive personality” bullet, because I know for a fact that I didn’t, but I can say that I’ve grown up with enough awareness and guidance to prevent myself from developing dangerous addictions.
- The weirdest and least useful effect of BHJS, for me, is that I have hypermobile joints in my pelvis. Evidently, there’s more laxity in my sacroiliac joints than is usual. As a physical therapist, Denis thinks this is fascinating. As someone whose pelvis does funky things at times, I’m glad Denis is a physical therapist and knows how to put it back where it belongs.
- I should note that there’s one really powerful exception: the curviest girl I routinely see at ballet class dances at the advanced beginner/intermediate level, and she’s really very good — she has natural grace, makes beautiful lines, and her technique is excellent. I think her curvy, feminine physique actually lends something unique and special to her dancing, and I’m always concerned when I don’t see her for a few weeks that she’s dropped out because of the otherwise uniformly-ectomorphic body types of the other ladies in class. The girl in question is very probably someone who doctors would classify as “overweight,” which goes to show you that all those categorical labels are rather silly. I suspect she’s just made the way she’s made, and I hope nobody gives her grief about it, because she’s beautiful.
Also, holy snotrockets, this post is long.
You guys, remember when I said that Giselle would be really cool reworked as a zombie ballet?
Turns out that our Wilis go out and do the Zombie Walk every year.
…So why aren’t we doing Zombie Giselle already???!!!!111oneoneoneone
Ballet Squid Chronicles: Schedule Juggling
I got my most recent math exam grade on Sunday, and I’m sorry to say that I bombed it. Seriously, it comprised the second-worst grade I’ve earned in the whole of my university career: an actual, honest-to-G-d D. I think I did a little worse on one exam in another math class I took, but I also seem to recall that I had a horrible cold or something (and I earned an A- overall in that class).
Your humble Ballet Squid doesn’t do Ds (in fact, I don’t generally do Bs, even).
Last night, I had a long conversation with Denis about how to amend my schedule to allow for more time to work on math. I had been thinking about putting down either the Monday night or the Wednesday night ballet class for the time being, until either I’m really on top of my math class or the semester comes to a complete stop.
Denis’ suggestion was more radical: since there are only about five weeks left in the semester (not counting Finals Week), he suggested that I step back from the evening ballet classes entirely until finals are done.
I resisted, of course: that wasn’t my plan. That wasn’t what I wanted. And, besides, I told him (and myself), my ballet training is important to my long-term career plans.
And then I thought about it a bit more and came to the following conclusion: ballet is, in fact, immensely important to me. It is also, in fact, important to my long-term career plans. However, my grad school application deadline — the thing for which I need to get my ballet really polished — won’t roll around until December, 2015. My graduation deadline at IUS, meanwhile, is May of 2015, and it would be nice to not have to repeat my math class. The prospect of somehow finding myself still whacking away at my undergrad work after this May because of one little math class is depressing beyond measure. Not gonna do it. Not gonna happen.
As it stands, I can still pull my math grade out of the fire, provided that I do well on the remaining hour exam and on the final exam (which accounts for 25% of my grade o.O). Doing so, however, is going to take some work: right now, I have a class average of 76, which is in serious WTF territory if you’re me, but which isn’t irretrievably bad.
This is entirely the result of the impact of the two exams we’ve had so far. Homework and class participation make up only a tiny fraction of the overall grade for this class, so the fact that my homework and in-class work averages are pretty good (high 90s and low 90s, respectively) doesn’t make any real difference.
I feel like a big part of the problem (besides the usual absolute nightmare where error-checking is concerned; you guys, I am the world’s worst error-checker when it comes to my own work, especially math) is that I just plain forget how to do stuff.
I think part of the reason for that is that my current approach to homework amounts to what People Who Know Things call Massed Practice: in short, I sit down and bang out an entire assignment at once, instead of doing a little each day. I’ve been doing this because assignments are due when they’re due and not getting home until 10 PM two nights a week made it hard to do anything else (and while I can write papers and stuff on the bus, I find it difficult to do math homework on the bus, since it requires juggling paper and pencil and calculator).
I know myself well enough to know that massed practice doesn’t work for me. I just somehow failed to grasp that that was exactly what I was doing.
Anyway, the upshot of all this is that I’m going to try Denis’ approach. He suggested that I take advantage of the Friday morning ballet class to try to keep things moving forward ballet-wise; I think that’s a reasonable goal (because of the bus timing, I also wind up losing a lot less time in transit that way).
I don’t think a more relaxed ballet schedule for a few weeks is going to impact my long-term goals. I am a bit more worried that it might, in fact, impact my mood stability. I’m planning to revert to using the bike for more of my homebound commute as a way of compensating (that makes the trip home quicker, anyway), unless my knee starts bothering me again. We’ll see how that goes. If things start to feel unstable, I’ll try adding one evening class back in and see if it sorts things.
So there you have it. As loathe as I am to admit it, I think that Denis has suggested the best plan for the time being. Here’s hoping it will get my math stuff sorted and I won’t have to repeat my math class (which would kind of hose up my plans for next semester, since I’d actually have to go to campus, which would entail commute time, etc.).
Ballet Squid Chronicles: Shoe Adjustments; Philip Glass Project Update
When I was packing our dance bag on Saturday, I noticed that the straps on my Sanshas are sewn in a different spot at the heel than the ones on my Capezio Romeos.
I’ve had issues with the Romeos (which are a touch on the wide side) rolling down at the back, so I decided to try re-sewing the straps. Snipped them just above the seam, then sewed them in again right behind the old spot (pictures to follow, but I’m too lazy to go get my phone right now).
I’m wearing them now, rubbing my heels against my therapy ball (because leather + vinyl = friction) to see if I can get them to peel off.
So far, so good.
I’m going to try them again in class tomorrow. I’m still not sure if I like the little sole pads on the Capezios as much as the ones on the Sanshas. If the adjustment to the heel attachment works as well as I’m hoping, I’ll probably adjust the anchor point at the front as well. Right now, it’s a bit too far forward, so the strongest support is just ahead of my arch. If I move the strap back, I think the Romeos will be even more comfortable.
In other news, Denis and I sat down to listen to the music for my choreography project today. He was having trouble finding the pulse in “The Poet Acts,” and since I’ll probably be working with at least a few non-dancers, we looked around for a piece with a more detectable pulse. We decided on “Escape!” instead, also from The Hours. We’re sorting choreography. He likes my ideas, which makes me feel like maybe they’re not crazy.
So that’s it for now. More tomorrow.
G’night, everybody.
The Problem of Privilege
I should be doing my Exercise Science Homework right now. Instead, I’m ruminating on the idea of privilege.
It’s something I’ve thought about a lot lately, mostly as a function of losing weight.
Thin privilege is huge in the gay male universe and in the dance world. It’s something I’ve enjoyed most of my life. It’s also something I didn’t have for a while, and which now — as someone who is once again pretty lean in a way that’s fairly typically dancer-ish — I have again. I feel very, very differently about it now than I did before I lost it for a while.
It’s not specifically thin privilege I want to talk about, though (don’t worry, I’m working up a whole post on that; it’s just going to take a while to write, because it’s a sensitive topic for everybody). What I want to talk about here, now, is the problem with being a person who has privilege.
The problem is, succinctly, that if you have a certain kind of privilege, you probably don’t know it exists, even if you’ve heard of it. You may have rational knowledge of it, but in some sense, it’s probably not real to you — kind of like you’ve probably heard of Montréal, but if you haven’t been there, it might not be really real to you.
Growing up as a skinny kid with a fat sister, I knew that my sister got picked on and stuff about her weight, but I didn’t know there were what one might think of as systemic forces involved. I got picked on about other things entirely, so getting picked on just seemed like a normal part of life as a kid. It didn’t occur to me that the bullying my sister experienced was an ugly manifestation of a socially-acceptable norm.
Likewise, I knew my sister had kind of a hard time finding clothes, but I didn’t know that the selection of clothes available to her was in any way different than that available to other kids. (To be fair, as a kid, I hated shopping for clothes — which struck me as irretrievably boring — with a fiery, burning passion, and avoided all involvement therewith.) I think I figured she was just picky. She was into fashion, after all.
I knew my sister got bronchitis every single year (we both have seasonal allergies, and they weren’t treated when we were kids). I didn’t know that her doctor blamed it (and basically everything else, apparently) on her weight.
Nor did I know her doctor assumed that she was lazy and self-indulgent just because she was bigger than some kids. My sister was no lazier or more self-indulgent than any other kid — having me as a sibling kept her pretty active, in fact, and she was stuck eating the same selection of salads, terrible baked chicken, and so forth that I ate (in fact, we often picked violets together to toss in the salad).
I didn’t know that she felt squeezed out of things she loved doing, like dancing, because there just wasn’t a place for bigger people in ballet. Being both a skinny kid and pretty oblivious, I didn’t really notice, at the time, how the bigger kids sort of faded out as we progressed. I never really thought about it (oblivious, much?), but if I had, I probably would’ve assumed — just like everyone else did — that they dropped out because they were lazy (and also that they were fat for the same reason). From what I’ve seen, that couldn’t be further from the truth.
Being a skinny kid, I didn’t notice that images out there in the world didn’t reflect my sister’s existence. In TV shows and movies, fat boys could at least be sidekicks; fat girls? If they showed up at all, they were uncool objects of derision: the kids it was okay to hate. Nobody ever rooted for the fat girls.
Meanwhile, I got to keep dancing. I got to ride bikes, ice skate, ski, do gymnastics, ride horses, swim in public. I could identify with the weird kids who are often the heroes in kids’ books and movies, because I was weird. I could crush on the fat-boy sidekicks in movies because they were there to crush on, because it was okay for boys to be fat, up to a point (as long as they were okay with being sidekicks, I guess).
No matter how much I hated it, I could buy clothes wherever I wanted (mostly: I remember kvetching about not being able to find a size that was small enough at PacSun when I was 19 and weighed about 120 pounds, but that’s a different problem entirely).
I didn’t recognize any of that stuff as privilege. To me, it was just, you know, life. I didn’t feel marginalized by the lack of fat girls in the media, because I wasn’t a fat girl. I didn’t notice whether or not there were cool jeans for fat boys, because I wasn’t a fat boy (not that I would have noticed, anyway, because I also wasn’t cool).
I didn’t feel alienated by the lack of fat kids in ballet class (or the lack of fat dancers on the stage) because I wasn’t a fat kid. I never realized that my pediatrician was kind of a fat-shaming dick about fat kids. I was a skinny kid. I was the default. I never noticed the pieces that were missing.
Flash forward to now. I can eat French fries at Burger King or buy sundae cones at the supermarket and nobody looks at me funny. I rock tights and a t-shirt in ballet class and out, and maybe people might look at me funny because they don’t expect dudes in tights, but nobody says a word about my size. I can go to the doctor’s office and kvetch about my asthma or whatever and nobody assumes that I’m sick because of my weight.
If I hadn’t been fat for a while, I wouldn’t recognize all that as privilege. In fact, I wouldn’t know most of it was happening.
A similar thing happens when white people think non-white people are being histrionic when they talk about experiencing racism. White people say, “I’ve never seen that happen.”
Of course we haven’t. Unless it happens really obviously, and right in front of us, we don’t know it happens at all — because it doesn’t happen to us. It’s hard for us to quite conceptualize what it’s like to be treated poorly because you’re a shade or two darker or a few kilos bigger than the next person.
Discrimination isn’t always super-obvious. In fact, it doesn’t usually come with a big, flashing neon sign. Privilege works the same way, only it’s even harder for us to imagine, because those of us who are on the “right” side of privilege benefit from it. Those benefits just seem normal, to us, so we figure everyone must get them.
Not everyone does.
Too few fat people have access to fun outfits for the weekend or stylish officewear (and that’s more important than it sounds), or health care without conclusion-jumping (my sister’s recurrent bronchitis has never been a function of her weight), or the chance to just freaking enjoy a meal out without being judged by everyone in sight (and, yes, praising someone for choosing the salad still really kind of implies judgment, especially when you’re scarfing down the fish and chips).
Too few women have their opinions taken seriously in business meetings or in academic settings.
Too few Muslims get to walk out their front doors without having to steel themselves against unwarranted comments.
I don’t think I would have ever really seen what thin privilege looks like if I hadn’t been, well, not-thin for a while. Surprisingly, I feel like it would be pretty easy to lose sight of it again (especially in the current cultural climate in the US, which is totally into making people who do lose weight feel pretty good about themselves).
I hope I won’t forget what it looks like, now.
danseur ignoble 