Shrill: Notes from a Loud Woman by Lindy West

Author:Lindy West [West, Lindy]
Language: eng
Format: azw, epub
Tags: Feminist Theory, Autobiography / Personal Memoirs, Humor / Form / Essays, Social Science / Feminism &#38, Biography &#38
Publisher: Hachette Books
Published: 2016-05-17T04:00:00+00:00

Is this who we want having influence in our country? Society must realize there are consequences to fat feminist beliefs. They range from the concrete (not fitting on airplanes) to creating a class of perennial female victims-seekers who have no notion of personality responsibility. Instead of focusing on self-improvement, they seek to blame everyone else for their problems, even innocent men on airplanes who have their property damaged from the canckled legs of deranged women.

On a different site, a commenter wrote: “Man FUCK HER. I wouldn’t want to stoop to feminist levels and wish bodily harm—castration/acid burning her face, etc.—on her, but if I did, then I’d say I wish that Buffalo Bill taught her a lesson or two.”

And another: “My god, what a putrid and deluded fucking cunt. I’m so glad that her health decisions that are none of my business will see her in an early grave. I’m sure when she loses her legs from diabetes or has a heart attack at forty due to lard clogged arteries that will be the patriarchy’s fault too. Bitch.”

Very astute, boys. I was probably just imagining the whole thing. I’m certainly not an adult human being who’s been successfully reading social cues for thirty years. And we certainly don’t have any evidence of general animosity toward fat people, particularly fat people on planes.

Before the day I didn’t fit, this conversation was largely an abstraction for me. My stance was the same as it is now (if people pay for a service, it’s the seller’s obligation to accommodate those people and provide the service they paid for), but I didn’t understand what that panicky, uncertain walk down the aisle actually felt like. How inhumane it is.

I’m telling you this not to garner sympathy or pity, or even to change your opinion about how airplanes should accommodate larger passengers. I’m just telling you, human to human, that life is complicated and fat people are trying to live. Same as you. Reasons I have had to fly within the past five years: For work (often). To see beloved friends get married. To speak to college students about rape culture and body image. To hold my father’s hand while he died. I’m sorry, but I’m not constraining and rearranging my life just because no one cares enough to make flying accessible to all bodies.

Airlines have no incentive to fix this problem until we, collectively, as a society, demand it. We don’t insist on a solution because it’s still culturally acceptable to be cruel to fat people. When even pointing out the problem—saying, “my body does not fit in these seats that I pay for”—returns nothing but abuse and scorn, how can we ever expect that problem to be addressed? The real issue here isn’t money, it’s bigotry. We don’t care about fat people because it is okay not to care about them, and we don’t take care of them because we think they don’t deserve care.

It’s the same lack of care that sees fat people

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