Nicole Arbour: Jenna Marbles wants her delivery back

So, I've stayed away from that Canadian Youtube comedian who months ago decided to be really edgy (as in not edgy at all) and pick on women daring to post photos of themselves in a way they find attractive, and just recently decided to go so much edgier (as in not even close to edgy) and pick on fat people.

Because it's stupid and boring and I didn't want to write about it. So, I'm not going to. I shared a great response by Lindy West, and an awesome video response by Melanie Greeke, and I'd hoped that would be the end of it.

But alas.

I cannot stand by while everyone talks about Nicole Arbour, and no one talks about how she completely lifted her entire persona from Jenna Marbles. She is literally a much worse version of one of the first woman Youtube comedians. Why is no one talking about that? You can't just steal a person's entire Internet persona, sap it of anything that was funny, and make it mean and lacking in intelligence without facing some kind of consequence. Or can you?

Think about it. The quick edits where she is one one side of the screen then the other? The makeup? The way she edits as if she's having a conversation with herself as a group? The voices to indicate other partners in the conversation of one? The intersection of movement and straight monologue?

Hell, what about her pronunciation? Her cadence? Last time I checked, only one of them was from Boston. The way she does little asides in different tones. Her body movements? Heck, her very eye movements. Her whole facial repertoire.

She is copying Jenna Marbles right down to the molecular level.

Except she doesn't actually have Marbles' secret, which is to include yourself in the bit.

Funny: "If you're ugly like me, have no fear, there are steps you can take to be good-looking, kinda."

Not funny: "They complain, and they smell like sausages. . .Crisco was coming out of their pores."

Funny: "Now it's time for your eye makeup. I like to use black because it says, 'I'm a whore.' The goal is to make yourself look nothing like yourself.

Not funny: "I actually took his fat, and I pushed it back into his seat, and I held it in place."

In Arbour's version of comedy, she is the hilarious, ill-fated hero. In Marbles' version of comedy, she is the object of which she is making fun. Huge difference.

I'm not going to talk about the similarities or differences anymore because there is nothing left to say. Click on these two youtube videos. See for yourself. It is insane how similar the delivery is. And how different the content is based on where it's projected.







There are other Marbles' videos that are even more in line with Arbour's delivery, but I don't feel like finding them. Maybe the one where she talks about female athletes and their boobs. I don't know. Don't really care.

The important thing is: Not only is Nicole Arbour offensive, petty and not funny, she's also a damn copycat.

I can make a not funny video in Jenna Marbles' style, too. Maybe I will someday soon.

Gaining 50 pounds proves nothing to no one

So, more than a year after the Maria Kang debacle, I wake up to this on my newsfeed.

"Woman packs on 50 pounds to prove 'no excuses' for being overweight"

www.today.com

Apparently, a while back, Katie Hopkins decided she was tired of having people tell her she was "lucky to be thin" and blaming their obesity on things other than themselves. She got so tired of it that she decided to eat 6,500 calories a day until she gained 50 pounds, just to show that it's only caloric intake and lack of exercise that makes people fat.

The only thing her "experiment" proves to me is that Katie Hopkins likes to fat shame. A lot. So much that she would undertake a drastic change in daily habits--one that made her cry because she thinks eating that much is so disgusting--so that she could continue to fat shame. It's that important to her.

And, honestly, it's totally off the mark.

All Hopkins did with this little foray into the world of overweight was prove that she, as an individual, with a normal metabolism, no physical or mental ailments that would beleaguer her weight control, enough money to afford a good diet, her genetic makeup and a bunch of other individual factors that make her a candidate for weight control success--would be overweight if she ate larger quantities of food than her body is used to.

I'm pretty sure science proved that already, first of all.

And secondly, proving that you personally eating a lot makes you personally gain weight says absolutely nothing about the rest of the population. To get all academia, it's not replicable and it's not generalizable.

So, congratulations on making yourself cry and force feeding yourself to gain weight so that you could then go back to your normal diet, lose the weight, and continue to fat shame--now in your mind, justified.

Hopkins has also said, "I don't believe you can be fat and happy."

To which I point her to this Tumblr.

Maybe Hopkins can't be fat and happy. She proved that to herself (unnecessarily since she already knew that about herself), but just because she doesn't like the extra weight and had to put massive effort into gaining it does not make that true for literally anybody else on the planet.

We are all different.

Hopkins, of course, is going to lose the weight in three months time by again drastically altering her diet and upping her exercise levels.

And that's great. But it doesn't prove that other people can do it.

It only proves that you can.

So, now, you're not just a random ignorant person making other people feel bad because you lack empathy and education about the different factors in obesity. Now you're an active participant in tearing people down to make yourself feel better about your life, willpower, cultural situation and genetics.

Congratulations, and good luck on your weight loss journey.








 

Clarity in the Check Out Lane - Contributor Post

Today, I'm lucky enough to share a post from Pollychromatic who had a sobering experience at a grocery store that cemented a realization that so often floats around our collective peripheral vision.

...



I was standing in the checkout line waiting my turn. Bored. Looking at the magazine covers rather than making eye contact with the other people in line.

As you do.

I was doing this, and something really clarified for me.

See, there was this horrible rag cover. Globe or National Enquirer, or Star, or something. It had the title of “Worst Beach Bodies.” There’s Kim Kardashian’s butt, front and center, titled “Double Wide.” Ha! Ha! Because Kim Kardashian has a butt that is wide, you see. Oh, and we all agree that big butts mean fat, and fat means ugly err, I mean not healthy. So we can all make fun of her butt being big because really we’re just concerned about her health and fuck if she doesn’t deserve it because what the hell is she doing thinking her big butt is okay to show off to the world as desirable! How dare she?! The nerve!

NEEEEEXT!

People I don’t know, people I don’t know, people I don’t know and… what? Is that the little person from that tv show? Amy Roloff? What in the actual fuck? They’re making fun of her? Because her body is different? And she dared to show it on the beach?

Are you fucking kidding me?

You know that point when your ears start to make that whooshing sound and your vision narrows, and you realize that you might just actually be one ragequit away from a for real stroke because you actually got that pissed off?

I was there. Right there.

And I want to use nicer language. I want to not use curse words, because I’d like for you to pass this around, and I know that using curse words makes that harder for you to do. I know that curse words are the retreat of a small vocabulary and that it takes finer skill and creates more power to write without them, but I am so enraged by this.

But it made something clear.

See, I’ve grown desensitized to the fat shaming. Every now and then it’ll get my ire up, but I have come to expect it. It’s what our media does. It’s what people in our culture do. It’s what our coworkers and friends and family do. Not all of them, sure, but enough. We can spread the body positivity from here to eternity, but the streak of shame and blame that we place on people, and ourselves, for fat, for daring to be fat? That’s wider than all the fat combined. It’s heavier, meatier, and I am here to tell you uglier.


Gabourey Sidibe can make her speeches about living past the hate and finding her own beauty, but at the end, we know, we all know, there are a world of comments that will come after about how she should still lose a few pounds. At the least, “for her health.”

And we’ve come to expect that, if not accept that. We don’t, as a culture, accept that fat is a genetic difference, we don’t, as a culture, accept that fat is just another one of the facets of beauty that exists in our species.

But.

I did not expect that to be put on a little person. I didn’t expect the highly critical eye of the media to turn to a person who was born with the genes that express themselves through one of the many varieties of drawfism. Amy Roloff is a little person. Her body is different. Making fun of her body for being different makes as much sense as making fun of Stephen Hawking because he’s in a wheelchair.

Here’s another horrible part of this. They cropped the picture carefully. They didn’t make fun of her husband for daring to be a little person on the beach. All the hate was reserved for her. Because that’s what we do.

And I really should have known better. Because we know better, don’t we? Of course the media is going to make fun of Amy Roloff. Just like they make fun of Gabourey Sidibhe. And it really is all the same. And it isn’t about a focused set of standards of beauty. It isn’t about the overuse of photoshop. It isn’t about fashion. It isn’t even about attraction, or health.
It’s about being bullies.

We’ve accepted a culture that bullies, especially, women. We take part in it. We consume it and regurgitate it and spread it far and wide on Tumblr and Pinterest and blogs and Instagram.

And god. I sort of want to thank that horrible magazine for clarifying it for me. Because damn if another picture dissecting what parts of whichever actress they took apart this week for being too fat was going to get through to me.

If you are a woman, you are less than. You are a consumable product. Here are your array of products and services to purchase so that you can be consumed. And you will consume it. $20 billion a year on the diet industry. $34 billion a year on beauty products and services (I’m sure there’s some overlap there on beauty services/products and the diet industry, but you get the idea). There’s a lot of money to be made by telling you that you look like crap. And when you get fed up and feel down and depressed about it, there’ll be a whole row of magazines at the grocery store, and entire blogs dedicated to ripping apart actresses and female celebrities who didn’t live up to the expectations that you haven’t been able to live up to either. And maybe you’ll rip them apart, too. So you can feel better about how shitty you feel about yourself, inevitably.

And maybe it’s time that we see that we feel like shit because we have been consumed and processed through a machine that digests us to turn us into ready consumers for their products and services. Maybe it’s time we realize that this media machine is not celebrating the beautiful life, but the impossible life, simply so we will consume it and be consumed by it. That the reason will feel like shit is because we have been shat.

And maybe we need to step away from the bullies and stop giving them our voices and ears to use. We need to stop consuming this. There’s just no world where it is acceptable to make fun of people’s bodies for being different. We need to turn it around on ourselves. There’s just no world where it is acceptable to make fun of our own body for being different.

Dammit, we are the expression of a beautiful conglomeration of millennia of evolution. We are life. We are living, breathing, thinking, dancing, rolling, wrinkling, jiggling, taut, stretched, bunched up, beautiful life. In myriad forms. We are life.

And that is beautiful.

Woman Hands Out Fat Shaming Notes to Kids so She's not Seen as the 'Mean Lady' -- Oh.

Perhaps by now you've seen this?

Now, you might this this is some spoof out to rile the social justice warriors. I admit, I wasn't sure at first. But no. This is a real note, courtesy of Cheryl from Fargo, North Dakota. In fact, here she is on y94 defending her decision.

The DJ asks her why she doesn't just give out healthy alternatives, and her reply is that she doesn't want to be the mean lady. So she'll give all the kids candy, and the ones she deems overweight will also be getting this incredibly well worded, and caring, note.

There are so many things wrong with this I hardly know where to start.

Let's first define "concern trolling" okay? Since apparently a lot of people don't seem to understand the concept.

Concern Trolling: "A person who posts on a blog thread, in the guise of "concern," to disrupt dialogue or undermine morale by pointing out that posters and/or the site may be getting themselves in trouble, usually with an authority or power. They point out problems that don't really exist. The intent is to derail, stifle, control, the dialogue. It is viewed as insincere and condescending." --Urban Dictionary

Now, this is a case of in real life concern trolling. The woman holds herself up to be helping the community by inserting a note which she finds to be "well-meaning" into those people's hands that she finds unhealthy. She has put herself into a dialogue that didn't exist, is controlling it, and wants to be seen as the good guy.

Here's why she can't do that:

1) It's none of her business. Halloween is an opt-in holiday. Think Halloween candy makes kids fatter and you can't stand it? Opt out. Leave your porch light off. It's as simple as that. Or as the DJ suggested, give out something you consider healthy. The kids won't care. They're there for the costumes and festivities. If they ever even do care about what kind of candy they got, it's long after the fact, and they won't even remember you. Repeat this to yourself: you are not that big a deal.

2) Parents have eyes. They can see their own children, they know what their children weigh moreso than even you do, and they have deemed it appropriate to allow their kids to partake in the collection of candy this year. They don't need you to tell them what they can see. They don't need you to tell them what they should do.

3) Collection of candy. That's as far as you see. For all you know that family is donating their stash this year. Or not. Not your business.

4) I happen to be a fairly thin, muscular woman--a woman some people would say is in great shape. I've  eaten four bags of Halloween candy in the past two weeks. Meanwhile, I know people struggling with their weight who have eaten nothing but wholesome, doctor-approved diets in that time. Point being, thin people do not represent healthy people necessarily. Those thin kids you're referencing in your note could have far worse diets and exercise than the ones you consider to be overweight.

5) Kids of trick-or-treating age are just coming into the stage where they learn about people like you, who will judge them for what they look like as opposed to for who they are. They've not yet built the walls of self-confidence around themselves, and reading a note like this could have a very definite and a very negative impact on them. They could accidentally allow you to define them. They could lose their sense of self and start judging who they are by what you think of them. They could then pattern this for years, becaoming more and more unhappy with themselves, always feeling inadequate, no matter how much they accomplish. These kids, they don't know you don't matter. So you have to act like you do. Because you might to them. And if that's the case, wouldn't you rather be the person who shored someone up when they were feeling insecure rather than pushed them down into the depths of self-doubt and worry?

In summation, here's a PSA. Happy Halloween, everybody! Remember this year to not be a total douchecanoe when handing out candy to the joyous children happy to be out and about and proud of their costumes.


 

What's Wrong with This Picture? Why Maria Kang Can't Tell People What to Do.

Maria Kang is getting a lot of heat for this photo:

Now, I came here to defend her, actually. That had been my idea. I mean, she's clearly "fitspiration," and that's a genre. People attacking her for 'what she does' (which is also what she does for a living), is almost like someone attacking a romance novel for not being Proust. They're not meant to be compared. Which, really, is one of the problems with this photo. It's meant for the 'fitspiration' crowd, not for the general public.

The problem with 'fitspiration' people is that they often assume that the general public is the 'fitspiration' crowd, or would be if they could only see the light.

It's so easy, you see. Anyone can do it. What's your excuse?

And there's the second problem with this photo. Unlike the other 'fitspiration' stuff she's posted that involve pictures of herself, she actually comes out and brings you into the equation. And you know what? We all have some pretty good excuses.

Here are a few from a Facebook thread:

"My "excuse" is that I don't work out for a living."

This is a good point. Maria Kang's business is fitness. It's what she does. She makes money from it, in addition to her social media presence. Blogging and writing are what I do. Unfortunately, they don't keep me fit. Come to think of it, they don't pay me either.

"I don't have money for daycare or a babysitter so I can work out for hours or go on 10 mile runs."

Another excellent point. Maria Kang's husband stays at home and is extremely helpful around the house. They do have money. She does have time. These are not small issues.

I'm totally privileged in that I can afford to go to a gym that provides child care, and I have the time to work out for an hour three times a week. I have a husband who looks after the kids on Saturdays when I go to that gym. I spend my days writing, being a housewife and mom, and going to grad school. This is privilege. I can do these things because I have advantages that other people do not have.

One person on Facebook commented that "it's pretty damned easy for a suburban soccer mom to tell a single mother with two jobs and barely enough income to afford fast food that she just isn't trying hard enough."

When you're working two or three jobs, as a single parent, and your car is on the verge of breaking down, and your kids need their time with you and you're just making ends meet, well, running 4x a week and doing your core 3x a week is not happening. It's not an excuse. It's reality. And when those parents sit down, exhausted, in the thirty minutes of peace they have between the time their kids go to bed and the time they drag themselves to bed, the last thing they want to see is some woman who doesn't get it telling them how easy it would be if they just gave up the excuses. The message simply cannot translate.

"My excuse is 4 kids in 5 years, an emergency c-section, and genetically inelastic skin. I had a consult with a plastic surgeon and the extra skin on my tummy falls into the "severe" category. So I can exercise like a beast (and I have) and I'll still look 4 months pregnant. So fuck her."

This is a biggie. When taken out of the 'fitspiration' subgenre (and even within it, honestly, because many, many followers of 'fitspiration' have fairly insurmountable odds, or as Kang would call them, excuses, when trying to get fit). It's great that Kang can look like that thirty seconds after giving birth (which she actually doesn't, but I'll get to that). The point is, not everyone is Kang. Not everyone can look like that even if they do everything she does exactly to the letter. Everyone's circumstances are different, and speaking as a lady with stretch marks and extra skin, it totally sucks. And seeing a (n edited) picture like that saying I'm just not working hard enough. Well, like the FBer said, fuck you.

Now, if you visit her Facebook page (which I have a lot to say about in a minute), you'll see at one point Kang posted this picture of herself:

You'll see through the sand, that her pregnancies do show. There are the stretch marks I so recognize. There's the way my own skin wrinkles when I sit. And yes, I know that she can arch and stand in ways so that that doesn't happen (I do it myself for photos). But in the first picture I posted, those stretch marks are non-existent.  I blew that photo up to as large as I could, hunting for a tell-tale streak. Nothing. Photoshopped or airbrushed out.

So, Maria, what's your excuse?

How can you tell women that if they just put down the pound cake and took up your prayer and exercise regime they would look like that, when  you don't even look like that? I am...disappoint. And none of this is to say her photo here isn't gorgeous. The only one saying that is her, when she thanks her fans for being "understanding and supportive" of her stomach skin. She is a damn knockout, as she is. I'm sorry she doesn't see it that way.

But wait! We're not done with real life "excuses"!

"I have hypothyroidism which means one of the many complex issues this causes is a slow metabolism. So it's not easy to lose weight but it's reeeeally easy to put it on."

When you take a meme like 'what is your excuse' and you put it on a picture that gets shared to the general public, you run the risk of people getting pissed off. Deservedly pissed off. Do you have hypothyroidism, Kang? Or lupus, or scoliosis, or fibromyalgia? No, you do not.

And they're not excuses. They are reasons.

I visited her Facebook page after reading the Yahoo article about her (who gives an exclusive interview to Yahoo, btw?) And there are lots of "excuse" motivations on there. Like this one:

Okay, now, I love this kid. I've seen this before, and I just love this kid. I'm not going to dwell on this point too much because I just don't know how I feel about it. But someone on Facebook made an interesting point which bears repeating here and that is: "those disabled "what's your excuse" memes are bullshit. Disabled people do not exist for your motivation."

I feel this is absolutely correct. I think the line here is where we stop celebrating our own fantastic-ness, and start telling others that they should be doing something just because we did it (or because the most adorable boy on the planet did it). Everyone has their own obstacles to overcome and everyone overcomes those obstacles in their own ways. You cannot take someone else's (even your own) story, and push it onto people at large. Life doesn't work that way.

Love yourself, love your life, job, fitness level, etc. But don't preach it to people who didn't ask to hear it.

Not to mention that some people simply cannot get her results, no matter what, like the FB commenter who worked out for two hours a day for three years, and still couldn't lose the weight.

After many people gave their "excuses" in that thread, an interesting thing happened. People started asking Kang what her excuse was.

"I have 3 degrees...what's her excuse?"

"Can she play tuba? No? What's her excuse?"

"I had my kids closer together than she did. What's her excuse?"

This is hilarious, but it also sheds light on something that isn't normally visible. No one would ever expect to see a tuba player's picture with the words "what's your excuse" atop it. And if they did see a picture like that, they'd most likely laugh their asses off. Because that's ridiculous. Not everyone wants to play tuba, so they don't need an excuse as to why they can't play it. Not everyone wants three degrees. And the people that do want three sometimes have the legit excuse as discussed above of not having the funds or the time to achieve them. And no one is posting pictures of themselves with their prizes and achievements in those areas asking others to justify themselves. Because that's silly.

But somehow it's not silly when someone does this in the working-out realm. Because 'fitspiration' is not just a subgenre, but is part of our general culture, and as such is open to these criticisms. Because the people hitting back don't find it silly or absurd. Shaming in this arena is such a part of our mainstream culture that people do get insulted when a random meme picture like this shows up on their social media. They get it enough everywhere else. They don't want it from a complete stranger, too.

The tuba player goes on to say, "Maybe it's not important or interesting to her... Gasp, you mean different people have different priorities?!"

And that's the crux of the matter. Looking like she looks a year after having her third child is not a priority for most people. And yet somehow, when seeing a picture like that, with a shaming message atop it, people do feel shamed for it not being a priority for them. And then they get mad. Because it's a dominant theme in our culture. One that needs to go away.

She has every right to be proud of herself, and every right to motivate those who are looking to be motivated in her arena, in her area of expertise. But she does not have the right to attack those who would fight back against her message. Because while she intended to say this: "I know you think you don’t have time if you have kids. But if I can do it, you can do it, too," she actually said this: "what's your excuse?" And those are two different things.

And it's not the first time she's tried to pass a genre message off to a mass audience. She frequently posts pictures like this one:

Which would be absolutely fine if it wasn't so patently false. Again, these self-motivating messages simply cannot translate into the wider world.

After receiving a lot of backlash for the original picture, Kang took to her own Facebook page in what is now a pinned post saying:

"I've been getting an influx of new followers, emails and comments (on my profile pic) recently. Some saying I'm a bully, I'm fat-shaming and I need to apologize for the hurt I've caused women. I get it. SO here's my First and Final Apology: 

I'm sorry you took an image and resonated with it in such a negative way. I won't go into details that I struggled with my genetics, had an eating disorder, work full time owning two business', have no nanny, am not naturally skinny and do not work as a personal trainer. I won't even mention how I didn't give into cravings for ice cream, french fries or chocolate while pregnant or use my growing belly as an excuse to be inactive.

What I WILL say is this. What you interpret is not MY fault. It's Yours. The first step in owning your life, your body and your destiny is to OWN the thoughts that come out of your own head. I didn't create them. You created them. So if you want to continue 'hating' this image, get used to hating many other things for the rest of your life. You can either blame, complain or obtain a new level of thought by challenging the negative words that come out of your own brain.

With that said, obesity and those who struggle with health-related diseases is literally a 'bigger' issue than this photo. Maybe it's time we stop tip-toeing around people's feelings and get to the point. So What's Your Excuse?"

Okay, so this is what's known in the business (the business being the internet, of course) as a fauxpology. And she doesn't even try very hard. This right here? "What you interpret is not MY fault. It's Yours." No. Just no. Words mean things. Interpretations are not pulled out of the blue. They are based on societal frameworks set in place long before Maria Kang got herself a 'fitspiration' FB page. You want to write an aggressive, accusatory message on top of your amazing picture? Do it. But own it. You did it. You own it. Them's the rules.

It is not the reader's responsibility to place your intent into the latent meaning of the phrasing you used. End of story. Or, as someone on Facebook aptly said, "I love how I have personal issues if something on the internet makes me think the person who made it is kind of a douche."

The FBer doesn't have personal issues. She is interpreting a media message as she has a right to do. That apology is the most offensive apology I've read in a long time. And spending a lot of time on the internet (not at the gym!) I see a lot of false apologies every day.

It's also important to note that body image is so important to Kang that she has suffered from a very real eating disorder, one as real as any of the conditions listed above. While her struggle in no way disqualifies her from motivating others to be fit and healthy, it is something that perhaps she should take some time to parse.

Like someone said on Facebook, "this woman has a major body issue - she is paranoid of being fat. She used to puke. She learned to stop puking. Now she exercises obsessively. That's not something to aspire to. Great. She's skinny and has washboard abs. That isn't something to aspire to if she does so as a way to mask some deep emotional scars. It's nothing to do with her being a good mom or a bad mom. It's nothing to do with her shaming me for being fat. This is about her trying to hide her body issues by telling everyone else they should have the same body issues. I have spent years fighting my body issues. I'm working really hard on them. I'm finally STARTING to be comfortable in my own skin. I hope some day she finds a way to be comfortable in her own."

I feel like that's the core message here. We all need to find a way to be comfortable in our own skins. A meme on Facebook isn't going to help us there. It's not a flash realization. It's a process and it takes a lot of fighting cultural norms and media messages to get there. Best to be part of the solution, not the problem.

As one FB commenter noted, "What it all boils down to is an inability to accept that other people's desires, motivations, abilities, obstacles, and circumstances are not the same as your own."

This issue goes far beyond 'fitspiration' and even beyond body shaming. It's a pervasive ideology in which people cannot fathom lives different from their own. Every life holds beauty. No one (at least no internet strangers) need to tell the people living those lives where to find it.

Maria posted that picture a few weeks ago. It's a message that rings true. It's a message that works across genres and boundaries and subjects. It's the true message for anyone looking better themselves. Let's concentrate on that, and not our "excuses".

PS - If you are interested in taking part in the body positive meme, or would like to see some of our "excuses" laid out, come over to We Don't Need an Excuse. Submit if you'd like!