Well.
I am alternately flattered and horrified. It’s awesome to be considered Orlando’s best fat-rights blogger but, um, really? Who wrote this copy? Did they even read the story that was done on me?
Best fat-rights blogger
www.therotund.com
She’s 350 pounds of soft Orlando jiggle, and she says the body mass index is bullshit and people should recognize rights for those who are beyond pleasantly plump. She’s even posed nude to prove that point. So if you’re tubby and need some inspiration on fat power, or are just a chubby-chaser looking for the mother load, you’ve found it.
I’m not actually bothered that they inflated my weight by 50 pounds (though I question their motivations) so much as the chubby-chaser angle there. I mean, dude, it isn’t like this is a dating site.
You can check out the other Best of Orlando winners in the Local Color category HERE. There are currently no comments.
37 Comments
OMFG. Will be sending angry letters.
That is just gross. The “chubby chaser” thing, I mean.
I am so just… *BOGGLE*
On the one hand they think I am cool enough to have awarded me this prestigious position *snerk* but on the other hand soft Orlando jiggle?
I actually can’t decide if that phrase is horrifically insulting or the best thing ever.
And, I mean, it isn’t…. I JUST DON’T KNOW!
Just sent this to the editor…
As Marianne Kirby’s friend and co-author of a forthcoming book on body acceptance, I was delighted to see her mentioned again in Orlando Weekly. (Best of Orlando 2008, Local Color.) Well, at least until I read what was written about her.
Marianne’s blog, The Rotund, is about body acceptance and fat politics. One of the recurring messages of the blog is that women’s bodies do not exist simply for the sexual gratification of onlookers. Which means “chubby chasers looking for the mother load [sic]” — as your writer so charmingly put it — will be sorely disappointed by her site. It’s light on the nudie photos (which were taken for a cancer charity), heavy on the thinky feminist shit. Not exactly the internet’s finest source for fat chick porn.
Also, for the record, Marianne’s 319 pounds of “soft Orlando jiggle,” not 350 — a fact your writer could have checked by reading the previous (1/31/2008) article on Marianne in the magazine.
I mean, really. Come on.
Best,
Kate Harding
Nobody would ever describe Paul of BFB that way, you can bet your ass.
Oh, I cross-posted with Kate. Great letter, Kate!
The chubby chaser thing doesn’t even make sense. Mother load of what? Thoughtful, incisive blog entries? Do you have some dating site or porn stash here I missed?
I mean, really. Come on.
Kate, I totally love you.
Meowser, I do think you are dead on with that observation.
I mean, as Kate pointed out, I didn’t pose nude just for the hell of it – it was to raise money for a cancer benefit. Jeezie creezie. And the chubby chaser mother “load”? If that is a deliberate misspelling, as much as I am noth grossed out by fluids, that is really gross.
Fu, I checked my sidebar for links and I seem to be missing the dating site and porn stash. I’m not sure WHERE they got to. *laugh*
Soft Orlando Jiggle has now become the height of hilarity around the house, though. I mean, I do jiggle sometimes. But I still kick ass.
If that is a deliberate misspelling
God, that didn’t even occur to me. EWWWWWW.
Please, please change your tag line to “350 lbs. of Soft Orlando Jiggle.”
My friend Deirdra says Soft Orlando Jigglefit ought to be my roller derby name. *grin* I think she is right.
When I think about your site, “kick-ass”, “witty” and “thoughtful” are the three discriptors that come to mind. Soft and jiggly? Not so much.
Just goes to show how deeply ingrained fat prejudice is. People cut us down even when they’re nominally paying us compliments.
wtf. that is just so… i don’t even know. did they read your blog at all before writing that!? ugh.
and “tubby”? who even uses that term after grade six?
“Nobody would ever describe Paul of BFB that way, you can bet your ass.”
Absolutely right. This is deplorable.
However, “Soft Orlando Jigglefit” could also be a band name.
Well, there’s certainly a comment there now. Hmpf.
That’s one hell of a lot of sneering (and euphemisms) in one small paragraph. Idiots.
Jeezie creezie.
For this, I love you. Especially if you wrote it in a James Mason voice.
Also, I’m pretty sure you can get Soft Orlando Jiggle at Sonic.
OMG, you did it! I love you!
OMG, you did it! I love you!
I have been contemplating all of the potential categories that are “beyond pleasingly plump,” and I think I have some of them (the order may need adjustment).
Chubby
Pleasingly plump
(followed by)
Pleasingly fat
Pleasingly jiggly
Awsomely soft
Orlando-ly fat
Deadly seriously obesely morbid
Pleasingly tubby
Inspirationally tubby
Powerfully fat
Ok, so, this most likely won’t be winning me any favors, but as an alt-weekly freelancer who has helped work on these “list” cover features before, I feel a need to explain what might have happened here. Let me preface all of it by saying that I can understand your confusion, as well as the anger of your readers. I also don’t agree with the editorial angle of the piece in question, nor do I speak for (or indeed even know) any of the editors, writers or freelancers who work on the Orlando Weekly. That said…
I am fairly willing to bet that the content of the Local Color section was either a) all written by one person or b) split between maybe two or three writers, most likely freelancers. (I base that estimate on the amount of written blurbs – I counted 29, but I could be wrong – and my experience in helping with these lists. I usually average about 10 to 20 blurbs.) Either way, all of this is going to be looked over by an editor who probably has several pages of these articles to proofread for style and so on. It doesn’t seem like a lot, and it seems like easy work until you’re about…1/3 of the way through. It’s at about that point that you start realizing that most of these things are boring, many of them are basically the same thing over and over (government scandals…charming locals…quirky community news stories…braaaaaaaaains…), and your deadline is TOMORROW and you’re STILL NOT DONE and it’s 1:30 A.M. and you have to be at your day job TOO DAMN EARLY for that GOD DAMN MEETING…
…and it is then that you go mad.
No, I mean it. You go CRAZY. You just want the thing to be done, and the part of your brain that usually keeps you in check suddenly starts suffering from a Chernobyl-style meltdown, and soon you’re cackling like the Dark Knight’s nemesis as you crank out stuff that you think will NEVER see print, but at this point, you just want to get the damn copy to your editor and collapse into unconsciousness. I know – I’ve been there. You can really see it in that last link – read carefully, and you can actually witness my descent into Saigon in real time. Don’t believe me? Check out the lead sentence for a local fruit festival, one for which I briefly interviewed a very nice, grandmotherly woman over the phone (during daylight hours). I can tell you for a fact that I was giggling like a 14 year old boy as I wrote it, in between muttering, “I shouldn’t…fuck it. It’ll never see print. My editor will take care of it.” To wit (ahem):
“The people of Milan have nice melons, and they’re not afraid to show them to the world.”
Four years of journalism school, ladies and gentlemen.
Now, multiply that insanity by about 15 when it gets to your poor, beleagured editor. Not only do they have to keep track of your now-mindless screeds, but they also have to do so for every other freelancer, and not just for this issue – a co-worker of mine who was a senior editor for an alt-weekly said that it was the most stressful job of his life, because you’re basically writing and editing three issues at once all the time. Factor in that alt-weeklies also have looser style restrictions in their arts/entertainment sections (but rather high journalistic standards in their investigative departments, given that they’re the only real muckraking press outfits left), and what we’ve got here is a FAILURE to COMMUNICATE…
But I digress. I think what it possibly (probably?) boils down to here are stressed out, overworked writers and editors, a publication (or rather, a journalistic genre) that prides itself on employing a playfully snarky tone in their arts/entertainment and opinion columns, and a clumsy (but not necessarily ill-willed) attempt not only at humor, but at trying to explain what sets this blog apart from dozens of other female oriented and/or feminist blogs. I’m certainly not saying it’s right, and it’s certainly not how I would have gone about presenting it, but I don’t think there was any malice intended.
Though now you’ve got me thinking about how I would write it. Hell, I’m already listening to The Doors…
What in the high hell kind of a…mercy, I’m semi-speechless, save a lot of baffled, random swearing.
Gotta love the journalist for thinking you were another sad lonely fattie.
Also, I think it’s a requirement in the media that they average out the weight of any fat person to be 350. Otherwise, they’d actually have to do research.
And since I’m actually closer to that weight than you Marianne, does it mean that I can be “Soft Baltimore Jiggle?”
I call dibs on “Soft Pittsburgh Jiggle.”
And yes yes yes to Jeezie Creezie in James Mason Voice. HA!
Katie, I will reiterate what I said over on Kate’s post:
You know, I am okay with the fact that they didn’t read The Rotund. These “best of” things have lots of winners and the winners all need blurbs and the deadlines are tight.
Skimming the article on her, though? Or even doing a cursory google on fat acceptance? That would have been nice. And you know, I’m a congenital slackoff journalist myself, so I understand not being able to do even that amount of research. You know what would have been nice in that case? Not fucking resorting to sexist, demeaning drivel as a substitute for being well-informed.
In other words, yes, I’m sure they were dashing off blurbs on everyone without a whole lot of background knowledge. But it’s utterly appalling that this is their default mode — that when asked to write a paragraph about a fat woman they immediately reach for objectifying, sexually loaded [NOT SIC] language.
Damn, I missed out on “Soft Baltimore Jiggle”! I’m more like “Sweet Baltimore Curves” anyway. I’m not fat enough to jiggle inspirationally (hee!) and if I can’t parlay my hips into a good nickname, the terrorists have already won.
wellroundedtype2, “Inspirationally tubby” made me LOL at my desk.
@#19 wellroundedtype2:
I want to be powerfully fat! Actually, that sounds like an awesome name for a superhero: Powerful Fat, kicks ass, sometimes bothers with the fiddly details of taking names.
Where’s my cape, damnit?
This is completely fucking ridiculous, and I’m sorry you were treated like shit in the press when you should have been receiving accolades out the wazoo. Seriously.
That said, though, this Spicy New Mexico Jiggle thinks you’re pretty cool. So, that’s something, right?
Last year a photographer from Creative Loafing (an entertainment paper) took pictures of our dance troupe at the Renaissance Faire. The one that made the paper was of me, all by myself, and it’s a wonderful shot. My troupe was beyond excited, but all I could see was the tagline – “Putting the Belly in Dancing”. I couldn’t help wondering if that was some sort of dig….
But gosh, the picture was good.
Wanna see?
http://charlotte.creativeloafing.com/gyrobase/say_aaahhhh_/Content?oid=222472
Mary Sue: to (probably mis)quote the Incredibles, No capes, darlink!
Katie, this: The people of Milan have nice melons, and they’re not afraid to show them to the world made me lol.
Also, wellroundedtype2: I love your list.
Misty’s pic looks like a super hero, of the genie persuasion.
Awesome.
Soft Orlando Jiggle — isn’t that the new sound that all the kids are playing on their am radios these days?
And I too used to work at a weekly, where the main purpose of those sorts of lists was an opportunity for snarky writers to be their snarkiest. Really, writers for tabloid weeklies are not kind people. Largely a misanthropic bunch.
Misty, that photo is AMAZING and you are gorgeous.
Aw, thanks y’all.
“Misty’s pic looks like a super hero, of the genie persuasion.”
My belly fu is strong! *laughs*
I totally call dibs on Soft Evergreen State Jiggle!
And, really, what a crap blurb. Basically, to almost anybody Not Us, if you’ve seen one fat chick’s blog, you’ve seen ‘em all.
Hey TR, looks like my letter and Sweet Machine’s made it into the OW (ow!), mine was #1 and hers was #3, only (at least in the online version) not our names.
Oh, and Annie McPhee’s was sandwiched in between ours, but they did get her name in there.