elisem

I read this in the original, and thought you pretty much said it all. Think of how much power for change we might have if we banded together to oppose such systematic ills instead of turning on each other.

Thank you, thank you, thank you. I'm not a big woman to start out with, and a few years ago I got fairly sick and lost what was for me a significant amount of weight: it pushed me over from "not very big for my bone structure" to "clinically underweight and really not doing well." Only a handful of my larger friends didn't respond with a variation on, "Gosh, must be rough" or "Don't even talk to me about this; I don't want to hear it." Because, apparently, one really can't be too rich or too thin, even when one's doctor disagrees.

I feel strongly that a wide (ahem) variety of body types can be attractive. Meet my chosen family and that'll be clear. But it gets really old to get "shut up, Barbie" attitude over it, and the next time I hear "real women have curves," I think I shall scream. (1. I have curves, they're just on a skinnier baseline than some people's; 2. does this make my flat-chested friends fake women? Androids? What?) Thanks for speaking up for the opposing view. People need to hear it.

That, yes, exactly that. That's what I was trying to say in my second post to that journal, but I think I ended up ranting instead.

Bodies are fraught, fraught I tell you.

Yay!

Thank you.

Could you do me a *HUGE* favor?

Could you *PLEASE* point out what was said that said someone was *GLAD* that thin women were getting some crap?

"Not too unhappy" means "unhappy, but not *REALLY* unhappy".

"Not particularly sympathetic" means "sympathetic, but not, like, *REALLY* sympathetic".

Now, yeah, those phrases *CAN* be used ironically. I grant that. There could be some huge misunderstanding. Hell, *I* might be misunderstanding, but I didn't notice anyone *asking* if those phrases were used ironically.

Yeah, it could be a huge misunderstanding and not a round of "who cares about the fat chick's pain if there's a skinny person to protect?" And, yeah, I know that's not a fair statement of *ANYONE'S* position in the conversation, but *DAMN* this hurts like a sonofabitch.

Did you actually *see* someone say they were *GLAD* to see thin women get crap? Did I miss that? Because, hey, if I fucked up that bad, my mood is *my* fault, no one else's, and that's cool, because I'm used to fucking myself up. Hell, maybe I have too much faith in a certain person's goodheartedness, and she *does* mean what everyone else is hearing... but that's still *ME* fucking up me, and not the universe, and ain't no one's fault but mine.

I didn't see anything but a person say that she's got her own pain, and she just can't really get worked up over the other side of that pain. She didn't deny it was a valid concern, but, maybe it wasn't on her top ten, maybe not even in her top hundred, of concerns. Real, yes... "two wrongs don't make a right", and all that. But she's got other things that jump to mind when she thinks "body image problems".

John, wishing he could find a way to filk Weird Al's "One More Minute", replacing "spend one more minute with you" with "spend one more minute feeling this screwed up over a really painful-to-read conversation that he's either completely screwed up on, or everyone else has mis-read."

[E goes back and looks.]

[E face-palms self.]

Damned if you aren't correct. In parsing systems not mine, that is. But yeah, she said, after listing some definitely outraging and all-too-common crap that gets done to fat women, "It's utterly painful, so I don't mind it so much when the thin women get a little back. OTOH, two wrongs don't make a right and all that."

I misread.

Well, I misread it as being the version of English I speak now, which is American (US-centric) Midwestern Scandosotan English, in which "so I don't mind it so much" translates to "so I rather like it" (I think that's one of the British English translations) or "so I'm like, 'Hell, yes!' when..." and so on.

Huh.

Mea saurus, mea saurus, mea maxima saurus. Which I will go say, after I let the long-suffering Mr. Ford have his patiently awaited turn at the keyboard and computer.

Thank you.

If it's any comfort, coming to it from British English, I would have read that exactly the same way as you did.

Well... thank you for your response, and for understanding. I think that helped me realize how easy the misreading was to do.

My mind sometimes does this "click" thing, and something is blindingly obvious. But I don't always realize that it's happened, so I don't realize that not everyone else is seeing it as obviously.

But writing what I said, and then reading a reasonable response, made me realize that, yes, those statements usually are used ironically (or as understatement (or is it overstatement? whatever)).

I'm going to bed now and trying to sleep, if my blasted neck and shoulder muscles let me. Sigh.

(I wasn't kidding about this being painful... 'twas literally so, as well as figuratively. And, I'm really sorry if I unloaded more of that pain at you than I should have. I was getting irrational by the end of the night.)

What you say was also my response to "Not too unhappy" means "unhappy, but not *REALLY* unhappy".: This person is not from Minnesota.

Here, for example, "not too bad a deal" means "a good deal," and "not too good a deal" means "a truly terrible deal." (Non-Minnesotans may think I'm kidding, but you know that I'm not.)

No kidding! I had a hard time with some friends in California, because they'd say, "How ya doin'?" and I'd say, "Could be worse." Which they would parse as, "It is possible that I'm doing worse than I was, say, yesterday." Whereas what I meant in my Minnesota-girl mind was that I was doing pretty well, better than the median, could imagine many worse situations than the one I was in.

Two or three weeks before my Gran died of a hideously painful bone cancer, I called her up and asked how she was, and she paused and then said, "Well, honey, could be better." That's Minnesota, right there.

Frankly, I'm still having a hard time with "not too upset" as "upset, but not excessively so." Even outside the upper Midwest, I'm not sure I've run into people using it that way. I guess Elise is a nicer person than I am, because I'm just not buying it. Why say it that way? Why not "not as upset" or "less upset," unless someone had accused her of being hysterical on the subject? If, for example, someone said, "I'm not too upset about the atrocities at Abu Ghraib," I would not parse that sentence to mean, "I have a large amount of upset about this, but not to a point I feel is excessive under the circumstances." Perhaps it'd be kinder for me to view such statements that way, but I just can't get there from here.

I am giggling about the literal interpretation of "could be worse." I would never in a million years take it as "I could be worse than I was yesterday." Wow! Yeah. *blinking a lot and looking side to side for a moment*

Putting the body language cues in as I type the Scandosotan is weird but I hope it helps give the whole picture of what the significant parts of the message are.

And your Gran sounds like she was a good one.

Oh yah. She could have been worse. :) That was my great-grandmother. Her son, my grandpa, was in for prostate cancer surgery, and when some of my friends came into his hospital room, they said, "How are you doing, Grandpa Adams?" And he said, "Wouldn't recommend this." Yep.

I saw that Olympian you talked about. It totally cracked me up.

Also, when we lived in California, I would listen to hockey, because the accents sounded right and the players...they spoke my language. There was once in a playoff game when the interviewed one of the team captains between periods, and his team was behind. The announcer said, "Nothing worries that guy! Cool as a cucumber!" when the interview was done, and I thought, "What? What interview were you watching? What more was he supposed to do to express that he was scared out of his mind, say so outright? ...Oh."

This is a problem now that I'm writing a book where the main characters are all Finnish or upper-middle-class-1950s British. I can have a few anomalous characters leaping around emoting, but mostly, I'm not sure it'll be clear to any American south of the Iowa border what's going on in any of their heads.

This is a problem now that I'm writing a book where the main characters are all Finnish or upper-middle-class-1950s British. I can have a few anomalous characters leaping around emoting, but mostly, I'm not sure it'll be clear to any American south of the Iowa border what's going on in any of their heads.

That definitely is one of those interesting writing challenges. I've seen it done very well, and cannot remember where, just now, but it had something to do with how the physical aspects of the scenes were described.

Huh. I suddenly wonder whether there's a bunch of it in the movie "Remains of the Day," which I have not yet seen. I know there's a bunch of it in Jane Austen.

By the way, I was reading a biography of Sarah Bernhardt yesterday, and it said that she once referred to the plays of Ibsen and Strindberg and their ilk as "des norderies" ("that northern stuff"). Hee! Also, it reports Leon Daudet as saying, "Ibsen's works have an original, painful beauty. But his laughter is a sneer, his melancholy a congenital cramp, his dialogue a series of mutual reproaches. His characters all seem suicidal. They inhabit dark cellars of bitterness and fruitless lust. One imagines they have never sipped wine or gazed at a sunny landscape. [...]" Yeah, well, I imagine that's how it looked to him. I gave a wry laugh at the next bit: "The moment they have a wife, a fiancee, or a petite amie they do nothing but interrogate her, scrutinize her terrify her, wrest her secrets from her, so that they can catch her out later. [...]" Now, allowing for the fact that Ibsen generally writes about unhappy people who are willing to share, as the saying goes, which I think accounts for the "catch her out later" bit, there's also a lot in that sentence about how indirect communication among some folks who resemble my people appears to someone from a different kind of communication style. Among my people you have to watch very closely or you'll miss at least seventy percent of the communication. Furthermore, keeping communication indirect in certain circumstances is part of politeness, respect, acknowledgement of role and power dynamics, and/or kindness, amongst my people. And probably part of a lot more things than that, too. It lets people have space, as well as face.

It is no wonder that Walter Mondale didn't do too badly as an ambassador to Japan.

Nor have I seen "Remains of the Day," nor read it, but that's a very good thought!

My boys have been known to have very happy conversations that Timprov describes as "three hours, six sentences." It's a very good thing we're all from the same culture. Also, we were visiting a church a few weeks back, and it was having a baptism. The family of the baby to be baptized showed up late and made a big thing of shuffling back and forth across the aisle. The pastor -- whose last name means, I believe, "snowy earth" in Norsk -- was furious. And Mark didn't even notice, but I did, and I was thrilled to death, because I kept looking at the set of his lips and jaw and thinking, "Oh, nobody in California got mad like that! They all throw fits. Home home home!"

When my dad's favorite uncle saw him after five years, he stuck his hand out, grinned, and said, "Dan'l." But it was enough -- in fact, for those of us use to elderly Scando guys, it was almost too much.

My theory is that this and MN Nice are what keep us from killing each other in the winter.

[facepalm] My latest fantasy novel idea was set in Japan. I had not previously seen the connection. Apparently I like doing this to myself.

When my dad's favorite uncle saw him after five years, he stuck his hand out, grinned, and said, "Dan'l." But it was enough -- in fact, for those of us use to elderly Scando guys, it was almost too much.

I would have been all sniffly. (Inaudibly and indetectably as possibly, of course.)

My theory is that this and MN Nice are what keep us from killing each other in the winter.

Yeah, I'm with you on that one. There's a lot to be said for the utility of a social code that allows you to exist in a small space shared with people you utterly loathe (temporarily or permanently, either way) without bloodshed or insanity, particularly if the alternative is to go outside and close the door behind you and freeze to death.

Though I believe there are some conversational and social equivalents to the latter, actually.

I always have to pause when someone says, "Can't complain," because I think, "Why not? Is something preventing you?" Rather than, "Things are good, so there's nothing to complain about."

Here, for example, "not too bad a deal" means "a good deal," and "not too good a deal" means "a truly terrible deal."

Oh yeah. Ohhhh yeah. (Someday I will figure out how to get the nuances of the inflections of that into print. I would be happy to do it in person for anybody who is curious and hasn't heard it; in the language of my people, it means, "You said it. Hell, yes. Bigtime. Uh-huh. Amen, sister," and a bunch of things like that. And the 'yeah' is almost a 'yah.')

Example of those phrases used in sentences:

When I found the Isaac Mizrahi jacket down at Steeple People secondhand store for a buck and a quarter, that was not too bad a deal.

When I on impulse one day at a moving sale bought the Bad Piano, which is no longer tunable really (because it hadn't been tuned since 1930) and which cost more to haul up the stairs here than it did to buy in the first place, that was not too good a deal, overall. It was also not exactly my brightest moment.

(Anybody want to translate the second sentence of that second example for extra credit? Also, both examples are true things that happened.)

There are also the important qualifiers that can be added to intensify the meaning of a phrase. For example:


That's not too bad. (Basic phrase - means "pretty good.")
That's what ya call not too bad, yah? (Conveys an awareness of irony and/or camp and or having an audience for the tale while still carrying the main meaning.)
That is not too bad at all. (notice the uncontraction of "that is," which along with a slight emphasis on the word "that" and a smidgen of pause before "is," functions here as a co-intensifier with "at all." The classical way of saying something is terrific, amazing, wonderful beyond the power of words to express is to say, "That is not bad. That is not too bad at all!")

Somebody else want to tackle the multiple meanings of the words "woa" (pronounced somewhere between "whoa" and "well" and sometimes comes out as "wall" or "wull" or "wool," and has a long dragged-out sound to it where inflection, pacing and pausing carry most of the meaning) and "yah"?

And then there was a perfect Minnesota moment at the Olympics a few years back. They were interviewing the parents of a young woman from Minnesota immediately after they had watched their daughter win a medal, and the interviewer asked, "How did it feel to see your daughter win the event?" First, there was a tiny pause, during which the parents made eye contact and the father inclined his head a fraction of an inch and pursed his lips the tiniest bit, with his eyes sparkling a little. Then the mother looked back at the interviewer and said, "Well, you know, all these years, she's worked so hard and trained for this so hard, and really put all of herself into it... and now, to see her up there, winning... well, it is just something." And Mom folded her lips and beamed at the interviewer, and the interviewer just stood there stunned, and watching the broadcast at home I pretty much fell out of my chair giggling, because it was just perfect, and they had no idea what she had said. (Translations, anyone?)


For those of you who have seen the movie "Fargo," remember the phrase "That's not so good for him, then." Do you recall which situation that was about, and who the speaker meant? Also, the phrase "I'm not exactly 100% with you on your police work there," means what, in context?

When the main sewer line breaks in front of one's house, a Minnesotan might say, "Well, that's not so good, then." When one wins the Powerball lottery jackpot, a Minnesotan might say, "Well, that's not so bad for you, then."

Heh. This probably wants its own topic sometime soon.



(Non-Minnesotans may think I'm kidding, but you know that I'm not.)

Oh, I'm probably not misunderstanding you too badly on that one. *grin*

Yup. It's like speaking nonverbal Japanese. People not raised in it can be taught, but there are levels of inflection that only natives can master.

There. I have gone and 'pologized. Thank you for making me notice.

Am still very interested in talking with her, and therefore do not regret the good fruits of my misreading, but, well, am not real pleased about having misread. M'ff.

Yes, and it can be very difficult to read posts about thin that are negative. There's a fair amount of conflict between thin as privileged and what messages actually come through IRL which are thin above certain ages is a bad thing.

In terms of media, age, rather than weight or any other item, has more of my concern.

I think all of that about qui bono is very interesting. And there are people who really don't think anyone can be too thin. At Minicon this year, jonsinger gave someone a piece of candy, and that person's response was "How do you stay so thin if you eat that?", putting poor Jon into a position of having to explain that actually getting really sick will do that to a person.

Also a friend of mine who was fighting cancer was asked how she'd managed to lose so much weight, and when she explained, her acquaintance only half-jokingly said she'd have to try it.

I mostly take issue with the generalization that "thin women do x".

I find generalizations like that evoke a visceral response in me. It may well be a response to my training my brain not to take in generalizations about people based on arbitrary groupings, so I try and make an effort when I hear people assigning groupthink. I think your responses in janetmiles's threads were an example of the tolerance I aspire to.