Fear and loathing in New Plymouth

This post contains some discussion of body image and fatphobia and if that's not something you think you'd enjoy reading, maybe skip this one. I'll probably be banging on about astronauts drinking their own wee or something next week (see you then!)

The other day I had the misfortune of being exposed to, not a bum in a g-string, but a story about them i.e. that of a New Plymouth mum who has started a petition asking whether skimpy swimwear of the g-string variety should be acceptable at public swimming pools.

Does it surprise me that this story has come to the fore given that it is currently freezing in pretty much the whole country and more polyprops weather than thong weather? Yes, a bit, to be honest. Am I surprised that somebody somewhere is having feelings about a woman's body? Well, no, what with me being conscious, and all.

Believe me when I tell you that the desire to mock the living fuck out of the aforementioned New Plymouth mum is very powerful. Extremely, but not quite, overwhelming. Just know that if I wanted to, I could, and it would be savage. But I think a better conversation to have is one about where this person's feelings of discomfort perhaps come from, and rather than being holier than thou about it, acknowledge that yeah, sometimes other people's bodies make me a bit squirmy too.

Bums: The constant butt of jokes

I do want to say from the outset though, that bums are not a threat to the moral fabric of society and seeing one (or several) is most likely not going to lead to trauma. Bums are, for the most part, extremely funny, especially to kids. Being the literal source of both farts and poo, the mainstays of all primary school stand-up comedy routines, bums are frankly, hilarious.

Sometimes boners happen

That said, the mum in this story has 3 boys and it's likely at least one of them is either on the train to puberty town or already at "Dear God, what is that smell?" Station and truly... I get it. Things can get uncomfortable when we're confronted with our children's burgeoning sexuality. I've never been a teenage boy but I'm given to understand that they can and will sport wood for a knot in a tree if the breeze is blowing the right way. It's just not possible, feasible or desirable to screen them from any and all potentially arousing sights.

Do I understand wanting to take the kids to the pool without having to deal with junior pitching a tent in his board shorts because he saw an attractive female body part? That is extremely relatable. Come on, no one wants to have to negotiate that situation. If that's what's going on here, I genuinely sympathise. Some days are just days when you don't want to have to do "boner management". Maybe all of them are. I don't know your life. But again, there's no realistic way of controlling all the variables here to the degree that you can guarantee a boner-free pool trip. Life happens, as do erections.

If the angst is not boner-related, i.e. her children are young enough that that's not an issue then... well, then we're just back to bums being funny. And then we have to speculate that something else is going on.

Other women's bodies

Being a feminist is to spend your life unlearning a lot of stuff that you've learned, but instead of becoming a Jedi, you just become someone who is considered a "liability" when it comes to small talk at family BBQs, and every conversation you enter into with a taxi driver is a potential minefield from which one of you will not return unscathed.

There's a lot of looking at your assumptions, thoughts, and feelings about things, so you can be honest about where you've come from in the interests of not going back to that place.

But just for the sake of trying to see this lady's perspective on things, I'm going to take a peek back there so I can try and figure this out.

If you scratch beneath the surface of a lot of women's psyches¹ you'll find a belief that we have to be, above all things, attractive to men. Men decide our value, and our value will be tied to how attractive we are. Our bodies should be a certain shape, and preferably young (so that we may bear many children), and this is fertile ground indeed, except the babies are insecurity and low self-esteem and constantly comparing ourselves to other women who definitely don't have as much cellulite as me, or weird hairs around her nipples, or this flabby tummy skin from having actual babies and... you get the picture. So sometimes when we see a pert little bum in a pair of togs that we would never in a million lifetimes have the confidence or audacity to wear because of what a misshapen beast we've come to believe that we are, this pings those receptors in our brains that make us feel shitty about ourselves and so we decide "this is a bad thing because it made me feel bad".

Fat body "feelings"

And before anybody assumes that this is a hang-up only for bodies that we deem "better" than ours, I present this fairly telling quote from Petition Mum:

“I also wondered if it was women of a certain body size wearing g-strings, or men exposing their bodies, would we be okay about that?”

So there are a couple of underlying assumptions that are clearly being made here and I think they're worth unpacking:

• People don't want to see men's bodies or fat women's bodies exposed in a "sexy" way.
• If people are okay with young, fit women wearing g-strings in public it's only because they find them pleasing to look at or are having a perv.

Now, before I attack either of these ideas, I have to admit that the first one is actually pretty accurate. We are not, most of us, used to seeing men's bodies in "sexy" swimming togs. Yes, the "mankini" had a moment but I defy anyone to argue that almost garment was actually enticing, ditto "budgie smugglers".

As for fat women's bodies (I'm assuming that's what "a certain body size" means here, and not, say, "a size 6, specifically") that is a whole other thing. Because now we get into some really dark, definitely not feminist stuff.

Having a fat body and having the temerity to reveal that fat body in a public place is Definitely Not Okay by many people's standards, including me for a large portion of my life and, get this, I am, myself, a fat person². This is one of the things that I am constantly working at unlearning. Because sometimes I react to seeing a fat person's body in ways that I am deeply, deeply ashamed of. The running commentary in my head when I see a lovely fat person wearing a midriff-bearing top is something like, "Ick, I can see their stomach. I would never wear anything that exposed my stomach, I just don't think it's flattering and I don't like it etc, etc" and this only stops when the fat angel on my other shoulder says, "Whoa, that's some fat-shaming bullshit. You wanna back the truck up, honey? That cute girl with the midriff is out here living her best life and you're doing what? Hating on her. The shame is on you, girl. Get your head straight³."

And that's just for a little bit of tummy skin. It's fucked up and I hate it.

This is how you know you haven't watched enough Lizzo music videos. Genuinely, seeing Lizzo unapologetically rock her stuff has helped me a lot with this.

So yeah, I expect that there are any number of people being very weird in their heads about fat people in swimming togs, and they might well be rendered incapable of speech should they see a fat bum in a g-string. It's not right or okay to feel that way, but it's extremely plausible that many people might.

As for the assertion that people like perving on young, hot things in g-strings, I'm not going to argue that's not true but it doesn't really take into account people like me who are just trying their best NOT TO BE WEIRD ABOUT OTHER PEOPLE'S BODIES.

I'll leave you to ponder how best you too might try to achieve this lofty full caps goal, and consider this last quote on the topic of the g-strings:

“I don’t want to be an overprotective mum. Is that the space we’re in with society now? If so, I’ll find ways to prepare my kids for that. But do we have to do that?”

Yes, you do have to do that. Life is full of awkward, confusing situations and the main part of parenting, other than keeping your child alive, is to teach them how to navigate these situations in the manner of a good person.

Part of being a good person is not being weird about what other people's bodies look like, and generally not being fixated on choices that other people make which have no measurable effect on your life.

Might those choices stir up anxieties or feelings of discomfort? Sure. But those are your demon babies to drown in the deep end, nobody else's.

¹ I can only speak from an extremely hetero perspective on this.

² Based on all the generally accepted measures, my body is a fat one. I'm just using it as a neutral descriptor here.

³ Yes, the feminist fat angel on my shoulder is Michelle Buteau.