Viva Forever

I want to be a stay-at-home mum. Except… without kids (though maybe a puppy). So… okay, I guess a more accurate description is stay-at-home person. ­¬_¬;

It’ll be terribly ironic if I decided to quit Uni and go on welfare RIGHT NOW because I don’t want to do an essay on social welfare due on Tuesday. What better way to argue for structural violence committed by our market-driven legal system than to actually immerse myself into it! TAKE THAT, NEOLIBERALISTS! It’ll be great, I can spend my days squirreled up in a house, watching anime and plotting out crochet patterns to make awesome plushies (like these) and miniature polymer clay sculptures (like these).

Sigh. Don’t worry that won’t happen. I’m just so jaded by this semester’s subjects (Remedies, Trade Practices Act and Taxation) that they simply pose no interest to me. I just DON’T CARE. The topic on welfare is fun to think about and discuss I guess but I don’t want to write an essay on it. Ugh it’s going to be torture waiting till next year, which is going to be so kick ass in that I’ll be able to take Intellectual Property, International Law, Legal Ethics and Litigation. Woot! But until then… WHINE WHINE WHINE!

I learnt recently that “Woot” actually is a shortening of the phrase “Wow loot!” that people who play Dungeons and Dragons say. That’s pretty awesome.

Initiate gun control. Initiate gun control. Initiate gun control. Initiate gun control. Initiate gun control. Initiate gun control. Initiate gun control. Initiate gun control.

At a federal level. I don’t know how to make myself any clearer. No it’s not the fault of the video games, the education system, the parents, drugs etc etc… IT’S GUNS. THOSE THINGS FIRE METAL EXPLOSIVES AT INCREDIBLE SPEEDS INTO PEOPLE. Fuck the Constitution, Goddamnit America, get your act together, hold a referendum and change that bloody section. It’s killing people. Make people have licences before they can carry those damn things.

Ugh. How many more people needs to die before they realise that hey maybe, JUST MAYBE America is better off WITHOUT guns being so easy to acquire and that, maybe I dunno, it’s REALLY DANGEROUS?!

Today I came across two entries on Yingna’s blog to do with long entries and “fat” people and looking “best”. Firstly I applaud her for speaking her mind, and rather controversially at that, but that’s about as much applauding as I can go. For context, she was also the person who expressed, what I thought, were rather thinly veiled racist remarks on a messageboard mentioned here (sorry the board thread has been removed since then). I feel bad to be seemingly targetting her, but if it’s any disclaimer, the following criticisms aren’t supposed to be personal attacks on the the blog writer, just her opinions, with my own opinions. At the end of the day, this is just an extra opinion on the matter. With that said, I am going to rip into her “observations”.

Regarding her first post
Firstly, I can’t help but note that she uses the word “fat” in two different lights. Contrast:

My denotation of fat may not be the same as yours.

and

Since, people with excess fat are usually overly sensitive to the topic…

If she really has a non-pejorative, specific definition of “fat” why does she go and make the overarching statement that people with “excess fat” are “overly sensitive”? Does she mean “excess” according to her definition or what is objectively considered “excess fat” (i.e. overweight -> obesity range)? In fact she goes on to say,

What this means is that when the girl is wearing a shirt and standing, bumps can be seen around her abdomen area. Any muffin top. Many times, the people who I consider fat are only considered chubby by others.

I don’t think most people who are merely “chubby” or even have a muffin top are “overly sensitive”. Heck, I’m developing somewhat of a muffin top, especially visible if I wear tight pants, and I’m 44kg (around 90 pounds). Does that mean I have excess weight? Umm, how about no? Even with my increasing potbelly, given my height (around 152cm -_-) my BMI is around the bottom ranges of “normal”. According to her definition, given my APPEARANCE (totally dependant on the tightness of clothing too), should I be “oversensitive” about my “hamburger shaped” body?

Another point is if the girl [presumably a "fat" one] writes that she is emo. I’ve only started to hear so many people utilizing the term emo in blog entries and descriptions of themselves. A few years ago, this word was not as popular.

Because of course, there weren’t any “fat” people before a few years ago. A few years ago (if I am to assume, two to three), blogging was never as popular as it is today anyway. The writer is linking “depressed”, “emo” entries to “fat” bloggers. She wrote in her comments that these are her observations, but did she note that maybe her observations are skewed to confirm her existing biases? Being depressed and emo is generally a social, teen problem and it doesn’t sound much more than just prejudicial to say that it is mainly correlated to a weight problem.

Days pass by and only the computer remains on, the screen never flickering as fingers type madly away at the keyboard. And then, a year later, when the girl discovers she’s gained another 10 pounds, no, maybe 20 pounds, will she give up the Internet? Most wouldn’t. Girls don’t give up opportunities to rant their little hearts out…

Yes, because girls don’t eventually have to go to high school, graduate, find a job or go to college/Uni. While it IS a problem in Japan with young adults (fat and NON-FAT ones of both genders) being incredibly anti-social, in the Western blogs that she seems to use as a stereotype, that is not the problem. She’s created this exaggerated, pessimistic, almost downward pit of anti-socialness that “fat” girl bloggers seem to necessarily descend into, without acknowledging that most of them would be forced by their environments to go out and change their lifestyles in some way. Oh and of course, we’re talking about girls with muffin tops. And finally, her advice,

Take a diet. Look better.

Not sure what she means by “look better”, but since when is a muffin top not good enough? Why take a diet when you can just eat healthy? Because I personally think there is a difference between telling someone to eat healthy rather than going on a diet. I think what most angers me about her post is the idea that girls can’t be comfortable with the way they look, muffin-top or no. Advocating for HEALTH is a good thing (e.g. with exercise), but her advice of “dieting” and “looking better” smacks of incredible superficialness. I guess it comes back to her definition of fat being no way connected to what is healthy amounts of fat (e.g. with BMI), but simply any fat that one can see.

Regarding her second post
Her first few paragraphs sound reasonable so there’s no need to comment on those. But I balked at her statements,

So, if a girl wants to win the heart of some boy, she will have to look her best.

Wait, WHAT? The easiest (non-ranting) way to put it is that it’s simply not true. There IS this thing called personality. Studies have found that knowing about a person’s behaviour can influence how you think of them. Pictures of the exact same woman, could get an “ugly/bitchy” or “pretty/kind” verdict depending on what subjects were told the woman in the picture was like. Even if one “looks their best” that would not necessarily win the “heart of some boy” (unless you want to date someone who’s going out purely by your looks). Yes, first impressions last but the first impression would very much depend on how down-to-earth, approachable, friendly, open you are. People who get together based on looks… I don’t think that’s a very viable solution.

By having an attractive figure and knowing you are attractive… this will help raise self-esteem.

What’s attractive? One can argue that someone who might not have model figure, and IS plump and chubby (I guess what she defines as a “hamburger person” -_-) does think of herself as attractive. Furthermore, her statement of course assumes that you need to have an attractive figure in order to raise self-esteem. What if already you have high self-esteem because you’re accomplished in academic/work and have a great social network; couldn’t that in itself boost your view of yourself and your appearance? Even if it doesn’t, if you’ve already got what you want, why would you need an “attractive figure” to raise self esteem?

Looking good can also lead to better health. There are many times when girls feel overshadowed by others because of their image. If the girl just started by having a good diet and exercised regularly, she wouldn’t be faced with the problem of being considered fat…

GUESS WHO ISN’T HELPING THE PROBLEM?!?! I find it odd that her conclusion to teen insecurities brought on by social standards is to simply conform to those standards. What happened to fighting back against cookie-cutter stereotypes and simply being happy with one’s body? Why isn’t the answer to teen girls being depressed about being overshadowed to reach out and tell them it’s okay for them to be the way that they are, rather than saying that they should try not to be what society (and the writer) calls “fat”?

Another reason for being good looking is just because of opportunities. You will gain more opportunities if you look your best. People would rather hire a slimmer girl than a fat girl for a job.

If I was a smart employer I’d hire someone who can do the job, not someone who looks a certain way. Unless you’re a modelling agency, if you’re looking to make money by hiring someone to perform a task, you’d want someone who’s capable, smart, a team player, a good learner etc etc. I’d think the profits made in a company overrides any notions of “appearance”. I really think the whole idea that the prettier/slimmer girl gets the job is probably decades old and the writer’s opinions comes across as mysognistic in the reasoning. If the writer believes in such archaic stereotypical notions, I wonder if she’d also think that men would get hired over women (not true as much anymore these days, thank goodness) because hey, that’s what happened during the “Industrial Revolutions of America”.

Phew, long post.

Site note: I’ve almost completed the layout of my crafts domain! I think that’s a relatively big step because layouts have been the biggest hurdle for me lately. The content part is always much easier to do. So yay, progress!

Anyway, here’s another reason #1239073 why believing in a religion is not necessary. Sam Harris mentions it very succinctly in his book Letter to a Christian Nation and I think it’s so profound and simple that I’m shocked that secularists don’t use the argument more often. Many religious people, and even those who aren’t very religious, cling to the idea of religion because they argue that religion gives the foundation to their morality, that without believing in a Supreme Being(s) that would cause people to do unspeakably immoral things.

But even on a logical level, their reasoning, especially from those who are not very religious, can so easily be shot down. Let’s take the bible for example. Many Christians say their morality comes from whats written in the new and old testaments. Without this guiding force to tell us how to be moral, they say, nothing stops us from going out and plundering and I dunno, raping puppies. However, many many things said in the Old Testament are quite abhorrent; for example, stoning of adulterers, stoning of naughty children, actual promotion of genocide etc etc. Even in the New Testament, for example, Jesus had no problems about keeping slaves so long as you treat them nicely.

So alright, many moderate believers then say, well OBVIOUSLY with such a change in context, we can’t talk what’s been said literally. Via renewed interpretation and just ignoring certain parts of the texts, we can still get the gist of what morality should be. But that’s the thing. The actual ability to pick and choose shows our moral intuition stems from OUTSIDE the texts! What we feel should be kept and what should be ignored (or reinterpreted) doesn’t come from the Bible, it comes from hardwired notions of altruism and social and developmental forces. These driving forces are within all of us and it’s simply false to attribute them to religious institutions.

Linked with this is the idea of why we do moral things. I doubt that in every day life, people behave morally because of religion. As Richard Dawkins mentioned, do we do good for the sake of it, or for fear of some dude/dudette(s) in the sky? Do you help an old lady across the street because you feel the urge to, or because you fear you’ll be punished spiritually if you don’t? I really think it’s the former.

I get quite annoyed when people of faith use retorts like “yeah well atheism is a religion to science” or “how can you criticise other’s beliefs when you believe in atheism?”.

ATHEISM IS NOT A RELIGION, IN ANY WAY, SHAPE OR FORM. I’m pretty sure that the “a”-prefix means “absence of”.

Someone (presumably clever, but whose name eludes me at the moment) once wittily said, “calling atheism a religion is like calling not collecting stamps a hobby”.

Like Sam Harris and Richard Dawkins would say, most people who are religious are atheists to other gods. A Christian is an atheist to Greek mythology, Hinduism, Muslim, Buddhism etc. Most people only believe either in one god or one particular group of gods to the exclusion to all others. Atheists just go one god/(group of gods) further.