One Fish, Two Fish, Hot Fish, Cold Fish

Pop quiz! How do you get from fishing in Colorado to pick-up artist misogyny?

A quick Googling, of course!

So I'm reading my Facebook news feed today, all happy-go-lucky, sharing awesome cello videos and collecting Gardens of Time bonuses, when I come across a posting from the state of Colorado fan page talking about all the fishing you can do in this beautiful state of ours. The page mentions catching "hot and cold fish", which phrase I have never heard. More to the point, my former Alaskan salmon-seining husband has never heard it. Off to Google!

Which ably answered the question - warm fish like warm water, cold fish, cold. Makes sense. But amid all the  links to Wikipedia and Yahoo!Answers was this gem, right on the first page of the search:

How To Warm Up A Defensive Cold Fish? HELP!! 

God, I don't know, how would you warm up a fish? Microwave? Oven?

Oh, wait - did you mean you want a human being to like and trust you? Well, here's a tip: Don't call her a fish. 


Gah. I shouldn't be so irritated before I'm even out of pajamas.

Skechers Has Some Balls

Yeah. Not, you'll notice, for kids - No. For girls, and girls only, because God knows, we need to be pretty and thin even if we're 6!

Skechers' response to the public outcry is highlighted in this segment from The Today Show, which quotes Leonard Armato, Skechers Fitness Group President:

The whole message behind Shape-ups is to get people moving, exercising and getting fit. Skechers' advertising for Shape-ups for Girls contains the same messaging being used by the First Lady's "Let's Move" initiative, which is aimed specifically at children. Shape-ups' intended purpose is to promote exercise and fitness, which should be viewed as a positive mesage for kids to get up and moving.

Yeah, sure. It's for "kids", it's for "fitness", it's for "health". And that's why it's only for girls, right? Because only girls are unhealthy?

Or because only girls offend us when they're fat? Because only girls are supposed to be decorative from the day of their birth, and any failure to do so means - What, exactly? That we might be out doing something useful and dangerous to the status quo?

I saw this commercial with Bacon while she was watching SpongeBob. My jaw dropped to the damn floor until she said, "Ugh. Those stupid shoes are so ugly. Why would anyone buy them?"

Thank God for small favors.

Virgin Bees

I know what you're thinking. "Kate," you're saying, "those two things have nothing to do with each other. Virgin bees. It's nonsense!"

And until last weekend, I would have agreed with you. I would have done the Stewie head-tilt  and then immediately disregarded everything after "virgin bees". Because bees are, well, bees. They buzz, and they dance to give directions, and they make honey, but I'm fairly certain that for all their complexity, they do not subscribe to human standards of sexual discourse.

I was wrong.

And here I need to give a little background. I know that over on the right there, it describes me as "Roman Catholic". Up until recently, that was true. Mostly true. I had my issues with the Church, because who doesn't, but I was willing to put up with them because the faith still resonated with me. I believe in Christ, in the True Presence of the Eucharist, in the celebration of the Mass as a recreation of the Last Supper. I like the Latin, the pomp and circumstance, the tradition.

What I don't like, and what's driven me away from the Church, is the relentless sexism and obsessive focus on sexuality. For a few months, we got a sermon on "deviant" sexuality and sexual "sins" every. single. Sunday at the Cathedral Basilica. You'd think after a while, priests would get tired of thinking about who's sticking his junk in whoever else's junk drawer, but you'd be wrong. Wrong, wrong, wrong. We got everything from "not kissing on dates is awesome because you're totally saving yourself from sin" to "give up birth control for Lent!"

I'm not even joking. While Rome was changing the translations of the Gospels to make Mary a "young girl" instead of a virgin, our priests were hammering home the fact that being gay makes baby Jesus cry and girls better keep those skirts below the knee and collars above the clavicle!

It was relentless and ridiculous, and I stopped listening. It was either that, or stroke out in the choir loft.

Last weekend was Easter. The Archbishop celebrates the Easter Vigil Mass every year, and he usually gives great sermons. I generally look forward to Christmas and Easter, when I get to hear him preach.

He started off normally enough, discussing the symbols of Easter. He discussed candles, and how Christ is the light of the world, and how the Vatican has very specific requirements for the candles we use in the Mass. They must be at least 51% beeswax, and for special candles - like the Paschal candle - the percentage is usually much higher. This is because beeswax is natural and especially fine, and we glorify God in part by using the materials He gave us in building His churches and all the things therein.

Beautiful, right? An interesting fact about candles, a Catholic rule explained, a nice little sermon about light and truth.

Except that I guess he thought Easter - unlike Christmas - just doesn't have enough talk about junk drawers, because he went on to include the fact that the beeswax is made by "female" drone bees. Bees who will never be queens, and will never have children.

Virgin bees. 


I was amazed my eyeballs stayed in my head and didn't fall out of the loft and onto unsuspecting parishioners, they were rolling so hard. Virgin bees. VIRGIN BEES, people. Not even the non-sentient, non-soul-bearing creatures put on the earth to help us live are exempt from being slutty slutty slutbags! That dirty queen bee, fucking all those drones just to perpetuate the species! It's a good thing she's not involved in making the wax, or we couldn't use it in church, could we? It would be no-good slutwax, and we couldn't have that!

I'm just - I'm done. I'm finishing out this choir season, and then it's over. I can't listen to another sermon like this. I certainly can't instruct my daughter in a religion that thinks she's a second-class citizen simply for having a vagina, and a nothing-class citizen if she ever decides to treat her body as if she owns it. I don't know where I'll be going - I know the Episcopalian cathedral has been hiring vocalists recently, so I may start there. I'll probably check out ELCA Lutherans if that doesn't pan out.

But honestly, I'll just settle for anywhere I won't have to hear about virgin motherfucking bees.

OK, Let's Talk About This

So, a study just came out in The Journal of Pediatrics that shows that girls are starting puberty earlier than ever - developing breasts at age 7 or 8, for example.

I am not a doctor, I'm not even vaguely a scientist, so I can't comment on the actual findings or why girls might be pubescent earlier than they have been. But I am a fat woman, so I feel qualified to comment on the supposition that this rise in early puberty might be due to fat, and to comment on the social consequences of early puberty.

First of all, I was a fat kid. I've been fat since I was born, and I was on diets when I started puberty, at age 10. The diets probably made me the late bloomer I was, at least for my family: my skinny mother had breasts at nine, her period at 10. I didn't have breasts till 10, and it was a full two years later, at age 12, that I "finally" got a period. I expect that my daughter will have much the same experience.

Was my "early" puberty a result of me being fat? Or of my genetics? Considering the stories I've heard about my maternal grandmother also starting her period at age 10, I'm more likely to consider genetics than fat. Especially since I get the fat from my dad's family - whose girls were well into their teens before they started menstruating.

What gets me, though, is that every news outlet who comments on this article mentions that the numbers of early puberty are up since 1997 - and so are the numbers of obese children.

Except, are they? 1997, as my fat acceptance friends will no doubt remember, was the year they moved the BMI goalposts for no scientifically valid reason. Millions of Americans went to bed "healthy" and woke up "fat". That sounds totally scientifically sound, doesn't it? And of course, we should apply these same standards to children, for whom the BMI was even less intended than it is for adult individuals, and then blame every health problem on their fat. That sounds like an even better idea, doesn't it?

So, no, there are probably not any more fat kids today than there were, so, no, I'm not simply going to say, "Ah, of course. Fatties getting boobies is a crisis! Put those girls on diets!"

Which brings us to the social consequences of early-onset puberty, which include low self-esteem, body-image problems, and eating disorders. 


Hmmmmm. Let's think, for just a second, about those three problems. What else causes those problems? Is it - maybe - just perhaps - American society's insistence that any ounce over a size 00 is fat? American doctors' insistence that fat is the root of all evil? MAYBE? YA THINK?

So fat kids get breasts earlier. Then they develop eating disorders. Obviously, it's the fault of the breasts.

The other correlation with early puberty is early sexual activity. Which is obviously because the early pubescents are just so ready, and not because everyone they know calls them a slut because they have tits. No one would do that, right? Right.

What we have is a scientific finding - there's more early puberty - butting up against the societal condemnation of fat sluts. While I think that early puberty needs more study, I also think that decrying the consequences of it as somehow caused by it, and not by society's need to put the hate on someone, is ridiculous. The reason we have low-self-esteem and eating disorders and slutty behavior in response to puberty is not because hormones make us crazy. It's because society looks at our bodies and thinks, "Hey, we own that. It's not yours, and it's not acceptable to us the way it is, so you need to feel bad about it. You need to treat it like crap, abase it appropriately, and then maybe we'll see about letting you back into the fold."

The fact that this study covers only girls, and that numbers about boys' precocious puberty are almost impossible to find, says a lot about what we want to know about as a culture, doesn't it. It's not about boys' bodies being unacceptable or somehow broken, even if they, too, are fat; it's not about boys becoming sexually active earlier.

It's about girls not fitting the mold, girls not being acceptable.

Just sit with that for a minute, and then ask yourself again why fat acceptance is necessary, why feminism is necessary.