Gorging On Grievance
Writing in the pages of Inside Higher Ed, sociology student and “self-identified fat woman” Bobbi Reidinger bemoans the hardships of the chunky would-be educator:
Fat academics need to be more vocal in calls for increased structural accessibility such as larger desks or substitutions for tables and chairs, greater ease in access to elevators, and more. Yet in addition to structural changes that campuses could make to help people of size be more comfortable — such as providing larger bathrooms, chairs without arms and larger auditorium seating — we need to discuss more techniques to combat stigma within classrooms.
You see, it’s not just a question of remodelling half the campus:
Weight-based stigma has an impact on the credibility of fat academics, in particular female academics who often must contend with both gender and fat stigmas… Weight stigma negatively impacts a professor’s credibility as a communicator within the classroom, with greater credibility being given to those who argue against their own self-interest.
Being sufficiently obese that it requires special furniture and enlarged bathrooms, and such that it becomes an obvious topic of classroom conversation, is in a person’s self-interest, apparently. As opposed to, say, a significant health concern – a cause of hypertension, diabetes, heart disease, gallbladder disease, stroke, osteoarthritis, joint failure, incontinence, sleep apnea, breathing problems, depression, anxiety, and cancer.
Therefore, when a fat professor makes their fatness salient inside the classroom, their fatness overrides their educational and occupational statuses, as students interpret this information as coming from an unreliable source.
It occurs to me that if an overweight educator, or would-be educator, presents her own fatness as a kind of moral elevation, a political piety arrived at via victimhood, and then demands oversized desks, plus-sized seats without arms, modified lifts, modified bathrooms, modified auditoria, “and more” – and does all this while sidestepping responsibility for her own rotundity – then students would do well to question the motives and credibility of such a person. And when a teacher or grad student fails to convince a class and promptly blames that failure on some alleged-but-undemonstrated sexism or “weight stigma,” as if that were both obvious and the only conceivable explanation, this is not necessarily proof of injustice or unrecognised talent.
Fat professors often receive lower student evaluations than their thin counterparts, as they don’t fit the “normal body” of a professor.
Again, this may not be about fatness per se, but may have something to do with the kinds of personalities attracted to “fat studies” and “fat activism” in academia and beyond, and the kinds of mental contortions so common to the type – contortions that are subsequently glorified as educational content and radical heft. (To say nothing of Ms Reidinger’s affectation of needlessly specifying the race of people who interact with her – “One colleague, a white man…”) Likewise, when a grad student insists that the self-serving claims of self-defined victims, including her own, should not be questioned or verified, then this isn’t an obvious basis for respect or academic gravitas:
I tell students it isn’t the job of the marginalised to prove their marginalisation and that we must take the words of those who suffer discrimination as true and legitimate.
In short, don’t question me.
This, we’re told, constitutes “critical thought.”
“Gorging on grievance”?
She’s fat, she’s round, she bounces on the ground …
Weight-based stigma has an impact on the credibility of fat academics, in particular female academics who often must contend with both gender and fat stigmas…
She wants all the intersectional points.
In short, don’t question me.
She might as well be constructing an argument that blacks must not question whites, or Jews must not question Aryans.
I had a number of fat teachers growing up, and cannot recall any of them demanding either the administration or students make special accommodations for their girth. Indeed, the fattest one I can recall was coach Suk, a powerlifting beast of a man with a rock tumbler for a voice box, who was one the most adept at keeping his charges in line – no small feat at the high school I attended.
But then, judging by what I can find of this frau Bobbi Reidinger, she is not just fat, but a very particular type of fat that seems to be prevalent among both the wider wokelings, and, no doubt in an unrelated phenomenon, people unaccustomed to working for their living. She is fatbody fat, not boisterously hefty, not peasant-woman stout with its supporting solidity of well-used muscle and bone, not even matronly fat, that of a broad woman getting on in years but still fond of gardening and going for walks; no, she is a cultivated blob, a great, loose mass of hoarded calories enveloping a human skeleton like some manner of reverse skin suit, or, perhaps a reverse prison, with the bars inside being the only thing that restrains the whole amorphousity from flowing over and consuming its neighbors like a terror of 1950s sci-fi, where, of course, the real monster was always veiled Communism.
In sum I am not the least surprised to learn of this woman’s omnivoracity for being catered to.
when a fat professor makes their fatness salient
I would thought that fatness was inherently salient.
Was that a reference to the Ardennes Offensive?
Are you saying that because she’s fat that means she is a Nazi, or do you agree that you are only saying that she is offensive because she bulges?
For my own part I do not dislike her for being fat. Rather, I believe she is fat for the reasons I dislike her.
Sorry, I felt that I was on a roll.
Sorry, I felt that I was on a roll.
You would have been, but she already ate it…
Could this in part be pre-emptive excuse-construction in the (admittedly vanishingly unlikely) event that she encounters a vertebrate in academia who fails her. Oh dear, that does sound silly. What was I thinking?
I had a number of fat teachers growing up, and cannot recall any of them demanding either the administration or students make special accommodations for their girth.
Yep. And I have a friend, a university professor of microbiology who would be considered fat at first glance, but it is a result of medications and reduced mobility because of a severe case of rheumatoid arthritis she has endured for all the time I’ve known her (20 years). And yet, even on days when she is in great pain, she soldiers on in the work she loves. She cringes at opportunistic whiners like Reidinger.
…in the (admittedly vanishingly unlikely) event that she encounters a vertebrate in academia who fails her.
Come on, everyone knows that in the cutthroat, dog-eat-dog world of fat studies you need the same willpower, not to mention academic rigor, as in biochemical engineering or astrophysics.
I was hoping to see an epiphany of sorts when she mentioned credibility.
As a teacher (sorry, ‘educator’ is the word we apparently use now), you need to at least provide a credible front to your class, especially if it’s a classroom full of teenage kids (the little bastards pick up on these things, trust me). You don’t care enough about your appearance, let alone your health ? It doesn’t matter how smart you sound or how true your words, nobody is going to take you seriously.
It’s the reason I never turned up to class wearing clothes I slept in, unshaven and smelling like I’d just stepped out of the gutter outside the local. Nobody is going to absorb the finer points on semiconductor physics when they’re being delivered by someone who looks as though they live under a bridge.
As far as this demand to remodel the whole world to accomodate their weight and/or girth, we are seeing this nonsense on everything from airline seats to escalator design. At what point do we politely hint that they are well outside the statistical sample limits ?
lardybloodydar: “especially if it’s a classroom full of teenage kids (the little bastards pick up on these things, trust me).”
Absolutely and the little treasures [in the eyes of their parents] will often set about destroying any teacher displaying any weakness or difference which the little [insert any negative descriptor that fits] note and that includes boys and girls acting together in a pack, even using blatant sexual harassment [including public ‘acts’] aimed at young women teachers just commencing their careers.
And: “… you need to at least provide a credible front to your class.” Yes. Teaching high school is all about control and power, a fact that modern trendy SJWs fail to understand until they are made to stand in front of the pack and ‘educate’ them. Love and singing kumbaya will not find a way to sooth the savages.
Why settle for a larger desk when you could have your own nation?
“Obesia” has a nice ring to it. They could have their own extra-wide flag, with a donut as the national flower.
There’s a tumblr group for fat PhDs? They don’t do anything, they just signal their fatness. And their PhD-ness. Some of them aren’t even very fat.
I think the internet is broken.
I need more information to evaluate her complaint. Is the white man fat, skinny, or in-between?
Someone was puzzled by references to a “fat body.” I think the term arose because these people tend to also be fatheads, and so a differentiating (if that’s a word) term was needed.
Speaking of fatheads—about Prince Harry, can one of you Brits explain exactly what he’s done? Is it still abdicating if you’re nowhere near the throne? Is he out for good, or can he return to the line of succession if he comes to his senses?
I applied to work for the U.S. Census, please keep your fingers crossed for me! It looks quite interesting even though I only applied for the office. Americans are too angry these days to approach them at random and start asking questions. I’ll be glad when the union breaks up, I think however many countries end up occupying the area will get along much better as neighbors, at least until the hordes fleeing plague-ridden California start invading the new countries to their east, which will end up making everybody all grumpy again. But I give it 15-20 years, at least, before that happens.
Craig Mc,
Under no circumstances should that flag have horizontal stripes.
I am not the least surprised to learn of this woman’s omnivoracity for being catered to.
As I’m sure I’ve said before, I don’t generally care how fat a person is. It isn’t something I’d otherwise make an issue or remark on. But when someone makes their own fatness the issue, the basis of their career, their activism, their specialness, and question-begging articles in Inside Higher Ed, while invoking injustice and victimhood and the need for elaborate and costly “structural” changes – and does all this while sidestepping the obvious – then it warrants some attention.
If you’re going to demand that someone else pay to accommodate your bulk while complaining about “weight-based stigma” and how it’s all terribly unfair, then it’s not unreasonable for others to raise the question of why, if at all, the fuss and expense is necessary. Or to ask whether the alleged lack of classroom gravitas might have something to do with being the kind of person who makes such demands, and who says claims of victimhood should never be questioned, while showing no interest in personal responsibility for being overweight in the first place.
And as Ms Reidinger makes no mention of having a leptin deficiency or using certain anti-convulsant drugs – and describes herself as a “foodie” – I’m assuming her fatness is, like most fat people’s fatness, a result of being too sedentary and consuming way too much sugar and carbs.
Oh, and this:
I’d imagine that if your professor makes the lesson about herself, her own fatness, and how fascinating her fatness is, whether relevant or not – and does so with the kind of dogmatic, half-arsed thinking shown by Ms Reidinger – then it might well be quite unnerving. Students might, for instance, realise “Oh bugger, I’m paying for this shit and will be for years.”
How does one create a fatness salient inside a classroom?
I can only imagine that it’s probably due to poor quality tailoring of the waistband. Maybe if she opted for elastication and also wore some sort of cummerbund, that particular faux pas could never happen again.
Fat academics need to be more vocal in calls for increased structural accessibility such as larger desks or substitutions for tables and chairs, greater ease in access to elevators… larger bathrooms, chairs without arms and larger auditorium seating
Or just lose some weight.
Or just lose some weight.
Fatphobe.
It must be great working in a field where you can devote your entire life’s work to you.
Fat academics need to be more vocal in calls for increased structural accessibility such as larger desks or substitutions for tables and chairs, greater ease in access to elevators… larger bathrooms, chairs without arms and larger auditorium seating.
Well, we’ve already committed to paying for your well-above-average lifetime healthcare costs. How about a gym membership and counseling instead?
It must be great working in a field where you can devote your entire life’s work to you.
Well, quite. And that’s sort of the point, albeit unspoken. In my experience, people who are just fat and maybe cheerfully resigned to their size are less likely to meet with disapproval than people who are fat and chippy about it. Like “fat activists,” for instance. I suspect it’s the chippiness that grates – the prickly narcissism and denial of responsibility, and the demands to be affirmed and indulged at someone else’s expense. The kind of people who say that “intentional weight loss” is an affront, an act of betrayal, and who say that if you do choose to lose weight – say, for pressing health reasons – then you’re committing the sin of “body-shaming” and are therefore an oppressor.
Just like those terrible, oppressive people who take selfies from above to minimise double chins.
Fat academics need to be more vocal in calls for increased structural accessibility
They could probably turn that into some sort of avant-garde opera: a whole stage full of swamp donkeys and other assorted fat bastards chanting “We need some bigger chairs/ Not quite so many stairs” to the melody of Orff’s “O Fortuna”.
…the prickly narcissism and denial of responsibility…
Meanwhile, from her twits…
I think that chap may have been on to something with that willpower bit.
“Feeling impending doom and panic…should be writing my dissertation…should be thinking about my grant…”
Her obesity appears to be a defense mechanism and her obsession with criticizing “society” for being anti-fat is just another layer.
I’m thinking perhaps from a cost/benefit perspective, it might behoove those who are the major parties on the hook for paying her to perhaps have a dozen doughnuts in the morning and a few pizzas in the afternoon delivered to her office and just let nature take its course from there. Or would that be wrong? I gotta plead ignorance here…
Oh, and props to Under no circumstances should that flag have horizontal stripes. That’s some thinking ahead there.
a whole stage full of swamp donkeys and other assorted fat bastards chanting “We need some bigger chairs/ Not quite so many stairs” to the melody of Orff’s “O Fortuna”.
See, this is what I like about this place. First the shot, then the chaser, and then the mental imagery.
This, we’re told, constitutes “critical thought.”
War is peace, Brother.
In academia today (k-infinity) “critical thinking” does not constitute thinking critically. It constitutes thinking dogmatically inline with (current interpretations) of Critical Theory.
I could, for instance, develop a “theory” that pizza doesn’t exist and call it Pizza Theory. Those who do not understand the jargon I have just made up that contradicts normal usage might well sign up for my Pizza Theory course thinking that they are going to learn all about pizza, when in fact they are going to be lectured all about not pizza.
And if they have already learned “critical thinking” they will accept the tenets of not pizza uncritically.
Squires, you’re on a roll today. Good thing Reidinger isn’t around, she might mistake you for the contents of a sandwich.
Ack, joke already made. What, me read all comments before replying? Nah.
…bastards chanting…
I don’t think it is an official leftist chant, though, unless it has in it “Hey, Hey, Ho, Ho [something, something] has got to go !”
To riff on yours, “Hey, Hey, Ho, Ho, More Than One Floor Has Got To Go !”
A take on a ’60s classic, “Stairs, Stairs, Hey Hey, How Many Kids Have You Killed Today ?”
The possibilities are endless.
War is peace, Brother.
Quite. And again, the replies at Inside Higher Ed and retweets by academics and students, supposedly clever people, are overwhelmingly favourable. This, it seems, is the prevailing narrative. In their circle, at least.
are not they hard on the planet ? all the extra fossil fuel to move them around? not to mention food , pizza boxes soda all takes its toll, a tractor somewere had to work longer and harder ,
“We need some bigger chairs/ Not quite so many stairs” to the melody of Orff’s “O Fortuna”.
I like your thinking, but I can’t help feeling that those lyrics might be more suited to being set to a tune in a Gilbert and Sullivan manner, rather than the tune of O Fortuna. “I stuff my face with grease, and fried chicken by the piece, and so I’m morbidly obese, but it’s really not my fault not in the least”.
…those lyrics might be more suited to being set to a tune in a Gilbert and Sullivan manner…
But could you imagine them being performed? The inevitable ‘likes’ and ‘ums’ would disrupt the flow somewhat.
Ahem..if I may…this ‘knowledge’ is over 10 years old now, so no excuses…
https://www.nhs.uk/news/obesity/obesity-adds-to-climate-change/
You will note that this is from y’alls NHS. But of course pay close attention to the caveats that I’ve ever so graciously bolded and italicized. Note that these cautions about statistics and how they are gathered do not IN ANY WAY apply to AGW studies. Not at all. So you just stop thinking those wrong thoughts right this minute, understand?
We used to recognize people like this for what they are: difficult personalities with chips on their shoulders wanting to pick a fight with everyone around them.
Such people are marginalized. Not because they are fat. But because they are impossible to get along with. Their obesity is the result of an personality disorder which results in overeating.
Now we empower such people with the weapons of cultural Marxism. This woman needs mental health not a soapbox protected by academic tenure.
Now we empower such people with the weapons of cultural Marxism.
Surely an ideological milieu that was sprung from the mind of a manipulative, mooching, unfaithful husband and father to two suicides wouldn’t blossom, or perhaps kudzu, into only so many flavors of the same mental poison. Surely.
It must be great working in a field where you can devote your entire life’s work to you.
This is the venerable and totally-not-bollocks tradition known as auto-ethnography. It’s been a thing for a couple of years at least, so it’s remiss of you not to have been aware of it. Here in the UK, we’re fortunate to be home to one of its foremost exponents, self-styled ‘rebel ethnographer’ Dr* Lisa Mckenzie. She’s working class, you know.
*Not a typo. She has held academic positions at several places, currently teaching (What? To whom?) at Durham, which I had previously assumed to be a serious institution.
…those lyrics might be more suited to being set to a tune in a Gilbert and Sullivan manner…
I am the very model of a modern academical,
I’ve information that’s both racial and intersectional,
I know the Marxist writers, my quotes of them quite plentiful,
But will fail you if you mock them or do ridicule.
I’m very well acquainted, too, with matters that are sexual,
Pronouns and the genders never can be hypothetical,
About body positivity I’m teeming with a lot o’ news,
I’m really quite offended when you say my studies have no bloody use.
Chorus
In short in matters racial, sexual, and intersectional,
She is the very model of a modern academical.
I am the very model of a modern academical,
Strange how you had the choreography and costume ready at such short notice.
Strange how you had the choreography and costume ready at such short notice.
Well, I did have to let your cape out to fit the Modern Academical character, and there were a lot of burned coats out in the alley for the plebeian onlookers.
there were a lot of burned coats out in the alley
Heh.
“those lyrics might be more suited to being set to a tune in a Gilbert and Sullivan manner”
I yield to no-one in my appreciation of G&S, but this is what sprung to my mind.
Here in the UK, we’re fortunate to be home to one of its foremost exponents, self-styled ‘rebel ethnographer’ Dr* Lisa Mckenzie.
Wow, what a hot mess. Our Ms. Reidinger has nothing on her.
You must be very proud.
I always thought the London School of Economics was a *good* school.
You must be very proud.
Dr McKenzie may be familiar to long-term readers, thanks to a (sadly, now-deleted) promotional video by the University of Nottingham, in which our self-styled “rebel ethnographer” – that’s how she imagines herself – explained that her academic role entails “not trying to find out something.”
Instead, we were told, she’s “challenging” the “negative stereotypes” of rough council-house neighbourhoods. She chose to do this by proudly showing us graffiti – or as she put it, “muriels” – that actually and quite vividly confirm every cliché – of litter, vandalism, gangs, car theft and – I quote – “young people who have died on the estate.” And all while a police helicopter rumbled overhead.
It was oblivious and farcical. And the University posted the video on YouTube presumably with the intent of showing us just how rigorous and impressive their sociology department is.
They could probably turn that into some sort of avant-garde opera:
As noted some bit back, it’s prolly been done . . . or at least at one point something of that sort got done . . .
And any vestige of sense they might once have had.
. . . Instead I am looking up baby fridges for skincare.
. . . . ‘k, so we know that the difference between talcum powder and baby powder is that talcum powder is finely ground up talcum . . . . but with baby fridges for skincare all I‘m coming up with for a meaning is It rubs the fridge on its skin or otherwise it gets the hose again . . .
Farnsworth, I knew I should have looked first.
Still, what’s one more brick in the wall:
I am the very model of a modern obese major chaser
I’ve jargon theoretical, intersectional and racial
I know the theories socialist and I quote the fighting feminists
From wypipo to abelist, in orders categorical
Not a touch on yours.
OT but thousands of pro-2nd-amendment supporters rallied at Virginia’s state capital this morning – in bellow freezing temps –
Not one incident of violence, no arrests, no racism. Media is thoroughly disappointed (to the point of making up stuff), Democrats hardest hit.
Put down the fork, porky…but you can’t because it has become your source of victimhood. Bitch.
…but with baby fridges for skincare all I’m coming up with for a meaning…
Who knew there was such a thing ?
Not a touch on yours.
Au contraire…
That there is gold, though “fighting feminists” is nicely alliterative, might I suggest “feminists pugilistical” to keep that “…al” rhyme thing going ?
Not one incident of violence, no arrests, no racism.
Darleen, and they cleaned up after themselves:
Unlike Antifa, Extinction Rebellion, etc., etc.
Also, it’s interesting that there were no counter protests and the police were very polite and didn’t touch or shove any of the protesters. Funny how wearing a side arm will breed respect.
Not one incident of violence, no arrests, no racism
And none of the speakers were terrorists or fascists or communists, unlike at the Women’s March events.
That there is gold, though “fighting feminists” is nicely alliterative, might I suggest “feminists pugilistical” to keep that “…al” rhyme thing going ?
Perfect is the enemy of finished. (Although you’re right about that. Making mock G&S scan properly is hella challenging)
One of my mock G&S attempts on a similar theme from a few years ago:
https://thompsonblog.co.uk/2015/11/unseen-energies.html?cid=6a00d83451675669e201b8d17bc5fe970c#comment-6a00d83451675669e201b8d17bc5fe970c
Darleen, and they cleaned up after themselves
Yep. Just like the TEA Party rallies ten years ago.
Not one incident of violence, no arrests, no racism.
TBF, there was white supremacist.
…but with baby fridges for skincare all I’m coming up with for a meaning…
Who knew there was such a thing?
Truly there is a hipster born every minute.
Why doesn’t she just self-identify as a skinny person? We’ve been lectured at for years how that changes everything. So, Bobbi, here’s the deal: you think skinny girl thoughts and we won’t spend millions of dollars remodeling the world for you. Everybody’s happy.
“greater ease in access to elevators”
What does that mean, exactly? I’m getting images of petroleum jelly and a giant shoehorn.
… A doughnut display at the back of the elevator might do it, I suppose. But then you how do you get them out of the elevator? The problem has actually worsened.