Aegon Toast

@alissarumseyRD: Achild is 242 times more likely to have an eating disorder than they are to have type 2 diabetes. Yet the vast majority of our public health education is spent warning parents (and kids) about “childhood obesity”. Why? Fatphobia (not health).

If you took a sample of 100,000 children, only 12 would have type 2 diabetes, whereas 2,900 would meet the criteria for an eating disorder. By 9 years old, 50% of girls have dieted or restricted their food intake in some way. 

42% of 1st-3rd graders want to be thinner 81% of 10 year olds are afraid of being fat. The majority of kids are more afraid of being fat than they are of cancer, war, or their parents dying. 

Like, one book (i can't remember if it was the guilty feminist or not??) talked about eating disorders and talked about how men are able to approach weight loss in a neutral and non-obsessive way and don't have experiences with extreme calorie restriction and stuff

And sure, that may be true of some men but men 100% do develop eating disorders and growing up labeled "fat" is hugely psychologically damaging to anyone of any gender?

Like?? You're just saying things???

also "the guilty feminist" had a chapter on consent that was mostly pretty good but it was talking about how women will sometimes "freeze/zone out" during an unwanted sexual encounter because something like "the power dynamics of [patriarchal] society also translate into the bedroom" and coercion can happen without clear use of force because of that.

I'm embarrassed sometimes honestly.

it was this article, "We All Simp for Alfred Molina" by Chingy Nea, that made me think of it, particularly this paragraph that one assumes the Nea must have composed whilst drooling like a cartoon wolf:

But gravity isn’t all Molina brings to the role [of Doc Ock]; he carries with him a stunning degree of raw sexual magnetism. As a larger man, Molina really carries his massive appendages, moves deliberately with a menacing cool and delivers one-liners in a sultry arch tone. The physicality of the role also plays into it with Octavius in an open trench coat with his titties out and with a bit of his paunch hanging over the metal tentacle corset around his waist, letting us really take in the beauty of his body.

it's Nea's appreciation for Molina's physicality, specifically the fond attention drawn to his visible paunch, that made me think of R.S. Benedict's essay "Everyone Is Beautiful and No One Is Horny." it's a good read but also a long one, so I'll summarize: Benedict posits that current standards of American attractiveness stem from post-9/11 anxiety - "When a nation feels threatened, it gets swole," she writes - and has created a national mentality of bodies as commodities to be honed to perfection without indulging in any of the pleasure a body can bring, a vessel disjointed from any sense of self and meant only to be looked at with awe.

she opens particularly by noting the very particular brand of sexless-ness that pervades mainstream media, leading to action heroes whose beautiful faces and implausibly sculpted muscles are attractive in theory but also seem to exist in a world apart from anything like genuine sensuality. their bodies are inhuman in their perfection, and this comes at the cost of doing anything as human as fucking. to quote:

In the films of the Eighties and Nineties, leading actors were good looking, yes, but still human. Kurt Russel’s Snake Plissken was a hunk, but in shirtless scenes his abs have no definition. Bruce Willis was handsome, but he’s more muscular now than he was in the Nineties, when he was routinely branded a bona fide sex symbol. And when Isabella Rosselini strips in Blue Velvet, her skin is pale and her body is soft. She looks vulnerable and real.

Benedict mostly speculates about the neutered nature of DC and Marvel's movie characters, but they're hardly the only blockbusters falling into this trend. Alison Wilmore's "Why Doesn't The Rock Get to Make Out More Onscreen?" calls attention to this with a particular focus on Disney's new Jungle Cruise movie, describing Dwayne Johnson and Emily Blunt's roles as "characters who are to Humphrey Bogart and Katharine Hepburn in The African Queen as Funko Pops are to people," with their inevitable kiss playing out "as though they’re dolls whose heads are being smashed together by a child enacting a rudimentary idea of passion."

similarly to Benedict's point, Wilmore notes that "There’s a striking divide between the body that Johnson is so famous for and the characters who are supposed to inhabit it... his characters rarely if ever seem to take pleasure in this physicality beyond its capacity to intimidate and serve as a spectacle."

and by now you're probably saying okay Makenzie that's swell, but what the fuck does this have to do with people thirsting over Alfred Molina? well, look at him.

take in the tits and paunch Nea loves so much, and compare Molina's body with the kind that have dominated the biggest movies of the last decade or so, since the MCU set the tone for the future of the superhero genre. Quoth Benedict again:

Actors are more physically perfect than ever: impossibly lean, shockingly muscular, with magnificently coiffed hair, high cheekbones, impeccable surgical enhancements, and flawless skin, all displayed in form-fitting superhero costumes with the obligatory shirtless scene thrown in to show off shredded abs and rippling pecs. And this isn’t just the lead and the love interest: supporting characters look this way too, and even villains (frequently clad in monstrous makeup) are still played by conventionally attractive performers. Even background extras are good-looking, or at least inoffensively bland.

Molina's Doc Ock isn't bland; he has character in the form of features that are, increasingly, written off as too ugly or undesirable for film. I think the reason people may be reacting so strongly to him nearly two decades after the movie's release is that a pretty-normal looking body has now become a spectacle unto itself, by virtue of being so normal.

the current crop of superhero stars are exercised, waxed, dieted, dehydrated, and quite probably steroided into something the average person could never achieve on their own, a body that's fun to look at but is ultimately alien to anything most people will ever experience. whereas what we're looking at with Alfred Molina's Doc Ock is something like a body that many people actually have, a body that many people have known and loved, a body that, frankly, many people have had sex with - certainly more than have ever had sex with, say, Chris Evans' Steve Rogers all hairless and shiny fresh out of getting shot up with super soldier serum.

it's a sexy body because it's a palpably human body, in a genre that increasingly shuns exactly that.

So, another thing about Molina's physicality is that he is a stage actor. I've noticed that stage actors, because of the fact that stage is about the 'single take' and there are no cuts, no post-processing, no close-ups, coupled with backstage being communal and stage acting generally having this higher requirement for the present and the reality of inhabiting a human body in a physical space, means that stage actors are a presence on screen that is more magnetic and more sensual, not even sexually just inhabiting the senses.

And not only that, but when you're backstage you have to get comfortable with your nudity and everyone else seeing it real damn quick, because unless you're in a really modern theatre building (not very often, most theatres are pretty old and labyrinthine), the space backstage is limited, and there are sometimes super-fast costume changes required. Theatre, also, has always been far more rauncy, liberal, and risque than cinema. There was never a Hays Code for theatre, and the MPAA has no power there.

It distinctly bothers me that a very plausible interpretation of the tags screencapped above is "Oh no, men are going to be forced into restrictive gender roles, which means that through toxic masculinity, they're going to end up doing much more violence and assorted bigotry against women and minorities. Those poor women and minorities!"

Congratulations, you are the 'toxic masculinity' you are talking about, because you apparently already don't think men can feel things unless they're gender-nonconforming in some way.

This feels like a good time to draw attention to an enduringly relevant post I call @aegontoast's disclaimer:

I mean it's hard not to read it as "It's inconvenient to me if others who are competing for the same men I am, have traits those men like; there should be a cartel to assure that no one does".

But... Leave that aside. Where's the mirror image? Are there tons of men out there complaining that other men are betraying men-as-a-whole by being too into knitting, liking romcoms too much, doing too much housework and performing too much cunnilingus?

I’ve definitely been on the wrong end of men who have resented me as a ‘pretty boy’ with the implication I was somehow cheating in the dating game by not playing fair and being a normal guy. Back in the awkward teen years, I was mistrusted by the boyhive for hanging out with girls and listening to them and being interested in the things they liked. There was always the implication that I was some sort of womaniser and just doing it to sleep with them, when I just genuinely preferred their company and their hobbies.

I always found it funny how often I got threatened or roughed up by their boyfriends as an obvious threat, when I didn’t see myself as anywhere near competing with these cool macho guys, but they clearly saw me as a threat for the opposite reason: I listened to her boring problems, I liked the books she was reading, I wanted to see her films with her, the touchy-feely stuff they couldn’t compete with. Again, it was assumed I couldn’t be her friend without some sort of agenda.

this is also why the main topic we talk about when discussing internalized misogyny is girls (not women - girls) who say they’re “not like other girls” and reject femininity altogether. it’s more profitable to act like the main source of internalized misogyny for women is women who resent other women for performing femininity correctly, the way they’re expected to, and not the other way around. it hurts no industry to act like the main source of internalized misogyny for women is women who reject what they’re being told is expected of them!!

idk this is making me go insane.

Women are the fastest growing US prison population, at an increase of 834% since the 70s.

Incarcerated women are more likely to enter the system with a history of abuse, trauma and mental health disorders, which prisons ignore or exacerbate.

Most incarcerated women (62%) are mothers of minor children, and are more likely to be the primary caretaker of these children, leading to family disruption/dissolution.

Women are also frequently incarcerated for “failure to protect” convictions - meaning victims of abuse are punished for being abused.

If I had one follower, and gained another, I could claim to be the fastest growing blog on Tumblr with a 100% growth rate. That would suggest that it was the most popular blog around, but the opposite would be the case.

If women make up 1% of prisoners and men make up 99%, that’s a shocking inequality. If we work a little bit towards equality and get those ratios to 9% and 91%, that’s progress, but still massively skewed. 

But then people will say ‘women are the fastest growing imprisoned group, at an increase of 800%’ and it looks as if the inequality is the other way around, as if they are being disproportionately imprisoned! Whereas the truth is that men were disproportionately imprisoned, still are being disproportionately imprisoned, and we have just made a small amount of progress against that. It’s misleading to present that as if women are the disadvantaged group.

Here are some real statistics for comparison.

There were fewer women of all races/ethnicities in US prisons than there were white men alone, and far fewer than black or Hispanic men. The headline there is not ‘women are the fastest growing group’ as if we should feel sorry for them, because if we want equality we want women to be the fastest growing group! We want the ratios to become balanced, and that means a higher proportion of white people and women and a lower proportion of men and people of colour. 

(That doesn’t necessarily mean more women in prison; it could mean fewer men. The same goes for the other demographics. On an individual level, many of these women deserve our sympathy. The whole institution is obviously flawed. But presenting it as if womankind as a whole deserves that sympathy, by presenting an inequality on which they are on top as if they are underneath it, is dishonest.)

I find this sort of thing really interesting, because it forces people to reveal their motivations. People in feminist spaces talk about gender equality, and I’m sure that many of us genuinely believe in it. But there are some who are motivated instead by the maxim ‘make things better for women’. In most occasions, the subtle difference isn’t exposed. We see women disadvantaged in many ways, and we work together to fight to improve their lot and achieve gender equality.

But then there are cases like this. Or the debate in the UK over the state pension age, where women were able to retire and claim benefits five years earlier than men, thanks to patriarchal laws which treated men as the main workers. When measures were introduced to make the two the same, there was an uproar from women’s groups who were losing their privilege, and women were portrayed as the victims.

Then there are countries where men are subject to the draft or military service, where women’s groups have been demanding that women have equal right to service and are equally as strong and capable as men. But when the government considers extending that requirement to women, they are shouted down by members of those same groups, and women are portrayed as the victims.

but then they still have all of the other women hiding with the children rather than doing anything to help, and see that as acceptable even though all the boys and old men have to fight, and often make a explicit point of shaming one cowardly man who tries to hide with them, and they still make a massive deal that the villains killed ‘women and children’ like that’s beyond the pale because they can’t fight back, and still want to evacuate them first… 

But the only place I’ve had someone physically try to remove me from a bathroom was in London.

Some random middle aged woman thought that she had the right to put her hands on me simply because I don’t match her ideas of what femininity is, and I don’t think it’s a coincidence that this happened in a place where transphobia is running rampant. Of all the weird stuff that’s happened to me in pretty conservative parts of the US, they simply are not as emboldened here as they currently are in the UK; but don’t think for a moment that they don’t intend to get there.

Trans people are reason enough to fight these bigots. It’s a good enough reason. Trans people deserve respect, dignity, compassion, and protection. But if you think they’ll be satisfied with only pushing trans people back into the closet, you’re utterly deluded. They want absolute conformity, simple as that, and they’re increasing their push here too.