I have no idea what I am doing--
I am just doing stuff...
Again, I never really post ship or fandom stuff…
But my local Five Below Finally restocked some Mandolorian toys and I was like—fuck it. I’ll get the cheapy figurines.
And tumblr has ruined my brain so I bought a Luke figure (because it was the only one left and seemed sort of like fate)
except…
This fucking memory came to me just now.
So in my undergrad, I was part of a magazine class. Meaning this class was about bring my college’s literature magazine back from the dead.
To get people excited and have them pre-order the magazine, the teacher was trying to create writing prompt contests and posting them on the school’s and lit mag’s FB pages (because this is back in the early 2010’s, okay).
I am, as I always have been, bigger than most people. Which is fine. But bear with me for the rest of this fucking memory…
So, to get the writing prompts started, the teacher was assigning people to give an example.
So it’s like, “oh this is poetry week, example by Whoever down below”
And then the person posts their little poem or whatever on the page. Everyone is encouraged to try, etc.
Well, one week it was “write a flash fiction describing yourself”
And I will tell you—I don’t remember who came up with the prompts, whether it was a whole class discussion or if the teacher themself decided on the prompts before hand. But the week I was supposed to give the example we had the WORST participation. And yes, it was for the above “flash fiction describing yourself” prompt.
And I……. Hated it. I hated the idea. Because physically, blond hair and blue eyed—everyone can see my fucking picture because it’s FACEBOOK. Oh and yes, I am overweight. It was the most mortifying prompt to have been given. I did not volunteer for it. I remember that much because I never would have chosen to give the example for that week.
The prompt is vague so I decide, I’ll describe my personality instead.
And because I am in my early twenties and think I am so fucking creative I just wrote paradoxical statements like “Despite her size, she walks into a room like she’s twenty feet tall. Her voice booms despite coming from a quiet corner. Her head might be in the clouds, but her feet are always pointed forward. Describing her is a paradox.”
Something like that—but that was basically how I finished it, that the best description that fit me was a paradox. One could argue it was pretentious, but I just literally did not want to describe my physical self because one, everyone could see my picture anyways, and two. I was/am a fat person and just did not want to open that door for comments on my body.
Despite having so many people enter into the writing contests to win Amazon/Starbucks/whatever gift cards—that week we had maybe two or three people outside the class participate. That week it was the talk of the class of what went wrong.
Which all came crashing down on my example to the prompt. That it was too confusing so no body wanted to engage with it. And I said, “I understand, But I just did not want to write about my physical appearance because people can see the picture of me on FB. I decided to describe my personality because the prompt was vague anyway.”
The response I got was, “You should have described how you looked. You confused people. The prompt didn’t matter, you should have done the easier thing.”
I just remember being so angry and stuffing it down because it felt like just a crass and careless response to a very icky situation I had been placed in.
If one has ever been visibly fat (especially femme looking and fat), to be asked to physically describe oneself is a death sentence. How do you play that off without self-depreciation or self-aggrandizing???
It’s taken years to unlearn the harsh fat phobia and even then, at that point in time, I could not have imagined the responses I would have gotten on my school’s open FB page…
So there is that awful memory to unpack…
Guess who is lonely…
Caption:
[ (stitch with @/sorrel.hartley) What’s the most like “chronically online” take you’ve ever seen on the internet?
I have recieved a comment telling me that it was transphobic to be comfortable with my masculine body as a nonbinary person. Like, (frustrated noise). there is so much to unpack with that take but I’m gonna focus on tiktok and tumblr’s perception of nonbinary people and how damaging that is to the community.
This idea that all nonbinary people must, like you know be fucking mullet, big eyeliner, fucking skinny, white, afab. Do you like frogs, do you like mushrooms? Shut the fuck up. I sometimes feel like my pronouns are rarely accepted because its like if you don’t look in my bio you hear my voice and it’s like, oh- Makes me so angry.
Tiktok and tumblr basically set themselves up for failure when they created this perfect perception of what a nonbinary person looks like. And god forbid if you don’t fit into that box, guess you’re not valid. Me being amab does not make me any less nonbinary and you’d think thats a given but for some people its just, you know- Do you like frogs or mushrooms? I’ll kill you, what the fuck.]
Note: The issue isn’t the people who fit the stereotypes, its the stereotypes being used to determine who’s “actually” nonbinary.
Gonna put that in bold for those who might not notice it at first
I can't stand when people try to INSIST that a nonbinary person isn't ~doing their gender right~. Like FUCK you! So much of being nonbinary is freeing yourself from boxes or doing whatever the fuck you like with the boxes and making it your own. There isn't a wrong way to do or be any gender, and to try and CREATE a "correct" way to be nonbinary is so gross and wrong.
Rest is not earned by being productive and overworking. It is a human right. It is a human need. You deserve to rest.
