Sublime

Growing up, I didn’t chafe at the shallow, exploitative representations of my gender I saw on-screen; I took notes.

Just as my friend Bethany is accused of ‘glorifying obesity’ just for having the gumption to exist without shame, Lindy describes being harangued with the same question – ‘isn’t this a slippery slope into poor health?’ – every time she asserts her humanity as a fat woman. As she puts it: ‘The question itself is an assault: it validates the idea tha

Maybe women would finally be considered fully formed human beings, instead of off-brand men with defective genitals.

On her frame, angular but soft, a baggy T-shirt is coded as “low-maintenance,” not “sloppy”; a ponytail is “sleek,” not “tennis ball on top of a mini-fridge.” Not only can she pull off ugly clothes, like sports sandals, or “boyfriend jeans,” they somehow make her beauty thrum even more clearly.

(Desexualization is just another form of sexualization. Telling fat women they’re sexless is still putting women in their sexual place.)

The game is rigged. There is no perfection.

Women, it seemed, were obliged to be thick-skinned about their own rapes, while comics remained too thin-skinned to handle even mild criticism.

(In a certain light, feminism is just the long, slow realization that the stuff you love hates you.)