Clutch Magazine: "Too Fat For Fun" and Michelle Rodriguez' Ancestors Light-Skin Obession
Monday, June 4, 2012 at 12:43PM
Fashion blogger Gabi Fresh donned a bikini and encouraged other women to ignore the naysayers and embrace themselves. Even in a "fatkini."The Snob has not one, but TWO stories up this Monday at Clutch Magazine. First up is how negative body images often keep women from both getting in shape AND enjoying their lives. Using fashion blogger Gabi Gregg's "fatkini" tale, I touch on how often so many of us forgo doing the things we love because we don't think we look "good" enough to enjoy them.
Here's a snippet:
How many times have you or someone you’ve known forgone pleasure because we felt we didn’t deserve it for some superficial reason? Where most simple parts of living are now “rewards” only for those who have the right “look” to obtain them? Where you can’t get married unless you drop the weight for the wedding, or you can’t go to the beach this summer if you don’t get into a certain shape, or that you can’t buy new clothes or start dating again unless you go down or up a dress size?
And how often does this – what we think will be motivation – turn into de-motivation at doing anything. Often saying “I’m not going to do so-and-so until I look this certain way” really means, “I’m never doing that at all because I don’t deserve it.”
What you end up doing is avoiding something fun because you’re worried about someone else’s judgment of your body when it’s really your own judgment and notions that’s truly holding you back. It sounds crazy when you say it out-loud. But that’s how a lot of us think. And we were encouraged to think this way by a society that puts women’s bodies up for critique – whether it’s Beyonce, Angelina Jolie, or your next door neighbor.
After all, if the so-called “most beautiful women” in the world can’t avoid ridicule about weight loss, muscle tone, facial structure, and hair – how can you?
Being a woman means your body is always up for discussion. Fat, thin, fit – there’s no way to escape it. You have the choice to ignore it and live your life as you see fit, or you can waste valuable time fretting about how you look instead of just enjoying whatever is the actual task at hand.
Read this full story -- Too Fat For Fun -- on Clutch Magazine Online.
The second story expands upon some recent news about Texas-born actress Michelle Rodriguez who learned the lengths the Puerto Rican side of her family went through to stay light-skinned, including marrying first cousins. The post tackles how, as a black American, the lengths some people in the Diaspora have gone through to dilute or deny their African heritage has bordered on everything from the absurd to the truly disturbing -- mainly how the taboo of "kissing cousins" was an easier burden to carry than dark skin for some people.
Here's a snippet:
It’s not that you don’t have lighter and brighter tendencies here in the states, but there’s an ongoing debate, dialogue, and conversation going on about it in black American communities. When I read about something like this, even though I know how race and color are viewed differently in places like Venezuela, Cuba, or Brazil – it’s always shocking.
A friend of mine who is black American and Puerto Rican (and light complexioned) married a woman who was also Latino. We were the same tone and had the same hair texture. She would often jokingly say we looked as if we could be sisters or mother and daughter. But when I joked about how both our hair was so prone to frizz up with straightened because of our shared African ancestry, she bristled and insisted she was not black and had no black ancestry.
She was “Spanish.”
Her husband, who solely identified as black, pointed out that she was – by his definition and most Americans definition, black or white – as black as he and I, but because of her background she didn’t talk about it. Having long hair and being a lighter shade of medium brown had somehow gotten her out of the “dreaded” black category in her native country. To her, her husband and I were the weirdoes wanting to dump our light-skin and brown-skin “privilege” to be lumped in with people several shades darker. We were crazy.
Because where she was from, that was a shudder-worthy notion.
Reader Comments (6)
Snob, I have to confess that I have this weird celebrity crush on Michelle Rodriguez (I must have some subconscious fantasy about the badass, asskicking type, since that's always the role she gets cast in).
But all that is ruined, since you have informed me she's inbred. If, by some miracle, I ever do go on a date with her, I will now have to demand she remove her shoes so I can check for extra toes.
And you're right that race is viewed quite differently in many Latin American countries. They sort of have their own One-Drop Rule -- only theirs says that if you're part white, you just go by white and forget about the rest of your ethnic background. This is no more or less nonsensical than America's One-Drop Rule, I guess; it's just different. But I believe this is a big reason why the "White Hispanic" and "White Non-Hispanic" census categories exist: That's Uncle Sam throwing up his hands in recognition of the fact that people arriving from foreign countries refuse to play by our racial rules.
I needed to fix what was wrong with my heart before I could tackle being out-of-shape. Because fat, fit, or thin, I wanted to be able to enjoy my life. What’s the point of sweating and working your way to fitness only to still be oppressed by thoughts of inadequacy, worrying what others think.
-- Important insight, Danielle! Especially the first sentence.
1. Gabi looks great in that bikini because it compliments her shape, therefore, teh she radiates confidence. I doubt very seriously that she would prancing around in a string-bikini with that smile on her face but I digress. I think she went a little overboard about people denying themselves certain things because they don't fit the mold that society dictates. Most people (myself included) will not participate/experience/wear certain things because they don't feel comfortable, not because of someone's opinion. I have a bikini that I haven't worn this summer because I'm a little overweight and for me, I would feel better when the bits stop jiggling then I will put it on because I'm a LEO and I'm VAIN AS HELL. Until then, a one-piece will do just fine.
2. I saw the episode with Michelle Rodriguez and yes it was a trip. What kills me is that people will come over to the USA and think that their racial standards from their country will fly in the USA. That is why I was surprised over George Zimmerman's racist attitudes because in most places he is still considered " A Beaner" (what some folks especially down South would consider him even if he is half-wife). When I was in grad school there was this black girl who had a really ethnic African-American name but her dad was from Panama. She was born in the USA and she was coal black but she never identified herself as "Black". We had a black speaker once, who asked everyone who considered themselves a minority to raise their hands- she never did. Even the white kids said she was "too white, even for them". I always wondered did she ever get her " N----- Wake Up Call".
My sister who is very light-skinned attended law school at Southern in New Orleans and she talked about how people would look disappointed when she said "she was just a negro from South Carolina" therefore, she had no one-drop of Creole blood in her.
Gabbi looks great in her bikini, it compliments her and she feels comfortable. Love it that women in North America are finally getting the idea that they can look bigger and less perfect than an airbrushed supermodel on a magazine cover or an actor and be okay with it. It was great to see women of all sizes, shapes and "imperfections" showing off their fat. Maybe eventually those ridiculous gotcha tabloid photos of "celebrities" with cellulite will end. However, I bothers me that women are now confusing putting on a bikini or wearing less with female empowerment. Let's look further ahead and deeper to empowerment of the mind, empowerment of the voice before we whittle it down to how we look. Enough patriarchs have done that for us for long enough.
This is so true..because of some extra kg i feel shy to wear shirt skirts and tight dress. I know that all this a simple complex, but in my brains it is too complicated. And the offend thing, that that i'm not alone in my limitations for getting pleasure from things that i like. But what other thought can form in the brand of "unstandard" women, if from the childhood they see the artificial "beauty" on pages of each and every gloss magazine.
Girl, we should be braver, if we don't want to end the life in a "potato bag" dress.
People need to leave Domincans, Puerto Ricans and whoever the hell else in their little bubbles of lies. Who are we to tell them what their ancestry is, even though it's staring at them right in their black and brown faces??? It's as if we are trying to put salt in their games, because we don't want to be here by our lonesome....once we begin to love our Africaness and declare it to the rest of the world, the rest of the diaspora will undoubtedly follow suit. Humph!