Swan (![[info]](http://l-stat.livejournal.com/img/userinfo.gif){kind=small} queenostara) wrote,@ 2009-06-03 11:28:00 |
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Uglies, fatties and brain surgery, oh my!
If anyone hasn't yet read Scott Westerfeld's Uglies series I very much recommend it. It's a young adult series and not particularly difficult or advanced reading but it is a poignant series about coming of age and accepting your own body.
Now Westerfeld doesn't really delve deep into the anti-fat realm of learning to like your body (and respecting the fact that your body is yours to do what you will with) which is not terribly surprising given that a) it's entirely possible it could make the book less popular b) the book already had a pretty good balance of accepting your own "ugliness" and actions or c) like so many people who've been relatively thin all their lives, didn't see it as a large struggle to tackle. Which is fine really, as a (aspiring) writer I recognize and respect the fact that everyone is perfectly entitled to write about whatever they damn well please. I just don't have to necessarily agree with every word they pen (like "Of Mice and Men", way to be totally original Steinbeck and make the only female character some evil seductress only out to cause trouble). Quite frankly, I'm happy for a body positive book at all in the young adult genre and I feel that Westerfeld is hitting on something really relevant in his series.
If you haven't read it, the Uglies series takes place in the not so far off future, a land where everyone is at the age of 16 taken under the knife to become "pretties". Everyone accepts the brainwashing that making everyone pretty is why they have such a peaceful society, that making everyone the same mold of an arbitrary standard of "beautiful" makes everyone equal and that even if it didn't the logic is "the government is paying for you to become perfect, who doesn't want to become perfect if given the chance?" Except there's something else that happens in the surgery. Something besides grinding bones down to delicate perfection and sucking all excess fat out of places where it's unwanted (read, basically everywhere). A part of the surgery no one knows about that happens in the brain. Lesions are inserted to make the newly made "pretties" more easily controlled, less capable of taking care of themselves and "bubbleheaded" as some of the characters call it.
It's a pretty (har) striking parallel to our current society, is it not? Ultimately, many don't care how smart, caring, strong or capable someone is, it's all about looks, especially when it comes to a certain gender (though the other certainly isn't exempt). The recent debate over a WOMAN candidate for supreme court justice's weight demonstrates that, it was written well at The Huffington Post "To some men, the only thing worse than a woman in power is a woman in power who they don't want to sleep with."
Somehow, even without mandating plastic surgery at age sixteen for everyone, our society has come to expect, even demand "beauty" out of everyone (especially every woman) and the general consensus is that if you aren't pretty, or if one thing about you isn't pretty you just aren't TRYING hard enough. So much of our society focuses on weight because thanks to the multi-billion dollar "weight loss" (read, scam) industry paying off doctors and pharmaceutical companies to stress that thin=healthy, focusing on someone's weight is an easy way to be a bigot and hate someone because you aren't attracted to them without looking like a bigot to many faux-gressives. It's an easy way to be a hateful, condescending asshole just because of looks because, well gosh, it's for the health of fatties everywhere, it's not bigoted at all (sarcasm).
Even in ways not focused on weight (which is, supposedly, the easiest changeable physical trait) we come to demand the cultural construct of beauty on everyone. Got scars like mine? Well you despicable ugly, go get some fucking miderma and spare me the pain of looking at your misshapen skin. Can't change it with miderma? "STAY INSIDE YOU UGLY, AND NEVER COME OUT AND SPARE MY DELICATE EYES! HOW CAN YOU DARE TO LIVE UNDER SUCH HORRIBLE SKIN?!!" So many not only see this as acceptable, but a necessary duty of those lucky enough to be born with all the physical traits akin to "beauty" or traits close enough to "pass" if you, you know, blink and sort of shake your head a lot (also sarcasm).
And now, not only are people going under the knife to have already dangerous proceedures like plastic surgery or weight loss surgery (like bariatric) which basically mutilate perfectly healthy organs, people are starting to have BRAIN surgery as weight loss surgery. http://blogs.myspace.com/index.cfm?fuse
Yep, you read that right. People are basically shocking their perfectly healthy brains just to lose 11 lbs.
Not only is it completely ludicrous that anyone fat must take any necessary action to become thin but the idea that the situation is desperate enough to have BRAIN SURGERY (something that still ain't all that great when it's necessary to begin with) is mind (ha) boggling. Aside from the fact that this is not a well researched procedure that probably won't work well anyway (like lots of other weight loss procedures) what kind of result will this have on the brain? You know, that thing that controls all your functioning?
Not to mention, this seems to me that if it works AND has damage on the brain we all might get to live the plot of Westerfeld's novels because there are plenty of doctors (and people) out there who really just want stupid, stupid fatties to shut up and fucking be compliant already.
Call me a conspiracy theorist, but this is fucking scary.
If anyone hasn't yet read Scott Westerfeld's Uglies series I very much recommend it. It's a young adult series and not particularly difficult or advanced reading but it is a poignant series about coming of age and accepting your own body.
Now Westerfeld doesn't really delve deep into the anti-fat realm of learning to like your body (and respecting the fact that your body is yours to do what you will with) which is not terribly surprising given that a) it's entirely possible it could make the book less popular b) the book already had a pretty good balance of accepting your own "ugliness" and actions or c) like so many people who've been relatively thin all their lives, didn't see it as a large struggle to tackle. Which is fine really, as a (aspiring) writer I recognize and respect the fact that everyone is perfectly entitled to write about whatever they damn well please. I just don't have to necessarily agree with every word they pen (like "Of Mice and Men", way to be totally original Steinbeck and make the only female character some evil seductress only out to cause trouble). Quite frankly, I'm happy for a body positive book at all in the young adult genre and I feel that Westerfeld is hitting on something really relevant in his series.
If you haven't read it, the Uglies series takes place in the not so far off future, a land where everyone is at the age of 16 taken under the knife to become "pretties". Everyone accepts the brainwashing that making everyone pretty is why they have such a peaceful society, that making everyone the same mold of an arbitrary standard of "beautiful" makes everyone equal and that even if it didn't the logic is "the government is paying for you to become perfect, who doesn't want to become perfect if given the chance?" Except there's something else that happens in the surgery. Something besides grinding bones down to delicate perfection and sucking all excess fat out of places where it's unwanted (read, basically everywhere). A part of the surgery no one knows about that happens in the brain. Lesions are inserted to make the newly made "pretties" more easily controlled, less capable of taking care of themselves and "bubbleheaded" as some of the characters call it.
It's a pretty (har) striking parallel to our current society, is it not? Ultimately, many don't care how smart, caring, strong or capable someone is, it's all about looks, especially when it comes to a certain gender (though the other certainly isn't exempt). The recent debate over a WOMAN candidate for supreme court justice's weight demonstrates that, it was written well at The Huffington Post "To some men, the only thing worse than a woman in power is a woman in power who they don't want to sleep with."
Somehow, even without mandating plastic surgery at age sixteen for everyone, our society has come to expect, even demand "beauty" out of everyone (especially every woman) and the general consensus is that if you aren't pretty, or if one thing about you isn't pretty you just aren't TRYING hard enough. So much of our society focuses on weight because thanks to the multi-billion dollar "weight loss" (read, scam) industry paying off doctors and pharmaceutical companies to stress that thin=healthy, focusing on someone's weight is an easy way to be a bigot and hate someone because you aren't attracted to them without looking like a bigot to many faux-gressives. It's an easy way to be a hateful, condescending asshole just because of looks because, well gosh, it's for the health of fatties everywhere, it's not bigoted at all (sarcasm).
Even in ways not focused on weight (which is, supposedly, the easiest changeable physical trait) we come to demand the cultural construct of beauty on everyone. Got scars like mine? Well you despicable ugly, go get some fucking miderma and spare me the pain of looking at your misshapen skin. Can't change it with miderma? "STAY INSIDE YOU UGLY, AND NEVER COME OUT AND SPARE MY DELICATE EYES! HOW CAN YOU DARE TO LIVE UNDER SUCH HORRIBLE SKIN?!!" So many not only see this as acceptable, but a necessary duty of those lucky enough to be born with all the physical traits akin to "beauty" or traits close enough to "pass" if you, you know, blink and sort of shake your head a lot (also sarcasm).
And now, not only are people going under the knife to have already dangerous proceedures like plastic surgery or weight loss surgery (like bariatric) which basically mutilate perfectly healthy organs, people are starting to have BRAIN surgery as weight loss surgery. http://blogs.myspace.com/index.cfm?fuse
Yep, you read that right. People are basically shocking their perfectly healthy brains just to lose 11 lbs.
Not only is it completely ludicrous that anyone fat must take any necessary action to become thin but the idea that the situation is desperate enough to have BRAIN SURGERY (something that still ain't all that great when it's necessary to begin with) is mind (ha) boggling. Aside from the fact that this is not a well researched procedure that probably won't work well anyway (like lots of other weight loss procedures) what kind of result will this have on the brain? You know, that thing that controls all your functioning?
Not to mention, this seems to me that if it works AND has damage on the brain we all might get to live the plot of Westerfeld's novels because there are plenty of doctors (and people) out there who really just want stupid, stupid fatties to shut up and fucking be compliant already.
Call me a conspiracy theorist, but this is fucking scary.
