Calling White Feminists: Show Up & Shut Up

Jamar Clark, a 24-year old black man, was arrested and shot by Minneapolis police early Sunday morning. Police had been dispatched to assist paramedics who’d responded to a domestic dispute between Clark and his girlfriend, in which Clark had allegedly assaulted the victim. Clark’s criminal record shows that this was not his first brush with the law; he’d previously been convicted of domestic abuse and armed robbery.

According to multiple eyewitness reports, Clark was unarmed, handcuffed, on the ground, and shot in the head “execution style” by police officers. Minneapolis police have not released official findings, but they’ve stated that their preliminary investigation suggests Clark was not handcuffed at the time of the shooting. Clark was transported to a nearby hospital and, according to his family, was pronounced to be “brain dead.” He was taken off life support and died Monday evening.

Domestic violence is not okay, neither is police brutality. These are not mutually exclusive concepts.

In America, we all have the right to due process. The police who shot Jamar Clark denied him that right. As citizens, we employ police officers to protect and serve our communities; we have a judicial system set up to decide whether suspects are guilty of the crimes for which they are arrested. Police have a job, judges have a job, and jurors have a job. In the case of Jamar Clark (and of so many other unarmed black men who have died at the hands of law enforcement officials), the police overstepped their jurisdiction. Regardless of Clark’s guilt, he did not deserve to die. Regardless of his crime, execution at the hands of police is far beyond the scope of punishment that would have been allotted him, had he been provided the due process to which he was legally entitled.

Systems of racial injustice perpetuate poverty among black families, increase domestic violence, and keep black women disproportionately oppressed. The systemic racism that results in egregious racial disparities in arrests and Minnesota’s huge achievement gap is also keeping black families in poverty.

Black women are disproportionately affected by the economic issues that we take up as women’s rights activists. While white women make an average of 77 cents per dollar earned by a white man, black women only make 64 cents to that dollar. Unemployment rates in Minnesota’s communities of color are significantly higher than among white workers, and one in three Black Minnesotans are underemployed. Men who have experienced unemployment or economic instability are more likely to abuse their female partners. Economic hardship can also make it more difficult for women to escape abusive relationships.

So what does this have to do with us, white feminists? Everything.

As feminists, it’s our job to stand up for all women. Demanding justice for Jamar Clark does not mean we condone violence against women. It means we expect accountability from the law enforcement officers and agencies we employ to protect our communities. It means standing up for black families who, as a result of systemic racism, are kept in a cycle of poverty and violence – a cycle that victimizes black women and children most of all.

Look. I’m a white lady. I don’t have a lived experience of racial oppression. My views come from a place of white privilege. But I am also a person who understands intersectionality and injustice, and here’s what I’ve figured out:

Solidarity is powerful. More bodies mean more power to overturn these systems of oppression. But as white feminists, we need to recognize that this isn’t our fight. As white feminists, we’ve learned and thrived at claiming space and finding ways to be heard. Now, it’s time to hand that space over to those who have been marginalized within our movement and within our communities. Standing up for racial justice right now means showing up, lending your body to a cause, helping the movement take up physical space, but allowing those who have historically been silenced to finally be heard.

I Can’t Even Right Now, Amy Schumer

My HBIT co-host is kind of an Amy Schumer fan. Like not huge. She’s not going to follow Schumer around on tour, but she liked Trainwreck and enjoyed the HBO special. Another great friend Emily – a hilarious, smart, badass feminist – has said she feels like she likes to laugh with Amy Schumer, but sometimes wishes she could censor her. I’m not sure what that means, but I think I agree with her.

So this week, I made it my job to watch Trainwreck and the Schumer special to get my own take. My wife and I got through the first 17 minutes of the special without a single laugh, so we turned it off. I figured I’d try it again on my own later. On Thursday, we rented Trainwreck on pay-per-view. I was annoyed by Schumer right off the bat – probably because of the bad taste left in my mouth after trying to watch the special – but I was determined to watch the movie in its entirety (I paid $5 for this shit). I finally finished the HBO special last night, and man – do I have some thoughts.

First of all, Amy Schumer is not fat. Not fat AT ALL. If you listened to her with a blindfold on you would think she was – at the very least – a plus-sized person. And – to be clear – there is absolutely nothing wrong with being a plus-sized person. In fact, she is an average sized person who – like every other woman on earth – deserves to love and accept her body and have her body be loved and accepted by the rest of us.

That being said, Schumer has made a decision to live her life on stage, in an industry where her body is a constant topic of conversation and critique. Let me throw in a small disclaimer here: That’s not cool, Hollywood. It’s not cool and it’s not okay that female comics have to live up to a sexist double standard. They have to be funny (perhaps, like female chefs, they actually have to be more funny). On top of that, they have to be sexy. Like, conventionally sexy. And that’s got to be really tough on these badass women who take the stage in the face of that double standard, and even – gasp – have the guts to make jokes about this very double standard.

There’s a paradox in the way Schumer has chosen to tackle the outrageous beauty standards of Hollywood, and it’s kind of problematic. On one hand, she calls out the industry for expecting her to be a size 0, for putting her on weight loss plans, for pushing her to develop a “late-in-life eating disorder.” On the other hand, every time Schumer talks about how fat she is, she does it in a self-deprecating fashion that shows us she actually hates her body just as much as Hollywood wants her to. The only difference is that she can make jokes about it.

I think Schumer is coming at this from the perspective of calling out Hollywood. And yeah, it’s kind of working. But this way of talking about female bodies has a much more harmful effect on the women who are looking to Schumer for inspiration than any kind of positive impact it might be having on the Hollywood standard of beauty. Every time she talks about how fat she is, Schumer forces women of all sizes, across America, to compare themselves to her (again – not fat) body. That’s causing women in the real world to hate their bodies more, not less.

Yes – part of feminism has to include the concept that as women, we have the right to say, speak, wear, and do whatever the fuck we want. And yes, a comic’s job often involves self-deprecation, self-mockery, and pushing the envelope on tough issues. But when a celebrity woman’s ‘I’ll get mine, you get yours’ feminism is being broadcast from a far-reaching platform, and when that woman’s message doesn’t break down barriers for women so much as it perpetuates stereotypes about us and reinforces systems of oppression… I take issue with that.

It’s super great to own your body and your sexuality, and it’s super important for women to speak out about that, especially when they’re privileged enough to have a public platform like the stage at the Apollo Theater and a one-hour special on HBO. But Schumer’s self-deprecating acceptance of her own body comes at the expense of other women’s right to accept and love themselves, while reinforcing Hollywood’s unattainable expectations for women’s bodies.

My issue with Schumer isn’t just about bodies. It’s hypocritical – and, I would argue, anti-feminist – to claim your own power as a ‘sex comic,’ to point out the double standards for female comics, and in the next breath to denigrate other women. Case in point: Schumer’s beauty pageant bit. Schumer paints all beauty pageant participants as vapid “corpses” with no identities of their own. Look, I’m not a huge fan of beauty pageants or swimsuit issues. But my feminist philosophy holds me to the belief that women – all women – are entitled to their own choices. That includes choices about having sex, talking about sex, and even showing off their (beautifully variously sized and shaped) bodies.

I embrace Schumer’s right as a woman to own the stage, to proudly own her body and her sexuality and the decisions she has made and continues to make for herself and her body. But if Schumer expects us to respect those decisions, she should think twice about using her platform to cut other women down for the choices they’ve made, or for perpetuating expectations that harm women’s ability to make their own choices or value themselves as individuals.

We Need to Talk About Mental Health and the Wedding Industrial Complex

I had a wedding. It was great! Also, I think I have post-nuptial depression.

Weddings are hard. It’s like your whole life for months and months is all about getting ready for this one big thing and then it’s here and you’re so wrapped up in it that you almost don’t even realize it’s happening. Kind of a great metaphor for life, right? We spend so much of our time getting ready for the next thing that we don’t get to experience what’s happening right now.

Like basically everyone else out there, I struggle with depression and anxiety. It’s something most people don’t see in me and I cover it up pretty well with what, I think, tends to come off as confidence. I’m a huge proponent of the “fake it till you make it” school of thought, and most of the time that works for me (apparently I am, actually, making it).

Going into the wedding, everyone kept telling me to make sure to “step outside the chaos to enjoy the moments and take everything in.” Great advice – except, because I am a person with generalized anxiety and a significant amount of control issues, the thought of being too anxious to enjoy my wedding and/or causing me to turn into a maniacal bridezilla was, ultimately, giving me tons of anxiety.

I know that I am not alone here. I put myself under a certain amount of pressure to have a Pinterest-perfect wedding. During the planning process, I had daydreams about being featured on wedding blogs and having our pictures go viral. In my mind’s eye, the flower crown was not shedding dead baby’s breath all over me, every corner of our wedding barn was a one-of-a-kind photo opportunity, the cake decorator hit just the right balance of rustic and elegant, and my left eye did not look smaller than the right one when I smiled in pictures. Basically, the wedding planning process was like living in a fairy tale, feeling like you have to create everything to make it come true, knowing that that’s an impossible task, and being completely consumed by it anyway.

The hard part about this is that I don’t see myself as someone who buys into the hype around the bridal industry and the wedding industrial complex. I am independent, strong willed, stubborn, and I usually [always] know what I want. I was inundated with marketing ploys that influenced my vision for the wedding, making it increasingly detailed and increasingly expensive. And I couldn’t stop.

When we label ourselves “brides,” we are immediately bombarded with advertisements and increasingly manipulative marketing strategies that convince us to buy into a certain element of competition around weddings. It has to be more unique, more personalized, more hand-made, more picture-perfect. As we strive to achieve wedding perfection, we lose sight of ourselves, and also of the reason we’re doing this at all.

Every time a coworker asked about the planning process, especially as the big day got closer, my response grew more detached and, strangely, more cliché: “I’m so exhausted, and I’m so excited.” In retrospect – planning my wedding took over my identity. My fiancee and I fought more than we ever had before. I didn’t even know either of us cared about centerpieces. Apparently we both have very strong opinions. So does my mom.

I won’t lie about struggling to control my anxiety or being able to fully enjoy our day. I don’t truly remember every detail. I yelled at my fiancee and her best man the day before the wedding. The ceremony is a little blurry, but I know that lots of people cried. I didn’t get to spend enough time with anyone in particular, but I had special moments with the most important ones. My new wife and I made sure to take a few private moments, but it generally felt like a whirlwind.

Of course, some elements of our wedding didn’t look exactly how I’d envisioned.
I imagine that there is a huge amount of freedom in recognizing what’s really important, and what you can just let go of. I don’t know how well I achieved that. What I know is that our wedding turned out beautiful, and that even though I saw a way more perfect wedding on Facebook THE NEXT DAY, it was exactly, perfectly us. And that I kind of don’t know what to do with myself now that it’s over.

I had a serious depressive meltdown a few days after the wedding, and I’m still struggling to swim back up to the surface. During our honeymoon, I had to pull over in middle-of-nowhere South Dakota because I couldn’t keep driving through the tears and I had no idea why they were even happening. The stress and pressure of wedding planning washed away, but left me feeling empty and goalless. Of course, I felt joy at knowing I’d just married the love of my life. But I also felt a gnawing sense of absence, even loss.

Our Pinterest obsession isn’t just making it harder to enjoy our weddings. It’s actually harmful to our mental health. Weddings are a big deal to most of us – to many of us, the biggest deal. But every time we click over to Pinterest, open a shiny magazine, or read the latest lifestyle blog, we’re setting a subconscious standard of living for ourselves which, ultimately, we know we’ll never achieve. I’m never going to have long, luxuriously smooth locks of perfect curls. My skin will probably always be a little ruddy, and for the life of me, I can’t keep the damn front table clear of clutter for more than half a day. The more time I spend admiring the perfection of other women’s lives, the more hopeless I feel about my own ability to create the life that I aspire to.

I don’t think this is healthy, and I kind of hate myself for being so wrapped up in all of it. But I also love to pin and read Country Living and totally admit to obsessively keeping track of my follower count on Instagram. Finding a balance between inspiration and individuality is a struggle that goes far beyond just my wedding. But recognizing the impact of the wedding industry on my mental health, our economy, and the loss of identity during the process, is a major first step toward recovering from it.

I don’t even know where this is going. I’m still trying to climb out of my post-wedding hole. I’m struggling to feel inspired, and feeling kind of lost about what to do next. What I know is that I spent so much time and energy trying to make sure our wedding was perfect that I lost track of the really important stuff, and now I need to figure out a way to get it all back.

An Open Letter to Mackenzie Walker, the 16-year-old Girl Who Lost 100 Pounds

I feel you, girl. I feel you so hard. I was a fat kid, and then a fat teenager, and then a fat adult woman. I was depressed, and troubled, and bullied, and hated myself. And I, too, made a decision to lose weight. But before that, I made a decision to love myself and my body.

I feel you. I’ve been where you were. But I also need you to know one extremely important thing. Other peoples’ assumptions about your body, your attractiveness, and your health do not determine your value as a human being.

We live in a society that hates fat, hates fat people, and teaches us to hate our fat selves and our fat bodies before we are even old enough to know what “fat” really is or means. As teenagers, we are fragile and self-conscious, and we internalize the body-shaming and bullying we experience at the hands of others. As women, we are held to impossible standards of thinness.

I don’t condemn you for wanting to lose weight. I don’t hold your weight loss against you. You made a decision about your body. I understand that. Just like your body, your weight loss journey belongs to you. But as a society, we need to acknowledge and address the fact that losing weight will not fill the “never-ending void” cited in that CNN piece as your reason for weight gain. Neither will excessive exercise or disordered eating habits.

Instead, perhaps this all could have been avoided if you’d been supported by a community that sees women as more than consumable bodies. Perhaps if the adults in your life had been more focused on your emotional well-being than your physical appearance, or if that teacher had taken the time to find out what was making you feel too hopeless to participate in physical activity, you’d know that you are more than just what people see when they look at you.

I condemn our body-shaming culture, the media, and the adults in your life for teaching you that your body is your only source of value in this world. I condemn our society for making fat women feel invisible at best and monstrous at worst. I condemn a culture that praises girls and women who literally kill themselves trying to achieve a body that is seen as desirable, and ostracizes those who don’t.

You are strong. You are brave. You are (and were) beautiful and valuable and worthy of affection. I hope to goddess that as you grow into womanhood, you find a way to truly work through the trauma of growing up fat in the society that has so completely convinced you that happiness is only attainable through thinness.