Post: #1

Quote:A third of the way through Sarai Walker’s debut novel Dietland, a shadowy vigilante movement known only as “Jennifer” tosses two rapists off an overpass on to the highway, where their bodies are mangled and flattened by speeding cars. They toss an additional 12 rapists out of an airplane from a great height. They strangle the impresario of a Girls Gone Wild-type program and blow up his enabling girlfriend. They scalp a hostage, demanding that lewd images of women be removed from newsstands by his sister, a publishing mogul.

So starts the Guardian article on this surely wonderfully written novel, to give you a quick taste of the depravity that's about to come.

Normally I try to avoid learning about this kind of filth for the sake of my sanity, but luckily my girlfriend (bless her shitlord heart) has a habit of forwarding the most degenerate stuff she comes across. As such, the intial article that served as my plus sized rabbit hole to Dietland:

Quote:Why it's time for radical fat acceptance

"I hope you have a heart attack and die."

Author and fat activist Sarai Walker receives such nasty comments on a daily basis. Seems like a waste of time to hope for an inevitability, however made-up this is likely to be.

Dietland's author, after escaping from SeaWorld

Quote:"People's rage scares me sometimes," says Walker. "There are a lot of people who think that fat people deserve to get diseases as punishment for being fat. On some deep level they think that fat people should suffer because they are fat."

Walker has channelled this anger into creative pursuits. Her new novel Dietland tells the story of Plum Kettle, a fat woman working for a fashion magazine. Kettle is biding her time until she has weight loss surgery and her life as a thin person can begin. Ah yes, waiting until stuff "just happens", I'm sure the target audience will relate.

On the surface, the book highlights the ways fat women are discriminated against in our culture, and debunks many of the myths about weight and the diet industry. But at its core, Dietland asks what would happen if women expressed their anger in 'masculinist' ways — outwards rather than internalising it. Because if there's something women are known for...

Walker creates a world where women fight back against the men who oppress them. And their tactics go way beyond angry protest marches and strident calls for legislative change.

Plum Kettle finds herself involved with a terrorist organisation called 'Jennifer' which drops accused rapists out of helicopters and burns down the houses of college fraternities that approve of rape.

Quote:"Women have a lot of things to be angry about, but unlike men who often turn their anger outwards, women tend to direct it inwards and that can lead to self-hatred and depression," she says.

In her fiction, as in life, Walker says that the hatred of fat bodies and a hatred of women are inextricably linked.

"The hatred directed at fat women is completely intertwined with misogyny," she says. "Any time you see a guy saying that he hates fat women or that fat women are disgusting or gross, it is a huge red flag for a guy who hates women. He's saying that women have to adhere to a particular body size and look a certain way, otherwise they are just sub-human."

Walker hopes that her book will help to change people's attitudes towards fat. If anything, her psychotic fantasies make me even more weary of fat chicks than I thought I could be.

"I wanted people to think about why women's bodies are constructed in a certain why; why fat women are discriminated against, why we have this objectification of women in our culture," she says.

She wants thin people to understand how hurtful, damaging and unfounded their fat prejudice is. And she wanted to break the mould of storytelling by having a main character who is fat.

"There were no serious novels about what it's like to be fat. For fat women I hoped that they would be able to see themselves represented in the book."

Her message is also one of fat acceptance. In Dietland Plum Kettle comes to realise that she will never become thin and her pursuit becomes about self-acceptance rather than thinness. What a twist!

For her part, Walker says she's truly happy with her body size. Even if she had a magic wand, she wouldn't choose her body to be anything other than it is. Except to that of Kirby, so she can inhale food even faster.

"I've come to appreciate the perspective that being in a fat body gives me. I have a perspective on feminism, society and culture that I wouldn't have otherwise. If I weren't fat, I would be a totally different person," Walker says.

Quote:In a culture that places so much importance on appearance and encourages self-dissatisfaction, contentedness with one's self is highly political, says Walker. "Self-improvement, what's that?"

"To say that you are going to accept yourself the way you are really freaks people out. It makes them very angry. It's deeply radical," she says.

But Walker is the first to admit that genuine body acceptance isn't easy.

"Fat people are treated horribly so it is natural for people to want to escape a group that is treated like that. It's just a practical thing; you wouldn't suffer as much mistreatment or have to put up with discrimination if you were thin."

Even those who consider themselves politically progressive seem to have a blind-spot when it comes to weight.

"Left wing, liberal and open-minded people will think critically about the government and corporations, but when it comes to fat they just accept everything they are told by diet companies and pharmaceutical companies."

And those who agree with her fat acceptance message are only supportive up to a point. They're still in pursuit of the thin ideal. Live and let die is still a thing, thank god.

"There is this idea that 'fat acceptance is ok for you and I support you but for me I want to be thin otherwise my life would be over'," she says. God forbid people want to be healthy themselves.

How has Walker managed to find body-acceptance in a world that, for the most part, hates her body and is totally obsessed with thinness?

It took Walker several years to relinquish the fantasy of one day becoming thin, and to realise that there is nothing inherently wrong with her body.

"Part of it was accepting reality; accepting that this is my body. It's the only body I'm ever going to have and I wasted so much energy hating it and fighting it. It was no way to live."

If you're a braver man than I, or simply masochistic enough to want even more after all that, there's an excerpt of the double-chinned creature's magnum opus somewhere on this page.

Post: #2

I'm gonna try to give the excerpt a read, but I gotta say something about this shit here:

Quote:"Left wing, liberal and open-minded people will think critically about the government and corporations, but when it comes to fat they just accept everything they are told by diet companies and pharmaceutical companies."

How about doctors? They just accept everything they're told too? It's basic fucking biology, your body is not suited for that shit. That's why you're struggling to walk now. That's why a flight of stairs has you feeling like you're about to die, it's your body telling you "STOP DOING THIS SHIT TO YOURSELF". Every obesity-related health issue is your body setting off it's check engine light, oil light, battery light, alternator light, flat tire warning, everything, and you're cruising along saying "fuck it, fixing my car is just propaganda by the mechanics".

I'd say her hamster has hit light speed but it suffered a coronary already.

Post: #3

The increasingly-clichéd power fantasies of psychotic violence by Female Incel Lefists and Video Games Journalists.

This is a good thing and needs to be encouraged.

Post: #4

"I wanted people to see what it's like being a fat woman through my novel."


Yeah I kind of figured that most of you go through life wanting to murder everyone that looks better, feels better, and is obviously happier than you lot are. I didn't need a poorly written snuff book to tell me all that.

Post: #5

Hamgalaxy?

Post: #6

(08-17-2015 04:38 PM)Kyriarch Wrote:  
Dietland's author, after escaping from SeaWorld

WNB, not even to repopulate the Earth if she was the last female on the planet.

Post: #7

(08-17-2015 05:27 PM)RIslander Wrote:  Hamgalaxy?

Her mouth is the supermassive black hole

Post: #8

This woman's entire way of thinking is so intellectually vapid and cliched I don't even know how to counter it.

It's like trying to deal with the type of religious fanatic that truly believes people are going to face eternal damnation if they don't live their lives in a specific way.

Virtually every point this woman and the article about her makes is conjecture at best or totally false at worst. Publishing tripe like this is irresponsible on a bunch of levels -- the most important of which is that it teaches overweight people they have no control over their bodies (false) and that being obese is an acceptable way to live (false -- ask any doctor).

There is one point I can comfortably make, though. Fat women aren't so much derided as they are ignored. Men avoid them because of their looks and because it takes you down a peg socially to be seen with them. And normal-sized women avoid fat women because they behave like fat is a disease they can catch.

I hope this author revels in the attention she gets from this article. It's more than she'll get from men throughout her whole life.

Post: #9

Any takers?

Post: #10

(08-17-2015 05:56 PM)Days of Broken Arrows Wrote:  and that being obese is an acceptable way to live (false -- ask any doctor).

Things had gotten so bad before I left Australia that doctors within the health system in my town were being brought before complaint tribunals for telling people their obesity was dangerously unhealthy and they that needed to exercise and lose weight, and were being requiring to undertake Sensitivity Training.

Post: #11

I read the shit so you don't have to. If you want to subject yourself to it, pg 25-39.

The synopsis itself is comedy gold:

Quote:Meet Plum Kettle, a thin girl living in a fat body waiting for her life to begin, just as soon as she has gastric bypass surgery. Enter Jennifer, a guerrilla group terrorizing
those who mistreat women, and suddenly Plum finds herself mixed up in a sinister plot. Other women challenge Plum to deal with her past and reconsider her future—
and then things really start to get interesting. Part Fight Club, part Bridget Jones, Dietland is an audacious debut novel that will knock you out.

But wait, there's more. The main character reads like every millenial feminist typist who calls herself a "writer" right now.

Quote:On most days I did my work there, sitting at a table in the back with my laptop, responding to messages from teenage girls. Dear Kitty, I have stretch marks on my boobs, please help. There was never any end to the messages and I usually sat at my table for hours, sipping cups of coffee and peppermint tea as I gave out the advice I wasn’t qualified to give. For three years the café had been my world. I couldn’t face working at home, trapped in my apartment all day with nothing to distract me from the drumbeat of Dear Kitty, Dear Kitty, please help me.

Quote:My daily activities kept me within a five-block radius and had done so for years: I moved between my apartment, the café, Waist Watchers. My life had narrow parameters, which is how I preferred it. I saw myself as an outline then, waiting to be filled in. From the outside, to someone like the girl, I might have seemed sad, but I wasn’t. Each day I took thirty milligrams of the antidepressant Y ——. I had taken Y —— since my senior year of college.

Who finds herself being followed by a manic pixie dream girl.

Quote:She was an odd girl, tramping around in black boots with the laces undone, her legs covered in bright fruit-hued tights, like the colors in a roll of Life Savers.

It then goes on for 4 pages about how miserable her lard-assed (read: she's THREE HUNDRED AND FOUR POUNDS) life is, living in a posh brownstone in Brooklyn (that's being paid for by a family member). She pops antidepressants because she got dumped in college years ago. She hates doing Weight Watchers but dreads getting gastric bypass because she won't be able to eat as much (the word "exercise" isn't even mentioned). It then goes into the horror of her day job, answering letters every day from hysterical teenage girls; fat girls, cutters, all the lovable BPD types that make up a chunk of the current (and future) dating market in the west today.

She then talks about all the clothes she bought for after her surgery...and that's the end. That's it. That's all there is to the excerpt. Didn't even get something teasing the rest of the book.

Post: #12

Any time I see "radical" in a headline = Bad marketing for the idea, good marketing for the click bait.

These people value coercion over persuasion because deep down they don't have the faith that their idea
will pass the common-sense "smell test."
But they're happy for the press, and the press is happy for them.

The cycle goes on...

Post: #13

Time to look for Amazon book reviews of this inspiring novel.

Post: #14

(08-17-2015 05:14 PM)Deuce Anna Half Wrote:  I'm gonna try to give the excerpt a read, but I gotta say something about this shit here:

Quote:"Left wing, liberal and open-minded people will think critically about the government and corporations, but when it comes to fat they just accept everything they are told by diet companies and pharmaceutical companies."

How about doctors? They just accept everything they're told too? It's basic fucking biology, your body is not suited for that shit. That's why you're struggling to walk now. That's why a flight of stairs has you feeling like you're about to die, it's your body telling you "STOP DOING THIS SHIT TO YOURSELF". Every obesity-related health issue is your body setting off it's check engine light, oil light, battery light, alternator light, flat tire warning, everything, and you're cruising along saying "fuck it, fixing my car is just propaganda by the mechanics".

I'd say her hamster has hit light speed but it suffered a coronary already.

Deliberate obesity, and advocacy in favour of it, is self-harm. It is as simple as that. It is a fucking mental illness. Young people who cut themselves or try and kill themselves we generally try to intervene with or stop them from doing it to themselves, but fat acceptance or fat advocacy turns this concept right on its head.

Cancer, heart disease, stroke, diabetes, gout, and high blood pressure don't give a fuck about your self-image or about whether you accept yourself as you are. They don't give a fuck about your conspiracy theories or your hatred of capitalism or of corporations at large. They are not impressed by your novel, your characters, or your opinions. In most respects, these conditions only really care about three things: your BMI, your diet, and your age. And the latter item will be reduced by decades if you keep doing this to yourself.

If indeed you're not clinically insane by declaring implicitly that you're happy to die at a young age because of your obesity, I wouldn't have a problem with it -- so long as you agree to neither seek treatment nor take medication for any of the above conditions or any medical illness connected with your obesity. Everyone in the West pays, indirectly, for the illnesses of others. You do not get one red cent of my money to pay for your lack of self-will and your deliberate self-harming choices.

Post: #15

(08-17-2015 06:23 PM)AnonymousBosch Wrote:  

(08-17-2015 05:56 PM)Days of Broken Arrows Wrote:  and that being obese is an acceptable way to live (false -- ask any doctor).

Things had gotten so bad before I left Australia that doctors within the health system in my town were being brought before complaint tribunals for telling people their obesity was dangerously unhealthy and they that needed to exercise and lose weight, and were being requiring to undertake Sensitivity Training.

W
T
F
?
!!!!!

Post: #16

I enjoy how the author speaks of someone being fat as an entirely different person from someone who isn't fat.

It's almost as if she believes it is impossible for a person to lose weight and live healthily. And since that makes being healthy impossible, she will never make an attempt at losing weight.

Post: #17

(08-17-2015 09:07 PM)cascadecombo Wrote:  I enjoy how the author speaks of someone being fat as an entirely different person from someone who isn't fat.

It's almost as if she believes it is impossible for a person to lose weight and live healthily. And since that makes being healthy impossible, she will never make an attempt at losing weight.

She really does think that. Read the part of the book posted in the link up top. The character sucks at using Weight (pardon, Waist) Watchers, so the ONLY other option she gives herself is gastric bypass surgery. Not trying a better diet, not exercising, those words don't even appear. She treats surgery as an inevitability.

Post: #18

(08-17-2015 09:04 PM)samsamsam Wrote:  

(08-17-2015 06:23 PM)AnonymousBosch Wrote:  

(08-17-2015 05:56 PM)Days of Broken Arrows Wrote:  and that being obese is an acceptable way to live (false -- ask any doctor).

Things had gotten so bad before I left Australia that doctors within the health system in my town were being brought before complaint tribunals for telling people their obesity was dangerously unhealthy and they that needed to exercise and lose weight, and were being requiring to undertake Sensitivity Training.

W
T
F
?
!!!!!

Believe it, mate. Remember, despite the combined forces of Instatwit leaning on Canada's government to keep Roosh out, they still let him in.

Australia threw Julien Blanc out. And he was assaulted by a female protester, too.

Post: #19

Reviews

Such an empowering book. I like reading the one star reviews that go into it.

Post: #20

(08-18-2015 01:09 AM)spokepoker Wrote:  Reviews

Such an empowering book. I like reading the one star reviews that go into it.

Here's a quote from one of the five star reviews:

Quote:I have to admit, I wish Jennifer, the feminist terrorist group from Dietland, was real sometimes.

That review was headed: Pure feminist revenge fantasy joy.

Gotta love people who turn their book reviews into Rorschach inkblot tests that they undertake. Wish we had more five star reviews like that.

Post: #21

(08-17-2015 09:04 PM)samsamsam Wrote:  

(08-17-2015 06:23 PM)AnonymousBosch Wrote:  

(08-17-2015 05:56 PM)Days of Broken Arrows Wrote:  and that being obese is an acceptable way to live (false -- ask any doctor).

Things had gotten so bad before I left Australia that doctors within the health system in my town were being brought before complaint tribunals for telling people their obesity was dangerously unhealthy and they that needed to exercise and lose weight, and were being requiring to undertake Sensitivity Training.

W
T
F
?
!!!!!

The District had lost a huge amount of money via lawsuits when an IRT Doctor had turned out to be drugging and sexually abusing his female patients, and they were terrified of further lawsuits for further sexual abuse, (including one where a gay nurse claimed PTSD a year after a female nurse briefly touched his dick through his shorts), and discriminatory behaviour was similarly on high alert.

There was an official list of 'pre-approved' language and 'suggested dialogues' with patients about weight. I wish I'd kept the damn mail. It was ridiculous.

Doctors can suggest to patients that weight loss and exercise would be potentially-beneficial to a patient's health, but can't say anything about weight being a negative in itself, or use any language that might offend or scare the patient, which limits the health implications that can be discussed: i.e. dropping dead of a massive heart attack.

You can't say:

"You need to go a diet because you are morbidly-obese and are at risk of a heart attack. I'll make an appointment for you with a Nutritionist."

Instead:

"It might be helpful if you would make an appointment to see a Nutrionist".

You leave it at that, and you hope they follow up on it.

Yeah... I know. Remember, Government Bodies are Matriarchal, so will always end up being inefficient by nature.

Post: #22

Interesting review from the Amazon page:

Quote:My own personal health history colored my opinion of this book, so readers of my review should know where I am coming from. I am a woman who is not only a little less obese than the character Plum from this book. Unlike Plum, I didn't let my weight stop me from living life and I never did wacky diets (other than in college when I was a normal weight). But I had an obesity-related heart attack a year ago that almost killed me. That -- not how other people treat you -- is the real cost of obesity. I now have to make lifestyle changes involving food and exercise if I want to life a full life. And it frustrated me to read a book where the emphasis was all on appearance not health.

Post: #23

Post: #24

Plum Kettle
Anastasia Steele
Bella Swan
Katniss Everdeen
Susie Salmon (The Lovely Bones)
Skeeter Phelan (The Help)

...

I show little concern for the incoherent and no doubt poorly-plotted, sparsely characterized purple-prose ramblings of some fringe fatty (1077 followers, good for you!) that no one is going to read anyways...



Why can't any of these chicks give their female characters names that aren't goofy and stupid?

I'll forgive JK Rowling for giving us 'Hermione' because the Harry Potter books take place in a magical, fantastical realm and she has done a service by introducing fantasy literature to slow adults, and she's one of like two female billionaires who didn't become a billionaire the day her daddy died.

Look at those stupid fuckin' names!

The Hunger Games also take place in a different world (a dystopian future in this case) novels are shitty empowerment porn full of bullshit feel-good pretty lies ('girls can be stronger than boys!', 'rich people are evil and poor people are noble and hardworking!'), Katniss Everdeen is a stupid name.

The rest of the books are terrible. I didn't read them all, but they are certainly terrible. Know how I know this without reading them? Look at who likes them; young and older women.

Young women like Maroon 5, freely handing over the details of their life to the NSA via Facebook and overpriced Starbucks lattes with like 600 calories in them.

Older women like Journey, shitty wines with cutesy ironic names and taking vacations to sit in a hotel room and get drunk in places like the Caribbean, Costa Rica and Southern Europe.

Am I wrong to expect their taste in literature to rise above this?

50 Shades of Grey is by far the worst. Anastasia Steele is a TERRIBLE name. None of these damn names sound ANYTHING like what a normal person would be named. Here are some standard female names that are at least believable:

Judy Callahan
Robin Lee
Michelle Stevenson
Dianne Abramowitz
Valeria Martinez
Fiona Liu

I just came up with these now. They are ten times superior. You are not a special snowflake, neither is the poorly-named character in your crappy 'novel'.

Post: #25

^^^^^^

This, +10000. The names of these characters wouldn't be out of place on a My Little Pony product line: "Coming this summer to toy stores near you: Rainbow Dash, Sweetie Belle, Pinkie Pie, Bella Swan, Plum Kettle, and our newest character, Katniss Everdeen with a mockingjay tattooed on her ass."

EDIT: If you want to psychoanalyse the choice (because most fiction writers, and especially most female fiction writers, are conducting amateur self-psychoanalysis when they write) it's as if the authors are so hung up on their (general) lack of femininity they overcompensate with the most soft, limp-wristed character name they can think of. "Hey, if Tiffany is a girl name, and I'm creating a female character, I'll call her Tiffany Twinklefart and make her a female with a capital F!"


In particular, with all these shit female characters, note the crappy sound of each name. It's all sibilants, hushing sibilants, and nasal occlusives, all 's', 'l', 'm', 'n'. Very few to no hard stops, no hard occlusives, no 'p', 'k', 't', and so on. In particular -- no name finishes with a hard occlusive. This is significant. For some reason, characters with the latter sorts of the sounds ending their names sound more compelling. Gene Roddenberry, when making Star Trek, deliberately chose character names that were strong and used these hard occlusives: Kirk, Spock, McCoy, Scotty, Picard, Riker, Data. Fuck, I despise JD Salinger's stuff, but even he came up with a better name for his most famous protagonist: Holden Caulfield.

And it doesn't have to be this way. Compare arguably the most powerful, most upstanding fictional female character of all time: Scarlett O'Hara, in Gone With The Wind and written by card-carrying Southern belle Margaret Mitchell. Doesn't end with a hard occlusive, but the first name ricochets off your teeth and makes you exhale like a dragon to pronounce her surname. Compare that with Katniss Everdeen, whose first name sounds like a deflating balloon and whose last name just disappears into the background like Charlie Brown's does.