Crystal

[rodentfanatic.livejournal.com]

Sizeism is (sadly) not limited to LKH. In most media, fat people either just inexplicably don't exist, or, when they do show up, exist as an object of disgust and mockery. Guys get off lighter (Jack Black, Seth Rogan) and can even be painted as charming and lovable protagonists/stars so long as they're funny, (and it seems that a guy can be a lot heavier than a girl can before he's considered "fat" anyway) but a woman...well, if she gets lucky, maybe she gets to be the Fat Comic Relief Best Friend and amuse everyone with her food-obsessions and hopeless man-hungriness. At least she'll get to be a recurring character though, right?

It's been awhile since I read any of the AB books, but among all the problems I remember, fatphobia wasn't really one of them. There was a definite "thin=beautiful" sentiment I suppose (admittedly as much for the men as the women), and Anita got to have her cake and eat it too by weighing some bitty number but also getting to rail against those terrible awful pretty thin blonde ladies because, unlike "boys with breasts", Anita actually has ~*ENORMOUS TITTEHS~* so she totally knows the woes of being plus-sized (not that I do either as a thin woman, but, call it a hunch, I am still pretty sure that just having an epic rack doesn't gain you the shitty treatment that actually being overweight besides just in your chest does--in fact, it probably gets you some Conventional Beauty Standards Bonus Points) Other than that, though, nothing much stuck out that I can recall...

Except Crystal. I believe that was her name, anyway. In Guilty Pleasures she's one of the humans at the party/gathering that Philip takes her to (it was a mixer for humans that were in to vampires, if I recall right) and she's described as looking like a soccer mom and as being quite plump. She also was all over (gasp! how dare she!) pretty-boy Philip, and while I cannot recollect the exact words, it seemed like, in addition to the sin of being a FEMALE coming on to one of Anita's men (was her attitude about this that bad back then? I don't think so, but she also didn't really have any men at that point to feel threatened over...), there was just an overall tone of disdain for her body type in the text that even in high school, with no understanding about anything related to fatphobia or fat-acceptance, I picked up on. If this were another author, I'd take that tone of a sign of prejudice on Anita's part, probably from internalized size-issues of her own, but given that what Anita thinks seems to be what LKH thinks, I'm kind of surprised, given that LKH seems to have (or thinks she has) a somewhat size-positive attitude (note that bashing skinny women does NOT equate to being size-positive).

Can anyone else remember or cite anything relating to this sort of thing that appeared in other books or her blogs? I'm just sort of curious, since it's something that always bugged me whenever she talked about Anita as a fuller-figured woman and that's great etc., etc., but wrote about, to my memory, a fat woman with just such a tone of judgement and disgust. So, what, is it okay to be "fuller figured" as long as it's in ways that society wants and is still considered attractive (tits, hips) or just as long as you keep your mitts off the pretty stripper boys?

Or am I just remembering everything wrong? Because that is totes possible too.

Comments

[cousinmary.livejournal.com]

Anita seems to have a problem with any female characteristic that isn't Anita-like. All the attractive women (Julianna and Bella, for example) are said to look like Anita in some way. Everyone else is defective somehow, too tall, too thin, too fat, too blonde, etc.

I always thought it was funny that it was the -hyena- who was named Narcissus ;-)

[amiedoll.livejournal.com]

The character of Crystal bothered me too. She is described in a very ugly way, as grasping and vacant and almost Zombie like in her desire. Anita pushes her around to get her away from Philip and Crystal has a sob attack and needs to be comforted. Philip is traumatized by the groping and runs off to the bathroom with Anita for a little light petting. Later Crystal is still pouting and upset by Anita in a very juvenile, almost mental impaired way.

I don't think I ever pictured Anita as a fuller figured person, I think she even told us at one point to picture Linda Hamilton from Terminator 2, that she was short but well muscled and yeah large boobed.

I vaguely remember she was pouting to JC at one point that she is no supermodel and he replied that over the years standards of beauty have changed and that he finds her attractive no matter what was in fashion these days. It was Anita's pretty standard "I'm not beautiful" routine while the other person just gaped and said "you really don't know do you?" which has been coming up more and more often in the later books, and with the Merry series as well.

At least she does not constantly vilify the larger community, just the Blondes lol. I can't recall that many larger people in her series, everyone seems to be at a normal weight,

[amiedoll.livejournal.com]

Sorry, I accidentally hit post and can't find my edit button, just wanted to add that I can't really remember many really skinny people either.

[dwg.livejournal.com]

No, you're not imagining it. This is from GP:

A woman stepped into the room. She was around fifty, or maybe a hard forty. Very blonde hair framed a plump face. Even money the blonde came out of a bottle. Plump little hands glittered with rings, real stones. A long, black negligee swept the floor, complete with an open lace robe. The flat black of the negligee was kind to her figure, but not kind enough. She was overweight and there was no hiding it. She looked like a PTA member, a Girl Scout leader, a cookie baker, someone's mother. And there she stood in the doorway, staring at Phillip.

She let out a little squeal and came running towards him. I got out of the way before I was crushed in the stampede. Phillip had just enough time to brace himself before she flung her considerable weight into his arms. For a minute I thought he was going to fall backwards into the floor with her on top, but his back straightened, his legs tensed, and he righted them both.

Strong Phillip, able to lift overweight nymphomaniacs with both hands.

Harvey said, "This is Crystal."

Crystal was kissing Phillip's chest, chubby, homey little hands trying to pull his shirt out of his pants so she could touch his bare flesh. She was like a cheerful little puppy in heat.

And then Anita tells her hands off her Kool Aid, and Crystal starts to cry. Later, Madge, our delightful host of the freak party, gets described as having pale thighs "like beached whales."

To counter it, Luther gets described as having solid-fat that's almost like muscle.

On a side note, there aren't very many hairy dudes in the series either. I don't mean "I can rope a sea turtle with hair from my back," hairy, but facial hair, chest hair, treasure trails, and arms. I know Jason is a stripper so he's waxed and JC has a trail. I get that it's a personal preference thing, especially when it's coming straight out of LKH's fantasies, but...a bit of variety beyond hair/eye colour does not go astray.

[world-dancer.livejournal.com]

Anita isn't fuller figured. She doesn't even weigh enough to safely give blood according to the Red Cross guidelines. That's how massively underweight Anita is.

[world-dancer.livejournal.com]

I always considered that scene to be a matter of wife swapping/key parties/multiple sex partners = gross & insecure. Remember, this is pure, chaste Anita. Remember her?

[rodentfanatic.livejournal.com]

No problem! Yeah, that's how I recall it--she was generally pictured as a grotesque fool who traumatized Philip just by touching him.

I think I originally pictured Anita as a Linda Hamilton type in the early books, with her scars and her hair being the most prominent features in my mind, but as the series went on the features that seemed 'loudest' to me were her so-called shortness, hotwettightness, and being incredibly irritating. My idea of her having a very curvy (big bust, big hips, teeny waist) figure may admittedly have come from how she was drawn in the comic books, though I swear there was a moment when I was just like "oh yeah right" where it was said her tits were of a size that made it impossible for her to cross her arms over them.

As far as skinny people, I was pretty sure at least some of her boys were on the thin side and considered all the more beautiful for it, especially Nathaniel, but now that I think about it I think they were more on the taut-muscular (just not freaky-huge) side, and I just PICTURED them as thin because, honestly, everything about most of them (especially Nathaniel) made me imagine the longhair sparkly-eyed bishounen of anime who are frequently rail-thin. I know there were thin women, double points if BLONDE and/or TALL, who were painted as pretty in the text, usually in connection with their thinness/tallness/blondeness, but that was admittedly not so much in a "actually pretty/prettier than Anita " way so much as "let me wangst about how society says these boys with breasts are hotter than me until my man-harem comes to tell me how much of a babe I am and spurn these same women who get jealous of me for MY uber-hotness"

But aside from Crystal, I can't recall anyone on the heavier side even EXISTING, as you pointed out, except for some men who were not vilified or made laughingstocks for it. Like, I think the fellow in the wheelchair was somewhat heavier, but he was evil because he was evil, his body type was never (to my memory) lambasted as something gross and how-dare-you-be-sexual-you-cow and such.

Sorry about all this "if I remember right" stuff, I don't own the books myself, always just used my library, which carried the series.

[rodentfanatic.livejournal.com]

Really? I must have gotten that impression from the way she's drawn in the comics and her massive hate-on for "the type of women who made me want to lose ten pounds when I looked at them". I figured that she just wanted to have a curvy/fuller-figured (by which I mean T&A not necessarily chubby or overweight) figure but also be oh-so-petite and tiny and have the smallest number, in the face of all basic physics, on the scale possible. Kind of like how I see RP applications where the female characters have a weight listed as being not much above 90 or 100 lbs but then have HUGE (but perky!) breasts and child-bearing hips that somehow fit in to Size Zero jeans at the same time.

[rodentfanatic.livejournal.com]

You sound like you have the right idea. That was also the attitude of someone I knew who was so Anita-like it was scary. Like, I cannot even begin to list the ways and it freaked me out when I realized it. Unsurprisingly, we're not pals anymore!

[rodentfanatic.livejournal.com]

Crushed in the stampede. Not kind enough. Wow, yeah, no wonder this always kind of irked me.

RE hair: But but but if you're not hot by Laurita standards, why do you even exist?!

[dwg.livejournal.com]

Um, I have all the ebooks to date. Most of them are in .lit format, but I can convert them to something else - so if you want them just for reference, I can help out.

[rodentfanatic.livejournal.com]

Naw, it's alright, but thank you very much, that is very kind of you to offer!

[dwg.livejournal.com]

It's the beached whale comment that stuck in my brain for so long and what I wound up using as a word search to find the relevant section, lol.

The other thing LKH seems against is cosmetic surgery, like with Bunny's boob job in Danse Macabre and she has to be physically carried out of the room for being mean to Anita, or I think it's Flirt that described someone as beautiful but it was a face artifice or something like that. I'll have to word search some more.

The only beautiful people allowed are the ones that Anita gets to rubber stamp. :\

[dwg.livejournal.com]

I know! In hindsight, I find it hilarious that Anita is bitchy at Melanie when Mel was all "Every girl should have more than one man! I'll share :D :D :D" and Anita is all "....no thanks," at her collection of snake-dudes.

I miss Melanie a whole lot. :( I am choosing to believe that her and Gretchen are BFFs and plotting Anita's demise.

[rodentfanatic.livejournal.com]

I LOVED MELANIE

I thought she was really cool and was very pleased when she survived to the end! I always hoped she'd come back to get Anita like she vowed and there would be epic fight-age, but, much like Sylvia's lesbianism, it seems she is forgotten. Another topic I've been meaning to start is "what non-Anita ladies from the ABverse would you like to see more of?" but first I'll need to sit down at the AB Wiki site and refresh myself on all the women I miss that have either been demonized out of their original selves or just plain wiped off the face of existence.

And yes, in hindsight that is so lulz.

[rodentfanatic.livejournal.com]

Yeah, I remembered something about someone's thighs like that, I thought it had been about Crystal's.

I notice the view that "beauty is of utmost importance but only NATURAL beauty is ok and actually beautiful and if you had plastic surgery in order to meet the impossible social standards you are expected to in order to be considered attractive and thus worth anything, you are a shallow whore!" is really common, and I'm not surprised she's bought in to that, since it just lets Anita have something else to be superior to all those other prissy vain bitches about.

[darkmanifest.livejournal.com]

Crushed in the stampede. Classy. I'm surprised she didn't throw 'lumbering' in there to replace 'running' and some reference to hippos.

[dwg.livejournal.com]

And nobody else is allowed to be kinky! Either people don't know what this is -- ala, Jessica Arnet so shocked and appalled at Anita getting up on stage to flog Nathaniel, even if he is the neediest bottom ever to bottom -- or there's rabid fetishists that have no idea what the word "no" is. Flirt has a gross discussion with Nathaniel, Jason, and Micah about people who are so into werecreatures, they try to offer the strippers money to be fucked like an animal, and those people are called -- wait for it -- "fur-fuckers"

Nathaniel said, “[The late Mrs Bennington] had money so she got private dances, but she was like most of the fur-fuckers. She seemed to think that we were animals and wouldn’t be able to resist our baser urges, as if because we have a beast inside us we can’t say no, or don’t have the right to say no.”

Jason frowned. “I used to do it after work, never for money, but just because a woman was hot, and she wanted me. But after a while it was as if they’d fuck the tiger in the zoo if it wouldn’t eat them, and they didn’t think of me as much different from that.”

I hugged Nathaniel with one arm and put my other arm past to draw Jason into the hug. “I’m sorry that people are so stupid.”

It's not exactly clear if it's just a fetish for beastiality or therianthropes themselves, but...the hypocrisy, it burns. It's okay when Anita does it, but when other people do it it's bad/wrong/dumb.

[rodentfanatic.livejournal.com]

Furfuckers lol. Also, yeah, that is hardcore hypocritical. I don't think Anita has any humans in her harem at all, and non-humans have been consistently painted as superior to humans both in attractiveness and sexual performance since the beginning anyway and it IS from Anita's POV...so yeah.

[rodentfanatic.livejournal.com]

Not to mention that the word "stampede" implies that Crystal isn't just big enough to be ONE cow, she's a whole herd! Yeah, wow, ditto for surprise that she's even being given the dignity to be described as "running" at all versus lumbering/waddling/etc.

[dwg.livejournal.com]

That, and she thought it was perfectly fine to call someone coffin bait until she started to sleep with vampires. After that, if anyone called her one, it's all HDU.

I kinda lol that "fur-fucker" is the most creative term LKH can come up with for this. I wonder how long it took to think of.

[dwg.livejournal.com]

And then Anita complained about putting on four extra pounds because of how Jean-Claude would have mouthgasms getting to taste what she ate.

[rodentfanatic.livejournal.com]

I realize that different body types will carry weight differently even if they're the same height so what's over/under/normal weight on, say, me, will not necessarily be so on another woman of my same height...but yeah, that's ridic-sounding to me. I'm 5'4 (so just two inches taller than she is) and a little under 115, and I don't have much muscle save for in my calves and my breasts (sorry if this is TMI) are on the small side. Boobs are like a half pound each per cup size or something like that (I think?) so if she was reeeeally thin and just happened to naturally have a big rack (I had a friend like that) then I *might* buy it, but muscle too? No way.

She wants it all. She wants to be toned and muscular so as to look badass (which, hey, is cool because it fits with her job and I get tired of seeing slim fragile waifs somehow hold their own against hulking brutes in terms of physical strength just because people fear giving a woman muscle will make her unattractive and that is The Worst Thing Ever) but she also wants to have CURVE APPEAL with her FUN FUN FUNBAGS...yet, also, have a teeny-weeny number on the scale. Because anything over 120 makes you a fatty fat fatty regardless of realism regarding body type, muscle density, etc. Kinda like how she gets to have loads and loads of hot sex with hot men but oh she's still a Good Girl because she didn't want it she just HAS to do it and isn't she still also being oh so liberated and progressive by doing it...even though she didn't want to?

I roleplay on forums, and I frequently see similar things in regard to the weight ridiculousness with female characters. One recent and particularly bad example was a woman who was 5'2 (and, like Anita, the fact this made her supposedly so ~*tiny and petite*~ was harped on alot in the profile) and MASSIVE (but perky!) boobs and an itty bity waist and "child-bearing hips" and "sexy muscle" yet also wore "Size Zero" jeans and "Extra Small" tops and was a "perfect body weight" of not much more than 120 lbs. Uh, what. No. You can't have big boobs and big hips and wear those sizes, no matter how bitty your waist is, and no matter how "sexy" your muscle is, it, along with the fat it takes to make your T&A, is going to weight something. I'm sorry, but you will have to up the number on the scale, I hope it won't scar you too much.

Ugggh, I think I remember that salad thing from one of her blogs! My dad is sadly the same way. He was overweight as a young man (like, in high school) and I think it really affected him badly, because he's very fitness-obsessed to this day and extremely judgmental of heavy people. I think the case with people like him and LKH is that while they've changed their outside, they haven't gotten rid of all the self-hatred about their body on the inside and it gets re-directed back out at other people who they judge and despise for reminding them about how they used to be.

Although the extra douchyness of also hating thin people and any woman who is not her sounds more along the lines of a girl I used to know who was a lot like Anita in many ways, including that she was REALLY hateful towards thin girls and blonde girls (but thin guys and blonde guys are SEX!) but, though she was plus-sized herself, really judged any woman as well who happened to be heavier than she was...or just in any way, physically otherwise, not her (she was a "not like those OTHER bitchy girl girls!" type too)

[rodentfanatic.livejournal.com]

Bet you anything she also hates when "omg those stupid skinny girls complain about their weight!"

[rodentfanatic.livejournal.com]

Also, yeah, I can't recall ANY overweight women in the series besides her. There are some heavier men, but, whether good guy or bad guy, I don't recall them ever having been treated in the same manner by the text regarding their weight, it was just part of how they looked and that was it. Which, sadly, is a common double-standard. And yeah, that scene totally read as the "gross gross gross fat slut lol!" moment. It was just so mean and uneeded that I was curious if any similar venom ever re-occurred around the same issue in other books, since she just seemed to REALLY be out to insult this woman that I'd expect her not to stop with just one instance.