All About That Bass

[lydy]

So, somehow, I became exposed to a pop song video "All About That Bass." It's not squarely within my interests, but it's pleasant, it's catchy, it's got some positive body image stuff, and I love Sione Marachino's dancing. A lot.

Here it is, in case you care:

I've also stumbled across feminist deconstructions of it. And just to be clear, I'm all good, here. I'm all good with a song celebrating people not being real fucking skinny, good with feminism, good with deconstructions of songs that I like, good with pretty much all of it.

The two main criticisms of the song from a feminist perspective are, I think, both valid. The first is that instead of simply arguing that it's ok to look the way you look, the singer is claiming that she's beautiful because some het boy wants to do her, and so approval is still based on male acceptance. The second is a lot of dislike for the lyric referring to skinny bitches, arguing that accepting of all body types has to include skinny girls, too, and setting up a conflict between fat and skinny girls is not a good thing, either.

While all of this is true, I think that the deconstructions mostly miss the primary message of the song, something that I suspect a lot of younger, heavier women need to know: being fat doesn't mean you will never get laid. Now, I have empirically tested this hypothesis, and can tell you that, yep, I can still get laid when I'm fat. I can also tell you that the thing that has most impeded my ability to get laid has been age, not weight. Turning 40 mattered in a way that gaining 40 pounds did not. Not that I'm feeling deprived, here, in case you were concerned.

But if you're 20 (as I believe the singer is), you have an awful lot of media trying to give you the impression that you are undesirable. Kirstie Alley permanently offended me when she said that she went on a diet because she didn't want to have "fat sex." As if it were some type of especially disgusting thing, to have sex while you weren't Hollywood thin. And I think there is a very real amount of insecurity, especially when you're young and don't have a lot of experience with sexuality, your own and other people's, to assume that you will not be able to find sex. And love. And sex. And this very silly, slight song is actually, I think, about the fact that no, really, it's ok. You will get laid. And that message? I like it a lot.

Also, that black guy dancing? I find that his name is Sione Marachino, he has some silly video of him in a parking lot that went viral, and I'd do him in a second. That boy has the moves, and is the chief reason I've watched this silly video several times.

Comments

[nellorat.livejournal.com]

I'm glad you brought the video to my attention! Especially, as a Barbie fan both nostalgic and ironic (must put up pics of my Pervert Barbies), I love how they used that imagery, including the guy like the Ken doll.

But I'm very ambivalent about it. The things you mention, yeah. (For one poem, I was happy to come up with "hungry women" instead of thin or whatever--anything natural is good, but that's only self-denying women on hunger-based weight-loss diets.) Also, I'm really sensitive to the idea that fat some places is good & others not so. As I'm getting older & becoming bigger around the middle, the "fat is OK as long as it's T or A" bugs me more and more.

Also, it bugs me that the only really fat person shaking it for real is a guy!

For all-out, over-the-top gratified fat lust, I recommend "It's Raining Men" by The Weather Girls. And "Big Girl (You Are Beautiful)" by MIKA has some of the same big is better and "curves in all the right places," but shows some larger women really rockin' it & is high-energy fat action!

I also am not dissing the song you shared. I've been a fat-acceptance activist for over 30 years now, and I've often said that the public image of fat people is so low that we need to use any scraps of fat-affirming pop culture we can scratch up. It would be nice if that weren't so.

By the way, in this LJ entry I rambled on about appearance standards, including the admission that my self-esteem, also, has suffered from my being old in a way that I could get past over being fat. I was a little disappointed that it didn't start a wider discussion. I'd love to talk about that with you, here there or elsewhere.

[lydy.livejournal.com]

I do think it is relevant that "All About That Bass" was written and performed by a 20 year old. Remember being 20? It's not exactly an age filled with wisdom and perspective. It is, however, an age filled with huge sexual insecurity. And that, I think, is what "All About That Bass" is really about.

I note that in "It's Raining Men" all the men are appallingly buff. It's a pleasant change to have the boys be the ones who are objectified, but it feels a bit uncomfortable, to me.

I don't really identify with being fat. I mean, I am on the heavy side, and I'm sure that my doctor would identify me as obese. Over the course of the last seven years, my weight has gone from about 180 to 113 to 195. I knew when I didn't weigh very much that this was a temporary situation, and did not get attached to my low weight. It wasn't sustainable. It did provide an interesting perspective, though. Because I'm well over 40, mostly people didn't notice the weight loss. If I had been younger, I would probably have seen a significant up-tick in sexual interest when I was skinny. Instead, one of my regular lovers remarked with distress, "It's like trying to bed a 14 year old."

Sexual attraction turns out to be incredibly plastic in most, but not all, people. We are bombarded with messages that claim otherwise. There's the "health" and "beauty" industry that try to insist that there are a few, specific physical characteristics that will get you what you want. Long, beautiful hair, skinny bod, perfect skin, the right scent... It's quite narrow. Oh, and yes, all of a sudden unnaturally white teeth are on the list of things that will get you laid. On the other end of the spectrum, there are people who argue that it is terrible and shallow to be attracted to the physical and we should only desire each other based on personality and emotion. That is equally wrong, though in the current cultural context probably less damaging.

I am sometimes uncomfortable with the fat acceptance movement because I think that some people make claims which are not true and not helpful. Weight absolutely does have some health impacts. Greater weight increases sleep apnea, for instance. It also puts greater strain on the knees. These are simple, mechanical issues that you don't get around. Gravity is real. There are some correspondences between other health issues such as heart disease and diabetes, but there are really good critiques about why concentrating on weight is exactly the wrong approach. I also am not too happy with the people who claim that fat is beautiful in ways that mirror the claims that skinny is beautiful. I think that fetishizing weight does no one any good, regardless of the weight chosen to fetishize. I find that my own standards of beauty for women have evolved over the years, and now have a lot more to do with how the person carries herself, her physical movement, than her weight.

[bibliofile.livejournal.com]

I too like that video! Not just the tune but the variety of the body shapes -- and they're all pretty good dancers.

The song itself reminds me of some reggae-ish song from maybe the '60s or '70s, though I haven't been able to place it yet.

And for the record, weight has always been the main factor in my apparent attractiveness-to-others. And I wasn't always this distance from skinny, either. People are weird.

[apostle-of-eris.livejournal.com]

A happy, bouncy "un-fuck you right back!" is a good thing. With enough back seat quarterbacks, yeah, it could have met stronger standards of ideological purity, but that's not what it's about. It doesn't have to complete the revolution to advance it.
I've gotten grumpier and grumpier lately about the One Drop school of political correctness: "If there is any criticism possible, then it's reactionary from the very pits of hell." This video attacks the Only One Good Right Way head on, the very heart and soul of revolution. If that doesn't count because it doesn't bring the Kingdom of God right now, I don't want to hear about it.

[lydy.livejournal.com]

I know a lot of people react to deconstruction this way, but I think that a lot of people who do deconstruction don't actually mean that something that has a flaw is therefore of the pits of hell, from the outer darkness, and must be rejected with all its works. I think that deconstruction is fine and useful. For me, it doesn't make me like things less. And I think that many of the people who do deconstructions continue to love the things that they identify as problematic. The utter rejection is often a projection of the reader, not the intent of the writer.

I think there is real value in looking at things and seeing where underlying prejudices and errors exist. I note that not a one of the girls in this video is actually fat. Meghan Trainor is not a size 2, but I bet she's a size 12 (which was Marilyn Monroe's dress size, by the way). I note that it's ok for Sione Maraschino to be probably in the neighborhood of 350 pounds, but he's a boy. And he's also being played in part for comedic effect. (But boy can that boy dance!) While pushing back against the norms, I think it's useful to see the places where it reinforces them.

I do think that the criticism that the singer is relying on approval of men is slightly misplaced because I think that they are missing the fact that what Trainor's really talking about is her ability to get laid. And it is actually, therefore, relevant that there are boys that like her booty. Self-affirming is all very good, but honestly, getting laid is fucking important, and not a solo sport.