shit, I caught Teh Fatz! what'll I do now? I'll be horribly disfigured for LIFE!

You know what pisses me off about the Obesity Epidemic? It's not just the fact that it's based on pure bullshit, the fact that the BMI is 16 kinds of laughable and a joke of a statistical hack¹. It's not the fact that we hear endlessly about it from the media, and What You Can Do To Protect Your Children.

It's the fact that they call it an epidemic. The implication is, it's communicable. In pretty much every other medical context, epidemic is a term used to describe the spread of a contagious disease.

The fat's catching, folks! Run for the hills! RUN, RUN, RUN, LEST YE TOO BECOME FAT!

Even if there were a genuine health concern here -- I don't concede there is but what the hell, let's pretend there is for a moment -- this is not a particularly helpful way of viewing something that isn't a communicable disease. Framing a healthy diet and exercise in the context of precautions you can take to keep from catching Teh Fatz makes them directly comparable to washing your hands regularly and not making out with the public water fountain. And that comes off as completely fucking ridiculous. I mean, really?

And, of course, implying that obesity is, by extension of being a disease and an epidemic, contagious reinforces loathing of fat people: they're unclean, you see. Unhealthy, unclean, unsanitary. They're destroying their own health and yours too. Just by being there!

I know I'm not the only one who finds the whole farce completely fucking ludicrous. I just wish there was anyone in the middle of the circus raising a voice to point out what a farce it is. Not just the BMI, but all of it, including the hysteria. (When is hysteria ever remotely useful? Honestly.)

But that would be endorsing obesity, of course. And that would be like infecting everyone with H1N1.

¹Ironically, yes, that article talks about obesity being a kiiiiiiiller. It does, however, nicely deconstruct how full of shit the BMI is and what a stupid basis it is for advice regarding management of anything.

guess what? still art.

Well, that's fascinating. I'm watching this hour-long feature on women in film for class, 'Reel Women'; I believe it's about twenty-five years old. Anyway, Susan Seidelman is described as being "one of the rare American women filmmakers today to be accruing a body of work. Now, what you see with a lot of women directors today is that they will make one or two very uniqe and remarkable efforts and then they'll either disappear altogether or they'll go into television."

I recognise that this really is true, even today: television is separate, different, lesser than film. Television isn't anything to take seriously. It's not really art. Film struggles enough to be taken seriously, and so it makes damned certain to make it very clear that television stuff isn't. You have to have *something* to be better than.

To which I say, like hell.

You know what, right here I will own up to being a populist hack; I don't claim to be otherwise. I want to write pulp fiction, science fiction; entertainment for the masses. I don't deny that.

But I'll also tell you that what the populist hacks of television (and literature, and, and, and...) do is damned well art too. I'll defend television as much as I'll defend quilting and other fiber arts as arts. I'll defend it the way I'll defend tagging as art.

That you don't respect something doesn't make it not art.

I find it fascinating that television was not and to a great extent still is not regarded as a body of work to be considered. That it isn't a meaningful aspect of those directors' careers. Really?

You know, I would love to know what women directors made a distinct but short mark in film and then went into television actually did in television. I think it's as important to consider as the films they made.

I really shouldn't be in film studies, I think. I should be in media studies, classes that look at film and television more equally.