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On June 11, the podcast was released ahead of Roxane's Hunger book launch, accompanied by the controversial article, which has since been deleted. The world needs you.Images: Instagram/MiaFreedman | Facebook/TheWallStreetJournal Please try to rise above the people who will tear you down. I apologise for the way my country has treated you. But as an Australian woman, I wanted to speak out about this: Mia Freedman does not speak for me. I haven’t spoken publicly about my experiences as a fat woman for fear of the now-standard internet response: the doxxing, the flame-war, the rape threats. I can’t imagine how difficult it would be if I was not white, born in Australia and cis-gendered. A woman took me aside and told me my dress was too short - imagine trying to have a conversation about a hundred-thousand dollar contract after that! And, as we all know, women are sometimes our worst enemies: because this woman was my size as well. I just attended a conference last week where I was a speaker and my company was an exhibitor. Being a fat woman in a male-dominated industry is difficult. Gian Wild, the author, teaching some accessibility informationīeing a woman in a male-dominated industry is hard at some tech conferences, I am the only woman speaker. The next time I was sexually assaulted I told no one. I escaped shaking and terrified, and went straight to the police booth that was close by, where I was told that I was “too fat to be assaulted”. A man pushed me up against the shelves and put his hands on me. When I was sixteen, I was in the supermarket buying deodorant. We are told in so many ways that a fat woman is not attractive.
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And don’t even get me started on the movies where “fat” (air quotes this time) women find love ( Love Actually or The Truth About Cats & Dogs).
#MIA FREEDMAN ROXANE GAY MOVIE#
Fat people are usually the butt of some joke (think Big Momma’s House or Shallow Hal), the source of torture porn ( Biggest Loser), a source of pity or disgust ( Homer Simpson from The Simpsons or What’s Eating Gilbert Grape), or embracing of society’s expectations of shame and self-deprecation (any movie Rebel Wilson has starred in). Whereas overweight people have apparently chosen to be fat and so are portrayed differently. People with disabilities are either the physicality of evil-incarnate (think Doctor Poison from the Wonder Woman movie or Darth Vader from Star Wars), the source of inspiration porn - first named by the late and great Australian, Stella Young - ( Forrest Gump or Rain Man), or embracing of society’s expectation of sub-human status ( Me Before You or Million Dollar Baby). Woman walks away from a wheelchair towards the sun - yes, people with disabilities are only there for your inspiration I may be fat, but at least I don’t have to watch people laud a film where an obese woman kills herself because her life is not worth living. (For a critique on the movie and it’s use of disability see Emily Ladau’s: “Spare me, ‘Me Before You’: Hollywood’s new tearjerker is built on tired and damaging disability stereotypes”). Think about that for a second, and think about all the people in wheelchairs who watched as mainstream media and people like Mia Freedman - entitled in so many ways - claimed it to be an empowering film.
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Take the movie Me Before You: the plot is that a man is so destroyed by becoming a quadriplegic that his life is not worth living. I also see these attitudes in my industry, where it is people with disabilities who are shamed or made to feel sub-human. I wish I had a dollar for every boss who told me to lose weight, and for every colleague that just had to share some diet tip with me! These attitudes are prevalent in Australian society, and in western society as well. Roxane Gay, photo from Washington Post by Jay GrabiecĪs a white cis-gendered fat (Mia Freedman would call me “super-morbidly obese”) Australian woman, I was appalled by Mia Freedman’s treatment of Roxane Gay.