Sparkle Harder Essay No. 2 — "The Delayed Adolescence Unique to the Fat Experience."

It’s my 35th birthday tomorrow (look out motherf***ers, I can finally run for President!!).

Birthdays inevitably have me thinking about milestones, and what I’m supposed to have achieved relative to my peers with every year that passes. As you can imagine, sometimes this puts me in a rather melancholy mood — when I should be celebrating with my friends and loved ones. I’m happy to say that this year is a little bit different.

The Delayed Adolescence Unique to the Fat Experience.

Delayed Adolescence is a concept I first read about with regards to the queer experience —

For most heteronormative, body-normative people, the following developmental stages play out on this timeline :

Adolescence - between the ages of 13-17

Emerging Adulthood - 18-27 (or 33, depending on who you ask).

In adolescence, we are first exploring issues of identity and sexuality. We are trying things out. We are having our first romantic relationships and our first intimate experiences. 

For many queer people (particularly millennial queers and older), we don’t fully experience this normative adolescent stage. Because of wrestling with our issues of identity and attraction, often with fear and often without support and guidance of elders, it often takes us longer to even get to the point of intimate experimentation, or “practice” if you will. Therefore many queer people experience a second, delayed adolescence in our early to late 20s. We are quite literally having the first experience of holding someone’s hand and feeling our heart beat out of our chest and the brains leak out of our ears — sometimes at 25 instead of 15.

This means that often our milestones are completely out of synch with the normative achievement progression. Everything — from marriage to house-buying to kids to retirement, can get bumped back by years or even decades.

I think this phenomenon is also typical to the fat experience. 

Those of us who are “lifetime fatties”, who were perhaps fat children and fat adolescents — often felt completely betrayed by and disconnected from our bodies as teenagers. Many of us were endeavoring to fundamentally make ourselves smaller before our bones were even done growing. 

Because of external or internalized fatphobia (or usually, both), many of us were kept from those normative adolescent experiences. Many of us were not able to experiment or experience love and sex  — until we more clearly understood our innate value and worthiness as human beings (something which diet culture endeavors to tell us is directly dependent on our size). This is part of why Fat Liberation is so meaningful to so many of us — it gives fat people permission to actually, finally live. The journey towards accepting that permission, for me, was years in the making.

Here I am, facing another birthday — but this year without that comparative thinking melancholy.

Despite family members having different hopes for my timeline, different definitions for success than mine — perhaps my development, my mistakes, my growth, and my choices were valid. 

I can’t compare myself to the girl I knew from high school who got married at 25, house at 30, 2 kids at 35. Our lives and our priorities are on completely different tracks, neither more valid nor valuable.

But I can give myself the space and grace to go through every developmental stage on my own timeline and in my own order, without shame. I can give myself permission to define success as I see it, honoring my values and my community.

I can be proud of myself for so many things.

I can think through the life I have built — the people I love, the art I have made, the mutual aid I have organized. I can think through what I have actually prioritized, and the impact those priorities have had.

And when I do, I’m proud.

I’m proud of the person I am, and the person I’m still learning to be. Not too bad for 35.

Ways to Cope with the Fleeting Nature of Fat Representation

You’ll have to watch my Instagram stories (added to highlights) if you care to know which particular fat celebrity’s dramatic weight loss post inspired this — but honestly it doesn’t matter. This is something that frequently happens to fat people as they gain visibility, and it’s something we can allow ourselves to process with nuance.

So, here’s the thing:

• It can be really heartbreaking when a fat celebrity endeavors to fundamentally change their body/make themselves dramatically smaller. There is no way around that. We have so little fat representation and visibility in the arts, it’s hard not to take it personally when that representation is taken away. For a moment — their beauty, their talent, was ours to take pride in.

• Bodies are not stagnant. They change throughout our lifetimes for all kinds of reasons. Asking anyone else to stay in any particular body, for any reason, is not aligned with fat liberation. It’s easy to feel like you have a claim on a fat body that has made you feel more at home in yours — but you don’t.

  Things to have compassion for:

  • Someone climbing higher in a deeply fatphobic industry like entertainment is enduring pressure from every gatekeeper they interact with. They are likely having roles and contracts offered to them with weight loss contingency clauses, contracts of which everyone who works for them gets a cut — therefore even their most trusted team/advisors are invested in them becoming smaller.

  • If they are compulsively working out or leaning into disordered eating patterns in order to achieve their goal, they are in mental anguish. They are thinking about little else other than how much food they are allowed to have and whether they have “earned it”.

  Things to understand:

  • They are eager to reap the rewards of the punishment they have endured. They are seeking the mainstream praise and validation they were never given in their fat bodies. They will be eager to show off the work they have done to conform. They will undoubtedly make silly, dangerous comments like all you have to do to lose weight is take a bubble bath instead of eating. They will conflate health with deprivation. They will soak up every affirmation that the pain was worth it, and live in fear that they won’t be able to maintain it.

We can make space for our grief, have compassion for what they are enduring, and also let their predictable, conformist show-and-tell behavior and food moralizing bounce off of us without harm.



Sparkle Harder Essay No. 1 — "What'll It Be Honey?"

This month I am thinking about shame.

How it blooms in us, even when we are sure we are beyond it. How it asks us to question our worth, our decisions, our right to say no.

I’m re-reading Sonya Renee Taylor’s, “The Body is Not An Apology” this month, a book that has truly helped me work through my own internalized fatphobia. I returned to it recently on a quest for nuggets of wisdom about boundaries (long story short: I’m workin’ on ‘em).

 Early on in the book, Sonya asks the reader the question:

“In what ways have you been asked to apologize for your body?”

It took a minute for this question to actually penetrate the arrogance that sometimes shows up, convincing me that I am liberated, I am healed — that shame doesn’t darken my doorway anymore. 

But as I allowed myself to consider the question more deeply — those apologies started rolling through. I felt them with a somatic impact — that anxious tingle I get when I feel like I’m crowding someone on a plane & taking up more space than I should. That feeling of panic that blooms in my tummy when I realize I’m walking as fast as I can and that I still can’t keep up the pace with the group of friends I’m with. The burn on my neck during the scramble to get up off my knees gracefully from the stage — because a director insists I sing the aria on the floor. Dining with someone with a much different appetite than mine — that prickle that makes me feel like I should keep pace with what they order, versus what I actually need to quell my hunger. 

In all of these moments, I am honoring the privilege and assumptions of others over the needs of my own body. In these moments — I am embarrassed. I feel shame. And I feel that ugly word “should”. I *should* be able to fit in that seat like everybody else, I *should* be able to keep up the pace with this group, I *should* be able to do whatever a director asks of me in a scene.

When in reality it’s an access issue. It’s an inclusivity issue. It’s an abilities issue. 

It’s NOT a *something-is-wrong-with-my-body issue*. 

 So this is what I will picture when I lay my head down on my pillow tonight…I will visualize these scenes, and I will drift off into a deep and shameless sleep.

Someone flops next to me in the middle seat, and pushes the armrest down, painfully pinching down into my hip. I flash them a grin, offer them gum and hand sanitizer, and ask them if they don’t mind keeping it up as it actually hurts me when it’s down. They say “I’m so sorry, of course!”. I thank them, put in my headphones and drift off to sleep.

My friends are almost three yards ahead and I am breathing hard. I stop, cup my hands around my mouth and yell “Hey assholes — you’re walking faster than I am able!” They circle back, throw their shoulders over mine, and we all stride together anew, laughing and happy.

A director gives me the staging — he would like me to fall to my knees for the aria. I straighten my spine, throw back my shoulders, and say sweetly, “You know what — I had a different idea for this aria…it involves me staying on my feet and I’d love show you if you don’t mind…”

The waitress at the deli flips a sheet on her pad, looks at me and says, “what’ll it be honey?”

I smile and ask:

“What’s your favorite thing on the menu when you’re really hungry?”

A fat-friendly home accessibility checklist

Is your space accessible to fat friends and loved ones?

*This checklist was originally posted on Instagram @sparklejams. Scroll to the bottom to view all ten downloadable slides.

It’s not just public spaces like airplanes, parks, and restaurants which are often designed to be hostile to fat people — very often, visiting the home of a normative-bodied friend can feel like a very physically unfriendly, uncomfortable experience. When you host fat people – are you considering whether they will feel comfortable and safe in your space?

You will likely not be able to accommodate all of the items on this checklist at once  — that is okay. Go through the checklist: assess your current space. As you have the capacity, the privilege, and the resources — do what you can to make your space more fat and disability friendly. You might see your fat friends more often :) Don’t have any fat friends? Why tf not?? (Maybe it’s because there’s no where to sit).

Fat and disability communities often intersect, hence the inclusion of suggestions for home-owners wishing to invest in a more permanent accessibility standard. 

I invite all my fat and disabled comrades to add demands in the comments.

_____________

Normalize providing accessibility details to every new guest to your home (literally put it on printed and digital invitations!), such as:

• how many stairs to the front door, and to the main social area (backyard deck stairs, etc.)

• is there an accessible bathroom on the main floor

• if there is extreme heat, what kind of temperature control do you have (AC, fans, etc)

• if your gathering is in an outdoor space, will any of your outdoor furniture accommodate a fat person — or should they expect to bring their own foldable chair?

Accessibility checklist: Seating

• Kitchen/dining room chairs do not have arm rests

• Deep, sturdy couches and lounge chairs 

• At least some living room seating options which are not low or close to the ground (you can easily raise your current furniture with lifts)

• Chairs with the highest weight capacity available — there are many stylish options which hold up to 600 pounds.

• Bar stools are not the only seating option ( I cannot emphasize this enough………………)

Seating Minimum:

 Consider your fat guest. There should always be at least one seating option in each room in which they can sit comfortably and without fear.

Accessibility checklist: Bathrooms

• Wide, high toilet

• Ample space between the toilet and walls/sink/door.

• Walk-in shower with rail, bench, and removable shower head

Bathrooms Minimum:

• Notice to your guests about how accessible your bathroom is

• Adjustment of any items which may crowd the toilet, like trashcans, plungers, or shelving.

Accessibility Checklist: Clearance

• Clear walkways and hallways 

• Allow for at least 32” of space between furniture pieces for ease of space.

For home-owners:

Open floor plans & wide hallways.

Widen doorways or add offset hinges to give an extra few inches of space 

Build a ramp to the front door — you will likely need a permit depending on where you live.

Add grab bars in the bathroom around the toilet/ shower.

Invest in a roll-in shower.

Install a toilet riser.

Rethink flooring — hard surfaces are easier to navigate with walkers and wheel chairs than carpets.

Replace round doorknobs with lever handles.

The Fat Protestor: a short guide to protesting while fat

I have learned through trial and error at marches, demonstrations, sit-ins, die-ins, and direct actions of all kinds. I wanted to share what I’ve learned so that my fellow non-Black fat people can feel empowered to put their bodies on the line in solidarity with their Black comrades — against police terrorism, systemic racism, and the unjust murders of Black Americans. Fat people are an asset to activism. Let us honor our bodies as the gifts that they are. Click through to see all 9 slides.

Sparklejams Fat Lib Resource Library

In an effort to make the resources I share on Instagram more permanent and easily accessible (and to take a tiny bit of control back from a fatphobic platform and algorithm which continues to shadowban and arbitrarily remove posts showing fat bodies), I’ve organized every linkable resources from my stories into a searchable spreadsheet. Everything from quantitative research on the science of weight stigma to fat consumerist blogs containing reviews of mattresses and furniture. It’s all searchable by content and category, and it’s free.

Sparklejams Fat Lib Resource Library

Fat suits take jobs from fat performers ( here's looking at you, Falstaff)

One of the few explicitly fat roles in the operatic repertoire is that of Falstaff by Giuseppe Verdi. It’s Verdi’s only comic opera, and it was the last thing he ever wrote. It tells the Shakespearean story of Sir John Falstaff and the Merry Wives of Windsor. It features, among other things, an always stressful ensemble patter section in the first act with the leading men and women simultaneously singing in different time signatures, a truly masterful fugue which ends the piece by breaking the fourth wall and poking fun at the audience, as well as one of the most magical arias ever written for soubrette soprano, “Sul fin d’un soffio etesio”, or, Nanetta’s aria. The aria requires a perfect, silvery float and the breath control of a free diver. Here’s a video of American soprano Kathleen Battle singing a shimmering, incandescent version.

The young woman sings to the other women and ensemble in the moonlight, everyone dressed up as fairies and nymphs in an elaborate plan to prank Falstaff in the dark woods as a punishment for being an all-around rascal. Kind of a fun women-get-the-revenge-in-the-end story that rarely happens in opera. 

The catch being that Falstaff and his supposedly disgusting fatness is the entire butt of the joke. 

The final act with Nanetta as the fairy queen and the prank in the woods ends with all the women shoving and pinching and poking Falstaff with sticks and literally rolling him around on the floor and scaring the ever-loving sh*t out of him. Between the fatphobia and the quasi-comic violence and the fairy disguises which always require masks you can only partially see out of and the punishing Italian tongue twister “Pizzica, stuzzica, spizzica, pungi spiluzzica, finch’egli abbai!” — this scene always stressed me tf out in performance.

So who cares, right? This is one of many, many pieces of music composed in the 19th century which are unsurprisingly problematic by modern standards. But unlike other problematic masterpieces which have been recognized by the industry as requiring context or commentary or at least some thoughtfulness in modern performance — most famously, Madame Butterfly — Falstaff gets none of that recognition or thoughtful contextualization. And I would venture to say close to 100% of productions use a singer wearing a fat suit or prosthetics to play the role of Sir John.

I’ve had the pleasure of having performed two different roles in this opera — the soprano leader of the pack, Alice Ford, and Mistress Quickly in my mezzo days (back when I was fun). Both production teams were populated with brilliant people that I deeply respect.

But with both roles and both productions, fat suits were used, and I was in the uncomfortable position of playing a fatphobic character whilst being fat myself. Those productions pre-dated my fatpolitik, so rather than really question the ethics of the fat suit and the general sh*t-show of a plot, most of my focus was centered on the anxiety of what the audience was thinking about while watching me. The character Alice goes on and on about how fat and disgusting Falstaff is — and as I sang those words and had to live in a character uproariously laughing with her friends and daughter as they make plans to f*ck with this genuinely annoying, misogynistic, gluttonous, slovenly, cheap, (but above all else, FAT) creep who thinks he has a chance at getting laid — much of what I thought about throughout that (besides that super hard ascending line to a C natural in gaie comari di Windsor) was, “God they must all be thinking about my actual fat body as I make fun of his faux one”.

Years later, with space away from the piece and a world of change in my thoughts about my right to make art and music no matter what my body looks like — all I can think about is what a terrible piece it is to sit through. Not to knock the bard, who I hold in such high esteem — but the plot is literally, *fat man has the audacity to think women find him attractive and is soundly mocked and humiliated for the transgression*. 

The music is a masterwork — but I can tell you that the way it is commonly presented, it is just not funny to modern audiences. No matter how funny or great the singers are. Collectively watching a dude in a fat suit get poked with sticks and dumped out of a laundry basket into a river. Hilar. 

I’m NOT saying to take it out of the repertoire. But doesn’t it deserve a fresh perspective? One that acknowledges that fat people are…human beings? One that presents the complex, devious, brave & silly John Falstaff as a real person?

In the words of my favorite ass-kicker of late, Elizabeth Warren, “understand this”: it is a moral wrong and a distasteful, dehumanizing practice to produce operas, plays, or films which feature performers in fat suits.

I’m betting the rationale for the fat suit on the part of production teams has often been something along the lines of — well it would be too cruel and uncomfortable to hire a fat baritone to sing this role. And I would ask: how is it any less cruel when it stars a normative bodied baritone in a fat suit? It’s still about a fat *person*. It still dehumanizes *fat people*. Even more so — because actual fat people aren’t even allowed on the stage to participate in a story that manages to give a glimpse of the real life cruelty that they regularly endure. No matter how grotesque and outlandish you make the fat suit and the costume. No matter how silly and cartoonish the character can be. No matter how deftly conducted and gloriously sung.

It’s still about a stigmatized group of people who often aren’t even allowed on the operatic stage in any role these days — even when it’s to play a fat character. Nothing about that makes me want to spend an evening at the opera, I’ll tell you that much. Not even for the music. I’ll listen to Kathleen Battle sing Nanetta on youtube and call it a f*cking night.

Comparison Thinking: Sanders v. Warren on LGBTQ+ Policy Proposals

I wanted to go through and compare my top 2 candidates on their LGBTQ+ policy proposals. Warren is my top choice for many reasons, but seeing the depth, breadth, nuance, and intersectionality with which she approaches the issues we face makes it very clear to me why she would make such an excellent President. These are summaries of the policy proposals contained on each candidate’s website. Please head to www.berniesanders.com and www.elizabethwarren.com for further detail and supporting research.

Fat People Face Extreme Danger in Police Custody

Almost a year ago to the day, I was jailed for a political protest for the first time in my life. I was arrested, transported and held for approximately six hours with six fellow protestors in one of the cells of a quiet, empty police station in a wealthy D.C. neighborhood. Throughout the process interacting with the Capitol Police, the Secret Service, and the D.C. Metro police, I was treated with courtesy and respect.

 As far as arrests go, a political protest in D.C. is about as low stakes as it gets. The only mitigating factor was the proximity of our action to the White House, which increases legal consequence for protestors. Nevertheless, a small group of white and white-passing women with no criminal records, undertaking advance communication with the police over an intended political protest in the nation’s capital, expect and maintain a boatload of privilege throughout such an endeavor.

 I was treated with dignity throughout most of the process, and yet my experience demonstrated something I, naively, did not anticipate.

 I’m fat — and before you protest at my use of that word, you should note that I, like many fat people, prefer it as a neutral descriptor as opposed to patronizing euphemisms like curvy or hyper-medicalized, dehumanizing terms like ob*se.

 I’ve been fat my entire life — and on the Fat Spectrum , a tool created by fat people to more precisely talk about the fat experience, I’ve always fluctuated between Mid-Fat (sizes 20-24) and Super-Fat (sizes 26-32).

 What I experienced during my arrest showed in stark relief the deep and extreme danger fat people are in when they are arrested. There are police protocols and infrastructure in place that put our lives at risk — and my experience, which I will relay in detail, gave me new eyes with which to see the murder of Eric Garner and the wrongful deaths of so many others. His death happened in the way it did because of both his race and his body. The racial bias present in our culture and criminal justice system enabled a police officer to feel justified and protected while acting outside of the law to physically punish and dominate Mr. Garner, to the point of death; the weight bias present in our culture and criminal justice system implicitly blamed Mr. Garner’s body and accompanying asthma for his own death at the hands of the police. No person of any race should be put in a chokehold and ignored as they plead for breath, and no person of size should ever be restrained in prone position, which increases chance of death via positional asphyxia for those with a higher body mass index. [i]

---

During the last half of September 2018, I watched with the rest of the nation as Dr. Christine Blasey Ford testified to the Senate about her assault, perpetrated by Supreme Court Justice then-nominee Brett Kavanaugh. I watched her soft-spoken courage in the midst of a media nightmare, and I watched his indignant, barely contained rage as he rudely scoffed at every question, his entitlement — his ownership of the seat he had not yet been awarded practically oozing out of his pores.

 Like so many other women in the U.S. who are survivors of sexual assault, I immediately saw — no — physically felt myself within her testimony. Panic, shame, rage. I felt paralyzed as I watched her tear her wounds back open out of devotion to country, and then be thanked and dismissed by the old white men in power to whom women’s pain means less than nothing.

 I couldn’t take it, and I saved my Facebook friends one more rant by jumping in the car and driving down from New York to D.C. to join up with an activist group that was organizing a direct protest action. There were marches planned by other groups I had been involved with, but this time I knew a march alone wasn’t going to be enough to soothe my anger and sadness. I needed more catharsis than a caustic homemade sign could give. I needed to do *something* in order to not feel so damn powerless and alone in my dissent.

 By The People — an impeachment-focused group — was the community I found. The action we planned and executed involved a small rally in front of the White House, and then a group of core protestors, including myself, using our bodies to block the Eisenhower Building entrance to the White House. This entrance is the most commonly used for daily White House business, so the goal was to interrupt the flow of Senators and staffers and dignitaries, even for a few minutes, to signal our protest of the Trump administration’s utter disrespect of and disregard for women. BTP organized in a compassionate, people-first way, coaching us on what to expect during our arrest and teaching us the stoplight signal system that allows any participant to cease their involvement at any point during an action, based on their evolving personal needs. I felt anxious, but prepared and determined.

The rally went as planned. I was one of several speakers, relaying briefly my own experience with sexual assault and what it meant to me to be there that day. We collectively marched our banner down the street and around the corner, and then the seven of us continuing the action sat down and locked arms to block the entrance while the rest chanted and cheered us on from across 17th St.

 The message on our banner and on our lips: We do not consent.

Tracy protesting in front of the Eisenhower Building entrance to the White House (partial, far right).

As we were on White House grounds, we were arrested by the Secret Service Uniformed Division. My two arresting officers asked me to get to my feet (for our collective safety, the seven core protestors had committed to cooperate with officer instructions once the process of arrest had begun), and then pulled me to the side and began patting me down. At this point, I asked them to cuff me with my hands in front of my body, as my wrists do not comfortably or easily cross behind my back. I was politely refused on the grounds of protocol. Off came the shoelaces and on went the misleadingly harmless-looking plastic zip tie cuffs reserved for protesters and underage drinkers in Adams Morgan.

 I was immediately in pain — not unbearable — but my wrists forcefully strained against the cutting plastic, twisting backwards farther than would be comfortable for anyone. It’s important to remember that as a size 26, the circumference my wrists have to travel in order to meet behind my rounded body is simply a farther reach than that for a normative body. My body is larger than average, but my arms are not longer — surely it makes sense to those that don’t live in my body why it would be more taxing and likely more painful for a fat person to be cuffed behind their back.

 Once I was put into the wagon, my pain level got significantly worse. The police van had a low bench, about a foot off the floor, on each side, and the van was bisected by a grate front to back to separate the prisoners on each side. I was instructed to step up into the van and sit down on the bench, and upon doing so I realized two things: 1) my shoulders now felt close to dislocation 2) my breathing felt suddenly very shallow. My wrists against the wall of the van pitched my body forward, and my chest met the tops of my knees thanks to that low bench.

 My fellow protestors started nervously chatting and singing protest songs to keep each other calm, and all I could do was disengage and quietly focus on my breathing.

 I’m an opera singer and have spent more than 15 years of my life in private technical training, post graduate work, and professional apprenticeships studying how breath works and how it can be regulated for the purposes of efficient, resonant, bel canto style singing. I essentially have a Master’s degree in artful respiratory function.

 When I folded myself down onto that bench seat with my arms behind my back, I instantly felt the unease of shallow breath. I wasn’t sure if it was possibly the pain and anxiety triggering panic — but I suspected that the position I was in was impacting my ability to fully inflate my lungs. I did the only thing I knew to do and began working through breathing exercises that I would teach in any voice lesson, which by design would keep my breath from getting any “higher”, or more shallow, than it already was. Quietly exhaling on the “s” consonant in a slow count: 5-4-3-2-1 *cool inhale through my nose and mouth with the back of my tongue raised* 10-9-8-7-6-5-4-3-2-1. **repeat**.

 The exercises were helping to keep the pain on the edges of my vision, but they were not solving what I realized was becoming a problem: I was not getting enough air. I used all of my concentration to keep the numbers steady and to stay calm.

 We were held on site in the van for a half hour, and then they started the engine and we were off to be booked into a police station across the Capital. All told we were in that van for about an hour, and by the end of the winding ride through the endless labyrinth of Washington DC, my breathing had become noticeably ragged. I could only take very short, shallow breaths, pushing them out again as quickly as I could in order to take more air in. The women with me were very concerned and repeatedly asked if they should yell through the divide for help.

 According to a 2011 study by Coventry University, “seated restraint positions with the person leant forward may increase the risk of harm or death during prolonged restraint. The risk will be further increased where the person exhibits higher BMI.” This study found that a fat person, or anyone with large waist girth, restrained in a seated position, leaning forward or with their chest near their knees, experiences significant reduction in lung function, and is at a much higher risk of positional asphyxia. In other words: fat people can easily die from asphyxiation when restrained in a leaning forward seated position. [ii]

I had not read this study or the other research on positional asphyxia at the time, but I knew that I couldn’t get enough air and that it was very nearly an emergency situation. Right when my panic was reaching its peak and I was gathering courage to scream my head off for a medic (this is a tip off for how scared I was, as seeking medical attention from a healthcare professional unfamiliar to me is not something I do casually…I don’t know if you know this, but fat people do not always receive compassionate, holistic care from doctors), we pulled into the gated garage of the police station. My eyes watered from the gratitude of impending relief.

 They parked the van next to the loading dock in the garage, and the officers in the front of the van opened the divider to inform us that we would be taken inside, one by one, to be booked. My new friends frantically told them I was having trouble breathing and needed assistance. The officers called out to me, concerned: Was I okay? Was I claustrophobic? Did I need medical attention? No. No. I’m not sure.

 They opened the back doors of the van and said I needed to be honest if I needed medical attention. I told them I didn’t think I did — “I’m not claustrophobic and I don’t believe I’m having a panic attack — I think the cuffs and the way I’m sitting are keeping me from being able to breathe”. They didn’t have a response to that or really seem to believe me, but one officer stepped up and in to unbuckle my seatbelt, asking me to stand up and exit the van after her.

 Now for the especially fun part: while 6 protestors and at least 5 police officers watched, I struggled to stand up, and failed. I am not embarrassed to be fat — I believe that the human body comes in all kinds of shapes and sizes and with varying abilities, and that there should be no shame or stigma attached to what form your body takes. But I admit that a situation of this kind, where a group of people are hyper-focused on and befuddled by how my body is differently abled than a normative bodied person, is a personal nightmare. I wouldn’t wish the humiliation of that experience on my worst enemy. Without the use of my hands to push myself off the bench, I couldn’t stand up. The space was too small to leverage the position of my legs to rise. After a minute of struggling, I told them I couldn’t get up and that they would need to remove the cuffs in order for me to do so. Again I was refused on the grounds of protocol. I don’t know if any of those officers considered the unnecessary cruelty of that moment, but they did not let it show.

 I struggled for another full minute, distress on my face and in my demeanor, sweat beading on my forehead and running into my eyes and my shoulder feeling like it might pop out of its socket and hit the moon. As I threw every ounce of panicked strength that I had into getting out of this disturbing solo performance of paralysis — I couldn’t breathe, I couldn’t stand, I couldn’t see and I couldn’t feel my damn hands — a force was created by my desire to escape that was so strong that I broke out of the plastic handcuffs. I kid you not. My audience was stunned as I finally stood up and my hands simultaneously swung free in front of me. I laughed and said, “well sorry, they came off anyway.” The women laughed in amazement. The cops did not.

 I stepped out of the van and was again cuffed behind my back, this time with actual handcuffs (they must have been scared — despite my still ragged and irregular breathing, there was now proof of my incredible superhuman strength). Two officers led me to a corner of the garage — I was to stay with the female officer, my back to the other women, until my breath recovered. I was instructed again, politely and firmly, that I needed to notify them if I felt I needed medical attention.

 It took fifteen minutes until I was able to breathe regularly, and by that time half of the other women had been led inside and booked. My turn came and I was fingerprinted, photographed, and led into the cell with the others, where they made sure I was okay and lovingly acted as a mirror so I could wipe away my smeared winged eyeliner and finally get my sweaty hair out of my face ( pro-tip: if you are planning on getting arrested, plait your hair —they take hair elastics away with all other personal items ). We spent our time together laughing and playing games and talking about our very different lives as teachers and organizers and grad students and performers, and before we knew it, were released with a court date.

 One of the organizers from By The People met us with water and snacks outside the jail where she had been waiting (outside of my pain and fear of asphyxiation…truly the most wholesome arrest experience I could possibly imagine). They secured quality legal counsel for all of us, as promised, and all of our charges were ultimately reduced to either a warning or a fine.

 All of this to say what I said in the beginning: there is police protocol in place which endangers the lives of fat people. I was treated as gently as anyone could possibly be when entering the criminal justice system, but that gentleness, which so many prisoners are not so freely given, still could not protect me from protocol and infrastructure which does harm to fat people by not considering their unique experience in custody. My seatbelt was buckled — a safety precaution so basic as to make the wrongful death of Freddie Gray in neighboring Baltimore still seem too shocking and cruel to even fathom. My need for medical attention was monitored — a Constitutional right never fulfilled for Sandra Bland, who ended up hanging in her jail cell in Texas three days after a traffic stop. The recognition of my humanity during this process did not extend so far as to accommodate my comfort and safety as a fat person — but it wasn’t recognized at all for Philando Castile, who was shot in his car while calmly complying with officer instructions.

 My white privilege, which deeply impacted how I was treated during my arrest, did not protect me from the fatmisia that is built into police systems. For those entering the criminal justice system without white privilege, the danger they face is dramatically compounded. I tremble for the fat BIPoC who experience the trauma of threatened asphyxiation, and who are not treated nearly so gently or compassionately as I was. Considering that we know that there is a large intersection between fatness, lower socioeconomic class, and interaction with the criminal justice system, it amazes and disgusts me that so many people would face these unnecessary dangers during arrest.

 Police departments nationwide need to make simple changes to arrest protocol and infrastructure in order to protect the lives of the fat people that they take into custody.

No matter what this fatphobic culture has to say about fatness, we deserve to breathe. When our bodies are not considered and accommodated, we suffer unduly.

 In the name of our safety, human dignity, and Constitutional rights, these systemic changes must be made.

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[i] O'Halloran, R.L., & Frank, J.G. (2000) 'Asphyxial Death During Prone Restraint Revisited: A Report of 21 Cases.' The American Journal of Forensic Medicine and Pathology. 21(1) 39–52.

[ii]  Parkes, J., Thake, D., Price, M. (2011) ‘Effect Of Seated Restraint And Body Size On Lung Function.’ Medicine Science And The Law. 51(3) 177-81

Damn Pansy

I drew this cartoon in February of this year. At the time I was working as a cover at Lyric Opera of Chicago in their wild production of Elektra (there was a waterfall of blood down the palace staircase at the end, it was a doozy) and coincidentally freezing my rear end off in the coldest winter this California girl had ever experienced. Sometimes it really does feel like this with these teeny little instruments in our throats — all traditional musicians use their bodies to play the instrument — but we are the only musicians who house our instruments in our bodies. Figuring out how to trudge through the snow and in and out of buildings with steam heat without getting sick or drying out has been something I’ve been slowly figuring out, and my little Pansy is growing ever-more tolerant. Everyone has different levels of sensitivity and over time you learn what your voice does and does not like. There are no great mysteries to mine: drink water, get sleep, don’t drag your voice down with a bunch of unsupported valley girl speech, and take care not to poke the reflux bear. Sexy stuff, this singing business.

Show Pony 2.0

I founded Show Pony on Tumblr in 2013. The header read: “an opera singer who sometimes draws things on the way to places”, which is a good summary of my brain-flow. It was such a great outlet and catharsis for me — the effort of translating some of the very weird, trying, and sometimes absurd experiences of life as a forever-emerging soprano into single panel jokes and stick-figure conductors. When I started it, I still had that icky divorced feeling that I was supposed to have a public-facing, fat-loathing, portrait-collar-wearing opera singer version of myself, and a second, real self, who thinks and writes and makes fat art and wears lace bodysuits and short shorts and secretly posts cartoons on Tumblr. Fortunately, in no small part because I gave myself that semi-anonymous space to hone my voice and creatively think through my professional experiences, I’ve evolved way past that place — and I don’t know how I was every convinced that a sanitized version of myself would benefit my career.

The first iteration of Show Pony has now come to an end – Tumblr, which was once a gorgeous community for some of the most prolific and interesting consumers (and makers) of classical music — changed it’s guidelines for “community standards”, and so my sketches of museum statue nudes in Vienna, my (tasteless but perfectly executed, lol) cartoon jokes about skipping the hook-up with the tenor, and even my writing covering personal experience with sexual assault were all flagged as inappropriate and taken down. So, I decided to move.

Welcome to Show Pony 2.0. I’ll be posting cartoons from the archives as well as weekly prose, poetry, and brand new illustrations. It feels like the end of an era, and I was honestly quite sad to hit that delete button on Showpo.tumblr —but I have been wanting to have a space of my own for a while now where I can write at length and post any weird doodle that pops into my head. Thanks to those of you who are still here, reading & listening. Community makes this life 1000x better.