Ironized Yeast for Keira Knightley

[queerbychoice]

keryx linked a while back to an article about finding an advertisement in a 1933 issue of Woman's World magazine for Ironized Yeast, a "special quick way to put pounds on fast":

"Now there's no need to have people calling you 'skinny,' and losing all your chances of making and keeping friends. Here's a new, easy treatment that is giving thousands healthy flesh and attractive curves--in just a few weeks! . . .

Skinniness is a serious danger. Authorities warn that skinny, anemic, nervous people are far more liable to serious infections and fatal wasting disease than the strong, well-built person. So begin at once to get back the rich blood and healthy flesh you need. Do it before it is too late!"

I think the endless advertisements for diet programs these days would be significantly less annoying if there were any advertisements mixed in with them that promised to help people gain weight. At least then there'd be some acknowledgment that there at least is some such thing as excessive skinniness, and of people who want to gain weight and have trouble doing so. It still wouldn't be ideal; ideally, there'd be no advertisements claiming that either weighing a lot or weighing very little would cost you "all your chances of making and keeping friends" or signify that you must automatically possess certain personality traits ("skinny, anemic, nervous people"). But it would be less bad than the current situation, I think. Currently, to the extent that our culture has any concept of such a thing as "too skinny" at all, the concept is only of anorexic women who wish they were even skinnier. There's no concept at all of the fact that gaining weight can be as difficult as losing it, or that anyone anywhere would ever even want to gain weight.

Meanwhile, bay_bus_rider linked today to photographs of nightmarishly anorexic Keira Knightley, which I do not recommend that you click on unless you have a very strong stomach, because I am not exaggerating when I say that those photographs are likely to make you feel physically nauseated and to give you nightmares. Anyway, I'd been meaning for a while to link to the Ironized Yeast thing, and now Keira Knightley has provided an absolutely perfect illustration of what excessive skinniness exists around us, and thus of how absurd it is for us to be endlessly surrounded with advertisements promising only to help people lose weight, and never to help people gain any.

Comments

[queerbychoice.livejournal.com]

The purpose of coming out in the first place is to be able to be ourselves, to speak about our own experiences and tell the truths about our lives as best we know it, and be able to feel that our expeirences have been understood. I am speaking mine, and by speaking it, I have helped provide places where hundreds of others have been able to feel that their experiences of choosing to be queer are finally understood by others too.

As for your boldface statement, it is my opinion that the belief in a "gay gene" harms gay rights. Please see my FAQ questions "Does the idea of choice encourage homophobes to say that queers don't deserve equal rights?" and "What is the difference between essentialist and social constructionist techniques for fighting homophobia?"

But even if the belief in a gay gene didn't harm gay rights, the denial that any of us can choose to be queer still certainly harms the rights of queer by choice people, who comprise approximately 8% of the queer community (see the link on that page to the Internet Survey of Queer and Questioning Youth, under #3). For the mainstream queer community to decide to sacrifice the rights of the approximately 8% minority of queer people who choose to be queer is just as bad as for the mainstream human community to decide to sacrifice the rights of the approximately 10% minority of all people who are queer at all. Queer by choice people have a right to be able to talk about our experiences and not everywhere encounter people trying to tell us that we're the only ones who've ever felt such a thing. And I intend to continue asserting that right.