Quote of the Day

[Trigger warning for body policing, disordered eating, fat hatred.]

"Maura Kelly is a very provocative blogger. She was an anorexic herself and this is a subject she feels very strongly about."—Joanna Coles, editor-in-chief of Marie Claire, on standing by the magazine's contributor Maura Kelly, who penned a detestable fat-hating piece in which she claimed to "find it aesthetically displeasing to watch a very, very fat person simply walk across a room."

Coles, as Kelly herself in her failful apology, is invoking Kelly's history of disordered eating in the most ignorant and opportunistic way. The implication that all superfat people ("morbidly obese," as Kelly assured us she was exclusively speaking about, to justify her bigotry) arrived at our respective weights via disordered eating is flatly inaccurate. Not all of us do.

And even worse than that repeated expression of wrongity-wrongness is the fact that Kelly and Coles are relying on it in order to, unbelievably, try to cast Kelly as some sort of ally to the superfat. "This is a subject she feels passionate about," where "this" equals disordered eating.

Well. That's certainly an interest attempt to rewrite history, but I haven't forgotten (in 24 hours) that Kelly was not writing about disordered eating, but about her visceral revulsion at my and other superfat people's very existence in her presence.

And, somehow, I'm just not feeling the ally love.

FAIL.