Some body positive comments just aren’t

[CN: Body hate inc slurs] You might have seen media coverage this week about the following tweet, and reactions to it.

walmart underwear vibes pic.twitter.com/wo66OQGIdo

— yasmin was here (@iranikanjari) December 24, 2015

When @iranikanjari (Suraia) posted the above pics, she drew loads of reponses. Of course, they were all informed, engaging and nuanced, discussing what the above pictures show about beauty standards, the intersectional gaze, cultural dialogue/appropriation and the concept of “natural” in biology/culture.

JK, she got lots of positive comments but heaps of body-shaming ones which she pushed back against and the story was featured in quite a few online media outlets.

If you want to see what Suraia has to say about it all, I recommend this awesome interview she gave. Highlights below:

• “The hate was usually from men, and sadly men of colour…Any woman who commented [negatively] was generally of western origin.”
• “My 7th grade English teacher told me, ‘The winner of the argument is the one who defines the terms,’ and I live by that. So when people started defining hair as gross, I redefined the terms for myself: I am not hairy, I see myself as a garden, as a forest, as the geography of my homeland.”
• “Brown people will not look like you. They should not be expected to look like you.”
• “There are too many people out there who are willing to steal the bindi off my head so they can wear it — all while throwing a razor in my face to shave.”

What I found interesting is that often even the comments that were trying to be body-positive were failing. Here are some comments from Vice’s Facebook post about the story, verbatim except some typo fixes. I’ve started with vile ones to show the continuum. It’s the continuum that’s important: many people think if they’re not explicitly slagging off someone’s body (or even if they have a few words of encouragement) that their comment is fine.

• Man this bitch is fucking rank. I included this comment not just for the continuum but to show how such stuff is treated as normal background noise. When two people responded someone else told them “don’t feed the troll,” as if the shitty comment is the given and the onus is on those who don’t share that attitude to STFU. The canonical response to this should be Lindy West’s Don’t Ignore the Trolls. Feed Them Until They Explode.
• I’m going to spew./Someone wax that wookie!/Yuck…I’d rather eat a bow of baby poo. The [literal] dehumanisation of the wookie/Chewbacca comments was addressed by Suraia in her interview. But as the last comment shows explicitly, a LOT of this negativity is implicitly about the commenter’s junk and its reactions to the photo. Even if you think that posting a selfie is an invitation for feedback (and I’ll let the intertube historians call that one), that’s still a far cry on being invited to give your sexual response. Unless you think you’re entitled to use your genitals as a measuring stick. Which many of these people do.
• Every one’s missus looks like this after the first month! Women amirite? Such deceivers, such…succubi. For more on that song, see this post.
• VICE; cutting edge, relevant and contentious journalism at it’s best. Yep, the old “as a white cis male I’m objective and rational, why are the rest of you hung up on identity politics” bullshit. Yes, people who are less likely to be body shamed and to have negative consequences (up to and including eating disorders, depression and worse) get to consider this story non-newsworthy. Don’t mistake such “grownups are talking” responses as anything but condescending and silencing crap.
• Gotta hack through the jungle to get to the temple./Not my thing but fair play. I’m sure underneath her pants would resemble a stab wound in a gorilla’s back. These were definitely meant as jokes and got a lot of likes. But whether something is funny or not is a function of the background beliefs of the audience. There is definitely such thing as a funny (for some) joke that marginalises giant classes of people. Is it worth it for the joke? If you think that’s a nuanced question because humour is complex and something something case-by-case, that’s great. And maybe you’re right. But it shows that it’s a choice you get to make, because you won’t be affected.
• Perfect candidate for laser hair removal; will work amazing on her because of the darkness of the hairs. This person is being helpful with supremely awesome intentions! I mean it’s not like a Twitter user from Texas would know that hair removal options exist, right? Suraia should thank them for rescuing her from a lifetime of ignorance with the insider knowledge that she too can be fixed.
• Anyone think she may have something like polycystic ovarian syndrome? More unsolicited and patronising advice offered up as something great. Except this time it’s also medical advice. Even if the commenter is a doctor, there’s a reason medical diagnostic centres don’t operate on the Twitter selfie model. The comment also assumes that Suraia’s hair needs a medical explanation. Now, I haven’t personally seen enough South Asian women’s bellies to form a statistically valid sample but many of the responses from South Asian women were that this is a perfectly “””normal””” amount of hair. In which case, the comment’s medicalising an ethnicity based on ignorance.
• Impressive snail tail .. do all chicks have one? Wouldn’t have known girls shaved that part. Although the tone is gross, this this commenter is actually willing to learn and update his model of the world based on this photo, and even asking for more information instead of making assumptions about what “all chicks” have. Sadly this puts him in the top 10 percentile of internet commenters.
• Unattractive but power to you for being body proud. Nope on a rope.
• Are you all for real? She can’t help what she was given, stop being so superficial. Society is sick if the majority of people can’t get past something so natural. The expectation that everyone conforms to a perfect ideal is ridiculous and all kinds of shallow. There is far more value in being a thoughtful considerate person than some shithead focused on tearing people apart for what they carry on the outside, choice or not. I bet most of you aren’t shiny muscular gym buffs either – ya jerks. This comment is the epitome of how a lot of body positive rhetoric gets it wrong. Can’t y’all get it through your head that she can’t help what she was given? Apparently a body. Also did you know that we should be nice and considerate to people who don’t fit a “perfect ideal”? This of course still buys into the same beauty standards, it just grants those on the wrong end of the scale some fucked-up charity. Finally the tu quoque implies that the shiny muscular gym buffs do have the right to “call out” Suraia, because apparently they’re not being hypocrites and that’s really really important. This is all very similar to anti-bullying memes that promote bullying.
• We’re so used to being inundated with plastic and photoshopped images we can’t handle seeing a real person anymore. Shame. This is also extremely body negative. Apparently Suraia is a “real” person for having hair. So the false dichotomy is that apparently to not be an asshole to hairy women, we have to then shit on people who are not hairy, people who choose to get hair removed, people who get cosmetic surgery and so on. We need to highlight how unnatural their bodies are as a way to create a background of scorn against which we can praise “real” women. It’s very similar to the real women have curves bullshit. No thanks.

One last thing. The articles I’ve seen have praised Suraia for challenging the critical tweets directly, for not letting them “get to her” but being “sassy” about it. While it’s great if she’s happy with how she was able to respond, if we talk too much about how well she did, we’re setting up a terrible onus that those on the receiving end of online abuse should act/respond. But for every Suraia there are probably many people who have been chased offline by such comments. Their response is by definition appropriate since everyone should get to make decisions about their safety and well-being.

You shouldn’t have to be witty (or beanything) in your responses and focusing too much on the response reinforces the idea of shitty online comments as an inevitable force of nature, that the recipient therefore Ayn-Randily “chooses” how to engage with. It’s victim-blaming in empowerment’s clothing.