The thin red line. Did Xia Xue cross it?
Today’s trending news is about her remarks about “morbidly obese people”. She calls the plus-size La’Shaunae Steward, 23, “morbidly overweight.”
It reports that “she took umbrage at “irresponsible” people who “gorge themselves with 30 burgers a day”, saying that when their health fails, taxpayers have to help them settle their medical bills.””
Xia Xue added: “The morbidly obese (La’Shaunae Steward) should never be seen as attractive. Irresponsibility isn’t attractive.”
This was where La’Shaunae fought back. Weighing in on the issue, she said: -
“Why are thin people this obsessed with letting me know indirectly they think I am unattractive to them, therefore I’m not worthy of love, a career, being visible and literally telling me the age I’m going to die?”
Serving back, Xia Xue said: -
“I maintain my stance. Morbid obesity isn’t attractive because it leads to death and disease. This isn’t personal against anyone so it isn’t fat-shaming. And I did not ever talk about chubby or regular fat people.”
Lesson? Mm...
Returning to the question I first posed, has Xia Xue crossed the thin red line?
Let me answer that question by saying this, we are product (and perception formed) of our culture. And if you must know, in an early age, in most African countries, being overweight is a sign of richness, health, strength, and fertility.
But I will not venture into what Xia Xue had described as “morbidly obese” - underscore “morbid” with life-threatening consequences. I will defer that for now.
In any event, some culture views polygamy as normal. And mind you, on a lesser cultural note, Russian spouses don’t count beach resort flights as infidelity, and Japanese businessmen will tell you with conviction that “if you pay, it’s not cheating.”
And the real shocker (for us at least) is that the young (aged 6 to 10) in the tribe of Sambia in Papua New Guinea go through 6 ritual phrases to become men, and one of the phrases is to perform fellatio on adult men and then, ingest their sperm.
In Singapore, if you are caught doing that, the minimum sentence you can expect is 8 years upward.
My point is, we live at a time of exclusive (if not predatory) culture where we have idolised and glamorised an ossified way of thinking, living and believing such that anyone who differs from that standard is deemed as different, excluded, discriminated and even stigmatised.
This is made worse by the internet, youtube and social media, where you see beauty defined and personified most superficially, conveniently and materially.
This is also where people like model La’Shaunae comes in.
From her point of view, the backlash reaction is this, why shouldn’t people like her be considered attractive, have a career too, be loved, be visible in society, be embraced for who they are, have true friends, and have a flourishing life and peaceably coexist with the rest?
For if you cut La’Shaunae and Xia Xue at the same spot, after removing all the makeup, fake lashes and lavish body accessories, don’t they (and we) all bleed the same crimson desires for love, for acceptance and for authenticity?
And FYI, this is La’Shaunae’s mission in her own words: -
“I want fashion to change, and I want to be the person that changes things! I want to be on magazine covers, I want to see my fat black model friends on magazine covers. I want us in high-end, high fashion campaigns and shoots and editorials, and I want the world’s biggest, most incredible brands to finally wake up and realise we matter and that we deserve their beautiful clothes. I wanna be in Dior and Westwood already!”
Can you blame her? Can you understand where she’s coming from? Can you understand the years of being bullied, the stares of disgust, and the silent tears shed in hidden corners and dark alleys?
In a society that is unidimensional, even shallow, with one synthetic gold standard for defining what is bankably beautiful and what is plain ugly, people like La’Shaunae strive in vain to be accepted. In other words, she wants to be loved the way Xia Xue wants to be loved too, and she wants to no longer be invisible, shunned and even despised.
At this juncture, l would not say that Xia Xue doesn’t have a point when she said: “Morbid obesity isn’t attractive because it leads to death and disease. This isn’t personal against anyone so it isn’t fat-shaming.”
Alas, beauty in this society is regrettably skin deep. Yet, we must not forget that anything that is taken to the extreme, as in being “morbid”, whereby one’s life is threatened, we must unquestionably stand up against that.
But, where Xia Xue has crossed the line is when she makes obesity personal, that is, in an individual she had singled out, over the very public internet, thereby risking misunderstanding, deepening division, and causing hurt.
On this, she is a product of culture too, that is, a culture where she - as a fashion icon, the queen of bloggers - thrives on or needs to occasionally make a statement, a raw, controversial and blunt one, in order to raise her profile, rile up her followers and polarise society.
That culture is also her own making; for initially the leader maketh her followers, later her followers maketh her - via a feedback reinforcing loop.
Not to mention, she is paid for endorsements based on maintaining and keeping her finely manicured cultural image, which is about being someone who speaks her mind, whether you like it or not.
Because if you think about it, reasoned diplomacy is expected in politics, court rooms and mediation sessions, but not in the ether space of social media.
On the contrary, it is largely about stoking populist sentiments to make a big splash with the hope of engineering it to go viral. It is therefore essentially about quantity over quality, bluntness over tactfulness, and hardcore binary over nuances, empathy and mutual understanding.
Think about it. If Xia Xue took the time to befriend La’Shaunae, spend time with her, understand what she has gone through, and quietly write encouraging notes to her, away from the public glare, wouldn’t that be more enduring, more meaningful and more empowering, for both of them?
Yes, she maintains her stand that morbid obesity isn’t attractive, leading to disease and death. We all know that. We agree to a large extent.
But when those same words were used unthinkingly to describe La’Shaunae most exclusively, for whatever social media brownie points she hopes to score, it becomes a personal, character attack at someone whom she doesn’t even know at all. It becomes a hit for populism rather than a precaution issued to show genuine concern.
That is where in my view she has crossed the thin red line - not that Xia Xue would bother anyway.
No comments:
Post a Comment