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quartz
2009-08-04 05:51 am UTC (link)

*nodding rapidly* Muscle weights half again what fat weighs and people do not seem to understand that. People keep telling me I look thinner (and I am, all the pants that fit two months ago will slide off my hips without unbuttoning now) and ask how much weight I've lost. The blank stares when I tell them "Not a single pound" is so disheartening as are the comments like "Well, I'm sure you'll start losing soon." I am losing you idiots, I'm losing inches! I'd sure rather lose 4 inches around my waist than lose 15 pounds, especially when it means that I've hit a 0.71 hip waist ratio and have converted fat to muscle.

Plus there's the whole 98lb weakling thing which sadly is true. One of my friends is 5'4" and 135lbs which is the ideal weight according to the doctor and she can't lift a 40lb box. She has to have someone else lift anything that heavy. The girls in high school and college who were size 8 and under had the same issue and were always calling the neighbors (or me) to come lift things for them. I like being able to do my own heavy lifting, it keeps me from feeling like a stereotypical Victorian Romance wilted delicate female flower who always needs to have a Big Strong Man around and validates my sense of self-sufficient Girls Doing It For Themselves power. :D

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kaesa
2009-08-04 06:46 am UTC (link)

Oh man, so much yes on the heavy lifting. (My other PE class that year was weightlifting, where I was the only girl in the class and realized a lot of the guys in the gym were apparently training specifically to gain hyoooge visible muscles but little to no strength. So that was weird to watch.) I'm actually on the planning stages of a superhero story where one of the main characters is a broad broad with superstrength, and she gets a lot of obnoxious media commentary about her body rather than what she actually does with it.

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	quartz 2009-08-04 04:58 pm UTC (link)
	Hee, weightlifting was fun. The guys in it, not so much, but the actual activity is something I miss a lot. Oh, that's a good starting point for a superhero story. is very interested Will it be more along the lines of a novel/short story than an episodic comic book? You are quite awesome. May I friend you? (Reply to this)(Parent)(Thread)

kaesa
2009-08-04 07:37 pm UTC (link)

I'm not really sure right now; it seems to want to be episodic, or maybe just with long stories and short stories set in the same universe. Originally it was going to be a webcomic, but update schedules and I never get along. (I should warn you she's not the main heroine -- she starts out as the mentor/hopeless crush/bff, and then for a while embraces the role of the villain for what she thinks are the right reasons. So yeah, another fat villain, but you don't see a lot of women in fiction who are short, fat, and dangerous to piss off.)

Sure, although I have not posted in a millionty years, and will be starting some really intensive classes soonish. So I will be boring or nonexistent, depending.

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quartz
2009-08-04 09:06 pm UTC (link)

Thank you!

The only villian I can even think of who comes close to that description is the Emerald Empress (Cera Kesh) from the Legionnaires and she never quite got to the truly evil stage (she was considered redeemable through acceptance and destroying the Eye(s)) before being rebooted out of existance. *shakes angry fist at DC*

Miss Kyle from PS238 (the webcomic) is the only other possible example and she's good and not all that dangerous it seems. Oh, what I wouldn't give for a good female villain like Ysanne Isard from the Star Wars EU. Now she had none of the "She's just a good girl who got hurt, a little love will redeem her" that most other female villains written in comics today seem to have hanging over their heads. *shakes fist at DC and Marvel this time*

And now I may have to neglect work so I can daydream about the Ultimate Good (Susan Ivanova) versus the Ultimate Evil (Ysanne Isard) in a fight to control the known universe.

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kaesa
2009-08-04 10:30 pm UTC (link)

I am sadly reminded of all the things I have yet to read, because I am only slightly familiar with the people you've mentioned. (For one thing, I got into superheroes ass-backwards, through webcomics and feminist blogs.) They are on my lists, though.

Mine is kind of this odd cross between Helen Narbon and Klaus Wulfenbach, but she's based on my (not evil) version of Helga Hufflepuff, who is similarly cheerful-but-scary.

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	quartz 2009-08-05 03:02 am UTC (link)
	whimpers I have real paid work I have to be doing, but now I'm distracted by Narbonic and have a craving to go reread all of Girl Genius for the umpteenth time. Must... resist! (Reply to this)(Parent)(Thread)

	kaesa 2009-08-05 03:29 am UTC (link)
	Erk. Sorry about that. At least I didn't link you to TV Tropes? (Reply to this)(Parent)(Thread)

	quartz 2009-08-05 03:37 am UTC (link)
	TV Tropes is resistable. Webcomics are not, especially ones with the Disturbing Palindrome Song of the Mutant Gerbils. has been sucked into Narbonic (Reply to this)(Parent)(Thread)

	kaesa 2009-08-05 03:47 am UTC (link)
	If you've gotten that far, there's no hope for you. I would offer more suggestions, but that would be Wrong of me. (Reply to this)(Parent)

	frau_eva 2009-08-05 05:39 am UTC (link)
	YES YES WRITE THIS STORY I WILL BE YOUR FIRST FAN. :O I had a similar idea for a graphic novel, and holy crap, we need more people understanding what it's like to be a woman with real physical strength. (Reply to this)(Parent)(Thread)

kaesa
2009-08-05 06:56 am UTC (link)

You should do yours too, as all I have written so far -- that I'm happy with, at least -- is the (not very superheroic, and only vaguely cyberpunk) story about what the main main character used to do with her Barbies. (I should post it, though, because it is called "She-Barbarians of the 21^st Century," and I'm very fond of it.) Other than that I have been faffing around with drawing them, and trying to worldbuild.

(Main main character is, and I DID NOT EVEN MEAN TO DO THIS, a bisexual English major girl gamer. So I guess she's implausible anyway, and no one will ever read it long enough to find that her BFF is, despite being short and fat and female, strong and ruthless and mean.)

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	adevyish 2009-08-04 08:43 am UTC (link)
	The last time I tried carrying a 40lb box a few blocks my arms were hurting for days envies you /stereotypical basement dweller, except that I don't live in the basement and I'm not male (Reply to this)(Parent)

	mydemand 2009-08-04 10:10 am UTC (link)
	HAHAHA YES to the blanket stare. Every other month it's "you've lost weight" and I reply "uh, no, still 70kg". It doesn't matter if I've been sedentary gorging out on food, or training in circus 5 hours a week. Still the same. (Reply to this)(Parent)

snarkhunter
2009-08-04 04:46 pm UTC (link)

That's the ideal weight for a 5'4" woman? Huh. For some reason I thought it was slightly less than that. (Hence my railing on "ideal weight" and what a crock of shit it is.)

But not all smallish women are weak!! I'm about that size, and you bet your ass I can lift a 40lb box--and more. I'm proud of being far stronger than I look.

I might look delicate, but that doesn't mean I AM.

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quartz
2009-08-04 05:19 pm UTC (link)

Yup, 135lbs which is two lbs more than perfect. Complete with ribs and hip bones showing in the case of my friend. It is a total pile of manure because she's starting to suffer from massive health problems that she wouldn't be encountering if she had any fat reserves. As is right now she can't go more than an hour without eating something because her body has no supply of fat to go get when there's no food in her system. When she's around I carry emergency chocolate just because of that.

Ah, not all smallish women are delicate little flowers, but the height-weight proportions laid out on the chart in my doctor's office makes no allowance for women who are small in dimensions to have any muscle weight at all. So women who're trying to meet that chart tend not to have any muscles. If they do have muscles oftentimes it leads to such a low body fat percentage (fat weight being replaced by muscle weight) that they end up with severe bone loss and hormonal issues. Gymnasts are a good example of being tiny and strong (and usually fairly healthy), but they have a whole lot of health issues that they have to watch for, which is why they have such a huge medical support base of nutritionists, doctors, and other professionals to make sure they don't fall apart.

If you don't mind me asking, does your doctor ever tell you that you're overweight and should lose so many pounds in order to be healthy regardless of blood pressure, cholesterol, or BMI? I'm shocked at the number of doctors in my experience who, when speaking to patients, equate pure weight with state of health irregardless of other factors and I'm trying to get a better idea of if it's a pervasive medical system idea or just the doctors in my area/health group.

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snarkhunter
2009-08-04 05:33 pm UTC (link)

TBH, I haven't had a non-gyno physical in about 8 years--and 8 years ago, I weighed about 15-20lbs less than I do now. (I was 22, and my metabolism was...speedy.)

So I'm not sure what a doctor would tell me. When I go in for other stuff, my blood pressure is perfect, but my BMI, depending on whether they put my height down as 5'3" or 5'3.5", is either right on the edge of "normal" or is "overweight." I also don't look like I weigh as much as I do--either b/c my weight is in the "right" places (I've got boobs and an ass) or because I have more muscles than I should (more than I should b/c oh, how I hate exercise. HATES it), so the nurses have been taken aback a bit when they weight me, but they don't say much.

All of that said, I don't think it's just in your area. From what I've heard second-hand, it's a pretty pervasive problem.

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mael
2009-08-04 10:26 pm UTC (link)

TBH, I'm 5'7" and I'm 137 pounds. It's more than my ideal weight, I should really be around 130 lbs when I'm healthy and exercising. And I can lift way more than 40 lbs. Also, my ribs would show even if I weighed 20 more pounds, as all my fat ends up on my hips. But my hip bones would still stick out, because my hips are damn wide. Also, I'm always hungry, but that's got nothing to do with my fat reserves and everything to do with my metabolism. So.

That is to say, I get annoyed when people make assumptions about my body and my weight and what that means about me as a person. I know what my body needs. And it's nothing that can be quantified by a single set of numbers.

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	frau_eva 2009-08-05 05:56 am UTC (link)
	I've heard stories in the fat blogopshere about doctors ignoring the actual problem they came in for and got tested in(in one case, PNEUMONIA) in favor of talking to them about "what we're going to do about your weight problem." Certainly not just in your area; just depends on how much a particular doctor gives in to the idea. (Reply to this)(Parent)

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