Fat Body Politics

shakethecobwebs:

alithea:

garconniere:

ok so like what’s the big stink about pork magazine?

Anonymous

long story short:

i had heard of pork magazine via tumblr a year or two ago, namely via some style bloggers who wore pins and cool shit from the mag. i kinda dug the aesthetic, but didn’t really look more into it. i flipped through a few issues i came across in a store but it’s not like i had a subscription or anything.

this changed last summer.

july 2011: pork magazine published some photos of a “cowboys and indians” photoshoot, featuring white folks dressed up as - you guessed it - stereotypical cowboys and indians. worse still, one of the people dressed up as an “indian” is swigging back hard liquor (as if we didn’t have enough bullshit propagating the stereotype of native people = drunks). some people involved in the photoshoot have a pretty big online following more around fat positive politics, so most critical folks involved in that community were totally caught off guard by this blatantly racist photoshoot.

then, the reaction to criticisms and comments saying “hey white folks you might want to think twice before putting on a headdress and playing dressup this way” was even worse than the photoshoot itself, if you can believe it.

fatpeopleofcolor wrote this great rundown of the situation if you want more details and links.

march 2012: made these “pork army” membership cards using nazi imagery. white folks reblog saying “sign me up, mein fuhrer.” haha! so funny, right?

april 2012: people point out that even with all of this behind us, some fat-positive blogs are still celebrating the people who have yet to be held accountable for participating in a racist photoshoot and very publicly aligning themselves with a publication that prides itself on using offensive imagery, racist language, and saying “fuck off” to anyone who disagrees with them.

and that, unfortunately, is why people are still talking about this shit almost a year later.

personally, i have directly contacted the editor of the magazine and some of the people i saw very publicly associating themselves with pork magazine who i had otherwise thought were cool dudes. sean responded quickly and respectfully enough, but we clearly disagree on the basics. i prefer that to the radio silence i got from people who still get lauded as “amazing babes.” there is ZERO accountability here and ZERO reason to support an independent magazine that is completely unapologetic about any criticisms that it uses violent racist imagery and language.

and hey, what a lovely ironic surprise: here, founder of PORK sean aaberg writes about his boney for gavin mcinnes, cofounder of vice, about his love for the t-shirt “the last of the white niggers.”

enough said.

still important.

Every time I see something about their magazine I cringe.