Rethinking 1000 Fat Cranes
The following is a post by a guest blogger who wished to remain anonymous. I jumped at the opportunity to host it here because this project has raised questions for me as well, though I’ve been unable to put language to what, exactly, was irking me about it.
To be clear: this should NOT be construed as a personal attack on anyone, including the individuals mentioned by name; it’s just raising legitimate criticism, and further highlighting the ongoing, neverending challenge of framing our fat activism in an anti-racist context. I like to think this movement is plenty strong enough to withstand and benefit from even the most difficult and painful criticisms. I also like to think that we, as individual fat activists, are likewise engaged enough and committed enough to accept other perspectives thoughtfully and with grace, even when they are hard to hear. I hope you agree. -Lesley the admin
Lately one of the most talked-about fat activist projects has been Marilyn Wann’s 1,000 Fat Cranes. Marilyn inspired my own activism, and much of her work has been an important part of contemporary fat liberation and fat activism, so it is not without some trepidation that I offer criticism of one of the most beloved icons of fat activism.
That said, I have been grappling with how to discuss the Fat Crane project ever since I first heard about it. I applaud the intention behind Marilyn’s efforts, and the efforts of those participating, to reduce size-based discrimination and to attempt to expand their horizons outside of simply a U.S.-centric activism – Charlotte Cooper and others have rightly criticized U.S. fat activists for often being remarkably insular in our work, forgetting that there are fat activists working outside our country and people experiencing size-based prejudice outside our country.
That said, virtually every aspect of the Fat Cranes project has struck me as in some way racist, ethnocentric, and inextricably intertwined with a frustrating tradition of cultural appropriation and cultural imperialism. It frustrates me that the vast majority of white fat activists who I know are lauding the project as truly revolutionary and important, without giving thought (or at least without giving voice) to some of these more problematic aspects. In a few places (on the Fat Studies list, in the comments of a Joy Nash’s post on the Fatshionista LJ and in select private journal entries) there have been the seeds of dissent and discussion on the issue, but they have largely been met with silence or ridicule. Note, for example, the person who “LOL’ed” at dreamalynn’s criticism of the project in the LJ.
What, specifically, are my criticisms? First, for those who aren’t aware, here is the basic premise of the project (which had its debut on August 6th), as described on the project’s Myspace page:
1,000 Fat Cranes is a response to the Japanese government’s decision to measure everyone’s waist.
1,000 Fat Cranes asks the Japanese government: Please end the war on waistlines…please make peace with people of all sizes.
What the MySpace and the original email were lacking, obviously, is any substantive context. Why are we sending these? Why did we choose an important Japanese cultural symbol to apparently educate the Japanese government about sizeism? What assumptions are going into this project – about the role of (predominantly white) U.S. activists sending cranes to Japan? The message, to me at least, comes across fairly clearly as we white Americans know better than you, and we’ll appropriate your cultural symbols in a (not-at-all racist/ethnocentric) attempt to help you fix the mess you’ve gotten yourself into.
And, oh yeah, we’ll premiere it on the anniversary of the day we bombed Hiroshima.
Why do I bother writing this? I suppose, really, I’d like to see some more substantive discussion of what this project is all about, of why the white, middle-class, American woman decided she wanted to educate Japan using Japanese cultural symbols. I want to see a discussion of cultural appropriation, of exporting American politics without much consideration for Japanese culture or Japanese politics. Is sizeism okay anywhere? No. But neither is a group of U.S. activists becoming, in large part, the Great White Savior of the non-Western world. There have been some powerful critiques of the racism and ethnocentrism of U.S. fat liberation by a handful of fat activists (including especially by others here at Fatshionista and elsewhere), but why aren’t all of us speaking out about these problems?
The Fat Cranes project seems like a great opportunity – instead of just participating because there’s a big name and it’s labeled a fat liberation project, let’s have a little criticism of the problems within our own movement. This post is my attempt to continue the discussion on race and racism in fat activism, and to really start a discussion about this particular project. I hope I won’t be the only one talking about it.
When I first heard about this project, I thought it was a bad idea. I’m probably in the camp of the somewhat insular U.S. mindset that change needs to start at home — there are plenty of things wrong right here in my country before I go criticizing anyone else’s, least of all with a symbol and art form that are not my own. (although I hope I would respond to a request for assistance for help from fat activists if one came my way.) I didn’t feel the need to critique it, but I suppose I thought that it was the sort of idea that wouldn’t succeed if others felt the way that I did.
Is it wrong to want to see an idea die on its own without attacking it? Not a very effective strategy, I can see. Do I worry that the idea’s originators and supporters are somehow reflecting the entire fat acceptance movement, or speaking on my behalf? Maybe I should worry about that.
At the moment, I feel like I’m trying to combat plenty of fat hatred in my own backyard — in the locker room at the Y, in my work, in the newspaper and online. I don’t even know where to invest my energies most days, I didn’t ever feel like taking on the Japanese government was going to be an effective use of my energy, and not in the way it was being approached. Again, if Japanese fat activists had said, U.S. allies, we need your help, we want you to do _____ — I hope I would have done it, or will do it.
I hadn’t heard about this yet and am appauled! On the anniversary of the bombing of Hiroshima? For real? That’s effed up.
Thanks for writing this. For myself, as a white fat activist, I don’t want to have anything to do with the Fat Cranes project and am ashamed to have it done in the name of fat liberation.
Dear fellow white people - when you get an idea, instead of just patting yourself on the back, getting the go ahead and making it public please just take a moment, breathe and try to deconstruct whilst letting go of your entitlement. It’s alright to fuck up sometimes but don’t drag everyone else along with you. If you’re not sure, ask. And even if you think you’re sure, ask.
I was basically going to write this same essay, but life got in the way. So, thank you Anonymous!
It is extremely disappointing that, yet again, race (and cultural appropriation, and ethnocentrism) have not been considered. There is a lot more work to be done than getting people to stop saying “fat is the last acceptable prejudice,” and it was shocking to me that there hasn’t been more outrage and discussion about the incredibly problematic way that this project is being executed.
I’ve also been troubled for reasons I haven’t been able to fully describe since hearing about this campaign and have been hesitant to mention the campaign on my blog. Thank you, anonymous blogger for helping to articulate some of my concerns.
When I first heard about the project, I immediately thought of the book “Sadako and the Thousand Paper Cranes.” I read the book as a child, but the poignant story has always stuck with me, especially after I became a historian myself with a rather keen interest in the social history of the World War II years. To me and many others, the 1,000 paper crane metaphor symbolizes the devastating impact of nuclear war. In fact, a statue of Sadako holding a golden crane is featured prominently at the Hiroshima Peace Memorial in memory of her and all children who have died from the U.S. atomic bombing of Japan. People today still fold paper cranes and send to the monument. Given this strong symbolism, it just strikes me as inherently wrong to appropriate the metaphor in any form.
The 1,000 paper cranes is based on an old Japanese legend, but it has since come to be known globally almost exclusively in relationship to Sadako’s plight and the symbolism it raises. If, in fact, the campaign does plan to premiere the cranes on the anniversary of the Hiroshima bombing (and I can’t find any confirmation of this on Marilyn’s MySpace page), it demonstrates that its organizers are well aware of this symbolism. The deliberate timing strikes me as appallingly inappropriate and cruel. However misguided the Japanese government may be, it’s intention is not to slaughter its fat citizens or subject them to inhumane and debilitating illnesses, but rather to make them healthier.
The swastika had a long history of positive meanings before the Nazi’s appropriated it and today, it is widely regarded as a symbol of anti-Semitic hate, human depravity and genocide. Had this action against fat people happened instead in Germany, would we be so willing to send the German government swastikas to fight discrimination of its fat citizens? I appreciate Marilyn’s motivation and realize that she understands the 1,000 crane metaphor to be one of peace, but it is also inescapably a metaphor symbolizing and memorializing children killed by nuclear war. I can’t help but feel that using this metaphor to advance any agenda detracts from, disrespects and minimizes this symbolism.
why aren’t all of us speaking out about these problems?
I *really* liked Lesley’s earlier post that said, “The failure we’re most often guilty of is not being overtly offensive but simply not thinking critically about race when we’re going about the daily business of FA.”
Also, the crane thing seemed weird to me from the beginning. I kept imagining Japanese officials getting all these fat cranes and thinking, “Now they’re making our cranes fat, too! Get the diet bird food!” The symbolism gets muddied when the project becomes yet another way in which the U.S. can be blamed for sending fatness abroad.
@rachelr
Excellent points. To clarify, apparently the original email announcement that went out about this project was sent on the Hiroshima anniversary, August 6. Odds are good that this was done out of ignorance and with no intention of capitalizing on the date for added significance.
That said, I would argue that this failure to realize the date’s extremely sensitive meaning in Japan still highlights a lack of forethought and critical thinking about this project from a cultural-appropriation standpoint, in my opinion.
The biggest problem USAcentric white fat activists face (and I include myself in this group) is not simply Being Evil (this kind of black-and-white thinking shuts these conversations down before they can begin, I think). It is, instead, a failure to consistently challenge ourselves to seriously consider all the alternative perspectives whenever we’re taking action like this.
The big unanswered question for me about this project is, why (and when?) did we choose the metaphor of war? When did we decide that our form of resistance to this initiative would be framed as “the war on waistlines?”
I know that the war metaphor is used frequently: we have wars on drugs, on homelessness, on terror, and more. But I have two criticisms of the “war on waistlines” framing of the 1000 Cranes project.
First, war is nasty. There are casualties, sides are taken, those who don’t sufficiently take sides are viewed suspiciously, there are spies, propaganda, and all manner of other unpleasant things. Is this how fat activities want to relate with the world?
(Maybe the answer is yes. But I’d like to see this discussed explicitly. The casual - as in not unpacked, not considered - use of the war metaphor raises unanswered questions for me. If we are going to engage with the world as righteous rescuing heroes, I’d like the chance to get on board with that, as opposed to having that assumption silently underlie our political activity.)
Secondly, by invoking the metaphor of war, this project brings a series of linked metaphorical definitions into play. In the war metaphor, we have a villain, a hero, a crime, and a victory. In this project, who is the villain? who is the hero? what is the crime, and what counts as victory?
The imperialism (and not just cultural imperialism) implicit in this scenario is that the Japanese government is the villain, and US-based (or, Western world) fat activists are the hero.
That is, there is a whole “saving the Japanese from themselves” unspoken assumption that underlies this project. And that form of imperialism - not just taking the symbols of war resistance (paper cranes) and appropriating them for this “battle”, but constructing a movement based on the (unspoken) premise that “we know better than you what is best for you and we will rescue you from your evil government” is what most reeks of imperialism to me and is why I am not down with this project.
I think there might be some misunderstanding about the cultural import of the thousand cranes. Although the thousand cranes can be seen as a symbol of war-resistance, ( really more a symbol of ‘never again’) they also have a commonly accepted meaning among the Japanese of being tangible evidence of a wish long-hoped-for. You make a thousand cranes because you want something very much; each crane is a physical symbol of that wish, and a group of a thousand cranes shows the tenacity of the person making the wish.
I’m not sure how much you know about the Japanese waist-measuring project - there is a maximum waist size allowed for men and women (not sure what they do with sumo wrestlers). I think there’s a limit of 33.5 inches for men and 35 inches for women. If they’re past the limit, they officially fail their annual fitness test and are told they must diet down to the appropriate size. If they do not do so, they will lose face and not advance in their profession.
I lived in Japan for seven years. I had one friend who was told by her doctor that she was too fat at 110 pounds - it would be better to get her weight down to about 90 pounds, at 5′4″. Fat discrimination starts at a young age - if your elementary-school child is fatter than is acceptable, you will get called in and sternly lectured about diet and exercise. Diet drugs that promise a laxative-style effect are available in the aisles of every drugstore. Beauty magazines offer diets that promised to slim thighs to the point of emaciation (light shining between the thighs when feet pressed closely together).
Japan is TERRIBLE for size shame/discrimination. And NOBODY’s fighting it because … well, there’s that stupid proverb, “The nail that sticks up will be hammered down.” And you know, even if you hate the idea of the thousand fat cranes (I think it shows a great sense of humour and creativity, especially because the traditional one thousand cranes are compressed to their thinnest in order to fit in properly.) just hearing about the project maybe made you notice that there’s something very, very wrong with Japan’s public health policy. You may feel that we have no right to comment on another country’s policy of fat oppression, but it’s good to know about the very harsh template that’s being inflicted on 150 million people, in the name of health and conformity. Because … that could be our tomorrow, you know?
@Kimberley
Whether or not size discrimination is okay is not in question. It’s never okay.
Whether size discrimination takes place in Japan is not in question. I’m sure it does, since it takes place everywhere.
The fact remains, non-Japanese people are ill-equipped to employ a decidedly Japanese symbol in a political action. Using that symbol anyway is a form of appropriation that, unfortunately, harkens back to a long and bloody history of colonialism and imperialism. Pointing to Japan as a site of size discrimination that is somehow more insidious or tragic than size discrimination anywhere else falls back into that old habit of exoticizing other cultures to make ourselves feel better about ours.
These actions do not have the luxury of standing alone, outside of history. They mean things. Sometimes they mean different things to different people.
The main thrust of the article above was NOT that however the Japanese government chooses to address the “obesity” bugaboo is A-OK! The point is that this information could have been passed along in a less disturbing and problematic way. Humor and creativity are great tools for activism, but not when their presence is given more weight than making sure our activism is anti-racist.
Also, wanted add: I know that being able to roll one’s eyes and check out and not think about it any more is not something everyone has the luxury of being able to do. I don’t mean to present it as a superior option.
Sigh. That last comment was meant to go in the thread above this one. Sorry.