A Battle for the Hallows

Like any good superhero, Status Quoman patrols the streets of Gothapolis on a regular basis, keeping crimes against the female body in check as best as her superabilities allow. Her beat requires more subtlety, more skill than that of Batman or Superman -- no signal alights the sky, no super hearing alerts Status Quoman to a crime being commited three miles away. No, our heroine must seek out evil in all its haunts and homes in this crime-ridden town.

Status Quoman likes to think her job requires more subtlety, but it really just requires being hit over the head with obvious things.

For instance, one night, about a month ago, Status Quoman walked her beat, this time venturing into a neighborhood unfamiliar to her. So far, the night had been uneventful. She found a lovely South Asian grocery store, leaving with a delightfully colorful lentil mix and some excitingly-named spices. The October night air held that slight nip that hints that fall is on its way. Status Quoman felt strong in the prospect of change that autumn always brings. For a superhero whose task it is to transform the status quo, change is one of her most powerful allies.

Her first inkling that Concavia was on the prowl came as Status Quoman approached a chain store infamous for its costume selection during this very season. At first, our heroine admired the selection flaunted by faceless window mannequins: a pirate, an ogre, a Ghostbuster -- and then, as she gazed, Status Quoman felt eyes on her. There, standing next to the Ghostbuster mannequin, was Concavia, smiling evilly. She, too, sported a Ghostbuster uniform. However, hers was the "women's" costume: the only attributes held over from the costume on the mannequin to her right was its yellow color and ghostbuster logo. The pant legs had been reduced to upper-thigh length shorts; the long sleeves to caps, and the collar to a low-cut, cleavage bearing, zip-down-to-the-waist flesh fest.

"How do you like my sexy-Ghostbuster costume, Status Quoman?" cackled Concavia. "I'm going to turn so many heads this Halloween, your sense of self-worth won't stand a chance. What are you going to go as -- oh wait, what was I thinking? You don't get to dress up."

"What do you mean, I don't get to dress up?" Status Quoman growled, her such-a-pretty-face flushing momentarily.

Concavia glanced up and down at Status Quoman once, let out a high-pitched squeal, and bolted into the store. Status Quoman's super big bones swelled into action, her super identity quickly flung into full battle mode. She burst into the store to pursue her archnemesis.

At first, our heroine could not determine where Concavia hid. Status Quoman started by looking for her in the basement. She was informed that this was the "men's section." Concavia was nowhere to be found amongst the racks and racks of colorful, interesting costumes. Status Quoman located the Ghostbuster outfit that she'd seen in the window. It was available in regular, tall, and extra-large sizes. A sales associate helpfully modeled the costume against his own body for our heroine, showing how much extra room it had for men of different sizes and heights. Status Quoman thanked him, but knew she must be on her way to finding and defeating Concavia.

She flew up the stairs and immediately knew she was getting warm. This section, the "women's section," was far different from downstairs. For starters, Status Quoman could tell, using her density sensors, that the total amount of fabric on this floor was far less than the floor below it. As she quietly crept from aisle to aisle, she discovered a horrifying sense of deja-vu. For every costume she'd seen in the men's section, a "women's version" of the costume existed on this floor. The women's versions were uniform in their short lengths and plunging necklines. They often included thigh high socks to accentuate long legs. Even an Elizabethan gown, traditionally low-cut and ornate, was shortened to show off stockinged thighs.

Then Status Quoman found the women's version of her Ghostbusters uniform. To her horror, she discovered that not only was it a napkin version of the men's costume, but it only existed in two sizes: small and medium. Status Quoman's face flashed purple. Now she knew why Concavia said that our heroine would not be dressing up for the holiday.

And that was when Concavia burst forward from behind the rack as the sales associate directing our heroine looked on with amusement.

Status Quoman chased Concavia out of the store. She chased her down the street and across town. She chased her across October and into Halloween. It was then that Status Quoman realized why Concavia was leading her on this chase. On that anticipated night of the carnivalesque, whose very essence requires and celebrates abandonment of self, Concavia replicated herself. Her mirrors were everywhere, in sexy devils, sexy angels, sexy butterflies, sexy cats, sexy cartoon characters, sexy nurses, sexy women-in-bikinis -- the carnivalesque had been reduced to abandonment of self and simultaneous adoption of a socially-mandated order of flesh-baring sex. Concavia was nowhere to be found, because she was everywhere.

Now Status Quoman is not against women showing their bodies. As a feminist superheroine, she fiercely defends a woman's right to wear what she chooses without fear of physical or verbal violence. However, this night of Halloween, Status Quoman saw aggression. She saw it in the guise of women forced into tiny squares of fabric because it was what was available to them, and expected of them. She saw women cloned into marches of identical costumes, lines of lingerie, the sense of creativity and surprise inherent in this holiday reduced to a sad, tired mass production line.

And what about the men, whose costumes afforded interesting levels of creativity (not to mention warmth)? Those men for whom, ostensibly, said women were putting on their mutated form of carnivalesque? They were now jammed into an uncomfortable position.

Status Quoman saw single girls who looked longingly after attached men who did not pay attention to their short skirts and tight bodices. She saw a troupe of sexy devils with cameras descend upon one hapless man waiting for his slice of pizza. And she saw another, unrelated sexy devil, who turned the call for attention on its head: when a man turned to look at her as she walked past, she responded with: "You. You are a pervert. Stop looking at me." Then, swinging her tightly-swathed hips, she strutted past.

Where does one draw the line? When a woman wears a "slutty" costume, whether or not it is something she does out of personal desire or out of social obligation, is that not done, in some part, in order to attract the attention of others? While violence of any kind is unwarranted and unacceptable, are men no longer allowed to look? Or was this yet another attempt to draw attention, or to fill a deficit of expected attention -- no man had thrown himself at her sexy-evil feet yet that night, so did that mean she was not sexy enough, and therefore had not fulfilled the promise of that one evening? No, look, a man, someone, a pervert, was looking at her. And the slutty-Halloween prophecy had been fulfilled.

Status Quoman never tracked down Concavia that night. It was a major victory for the enemy. And Status Quoman knows that, in spite of her own civil disobedience by dressing creatively no matter how much extra fabric she binds to her body, the battle will only get worse before it gets better.

In Which Our Heroine Learns Not to Judge

It's lunchtime in the Hall of Paperclips, and Status Quoman is taking a well-deserved break from her latest battle. This morning, she fended off a surprise attack from Rotunda, who had been lying in ambush in her closet. As our heroine stood in a state of half-sleep, gazing disinterestedly at the row of hangers bearing item after item of clothing that no longer fit over her super big bones and trying to decide which pair of pants would reduce her super powers the least (for uncomfortably tight clothing is like kryptonite to Status Quoman), Rotunda sprung from behind a size X4 skirt and flung herself upon Status Quoman.

"NO! Not the blue cropped pants! Everyone will see how high you cinch them up on your waist so they'll fit!"

They grappled for about three minutes -- it was a short battle, by Rotunda standards -- until Status Quoman wrenched the blue pants from Rotunda's chubby hands and pulled them up and over her Super Hips. With a final flourish, she zipped, with Rotunda grasping at her shouting "DON'T! DON'T!"

The pants zipped without much trouble. Rotunda looked perplexed.

"I could have sworn those were smaller. No matter. I'll get you next time you try on the pink pleated skirt, Status Quoman!" Rotunda disappeared into the closet, and Status Quoman could hear her rifling through her clothes, giggling quietly and maniacally with each clack of a hanger.

Now, Status Quoman relishes the fruits of her latest Super Initiative: Bringing Lunch to the Hall of Paperclips Every Day. Today's super lunch includes a delicious, healthy sandwich -- an original Gardenburger on high-fiber flax bread, a slice of locally-grown organic tomato, chunks of ripe avocado, locally-grown organic lettuce, locally-grown organic red peppers that she'd roasted last night in a fit of Super Domesticity, and a shmear of spicy chipotle hummus. (Part of Status Quoman's ongoing mission to maintain a happy status quo involves supporting local agriculture, and her Super CSA has saved her from the clutches of Rotunda's processed-food attacks on multiple occasions.)

Even superheros need breaks every now and then. Oh look, Status Quoman thought, Dick Cavett's put out a new article in his column! Actually, Status Quoman has been so busy counting paperclips that she has regrettably missed some of the previous columns; this particular personality has always written with exceeding wit and clarity. Our heroine eagerly devours the article while devouring her Super Lunch.

Oh no, thinks Status Quoman. Rotunda must have escaped my closet and infiltrated the halls of the Grey Lady. How is it possible that Dick Cavett, friend of Groucho Marx and John Lennon, recently revealed to have been persecuted personally by Nixon, teller of ghost stories and stories of awkward rites of childhood passage, could call obese women "a herd of heifers"? Status Quoman had to read further.

It was only a few years ago that I first noticed an obese person in a commercial. Then there were more. Now, like obesity itself, it has gotten out of hand.

This disturbs me in ways I haven’t fully figured out, and in a few that I have. The obese man on the orange bench, the fat pharmacist in the drug store commercial and all of the other heavily larded folks being used to sell products distresses me. Mostly because the message in all this is that its O.K. to be fat.

As we know, it isn’t.

...Fat people, the commercial-makers may feel, are entitled to representation. What’s wrong with that?

Everything.

Status Quoman nearly chokes on her locally-grown, organic red peppers. Cavett goes on to discuss the health problems associated with obesity -- the usual parade of "several cancers, crippling damage to joints, heart attack, stroke, diabetes and sleep apnea," touches briefly on the racial and socioeconomical connections to obesity, confirms that it is becoming a worldwide "revolution," and reminisces about the day of his childhood in which the Fat Lady in the circus, a true human rarity, deserved her place among the freaks.

Status Quoman also detects more than a hint of sexism -- though Cavett does not say so explicitly, women seem more regularly identified as the objects of his disgust: the Fat Lady of his youth, the "herd of heifers," the "fat, sassy black lady" of sitcoms, qualified only slightly by his added parenthetical -- and possibly editorially-mandated -- "(or man)."

Cavett briefly mentions the fast food nationalism sweeping the world, but otherwise does not bother to consider the reasons behind growing rates of obesity. Status Quoman scratches her head; and why would he? The subject is already talked to death and speculated upon and studied and mourned every time a new statistic arrives. Cavett's point is clear: he wants to shed political correctness and point a solid finger at a potato he thinks does not belong in the melting pot. The big, fat, lumpy potato.

Status Quoman's Super Big Bones begin to shake and her Super Such-A-Pretty-Face flashes red, ever so briefly. Cavett accuses the potatoes of being contributors to the "epidemic" that's seizing the world, and accuses advertisers of exploitation in admitting that, for once in the history of popular media, overweight and obese people do exist, and might exist as normal people and not just as butts of fat jokes. What he does not include, for reasons that most likely mean that he does not want to dilute his diatribe with any modicum of compassion or thought-outside-his-healthy-BMI-box, is that overweight and obese people do not benefit from only seeing Concavia and her henchwo/men on TV. In fact, the era preceding popular media's (still completely marginal at present) inclusion of those of above-average body size was the era that shepherded in the rise of obesity in America. Does Mr. Cavett think that showing acceptance -- no, not acceptance, admission of existence! -- of overweight people encourages obesity when their non-acceptance ushered in their growing numbers?

Does Cavett not realize that looking at obese people on television does NOT make Status Quoman wish she were fatter?

Status Quoman realizes with a start that Cavett is engaging in the classic game of blaming the fat people for being fat, as if fat is something that people strive to be. As if, in a Western society dripping with Concavian celebrities and oblique sex, it's preferable to be a fat person: socially reviled as sexually unappealing (or worse, easy), professionally unambitious (because clearly a person who let his/herself go cannot possibly be a go-getter), and physically underperforming (and here Status Quoman flexes her Super Somewhat-Pudgy-But-Still-Muscular Biceps menacingly). As if the rare advertisement that includes an overweight person encourages viewers to chase the American dream of social pariahism!

As if being fat is a choice we make.

All of a sudden, Status Quoman freezes. Concavia's thin, bony fingers are closing around her shoulders. POW! Status Quoman's evil archnemesis sharply tips our heroine's chair, throwing her flat on her back. Status Quoman feels the back of her head and touches warm liquid -- she withdraws a finger and sees that it is sticky, dark; Concavia's attack has hit hard, and she is now lying in a pool of her own hypocrisy.

"Now I have you, Status Quoman," Concavia cackles. "How many times have you bemoaned 'how easy it must be' for those overweight people whose diet consists mainly of fast food and prepackaged, processed food items to lose weight? 'All they have to do is change the quality of food,' you've complained, when you actually have to work for it? When your body is genetically programmed to gain weight even on a diet of vegetables and whole grains?"

Concavia pins Status Quoman to the ground with a bony, knobby knee. Our heroine struggles to free herself, but Concavia's accusation prevents her from rising. Status Quoman knows this is true; she knows that in her moments of self-pity, the moments in which the kryptonite (rather, "Quoptonite") breaks her down, when she reads about someone who lost 100 lbs simply by realizing that a diet of burgers wasn't working, or when the scale creeps up even when she feels as if she isn't having enough fun to be gaining weight, that her self-pity and judgment does not, in fact, help her along her quest. And when she compares herself to other overweight people at all, fully knowing that there is no clear, silver-bullet solution to general obesity.

Concavia cackles louder. "You thought it was Rotunda holding Dick Cavett captive, when it really was ME!" Status Quoman feels her strength fail; then she rallies. Her Super Big Bones expand to their full Big Size, and she throws Concavia and rises.

"Concavia!" Status Quoman shouts. "My arch-nemesis, you have unknowingly helped me in my ongoing pursuit! You have identified a weak point in my Super Armor, the point in which judgment of others for personal benefit seeps through.Now that I see it, I will mend it, and will be that much stronger against your attacks."

Status Quoman's Super Such-A-Pretty-Face flashes blue, then pink, then settles on polka dots. "I would advise you to move aside before my Super Big-Boned hand finishes forming a Fist of New Intentions."

Fearing the threat of Status Quoman's Intentionally Vague Attack, Concavia laughs maniacally as she slips through the door and out of sight.

"You haven't seen the last of me, Status Quoman!" our heroine hears, echoing down the hall.

Status Quoman's Super Big Bones shrink down to their normal size, and her Super Such-A-Pretty-Face settles into its normal hue. Concavia's attack has made her stronger by temporarily allying her with a hostile force in the Opinion section. And really, what is Opinion other than one [thin] man's personal perception?

Status Quoman sits down to mend her super armor. Maybe she should get someone to help her with that. Even Batman has Alfred...

Wait a minute, thinks our heroine. Did Concavia say she was holding Dick Cavett captive? Maybe I should hire new writers.

The Saga Begins...

Status Quoman woke today to find a cool breeze blowing past the Fortress of Solitude. Granted, the Fortress is cleverly disguised to look like a typical medium-wage-earner's studio apartment, but a true superhero does not require the fancier trappings -- or at least not giant, isolated, mansion-adjacent caverns in which to store them. It would be nice to have an extra cavern somewhere, though, she thought. It would be perfect storage for her tighter civvies.

She walked past her bookshelf, stacked with Wollstonecraft, Woolf, Stein, to sit at the SuperQuomputer for her daily mornings' work: scanning the news for crimes that require the aid of her superpowers. It would be nice if today could be an off day, one in which the Quo-signal would not be lit by a woman or man in need, in which a crime against body and brain would go uncommitted, in which the tenuous balance between a feminist lifestyle and the quest for healthy body and body image would go uncompromised. She could go for a bike ride. Catch up on Wired. Flaunt her secret identity with reckless abandon.

She was abruptly pulled from her reverie as a story caught her eye -- it was about the increasing demand in the Evil Fashion Overlords' Image Mines for ever more raw materials, in this case, models with dance backgrounds. One sentence specifically made Status Quoman's magic big bones quake: “Ten years ago we didn’t have that many models around, but the turnaround now is so high that in order for the girls to compete they have to be perfect.”

Concavia, Status Quoman thought grimly.

She reached for her cape.