Sometimes “Special Snowflake” isn’t necessarily so special…
Feb 10th, 2011 by heidi
I belong to a pregnancy group on Livejournal, not because I’m currently pregnant (or likely to be ever again) but because I generally think it’s good for the current pregnates* to have the Wise Wisdom of Wiseness from women who’ve been there. Also, I like to pipe up now and then to remind the pregnates not to be so harsh on their bodies. There’s a lot of fatphobia in pregnant women, generally directed at themselves.
So.
A woman, whose size I do not know but who self-describes as “fat” posts about how she had a horrible ultrasound experience at her anatomy scan. The tech apparently took less than fifteen minutes (hello! mine took more like 30-45 minutes!) to do the scan. During the process she was rough, to the point of leaving skin split on the woman’s belly.
Cue someone who accuses her of having an underlying condition, because a lubricated ultrasound could NEVER cause split skin, as skin is elastic and stretchy.
I call her on it. Fat women (and the OP did self-describe as fat), can have skin split if the tech pushes too hard.
Mistaken commenter accuses me of being a “special snowflake” as she is a size 18 and has never had split skin from an ultrasound. Skin is stretchy, so therefore it can’t happen. I explain that, at a size 28/30, yes, indeed, I have had skin split after an ultrasound that was too brutal. Skin is elastic, yes, but there is a limit to its elasticity.
The OP replies that she is approximately my weight/size. I commiserate with her because I know how it feels to be abused (and I don’t use that term lightly – it is abusive for a medical professional to be harsher than they need to be with a patient and not care about said patient’s pain) in a context where you’re worried about your baby and in an environment that feels unfamiliar and uncomfortable.
There’s been a lot of talk on the Fatosphere feed about whether or not people of different sizes need spaces of their own to discuss issues that apply directly to them. That question has been debated by far more eloquent and aware individuals and I won’t rehash it. What I do want to say is that there are times when someone who is a size 18 cannot fundamentally understand the experience of someone who is my size. Their experiences are valid and not inherently worse/better than my own, but when a size 18 declares that skin is elastic and could not possibly split for any fat woman because hers hasn’t split, it’s good to have someone else my size affirm me and say that my experience is true and legitimate because they have gone through it. Sometimes that can happen in a more public space. Sometimes it needs to happen in a place where there’s no need to fear an indignant commenter who claims that she’s “not fat enough for your special snowflake club!” because you point out that her experience doesn’t necessarily equal yours.
There aren’t many Notes regulars as clueless as the commenter on that thread was, I will readily admit. Still, it felt like a slap in the face for someone who clearly thinks of herself as fat to assume that someone else is lying? exaggerating? mistaken? simply because her own experiences, and ours, don’t mesh. In the world of FA, there must be room for us to have conversations as a greater community and room for us to have smaller, more private conversations that do not exclude for the purposes of hurting others, but instead to help certain parts of the community heal more easily.
***
* Yes. I know how “pregnant” is spelled. I am using the term “pregnate” tongue-in-cheekily.
It takes a special kind of self-absorption and ego-centricity to make it to adulthood without realizing that our experiences aren’t universal.
Also? “special snowflake”—I don’t think that phrase means what she thinks it means.
I’ve been in situations where I’ve had someone else step to my side to back me up, and I’ve also been the backer-upper. Both are very life-giving places to be, IME. Hopefully even if you didn’t reach miss my-experiences-are-universal, your dialogue has helped many others who are reading silently!
Thanks, Katie.
I couldn’t BELIEVE how demeaning it was for her to tell this woman that no, something else must be wrong with her body, because it wasn’t possible for an ultrasound scan done badly to tear skin. I couldn’t NOT stick up for the original poster.
My response to people who have the ‘Well I did it and therefore so can you!’ attitude is “So? your reality is not MY reality! I am not you! Not every person can do what you did in X situation. Because you were able to do it, do you want a fuckin’ gold star?”
Conversely, this is absolutely WHY having a wide variety of voices in one spot is so important; more perspectives and experiences are shared, which cuts down on bigotry and ignorance, which cuts down on hatred. I’m glad you’re hanging around the pregnant ladies club on LJ.
I really hate how the term “special snowflake” is used to easily and completely dismiss the reality of some peoples’ experiences. /sigh/ Just another example of the profound breakdown of empathy in our culture. Frustrating.
Ye gods and little purple fishes! Did she miss the first day of kindergarten where we all learned to our consternation and edification that other people live in ways we haven’t lived and experienced things we haven’t experienced??????
See most of us got some version of that lesson by the time we were five or so. I pity someone who has so utterly missed the bus as to make it to adulthood without being willing to hear that someone else had a different experience than she did.
I also sincerely hope she never experiences a non-standard reaction to a drug or medical procedure. I’m betting she won’t believe that, either.
“I couldn’t NOT stick up for the original poster.”
I often feel similarly when I see crap like this!
@CTJen, I think it’s really unfortunate that it gets so over-used, when it’s real meaning is to highlight when privileged people throw their weight around in a conversation and, while doing so, claim that they are somehow “special” or “different” from all those “other” privileged people, but they don’t actually realize they are behaving in privileged ways.
Which, I guess, quite ironically, the commenter in question who called Heidi a special snowflake was actually acting pretty close to the real activist meaning of that phrase.
I’m surely glad that you are speaking up on the pregnancy forums as a woman of size. It’s good to have multiple voices out there about the topic.
As you know, it’s harder to “see” clear images on ultrasounds in fat women because adiposity does interfere with imaging to some extent. As a result, some techs push REALLY REALLY HARD in ultrasounds, thinking they are getting a clearer/better image, but sometimes this only has the effect of causing the woman tremendous pain, not improving the image that much. I have not experienced the split skin (I actually am your size) but early on I experienced one of these super-painful ultrasounds. OWWWWW. I can totally see how taken too far, that could cause skin damage.
The ironic thing here is that pushing too hard in an ultrasound can actually distort the data they are getting to the point of getting a false-positive diagnosis for a birth defect. More fat women need to be aware of this possibility.
I have a blog entry about ultrasound and women of size here:
http://wellroundedmama.blogspot.com/search/label/ultrasound
and a more complete article on it here:
http://www.plus-size-pregnancy.org/Prenatal%20Testing/prenataltest-ultrasoundbigmoms.htm
Feel free to share these links on the forums if you think they might be informative.
” In the world of FA, there must be room for us to have conversations as a greater community and room for us to have smaller, more private conversations that do not exclude for the purposes of hurting others, but instead to help certain parts of the community heal more easily.”
This is so well put Heidi! Affirmation and realizing that you are not alone, especially in a world that singles you out and pushes you away from others for not conforming to the norm, is powerful. And like Twistie said….how did this person get to her stage of life without learning the lesson that everyone’s experiences are different? Human suffering is universal, shared individual experiences are much less common, but when we find that common experience, it opens the door to a whole host of mindful thinking and empathy. It’s humanizing.
Thank you for advocating for this woman. If her experiences are anything like mine were as a pregnant fatty, I’m sure she needed to feel believed, just as much as the “special snowflake” needed to learn that her own experiences don’t apply to everyone.
I am frustrated by this dialogue going on in the fatosphere regarding those feeling excluded because they aren’t XXX weight. I’ve always been keenly aware that there are varying levels of “privilege” within the FA community. It doesn’t make me bitter that I haven’t had the more privileged smaller fat experiences in a very long time. Just like it doesn’t make me bitter that I haven’t had the less privileged experiences of a larger fat than myself. Staying aware of where you fall on the privilege spectrum will only enhance and deepen understanding for everyone.
🙂
@Twistie – it makes me quite sad that her children will have to deal with someone who’s so judgmental, too. What in the world is she going to do when her children have different experiences than she ever has had, or do things she’s not expecting? /sigh
I’m just amazed by ‘mistaken commenter’s inability to realize that the fact that she is a fat woman does not mean that every other fat woman on the planet is exactly like her *shakes head*.