I was thinking of the whole "fat face and double chin thing" as sounding like you were too familiar with it. :)
Yeah, I know what you mean. One of the things that really got me thinking about some of this crap? Running across a photo of (burly) Gary Farmer yukking it up with Graham Greene, and having an obviously disproportionate reaction which took me completely by surprise. I was automatically cringing, they reminded me so much of some of my own big, loud relatives I was supposed to find embarrassing. They looked like my mom's cousins, with their big embarrassing laughs. (And no wonder with the familiar dynamic, since it turns out those two are cousins.) It also hit me that my relatives were supposed to be particularly embarrassing when they were obviously having a good time and not caring what other people thought! Not exactly subtle, but hey.
I mean, it was absolutely ridiculous. I didn't realize just how much very specific lurking shame I had going until that little demonstration. I knew there was some, but not to what extent.
There is a reason for some of the intensity there: I grew up in a college town with some really hostile attitudes toward local people, a lot of whom just happened to be Native. You can't be racist if you insist they're all "just" stupid white trash--which sounds bad enough to me, especially when said white trash are obviously of a different ethnic background and easily identified as such on sight--and must be lying if they say otherwise. It was not a good place to grow up with certain physical or cultural characteristics. I ran into a lot of "not racist, really!" harassment in school, as part of the local minority in that system--and my family got ridiculed a lot, including by teachers. All the administrators were non-local. Most local people were less stubborn and had moved into one of the surrounding counties by then; even more have in the past 15 years. That town is a weird island. So I am maybe a little touchy about the "you can't possibly be who you say you are" factor, too.
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Yeah, I know what you mean. One of the things that really got me thinking about some of this crap? Running across a photo of (burly) Gary Farmer yukking it up with Graham Greene, and having an obviously disproportionate reaction which took me completely by surprise. I was automatically cringing, they reminded me so much of some of my own big, loud relatives I was supposed to find embarrassing. They looked like my mom's cousins, with their big embarrassing laughs. (And no wonder with the familiar dynamic, since it turns out those two are cousins.) It also hit me that my relatives were supposed to be particularly embarrassing when they were obviously having a good time and not caring what other people thought! Not exactly subtle, but hey.
I mean, it was absolutely ridiculous. I didn't realize just how much very specific lurking shame I had going until that little demonstration. I knew there was some, but not to what extent.
There is a reason for some of the intensity there: I grew up in a college town with some really hostile attitudes toward local people, a lot of whom just happened to be Native. You can't be racist if you insist they're all "just" stupid white trash--which sounds bad enough to me, especially when said white trash are obviously of a different ethnic background and easily identified as such on sight--and must be lying if they say otherwise. It was not a good place to grow up with certain physical or cultural characteristics. I ran into a lot of "not racist, really!" harassment in school, as part of the local minority in that system--and my family got ridiculed a lot, including by teachers. All the administrators were non-local. Most local people were less stubborn and had moved into one of the surrounding counties by then; even more have in the past 15 years. That town is a weird island. So I am maybe a little touchy about the "you can't possibly be who you say you are" factor, too.
OK, that turned out way longer than intended!