Firestorm of controversy! A Miss America contestant was judged to be ‘curvy’ by the tweet-o-sphere. He body was also called ‘normal’. (In this case, it was deemed a good thing. Sometimes, not so much. Ah, fickle tweetsters.) The ‘curvy/normal’ woman in question is 5′-8″ and size 4.

Now, we all know women’s clothing sizes are utterly made-up and wildly varying from maker to maker  — why can’t women’s clothes be labeled by measurements, like men’s are, anyway? — but if you google a photo of Miss Indiana, you will see she looks ravishing in a bikini. So whatever size 4 means, she’s wee. And tan, and pretty, and fit-looking, and very white of tooth.

She is not, however, curvy.

Because, friends, ‘curvy’ is a body type, not a weight class. If you are curvy, then your waist goes in and your hips go out, and other parts do the same up and down the length of you, in the shape of a curve. See above photo if you’re lost.

Why is ‘curvy’ used so constantly as a euphemism for ‘not as thin as we think you should be’? What if you’re a curvy size zero? Then what? What if you’re a straight up-and-down size 32?

We have two conjoined issues here.

One is a widespread unwillingness to root around in our rich language for apt words to call a spade a spade. (In general, not just about this issue.) Mean people want to say ‘fat’, but they’re not allowed any more, and driving that underground is both good and bad. ‘Overweight’ is tough, because over what weight? ‘Plump’ is a terrific descriptive word, full of overtones of happy deliciousness, but it’s out of favor. I wish we would borrow from German, which has ‘zaftig’, which I find delightful.

In any case: when we want to describe someone as not-model-thin, we come up short. (Why we spend so much time describing women’s bodies is a different issue.)

But I don’t think using the totally wrong word to describe something is a good solution. Curvy means S-shaped. It has no bearing on weight-to-frame ratio.

The other part is our increasingly furtive but nonetheless extremely powerful disapproval of — well, of almost all women’s bodies. Which is exhausting, if you’re a woman.

Millions of extremely accomplished American women will collapse if they can’t fit into their thinnest pants and feel like a failure as a human. Because all that matters is being thin. Even pretty is not as important!  Thin or bust!

This curvy thing bugs me because
1) I am a self-appointed member of the Language Police, and
2) I am curvy, irrespective of whether I am overweight.

I hate that ‘curvy’ now means ‘fat, but we don’t want to say that’. Give me my word back!

*le grand sigh* Do you think we will ever get back all the energy we expend talking about women’s bodies, and do something useful with that brainpower?

Yesterday, on Memorial Day, I was at a place which lowers and removes the American flag every day at sundown. It was a regular ritual, made more meaningful by the thoughts it evoked on that particular day.

The few of us on premises stood as a cannon was fired, and the flag solemnly lowered and folded. I quietly sang taps to myself. No one took a photo. We just stood, honoring the flag, awash in our separate thoughts.

For me, Memorial Day is complicated. I feel such relief that most of my relatives are honored on Veteran’s Day, not Memorial Day. I feel such gratitude toward those who choose to serve.

But I also feel guilt about all the families who are mourning on Memorial Day, especially today, right now. The wars we’ve been waging for almost 15 years are falling disproportionately on the same shoulders, over and over. Servicemen and women mobilize time and again, while the rest of us spend the holidays meant to honor them barbequing and shopping.

When they come back? As a country, we’re not supporting them. Congress has been cruel to vets of late, and we just… let them. We turn away, embarrassed, tired. I turn away.

What can we do? I’m really not sure. I sign petitions, I tell my rep how I feel… nothing changes. I tell you one thing: IMHO, posting ‘We support our troops’ on Facebook is downright irksome. Do we, really? Do we do anything substantive to support our troops?

Maybe it’s time to do more than click ‘like’ on flag photos. Maybe we can turn to our local communities and try to be involved. There’s a program in Charlotte, NC, called Charlotte Bridge Home to help vets transition back into the community, and help the community connect with vets to employ.

Are there more programs like that? Is there a vet in your neighborhood in need of an afternoon of free daycare, or help fixing a car, or some computer training or troubleshooting? What are you good at that maybe you could do for a vet?

I’m a songwriter. I’m decent at singing, writing songs, and driving long distances without getting speeding tickets. What good is that? Perhaps no good at all. Seems totally removed from anything useful to a vet.

Or… who knows. maybe a song I write about it will open a heart, spur someone to action.

Maybe this song. Maybe your heart.

Listen to Lament

I don’t — as you know, if you follow Late Night Poetry here at The Skinny (our motto: Sleep is IN this Spring) — I don’t post all that much truly really contemporary being-written-right-now poetry.

Partially it’s on accounta I’m out of the loop, and partially it’s because I am the sort who only reluctantly dwells in the internet age, and it sort of saddens me to see it referenced over-much.

Because, really: so much of life is trans-historical — loss, joy, triumph, collective experiences — and if only we will pay attention we can see past the how to the more important what. Or possibly, if we pause from all our posting, we might have some shot at figuring out why, while we are still around to do something with the information.

But this poem just glances at it. Plus, it references a stretch of land I know very well and which is under-rated here in NYC.  So what the heck. Here she goes.

By Alicia Ostriker