{"id":226,"date":"2016-07-19T21:55:37","date_gmt":"2016-07-20T02:55:37","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.cjaiferry.com\/blog\/?p=226"},"modified":"2016-07-19T21:57:14","modified_gmt":"2016-07-20T02:57:14","slug":"body-shaming-flash-fiction","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.cjaiferry.com\/blog\/body-shaming-flash-fiction\/","title":{"rendered":"99 Words of Body-Shaming"},"content":{"rendered":"

This week I had the unfortunate luck to witness a truly horrible scene in a restaurant that I like to frequent when I am in write-a-million-words-a-month mode. Usually when I visit this restaurant, the servers (who all know me and know my caffeine of choice) show me to the same table (complete with an outlet) that is in a back corner. They are fastidious\u00a0in their attention to my caffeine levels, never letting the sweet nectar get too low, but otherwise leave me alone for hours at a time. The restaurant experiences a fairly healthy turnaround in terms of customers, but it’s never too busy and seems to provide just the right levels of ambient noise.\u00a0Perfect, right?<\/p>\n

Well, not this last time. As I said, I witnessed a horrible scene when a\u00a0little girl and her grandparents decided to sit in a booth near me. For twenty minutes I was subjected to body-shaming in its cruelest form: from a loved one. The grandmother not only took food from the plate of her still-in-a-booster-seat granddaughter, but repeatedly told the youngster that, if she ate [fill in the blank], she would get fat and\u00a0not fit into her favorite dress and\u00a0not have any friends.<\/p>\n

I became so disgusted I packed up my computer and left. I also shared this scene on one of my social media channels, and Charli Mills over at Carrot Ranch<\/a> was quick to point out that it sounded like the spark of a flash fiction. Not surprisingly, this week’s flash fiction prompt is about anger:\u00a0In 99 words (no more, no less) write a story using the emotion of anger.<\/p>\n

Challenge accepted…at the very, very last minute (naturally!). But I really wanted to explore the anger from a different place, so here goes:<\/p>\n

Lessons from\u00a0Mom<\/strong><\/span><\/p>\n

Martha snatched the greasy garlic bread from the plate. \u201cNo chubby cheeks for you.\u201d She spooned carrots onto the five-year-old\u2019s plate.<\/strong><\/span><\/p>\n

Her granddaughter\u2019s face burned with humiliation. <\/strong>Let her scream and cry<\/strong><\/em>. Martha wasn\u2019t afraid of a scene. She was terrified the girl would end up fat and alone, like her grandmother.<\/strong><\/span><\/p>\n

Martha\u2019s mother had been more concerned about clean plates. There are children starving in Africa<\/em>. If she\u2019d really cared, she wouldn\u2019t have sentenced her daughter to life in a size 24 prison.<\/strong><\/span><\/p>\n

Martha opened her mouth and shoved the garlic bread in, hoping she’d choke on it. <\/strong><\/span><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

This week I had the unfortunate luck to witness a truly horrible scene in a restaurant that I like to frequent when I am in write-a-million-words-a-month mode. Usually when I visit this restaurant, the servers (who all know me and know my caffeine of choice) show me to the same table (complete with an outlet) […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"99 Words of Body-Shaming\r\n#flashfiction #writingchallenge","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":true,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[4],"tags":[15,16,26,20],"class_list":["post-226","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-writing","tag-carrot-ranch","tag-flash-fiction","tag-mother","tag-writing-challenge"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p4WVQN-3E","jetpack_likes_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.cjaiferry.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/226","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.cjaiferry.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.cjaiferry.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.cjaiferry.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.cjaiferry.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=226"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"https:\/\/www.cjaiferry.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/226\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":229,"href":"https:\/\/www.cjaiferry.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/226\/revisions\/229"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.cjaiferry.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=226"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.cjaiferry.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=226"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.cjaiferry.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=226"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}