How I took LeBesco's statement was that we need to focus on the real definition of the word rather than the connotations of the word. The words "queer," and "fat," didn't always have such negative connotations, throughout history, they picked up these stigma's ,and what LeBesco was saying was that if you understand language and how it was used you can take these words and reclaim them. It also has less to do with what is said rather than how it's said. The inflections you put on your words are much more important than the words themselves.
The "artificiality of truths we think we know," seems to be lies and stereotypes we seem to accept. I really like the wording of this quote as well because it's so true. If we accept "queer" or "fat" to be insults that others use to tear people down, they will always be like that. This is why we "think" we know that being queer or fat is a bad thing, but in actuality if you have an understanding of the language, we know it isn't necessarily true.
I really like what LeBesco has to say about reclaiming the word "fat" as a way to reject normative regimes of beauty. It's just like the reclamation of the word "queer" as a way to reject normative regimes of sexuality and gender. Obviously Divine in "Female Trouble" would be considered "fat" by any and every sense of the word, and that was obviously intended when developing the character. Divine takes the idea of "fat" and exaggerates every aspect to prove that too much of anything is harmful. Beauty takes over and nothing else matters but being beautiful to her, and it's awful. Look historically at the seven deadly sins, one of which being gluttony. The reason it was considered a deadly sin wasn't because people just overindulged, that wasn't the problem, the problem was people would become addicted and take things too far to where nothing else mattered, which is the problem with all of this. "Beauty" overtook Divine.
I think that's the problem with the words fat and skinny, they have such negative connotations associated with them that we have stuck in our brains from growing up. It reminds me of children and how they get bullied by getting called fat or gay. After hearing that, they immediately associate that with something thats bad, something that they dont want to be or to be called. When you're young you either don't know what these words actually mean or you don't even care, all you know is that it's something you don't want people to think you are. I definitely agree with what you said that the inflections you put on your words are much more important than the words themselves.
Great point about the stigmas being attached to words like queer and fat over time. LeBesco seems to understand language very well and I appreciated her thoughts on the subject. I also made a similar point, I believe, that the words themselves aren't so very important - it's how they're said and used, in what context, and that every person is bound to have at least a slightly different viewpoint since each individual's language and meaning is affected by their own lives and personality. Since we are all different, our words are bound to have different connotations.
I never even thought about the point of 'beauty' overtaking Divine/Dawn and relating it to gluttony, good job! The prompt for this week's blog was interesting to me because it made me connect all the different ways Divine could be considered 'revolting' - whether it be her weight or her disfigured face after the acid, but even more so all the criminal things she does - cutting off Ida's hand, shooting the crowd during her show, and especially killing Taffy.
I agree with you that the common definitions of words that we use now isn't what they were originally defined as, but I don't think that "fat" or "queer" was ever necessarily a good thing. If we simply look at the true definitions of these words, then what we would come up with would be neutral at best. It is true that the connotations and meanings of words are more dependent on the context than anything else. You mention in your post that in order to reclaim terms, we just need to look at their "true" definitions. I disagree, and instead think that reclamation is taking this neutral word with a negative connotation and warping it to the point of positivity. We've got to really push back if we ever want "fat" or "queer" to represent something better than their denotations. The word I think of most in this scenario is "dyke." Analyzing the dictionary definition, it's not so bad. In real life, it is used as an insult. Only through reclamation does it become a positive identity and community (i.e. Dyke March).
Do you see the film doing any reclaiming of its own? Does it successfully reclaim "beautiful," at least within the context of its running time?
I think society has trained our minds with popular culture most notably reality shows and award shows. Everyone is losing weight and feeling great. Fat says you are not willing to invest the needed time in the gym to look better. I personally think bigger people are beautiful. I think the movie does a great job at depicting this.