Fatty-bracketting

And the dumping of real and metaphorical rubbish

Lately I’ve been feeling vexed about bins, rubbish, arses, other people and my responses to other people. There’s a thread that joins them all, so strap in.

My office is by an open window that looks out onto the street and our giant plastic, black wheelie bin. I know, right: yum. The other day I was gazing out of the window, which I do for a long time before writing anything down, when a man holding a dog lead deposited a tiny green sack full of dog poop in our wheelie bin. I was outraged, and yet also frozen to the spot. You see, the bin men take away large bags but if you’ve left smaller stuff at the bottom of the wheelie then they don’t bother: you’d better be ready to make the head-first trip into the bin to rescue whatever is languishing there from the sea of bin juice. Double yum.

But by the time my outrage had reached the surface, and I was ready to tear him a new one, the man was long gone. My ire had nowhere to go and so I explained it away: I saved myself an argument in the street with a man in sandals. He was probably having a bad week and needed to use our bin for ease and speed before returning to nurse his be-sandled partner. Let it go why don’t you!

Except that this happened weeks ago and I still seem to be talking about it.

So why didn’t I do anything in the moment, when a window was all that separated me sandal-poop man? I thought really hard and alighted on a time two decades ago (I am like an elephant, I remember everything) when I was sitting in the pub with a drunk and irascible friend. She turned to me and said: You see, Hannah, the thing about having arses like ours is… whereupon I quietly listened to her monologue about how massive her arse was, how it wasn’t the arse she chose, how she couldn’t seem to change it, and how annoyed she was, by extension, with my apparently also sizeable arse. (NB the pic below is not my arse).

It was the first time I remember freezing. I was silent, shocked in my struggle to find words to explain exactly what was happening. Was I being insulted or drawn into someone’s vulnerable confidences? Should I feel honoured or angry? What’s true is that much like someone using our bin, a crossing of boundaries had occurred.

It wasn’t until several days later that I called a friend and said:

I’ve been fatty-bracketted.

You what? She said. What even is that?

I told her about my theory. At length. About the unwelcome arse-comparison in the pub. I told her: fatty-bracketting is the business of having part of your physical or mental self plopped into someone else’s negative bin…. and here’s the thing: entirely without your consent. What, she said, empathy without consent?

The thing is, what if you don’t think of yourself as having a particularly massive arse? What if you don’t want to be brought down that day with the idea that even though you don’t think your arse is massive, one of your friends and if she had her way, the rest of world, might think it’s massive? What if you’d previously spent time thinking your arse was massive and worked hard never to think about your poor arse that way again only to be reminded by your fatty-bracketting friend that in a judgemental society, including a member that also turns out to be her, this work was entirely pointless?

Sure, we’re in the twenty first century and it’s more than time to turn a blind eye to the tedious subject of arse-size and why it even matters. Let it go! And there are plenty of people for whom fatty-bracketting is water off a duck’s back. They too would chant Let it go! And yet, what if you’re not a duck? What if you look like an elephant with a tough skin but are in actual fact as thin-skinned as a frog? What if, when you tell someone you went for a run and their response is GOOD FOR YOU all you hear is: Good for you! Because I bet it’s hard work hauling that massive elephant arse around the park!

The point here is that while someone may look like an elephant they may be a frog inside aka fatty-bracketting anyone is not ideal when you don’t really know what they feel about anything. And if you’re still not convinced, let’s turn to Brene Brown. She uses a cave metaphor to express the difference between empathy and sympathy.

Sympathy is like standing at the edge of a deep, dark hole and shouting down to your friend, Oh, that looks rough! Want a sandwich? This approach acknowledges their situation but you do not truly share in it.

Empathy, by contrast, is the vulnerable act of climbing down into the hole with the person and saying I know what it’s like down here, and you are not alone and I brought you a sandwich. It’s about feeling with someone and making a connection, even if you can’t offer a quick solution.

Fatty-bracketting – on the other hand – is your friend rabidly tunnelling through the ground to get to your cave (she’s not the kind to bother with the up and down of a ladder) then taking you by the hand, dragging you back through her home-made tunnel to her cave where she demands you listen while showering you in bin juice and telling you she ate all the sandwiches which is exactly why you and her both have massive arses.

And so, to conclude, there are two things here. No no one should be using other people’s bins – real or metaphorical – to dump their real or metaphorical rubbish and in any event, consent must be sought, not least because you might be dealing with a frog.

And the second thing is how you respond when someone puts their rubbish in your bin without your consent. Well I’ll tell you how, now I’ve had time to think about it: cut them off mid-sentence by turning around, shaking your booty and saying FATTY-BRACKET THAT, BABY!