Sometimes, things suck.

The difference is how we respond.

“I thoroughly disapprove of your favoured brand of megaphone!”

I genuinely think that some people in this world (John Cleese, She-Who-Shall-Not-Be-Named and all their anti-woke friends) have legitimately never faced serious criticism before.

The vibe is almost like it’s unseemly to criticise them. How dare someone criticise them! They’re brilliant, and everything they do is brilliant… why are you saying “er, notes?” instead of applauding? Bloody peasants!

Criticism is one of those things that happens. Sometimes it’s justified, sometimes it isn’t. It’s part of that big list of stuff that goes into a box marked ‘Well That Sucked’.

Modelled very heavily on the Ark of the Covenant.

The big difference between the little people like you and me and people who rail against anyone treating them like less than royalty is that… we just have to get on with it. We don’t have the recourse of retreating to our speaker circuit, or our newspaper column or any of the other counter-forces that entitled people can muster to their defence.

We just sigh. Maybe wipe away a tear. Put our smiles away, and get on with the day.

The clown recommends that the doctor see the great physician at the hospital immediately. The doctor replies: “but, Pagliacci, I am Doctor Salk!”

Here’s a little story about my (small) role in a movie that filmed in London last year. Despite them casting explicitly for big trans women actors (in a movie about body positivity) this is what happened to me, in no particular order:

I ended up being the only actually fat person on set and one of only two trans persons on set.

I got a panicked call 1 hour before filming, because apparently they couldn’t find anything in any shop in any size appropriate for me. I’m a size 26, by-the-by, so I can shop at most high street retailers.

They made a very big deal about letting-out the ridiculous clothes for me that they did manage to find. I looked damned ridiculous, it was genuinely like fancy-dress shop clothing.

I’m big, it was physically active and it was hot under the lights. The makeup artists didn’t do a particularly good job of hiding their frustration with my sweat messing up my makeup/hair.

On two occasions I was ‘reminded’ to close my legs whilst I was just resting off-set, despite wearing underwear (and having, frankly, thighs likely to make seeing anything difficult). “Not for me, for you” I was told.

For the second round of scenes two weeks later, my new costume was so utterly mis-sized that I had to stand naked whilst a wardrobe artist stuffed me into it.

I spent the second night sobbing in my hotel room, because I’d been made to feel like such an utter freak. I’ve never been so thoroughly humiliated and demeaned.

My co-star (listed in the script as ‘the other transgender’) was, and remains, a self-involved brat who wondered aloud how I could call myself a woman when I’d never worn fake eye lashes, and legitimately laughed at me when I just said “I got by fine with mascara”.

Said co-star periodically popped up in my messages a couple of times afterwards, wanting help with stuff like setting up IMDb, how to get an agent and so on. She stopped talking to me literally the instant she got the information she wanted. Like not even a ‘k thx bye’, just instant gone.

Now, said movie is nearly out. The trailer is out. Of course, my bratty co-star is in it (albeit only for about 1 second, we were minor characters after all) and I (the only fat person in a movie about body positivity) am not. She’s tagged me in IG, linking the trailer and boasting about how great it was and what a Powerful Message the movie sends and how well she was treated and how it’s the First Movie from [Cultural Genre Redacted] to Feature a Trans Person (i.e. her) Positively. I mean, it ain’t but don’t let the facts get in the way of some serious self-promotion.

“Oh I wake up like this every day, and everyone always tells me how much they love my hair, that’s why I use [INSERT BRAND PLACEMENT] because I’m so, so special and clever!”

Me? Quite frankly, I was treated like shit and I don’t know if I’ll ever want to do on-screen work again.

However, now of course it is time for me to right this terrible wrong committed against me!

It’s time for MY VENGEANCE! MY fight for justice! MY campaign for truth so EVERYONE knows I suffered, and the movie makers stink, and my co-star was a bitch and and and

Ha. Nope.

I’m writing this article, that’s my big retaliation. An article that probably four people will read. Because that’s what happens when you’re just a nobody. One of The Little People. If someone important had been treated like that well that’d be one thing… but the likes of me?

“Well, onwards and upwards, at least I live in a country that otherwise values people regardless of body size and- er, oh… well at least they aren’t waging a culture war against trans people and- er, oh… at least they value people of all genders and- er, oh… oh. I see.”

I ignored the IG post. I try not to dread what the finished movie will be like. Will they mostly cut me out? Or worse, will they leave me in and it’ll be as humiliating to watch as it was to film? Will I just pretend it doesn’t exist and I was never in it? That’s my big retaliation.

When you, me and people like us get treated badly we put it into the box marked ‘Well That Sucks’ and keep right on plodding. That’s our retaliation.

“Oh darling, I do so love getting everything I want all the time, but I would trade it all for a life-size, solid diamond diplodocus that shoots lasers and smells like banana.”

What on earth must it be like to be so entitled that you feel it proper to go to war, just because someone didn’t treat you like a monarch? It’s like saying “your pet tortoise looked at me funny so I’m entitled to napalm it”.

I got treated like shit, and all I can do is move on.