I'm quite happy to terrify you.

So yeah, there's this blog and it's over at Marie Claire's website and I'm not linking to it because I don't want to give the writer or Marie Claire one more goddamnable hit on their website, and two writers I enjoy have already thrown down exquisitely regarding the subject:

Lesley Kinzel at Fatshionista aaaand

Melissa McEwan at Shakesville

..and they say what I would say in response to the utter claptrap that appeared at Marie Claire today.

But.

To reiterate to those who read me and those who know me and those who might wander across this blog looking for some sort of assurance that they are worthwhile human beings who deserve to be treated like human beings: you can thrive on a steady diet of defiance. You can thrive in spite of a trillion messages being pounded down your throat every day that you are lesser and worthless because of your fat. I know sometimes there's frustration because you may feel like you're not doing "enough" for Fat Acceptance because you might not blog or write letters or whatever, but SIMPLY EXISTING and BEING and LIVING in public is a gigantic protest in and of itself. Walking out the door every day and making it to the end of that day is a rebellious act. Owning yourself, every single fucking inch of yourself, is a glorious "fuck you" to every person who thinks what Marie Claire writer-person wrote is right on the money or every mouthbreathing internet commentator who takes shelter in anonymity to vomit out bile and bullshit.

You don't have to answer to anyone about your body. You don't have to justify your existence to one single solitary person in this entire fucking universe. You don't have to apologize, you don't have to explain your exercise routine (if you have one, which you don't have to have) or go into detail about what you eat or smile and nod politely when someone who "means well" gives you weight loss diet advice.

And when you have those shitty days (because you will) when you cannot take one. more. bullshit. article or report about what horrendous creatures fat people are, know that you can be renewed just as easily by something positive you read about fat people or a song that you dig or a movie that you love or that knitting project you've been putting off (*looks forlornly at knitting needles and yarn lying dormant on desktop*). You can be renewed and you can summon up the strength to get up and go out and THRIVE on the defiance that is the fuel in this fight.

Fat acceptance and self-admiration/enjoyment/love is, at its heart, in this society as it stands today, the shit-hot ultimate in defiance. Don't despair, my thin compatriots, because the shit end of the stick gets brandished at you a-plenty too. There's always "more" you could be doing, am I right? It's never quite good enough, is it. That? That kind of tripe is precisely why Fat Acceptance isn't simply for the fat. If you're still scared of the word "fat" and all the baggage it carries, then by all means, call it "size acceptance" or "body acceptance", but my message remains precisely the same: you are absolutely, 100 percent a-okay the way you are this very day, this very second. There's no disclaimer, there are no rules that state you can only dig yourself if you're X pounds and X size and X height. And those that would tell you there are are, well, full of shit.

I can only class it up so much, you know.

Defy and thrive, everyone. Defy and thrive.