To those who know me but might not *know* me.

I'm apologizing in advance for this blog post because I will probably get disjointed (more than usual), ramble (more than usual), and whatnot. But this is a blog post for the people who don't know me as Jane, fat acceptance activist from Casual Blasphemies, but Jane... from View Askew or Janesy from LiveJournal or JaceyIBLTD from Musicland.



When you're done with this, chances are good you will think I'm deluded or ignorant or touched or all three. And you're welcome to think that when you're done because I expect it. I've heard it and the following all my life, really:

"Doesn't she realize what she looks like?" (audience member at 1990 Madrigal dinner at high school where I was playing Portia from a playlet called "When Shakespeare's Ladies Meet")

"My mom asked me if you have any friends" (friend in third or fourth grade)

"TUB OF LARD!" (car of males driving down a side street, probably junior high)

"Yes." (a young man in response to being asked if he'd accepted a bet from his friends to dance with me, senior year of high school)

"Are you pregnant?" (third grade)

"If I looked like you, I would kill myself" (Freshman year, when the entire homeroom of about 25 kids engaged in nine months of harassment, including "Wide Load" notes on my back and tacks on my chair)

My experiences aren't unusual. Ask anyone who is or was fat or in any way different from the so-called norm and I'm sure they have similar stories. I'm not particularly special in that regard. I might be slightly special snowflakey because of how I chose to deal with it. Instead of completely rejecting the world (which would have been understandable), I chose to go at it headlong and goddammit, I would make people forget I was fat by sheer force of personality. I would be the funniest, I would be the nicest, I would be the most fun person you could ever hope to meet so that the first thing you thought of when my name came up wasn't "oh, the fat girl" but "oh, the cool girl/the one who sings/the comedian/the one on the radio/the one who eats fire/the one who gives really good advice/the one who listens well/the one who writes well".

I dieted with purpose and with skill, like so many of us do. I counted my calories and exercised accordingly and I'd lose that weight and oh, how wonderful I looked, how good I looked! It was never enough, of course. My body held onto as much of my fat as it could and the second I would relax a little, not work out all five days or six days or seven days, KAZAAM it came screaming back. I did it for years. I did it from the age of 10 until my early 30s. I almost committed suicide twice in my teen years because I knew no one would love me because of my fat and I'd always be alone. (First time around, I didn't do it because I wanted to see Duran Duran live; second time around, my ego - which is epic, mind you, to this day - wanted to see how many awards I would get at the end of senior year of high school because I was very active in theater, speech, the radio station, the newspaper. Yes, the stupidest things can actually save you.)

Being a fat acceptance activist is the best decision I made, one that I'm 110 percent happy I made, and I will go to glory believing deep in my bones that fighting the diet culture and the sizeism and fatphobia and fucking wrongheaded information and attitudes that rule this country is right and the truth and even if I make ONE person embrace their size AS IT IS and not give a shit what the scale says and lives one's life without tormenting themselves about one's weight or appearance and lives one's life how it suits them without fear or apologies for it, I will feel like I did some good. But actively rejecting the diet culture, the default, the lifestyle that is deemed morally sound and "good", fucking sucks on many days.

It's been sucking the last couple of days, ever since Kevin Smith got booted off his Southwest flight and he went public so gloriously with it. It's sucked because it's served to remind me just how hated I am. When I say "I", I don't necessarily mean the Jane that you know (either in "real life" or "online"), because you may be of the "oh, I don't mean *you*" persuasion. That is, when you go on a tear about the horrid fatties making the world a shittier place or when you have no compunction about peering in someone's grocery cart and criticizing their choices because of their size or busting on a celebrity's weight gain - oh, *they're* fat and horrid, but oh no, Jane...you're not horrid. You're not like THOSE fat people - why, I don't even see you as fat! I understand that mindset. I've lived in the shadow of that mindset my entire life, worked my ass off to distract people into that mindset because I wanted to be liked, I wanted to be loved, I wanted to be cool.

Over the last couple days, it's sucked and it's hurt me to see fat people apologizing to the universe for existing and not trying hard enough to be thin and taking up too much space and failing morally for being fat; the cheery, game self-deprecating tinged with self-loathing, the act I put on for so many years rolled out before me over and over. The act is exhausting. The act is wrong. The demand for the act is morally bankrupt and vile. And yet, it's easier. It's approved, you see. If I were to declare I was going on a diet tomorrow, I would be praised to the high heavens. It wouldn't matter the kind of mental pain it would cause me, the personal pain it would cause me, the pain it would cause those closest to me because of what dieting requires of me. I would be trying for a just cause, not something as foolhardy and useless as fat acceptance (pah!). I would be liked by more people. I might even be loved. I certainly wouldn't be "crazy", that's for sure.

I don't require you to understand my fat acceptance stance. I wish you could, but I know there aren't any miracles coming down the pike anytime soon. If you're dieting, I'm not going to cheer you on or praise you for losing a half a pound. I'm not game to agree that any food you consume is "bad" or "good" because it's just food and food is lovely. I'm sure we can find plenty of other things to talk about other than your diet and other than my fat acceptance (except "Lost" - I bailed on that shit in season one). I hope you find contentment and that you find a way to dig yourself and your body and all the things it's capable of doing regardless of how much fat may be on it, and that you don't put your life on hold until that magic day when you've met your goal weight. I wish you only the best.

Jane

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Why do I do this?

Being a fat acceptance activist or supporter is not…the…easiest thing to rock. It’s a two-fronter: you have the obvious battlefield of the mainstream media and entertainment and the weight loss industry and on and on, but you also have the internal battlefield that you’ve carried since…hell, BIRTH, it seems. Internal voices that at times seem way louder than the collective shriekers that get bent at the thought that fat people are, you know, human.



I’ve been having a bit of a time with those bastardly dastardly voices as of late, and even when I’m in one of my wiggier states, I can logic the shit out of my wigs. I’m less active than I’d like to be and I’m feeling it mentally, feeling it physically, and I have to ride the resulting grumps out and figure out some sort of activity that I like doing because I like being active and I love how it feels when I am active on a regular basis. Life has changed a bit on other fronts and I’m wrangling with that. My sister’s on a diet and she’s lost weight and WHY CAN’T I DO THAT SURE I COULD DO THAT I COULD YES I COULD PAY A DOCTOR WHOSE NAME SOUNDS LIKE “GODDAMN” MONEY FOR IT AND TAKE AN APPETITE SUPPRESSANT AND I COULD NITPICK AND OBSESS ABOUT WHAT I’M EATING FOR EVERY SINGLE MEAL *high-pitched unintelligible squeal*

Oh yeah, it’s been one of those…quarters. It’s been one of those quarters where something really, really lovely and wonderful and gorgeous and miraculous happened, but it was soon followed by the inevitable sneak-up of my brain to say, “oh hi, Jane [laughs]”. It’s annoying as hell witnessing the falling-over of people when they see someone who’s lost weight. I went to a family function recently with said dieting sister and of course, all talk went to a) how great she looks and b) what kind of failures everyone has been because they have been “bad” and need to do “something”. It’s just so…weird to stand there next to the Latest Marvel In Dieting Technology and listen to them be gushed at and know – you KNOW – the gusher is looking at you and thinking, “ugh…she’s so fat” (and not “fat” in that “it’s just a neutral descriptor!” kind of way, if you dig). And this quarter, that’s been irking me a fucking bunch. It makes me angry. It makes me very, very angry that my worth as a person is immediately negated, not just by strangers, but also by family because of my fat. I’m fucking angry that I can’t find clothes that I like. I can find clothes, sure, but I fucking don’t want to wear what I’m being told I’m supposed to like because I have a vagina. I’m fucking angry that I have to hear sloppily-researched, half-assed reports on the news just about every night about how I and people who look like me are villains and destroying pretty much anything and everything that’s good in the world. I’m fucking angry and I am tired, so so so very tired of suffering fools.

I’m fucking angry that fat people’s medical concerns are insty-treated with “lose weight”, as if there’s absolutely no other explanation for a malady. I’m fucking angry that people are actually questioning whether the nominee for Surgeon General, Dr. Regina Benjamin, can do the job because she’s fat. I’m fucking angry that little kids are learning earlier and earlier to hate themselves because they don’t look like what they see on TV, in movies, or like other kids. I’m fucking angry that there are parents who are teaching their children that nothing matters more than thinness. I’m fucking angry that billions of dollars are made off the self-hate industry and that people with influence and a voice that others pay attention to buy right into it again and again and again (HI, OPRAH). I’m fucking angry that people cloak their prejudice in “I’m only concerned about your health”. And most of all, I’m fucking angry that there are women and men in the world who walk through their lives believing they’re not worth a sack and a half of shit simply because they’re fat, who wait and wait and torture themselves over and over and over again believing they’re only permitted fun and wonder and love when they’re thin.

I’m not the best blogger in the Fatosphere, not by a long shot. I suck at deeply analyzing studies and articles and reports because I get too (fucking) angry. My ability to coolly parse goes right out the window due to my inclination to go from zero to !!!!!!!!!!! in 2.3 seconds. I’m not the most strident blogger, either. I don’t have tales of getting into online brawls, spewing out facts and figures to counteract the “YOU’RE GONNA DIE BY 30 FATTY (just as an aside, I’m 37 and we’re all going to die sometime)/UGLY FATTY (well, depends on who you ask, I reckon)/NO FAT CHICKS (you got me there, sport)” vitriol. I refuse to return to the mindset I required in order to diet and I will not encourage others in their efforts to diet or have weight-loss surgery, but I’m not the person who will shriek, “NOOOOOO!” at them because ultimately, as I ask you to respect my right to treat my body as I wish and not make judgment or comment upon it, I will do the same for you. But goddammit and tarnation, I will repeat over and over again that there is nothing gained by anyone in accepting that self-hatred and self-loathing is appropriate, welcome, or a rite of passage that we should all endure. It does not make you a better person, a more “real” person, a more right person to live each day telling yourself how awful you are. The people who would gladly tell you yes, you’d be prettier/more handsome/better/more moral/”good” if you were only 10, 20, 50, 100 pounds less are not people who hold your best interests at heart. They are, plainly put, in my way of talking...jerkoffs. Those would love you conditionally – they are jerkoffs.

So why do I do this? Because I remember so, so very well how I used to feel about myself. How I cried over how ugly I thought I was, how worthless I believed myself to be, how I couldn’t possibly be loved as fat as I was/am, how many years I blew refusing to really live because I didn’t think I was allowed to. If I can get just a few people to get off that train and see – really see – that they have and deserve a place in this fucked up, goofy-ass world just as much as the “beautiful people” do, then I’ll have done something good. Maybe not earth-spinning-off-axis huge, but I can be content with tilting things a bit.

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