Taking it personally.

Embracing what is different, unusual, or goes against the grain is not something a goodly majority of the world has in its skillset. And certainly embracing something like *GASP* fat acceptance is just plain wacko in many, many, many, many people’s eyes. Now, when I come across something that doesn’t quite twirl my skirts or baffles me, my tendency is to either do research to find out more about said thing, ask people who have experience in said thing about said thing, or simply say, “okey-doke” and move on with my bad self to whatever next thing catches my interest. However, there is a certain breed of cat out there that will stomp feet and screech derision until the end of time not only about the O-beeeeeeeeeeesity Epidemic that Ees KEELING US ALL, but also absolutely anything that deviates from that cat’s personal norms.



Recently, I read a Dear Abby column in which a grandmother was given tremendous shit by her daughter-in-law for sending only $5 in a card for her grandson’s eighth grade graduation and then following said shit-blowing with a “thank you” card from the grandson that was, as expected, passive-aggressively awful. I thought it was simultaneously horrific and yet, amusing because I tend to be evilly entertained by awful people that believe being grateful and polite is for the weak. I started a conversation about it on a message board and it soon turned into a discussion about graduations and experiences with graduations. It appears that graduations vary by region – I graduated from eighth grade, while others graduated from sixth grade, and for others, the move from middle school into high school wasn’t marked at all. Which is fine and interesting and whatever, much like how I drink pop while others drink soda. However, one poster got sweaty and hyperbolic about how graduating from anything other than high school or college was ridiculous, clearly a money grab created and sponsored by the big bad corporations, it’s a waste of time and money and if ZIE was invited to anything even resembling such a thing, zie would practically take a dump on their porch for suggesting zie would endorse said practice in any way, shape, or form. It was impossible for hir to comprehend the notion that things are done differently in other parts of the country, things that will continue to go on with or without hir endorsement, and that hir outrage was fuckdiculous.

The Takin’ It Personally people (TIPPs!) are the people who paint fats as being food-shoveling, sweaty, lazy fools who are making the choice to be fat because they don’t want to stop eating Suzie Q’s and Ho-Ho’s while they lay on the couch/floor/bed, and are certain beyond any doubt that the fats are destroying America one stick of beef jerky at a time and should health reform ever come to pass, will bankrupt the system before you can say “but the population as a whole is aging and bringing with it increased medical needs because of age-related afflictions”. “The Obeeeeeeeeeeeeese/the poor/the disadvantaged/’the lazy’ are going to REACH INTO MY POCKET/PURSE/DITTY BAG and TAKE MY HARD-EARNED MONEY to support THEIR UNHEALTHY LIFESTYLES,” they rage before falling onto the nearest fainting couch in an anger-induced swoon. They’re the ones who get all sputtery and concern-trolly and eye-teary when the subject of the Fat comes up because it’s SCIENCE that all fat people are ticking time bombs of diabetic heart faily oozing death and they’re Takin’ It Personally because they want you to be the BEST you can BE and you’re only BEST when you are – ding dong, candygram! – thin. Rejecting the Fantasy of Being Thin and spreading that concept around really gets the TIPP’s drawers in a fiery uproar. I was informed by a TIPPer that Fat Acceptance was as “evil” as McDonald’s* and that people really shouldn’t have as much self-esteem as those in Fat Acceptance believes everyone should. Somehow, having a positive view of oneself means one no longer is interested in striving in improving oneself...? Oh wait, no, okay, I get it now, I get it now – the only really worthwhile improvement one should be making is shaving off those horrific, nasty pounds. Right. How on earth could I forget? Another TIPPster was quite aggrieved that I “refused” to “get healthy” and wouldn’t praise hir endlessly for hir “hard work” when zie embarked on a liquid diet. If I was a TIPPer, I might have raised a ruckus and railed against the futility of it and how I was personally offended and tearfully told hir how in the long run, zie would only be doing more damage to hirself and hir psyche by engaging in such a practice. But that’s not my style. My style is simply to reiterate again and again my personal message of self-appreciation, self-love, and self-worth being the ultimate goal, and a goal that is achievable and available for every single frickin’ person walking the earth, fat or thin; that it isn’t something that is only deserved by those engaging in societally-approved “healthy” behaviors or lifestyles or income brackets; and most importantly, isn’t impossible no matter what society or you tell yourself.

I had a TIPP approach me in the bathroom at my workplace one day – she was getting a gander at the nine stars tattooed on my left forearm as I dried my hands and the disdain was clear as she asked me The Question: “WHY would you do that?” It was quite hard for me not to respond, “WHY would you give a shit WHY I did it”, but I like to be polite to the TIPPs and speak slowly to them as if they were five-year-old children. “Because I’ve always liked tattoos, always wanted tattoos, and I like how they look,” I responded. She shook her head and tisk-tisked and smiled at me like I was a silly billy, saying as she exited the bathroom, “To each his own!” I only wish that the average TIPP actually believed that.

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A hot link.

Melissa McEwan at Shakesville does damn fine deconstructing and basic "are you frigging kidding me" far better than I could ever do and she brings the rock with Evil Fatties today. Follow the link and read the rock. Read more on this article...

More To Hate.

It's weird - for whatever reason this particular week I became acutely aware of just how much out-and-out hatred is leveled at fat people. Or, at the very least, how the internet has provided a platform for such hatred to be aired. Marianne from The Rotund wrote a great piece at the Daily Beast regarding Fox's "More to Love", the dating show featuring a fat bachelor and fat women vying for his reality show-generated love (see her blog for the link). In an unusual moment of complete duh, I took a peek at the comments.



WOW. That's all I can manage is a WOW. The vitriol was overwhelming, the disdain, the hate - and there's no other way to describe it, it wasn't just "reservations", it wasn't just people having some "minor issues", this was a gleeful carnival of Hate and everyone seemed to be clamoring for a spin on the Hate-O-Whirl about how I (because I have to make it about me) am a horrible, awful person who is going to steal tax dollars and is a lazy, good-for-nothing loser (except when it comes to weight, of course, and it's SO SIMPLE TO LOSE WEIGHT YOU FAT ASSHOLE) who just really fucking sucks and ruins everything.

I don't get shaken by much. This shook me because you see, when I'm out and about in the world, I don't see all that many women that look like me:



The way the media hypes it, there should be an Army of Me rampaging across the planet, landing in hospitals using up all precious resources so as to prevent thin (read: deserving) people of them, and then we're rolling across the countryside, devouring nothing but ice cream and Fritos and Fritos in ice cream layered with chocolate and high fructose corn syrup - fuck, we BATHE in high fructose corn syrup. And we entice the weakest and most vulnerable among us, THE CHILDREN, down the chubby road to despair and heart attacks at age four, and we gleefully cackle as we completely undermine all society ONE POUND AT A TIME!

Except that's not what I see, and I don't think it's what a vast majority of people see in the everyday world, but with every headless fatty that's trotted out to symbolize "the obesity epidemic", people are convinced that they come across monstrous resource-sucking beasts each and every day. Things. Things that are less than human and don't deserve humanity unless they look and behave precisely how they're supposed to. I haven't felt like a thing in a long time, but after seeing those comments...I'm still having trouble walking it off. It is a relentless assault, day after day, no matter how disconnected from the major media outlets you may be. And I've stated before that it's not a winning game for anyone, but today, I'm focusing in on me because it's the only way I can manage to dig my heels in and find myself again amidst all this thing.

Of course, Fox's fucking "More to Love" ain't helping matters much. They claim to be trying to perform a public service of sorts by having a fat-centric dating show so the world can see "They're Just Like Us Skinnies!" The way they show that? By displaying the fat women's heights and weights onscreen whenever they do an interview with a particular contestant. You know, how they do on all the dating shows, right? *pounds head into desk repeatedly*

I know I'll get over it. I always have throughout the years, and few things fuel my fire more than some good old-fashioned defiance. But damn. Just...damn.

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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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The State of Independence.

It's the Fourth o' July here in the United States, marking the day we said "hey yo, we don't think so" to the British and threw down stakes on our own joint. Of course, because I'm having people over for dinner and had planned on grilling...the weather has taken a big dump on the Midwest. THANKS, WEATHER.

But I'm not here to talk about my grilling plans (or how they've been pooped on) - I'm here, instead, to declare independence and hope you might join me at whatever comfort level you're currently residing.



My self-worth is not determined by the size of my ass, the span of my belly, the jiggleliciousness of my upper arms, my stretch marks, or how this might determine how attractive or unattractive I am to others.

The food I eat doesn't change my morality. The chocolate Frosty shake I had yesterday didn't make me bad. The mixed green salad with balsamic vinaigrette dressing I had before it didn't make me good. The pork tenderloin I'm cooking tonight won't make me bad. The fruit salad I'll be having along side it won't make me good. I'm a decent person because I'm not a raging douchehole. (Okay, some might disagree, BUT WHATEV.)

My weight also doesn't affect my morality. The size of my thighs is not an arbiter on the Good/Bad Scale. I will not be a better, finer, smarter, more charming, or more delightful person if I'm thin. I am a fine smarty charmer, period.

My weight doesn't determine how worthy of love I am or how much love I'm capable of flinging out there.

I will not hide myself. I will not sit in a corner and behave like I'm "supposed to" because I'm fat. I will be true to myself in all respects and accept and embrace the consequences of being me. I will be loud, I will be honest, and I will gleefully work to upend every single bullshitty message that is being sent to women, to men, to everyone about what makes them worthwhile.

I will be defiant to the very end, and goddamn, I will have a great time.

Happy Independence Day, everyone.

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The Wonderful World of Doucheney

I've been lax in the new bloggage arena, as I've recently returned from a trip to Australia and bouncing back from 24-hour-long travel days is not quite as easy as it used to be. So you'll have to excuse me if I'm a bit all over the place because I'm in one of those moods that results in having far too many subjects swimming through my mind and simply not enough brainpower to summon up any kind of intelligent response beyond "SHUT IT" or profanity-laden variations thereof. So, for now, I will focus my ire on the Wonderful World of Disney.



My bell has been rung hard by Walt Disney Studios' upcoming animated movie called "G-Force". "G-Force" is about a gang of intrepid international spies or some shit, and they all happen to be guinea pigs. Cute, right? Well...if you're into guinea pigs, but yeah, CUTE! Whee! Fun! Guinea pigs doing karate and engaging in adventure! Voiced by Sam Rockwell, Tracy Morgan, Nicolas Cage, and Penelope Cruz, the G-Force get into hi-jinks and stuff and...whatever. This movie never would have registered on my Couldn't Particularly Give a Guinea Pig's Ass About Disney (yes, including Pixar*) Radar unless I'd seen a commercial for it on Discovery Channel or Animal Planet and couldn't suss out who was doing the voices of said guinea pigs. I looked up the website for information and what put me over the edge and fired my ass up was the fact that the female guinea pig, in a film that is ostensibly geared towards children, is described...as SEXY. Agent Juarez, voiced by Cruz, is a "sexy martial arts pro". IT'S A FRIGGING GUINEA PIG. GUINEA PIGS ARE JUST ONE THING: CUTE (well, if you're a guinea pig fan). They are not SEXY. The male character pigs aren't given descriptors like "sexy" - they're "determined to succeed at all costs", "outrageous". Not one mention of how "sexy" those male guinea pigs happen to be.

Oh, but sexy Agent Juarez is "the brains of the outfit", so it's okay that the female character in this crapfest's initial description is about how fucking "sexy" she is. If you're wondering why boys and girls are getting sexualized younger and younger, you don't need to look much further than this impending shitfest for some clues.





*Yes, I realize that not being a fiend for Pixar makes me a soulless, heartless robot incapable of love or something. It's not that I hate Pixar, I'm just not particularly driven to rush out opening weekend to see whatever they might fling up on the multiplex screens. Plus, I spent a year in college studying and doing animation, and it kind of made me really hate most cartoons. Except "The Venture Brothers".

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Self-loathing coated in butter.

How do you solve a problem like Kirstie Alley? She’s on the cover of People magazine this week, decrying the horror that is...well, her. Of course, she’s a horrible, disgusting human being because she’s “fallen off the wagon” and has gained 83 pounds as a result of de-Jenny Craigging herself in 2007. She’s at the shriek-inducing number of 228 pounds, which I haven’t seen myself since I was in high school, and so, like a good self-loathing fattie, she’s publicly deriding herself on a major magazine cover and on Oprah for being 58 years old and not looking like she did or weighing what she did when she was on “Cheers”...OVER 20 YEARS AGO.



There are comments on the article – I’d advise avoiding them, as it’s mostly the usual song and dance of “calories in/calories out”, “there’s no way she’s only 228 lbs, she must be 350 lbs.”, “embrace your size – but lose weight anyway!” and “it’s a lifestyle change!!!!” I swear to Christ, if there’s any cliche’d phrase I’d like to torpedo, it’s “IT’S A LIFESTYLE CHAAAAANGE!!!!” Say it in a really high-pitched voice to amp up the annoying factor. But at the same time, it’s an interesting microcosm of the hamster wheel so many people are stuck on. “I lost weight, it came back, and I lost weight, and it came back, and it lost weight, and it came back” is a common refrain among the commenters, but dammit, they are determined that this one last time, just this one...last...time, it is going to stick and stick hard and they are going to be the perfectest version of themselves that they know is hiding inside of them--! Oh, and the usual “I need to be around to see my grandchildren” gets dropped that I can so easily envision being said in a wobbly yet summoning up strength they had not known they had with tears dancing in their eyes sort of voice. This fat ain’t gonna lick me! No sir! I’m gonna spend my days counting my calories/points/eating my frozen NutriSystem meals/endlessly fretting about what I put in my mouth and one day, I’ll find me a man who loves me and get a real nice job in the big city and everything’ll be a-okay ‘cause I’ll be skinny and pretty and good!

Sorry – flight of fancy that probably should have stayed in my head. Though I do tend to have internal dialogues that wind up sounding like 40s melodramas. I’m not sure I have a point, exactly (and when do I, really), but when I read all of this horseshit I wish I had a scream as loud as an air raid siren so I could grab people’s attention but good and tell them that hating themselves is not going to be the magical key to weight loss and perfect health. Self-loathing is not a fucking character-builder. It doesn’t make you stronger. It doesn’t make you better. It’s just an ever-deepening, creepy-ass trap; a trap that is a huge moneymaker for corporations that do not have and never will have good intentions. You’re not disgusting. You’re not freakish. You’re not ugly. And you’re never going to be perfect. And holy shit, that is so okay.

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