Being 4’11 and currently 90 pounds, I have never received so much body shaming and hate as I did when I was at Mary Baldwin College, an all-female school I attended freshman year. I thought that being at an all-female school, that the females would have mutual understanding, and respect one another. That they would be strong supporters of self-ownership, and believe that whatever we choose to do with our bodies should be our business. But what I found was the complete opposite. Continue reading
Fat
Trust your body
About a month ago I went to visit my Doctor for the first time in about 5 years. I found after a certain age my primary physician was replaced by my gynecologist.
In general I think I’m healthy other than once a year getting the common cold or flu. Since the beginning of this semester I hadn’t been feeling my normal self. I had been suffering from stomachaches constantly, feeling exhausted even after a full night rest and suffering from headaches daily.
The Girl That Fat Built
So much of my identity has been shaped by my body and the way the world around me has treated it that I often find myself wondering, “If I’d had a different body, who would I be now?”
Some of my earliest painful memories are of becoming aware of my weight as an issue—my parents’ noticeable concern for my young and rapidly changing body, being called fat by my peers, the inability to share clothes with friends, the list goes on.
As my fat seemed to be under attack by the world around me, I subconsciously began to fashion armor around it. My attempts at protecting myself began with denial, not letting myself believe I was a “fat kid.” At eight years old, I still had the sense that I was fantastic and beautiful and I wasn’t ready to give that up. However, as people grew meaner and more eager to inform me that I wasn’t as beautiful as I thought I was, I came to a sort of sad acceptance.
But because I was a rambunctious and attention-seeking kid, I decided that maybe I could use being fat to my advantage. Continue reading
No more ignoring fat bodies [warning: rape]
It seems to me that no one ever thinks about this, or they never want to talk about it. I want to talk about it. I think it needs to be written down, passed around, and heard over and over again until we replace our present beliefs with the truth.
The nonpliment – “Oh my gosh, you lost so much weight!”
Sitting in my “to-read” list for a bit was this article. It caught my eye because of what we have been talking about in class for our fat studies unit. Now that I read it, I am SO glad I did.
During our conversation last week, we talked about the really important idea of keeping the lives of fat people at the center of our analysis. One of the other points from class that really stuck with me was that it’s not just enough to focus on loving our own bodies and encouraging people to love their bodies, but we also need to respect and love other people’s bodies of all shapes, to accept, to affirm, and to abandon size-judgement. Continue reading
Note of Absence for 10/9
I’m not going to class today.
I can’t say that it’s because I have a fever, or because I had a dentist appointment, or because anybody died.
I’m not going because of the sensations I feel when we talk about fatness. The sickness and the overwhelming feeling of inadequacy (that has always been pushed in to my mentality from various points in my life) always crop up as we talk about our fat, or not so fat bodies. It’s inevitable, this distinct sucking feeling, as if my gut has become a vacuum, and I can zip myself away like a fancy reusable grocery bag.
We talk critically about the hegemonic institutions that create these body ideals. We complain together, air our grievances, we nod and shake our heads together. We are a good class, a good group of people who can empathize and understand each other’s problems, but that’s not enough to save me from wanting to shrink into my backpack and cry in a bathroom stall.
Yo Mama’s So Fat…
Working at a restaurant gives me the chance to people watch. It’s almost as if people forget they are out in public and say things in conversation, with each other or even myself, that often catch me off guard.
My body and me: the original arranged marriage
As long as I’ve been alive, I’ve been some version of overweight. I was my mom’s biggest baby. There was the “baby fat” phase (which I tried to ride to middle school, much to my embarrassment); the “I’m gaining weight because of puberty but it hasn’t decided where to live yet” phase of middle and early high school; the “I may not actually be overweight but I’m so disgusted with that tiny bit of belly fat that I’m pretty sure I’m obese” phase that seems pretty rampant in American high schools; the “shit, now I really AM overweight because I decided to take birth control and I put on 50 pounds in 3 months” phase of panic, terror and depression; the “I’ve stopped trying to stop gaining weight” phase where I saw numbers over 200; the “I had a baby and despite gaining hardly any weight with pregnancy I’ve managed to get even bigger postpartum” phase that’s pretty popular with new moms; and my personal favorite, the “oh my god, this is the biggest I’ve ever been ever in my life and I’m completely freaking out” phase of morbid obesity that has consumed my adult life.
Basically. Though my scale isn’t this clever. And I have better toes.
Sensing a trend? Continue reading
The Adipositivity Project
I’ve been aware of The Adipositivity Project for a number of years. Most people who float around Fat Acceptance circles online are aware of it, but when I’ve shown it to friends who aren’t aware of FA, it’s always surprised them. I thought, given the reading for our next class, this was at least visually on topic. I’m also always a fan of activism through art and you can’t say Substantia Jones’ photographs aren’t beautiful or radical. Many of the photographs are nudes, so beware if you decide to click through. I’ve pulled some of the more modest ones to show the intent of the images.
Adipose: Of or relating to fat.
Positivity: Characterized by or displaying acceptance or affirmation.
MISSION: The Adipositivity Project aims to promote size acceptance, not by listing the merits of big people, or detailing examples of excellence (these things are easily seen all around us), but rather, through a visual display of fat physicality. The sort that’s normally unseen.The hope is to widen definitions of physical beauty. Literally.
The photographs here are close details of the fat female form, without the inclusion of faces. One reason for this is to coax observers into imagining they’re looking at the fat women in their own lives, ideally then accepting them as having aesthetic appeal which, for better or worse, often translates into more complete forms of acceptance.
The women you see in these images are educators, executives, mothers, musicians, professionals, performers, artists, activists, clerks, and writers. They are perhaps even the women you’ve clucked at on the subway, rolled your eyes at in the market, or joked about with your friends.
This is what they look like with their clothes off.
Some are showing you their bodies proudly. Others timidly. And some quite reluctantly. But they all share a determination in altering commonly accepted notions of a narrow and specific beauty ideal.
I love this project, especially considering the attempts by the media to include “real” bodies through the use of marketing like the Dove Campaign for Real Beauty and “plus size” (really a size 6-12) models, and how different these fat people look from those culturally approved fat bodies. These aren’t the media portrayed idea of what is “real” (and how problematic is that word in regards to any person?). These (mostly) women, 
according to the BMI (another problematic method of judgment!), are obese, or more likely morbidly obese (sometimes called Death Fat in the FA community). Most of them probably weigh somewhere in the neighborhood of 200 or 300 or even 400 pounds – yet I don’t think they look like the stereotypical bed-ridden mordibly obese person most non-fats think of when they hear those numbers. Or maybe they do look like those ZOMG FAT people to you.
However you see them, these people are fat, but they have accepted the bodies they have and are living their lives in them.
Unruly Bodies 
