Today’s Tank Top Tuesday post comes from Karyn of PhatSheepette! Looking amazing (and oh so chillax I must say) and proudly exercising her right to bare arms!

“Here I am in my tank, chilling in the shade with my sheep.  Fat Sheep has her own blog and it’s fascinating to see people’s reactions when you say that, yes, her name is FAT sheep.  However she is proud of her marshmallow-like figure.

I am taking submissions from anyone who wants to exercise their right to Bare Arms for future Tank Top Tuesday posts! Email your pics here: notblueatall@notblueatall.com, please include the name you’d like in the post, a blog or etsy shop you wanna plug, your thoughts on bare arms or other fatty philosophies. It does not have to be in a tank top, so long as your arms are bare. Have fun with it!

Also, feel free to still treat comments as TMI topic/discussion/venting area! Feel free to ask TMI questions or just vent/rant about your own stuff. I love it! We all do! =0)

Today’s Tank Top Tuesday post comes from none other than my sister, Katie/SpiffyGal! Woo hoo! I must say that I am a very proud big sister! I had picked her up to do stuff the other day and loved her tank top (we both love Lenore-comic book “dead girl”) and she mentioned that I should take a pic for the blog. I was mega-stoked! Also, I want that tank top! Ha-ha!

“I am not so self-conscious about my arms usually, only when it’s really hot and I get sweat rolling down my arms, that is really annoying. I started gaining weight mostly due to being on depo provera. It’s a contraceptive in the form of a shot. I would get a shot once every 3 months and I didn’t have a period at all. One of the side effects is weight gain. Also part of it is when you start “settling down” with someone and are less physically active. I use to have dance class 3 times a week in high school and I use to be right around 130lbs. now with almost no change in diet and a decrease in exercise I am about 190 give or take. But I’ve always been big in the hips. I try and exercise for a while and stick with it for a few months and then ether we get bored or our life becomes busier and we can’t keep it up. But I am maintaining my weight right now I stopped going up in weight when I went off the shot.

My only problem I have with my weight is bra size. In high school I was a C cup. the last time I was measured I was 34 DD and possibly on the cusp of DDD I haven’t been sized in awhile so I don’t know what I am now. I stopped wearing regular bras because they are expensive and uncomfortable. I have been wearing sports bras for the last few years. But now I need new ones and like everything else right now we can’t afford to get new ones other than my bra issue I am ok with my body and how it looks. I love what you are doing for body awareness and fat issues.”

SpiffyGal/SpiffyKitty & her husband GottaSpiffy review Professional Wrestling and Disney Films on YouTube.

I am taking submissions from anyone who wants to exercise their right to Bare Arms for future Tank Top Tuesday posts! Email your pics here: notblueatall@notblueatall.com, please include the name you’d like in the post, a blog or etsy shop you wanna plug, your thoughts on bare arms or other fatty philosophies. It does not have to be in a tank top, so long as your arms are bare. Have fun with it!

Also, feel free to still treat comments as TMI topic/discussion/venting area! Feel free to ask TMI questions or just vent/rant about your own stuff. I love it! We all do! =0)

**Friend of the blog Erylin, has a clothing swap coming up in Kansas city mo. we will be having one on September 25th at the north Kansas city library right off of armour and I-35. (if you need more info leave a reply and we will connect you somehow). **

My beautiful piggy got shipped out today, back to her home away from her decorator/designer/etc…and back to the loving arms of Amanda where she can do more good than she ever could here. And so, I introduce to you and the world, my lil’ Piggy babe (don’t really have a name for her…Body Activist Pig? Meh.):

Isn’t she lovely? I love her to pieces! I put a lot of time into adorning this little wonder, and I am so glad to see the end result. For more information about the project she was created for, check out: http://fatwaitress.wordpress.com/ and say Hi to Amanda! This is her project and her passion and commitment to positive body activism inspires me and gives me so much hope for the movement! Thanks Amanda! You rock my socks, lady! <3

My husband and I recently watched the documentary, “Pregnant In America” on our Netflix instant watch (gotta love it). I had wanted to see it for awhile. Having previously watched “The Business of Being Born” another birthing in the US related doc by Rikki Lake and, “At Your Cervix” where the truth behind pelvic exams was revealed. All great documentaries! I highly recommend them all if you are even remotely interested in having a child in the United States of America. Because a lot of what we’ve been told, taught or marketed to in regards to women’s bodies and reproductive health, is, well…BULLSHIT!!!

I was born in a hospital. No complications, just a typical 1977 birth. My younger brother and sister, however, were born at home with a midwife. They, too, had no complications in their births (or should I say our mom didn’t). Yet somewhere along the line I grew a nice big prejudice against home births. I am not entirely sure why, other than I typically will rebel against anything my mother is for (I have not seen her in over 15 years). But getting my info on and watching these incredible documentaries has completely changed my mind!

I had grown fearful, over the last couple of years, of having a kid because of a lot of things. Mostly passing on genetic stuff, but also because there’s a damned good chance that I’ll have a fat child (who may also end up with my hair color, not bad, but kids are merciless towards redheads). Would the government take my child away because it’s fat? I couldn’t bear the thought of living through that. Or would I even get a say in the birth of my child while also being seen as too fat for anything in the eyes of the medical world? I read the blog WellRoundedMama and have found some great articles/info/resources there, but that fear still lingers.

When I read this post on AmpleProportions I was quickly reminded of my fears and the real threat to our rights as women in America, let alone the rights of the fat! Watching “Pregnant in America” sort of snapped me back to my germaphobic self in a way: hospitals are for the very ill, not for the newly born! I mean, babies don’t belong there! They don’t have fully formed immune systems and who knows who is touching your baby and if they’re washing their hands appropriately?! My husband has long said that he doesn’t want to have our baby in a hospital because they snatch it away from you the moment it’s released from the birth canal and instantly inject, weigh, test, “clean”, etc… when the natural thing is to clutch the infant to the mother’s breast, leaving the placenta in-tact for awhile, so that the natural hormones kick in and do what they need to do: Bond, initiate natural breast feeding and so much more.

Is it possible that the rise in postpartum depression has something to do, directly, with the westernized pathology of handling birth? To inject drugs (epidural) into the spine of the mother (can lead to so many problems I don’t even wanna talk about right now) so that she cannot feel the baby moving and may even be temporarily paralyzed until after the baby is born? You see, we’re natural baby makers, women. We and our bodies know exactly what to do, if we are unaltered and uninhibited. We will find the right position for us while giving birth, naturally! While OB/GYN’s have been trained to find pathology and complications where none exist all in the name of efficiency and profit! Laying on your back, legs splayed in the air, is not only not natural, but damned uncomfortable while pushing out a baby! I have completely changed my mind and I have no intention of going anywhere near a sick house (hospital) unless it’s an absolute emergency. They don’t want me anyway, I’m fat and have no insurance. Fuck ’em!

I’m not pregnant and don’t have immediate plans to get there, but if and/or when  I am ready, I thank the stars above that these films and the experts and resources available today are there to inform and help me along the way. I cannot stand the thought of not being in control of my own body or infant. To interfere with a natural thing? Well, that’s bullshit! I won’t stand for it and I most certainly will not pay for it!

You know when you get a new bra, how it’s suppose to just fit the last row of tabs? It’s sort of tight/snug, but not unbearably so, so you just deal. Well, that is how it was for me at least. But the last time I bought a pack of bra extenders I found out the hard way that they simply don’t (or very rarely) come in a row of five like my actual bras do. Having just purchased four new bras and not wanting to just deal with the initial tightness of them, I decided to take matters into my own hands…literally!

I took a pair of scissors and snatched the two broken bras from my trash can and cut the hooks and tabs out of them. You can see in the first photo here that one side is all tabs and the other is a row of hooks. I wasn’t sure at first how I’d go about attaching them, but I just went ahead and dove in head first! I simple flipped the hooks under the tabs and sewed them (I do have a machine, though I’m not fully skilled at using it yet) on the opposite side (facing the appropriate way so that they could be used of course). I couldn’t manage to sew a straight-across line with all of the hardware in there, so instead I went in short bursts between each hook:

You can see on the beige one (’cause I used black thread) where my stitches are. I made one black and one beige since that is what I had on-hand and pretty much all I wear. And they worked like a fucking charm, I tell ya! Perfection! They fit, I don’t even notice them when they’re on and best of all my new bras fit spectacularly! It took me all of five or so minutes and didn’t cost me a dime! I love stuff like this.

Do you have a cheap and simple DIY projects you’d like to share? Hit me up! I’d love to post about it here and try it for myself, too! notblueatall@notblueatall.com