I had this very cohesive thought and it was so great…when I was in the shower this morning. D’oh! I hate that! So much has happened since then that I can’t really remember my whole schpeel, but here goes:

You know the people who insist it’s unhealthy to be fat? The ones who are major yo-yo dieters? The ones where dieting is a religion? Or the ones where, “I just want you to be happy and healthy and you can’t be happy and fat?!” The people who practically gargle with diet soda and energy drinks? The people who believe in their heart of hearts (how did that become a saying?) that being fat is a choice? That being fat is a personal failure or sin?

These are the people we cannot change. They refuse to question the information being fed to them. They are marketed to very specifically and they swallow every last calorie-free morsel with a smile (and a side-eye towards the fat)! They have resigned themselves to a life of judgment, shame, guilt, penance and sadly, ignorance. Those who don’t even bother to read the labels on their diet beverages and bars and energy thingies but will most certainly tell you why what you’re eating is so “bad bad bad!” go about the world in a bubble. We cannot reach them. And I don’t think we should even try.

You may be thinking that this is very cynical of me or very judgmental, I’m not judging people by their looks, but by their actions. I do think that this is an acceptable form of judgment for the most part. I believe that your actions and impact in/on the world should convey your true self or nature. I may be off base here and if I am, do let me know. All I am saying is that this group of people who insist upon “health” and then turn around and commit to a life of feeling gross in the name of dieting? We cannot get to them or even convince them that being fat is not a choice. No more than we can convince many other groups who target and/or attack the oppressed and marginalized with hate and violence. We just can’t and I don’t think we should waste our resources on them. I am saying that it’s time to walk away from these people and let them be. I know they won’t let us be, but we don’t have to engage with them in conversation or debates.

I do think we should be trying to get our message of positivity and overall health for everyone out into the public! I think that their are millions who would be open to it and benefit from it! The more people I drop the f-bomb on (FAT!) the more are surprised and open to hearing more facts! Because people are suspicious, people are angry and people are tired of the same old marketing and dieting run around. Somewhere along the way their common sense said, “Hmm…this doesn’t seem quite right.” but with nothing else to go on they simply leave it be. That’s where Fat Liberation can fit in! We can offer our resources and information and help people! Yes, help actual people live better lives & happier lives! Without guilt or shame!

Yes, I wish everyone could read “Health At Every Size” by Linda Bacon PHD. I do! Because it is an eye opener, a mind expander and a path towards understanding just how fucked up this dieting thing is and what it’s doing to our bodies and minds! It’s sick and it’s dangerous! When I first read that dieting fucks with your brain chemistry, I had to take a lap, y’all! I had to let that shit sink in for a good while. I value my brain! I value my body! I value my sanity and my life! I just do, not sure if this is an instinctive behavior or if I’ve developed this over my 33 years of life. But damn! We are being abused and punished and shamed for lies made up by someone else (dieting industry/marketing) for profit! But what it’s doing to millions of people all over the western world is a crime against nature and not just humanity!

These corporate machines are created for one purpose: Profit! Greed! Riches! The result is hundreds of millions of disordered eaters, self-haters, body abusers, fucked up brain chemistry and the inability to even know what and when and how hunger feels like or fullness feels like or how to satiate and fuel our bodies. We’re complicated little entities. No doubt! But these corporations know exactly what they are doing. Jenny Craig is owned by Nestle. Weight Watchers was owned by Heinz (and they still make their packaged products) and is now owned by Artal Luxembourg who is also heavily invested in Keebler cookies and Sunshine biscuits. Think about that for a minute. These corporations have no interest in your health or well being, they only want your wallets emptied into their coffers! You tell someone this and their eyes bug right out of their head. Go ahead, lay some truth on ’em!

A friend recently posed this to me in regards to intuitive eating:
“encouraging intuitive eating while also insisting that  processed foods are A-Okay. there are armies of evil scientists working round the clock designing foods that are intended to completely fuck all normal human hunger and satiety signals. how can anyone manage to eat intuitively when they are pumped full of pseudofood-drugs designed to insure they will never feel either genuine hunger or genuine satiety? different foods don’t have different moral worth. but they do have different biological effects. to me it just seems like setting people up for endless frustration and unhappiness, if they continue to attempt to eat intuitively while also ingesting things that make that completely impossible, by design.”

My response:
“We’re talking about teaching intuitive eating to disordered eaters. To help get them started on the path to healthier/healthy eating you must start with the behavior first and then worry about the ingredients. Fish versus fishing, you know? Once a person does actually begin to listen to and understand the nutritional cues their body is signaling then they can start to focus on specific nutrients they need and various ways to get it. It is so difficult to break away from the disordered eating and food associated guilt that I wouldn’t worry about what actual food they are eating yet, they have to start somewhere, ya know? To remove the pretend moral values of food is a near impossibility for some.”

And she got it! It made sense. And it gives me hope that the more people we can explain this stuff to the better our chances of seeing an end to the discrimination and hate…one day. And I know it sucks to read those two words: one day. *sigh* but it’s enough to keep me in the fight! It’s worth it! No one deserves the hate and shame and bullshit that gets flung so freely towards us just for how we look! It’s bullshit and I feel that we need to be more vocal about the specifics on why it’s bullshit! Follow the money trail and you will see what I mean!

I want to nurture our bodies and minds. I want to embrace my fellow fats and let them know that I love them, I value them. I want to keep our allies close! I think we need a very specific and simple Fat Liberation hub where all resources and information and links can be found. Not a blog, mind you, just a resource database type of thing. Something anyone could stumble upon and understand. I want us to create a truly supportive community and branch that out into our local communities. We can do workshops and educational seminars. We can create fun and positive events and encourage activism! And finally, but I think most importantly, we should continue to support one another and encourage each other!

I know this was a bit of a rant, but so be it. This is how my brain works sometimes. I’d love to hear your thoughts. Or you know what? Just let me know how you’re doing! Ha-ha! Thanks for reading! <3

Sunday night I was fortunate enough to attend Queer. Fat. Political.: “a flabulous star-studded, politically inspired evening of fierce fattitude and performance sponsored by the GLBT Historical Society’s Womyn’s Committee.  Commemorating the life and work of fat activist Judy Freespirit (who has an archive at the Historical Society) and will feature performance from the legendary FAT LIP Readers’ Theater, Jezebel Delilah X and others! Performances will be followed by a discussion/Q&A and is meant to create dialogue between generations of fat queer activists.”

It was one of the most powerful evenings of my life! It is right up there with the flesh mob I participated in for International No Diet Day. THAT GOOD! I was asked by Virgie Tovar to video tape the evening’s performances and little did I know that this would have such an impact on me. Did I already say “Wow!?” Because WOW!!! We’re talking about a room of radical feminists of varying ages, fat liberation activists from the 70’s, 80’s and now! But I don’t want to get into the who’s who and all of that…

I felt a great responsibility standing in the back of the room. A responsibility to do more, to be more out there and active and public and political. To keep fighting the good fat fight! The feminist fight! To liberate us all and create equality in a nation built upon the opposite. Heavy task, certainly, but I now feel more compelled than ever to organize and do more! These women created these huge radical, very public and very political actions! But I feel that this is something left behind and that pisses me off, for myself and for them. There is no second wave of fat liberation activism because nothing has changed! We’re still dealing with the same shit they did back when.

I love attending fat events. I LOVE IT! I look forward to them and after I am high on fat positivity! But then I go home, I work, I blog, I live. Nothing truly happened, ya know? But when I participated in the flesh mob for INDD? I changed! We made an impact on actual people!  I do feel that these more social events (performances, swaps, etc) are great for the uninitiated or for those who are intimidated or would like to reengage in fat liberation/fat acceptance. They recharge my batteries for sure. But what else? You eat cupcakes, maybe get some cool clothes, but no awareness was created, no waves made. We stick to online activism because it’s accessible, easy, fits into our collective schedules…and there is nothing wrong with that. I just want to do more!

The fire has been reignited and baby? I’m ready to start cookin’! Talking to Virgie and some other local fats all over the bay area, we all want to do more! It’s a fabulous feeling! So now we’re going to start researching and seeing what venues we can find and what things we can put together to keep people engaged, to become more accessible and to stay more political! I just couldn’t walk out of that building without having some sort of mission. I have big ideas, y’all! But I want some of yours, too!

What would you like to get involved in for fat liberation? Do you have a skill or talent or ability that may be useful or helpful for an organized fat action? Artists? Writers? Dancers? You name it! I wanna hear from everyone! What do you want to see happen to create more awareness? Do you think it’s all in vain? Do you think it’s bullshit? I wann hear it all! No judgment here! You know how I roll, honesty, baby, yeah! Ha-ha!

Today’s Tank Top Tuesday submission comes from Katie Koumatos!

I, like my mother and grandmother, have copious arm fat.  In the rad world of fatty activism, we call them “Hey Baby’s, because that’s the part that wiggles when you wave and yell hello to your friends.  I have learned to love my arms, appreciating their size and interesting shape.  But I have not always been this chill about my arm fat.  For many years I wore ill-fitting t-shirts in the summer, staring jealously at tank top clad girls who seemed so svelte and comfortable.  About five years ago I finally took the leap.  My first tank top was covered in glitters and sparkles, in hopes that folks might be dazzled by it and completely miss my giant naked arms.  I wore it out and surprisingly, no one threw rocks or even insulted me.  I felt beautiful and even more importantly, cool in the hot Sacramento sun.  Years later, more than half of my summer tops are tanks and I don’t even think about it.  It was one of those first steps on the road to body acceptance and I am so thankful I took that risk!

I would never refer to or describe myself as graceful, except perhaps in jest. I won’t go so far as to say that I’m terribly clumsy or unbalanced, but I am whatever it is that I am (I just am) and this means that from time to time I fall or trip or stumble. It’s not a big deal, except when it is! And when you’re fat it is always a big deal. Ugh!

My husband probably has nightmares about my falling because even when I just stumble a bit and catch myself, he acts as though I’m flying through the air into giant steel horror film inspiring spikes from hell. I fall about once a year I believe and while it’s not always in public, it is those instances that stick out in my mind, but mostly due to people’s reactions and not due to some sort of injury I sustained or anything.

The first public fall I remember was just awful! I was wearing these new slide-on sandals with a rubber soul. The problem was that the heel of it was rounded and thus not entirely stable. I didn’t realize this of course until I fell in a grocery store. *ShakesHead* I just sort of turned my ankle and fell. No biggie, right? Wrong! You would have thought an old lady was having a heart attack the way baggers and checkers and regular Joe’s came a-runnin’ to my aid. Only, I didn’t need or want any aid, let alone any attention. I was beet red (or probably more resembling a boiled lobster in color) and just wanted to get the fuck out of there. But the manager, I am sure, was worried about a law suit, while I was just worried about saving face! I threw those shoes out the moment I got home.

The next public fall I recall was on our flight back from Europe. I think it was the flight from Ireland to England’s Heathrow airport. We were deplaning (this is the most hilarious term for exiting a plane, y’all!) and just as I crossed the threshold from plane to tunnel/tube/whatever that thing is you walk through to get to the terminal, I somehow got caught up on a small bit of diamondplate (like a steel plate with x’s on it) and slammed my knee into the diamondplate and the rest of me onto my suitcase. The flight crew looked horrified. The passengers held up behind me were horrified (if not peeved that I was holding them up with my fall). My husband was in near shock. I just wanted to evaporate! Little did I know that my knee was actually quite fucked and I would spend the next 12 hours in horrible pain from the swelling and being cramped into a coach aisle seat, which I’m actually grateful for since I could stretch it out a bit from time to time.

And then I broke my foot! Such a stupid and boring story, I think. I was a corporate trainer for a mortgage company/bank and I was visiting an office out in central California and as I was walking (not in heels for once, at the time), my heel or toe caught the edge of a walkway and I flung forward onto my briefcase (gotta love these luggage landings). Only something wasn’t right, my right foot was white-hot and I couldn’t feel it entirely. So I shoved my shoe back onto it (and mule type of slip-on, quite comfy actually) and went on in to train the peoples. When I fell, about four people came running out of the office to help me up. What a first impression, eh?  To make matters worse the people I was there to train were complete assholes to me about the new program I was there to train them on. But I digress. On my long-ass drive back home (3 hours I believe), my foot became increasingly painful. Like scary painful? On top of that I got a call from some headquarters jerk-off that decided that was the right time to be a prick and start yelling at me and question my authority when I absolutely had the fucking authority to ask for the cell phones for employees he was organizing. So that ended up with me hanging up on him and crying my entire face off. Turns out I had a tiny fracture and while I didn’t miss any work, I was in a lot of pain for a long time and have sworn off uncomfortable shoes ever since. No, I don’t care how cute they are. Fuck them!

I’m sure I’ve fallen a few times since, but I can’t quite remember any specifics. Until this passed Saturday morning. I was in a hurry to open the cafe, but needed some milk and stopped at a local drugstore a block away. I entered the parking lot (in my car, duh) and as I pulled into the first spot in the row my back tire caught this sliver of a curb. Funny thing…I get out of the car and grab my canvas bag and wallet and rush towards the store. Only, my left toe (I’m wearing flip-flops) catches that same damned sliver of a curb and I go flying like the lowest flying superman ever! This woman walks up slowly and says quietly but sternly, “Are you alright?” and I say, “Yeah, I’m okay. Thanks.” and when I look up she’s already entering the store. She didn’t actually give a shit! Nice! No, seriously, I don’t want people to fuss unless I’m like “hey help!” or whatever. But oh well. I am fine, I was embarrassed, but since not many people were around so early on a Saturday I wasn’t too concerned. But damn if it doesn’t still sting! My hands and left arm got a bit scraped up, but no blood thank the stars. You know that stinging-burning sensation you get from a scrape? THAT SUCKS!!! I HAS IT!!! Ha-ha! And I think I chipped my big toe nail which sucks because I was going to paint them when I got home.

So, I am left wondering, would the reaction be different if I were smaller in size? Is it the mere sight of so much flesh (and assssssss, heh-heh) hitting the ground that causes this extreme of a reaction? Do smaller people never fall or trip? Have you publicly fallen? How did people react? I once tripped walking from the kitchen to the living room by catching my toe on that lip of carpet that divides the room, my husband was so freaked out! I was totally fine and laughing the entire way down (it was a slow-mo one), but he was so shaken that he was mad at my laughing about it. Oh well. We can’t control other people’s reactions to us, so why not just be a fucking bad ass on the regular, right?!

I would like to hear from other fats about their experiences like this. Or perhaps you got an entirely different response? Tell me all about it! =0)

Trigger Alert: a WHOLE lot of bad language used therein: unless you dig that kind of thing, then step right in!

Fattiboombalatti here, how yous all doin’?

So today I get into an altercation with some douchebag who was parked in the alleyway (even though he had his whole, empty drive way) unloading some bullshit from his van. He isn’t moving even though I am clearly behind him, he expected me to back out onto a busy street and go around. So when I got out of my car and tell him not so nicely to move his car we start having an argument. First he tells me that I am “ignant” (his word, not mine) then he calls me a “Fat Bitch” then a little later, “White Bitch’. Before all is said and done and then he finally moved his van out of the alley so that I could move forward. My responses to those epithets above were: “lol I am “ignant, huh” “ooo big man calling me fat bitch I am so scared” and finally “ahh pulling the race card, are you?” and that was after he threatened to hurt me… in our quick back and forth not once did I disparage him by how he looked or about his qualities or capabilities, I did tell him to go fuck himself, but that’s really an invitation rather than a judgment.

So anyway… I want to deconstruct those words. Fat Bitch Fat Bitch Fat Bitch. I have probably heard those two words from pissed off people more than any other epithet that can be reasonably applied to me. I don’t really understand what is it about calling me a fat bitch that is supposed to be so insulting.  Like what do they expect me to do? Grab my fat all of a sudden and say, “Oh my god! I never noticed I am fat!!! After you have so succinctly pointed out my fatness I will right away jump on a treadmill and drink slim fast, thank you for your acute observation, sir.” Like really, what’s the point about pointing out the obvious here? I am fat and yes I am a bitch upon occasion and usually in direct correlation to the douchebaggery which is you at the moment.

The label Fat Bitch seems to apply whenever I have stopped being a “good girl” and sifting through the other moments where I have been called such was usually when I was attempting to assert my rights or my needs. Fat Bitch seems to be the label of nonconforming women, angry women, women who just really don’t give a fuck. I mean, I really don’t and am not ashamed to take up the cause whatever that cause may be. It’s not too dissimilar to slut, whore, cunt…. Those are also words usually applied to women “behaving badly’. As if those words, like Fat Bitch, are meant to silence us, to shame us, to assign us to a moral code of bad better best.

I had another nasty thought though, an insidious one that now when I looked at thin people, naturally slim people after the incident tonight I thought…. Do ALL of you, when you see me, do you think “Fat Bitch” about me? Is your disgust with me so intense and so close to the surface that all I have to do is make you angry for it to come bursting forth? Do I walk down the street and as I pass you does something within speak in the silence of your mind… look at that fat bitch? Have I been blind all these years thinking good will when in fact its just social niceties? In the face of ALLLLLLLLL that….. How can we not but reclaim fat bitch for our very own? While you attempt by making me “small” by using those words, as if those words should mean that instantly I am less than you, worth less than you, mean less than…. You. Cause I won’t do it. I am not going to shut the fuck up. I will not be a good girl. I will not go away and I certainly am not going to allow you to make me feel lacking. Though we fatties have been conditioned to believe that that most feared word once brought out into the light is like kryptonite to our souls; Supposedly rendering us powerless and in doubt. Like sunlight to a vampire calling me a Fat Bitch is supposed to render me weak and ineffectual; the horrible nightmare of every woman on this planet, “do I look fat in this?” the word to luff my sails, to becalm me and to win.

Does anyone know how to screen print T Shirts? I really really want one that says “Fat Bitch” on it. I’m claiming this.

NotBlueAtAll: Yes! You can certainly do your own DIY style screen printing, but there are some fab sites that do this cheaply, without the mess, as well! My fave is CustomizedGirl.com (link will put you directly into their plus sizes) and I have bought a tee from them that fits fabulously (don’t remember if I got a men’s 3x or a plus size one)! They have fun fonts (even rhinestone & glittery ones), you can even “distress” your design and I found it to be the most user friendly of custom t-shirt sites. Coupon Code: 4Got (15% off) or CG$U ($5 off) I have not tried these codes, but if you get their emails they send you discounts often, gotta love that!

I’ve also ordered from VistaPrint.com but their biggest size was a big snug, I still wore it for a charity walk, but haven’t worn it since.  I have done my own screen printing but it is pricey for the paints and quite labor intensive. You could buy a Yudu machine ($99-$399) and have an at-the-ready screen printing station for yourself, too.

My two cents: I love this! Taking back that which is constantly being thrown at us?! Yeah!!! When I have been called a Fat Bitch (forever capitalized, thank you) I have almost always smiled at the notion, that this simple turn of phrase could take power or diminish me?! NO WAY! Not on my watch! I’d love a Fat Bitch tee, here’s my first draft design, Woo!: