Made by Ragen Chastain from Dance with Fat (More info about the video at the link). A response to the Australian Biggest Loser ad campaign. To view the original video click here, but should come with a trigger warning. Happy I was able to be involved with this video.
Be sure to register and check out the Body Love Revolutionaries Telesummit that starts on January 31st with Marilyn Wann, Peggy Howell and me talking about activism. It is going to be amazing. For more information about the summit, how to register and about all of the speakers go to http://www.bodyloverevolution.com/
Also check out the facebook event page.
Here is the complete schedule!
Activism — Tuesday, January 31st at 8PM EST with Peggy Howell (NAAFA), Amanda Levitt (Love Your Body Detroit), Marilyn Wann (Fat!So?)
Health — Thursday, February 2nd at 7PM EST with Linda Bacon (Health At Every Size book), Ragen Chastain (Dances With Fat)
Fatshion — Tuesday, February 7th at 8PM EST with Marie Denee (Curvy Fashionista) , Rachel Kacenjar (Cupcake & Cuddlebunny), Yuliya Raquel (Igigi)
Sex — Thursday, February 9th at 8PM EST with Hanne Blank (Big, Big Love), Virgie Tovar (Guide To Fat Girl Living)
Blogging —Thursday, February 16th at 8PM EST with Marianne Kirby (Lessons From The Fatosphere), Margitte Leah Kristjansson (Fat Body (In)Visible), and Brian Stuart (Red No. 3 Blog)
Fitness — Tuesday, February 21st at 8PM EST with Jeanette DePatie (The Fat Chick Works Out), Anna Guest-Jelley (Curvy Yoga)
Fatness/Queerness — Thursday, February 23rd at 3PM Eastern with Bevin Branlandingham (Queer Fat Femme), Charlotte Cooper (Obesity Timebomb), Jessica Jarchow (Tangled Up In Lace)
Politics/History — Tuesday February 28th at 8PM Eastern with Paul Campos (Obesity Myth), Amy Erdman Farrell (Fat Shame)
We often think of New Year’s Resolutions as a chance to make up or change the things we didn’t like about the year before. This is normally directed at ourselves since most resolutions focus on how we can change who we are by making ourselves better. Living in a body that you hate, due to your weight or any other reason that you want to change it, normally leads you to enter the New Year down a path filled with self destructive behaviors that in the end do more harm than good.
Learning to love ones self or have a healthier relationship with your body can be a really positive way to start the year if you are not doing it from a negative place. One of the best ways that this can be found if you find yourself wanting to diet is to do the exact opposite and ditch dieting. A health movement that has become part of the forefront of the fat rights movement is Health at Every Size. This is in so many ways one of the simplest ways to not only have a better connection with your body, especially if you have or still are suffering through disordered eating patterns or weight loss attempts. This is about finding that connection with your body that is lost during weight loss attempts that create an inner conflict between your body and your mind.
This was the last step that I needed to finding complete happiness within myself. Learning to listen to my body instead of listening to others about how I should take care of myself was the tipping point to finding what I was looking for. This means finding joy in moving my body, eating intuitively or listening to hunger cues and knowing what I need to nourish my body while feeling good living in it. This means having a connection that stops denying the body I live in.
Basic Principles of Health At Every Size®
From the Association for Size, Diversity and Health
Links
Health at Every Size by Dr. Linda Bacon
HAES Community – Local resources and more information
I have finally updated my Etsy for the holiday season. Use the coupon code FATWAITRESS until December 1st for 10% off everything. Support me paying my bills and get some awesome gifts. fworiginals.etsy.com
Watercolor Papercut Shadowbox – $18
Noro Multicolored Lace Scarf – $55
Also check out,
When I was 15 my parents started to get divorced. At 16 my mom and I moved out of the house after a pretty fucked up situation that made me respect her even more than I already did. To some it up, she threw herself to the wolves instead of letting me ruin my relationship with my dad. What also came out of that was she lost my brother. It has been 10 years since my brother stopped talking to my mom. It has been 6 years since he stopped talking to me and while the reasoning for why he stopped talking to her makes sense, even though he only knows half of the story and he wasn’t actually present like I was to see what actually happened. Why he stopped talking to me doesn’t.
The thing that frustrates me about this whole situation is that when he stopped talking to me, he cut himself off from my whole family on both sides. While a few family members on my dad’s side still see him every once and a while the vast majority only know what I do, and that’s nothing. Every holiday I now expect to be asked about him, to be told to keep trying, to tell me that it is up to me to bring him back.
In reality it isn’t.
My brother is an adult. If he wants to not have contact with his family that is his choice. If he doesn’t want to have contact with me that is his choice. It is also my choice whether or not I should put myself through the emotional mess of dealing with the fact that I have someone out there who shares the same DNA as me and wants nothing to do with me. I throw that box on the top shelf of my closet and hide it behind all of my other baggage.
I am often told that I should just contact him, write a letter every once and a while. This again ignores that I am doing all of the emotional output in this relationship. I care about my brother, I care that he is well, I care that he is happy but at what expense should I care about him when he has little regard for my own wellbeing?
If you know someone who is estranged from their sibling stop giving advice and just listen. You probably know very little about what actually happened. Shit I was involved and I still don’t know exactly why he stopped talking to me but I’m sick of sitting around and caring. If he comes back then he comes back, if he doesn’t well then he is missing out.
I have been crazy busy, between Love Your Body Detroit’s Body Positive Scavenger Hunt for Love Your Body Day 2011, class and my 2 jobs. I participated in a photo shoot for a non-profit yoga studio in downtown Detroit called City Yoga. They wanted to show that all people no matter who they are can do yoga. It was a great day. I also have been getting my back tattooed since the middle of August and it is finally finished.
The tattoo itself has a ton of different elements that I put in. The quote is from “A Vindication for the Rights of Women” by Mary Wollenstonecraft. My fat dancing lady is not only to show a fat active body but also because I love Niki de Saint Phalle’s nanas and it is a recreation of her sculptures that can be found at the National Museum of Women in the Arts. The tattoo style was for my favorite watercolor painter Stina Persson.
This will be posted on the Ferndale Patch tomorrow.
I was 18 when I found the fat rights movement. Unlike my peers who spent years of weight cycling and trying every diet they could, I have only ever been on one diet. My entry into this movement came from understanding the ways beauty ideals oppress those who cannot conform to them. I spent my whole senior year losing weight believing if I just got down to a size where I would no longer be fat, I would be worthy, I would be beautiful.
My need to be beautiful began at the age of 5 when my parents were told I should participate in beauty pageants. The recommendation came from the mother of Ashley Johnson who at the time was in my brother’s preschool class and moved away the same year to take the part of Chrissy Seaver on the show Growing Pains. After that I was thrown into a life where my outward appearance was made to be more important than the characteristics that made me who I am today. While I only spent a year actually participating in beauty pageants the need to be pretty stayed with me and attached itself to my sense of worth and to my gender. Once I became fat those values I built up around me were ripped away over night.
I was 11 when I was first called fat. I was not always called fat; I had a whole slew of names that came with the change in status when I entered middle school, big bertha, earthquake (this was often screamed while my classmates shook tables), and jolly green giant. When I think back on it now I find it amusing that my classmates somehow thought that my body would create a seismic event when I walked. To be honest I changed that year, emotionally shutting down and trying to build up a wall around myself for fear of being vulnerable to their attacks but it wasn’t until I took a road trip with my dad at the end of the school year to visit my aunt everything came into focus.
When I talk about my past with body shame and fat stigma, it isn’t abnormal for people to tell me how it wasn’t the media, or their peers but parents and family members that brought on their own shame and the resulting consequences. I truly believe it is different when it comes from your family. We are told family is suppose to love us no matter what, but this isn’t true and when they say hurtful or damaging things it should be addressed as such.
The words my aunt said to me were simple and in her own mind were probably coming from a place of misplaced care. When she told me, “You would be so beautiful if you were thin,” it was not only the first time a family member addressed my body, but also the first time it became clear that I lost something tangible by being fat.
That is why I am so passionate about the work I do today. Being taught to hold my personal appearance as a sign of my worth and my femininity, only to have it taken away when I no longer conformed to societies beauty ideals changed how I felt about myself. Because performing beauty is a standard requirement for someone who is gendered female, I spent a long time disassociating with my body and my gender. When I was finally able to understand that my pain was from the way I was socialized in my early childhood and teens I was able to disconnect myself from the equation. In other words, the way I was treated was not my fault or because of my body but due to the fat stigma in our society.
The changes were drastic, I stopped speaking negatively about myself, my body and/or otherwise. I also stopped speaking negatively about other people’s appearance instead judging them on their own interactions with me personally. This alone made learning to love my body and feel more connected with it, after hating it for so long, easier. Once I change the ways I thought and talked about bodies I started to address why I learned to feel that way, taking my life and tearing it apart to give myself a deeper understanding of where all of my shame came from.
Stopping my own body shaming was not an overnight process, it is still something that comes up at unexpected times, but when it does I’m not scared anymore. The only thing I fear now is going back to where I was before.
If you suffer from body shame, seek help. Surround yourself with people who will support you no matter what body you live in. Address why you feel the way you do about your body, and know that those feelings are not because of you. The Center for Eating Disorders in Ann Arbor and is an amazing resource to take back your body.
October 19th is Love Your Body Day.
The National Organization for Women’s Oakland County chapter will be holding an event titled “Love Your Body: Media and Body Image” I will be speaking about the language we use to talk about our bodies. For more information visit their event page, linked above.
AND! Don’t forget about Love Your Body Detroit’s Body Positive Scavenger Hunt.
