Tag Archives: fat stigma

Planned Parenthood Talk

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On Tuesday, while Cecile Richards was testifying before a house oversight committee, I was at Planned Parenthood Mid and South Michigan’s Detroit health center talking to them about creating fat inclusive health care.

It seemed incredibly ironic that while their staff is educating themselves about creating an enviornment to serve more people they were being presented as an organization that only provides abortion and doesn’t give life saving reproductive health care.

Their staff was great. They wanted to provide better health care for people regardless of body size and wanted to create a more inclusive environment for their employees.

Note – I’m in the middle of writing my thesis this semester so I haven’t had time to update the blog as much as I would like to. Please follow my other social media to stay connected!

As always, connect with me on tumblr, facebook and twitter.

Remembering Why This Work is Important

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Every so often people tell me they couldn’t do the work I do with so much backlash and outright hatred that is directed towards me personally but so many people in fat community.

I do it for people like this. Over the years I’ve had an outpouring of messages from people who have told me how my work has changed their lives and it means the world to me. I can’t fully express it but it gives me energy and reminds me why I’m here.

Thank you. ❤

Your blog means so much to me.

As a woman who has been through several well-renowned and extremely expensive inpatient programs designed to uproot my eating disorder, I can honestly say that nothing really stuck until I discovered the body positive community via your blog.

Treatment taught me how to eat again, but once I left, I would fall right back into my old habits. I hated myself and my body so much that I was willing to do anything to be thin, even at the expense of my health, even at the expense of the emotional well-being of my friends and loved ones who knew exactly what I was doing when I ran to the bathroom.

It wasn’t until I discovered exactly why thinness is elevated the way it is in our society that things started to change. I stopped feeling helpless and started to feel angry. The realization that my misery, my suffering, and my failing health resulted from my role as a pawn in an expertly calculated but indisputably evil hypercapitalist scheme to breed self-hate in order to sell beauty and diet products hit me hard. I felt manipulated and I felt used, and I was determined to never be taken advantage of like that again.

I’m doing a lot better. At this point, I’m “chubby” and not “fat” due to mountains of stress and being too broke to buy all of the groceries I like to buy, but I loved myself when I was. I learned to love myself at my highest weight and I would love myself if I reached an even higher weight than that. I no longer tie my personhood and self-worth to a number on a scale. I haven’t even weighed myself for months.

And that is largely because of this blog and the resources I found through reading it. I am in debt to you, Amanda, and I’m sure I’m not the only one that feels this way.

Please keep writing and doing you, it means more than you could ever know.

As always, connect with me on tumblr and twitter.

Abundant Bodies 2015 – Support Fat Community Projects

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The Allied Media Conference will be happening June 19th – 21st and for the second year in a row the Abundant Bodies Media track will be part of the conference for the weekend. I’m one of the coordinators of the track for the year and we are currently fundraising to support our track, session presenters and participants. We’re not only hoping to help people out with travel expenses but to also pay presenters for the knowledge and time they will be giving throughout the weekend.

We have a TON of amazing perks including a fearless craft-a-thon with Marianne Kirby, a gift pack from Re/Dress, tarot readings, a mental health / chronic illness chat and more!

Please consider supporting and sharing our fundraiser with your networks.

The track was created and continues to be primarily ran by Women of Color, our sessions are also primarily ran by People of Color. Here is some more information about the track,

This year at the Allied Media Conference 2015 (June 18-21 in Detroit, MI) we are coming back together to continue our conversations, share skills, experiences, stories, media, knowledge and strategies to build a more beautiful, body accepting and abundant loving future!

ln this track we will gather, share and celebrate the wisdom and abundance of our bodies. Abundant / thick / fat bodies are the target of so much hate, policing and negativity, even in our organizing communities. How do we unlearn mainstream ideas of what a body should look like and (re)-learn to celebrate the diversity, resilience, wisdom and beauty of all bodies? How can we work together to deconstruct fat stigma and other forms of marginalization while building a stronger inclusive fat community? How can we challenge ourselves to decenter whiteness, capitalism, ableism, cissexism, heterosexism and classism while we explore what it means to be fat?

This track will explore these questions and create spaces to challenge the ongoing ways mainstream media shames and harms abundant bodies. Our goal in our organizing and activism is to create media and practical strategies for resistance, healing and community building. We will broaden the conversation around fat activism by centering this track on the voices of Indigenous, Black, People of Color, Dis/abled, Super-sized, Trans and Queer fat folks. Through workshops, panels and skillshares we will transform mainstream ideas around abundant bodies and create resilient communities utilizing different forms of media such as zines, theater, oral histories, poetry, social media, dance, comics, and art.

You can view the entire AMC2015 schedule here and find out about all of the amazing sessions we will be having during the weekend.

And again, please consider supporting and sharing our fundraiser with your networks.

Tumblr Question – Arnt you afraid of health problems later in life like heart disease

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Click here to see the original. To see more questions like this one visit the FAQ on my tumblr.

Not anymore than everyone else should be regardless of their weight. Studies show that fatness carries a heightened risk of disease but that does not mean the body or weight itself causes disease. In fact, there are no studies that show fatness causes disease, rather, studies show that weight and disease are correlated with each other.

When we consider that and see how similar research on the health of fat people is to people living in poverty, women or People of Color we see that the relationship or heightened risk of disease has more to do with the environments we live in. Fat people are more likely to live in poverty. Fat people are also more likely to be People of Color. Sociological literature about health disparities show that racism and classism have a HUGE impact on the level of health people are able to access due to the social constraints created by both of those systemic / institutional oppressions.

So am I “afraid” of health problems later in life? No. Right now I’m afraid of the lack of access I have to quality medical care. I’m afraid of how the stigma I am forced to navigate through impacts my physical and mental wellbeing. I’m afraid of people putting more emphasis on individuals transcending the constraints placed on us instead of creating a world where everyone has access to safe communities, equitable wages, fresh foods and stigma free medical care.

That’s what I’m afraid of.

#CropTopGate and A Letter to an Editor

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At the beginning of July I posted on my tumblr about a situation that arose due to a photo of me that was photoshopped and published in a local magazine.

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This article was published in a local magazine this month and it took me a minute to realize that the photo had been photoshopped to hide the fact that I’m wearing a crop top. While I was at the shoot the photographer kept asking me to pull the shirt down because they thought the 1 inch of skin showing would distract people from my face.

 

Fat crop tops are not necessary but I think it’s important to note how the prevalence of fat phobia made the writer of the article, who I think was fantastic, not even notice or think about checking to make sure the photo wasn’t photoshopped. 

 

Bottom photo was taken the same day. Clearly my stomach is going to ruin the world.

I called it #croptopgate and tweeted along with the tag #mybeautifulbody, which was created by a follower on twitter who wanted to respond to what happened to me in their own way. There was some push back against the use of the second tag but I’m also very aware of how people are at different stages in their own deconstructing of fat stigma and self hatred. Being able to call yourself beautiful when you have spent your whole life thinking you aren’t can be revolutionary. 

Below is the letter to the editor I finally sent today. I’ve been taking a break from writing and that meant not getting this out when I wanted to.

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In the July 2014 issue of WestEnd Magazine I was featured in the “Faces” section to highlight the work I do to deconstruct fat discrimination and body ideals. While I know for many the issues fat people are forced to navigate in their daily lives is a new concept, I incorrectly believed that the magazine would be more thoughtful in how my photographs were used. My experience being interviewed was incredibly positive but I cannot say the same about the photo shoot or the final image that was used in the magazine.

From the beginning of the shoot the photographer made it very clear they were uncomfortable with the outfit I was wearing. I highly doubt that their discomfort would have been the same if I wasn’t a fat woman whose outfit drastically challenged the “rules” assigned as appropriate clothing for fat people. Most fat women are taught from a very early age that we are suppose to hide out bodies and be ashamed of them, thus wearing clothing that covers or diverts attention in an attempt to pretend our bodies simply don’t exist. I thoroughly reject the idea that I need to hide my body and wear clothing that I love regardless of how other people feel. Due to this, I wore an outfit that I made myself – a matching skirt and crop top with a lace upper – for the shoot.

On the day of the shoot one of the first things they asked was if I could pull my top down, saying they believed the top would “distract from my face.” Their comment may seem to be harmless but it is one that I have heard most of my life in other forms. Often fat women are told we have “such a pretty face” making a distinction between what is considered to be beautiful and not. Our bodies are considered to be distractions and my outfit didn’t hide that distraction but instead forced the photographer to look at it. It forced them to be distracted and actually see my fat body.

The photo shoot continued without any more comments but when the article was published I wasn’t surprised that the photo they chose not only was taken from an angle to make me look thinner but the outfit I was wearing was photoshopped to look like a dress. This experience has reminded me that while I can control the way I dress and present my body to the world I cannot control the way it is consumed and presented by others. This experience that ended the final photo is a complete disregard of my work and myself as a person.

I hope this experience makes the magazine think more thoroughly about the photographers they use and how they communicate with them about the subjects they are profiling. The bodies of marginalized people shouldn’t be presented in a way that makes other people feel comfortable nor should the magazine be completely unaware that a photo was digitally altered as was done in my case. We should have the autonomy to decide how our bodies exist in and out of print.

Sincerely,

Amanda Levitt
Scholar. Writer. Activist. Unapologetic Fat Lady.
FatBodyPolitics.com
@FatBodyPolitics

 

As always, connect with me on tumblr and twitter.