I was lucky enough to be on one of the fantastic Golda Poretsky’s Body Love Revolutionary Telesummits with Dr. Linda Bacon tonight.  It was an honor to work with both of them (Golda has more amazing telesummits coming up, check out the schedule here!)

Unfortunately my phone mysteriously lost signal at the end and I didn’t get to answer a final question from one of the people who had called in.  She was a dancer and she asked me something like do I feel that when I dance I have to be better than others to overcome stereotypes.

It’s a really good question, and it took me a long time to gain perspective on this:

When a fat person chooses to do something, and that thing happens to challenge someone else’s stereotypes of people of our size, we are not asking for their approval, we are doing them a favor.  We are giving them the opportunity to question their stereotypes.  Their choice to believe those stereotypes and prejudices, and whether or not they choose to challenge them, is on them.   We can’t control that.

As an artist I can choose that one of my goals is to afford people an opportunity to rethink their stereotypes and prejudices about people my size.  I can also decided “fuck ’em if they can’t take a fatty” and simply do whatever I want to do just, because I want to do it.

One of the dance workshops I teach is “Lyrical Movement for Larger Bodies”.  A question that comes up pretty often is “how can larger dancers express frailty when people can’t see us as frail”.  There are a lot of ways to do that technically and we go through them in the workshop. But I think the biggest part of it is, at least for me, was the realization that people can only see what they choose to see. There are people who cannot see a fat person as frail, that’s not the fault of the fat dancer, it’s the choice of the audience member. It does become our problem if we are auditioning etc. and addressing that is a whole other blog.

We are not obligated to live up to someone else’s expectations or to challenge their stereotypes.

Extremely Exciting Update!

Our Fundraising campaign for kids in George raised over $12,000 in the first day during our Big Fat Money Bomb.   Now we just need to get to 1,000 individual donors and we will unlock our $5,000 More of Me to Love Matching donation.  So today is solidarity dollar day!  If you are reading this I’m asking you to take 1 minute of your time and donate $1 to show that you support standing up for this kids and against bullying. The GoFundMe page doesn’t accept donations of less than $5 so we’ve set up a pay pal account just for this:

DONATE A Solidarity Dollar NOW!

If your donation is more than $5.00  it is also greatly appreciated and you’ll donate through our GoFundMe site.  Click Here!

Every donation, no matter how small, bring us closer to getting 1,000 individual donors and unlocking our $5,000 More of Me to Love Matching Donation.  Every little bit TRULY helps!

This blog is supported by its readers rather than corporate ads.  If you feel that you get value out of the blog, can afford it, and want to support my work and activism, please consider a paid subscription or a one-time contribution.  The regular e-mail subscription (available at the top right hand side of this page) is still completely free.   Thanks for reading! ~Ragen

For the last 9 months, every single day, children in Atlanta have seen billboards, commercials, and signs at bus stops like this:

If you are thinking “it’s not that big a deal” I want to tell you that, as a former bullied fat kid, I think it is a very big deal.  The messages couldn’t be clearer.  If you’re fat – you should be ashamed.  If you’re not fat – you should be terrified of becoming fat because fat people are diseased gluttons by choice and it’s ok to publicly shame them.

If Atlanta was a gymnasium, fat kids would be standing against the wall while older, bigger kids from CHOA hurl dodgeballs at them.

I couldn’t stand not to do something.  Something big enough to show these kids that, even if they feel all alone, someone has their backs.

Enough is enough. It’s time to stand up for these kids and give them a tangible symbol of support and hope.  It’s time to stand up for the powerless bullied fat kids some of us used to be.  It’s time to stand up for our current fat selves,  friends, family and neighbors.

It’s time to do something big.  Today is Big Fat Money Bomb day. We are raising the money to put up billboards and print media campaigns from a Health at Every Size® perspective to show kids of all sizes that they are valued and respected.

Thanks to the More of Me to Love Match, we are already half way to our first billboard. They have donated $5,000, and to access that money all we need to do is raise the other $5,000 and get 1,000 individual donors, so every little bit helps and your donation goes twice as far.

Does $5,000 sound like a lot?  Let’s put some perspective on this number. If each of my followers gave $10, we would raise $21,220 – enough for 2 billboards and a large media campaign with the MOMTL match.  If each visitor to the blog from yesterday donated $10 we would raise $41,680, enough for four billboards and a massive media campaign.  To meet goal we only need $5,000.  We can do this!  And when those billboards go up and as the publicity around them gets our experts into the media talking about the Health at Every Size(r) Approach, we can all be proud.

I remember what it was like to be bullied as a kid.  Right now there are fat kids in Atlanta doing the very best they can to deal with the shame, stigma, and humiliation being thrown at them.  Let’s stand up and help them fight back.

Update: We raised over $12,000 in our first 24 hours on 2/2/12.  Now our goal is to get 1,000 individual donors so that we can unlock our challenge donation of $5,000 from More of Me to Love!   Wo today (2/3/12) is Solidarity Dollar Day.  If you are reading this I’m asking you to spend a minute of your time and a dollar of your money to show that you care about these kids and help us get another $5,000 to run a massive media campaign with bus stop signs, ads in newspapers etc.

DONATE A Solidarity Dollar NOW!

If your donation is more than $5.00  it is also greatly appreciated and you’ll donate through our GoFundMe site.  Click Here!

Every donation, no matter how small, bring us closer to getting 1,000 individual donors and unlocking our $5,000 More of Me to Love Matching Donation.  Every little bit TRULY helps!