In response to my post about how fat hate is often about things other than our actual fat, I received comments and e-mails from people who had experiences where they were ignored, erased, or made to feel invisible. This is just another effect of the war on fat people, of the government encouraging our employers, families, friends – even fat people ourselves – to stereotype us based on how we look, and to hate the bodies we live in 100% of the time.

We get ignored and made to feel invisible- by people who work in shops, by people on the street, by doctors, by hiring directors, by teachers in everything from community classes to Masters level college courses.

We also get erased.  This can happen physically  – Blog readers have told me about attending  weddings but finding themselves completely left out of the hundreds of pictures, fat people have been told by brides (who clearly don’t have any home training) that they are not being asked to be bridesmaids because they’ll “ruin the pictures.”  Yesterday commenter Maggie talked about how she had been at a workshop for a week with classes that only had 8 other people that was shot by the town’s tourism rep – who didn’t include her in a single picture.) I had a little kid say “Mom, that lady is fat” and the mom’s response was “Don’t look at her!”  This is not an episode of Dr. Who and I am not an angel statue so it’s totally ok to look at me.

Erasing can also happen emotionally. It happens when people insist that the above things don’t happen, that’s it’s all in our head.  When people’s response to hearing about the stigma, bullying and oppression that fat people deal with is to try to discredit us.  It happens when people try to replace our actual experiences with their made up ones about what it’s like to be fat. (I was once on the news with a celebrity personal trainer who was saying that nobody at 300 pounds could move comfortably.  I responded “What he is saying does not apply to me…” and he interrupted me and said “I beg to differ.” Seriously. He disagreed WITH ME about what I SAID does and does not apply TO ME.  This can be even worse for fatties with multiple marginalized identities – queer, trans*, disabled people, and people of color for example.

This isn’t fair, it isn’t something that we should have to deal with. It’s not our fault but like so much fat hate bullshit it becomes our problem.

There are some things that I do to combat this – obviously these are just my ideas – your mileage may vary, please feel free to ad yours to the comments.

• Take pictures and post them on social media (I even have a gallery on this blog)
• Get in front of the camera at events you are at
• Say something when you see people replacing other people’s actual experience with their own stereotypes/prejudices etc.
• Stand firm in your right to be the best witness to your experiences.
• Share your experiences – tell your story.

Of course nobody is every obligated to do any activism at all, I think that in the end the most important thing to remember is that it’s other people’s behavior that’s the problem, not our bodies.

Like the blog?  Here’s more of my stuff:

Interviews with Amazing Activists!!  Help Activists tell our movement’s history in their own words.  Support In Our Own Words:  A Fat Activist History Project!

Become a member: For just ten bucks a month you can keep this blog ad-free, support the activism work I do, and get deals from cool businesses Click here for details

The Book:  Fat:  The Owner’s Manual  The E-Book is Name Your Own Price! Click here for details

Dance Classes:  Buy the Dance Class DVDs or download individual classes – Every Body Dance Now! Click here for details

Ever since I posted about doing a marathon I’ve been getting tons of hate mail. I got an e-mail that said “A part of me sincerely hopes you die doing that marathon so that others will see you can’t be over 300lbs and act like it doesn’t matter, you need to lose weight!”

This illustrates something that people who fat bash for fun, profit, or pleasure often try to disguise behind claims that it’s “because of our health” or “for our own good.”  A lot of fat bashing has almost nothing to do with us being fat per se.

For starters, let me take a shot at re-wording this person’s comment:  “A part of me sincerely hopes you die doing something that you like to do, so that other fat people don’t get the idea that they can do things that they like to do, as if the shame and stigma that I want to heap upon all of you doesn’t matter.  You need to hate yourself like I want you to and do what I say!”

A lot of this type of fat hate is about insecure people who have put all of their self-esteem eggs in the thin basket, people whose only method of feeling good about themselves is to try to find someone who they are “better than.”  For many people, that’s fat people.  If fat people don’t play along by hating ourselves and valuing these people’s bodies above our bodies, then it can lead to an angry response.

A lot of the social stigma that fat people face can serve to make us second class citizens – clothing stores use our purposeful exclusion as a marketing strategy, hospitals don’t bother to purchase equipment that will help keep us alive, the government is actively encouraging our employers, friends, and families to stereotype us based on how we look.

When we refuse to bow to this and we live the lives we want to live – doing a marathon, wearing a fatkini, going to see that band we like, eating at the new restaurant- or engage in activism to make the world better for us, this can be seen as “rising above our station”.  There are people who count on fat people trying to solve social stigma by changing ourselves.  When we decide to solve social stigma by ending social stigma, the people who profit – monetarily and/or emotionally – from our attempt to change ourselves can start to get antsy.  Or completely panicked and pissed off.

There are people for whom conforming to societal norms by getting as close as possible to the stereotype of beauty is incredibly important, and something at which they throw a tremendous amount of time, energy, and money. People are absolutely allowed to do that.  It goes wrong when these people start to resent and become angry with those of us who make different choices.

I think that one of the most powerful types of activism fat people can do is live our lives unapologetically.  In the world we live in, waking up and not hating ourselves is activism. So going to that show, or wearing the awesome sweater we crocheted, entering a 5k, getting a scooter and going to Vegas, or whatever we do that isn’t hating our bodies – are acts of revolution.  Every single time a fat person refuses to be silenced, hidden, kept away, or kept out of an activity it is a revolutionary act.

There are many fat people who are afraid to do the things that they want to do and that’s totally ok and understandable.  Outside of not trying to take away people’s civil rights, I’m not trying to tell anyone how to live.  As I have said before, if someone reads my work and realizes that fat people deserve to be treated with respect that’s great, but the goal of most of my work is to suggest/remind fat people that we deserve to be treated with respect.

I don’t do things to inspire people (that’s way too much pressure) I do thing that I like to do.  So I don’t care if I ever “inspire” anyone to do a marathon, but if my doing a marathon, or wearing a bikini, or stubbornly refusing to hate myself, helps another fat person go to bingo, or join a quilting circle, or go read a book in the park, or do anything that they want to do, then I’ll be thrilled.

Like the blog?  Here’s more of my stuff:

Interviews with Amazing Activists!!  Help Activists tell our movement’s history in their own words.  Support In Our Own Words:  A Fat Activist History Project!

Become a member: For just ten bucks a month you can keep this blog ad-free, support the activism work I do, and get deals from cool businesses Click here for details

The Book:  Fat:  The Owner’s Manual  The E-Book is Name Your Own Price! Click here for details

Dance Classes:  Buy the Dance Class DVDs or download individual classes – Every Body Dance Now! Click here for details

Every time I see someone being complimented for “looking so great” after their recent weight loss, I cringe a little.  People who undertake weight loss attempts are often encouraged to motivate themselves by hating their current bodies.  When they are successful at short term weight loss, they are encouraged to look back at their “old body” with shame, scorn, and hatred.  And that’s a big problem.

Not just because at some point the person will probably start to think “if everyone is talking about how great I look now, how did they think I looked before?” but also because the vast majority of people gain back their weight in two to five years.  Then they are living in a body that they taught themselves to hate and be ashamed of, remembering all of those compliments. Yikes.

I’ve also had friends and blog readers who’ve lost weight because they were sick, or stressed, or in some other unintentional way, who’ve said that this kind of compliment was horrible  It made them wonder what these people thought of their bodies before, it created friction when they regained the weight, and it created an incredibly awkward situation when the person said “You look great, what’s your weight loss secret?” and their answer was “chemotherapy.”

So compliments can be a minefield.  But they can also be awesome.  Here are some guidelines that might help.  Of course, your mileage may vary and these are just suggestions:

Avoid Body Comparisons

Bodies are beautiful all the time.  People’s body size changes over their lives, sometimes on purpose, sometimes through extraneous, even undesired, circumstances.  Either way, it’s impossible to tell people that they look better without telling them that they looked worse, and that’s no good.  So, maybe don’t do it. Try this:

• You’ve always been beautiful and I’m glad that you are happy.
• You are beautiful at every size

No backhanded compliments

Some of these might seem obvious, but you’d be surprised. A compliment should probably never include:

• “For a” as in “You’re really pretty for a fat girl”
• “I guess”  as in “If you like that dress I guess I like it”
• “such…but” as in “You have such a pretty face, but you need to do something about your weight.”
• “brave” as in “You’re so brave to wear a sleeveless shirt”.

Drop the “for a” and “I guess”. Drop “such”, “but” and everything after, consider adding an adjective.

• You look very pretty.
• I like that dress too.

Any mention of “brave” that is not followed by “for fighting off those wild animals” is a bad call.  Try “You look great in that shirt.”

Complimenting the clothes

• Those jeans make your butt look great.
• That dress is very flattering.
• That shirt is so cute.

Compliment the person not the clothes

• Your butt makes those jeans look great (maybe save this for people who are not co-workers and are close friends)
• That dress really compliments your rocking body
• You have fantastic taste in clothes

Ah, that’s better.

No putting yourself down as part of a compliment

• You look great, I wish I had legs like that
• Wow, great job, I could never press that much weight
• I love your hair, I could never pull off that look

It tends to ruin the compliment the person feels like they have to make you feel better at the end of it. This fix is easy, just drop the part about you:

• You look great.
• Wow, great job.
• I love your hair.

Easy peasy.

So go forth and compliment fearlessly!

Meet me in Chicago!

The Abundia Conference is coming up November 1-3rd in the Chicago area.  There will be amazing women, lots of fun and fatty fellowship, plus I’m the speaker this year and we’ll be talking about everything from being our own medical advocate, to improving our relationships with our bodies, food, and movement, and of course we can dance if we want to (which is to say that we will have an optional dance workshop!)  They have a sliding scale, lots of options, and an empowerment fund to help with finances.  You can get info and register here!

Like the blog?  Here’s more of my stuff:

Interviews with Amazing Activists!!  Help Activists tell our movement’s history in their own words.  Support In Our Own Words:  A Fat Activist History Project!

Become a member: For just ten bucks a month you can keep this blog ad-free, support the activism work I do, and get deals from cool businesses Click here for details

The Book:  Fat:  The Owner’s Manual  The E-Book is Name Your Own Price! Click here for details

Dance Classes:  Buy the Dance Class DVDs or download individual classes – Every Body Dance Now! Click here for details

One of the most frustrating things that I deal with as part of our fat bashing society is the idea that my fat body is a signal that I need other people to tell me how to live my life – what to eat and what not to eat, how to exercise etc. In fact there is a whole lot of food policing and food moralizing by and against people of all sizes.  I think it’s important that we each be able to make our own choices about what we eat, and have access to information if we want it.  But I wasn’t always this way.

Several years ago I was in a very different place than I am now.  I believed strongly in the moralization of food – I could have written those truly awful Truvia jingles. I shared my thoughts, opinions and judgment with others like I actually had a Food Police badge.   It was at that time that my best friend Kelrick told me about his discovery of Jamba Juice.  In his words I “screwed up my face and said ‘ewwww too much sugar'”  We repeated this scene several times. This is the kind of thing that I’ll be hearing about from Kel for the rest of our lives. Those chickens came home to roost today when I made what I thought was a funny post to my Facebook page:

I’m told that as my training sessions for the Marathon get longer I’ll have to put more thought into hydration. Gatorade was on sale today so I bought 10 different flavors in the hopes of finding some that taste less like flavored sweat and more like anything else. But what is with the flavor names? What the effing crap is “Riptide Rush”? How about naming it something that gives a clue as to the flavor?

I have literally no idea why I capitalized “marathon” by that’s a psychoanalysis for another blog. I had intended for this FB post to be somewhere between “this is funny” and “share my pain.”  Unfortunately some people took it as an invitation to lecture me about what I should put in my own body and broadly moralize about food.  I completely understand how their could have been confusion since I was talking about advice that I had received.  I later posted to clarify and the policing and moralizing immediately stopped.

I’m sure everyone who posted was well-intentioned, I’m sure they believe that they are right and giving me helpful information, hell a few years ago I would have done the same thing. After a lot of studying and soul searching, I’ve come to believe that food policing and moralization, however well-intentioned, are not helpful, and in fact can be quite harmful.

Food policing happens when we decide that it’s not enough to make our own choices about food, we have to help others make choices as well.  Policing other people’s food is a slippery slope – who gets to decide?  Does someone who believes that veganism is the healthiest (and therefore lowest cost-on-society option) get to insist that everyone is vegan?  Do they get to not pay for the healthcare costs of non-vegans?  What about someone who thinks Paleo is the healthiest?

Food policing can take overt forms “Your juice has too much sugar!” or subtle forms “I know you love your bod – please find something healthier to drink!” Subtle or overt, I’ve never met anyone who wanted to tell me what and how to eat, who also wanted someone to be telling them.  Well-intentioned or otherwise, I think it’s a bad idea.

Food policing has any number of problems.  First, it’s arrogant to assume that other people need us to tell them what and how to eat.  It’s also dangerous when the policer doesn’t know everything about the policed.  People recommended that I drink pineapple juice – I’m sure it’s great except I’m allergic to it.  People told me that I should eat peanut butter as a snack.  I’m sure it’s great, except my best friend, who is running with me, is deathly allergic and just having peanuts around him is dangerous. There are some people who can’t digest certain foods, there are food allergies, there are any number of personal issues that might inform how and what a person chooses to eat and unless someone is asking for advice it’s not our place to give it.

Food moralization happens when we assign moral value to food – good, bad, guilt-free, sinful, crap, clean etc.  It’s problematic because it can cause and/or reinforce unhealthy relationships with food.  It also doesn’t take into account individual needs or circumstances, some of which we may not even be aware of. What each person can afford, what they are capable of preparing, any health issues/concerns they may have, and what they like all factor in.

So how does this work in real life?  We have the right to decide that food has a moral value in our own lives, but it’s not ok to try to apply those morals to someone else (just like some people don’t eat pork for religious reasons but it’s not ok to suggest that stores should stop selling bacon.) If we think that a certain company or food should be taken off the shelves, then I think we should consider focusing on the company or the law and putting information out on our own spaces (blogs, FB pages, Twitter etc) , or join spaces where these discussions are encouraged, rather than focusing on individuals and their choices and using other people’s spaces to “educate” them when it’s not been invited.

I’m off to have a Gatorade Jamba Juice.

Las Vegas Area Readers:

I’ll be in Las Vegas in October for the awesome Size Diversity Task Force Retreat.

If you are in Las Vegas I would love to meet you, let me know  If you know of a college, business, or organization that might like to have me as a speaker while I’m there, I would love to reach out to them, feel free to e-mail me at ragen@danceswithfat.org

Like the blog?  Here’s more of my stuff:

Interviews with Amazing Activists!!  Help Activists tell our movement’s history in their own words.  Support In Our Own Words:  A Fat Activist History Project!

Become a member: For just ten bucks a month you can keep this blog ad-free, support the activism work I do, and get deals from cool businesses Click here for details

The Book:  Fat:  The Owner’s Manual  The E-Book is Name Your Own Price! Click here for details

Dance Classes:  Buy the Dance Class DVDs or download individual classes – Every Body Dance Now! Click here for details

Reader Diane sent me an article by Emma Woolf ITW: everything I’m about to talk about] asking why, if fat bashing is not ok, thin bashing is?

The article started:

I have never been fat, but I know exactly what it is like to be judged for my size and hear unkind comments about my appearance. We need to shift the weight debate to health, rather than looks

So far so good – I agree with this. I don’t care how much thin privilege someone has, I’m against body shaming for bodies of every size and I believe that a culture of stereotype photo shop beauty, body bashing, fat shaming, and the fear of fat hurt everyone.

I also think that having thin fat activists/allies is important and that it’s easier to create allies where there is common ground – if someone is acknowledging that the way fat people are treated is wrong and they realized this through some empathy from personal experience, then I think we’re moving in the right direction and I’m not likely to jump right into “ACKNOWLEDGE YOUR PRIVILEGE!”  I’m happy to save those important discussions for later, once we have a bond that makes the discussion more likely to lead to empathy and understanding than defensiveness and frustration.

Unfortunately, Emma takes a bad turn.  She says “my book contains not a single word of criticism about larger-sized people.”  But then there’s this:

I’m fed up with being judged for being physically disciplined, for watching what I eat, and for exercising five times a week.

If Emma is being judged/bashed/shamed because she is thin, I think that’s wrong, but it’s not the same as being judged for her eating and exercise choices.  Those are separate from body size and when you’re working with stereotypes like this and making assumptions and confusion behaviors with body size you can assume that you are traveling down a bad road. Things do not get better:

Other things a thin woman is not allowed to say: “it takes willpower to stay slim”; “of course it would be easier just to eat anything I wanted but I don’t”; “yes, I’m often hungry mid-morning but I wait until lunchtime”. Above all, a slim woman must never say: “I prefer being slim.”

Actually a thin woman can say all of those things but she doesn’t say them in a vacuum.  First of all, there are many, many studies that show that body size is not a matter of willpower, or a matter of ignoring our bodies’ hunger signals.  And it’s not surprising that one would prefer being slim considering it means not have war waged on you by the government for how you look – but that’s where it helps to understand that, even if a thin woman is wrongly shamed for having a thin body, there are still privileges that she receives that make her life different than the lives of fat people and it would be pretty cool if she would work to make sure that everyone has the opportunity to prefer being the size that they are like she does.

I wasted a decade struggling with the mental twists and turns of anorexia. It was only in the last few years, when I found a medical reason to recover – my fertility — that I made progress with weight gain. Could the same approach work for weight loss? If we reframed the debate around fat and accepted that it can be a form of disordered eating with physical consequences, we might start to get somewhere.

I am so sorry that Emma had to struggle with an eating disorder, but her attempt to extrapolate her experience to fat people, and her thinking around fat and eating disorders is deeply flawed.  Body size is not an eating disorder diagnosis.  Eating disorders are complicated mental illnesses with various physical symptoms, behaviors, and manifestations that can be different for everyone.  People of all sizes have all kinds of eating disorders – there are fat anorexics and thin people with Binge Eating Disorder.

People who have recovered from eating disorders are also all different sizes.  The conflation of size and diagnosis and the assumption of size and cure do a disservice to everyone. The problem with weight loss isn’t that it’s not tied to mental illness, the problem with weight loss is that is just doesn’t work.  Almost everyone loses weight in the short term, almost everyone gains it back in the long term and attempting to diagnose an eating disorder based on body size won’t change that but will cause a host of additional problems.

The piece ended up in a very different place than it started when Emma was suggesting that “We need to shift the weight debate to health, rather than looks.”  When you equate looks with health you make that shift impossible, and you add to the tremendous about of stigma, stereotyping and shame that fat people already face – and since you know how painful that is, if you think about it I think you’ll realize that you know better.

Like the blog?  Here’s more of my stuff:

Interviews with Amazing Activists!!  Help Activists tell our movement’s history in their own words.  Support In Our Own Words:  A Fat Activist History Project!

Become a member: For just ten bucks a month you can keep this blog ad-free, support the activism work I do, and get deals from cool businesses Click here for details

The Book:  Fat:  The Owner’s Manual  The E-Book is Name Your Own Price! Click here for details

Dance Classes:  Buy the Dance Class DVDs or download individual classes – Every Body Dance Now! Click here for details

I cannot count how many times a good, even a fantastic, idea has been completely ruined by throwing weight loss/fat stigma into the mix.  I’ve rarely seen such a good (good here having the meaning of HORRIBLE) example as the Fruit and Vegetable Prescription Program.

Good idea:  Help people afford fresh fruits and vegetables from local farmers markets.  I believe that public health should be about giving people options for the foods that they would like to eat, I can get behind this idea.

Good idea all fucked up:  Make this a program for fat kids who have to be weighed in and “educated” monthly.

What’s the problem?

First is the stereotypical assumption that fat kids don’t eat vegetables and thin kids do.  I’m sure that there are plenty of thin kids whose parents could use help affording fruits and vegetables from local farmers markets and plenty of fat kids who eat their fruits and veggies. If vegetables are healthy, then they are healthy for all kids – not just the fat ones.

Subjecting fat kids to weekly weigh-ins is super problematic, as any fat kid who was subjected to weekly weigh-ins can attest.  Also, it doesn’t work.  Research from the University of Minnesota found that “None of the behaviors being used by adolescents (in 1999) for weight-control purposes predicted weight loss[in 2006]…Of greater concern were the negative outcomes associated with dieting and the use of unhealthful weight-control behaviors, including significant weight gain.”

There are studies that show that eating fruits and vegetables can have some health benefits for some people (there are people who live with illnesses that make eating fruits and vegetables problematic.)  There are no studies that show that eating fruits and vegetables will make these kids thinner.  The idea that it will creates sets up these fat kids up to be seen as failures, and possibly as a “waste of money/resources.”

One of the testimonials from an MD states “Families who took advantage of the program bought more fruits and veggies. Beyond this, the greatest success was in improving enrollment and attendance at monthly visits.”  It takes a special kind of arrogance and a complete lack of understanding about the deep weight bias held by many doctors and healthcare professionals, to think that getting fat kids to the doctor to be weighted and lectured once a month is a great success.

The biggest problem is that they are guessing about this – they are experimenting on children.  They have learned nothing from the so-called “healthy living” programs that were supposed to “combat childhood obesity” (because anytime you can put combat and childhood in the same sentence you know you’re on a great path), an ended up increasing disordered eating. 

In short, the fact that the program is well-meaning does not overcome the fact that it is based in stereotypes, steeped in condescending paternalism, and could absolutely do more harm than good. Plenty of studies show that, while health is multi-dimensional and not entirely within our control, behaviors are a much better indicator of future health than body size.  There are no studies where a majority of fat people become thin and stay that way long term, and there are no studies that show that those who maintain long-term weight loss are healthier.

The answer is simple – it’s time to take weight out of the health discussion.  Make public health about making options available to the public, rather than making fat people’s bodies the public’s business.  People don’t take care of things that they hate and that includes their bodies and shame is not good for our health, so public health interventions that create body hatred and stigmatize a body size are flawed from the outset, so let’s stop doing that and start doing something that makes sense.

Like the blog?  Here’s more of my stuff:

Interviews with Amazing Activists!!  Help Activists tell our movement’s history in their own words.  Support In Our Own Words:  A Fat Activist History Project!

Become a member: Keep this blog ad-free, support the activism work I do, and get deals from cool businesses Click here for details

The Book:  Fat:  The Owner’s Manual  The E-Book is Name Your Own Price! Click here for details

Dance Classes:  Buy the Dance Class DVDs or download individual classes – Every Body Dance Now! Click here for details

I had just finished a talk about Health at Every Size at a technology company that had requested, and received, a very data-heavy presentation.  We had spent two hours going over the research around the failure of diets and the success of healthy habits and I had spent over two hours more answering questions  – no, nobody is obligated to pursue health by any definition – no, health is not entirely within our control – no, there really isn’t a single study where a majority of participants moved into “normal” BMI and maintained it – yes, studies have claimed success when 70% of people dropped out and the rest averaged 2 pounds of weight lost over 2 years.  Finally the engineers and computer programmers were satiated and the questions ran out.

I was packing up my things when a woman came up to me and said “I loved your presentation and I totally agree with what you said about dieting not working.  I’m trying to lose weight right now but after all my dieting failures I’ve accepted that I’ll never be skinny, I just want to get back to a size 14.”

This is not the first time this has happened.  In the past I have said this exact thing.  I hear and see it all the time.  It’s a particularly heartbreaking moment I think – the person has given up on their dream of being thin and created a new dream that, sadly, is likely precisely as unattainable.

I’ve written before about how difficult it is to be called a quitter, to give up the allure of the next diet and all of it’s possibilities, I’ve even discussed how I think our belief in the possibility of being thin is hindering the fatty uprising.  

Even once we get past that, we’re still subject to this pitfall – the “I just want to be a size X” myth.  We hit this stage when we acknowledge that thin is not a possibility because diets don’t work, but then hope that maybe they’ll work well enough for a smaller body than we have now. The goals of this are completely understandable – wanting to fit into old clothes, wanting to fit into an airplane seat/movie seat/chair with arms, wanting to be able to shop in a brick and mortar store, being emotionally attached to a specific size, hoping that being thinner will help mobility, and plenty more.

The problem is that no matter how good/rational/reasonable the reason – diets still just don’t work – it’s still feeding your body less food than it needs to survive in an attempt to get it to eat itself and become smaller, and that is still a recipe for disaster.  The vast majority of these attempts will still end up in long-term weight gain, leaving the person not just with the problem they were originally trying to solve, but possibly new problems as well.

To be clear, I’m not trying to tell anybody what to do with their body, I don’t believe that I can argue for my right to practice Health at Every Size while simultaneously arguing against someone else’s right to diet.  Plus, other people’s bodies are not my business. This is just a suggestion:

I suggest that the sooner we give up the “I want to be a size x” dream, the sooner we can start working on the “I want a better size-I-am-now” reality.  Once we stop believing in the Thin Fairy – when we realize that our bodies are not the problem – we start to see all the actual problems. 

We can choose to start creating a world that works for us – asking for armless chairs, finding a way to get clothes we like, flying with fat-friendly airlines, going to movie theaters with seats that have arms that raise, get the mobility aid(s) that can help us, working on strength/stamina/flexibility/movement patterns instead of just trying to get smaller, doing activism around any of these things and anything else that is in our way. Even if we don’t choose activism, at least now we’re placing the blame where it belongs and not on our bodies.

I still remember the day I decided that instead of waiting for some other body to show up, I was going to take this body for a spin – appreciate it, defend it, make the world better for it.  I don’t want to imagine what my life would be like if instead i had decided, for the eleventy gabillionth time that it was time for the next diet so that I could just get down to a size whatever.

A little help from my friends?

I’m making plans to go to Southwest Florida to interview the amazing Lynn McAfee for the Fat History Project.  Lynn is one of my heroes and is someone who almost every single person I discussed the project with said I HAD to interview. This project is so important to me – it would be awesome if you could help me get her amazing memories and wisdom (and that of other incredibly fat activists) out on YouTube for free for everyone to see.  There are lots of ways to help, whether or not you can help financially:

Support the project – financially and/or by passing it along on social media. If you don’t like GoFundMe or are donating less than $5 (every little bit helps!)  You can totally use paypal

Become a member: For just ten bucks a month you can support this project and other activism that I do, keep this blog ad-free, be the first to know about, and get special deals on, all of my stuff, and get deals from cool businesses and my undying gratitude Click here

Help me find speaking gigs in Southwestern Florida –  if I can get some speaking gigs (even small ones) I can spread the HAES/SA love and it can help offset the travel costs.  If you know of a college, corporation, book store, dance studio etc. in Southwestern Florida that might like to have me as a speaker, e-mail me at ragen at danceswithfat dot org!

Buy the Book:  Fat:  The Owner’s Manual  The E-Book is Name Your Own Price! Click here for details

Buy the Dance Classes:  Buy the Dance Class DVDs or download individual classes – Every Body Dance Now! Click here for details

This is, I think, the final piece in what has turned into a trifecta of posts dealing with the BS that fat people have to deal with.  The first two pieces are here and here 

I get a lot of e-mails from readers who want to know what I say to various fat hate that I have to deal with.  Here are some examples, some are serious, some are jokes.  As always your mileage may vary and feel free to use these as is, change them up, or don’t use them at all:

You have such a pretty face

• Sure, but wait until you see my fine, fine ass.
• Thanks, it matches my beautiful body

Do you need to eat that?

• I thought that you were an accountant, are you also a dietitian?
• Yes, because dealing with your rudeness is depleting my glycogen stores at an alarming rate
• If I want to talk to the food police, I’ll call 911
• Thanks for trying to give me your insecurities, but I was really hoping to get a Wii for Christmas this year
• No, but using my fork to eat helps to keep me from stabbing you with it

What are you doing about your weight?

• Moving it through space with grace, power, and joy
• Dressing it in fabulous clothes and taking it out on the town
• My weight is fine, what are you doing about your rudeness?

Don’t you know that being fat is unhealthy?

• Don’t you know the difference between correlation and causation?
• Don’t you know what is and is not your business?
• No, I don’t and you don’t either.  It looks like you need to do some research.

Are you pregnant?

• No, but the night is young. (This one is direct from the brilliant Marilyn Wann!)
• Piece of advice – if you can’t see the baby’s head, don’t assume the woman is pregnant.
• Yup, I’m in my 108th trimester.

This Health at Every Size stuff is just fat people justifying people being fat.

• My fat body is amazing and requires no justification. Your rudeness on the other hand is inexcusable.
• Health at Every Size says that healthy habits are the best chance to improve our odds for a healthy body.  Are you suggesting that we should tell people to practice unhealthy habits?
• It sounds to me like you are just trying to justify your fat bashing.

But my brother-in-law’s cousin’s babysitter’s best friend’s aunt lost weight and they are healthier that they were.

• Did they change their behaviors to lose weight?  Then is it possible that the weight loss and the better health are both side effects of the behavior change?
• That’s fine for that person but everyone does not have to choose the same path.
• I base my decisions on evidence, not anecdotes. There are people who survive when their parachutes don’t open, but I’m still going to wear a parachute. The vast majority of the time intentional weight loss attempts lead to weight gain not better health in the long term, so weight loss is too a dangerous choice for me.

People on Dancing with the Stars lose weight , why don’t you? (It’s possible that this one just happens to me)

• People are able to appropriately interact with strangers, why can’t you?
• People on Dancing with the Stars just started dancing, I’ve been at this a while.  Based on the research they’ll gain their weight back in a few years, but I’ll still be a fabulous fat dancer.

All you have to do is eat less and exercise more and you’ll lose weight.

• Right, and all you have to do is click your heels together and say “there’s no place like home” and you’ll be there.
• Oh my god, I’ve never heard that before, thank the gods I met you inappropriate stranger.
• Looks like I wasted those hundreds of hours reading the research – who needs evidence when you can just repeat a platitude.  Are you still using heroin as a cough suppressant and saving for tickets to sail around the flat surface of the Earth?

You’re pretty for a fat girl.

• Why on Earth would you think I care what you think about me?
• That’s weird, I was just thinking that you are attractive for a rude person!

You’re not fat!

• Holy crap, we need to go to the Optometrist right freaking now!
• I am absolutely fat, and there’s nothing wrong with that.  I think what you might mean is that I don’t fit your stereotypes of fat – in which case the problem is with the stereotypes and not my size.
• You know, when you say that I’m not fat, when I obviously am, it makes it sound like you think there’s something wrong with the body that I live in all the time, there isn’t.

You’re not fat, you’re fluffy.

• Sorry about that – you activated my throat-punch reflex.
• I’m really not fluffy – I don’t even float in the water.  Really, I’m just fat.
• Please, for the love of all that’s holy, stop trying to “help”.

We can’t have you as a speaker on fitness/athletics because your lifestyle is obviously leading you to an unhealthy body and we don’t think you make a good role model.

• Fuck you.  (Ok, that’s not really one I recommend)
• So you’re saying shame fat people for not pursuing fitness, then stigmatize us when we do pursue fitness, then conceal any success we have pursuing fitness?  Yeah, that’s gonna work out.
• This kind of stereotyping and silencing of fat athletes means that fat people don’t have any role models who look like us.  Nobody is required to pursue health/fitness/athletics but attitudes like this lead fat people to believe that they can’t do these things even if they want to.  Hope you’re proud of yourselves.
• It’s interesting that you are comfortable ignoring all of my accomplishments because you can’t set aside your prejudice about my body.

Are you being bullied about your weight?  Then do something about it (implying that the fat person should lose weight.)

• The solution to social stigma is not weight loss.  It’s ending social stigma. The problem is not fat people, it’s those who stigmatize us.

You can’t tell me that you’re comfortable if you’re fat.

• You can’t tell me whether or not I’m comfortable since you’re not, you know, me.
• I can and I am telling you that, despite your best efforts to make me uncomfortable, I am very comfortable being fat.
• It is not ok for you to replace my actual experiences with your made up ones about what it’s like to be me.

If you could snap your fingers and be thin you would.

• No, I wouldn’t.  But if I could snap my fingers and stop you from being a fat bigot I would.  Let’s give that a shot. *snap*

Like the blog?  Here’s more of my stuff:

Interviews with Amazing Activists!!  Help Activists tell our movement’s history in their own words.  Support In Our Own Words:  A Fat Activist History Project!

Become a member: Keep this blog ad-free, support the activism work I do, and get deals from cool businesses Click here for details

The Book:  Fat:  The Owner’s Manual  The E-Book is Name Your Own Price! Click here for details

Dance Classes:  Buy the Dance Class DVDs or download individual classes – Every Body Dance Now! Click here for details

If you are online daring to suggest that fat people deserve to be treated with basic human respect, at some point you will likely end up with a hater.  Hate takes lots of forms from “well meaning” to abusive.  I’ve discussed dealing with “well intentioned” haters before, today I want to talk about the abusive kind of haters.

I’ll give you some techniques that I use to deal with this but my primary advice is to remind yourself that the problem is with these people and not with you.  I figured this out the hard way – there was a day when I was the victim of a coordinated hate attack, In 48 hours I received over 5,000 comments almost all of which called me some horrible name and suggested that I kill myself.

Using the techniques I will share below, I managed to keep any of it from appearing in public and I didn’t mention it in public for months so that after 2 days, 30,000 hits and over 5,000 comments these people had nothing to show for their work.  But something even cooler happened – it became crystal clear to me that these people were seriously messed up and that it had nothing to do with me.  I don’t wish this experience on you, but feel free to share the conclusions.

In the meantime, here are some ways to deal with haters (as always, your mileage may vary and these are only suggestions – I support you in dealing with haters any way you want.)

1.  Moderate, Moderate, Moderate

When I started out, I felt like I should post every comment that wasn’t just overt spam.   I believed that it was somehow cowardly to not post hater comments.  I have since changed my mind – I work hard to put out good information on this blog and develop a readership and I don’t have to hand that forum over to a hater to prove anything.  People are allowed to behave like idiots but I’m under no obligation to give them a place to do so.  I also realized that it was truly upsetting to readers who were just dipping their toe in the size acceptance pool to read the kind of hate that I get.  I moderate everything – my blog, my youtube videos, my facebook, everything.  Remember that when you have a blog, youtube channel, facebook page etc.  it is a world that you created and you are the underpants overlord boss of everything, you can make decisions accordingly.

2.  Skim

I read just enough to figure out that something is hatemail and then delete it.  The fact that someone has managed to submit a comment correctly does not obligate me to read it, especially since so many of them just don’t make any kind of effort toward creativity.

3.  Don’t bring logic to a hate fight

I used to think that I could reason with these people or that the fact that I could back up my claims with evidence and my haters could not would be important to the debate.  Turns out that I am not the jackass whisperer.  I choose in my work to focus less on whether other people believe that fat people deserve to be treated with respect, and more on whether fat people believe that they deserve to be treated with respect.  That means that engaging haters is not the best use of my time.

4.  Decide on the day

Maybe you’re having a day when the hatiest of hate mail doesn’t bother you and you decide that you want to spar with the haters.  That’s fine.  Maybe you’ve just had it and you don’t even want to check your comments – that’s ok to.  This is hard work and taking care of the person doing that work (that would be you!)  is important.

5.  Have a little fun

My blog gives me the ability to edit comments, and choose who can post freely and who gets moderated.  Sometimes people who send me tons of hatemail will try to sneak through something that sounds positive.  I always approve it but then send them into permanent moderation so they can’t follow up as they would like and it ends up looking like they love my blog.  Juvenile?  You betcha and I don’t care.

6.  More’s the Pity

It can help to remember that these people are just kind of pitiful – they spend their days on the internet, seeking out people with whom they disagree so that they can be unbelievably rude to them. It hardly ever happens anymore but if hatemail even starts to bother me a little bit I just remember to thank all the gods that I’m not in whatever situation has lead these people to this behavior.

7.  Monetize it.

When I saw mommy blogger Dooce’s page to monetize her hate I knew that I was looking at brilliance.  Now I have a page of my own.  It’s off the blog so that people who don’t want to be triggered never come into contact with it accidentally, and it’s cathartic to me to answer the hatemail.  I’ve just updated it with new hatemail, you can check it out at www.danceswithfat.com/hate  [Trigger Warning:  it’s hatemail y’all]

8.  Report it

Some bloggers publish e-mail addresses and other personal information from their haters.  I know at least three bloggers who track IPs of hate mail that they get during work hours that come from businesses, then inform the people in charge that someone from their company is spending their work time sending hateful, cruel, and threatening e-mails. Consider other methods of reporting, especially if it gets way out of control with threats of violence etc.

Whatever you do, I highly recommend a modification of one of my favorite mantras (modified any way you like):  my haters are fucked up and i am fine.

Like the blog?  Here’s more of my stuff:

Interviews with Amazing Activists!!  Help Activists tell our movement’s history in their own words.  Support In Our Own Words:  A Fat Activist History Project!

Become a member: Keep this blog ad-free, support the activism work I do, and get deals from cool businesses Click here for details

The Book:  Fat:  The Owner’s Manual  The E-Book is Name Your Own Price! Click here for details

Dance Classes:  Buy the Dance Class DVDs or download individual classes – Every Body Dance Now! Click here for details