This is one of those annual tradition posts – it’s the Underpants Rule and it is pretty simple: when it comes to personal choices, everyone is the boss of their own underpants. So, when it comes to personal choices, you get to choose for you and other people get to choose from them and it’s not your job to tell other people what to do and it’s not their job to tell you what to do. To illustrate, if someone is considering saying something about personal choices that starts with

• People should
• Everyone ought to
• What people need to do
• We should all
• Nobody should
• You shouldn’t
• blah blah things that have to do with underpants that aren’t yours blah blah

then there is a 99.9% chance that they are about to break The Underpants Rule. Of course telling you that you should follow the Underpants Rule is, in fact, breaking the Underpants Rule which is pesky, so let me instead make a case for the Underpants Rule and then you can make your own choice.

I chose a Health at Every Size practice (knowing that health is not an obligation, barometer of worthiness, or entirely within our control)  because I am a fan of research, logic and math.  I think that the research clearly shows that a HAES practice gives me a much better shot at supporting my health with way less downside risk than a weight loss- based health practice.

There are people who think the exact opposite of that.  I know that because they come here and tell me so – they say that I should make a different choice.  This blog is my little corner of the internet.  It exists only because I created it and I am thrilled to pieces that people enjoy reading it, that people get inspired by it, that it gives people information to make choices etc. I try very hard to make sure that I always follow the Underpants Rule and never tell anyone else how they have to live when it comes to their personal choices, and yet people come here and try to tell me how to live when it comes to my personal choices.  That’s annoying.

For this reason, I would never go onto someone’s weight loss blog and tell them all about Health at Every Size and quote research as to why I think it’s a better choice.  Those are not my underpants.

I do not enjoy (or believe them) when people tell me that I need to become smaller to be attractive.  Therefore I would never say that thin women need to become larger to be attractive.  Besides the fact that I don’t believe it, those are not my underpants. (Not to mention that the path to high self-esteem is probably not paved with hypocrisy so doing to someone else exactly what I don’t want done to me seems ill-advised.)

The “War on Obesity” is an underpants rule breakdown on a massive scale. A group of government, public and private interests (with various profit and political motivations) has chosen a group of people who are identifiable by sight and is now trying to tell us everything from how we have to prioritize health, to the path we have to take to become healthy, to how our bodies have to look.  Who died and made them Underpants Overlord?  Nobody. (And another year has gone by and I’ve still not received my official fat person pony.)

My metaphorical underpants and my actual underpants have something in common:  if I want somebody else in them, that person will be among the very first to know.  I have definitely not invited the executives at HBO, Kaiser Permanente, the government, or the diet industry into my underpants.

Over the years, there have been some misunderstandings about the Underpants Rule – mostly confusion about what is and is not covered, I wrote about the limitations of the UR here.

Now, I’m not telling what to do (cause, you know, Underpants Rule) but I’m suggesting that if you don’t like it when people attempt to be the boss of your underpants, then maybe take a pass on trying to be the boss of someone else’s.  I’m fairly certain that “Do unto others exactly what you don’t want them to do to you” is the brick rule or the pile of crap rule or something – at any rate a LOT of steps down from platinum and gold.

Remember, you are forever the boss of your underpants – occupy your underpants (with a nod to reader Duckie for that phrase)! I’m going off to see if there is a Guinness World Record for number of times the word underpants is used in a blog.

Underpants. Underpants. Underpants.

Underpants.

Under…

…pants.

Like this blog?  Here’s more cool stuff:

Become a Member! For ten bucks a month you can support fat activism and get deals from size positive businesses as a thank you.  Click here for details

Book and Dance Class Sale!  I’m on a journey to complete an IRONMAN triathlon, and I’m having a sale on all my books, DVDs, and digital downloads to help pay for it. You get books and dance classes, I get spandex clothes and bike parts. Everybody wins! If you want, you can check it out here!

Book Me!  I’d love to speak to your organization. You can get more information here or just e-mail me at ragen at danceswithfat dot org!

I’m training for an IRONMAN! You can follow my journey at www.IronFat.com

If you are uncomfortable with my offering things for sale on this site, you are invited to check out this post.

My sadness over the fact that Chrissie Metz’ character in This Is Us has decided to have stomach amputation (announced in an episode that I think they should have named “An Ode to the Stomach Amputation Industry”) has lifted a bit because I discovered maybe my favorite fat character ever on a TV Show.

The show is called Scorpion and it’s about a group of geniuses who work with the US Government to solve crimes (why did nobody tell me about this show before now?) The character I’m talking about is Sylvester Dodd, played spectacularly by Ari Stidham. (Note – I don’t know how Ari identifies size-wise, I think of him as a fat, he might not agree.)

What I love about the character is that he is a very multi-dimensional main character, the character is very physical and often given very physical tasks to do that are literally life and death and, with the exception of him being called “Big Fella” in a good-natured, non-judgmental way, his weight is never an issue (at least as far as I’ve seen.  Fingers crossed since we’re basically binge-watching this show right now.) The show isn’t perfect, it can play on stereotypes and there could definitely be more diversity in casting,  I enjoy the show and it makes me so happy to see a fat character portrayed as something other than a self-loathing side kick.

If you have favorite fat and fat positive TV characters (ie: multi-dimensional, no diet talk, no weight loss talk, accepting/affirming of their size etc.) please feel free to leave them in the comments.

Like this blog?  Here’s more cool stuff:

Become a Member! For ten bucks a month you can support fat activism and get deals from size positive businesses as a thank you.  Click here for details

Book and Dance Class Sale!  I’m on a journey to complete an IRONMAN triathlon, and I’m having a sale on all my books, DVDs, and digital downloads to help pay for it. You get books and dance classes, I get spandex clothes and bike parts. Everybody wins! If you want, you can check it out here!

Book Me!  I’d love to speak to your organization. You can get more information here or just e-mail me at ragen at danceswithfat dot org!

I’m training for an IRONMAN! You can follow my journey at www.IronFat.com

If you are uncomfortable with my offering things for sale on this site, you are invited to check out this post.

This post is a danceswithfat tradition, offered for those who may have to deal with inappropriate friend and family behavior during this “holiday season” (whether they are celebrating any holidays or not.)

Ah, is there anything more fun than being under surveillance by the Friends and Family Food Police?  There are only a couple of things that I can think of – root canal, shaving my head with a cheese grater, a fish hook in the eye…

This happens to almost all of my fat friends, but to be clear it happens to thin people too – food judgment and shaming happens to people of all sizes and it’s never ok.

I think that we need to remember that fat hate and body shaming is modeled for people all over our culture, fear of being fat is a driver of a lot of behaviors.

First, I always suggest that you be prepared for boundary setting when you go into this type of situation.  Think about what your boundaries are, and what consequences you are willing to enforce.   So think about what you would be willing to do – Leave the event?  Stay at a hotel?  Cease conversation until the person can treat you appropriately?  Be sure that you know what you want and that you can follow through.

As an example, I’ll use that age old shaming question “Do you need to eat that?”

This is such a loaded question. What do they mean by “need”? Are they asking if my glycogen stores are depleted? If I am near starvation?  If my body at this moment requires the precise nutrients that are delivered by cornbread stuffing and gravy? Or do they feel that fostering a relationship with food that is based on guilt and shame is in my best interest?

This question is custom-made to make someone feel ashamed.  I think it’s asked for one of about three reasons:

Judgment

The person asking the question has decided that it is their job to pass judgment on your activities.  Being too cowardly to directly state their opinion, they use this question as a mode of passive aggression to “make you admit it to yourself”.  This is one of those situations where they would probably claim to be mistreating you for your own good, also known around this blog as “Pulling a Jillian“.

If the person asking this question truly cared about you and your health (however misguided they might be), they would talk to you about it in person, alone, at an appropriate time, and they would ask a question that invited dialog, not try to embarrass you in front of people while you’re eating what is supposed to be a celebratory meal. That right there is some bullshit.

Power/Superiority

Remember that some people never psychologically got past Junior High and nothing makes them feel so powerful as judging someone else and then making them feel like crap. Maybe because they are drowning in…

Insecurity

The person asking the question perhaps struggles with weight stigma, their guilt about eating etc. and since they feel guilty for enjoying the food, they think that you should feel guilty about it too, or they want to deflect attention from their behavior to yours.

The degree of difficulty on discerning someone’s intent in this sort of thing can range from “of course” to “who the hell knows”. Here’s the thing though, from my perspective it doesn’t matter why they are asking it:  I am not ok with being asked, and I get to make that decision.

So you’re at a holiday meal, you take seconds on mashed potatoes and someone asks the dreaded question:  “Do you need to eat that?” It seems like the table falls silent, waiting for your reply.  What do you say?

If it’s me, first I quell my rage and resist the urge to put them down (Yes, I do need these mashed potatoes.  Did you need to be a total freaking jerk?)

Second, as with so many situations where people lash out at you, remember that this is about their issues and has nothing to do with you.   If emotions well up, consider that you may be feeling embarrassed and/or sorry for them, and not ashamed of your own actions.

Finally I suggest you find your happy (or at least your non-homicidal) place, and try one of these:

Quick and Simple (said with finality)

• Yes (and then eat it)
• No (and then eat it)

Answer with a Question (I find it really effective to ask these without malice, with a tone of pure curiosity.  If you’re not in the mood to have a dialog about this, maybe skip these.)

• Why do you think that’s your business?
• What led you to believe that I want you to police my food intake?
• I thought that you were an accountant, are you also a dietitian?

Pointed Response (be ready with a consequence if the behavior continues)

• I find that inappropriate and offensive, please don’t comment on my food choices
• What I eat is none of your business, and your commenting on it is not ok
• I have absolutely no interest in discussing my food intake with you
• I’m not soliciting opinions about my food choices.

Cathartic (but probably not that useful if you want to create an opportunity for honest dialog)

• 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 Pie-1-1
• I’m sure you’re not proud of the completely inappropriate behavior you just exhibited, I’m willing to forget this ever happened
• Thanks for trying to give me your insecurities, but I was really hoping to get a Wii this year
• No, but using my fork to eat helps to keep me from stabbing you with it

I don’t believe that guilt is good for my health and I’m definitely resisting arrest by the Family and Friends Food Police.

Like this blog?  Here’s more cool stuff:

Become a Member! For ten bucks a month you can support fat activism and get deals from size positive businesses as a thank you.  Click here for details

Book and Dance Class Sale!  I’m on a journey to complete an IRONMAN triathlon, and I’m having a sale on all my books, DVDs, and digital downloads to help pay for it. You get books and dance classes, I get spandex clothes and bike parts. Everybody wins! If you want, you can check it out here!

Book Me!  I’d love to speak to your organization. You can get more information here or just e-mail me at ragen at danceswithfat dot org!

I’m training for an IRONMAN! You can follow my journey at www.IronFat.com

If you are uncomfortable with my offering things for sale on this site, you are invited to check out this post.

Chrissy Metz is one of the stars of the television show This Is Us.  As is all too often the case, she plays a fat character who is “struggling with her weight”  As is less common, the contract she signed to play the character includes a requirement for weight loss.  She says:

In our contract, it did state that that would be a part of it, to lose the weight in the trajectory of the character as she comes to find herself. That was a win-win for me. Because it’s one thing to try to do it on your own. But as human beings, it’s an ego thing: We’re more likely to do something for someone else.

I just have to be very clear. Whether or not I lose weight or stay the same, it’s purely a choice of mine for health. Not because I think that plus-size, curvy, voluptuous, big bodies aren’t attractive — because I think they’re awesome and sexy.

So I’ll just have to make sure that’s known, because I’m not selling out the big girls. I don’t do that. That’s not me.

As this has been posted to social media by frustrated fat activists I’ve been seeing a lot of questions about why this is a problem, so I thought I would give my thoughts as to the answers:

Lots of fat people do want to lose weight, why are you complaining that her character is one of those fat people?

It’s a problem because almost every fat character who we see on television and in movies is fully invested in fat-hating diet culture. Representation matters, and the fact that almost all media representation of fat people is based on negative stereotypes and diet culture is a problem.  It means that we don’t have role models who look like us (and like looking like us,) and that nearly every time that fat-positive fat people find out that we are actually going to represented (which is, in and of itself, pretty rare in television and movies) it’s not long before we find out that the we aren’t going to be represented at all – the only fat people who are represented are fat people who don’t want to be fat any more.

There are plenty of fat people who aren’t interested in weight loss and we would like to see ourselves represented as well. It’s not just important for fat people, but also for everyone we interact with, whose beliefs and opinions about us are shaped by our media representations as self-loathing stereotypes.

She said that this is about her health, don’t you want her to be healthy?

She is allowed to do whatever she wants with her body for whatever her reasons are, and she is allowed to believe whatever she wants about health.  She is allowed to try to manipulate her body size even though the evidence suggests that the most likely outcome of her weight loss attempts is weight gain. But let’s be clear that she didn’t say that she was losing weight for her health. First she said she had to lose weight per the contract that she signed to be on a television show.  Then, later, she said that it was about her health.

Also when she says “That was a win-win for me. Because it’s one thing to try to do it on your own. But as human beings, it’s an ego thing: We’re more likely to do something for someone else. ” it makes it seem like that’s some kind of factual statement when, in fact, there is no reason to believe that being forced to lose weight for a contract or for “someone else” will have any more chance of long-term weight loss than any other motivation (which is to say, almost no chance at all.)

What will happen if she doesn’t lose weight?

This is a damn good question. She says it’s about her health but what will she be doing to lose the weight – especially if it’s a contractual obligation?  It’s bad enough to eat less than you need to survive in the hopes that you body will consume itself and become smaller, but we also know that over and over again doctors and pharmaceutical companies have been completely fine with killing fat people in attempts to make us smaller so I can only hope that this doesn’t spiral into something horrific just so that television can create yest another shitty “before and after” weight loss as self-discovery fatty story. And even if she is able to lose weight short term, if she’s like the vast majority of people who regain the weight, what will happen then?

She said that big bodies are awesome and sexy, why isn’t that enough for you?

It’s nice if she thinks that, but my fight isn’t just to be seen as beautiful or sexy, it’s to be seen as a human being and not a walking “before” picture. It’s about having the chance to get actual health care based on evidence-based interventions rather than being prescribed a bag of not-so-magical weight loss beans. It’s about fat people no longer being hired less and paid less than thin people with the same qualifications.  Being seen as sexy is nice, but what I’m talking about here is seeing people who look like me represented in media as fully actualized, non self-loathing human beings, rejecting diet culture and leading amazing lives.

But she says that she’s not selling out big people! She says it right there!

She may well believe that, and that’s great, but I don’t think her actions are necessarily in line with her goals here. If she really doesn’t want to sell out fat people she could say something like “I signed up to play a character with a weight loss trajectory and I agreed to be contractually obligated to manipulate my body size to portray that character.  I want to be clear that weight is not the same thing as health, and that neither weight loss nor health are an obligation, barometer of worthiness, entirely within our control, or guaranteed under any circumstances.  While I may choose to attempt weight loss, I understand that weight loss doesn’t make me better or worse than anyone else, and I also want to celebrate fat people who reject diet culture and live amazing lives in fat bodies.”

Once again, Chrissie Metz – like everyone – is allowed to do whatever she wants with her body for whatever reason she chooses, but that doesn’t mean that those choices don’t add to the diet culture that oppresses fat people. I wish her all the best and I hope that she will work hard to fully support fat people and to reject anti-fat culture even as she tries to manipulate her body size to fulfill her television contract.

Like this blog?  Here’s more cool stuff:

Become a Member! For ten bucks a month you can support fat activism and get deals from size positive businesses as a thank you.  Click here for details

Book and Dance Class Sale!  I’m on a journey to complete an IRONMAN triathlon, and I’m having a sale on all my books, DVDs, and digital downloads to help pay for it. You get books and dance classes, I get spandex clothes and bike parts. Everybody wins! If you want, you can check it out here!

Book Me!  I’d love to speak to your organization. You can get more information here or just e-mail me at ragen at danceswithfat dot org!

I’m training for an IRONMAN! You can follow my journey at www.IronFat.com

If you are uncomfortable with my offering things for sale on this site, you are invited to check out this post.

 

Khloé Kardashian has a new show called “Revenge Body.”  The premise is “Let’s make our haters our biggest motivators” and to that end people who have been bullied are given a team of trainers and “beauty experts” to help them go to drastic measures to look like people they assume their bullies would not have bullied which, for Khloé, passes for “revenge.”

While people are allowed to do whatever they want with their bodies for whatever their reasons, this, to me, is no kind of revenge.  This is spending a ton of time, energy, and money to give the bullies exactly what they wanted, and then asking for their approval.  It’s like saying “give the bullies your lunch money, that’ll show ’em!”

We don’t owe our bullies anything, least of all manipulation of our body size, eyebrow waxing, or uncomfortable shoes – however “fashionable” they might be.  Oppression takes a lot of different forms, and oppression against people who are believed to be able to move out of an oppressed group often leads to people feeling vindicated in their suggestion that the best way to solve social stigma is for stigmatized people to change ourselves.

As a queer woman I’ve been told that if I don’t like being the victim of homophobia I should date a dude. As a fat woman I’ve been told that if I don’t like being the victim of fatphobia I should become thin.  In both cases it doesn’t actually matter if it’s possible to change myself, because the cure for social stigma is ending social stigma – not for stigmatized people to try to squeeze ourselves in a mold someone else created for us.

I will not try to manipulate my body size for some kind of twisted victim-blaming concept of “revenge.” I will wield my beautiful fat body like a weapon.  I will love it, I will care for it, I will move it, I will show it in public, I will viciously defend my body against anyone who seeks to classify it as anything but amazing. The problem here isn’t how we look, it’s that people bully us for how we look. I don’t care about revenge, but I do demand social change.

Like this blog?  Here’s more cool stuff:

Become a Member! For ten bucks a month you can support fat activism and get deals from size positive businesses as a thank you.  Click here for details

Book and Dance Class Sale!  I’m on a journey to complete an IRONMAN triathlon, and I’m having a sale on all my books, DVDs, and digital downloads to help pay for it. You get books and dance classes, I get spandex clothes and bike parts. Everybody wins! If you want, you can check it out here!

Book Me!  I’d love to speak to your organization. You can get more information here or just e-mail me at ragen at danceswithfat dot org!

I’m training for an IRONMAN! You can follow my journey at www.IronFat.com

If you are uncomfortable with my offering things for sale on this site, you are invited to check out this post.

 

The Toronto Transit Commission created a campaign about public transportation that juxtaposed public transportation backgrounds with dancers from the National Ballet of Canada.  Fat activist Jill Andrew pointed out that the campaign falls short on inclusivity and representation when it comes to who uses the TTC. She explained:

We can’t deny that there is a lot of body-based discrimination that happens … within our moves around the city…My experience as a racialized woman, as a fat woman, I’ve been called an f-ing fat black b—- on the TTC, is this video really moving me? Is this video at all depicting me on the move?  The body types of most ballet dancers do not adequately represent those of most Canadians and, I dare say, most TTC users. This is simply an opportunity to reflect on who is being left out by an ad campaign such as this.

Predictably someone wrote an article to whine that Jill is being “too sensitive” (with thanks to the always amazing Tigress Osborn for making me aware of this.)  That someone is Erin Davis who wrote about this for Notable.com in a piece in which she prefaces an attempt to discredit the words of a fat activist by saying “I am all for the ever-important body positivity movement.” Right. Out of curiosity Erin, what would this piece have looked like if you weren’t “all for the ever-important body positivity movement?” You know what, never mind.

When requests for inclusivity and representation are met with shouts of “oversensitive” and “too-PC” it’s a pretty good bet that it’s being done by someone who is not thinking critically. As if to make it crystal clear that she just doesn’t get it, Erin makes the common mistake of confusing logic for fatphobia when she “explains” the lack body diversity of the ballet dancers in the ads saying: “Dancers look the way they do because they’re dancers.”

Except that’s not actually true at all. The truth is that dancers look the way they do because if they don’t look that way they have almost no chance of being employed regardless of how talented they are because of the rampant fatphobia that exists in the dance world.

So Erin has actually been duped by the very lack of representation that Jill Andrew is pointing out and that Erin is trying to shout down as being “over-sensitive.”  Priceless.

Representation is important, and it’s important to think about who creates the images that we see in the media, what their own prejudices and/or profit motives might be, and it’s important to question that lack of representation not just of fat bodies, but also of People of Color, disabled people/people with disabilities, and other under-represented groups and those with multiple marginalized identities.

So while I don’t love Erin’s article, I do appreciate the great job that she did of proving my (and, as far as I’m concerned, Jill Andrew’s) point: Representation Matters.

Like this blog?  Here’s more cool stuff:

Become a Member! For ten bucks a month you can support fat activism and get deals from size positive businesses as a thank you.  Click here for details

Book and Dance Class Sale!  I’m on a journey to complete an IRONMAN triathlon, and I’m having a sale on all my books, DVDs, and digital downloads to help pay for it. You get books and dance classes, I get spandex clothes and bike parts. Everybody wins! If you want, you can check it out here!

Book Me!  I’d love to speak to your organization. You can get more information here or just e-mail me at ragen at danceswithfat dot org!

I’m training for an IRONMAN! You can follow my journey at www.IronFat.com

If you are uncomfortable with my offering things for sale on this site, you are invited to check out this post.

I got this question from a blog reader:

How do you cope with people who have lost significant amounts of weight, and who suddenly seem to think that they have all the answers? I have seen this recently with a few acquaintances, one of whom has lost a massive amount of weight and now seems to spend most of her time criticising others for being unable to do the same. I’ve expressed my concerns to her- firstly that she’s using [a commercial weight loss program], which means she may well put all the weight back on again- but also that her manner has become incredibly toxic and fat phobic. She is not the only one, though.

I suppose what I’m saying is, how can people who know what its like to be the subject of fat-shaming and discrimination suddenly forget all that and perpetrate it against it others once their circumstances change?

This is something that has happened to every fat person I know.  We have a friend who experiences short term weight loss and suddenly they are a Weight Loss genius and expert on why everyone should be thin.  Often it doesn’t matter if they themselves struggled for a long time, or even if this isn’t their first ride on the diet roller coaster.  Of course, people are allowed to do whatever they want with their bodies, but that doesn’t make it ok for them to add to the oppression of fat people by diet culture.

Let’s start with some of the reasons this happens (of course your mileage – and everyone else’s – may vary so these things may or may not be true for your newly minted weight loss genius friend.) I think it’s a confluence of things having to do with our culture’s obsession with weight loss and thinness:

They have, for the moment anyway, moved themselves out of a stigmatized social class. They are like the kids who suddenly became popular in high school and then join their new “cool” friends in teasing the kids who used to be their friends in junior high.  They are enjoying their new-found privilege and acceptance and they feel like they need to use the language of the people who used to oppress them to keep it, so they now sound like a walking, talking weight loss add complete with before and after pictures and weight and measurement changes that they tell anyone who will listen.

This often comes with a double dose of anything from advice to scorn for the people in their lives who are fat, and especially those of us who aren’t engaged in weight loss. This is because the “cool” kids are only powerful if everyone else wants to be them, so if they are resting their self-esteem on thin being more valuable than fat, but we don’t buy into that and we don’t think that thin is any more valuable, that challenges everything for them from their self-esteem to their social status.

The second issue is the way that we are taught to credit everything good to thinness/weight loss and everything bad to fatness.  There is a more complete explanation here, but the basic issue happens when people make behavior changes and they experience health changes and weight loss (at least for the short term) as a result.  Instead of seeing both the health changes and the weight loss changes as side effects of the behavior changes, they give all the credit to the weight loss.

Often people will credit weight loss with better treatment socially, when the fact is that they have, at least in the short term, solved social stigma by changing themselves to appease their oppressors. Basically they’ve given the bullies their lunch money and, at least for the moment, the bullies have stopped beating them up. It’s important to make the distinction because otherwise they are oppressing fat people by blaming our bodies when the actual problem is the stigma, bullying, and oppression we face because of weigh bias.

And then, sometimes, it’s just blatantly done for profit.

As far as how to handle it:

I suggest that you resist, with conviction, the urge to tell them how good they look now – it sounds like you are saying that they looked bad before.  If we want to opt out of a world where some bodies are seen as better than others, then not suggesting that somebody’s body is better because it’s a different size is probably a decent place to start.

Often when this happens people are really excited and expecting a compliment. I know that there is an extremely high chance that they are going to gain the weight back.  For that reason I try to comment in a way that will lessen the self-esteem hit if they end up in the vast majority.

By the way, if they don’t bring up the weight loss I don’t bring it up. Weight loss isn’t always welcome – it can be from medical issues, medication, stress, grieving etc. and I don’t want to bring up something painful. Plus this conversation is awkward enough, I’m not going to go through it if I don’t have to. (If you’re dealing with unwanted weight loss compliments, or want some suggestions for talking about your weight loss without hurting fat people in the process, I have some suggestions for you here!)

If they bring up weight loss what I tend to say is something like “I’m glad that you are happy” or “You were beautiful before and you still are” or something that is as neutral as possible.  While it’s important to me that people be allowed to make choices for themselves including the choice to attempt weight loss, it’s also important to me that I not perpetuate and praise diet culture or make it seem as if I think a body is more valuable or in some way better if it is currently smaller than it was before. Other people feel differently about this, choosing to celebrate other people’s weight loss and of course that’s their right.

If you are uncomfortable with the amount/frequency of diet talk and weight loss talk, you have several choices. You can decide to just live with it (in this case having a mantra that you say in your head like can be helpful – I use “hey, that’s bullshit!”)

You can try responding to diet and weight loss talk with Size Acceptance and/or Health at Every Size talk (ie: Them: “I ate super clean today and I’ve lost however many pounds this week” you: “I just feel so much freer, happier, and healthier not moralizing food or talking about my weight!”).

You can change the subject. My friend Jeanette (aka The Fat Chick) told me about a friend of hers who memorized a bunch of facts about monkeys and every time someone brings up diet or weight loss talk, she uses one of her random facts to change the subject to monkeys.

It’s also perfectly ok to set boundaries. Something like “I respect the choices you make and how you feel about your body, but I’m not interested in diet or weight loss talk so if we’re going to hang out we need to find other things to talk about.”

However you decide to handle it, it’s also totally reasonable and ok to be disappointed and hurt by your friend’s actions, and remember that however you choose to deal with it on any given day is totally valid, as are your choices to not be part of diet and weight loss culture.

Like this blog?  Here’s more cool stuff:

Become a Member! For ten bucks a month you can support fat activism and get deals from size positive businesses as a thank you.  Click here for details

Book and Dance Class Sale!  I’m on a journey to complete an IRONMAN triathlon, and I’m having a sale on all my books, DVDs, and digital downloads to help pay for it. You get books and dance classes, I get spandex clothes and bike parts. Everybody wins! If you want, you can check it out here!

Book Me!  I’d love to speak to your organization. You can get more information here or just e-mail me at ragen at danceswithfat dot org!

I’m training for an IRONMAN! You can follow my journey at www.IronFat.com

If you are uncomfortable with my offering things for sale on this site, you are invited to check out this post.

 

Every once in awhile a meme starts going around social media that says “You are not fat.  You have fat.  You also have fingernails.  But you are not fingernails.”  I’ve seen this in plenty of versions and I think it’s problematic on a lot of levels. It must be going around again because I’ve been getting a bunch of requests about it, so I’m re-posting my response.

First of all, as regular readers have probably already sussed out, I would be much more comfortable if this was written from the perspective of how someone feels about/for themselves instead of dictating to others how we should feel (ie: “I’m not fat, I have fat” instead of “You are not fat, you have fat”.)  People are allowed to look at their bodies this way because, hey, underpants rule.  That said, I think it’s an idea worth some exploring.

Let’s consider some other examples – can you imagine Facebook memes that say “You are not brunette, you have brown hair” or “You are not tall, you have above-average height.” When I’m flying in for a speaking gig I often tell the person who is responsible for picking up that I’ll be the short, fat, brunette -in the blue dress or whatever.  People often respond by telling me not to call myself fat, nobody in my life has ever told me not to call myself brunette.  Therein lies my problem with this – it seems to me that the reason to draw a distinction between being fat and having fat is that we are considering being fat to be a negative thing from which we want to disassociate, and/or we want to see it as so temporary that we don’t want to be identified as fat.

I don’t think the research suggests that most fat people will remove our fat.  Regardless, knowing that it’s possible that time and circumstance might change the size of my body, I don’t think that’s a reason to not identify the way that it looks now. I call myself a brunette even though it’s basically a certainty that I will someday have hair that is gray and not brown. So even though there’s the possibility that my body may someday not be fat (through illness etc. – it’s certainly not a goal of mine) I’m definitely fat right now. So why would I want to find a semantic way out of it?

The actual problem is the way that people with fat bodies are stigmatized, stereotyped, bullied, marginalized, and oppressed. I’m just not sure this can be solved by “having” instead of “being” fat. To me the fact that identifying a body as fat is considered an insult is a symptom of a problem, not the actual problem – so this can’t be solved through wordplay.  If brunettes were being oppressed I don’t think there is much to be gained by saying that I’m not a brunette, I just have brown hair.

Similarly, since fat people are being oppressed, I don’t think there is much to be gained by saying that I’m not fat, I just have fat.  Mostly because no matter how I describe myself, people can still see me, and these oppressions are based on how I look to others, not on how I describe myself.  I also understand that the word “fat” has been used as derisive and I understand that not everyone is into using it as a reclaiming term and everybody gets to decide that for themselves.  For me, using the word fat to describe myself without apology tells my bullies that they can’t have my lunch money any more, and avoids pathologizing my body in the way that terms like “overweight” and “obese” do.

It’s possible that people would give me slightly better treatment (however begrudgingly) if I said that I’m not fat – I have fat, or if I characterized myself as being overweight in a way that indicates that I believe there’s a problem with my body.  I’m ok with passing on that “approval”, because  I am far more interested in fighting stereotyping, stigma, bullying and oppression, than I am in trying to avoid it through wordplay or concessions that I can make to my oppressors.  Other people may see this differently and/or make other choices than I do and, of course, that’s completely fine. But as for me, I am fat because I have fat and I’m fine with that.

Like this blog?  Here’s more cool stuff:

Become a Member! For ten bucks a month you can support fat activism and get deals from size positive businesses as a thank you.  Click here for details

Book and Dance Class Sale!  I’m on a journey to complete an IRONMAN triathlon, and I’m having a sale on all my books, DVDs, and digital downloads to help pay for it. You get books and dance classes, I get spandex clothes and bike parts. Everybody wins! If you want, you can check it out here!

Book Me!  I’d love to speak to your organization. You can get more information here or just e-mail me at ragen at danceswithfat dot org!

I’m training for an IRONMAN! You can follow my journey at www.IronFat.com

If you are uncomfortable with my offering things for sale on this site, you are invited to check out this post.

People in the US are borrowing a response to Brexit.  It’s the small act of wearing a safety pin to show that we are in solidarity with marginalized groups.  This is in response to the US having a president-elect who ran on a platform of blatant racism, xenophobia, Islamophobia, misogyny, anti-Queer anti-Trans sentiment, and anti-Semitism, whose election was supported, endorsed, and celebrated by the KKK, and who has appointed a white supremacist and a boatload of viciously anti-queer and trans people to his transition team,

As word of this project has been getting around, there have been arguments against it, and a few hundred of you have asked me what I think.  I thought I would discuss the major arguments that I’ve seen and then give my thoughts:

The first argument I’ve seen is the idea that you shouldn’t wear the pin unless you have a plan to intervene in any and all situations that might occur, with all marginalized populations, wherever you are.

I think that this argument is flawed in its premise.  I don’t think that anyone is (or, at least, I think that anybody should be) expecting that everyone who is wearing a safety pin is going to have any specific competence when it comes to intervening in these situations.  I think that the safety pin serves as a simple symbol that a person is not part of the active bigotry that has been a cornerstone of donald’s campaign.

As a queer woman, when I’m out in the world there is often no way for me to know if someone is as virulently anti-gay as, say, our new vice president-elect Mike Pence (who wanted to divert funding away from caring for people with HIV and AIDS, to programs that claim – all evidence to the contrary – that they can literally shock the gay out of people.)  If I see someone wearing a safety pin, it comforts me to know that they do not wish to try to shock me straight, and I appreciate that.

However, I have no expectation that they would have any particular skills should some gay bashing go down, and I don’t think I have any right to.  They are wearing a safety pin, not a certification in de-escalation of difficult, dangerous, possibly life-threatening situations.

That said, creating these plans and skill-building around them is an absolutely a worthwhile undertaking that I encourage.

The other major argument I’ve seen is that the pins only serve to make the wearers feel better/assuage their guilt at being privileged, and do nothing to actually help in the situation.

I would never speak for groups to which I don’t belong, what I will say is that as a queer woman (and thus part of at least two of the groups who people wearing the pins are supporting) I disagree with this for several reasons.

First, as I mentioned above, I think that the safety pins show support for me – which I appreciate. Seeing a safety pin is comforting to me.

Perhaps even more importantly, I think that the safety pins serve to disrupt the assumption that bigots tend to have, that people like them hold the same prejudices they do. This happens to my thin Size Acceptance friends when other thin people assume that they are cool with fat bashing, it happens to me when another white person assumes that I am ok with racist jokes, it happens to straight (and straight passing) people when straight people assume that they are ok with anti-Queer and Trans talk.

When someone is wearing a safety pin, the bigots are forced to acknowledge that the person does not hold the same prejudices.  More people wearing safety pins = less comfort and sense of safety for bigots. In this way people can use their privilege to disrupt bigotry.

I think that research supports the idea that these small steps are important building blocks for future activism. In his book, Influence – The Psychology of Persuasion, Dr. Robert Cialdini talks about a study in which two psychologists asked people living in a neighborhood in California to agree to erect a huge billboard in their front yards supporting safe driving. As you might imagine, almost all of them said no. But in one small group, incredibly, about 75% of the residents agreed to put a big ‘ole billboard in their yard. The difference?  That small group had previously agreed to display a 3-inch safe-driving sign in their windows.

Cialdini explains that when they put up the tiny sign, it changed how they viewed themselves.  So when they were asked to say yes to the billboard, they were much more likely to agree because they saw themselves as agents of the cause.

As activists I think we sometimes want people to jump to doing big work, and we get frustrated by small gestures.  But, again speaking only for me and the marginalized communities to which I belong, I think it’s important to remember that those small gestures are more likely to lead to bigger work in the future, and that discouraging people from participating in activism is unlikely to encourage them to participate in the future.

Finally, I know that holding back the tide of bigotry and oppression is going to require a difficult and sustained effort, and I suspect that we are going to be encouraged at every turn to stop paying attention.  It’s my hope that putting on a safety pin every day reminds people that our constant vigilance and work is required.

[Edit:  This came up on my Facebook post and I wanted to address it] – someone copied a list of things that the writer said people must be willing to do if they were going to wear the pins.  My response was:  I appreciate people sharing their thoughts on what they think the safety pin should mean and what they think people should be prepared to do if they wear the pin. But I’ll point out that there are as many opinions about what allies should do as there are marginalized people – and they differ wildly.)

I think that the safety pin is a simple symbol that someone is not in active agreement with the platform of bigotry that saw donald elected and continues with his transition team. I also want to point out that the things people mention that people “should” be willing to do are things that some people can do, but they are things that many people can’t do because of physical ability, degree of neuro-typicality and more, and so when we demand specific things like this in order to be an ally, we are further marginalizing marginalized populations by telling them that their activism isn’t – and never will be – good enough, and can be profoundly ableist. [end edit]

Certainly there are issues with this project:

There are people who may be using the pins only to assuage their guilt, or they will consider the safety pins to be all they need to do.  The thing is, if that’s how they feel then they probably weren’t going to do anything else anyway, so at least they are doing something.

There are issues of privilege – as a white, currently able-bodied, currently neurotypical, cisgender person wearing the safety pin is less risky for me than it would be for people who have other marginalized identities. Also, while women are definitely marginalized and in danger with donald in office, a majority of white women who voted, voted for donald, and so we need to take responsibility for that, and be sure that all of the efforts we make to protect women include and center Women of Color.

The pin isn’t a perfect predictor of behavior or beliefs. There may be some people who are in support of some communities but not others. As a fat person I’m well aware that someone wearing a pin might be absolutely down with supporting me as a queer person, but still see no issue with fat bigotry. More problematically, this may be the most likely to happen to people in the most marginalized communities. We all need to hold ourselves and each other accountable for examining our own implicit and explicit biases and doing the work to overcome them.

It can’t be the only thing we do.  The next four years are going to require constant vigilance, this is the time to fight, to hold the line, to preserve our humanity and save our country, to try to make this the last stand of the bigots. Safety pins are a start, but they certainly aren’t the end.

The safety pins are meant to show support for People of Color, Muslims, Immigrants, Queer and Trans people, disabled people/people with disabilities, women, and all marginalized populations under attack. There are people in all of those communities who do want people to wear safety pins, and there are people in all of those communities who don’t want people to wear safety pins. No community is a monolith and so every time we do something that some people in the community ask us to do in solidarity, we will upset other people in that same community who disagree with the action. It’s the nature of trying to work in solidarity.

The safety pin project is imperfect.  But then, so is every activist project that has ever been undertaken. So it’s up to each of us to decide what we want to do.

In this case I’m choosing to wear the pin because I would rather err on the side of showing support and solidarity, with apologies to those who would rather I didn’t and who don’t feel supported by the gesture.  And, because it’s Say Something Sunday, I’m telling people that I appreciate them wearing a safety pin in support of the marginalized communities to which I belong.

Like this blog?  Here’s more cool stuff:

Become a Member! For ten bucks a month you can support fat activism and get deals from size positive businesses as a thank you.  Click here for details

Book and Dance Class Sale!  I’m on a journey to complete an IRONMAN triathlon, and I’m having a sale on all my books, DVDs, and digital downloads to help pay for it. You get books and dance classes, I get spandex clothes and bike parts. Everybody wins! If you want, you can check it out here!

Book Me!  I’d love to speak to your organization. You can get more information here or just e-mail me at ragen at danceswithfat dot org!

I’m training for an IRONMAN! You can follow my journey at www.IronFat.com

If you are uncomfortable with my offering things for sale on this site, you are invited to check out this post.