NOTE:  For what I think is a very cool update on this see “In Defense of Jennifer Hudson?”

I caught Jenifer Hudson’s new Weight Watchers Commercial.  In it she says “Before Weight Watchers, my world was can’t”

This was the most horrifying, angering and frustrating diet commercial I’ve ever seen.

Why?

Before Weigh Watchers, Jennifer Hudson:

Was a finalist on American Idol.

Starred in a major film.

Won TWENTY NINE awards for her debut performance including:

• Golden Globe
• NAACP Image Award
• Screen Actors Guild
• Academy Award

Was the only person to ever go from a reality show to winning an Oscar

Had a debut album that won a Grammy.

How many actresses have gone an entire successful career without winning an Oscar?  How many singers have been well loved and highly successful without ever winning a Grammy? Let alone winning one each on your FIRST TRY.

So Jennifer, let’s you and me have a chat huh?  If you want to change the size and shape of your body that’s fine. If you reached your goal then celebrate your victory.  If you’re healthier that’s great and if you think that Weight Watchers is healthy and want to try to convince people of that – it’s your prerogative.  But what would possess you to stand there and say that none of your previous accomplishments counted because you weren’t thin?…that before you were thin your whole life was “can’t”.  Discounting not just your work but your fans, and the people who supported you.  I’ve always wanted an Oscar, since it doesn’t mean anything anymore, would you send me the trophy?

I am well aware that Weight Watchers wants us all to believe that there is no such thing as success or happiness unless you’re thin.  The diet industry makes 60 Billion dollars a year by convincing us of that. I am utterly unsurprised that they would write such a script.

What I can’t believe is that Jennifer Hudson is willing to be a part of the message that no matter what you are doing in your life, if you’re not thin it just doesn’t count.  During her Academy Award speech she thanked her Grandma saying “If my grandmother was here to see me now. She was my biggest inspiration.”  Now she is saying that it was nothing.  I wonder how her Grandma would feel about that?

I don’t know what Weight Watchers had to pay to get Jennifer to discount her achievements,  and I don’t  care what she was willing to say for pay. I know that Jennifer Hudson used to know that her life didn’t start 50 pounds from now.  Your life is only “all can’t” if you believe that it is.  If she really believed that her whole life was can’t, she never would have fought for her spot on American Idol.  Never would have won a movie role over hundreds of actresses and singers.  Never would have won a Grammy or an Oscar.

Gabby Sidibe was on the cover of Elle this week.  She says “I sleep with myself every night and I wake up with myself every morning, and if I don’t like myself, there’s no reason to even live the life. I love the way I look. I’m fine with it. They try to paint the picture that I was this downtrodden, ugly girl who was unpopular in school and in life, and then I got this role and now I’m awesome, but the truth is that I’ve been awesome, and then I got this role.”

Your life does not start 10 or 20 or 50 pounds from now. Your life has already started.  You will never get this time back, this day, this moment, this week – they are all gone. If you want to waste the time you have left waiting to be smaller that’s your option.  But if that’s how you’ve been living – aren’t you tired of that?  You DO have a choice, a choice nobody can ever take away from you – you can live an amazing life right now.

The way I know that is because I do. At 5’4, 280 pounds I have a fantastic life.  I am extremely healthy,  I have great friends, I date, I am succeeding in dance – a world completely dominated by a culture of “thinner is better”.  You can do it too. Even if you are trying to change the size of shape of your body, why not be happy and lead a fantastic life while you’re at it?

Unless someone is paying you a lot of money to say that your life is crappy, maybe you want to just go ahead be awesome.

Every week at my Thursday networking meeting (Hi NBXers!) we have a “press conference”.  One of the members tells us a bit about themselves and then we get to ask them questions.  This particular member is a triathlete and a triathalon coach.  Someone  asked him “Have you ever run an Ironman and what was your time?”

He responded back “Yes I have.  Have you run an Ironman?

“No.”

“Ok, well the deal is that if you haven’t run an Ironman, you don’t get to ask someone who did about their time, because for you it doesn’t matter.”

He said it very respectfully and I thought – Damn skippy!  Why should someone who hasn’t put themselves out there and tried, get to judge the results of someone who has?  Way to set a boundary dude.

How often do people sit on their comfy couches drinking beer and yelling at athletes?  Or trash the talents of actors and singers – or their outfits?

A professional singer has been rejected hundreds or thousands of times.  An actor has endured people laughing at his dream, telling him it’s impossible, rejections, horrible jobs as an extra, work in cheesy commercials, and who knows what else to live his dream.  A Left Tackle overcame unbelievable odds (22,000 to 1 odds by the most conservative estimates I could find), and has been through a level of physical conditioning and injury hell that we can’t even imagine, only to find himself enduring being yelled at by some half-drunk fan to move his feet and for pete’s sake HIT SOMEBODY.

Everyone who has ever pursued a dream that put them front and center has known these people.  Sometimes they are people who choose to make a team or a star part of their own identify; and now they need that team or star to win so that they can feel like they won something – their emotions rising and falling with someone else’s achievements and failures.  Some are people who think that they could have made it if they tried, so they feel justified in trashing someone who did try and succeeded.  Some are people who just want to put someone else down to feel better about themselves.

All of these behaviors are perfectly within people’s rights and I’m not trying to tell anyone what to do.  I’m just suggesting that what they told us in elementary school is true – criticism only hurts the criticizer.

I happen to think that P!nk is an artist doing some very cool things.  Even if I didn’t think that, P!nk is rich, famous, and living her dream so she probably doesn’t care if I or anyone else thinks that she’s a hack (I certainly hope she doesn’t).   But every time we criticize someone who has put themselves out there we are reminded of what can, and almost certainly will, happen to us if we find the courage to step up and go after our dream.  So maybe we don’t. Maybe we shy away from doing something because we’re afraid that people will treat us the way that we treat those who have succeeded. Maybe we let our fear of criticism (grown from the seed of our own criticism of others) reduce us to a mass of excuses, rationalizations and victim mentality.

Maybe we should think more like an Ironman – if you haven’t put yourself out there like I have, then I don’t know who you think you are to judge me, and more to the point,  I don’t care.

It reminds me of one of my favorite quotes by Theodore Roosevelt (c’mon you knew that was coming), I’ve copied it in its entirety below but it begins “It is not the critic who counts; not the man who points out how the strong many stumbled or where the doer of deeds could have done better.  The credit belongs to the man who is actually in the arena, whose face is marred by dust and sweat and blood…”

So I guess we can sit around and trash people who are living their dream if we want, or we could find the guts to step up and go for our own dreams and boost others up in the process.  We can be the ones in the arena, risk having our faces marred by dust, and sweat, and blood.  Stare our critics in the face and say “Come and get me.  Say something.  I dare you.”.  I think you’ll find that Teddy was right – it is not the critic who counts.

“It is not the critic who counts; not the man who points out how the strong man stumbles, or where the doer of deeds could have done better. The credit belongs to the man who is actually in the arena, whose face is marred by dust and sweat and blood, who strives valiantly; who errs and comes short again and again; because there is not effort without error and shortcomings; but who does actually strive to do the deed; who knows the great enthusiasm, the great devotion, who spends himself in a worthy cause, who at the best knows in the end the triumph of high achievement and who at the worst, if he fails, at least he fails while daring greatly. So that his place shall never be with those cold and timid souls who know neither victory nor defeat.” –Theodore Roosevelt

My non-profit, Body Positive Dance, was honored to be chosen as fundraising recipient for the Grand Opening party of Texana Lane . They are a community for women with spunk, sass, and soul that offers women-helping-women resources and some very cool shopping.  They have stuff locally (Austin, Texas) as well as online.

When I read the website I was stuck by the phrase “…and never put her wishbone where her backbone ought to be”.

The same day I read that, I got an e-mail from a woman telling me about how she doesn’t know what to do because her friends and family are so mean to her about her weight.  She said that they treat her horribly, always say nasty things to her etc.

A lot of us have been here – with families, friends, strangers –  we can be subjected to all kinds of poor treatment.  This is a situation that requires backbone, not wishbone.  As people of size, hell as people at all, if we want to be treated well we can’t wish for it, we have to insist upon it.  Here’s one way I’ve found to do that:

Step 1: Decide what your boundaries and standards are

You get to decide how people treat you – you are in charge.  How are you willing to be treated?  Do strangers get to make comments about your size without you saying anything?  Do your loved ones get to nag you about what you eat?  How does your mom get to talk to you?  Think about it, make a list, write it down. (This doesn’t just apply to size either – you decide what your standards for treatment are in all areas of your life.)

Step 2:  Decide on the consequences

I have found that this can be tough. You have to be realistic here –  there’s no point in having boundaries and standards if you’re not going to enforce them.  Setting boundaries and then not enforcing them will likely end up making you feel powerless and will teach people that you don’t mean what you say.

Personally I typically go with a teachable moment, then a warning, then a walk away.  Sometimes I give more than one warning but in the end I’m ready to walk away.   I’m absolutely willing to walk away from anyone who doesn’t uphold my standards for treatment…better alone than in bad company. I have disowned family members because they refused to treat me in a manner that was in accordance with my standards.   But that’s me. You may not choose to walk away from family or friends or you may not be in a position to right now.  Neither is better or worse, we just have to know ourselves and our situations.  The main thing to remember is that you can’t threaten to do something that you’re not actually going to do.  So if you’re not going to walk away from your mom no matter how badly she treats you, then you need to come up with a different set of consequences – maybe she doesn’t get to see you (or the grandchildren if any) for a certain period of time or until she apologizes.

I hesitated a little to use the word consequences because I am concerned that there is a connotation of punishment and that is not my intention.  For me this is not about punishing people – it’s not about other people at all.  This is about you choosing how people in your life treat you.

Step 3:  Practice

You have to be ready, otherwise you will have a pretty decent chance of falling apart.  Practice in your head, practice in your car, and around your house.  Imagine what is likely to happen and practice your reaction.  Do it out loud, write it out if that’s your thing.  Just be ready.  Create an affirmation around it, maybe “I insist upon being treated with respect in ever single interaction.”

Step 4:  Engage Backbone

Stand up for yourself.  Consider though, that empowerment may not be about screaming at people, and I submit that it’s most definitely not about controlling the behavior of others.  I have found that being empowered is mostly about being calm and assertive and enforcing your own boundaries, rather than trying to dictate the behavior of others.  So not  “You have to behave [in this way]”, but rather “If you continue to do [this] I will do [that]”.

This may mean that it’s time to have an honest conversation with people in your life who currently aren’t living up to your standards and treating you as you deserve to be treated.  Explain that their behaviors (be specific) have not been appropriate for you and be very clear about what you expect of them moving forward.  Explain the consequences.

They’ll probably be surprised.  It’s reasonably likely that they’ll try to make it a debate – to negotiate.  You get to decide if this is a debate, a negotiation, or simply a transfer of information.   You can expect push-back on this, stay calm and remember that you get to choose how people treat you all the time.  They may try to make it about you – tell you that you haven’t been meeting their standards.  If that’s the case offer to have that as a separate conversation and give them the same respect that you want to be given, but make sure that you accomplish your mission of clarifying your boundaries and standards and the consequences for violating them.

Step 5:  Stick to It

For me, this is where the work really begins. Over and over again you’ll have to decide if upholding your standards is worth whatever the consequences are for doing so.  I personally find that the consequences for not standing up for myself and what I deserve are always worse than the consequences of being inauthentic or not standing up for myself, but that’s just me.

I notice that true freedom in my life has meant realizing that:

I never:

• Control all of my circumstances
• Control the behavior of others
• Control what others think of me
• Control who I’m an example to

I always

• Choose to take responsibility for my reactions to circumstances
• Choose how I will deal with behaviors that don’t meet my standards
• Choose what I think of me
• Choose what I’m an example of

I’ve drifted a long way from Texana Lane and the cool work that they do, so I’ll end by thanking the fabulous Lane Ray for the inspiration and the fundraising help, and saying that if you’re in Austin on Sunday 9/12/10 anytime between 12 and 5, come hang out with us at the Grand Opening Party.  It’s free, family friendly, Sara Hickman and other local musicians are playing, there will be cool local businesses and a really fantastic time!

12pm – 5pm

Details are Here

I was working out at the gym a couple days ago when a person I don’t know came up to me and said  “Don’t give up, you can lose that weight”.

So I said back “Don’t give up, can learn what is and is not appropriate interaction with strangers”.  I know it probably would have been wise to go for the teachable moment but I’m not made of stone and sometimes when you catch me offguard (like when I’m doing high intensity intervals, sweating like a farm animal, monitoring my heart rate, my speed, my incline, and trying not to fall off the machine as I test the upper limits of how fast it can go) you get the first thing that comes into my head.

I continue to be frustrated that we are constantly sold…sorry, I mean told… that we need to lose weight – something that nobody can prove is possible, for a reason nobody can prove is valid.  Trying to do that and failing for your whole life is not healthy (in fact more and more studies show that yo-yo dieting is more unhealthy for you than being obese).

Mark Twain said “If at first you don’t succeed – try, try again.  Then quit, no use being a damn fool about it”.

Look, when I was a little kid I wanted to fly because I hated riding the bus to school.  A couple falls off our big metal fence and a quick physics lesson from my mom helped me understand that flying wasn’t possible for me – no matter how badly I wanted to do it or how much better it would ostensibly make my life.  Even if everyone in the world would have said that my life would be better if I could fly, it was just never going to happen.  So I could keep falling off the roof, or I learn how to work a bus ride.  (It turns out, for example, that you can’t do your homework while you fly – but you can sure as hell do it on the bus.)

For me, choosing Body Positivity (or Health at Every Size, or Size Acceptance or whatever you call it) is not saying “I give up on my health”.  It’s saying that I care about my health – mental and physical. I care about it enough to do some research and from that research I conclude that dieting doesn’t work.

So I care enough about my mental and physical well being that, even thought people tell me it’s crazy,  I’m going to check out of this ridiculous cultural norm that we have where everyone hates their body and spends their whole life talking about how awful it is, and trying to change the size and shape of it.

I give up alright.  I give up on doctors who tell me to lose weight to cure whatever is wrong with me BEFORE they do any tests (like the time when My Doctor Tried to Kill Me).  I give up on the diet industry- I think I’ll keep my money and my sanity, you bloodsucking leeches.  I give up on the diet industry’s message that unhealthy behaviors (liquid diets, starvation, stimulants, double double bacon burger extra cheese, hold the bun) will lead to a healthy body.  I give up on starving.  I give up on ignoring my body’s signals for things like hunger and fatigue.  I give up on  treating it like a limitation instead a trusted friend. Most of all, I give up on hating myself.  I am many things, but I am not a damn fool.

I have friends on diets.  Friends who read my blog and tell me how much they like what I say.   Friends who read the research on dieting (for a bunch of research you can check out this post.) I have friends on food restriction diets, reconstituted soy protein diets, weight watchers, Atkins etc. Somebody asked me today if it bothers me.

Not at all.

We hear a lot about taking the road less traveled by –  which is the one I’ve decided to take. You can also take the one most traveled by – and that, too, will make all the difference. Either way it’s always your choice.

I’ve talked in this blog about my take on inspiration.  You can read the full post here – basically I believe that you can never inspire or empower anyone.  All that I think any of us can do is present an option and  people can choose to walk toward it or away from it, So all I ever want to do is present an option.

Here is my option:

• You could love yourself, right now.
• Your relationship with your body could be healed.  You could start being grateful to your body for everything it does instead of buying into a bunch of marketing designed to make you feel like that you are the wrong shape and size and that you are flawed and unattractive.
• You could reject the diet industry and the message that makes them $60,000,000,000  a year and decide to pursue health through healthy behaviors, and stop worrying about what shape or size it comes in.
• You could take the time to learn what food and drink and movement and how much you and your body like (by trial and error if necessary) instead of allowing someone else (Jenny Craig?) to decide that for you.
• You could decide that you are the only person who gets decides how you feel about yourself.  It’s called SELF-esteem.  Not my-mom-esteem, or boss-esteem…
• You could love yourself right now.  Right. This.  Second.
• You could decide that there is nothing in the world that can stop you from loving yourself and your body because that’s what you choose and you are willing to do whatever it takes to make that happen.

That’s my option.  It’s not easy at first – at least it wasn’t for me.   I have found it to be worth it.  You could try it out and if you don’t like it, you could go back – you could choose something else.  I’m not about making other people’s choices for them.  My choices have lead to a place of  health, happiness and where I love my body, and I love how I look naked.  I hope everyone else’s choices get them exactly where they want to go.

Today I watched a documentary called Spirit of the Marathon on Hulu.  I had previously seen it in the theater and loved it both times. It follows several people from training through their marathon. From elite athletes who run the marathon at an unimaginably fast pace (every mile faster than the treadmill at my gym goes), to runners who are “doing it for the t-shirt”.  There’s even a runner who advocates running as slowly as possible “You paid for this course to be open as long as it’s open – take your time and get the most out of your marathon dollar…”  I also watched a recording of an Ironman. The former Ironman winners who were interviewed, to a person, said some version of  “This is a thing that the human body just isn’t supposed to do.”

We celebrate this in our society – people who run farther, go faster, push the boundaries of human endurance.  As a professional dancer I endure a level of training that very few people would probably want to do.  (Not many 33 year old women are pulling muscles working on their splits or training to do a back handspring).  Those of us who push the boundaries tend to be proud of the level of our athleticism.

But do we need to do this to be healthy?  No!  Abso-freaking-lutely not.    Athleticism and health are not necessarily the same thing at all.  Over a lifetime of playing sports as hard as I could and especially as a dancer, I’ve had any number of injuries that a normal healthy  person would never have.  I’ve also ignored my body’s signals in order to compete.  My second year dancing I started to feel a twinge in my ankle about a month before Nationals.  But it was a month before Nationals so I didn’t feel that I could stop training and it wasn’t that painful.   At Nationals during waltz the ankle bent completely in (so that the inside of my foot touched the inside of my ankle I later saw on the video), causing me to fall hard on the opposite knee.  I got up and finished the dance.  I danced there more dances that day and eight dances the next morning in a lot pain – mostly from my knee at the time.  Turns out that the knee wasn’t that hurt but  I had very seriously injured my ankle – so much so that I had to do a year of medical massage, acupuncture, pilates and rehab to be able to dance on it. The whole thing probably could have been avoided if I had taken a couple days off when I first felt the injury, but I’m a boundary pusher, which doesn’t always equate to smart decisions or common sense.

In order to do these crazy things that we do, we ignore our body’s signals all the time and work well past what we would need for general health.  So I wonder, does celebrating this level of athleticism discourage people who could be healthy if they just moved 20 or 30 minutes a day on most days?  Do they feel like they need to run a marathon or they just shouldn’t bother?  I wonder what would happen if  society would glorify dancing around your livingroom or gardening or whatever kind of movement you would like to do, instead of pictures at the gym of people at their physical brink, trying to push past.

There are people for whom testing the limits of their bodies is part of what they love about movement.  I’m one of them.  That’s fine. It doesn’t make us better or worse than people who don’t want to see how hard they can work before they vomit and how hard they can work after.  If we really thought about it, it’s not really about our health – we could have health without stress fractures, muscle strains, sprains, pulls etc. and all manner of overuse injuries, and ignoring our bodies when they are screaming at us to stop.  That’ s not particularly healthy at all.

One of the Ironman competitors said “To make it through the Ironman you don’t need to be the best, you just need to be consistent and keep pushing forward.”  It would seem from a lot of the research that health and physical fitness can be acquired in roughly the same way. If you feel like you’re not getting enough movement in your life, find some stuff you like to do and do it.  Try some new stuff – if you like it do some more of it.  If not, you don’t need to do it ever again.  If you like to run and feel like you’d like to try a 5K,  or whatever – try it.

It’s important to remember it’s not about your weight (I talked about this in my blog “Is it Cause I’m Fat?”)  It’s about realizing your current level of physical fitness and what you’ll need to do to get where you want to go.  You can be healthy and happy even if you never run a mile.  Move and have fun and see what happens.

This is Daisy, and this is what Daisy did when I walked away from my computer for a minute.

Daisy belongs to my friends Mel and Brian. A few weeks ago Mel and Brian got new neighbors.  The new neighbors meant new dogs for Daisy to meet.

One of the dogs didn’t like Daisy very much.  She would run up to the  fence and bark viciously.  Daisy is an awesome dog but is not, in any way, the brightest bulb in the box.  She didn’t understand that the dog didn’t like her.  So the interaction was basically like this:

Jasmine:  I DON’T LIKE YOU AT ALL  😦 !!!!!!

Daisy:  I LIKE TO BARK AT THE FENCE  🙂 !!!!!

Jasmine:  I MEAN I REALLY, REALLY DON’T LIKE YOU AT ALL 😦 !!!!

Daisy:  OH COOL, WE’RE GONNA BARK LOUDER NOW  🙂 !!!!!!!

Jasmine:  I WANT TO BITE YOUR FACE OFF  😦  !!!!

Daisy:  AWESOME, WE’RE GOING TO JUMP AT THE FENCE NOW 🙂 !!!!!

I can always have a good conversation with someone who is willing to talk, even if they don’ t agree with me.  But I’ve always struggled at how to deal with someone who just wants to call me names.  I think I’m going to take Daisy’s tactic and just act like I don’t understand what’s going on.  I’m imagining something like:

Person:  You fat bitch!

Me:  I like flowers.

Person:  I’m mean you are a big fat fatty!

Me:  Flowers are pretty.

I wonder what will happen?

In the meantime, Daisy took over my blog to give you a message about body positivity:

Hi, my name is Daisy and I have something important to say (obviously because if you think typing without opposable thumbs is easy then you have another thought coming).   There are some things you have to know about me.

• I’m not super bright, almost everything confuses me
• I destroy my toys, then I’m sad that I don’t have them.  But I can’t make the connection between destroying my toys and not having any so I do it every time.
• I don’t have brakes – often the way I can come up with to stop is running full speed into something more sturdy than I am
• I don’t meet the “Breed Standards” for American Staffordshire Terriers – I don’t look right at all
• When I run around my face and body turn pink – it looks kind of silly.
• My dads say that I’m made of rubber bands and poo and not much else

I’m not the perfect dog, but my dads and their friends love me and that’s all that’s important.  I think I’m awesome and that everybody wants to be my friend.  If they don’t that’s their loss.  You should think about thinking that way too.

So let’s pretend that losing weight really does solve all of your problems.  You get a spouse, a promotion, people like you, your dog stops peeing on the carpet.  Everything is great.

But don’t you have to wonder – are you just a couple of cheeseburgers away from losing it all? What if something happens and you gain the weight back (pregnancy, a car accident, a health issue, like 95% of people you aren’t able to maintain your weight loss for five years etc.).  Do you suddenly become a country song – you lose your spouse, your job, your friends, your dog reverts to incontinence?

I saw an article recently about a woman who had lost 100 pounds.  In the article she said “My boyfriend admits that he wouldn’t have dated me when I looked like that”.  It’s certainly her decision to date someone who feels that way about her, I just don’t get it.  How is that ok? What if it goes all the way and you marry him – now you have to spend your life being terrified that if something happens to cause you to gain weight you’ll know that your husband doesn’t find you attractive, he’ll likely feel that he has every right to be all over you about your weight since he told you up front that he doesn’t want you if you’re not thin,  and you could even end up having to go through the heartbreak of getting divorced.  I’d also ask him now about his other deal killers – if he’s so appearance-based in his attraction then how does he feel about  gray hair or wrinkles?

If you aren’t as healthy as you want to be, then I would suggest healthy behaviors (new ones and/or more of the ones that you are already doing)– move your body in ways that you enjoy, eat food that nourishes you more of the time.  Nobody has ever proven that their diet method leads to long term weight loss – in most cases it’s just the opposite as you end up in a cycle of yo-yo dieting.

I’m incredibly fat and my life is awesome, so it can be done.  If there are things that I could have have or achieve,  or if there are people who would date me just because my body was a different shape or size, then those things and people are cheap and tawdry and fleeting.  I don’t want them and they sure as hell do not deserve me.

In the end of course, as always, the choice is yours.

A Lithonia, Georgia woman was charged $5 extra for a pedicure because of her weight.

I almost called this post Nailed in Georgia.  That’s not really important now, I’m only telling you because I didn’t want to waste a pun, however horrible.

Onward….

Kim Tran, who manages Natural Nails, told Michelle Fonville the surcharge was to cover costly repairs of broken chairs by overweight customers. Tran says the chairs, which are used for pedicures, have a weight capacity of 200 pounds and cost $2,500 to fix.

Fonville said that was discrimination. Tran eventually refunded the money, but asked Fonville not to come back to the salon.

Source:  http://www.wusa9.com/news/local/story.aspx?storyid=108630&catid=148

I would say that I don’t have words, but obviously I do or I wouldn’t be blogging about this.

To preface this, as the fat recipient of many a pedicure, I had some serious doubts that her chair weight limit was 200lbs.  I did some research and most of the pedicure chairs I found weighed more than 200lbs themselves.  According to several sources the average weight limit is 300lbs but that is a low number in the owner’s manual meant to decrease liability exposure for the chair manufacturer, and the chair will actually hold more weight.  Also, you can actually get a chair for $2,500 so if the repairs are that much, she might want to just spring for a new one..

For the sake of argument though, let’s assume that she is terrible at shopping and has very expensive chairs with a very low weight limit, and everything she says is true.

First let me say that as someone significantly over 200 lbs I do not want to go through the public humiliation of breaking a chair, especially one that costs $2,500.00 to fix.  As a former business operations consultant, I can see where $2,500 would be a significant strain on the business finances.  I don’t know the nail business but if we estimate that they charge $40.00 for a pedicure and have a 25% profit margin, that’s 250 pedicures to break even on fixing the chair.

Here’s the thing though:  If the chair has a weight limit of 200 pounds, we can reasonably expect that it would break when someone who is over 200 pounds sits in it.  Since she is only charging a $5.00 offset, Miss Tran is betting that the chair will only be broken by every 500^th customer over 200lbs in order for her to break even on the repairs.  The math does not add up.

Upon further research, Ms. Fonville was not notified as to the weight limit of the chair or the additional charge until after she had finished her pedicure, paid, and realized that her bill was higher than it should be. This is especially problematic to me because at that point Ms. Tran already knew that the chair hadn’t broken under Ms. Fonville’s weight and so was charging her for an eventuality that was an impossibility.  It would seem that Ms. Tran wants the extra money, but not the trouble of appropriately crafting a company policy that is fair and makes sense.

How is this policy to be applied?  How do they know who is over 200lbs?  Is there a scale?  Do you sign a waiver?  What if a chair breaks while a 120 pound person sits on it?  If someone has kids with them and the kids want to sit on their lap must a combined weight be calculated first, if the kids jump how do we calculate for that?    How are customers notified of the policy? Are we rounding to the nearest pound, tenth of a pound?  If I weight exactly 200lbs do I have to pay?  If I weight exactly 200 pounds and I drink a bottle of water pushing me over the weight limit while I’m in the chair do I have to pay?  Why not require that everyone over 200lbs puts down a $2,500 deposit and then if the chair doesn’t break they get their money back?  That ought to go over great.

I’ll leave it to Ms. Tran to work all of that out.  In the meantime, what I would personally rather do is give my money to a salon that wants my business enough to get a chair that supports my weight.  We’re constantly told about how omigoddeathfatwtfbbq we all are – if such a large percentage of us are heavy, there has to be a salon that wants to paint our toenails.  And if not, why don’t some of us start some?

Good for Ms. Fonville for sticking up for herself.   Here’s hoping that she didn’t need to be told not to come back to the salon.

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I am unrepentant inspiration junkie.  I am playing the theme of Greatest American Hero on myiTunes right now.  “Believe it or not Iiiiiiiiii’m walking on air… ” (I always loved that show.  Just a normal guy who got a suit with some gifts he didn’t understand – he overcame his fear and made the most of it.  Awesome.)

I recently did a vision boarding class and today I hung vision boards with pictures of what I want and words like “Inspire” and “I dream of being a superhero” all over my house.

I have a blue box with hundreds of motivational quotes that I painstakingly wrote on index cards from the time I was in middle school through college.

I watch this video each and every morning

I send these kinds of videos to my dance team.  I spend time making 5 minute song mixes to try to motivate them during our wall sits, and picking music that I hope will be inspiring for the time when we do boards and run sprints.  I put quotations on the bottom of our rehearsal sheet every week.

Reasonably often the team laughs at me.  People I know make fun of me goodnaturedly.  They say it’s silly, they say that they are too jaded for such cheesy things to motivate or inspire them.  They imply that I am perhaps a bit of a simpleton for deriving motivation and inspiration from Michael Bolton singing Go the Distance from Hercules.   They may well be right and as usual I’m not saying anyone else has to crank up the Michael Bolton (although if you’re on my dance team you might be subjected to it during wall sits…).  So I guess I am kind of cheesy and simple when it comes to this.

I.  Do.  Not.  Care.

I jump off cliffs…and I fail and end up bloody and broken.  A lot.

I live in a world where I get 386,170 negative messages about my body every year and I choose to love myself and my body, and I want to let other people know that they can do the same if they choose.  Which means not just actively rejecting every single one of those messages but then finding the energy to shout new messages at the top of my voice (I often feel like the chihuahua in the picture above…)

I interact with people who identify as jaded and bitter, not as a temporary state but as a way of life.

I regularly watch people settle for less than they truly want or truly can be, because it’s easier or safer and/or by their own admission they are  just too scared or to complacent to make the effort.

Let me be clear – all of these are perfectly valid ways to live and I’m not judging them.  They just aren’t what I choose for me.  Please understand, it’s not that I think my way is better than anyone else’s, or that other people should choose my way.  It’s just that I’m committed to my way FOR ME.

For me – I want see the view from the top of the mountain of my potential.

You know how every 18 year old thinks they can change the world and then they outgrow it?  I thought I could change the world when I was 18.  Now that I’m 33 though…

…I’m absolutely CERTAIN I can.  I want to see who can I be, what difference can I make  if I do everything that I possibly can.

The catch is that in order to do that I have to avoid buying into all those negative messages.  I have to conquer fear after fear after fear.  I have to stand up to a big scary dog who thinks he could chew me up and spit me out (just go with me on the metaphor here).  I have to fail spectacularly and not let my failures get me down.  I can’t become jaded and bitter, no matter how many life experiences I have that make jaded and bitter seem like a reasonable things to be. I have to be honest and authentic  and avoid settling, even when things are hardest and an easier, safer option seems like a good idea; and no matter how many people would find me less weird/obnoxious/cheesy/intimidating  if I did.

So I use every tool available to me – inspiring quotations, songs, books, movies, vision boards, whatever. I celebrate my victories with a ridiculous butt-shaking happy dance. Anything that reminds me of who I want to be and what I want to accomplish in those low moments when I might be tempted to forget.  It works for me and I do not apologize for it.  Maybe I’m a cheesy simpleton, but I’m a cheesy simpleton who’s KICKING ASS!

Here’s one of my famous cheesy quotes.  I actually have this one on the mug that holds my toothbrush so I see it every morning and start my day ready for some ass-kickery:

“I am here for a purpose and that purpose is to grow into a mountain, not to shrink to a grain of sand. Henceforth will I apply ALL my efforts to become the highest mountain of all and I will strain my potential until it cries for mercy.” –Og Mandino

Ok, one more since you asked nicely:

Indomitable, that’s the word…  Allons y!  –The Doctor