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.

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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.

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Ann Coulter, a talking head who has made a name for herself by saying horrible things in front of as many people as possible, took advantage of the recent election protests to engage in some pretty weak attempts at fat shaming.

Her opening attempt:

To be fair, there may be protests that don’t include fat people of any gender, but I’m always happy to be associated with activism, so thanks Ann!  I hope that fat people are at protests – and not just protests about the mistreatment of fat people, I hope that fat people are at protests against any oppression and mistreatment, and against any would-be despot.

Ann tried again:

This is Ann Coulter in a nutshell – completely missing the point, and recommending things that aren’t supported by evidence.

This is what we mean when we talk about fat oppression, when we talk about size bigots – that there are people who are under the misconception that our body size somehow de-legitimizes not just our actions and lives, but anything that we are involved with. Thousands of people show up to protest, but the protest doesn’t count because some of those people are fat?  You’re going to have to sell bullshit somewhere else Ann, we’re not in the market.

This is what bullies do – they try to keep us down, they try to keep us from protesting the mistreatment that we are experiencing, and when that doesn’t work they try to say our protests don’t count because we are the ones protesting.  That’s bullshit, obviously, (though luckily in this case, Ann is genuinely terrible at it.)

Nobody is obligated to protest, but if you feel moved to protest then show up, wave that sign, be that fat person. There may be protests without us, but they will be better with us, so let’s keep showing up and speaking out making the world better, and people like Ann can keep complaining about it on Twitter.

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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!

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

I’ve written before in this blog about how the War on Obesity is conducted in a way that lets us know that they want us thin or dead and they don’t much care which.  One of my many concerns with the horrific new US President is that he has promised to repeal the Affordable Care Act (also known as Obamacare)

This is a big deal because before the ACA was passed, insurance companies were allowed to deny insurance to fat people.  I went fourteen years without insurance because insurance companies were allowed to consider my body size a “pre-existing condition” and deny me insurance in a country where medical care costs are predatory, profit-driven, and expensive far beyond all reason.

This is significant because those who don’t have insurance are often charged up to ten times the amount for the same procedure or medication as the insurance companies are charged (In this instance a two-day hospital stay would have been over $21,000 for a person without insurance, but the insurance company pays just over $2,000 for the exact same service.  A good friend of mine is on a medication for which he has a co-pay of $6 and his insurance pays another $68 for a 30 day supply.  Without insurance the same medication is $1,200.)

Some fat people in the UK are facing this situation in the face of funding shortages. Vale of York Clinical Commissioning Group (CCG) has decided that patients with a body mass index (BMI) of 30 or above will be barred from most surgery for up to a year.

Let’s be clear, they are not suggesting that the surgeries are less necessary for fat people, and they are not suggesting that waiting a year will be good for these populations. They are simply saying that they’ve decided that, in order to save money, if your weight in pounds times 703, divided by your height in inches squared, is greater than 30, you are less deserving of routine medical care. 

Don’t fool yourself, this isn’t about health, or “healthy behaviors” by any definition – this is about money, and it’s about the people in charge deciding whose blatant oppression the general citizenry will tolerate. Years of campaigns suggesting that it’s fine for people to stereotype fat people and blame us for their problems have led to a situation where people are comfortable with us being denied the same medical care that they receive.

You can read my full piece, including a look at the complete lack of logic in this decision, here…

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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.

What do we do now?  That is a question I’ve heard, and asked, hundreds of times in the last two days. In case you missed it, the United States has elected a proudly racist, misogynist, ableist, xenophobic, Islamophobic, fatphobic, anti-Queer, anti- Trans, anti-intellectual, anti-Constitution, climate change denying, white supremacist supported, horror of a human being to be President.

What do we do now?

Each of us will have to make that choice for ourselves. Immediate self-care in the aftermath is important – while you certainly aren’t required, it’s completely reasonable to take time to grieve, to mourn, to find solace, to take care of yourself.

I think that there has never been a time in my life that it has been more important to be an activist. Not just an activist for issues that affect me (attempts to steal the civil rights of Queer people, going back to a time when fat people are denied insurance coverage and more) but an intersectional activist.  My various privileges (being white, cisgender, currently able-bodied and neurotypical et al) will protect me from horrors that others will face and are already facing, and those are my fights as well.

I’m going to continue to do Size Acceptance and Fat Activism because I think that claiming and owning our bodies as our precious homes is crucial.  Remembering that our bodies are amazing and worthy of care is crucial.  Insisting that we deserve a world that celebrates and cares for bodies of all sizes is crucial.

This election may have kicked my ass, but believe that I’m going to be kicking back. I watched the movie “Big Miracle” today just to hear the line “There’s always something you can do.”  There is always something I can do.  And I’m going to find every way I can to do it.

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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.

There was a “game” my brother and I “played” growing up, in which one of us would grab the other’s arm and use their own hand to hit them whilst saying “Why are you hitting yourself?  Stop hitting yourself!” It’s not a game I’d recommend, and it’s certainly not an advertising strategy that I find ethical, but it pretty much encompasses Weight Watchers Australia’s new ad campaign, which is all about acting like they have no idea why women are self-conscious despite decades of ads that they created specifically to make us self-conscious.

The work of Size Acceptance and Health at Every Size Activists is coming to fruition, and the word is getting out that weight loss almost never works. More and more people are realizing that neither our body size nor our health are completely within our control, that we can love the bodies we have, and choose how/if we focus on our wellbeing. More and more people are realizing that diets don’t work and that we can create and pursue health and wellness goals that don’t include trying to manipulate our body size — or consider that to be a goal worth celebrating, or even talking about.  

So the diet industry is pivoting, co-opting the language of the people who have been fighting against their greed and lies for year. Now the same companies that have invested billions of dollars into convincing us that we should hate our bodies, unless and until we are thin, suddenly want us to believe that they are all about us loving our bodies (as long as we’re still paying them to make our bodies smaller). They hope we don’t notice that they’ve been the ones holding our arms and making us hit ourselves.  

You can read my full piece about this here…

Like this blog?  Here’s more cool stuff:

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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.

Several readers let me know about this truly ridiculous article from brightside.me called “Seven Mistakes We Make When Choosing Clothes that stop us looking our best ” Their advice is indented, followed by my responses.  To read the article in full, you can click the link above.

Clothes that have a large checkered pattern can completely kill your figure. They look stylish, but they give the impression that you’re several inches wider at the hips. Instead, go for designs with neutral prints or just plain colors. If you really love checkered designs and can’t imagine your wardrobe without them, select items with small rather than large squares.

Looking several inches wider at the hips will “kill your figure?”  Spare me. Let’s try this again.  If you really love checkered designs and can’t imagine your wardrobe without them, then wear them happily and fuck whoever wrote this.

Horizontal prints give the impression of a much larger figure than you actually have. But if you love striped clothing, don’t despair. All you need to do is change their direction: vertical stripes achieve the opposite, making you look taller and slimmer. Alternatively, you can always opt for a classic combination of different colored items.

If you love striped clothing don’t despair, because you can wear it whenever the hell you want.   You are under no obligation to buy into a stereotype of beauty that suggests that your clothes should be used to create an optical illusion magic trick.  You look just as fabulous with a “much larger figure” so rock those stripes.

Endless ruffles, folds, and frills add at least a couple of sizes to your appearance. Try to choose clothing with the minimal amount of decorations, such as a zip-up skirt which will lengthen your figure or vertically striped clothing as described above.

We are only three tips in and already I’m sick to death of this tired fat-shaming bullshit advice.

Large prints make you look heavier and wider, whilst sandals with long laces going up your legs make you appear shorter. On the other hand, a sharp neckline and a slit in your skirt can make you look taller. Take care to select things made with just one color, and choose shoes that are close to your skin tone. This will also help you look taller and slimmer.

Say it with me – There’s nothing wrong with being short and fat! (Or tall and fat, or short and thin, or average height and kind of medium size, or whatever.) There’s nothing wrong with being tall and thin, but it’s not any better than any other height weight combination and there is something wrong with the idea that we should all try to look as tall and thin as possible.

A boat neckline on a dress can give the impression that you’re a lot heavier than you really are, whereas a V-shaped neckline with cleavage can make you look truly elegant.

This just in – being heavy is not the opposite of looking truly elegant.  GTFO with this nonsense.

The only thing worse than horizontal stripes on clothing is wide and bright horizontal stripes.

Beg to differ.  I think that there are far worse things on clothing than wide and bright horizontal stripes – like spilled spaghetti sauce right before a date, baby spit up when you are running out to an important meeting, or a swarm of angry wasps at any time.  A little perspective, please.

Bright colors make you look larger to a much greater extent than more subtle tones do.

At this point I’d like to suggest an alternate title for this piece “Seven Ways That Women Can Dress To Look As Small As They Can And, If Possible, Disappear Completely.”

This is just ridiculous.  I’m a proud member of the Fuck Flattering Club, but others don’t have to be. People of all sizes are allowed to dress however they want for whatever reasons they want (and should have the same options for design, quality, and pricepoint to do so) but can we please stop suggesting that smaller and taller are better than bigger and shorter?  Can we stop tolerating  articles like this one – that do nothing but promote fat shaming under the guise of fashion advice? Can we celebrate our right to choose clothes based on our own criteria, including not giving a flying frick whether they make us look bigger, smaller, shorter, or taller?  Instead of trying to make all bodies look tall and thin, let’s celebrate the diversity of body sizes and all the ways we choose to dress them.

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.

Because our society is so incredibly thin-obsessed and fatphobic, sometimes people get confused and think that a fat body is a walking invitation for their judgments and comments. If you’ve been pointed to this blog post, you may be one of those people.  Don’t worry, I’m here to help.

First of all, other people’s health is not your business unless they ask you to make it your business. It doesn’t matter what you think you know about someone’s health, it doesn’t matter if you know something about someone’s health, it doesn’t matter what you want your tax dollars to pay for. Your health isn’t other people’s business, their health isn’t yours.

So, even if you are stating a sincerely held negative belief about fat people’s health, that just makes your anti-fat sentiment healthist and ableist as well as sizeist.

I could go into the research and realities about weight and health, but it doesn’t matter. No matter what stereotypes you personally believe to be true about everyone whose weight in pounds times 703 divided by their height in inches squared is greater than 30, or everyone who “looks fat to you” or however you’re personally making this distinction, other people’s health is not your business unless they ask for your opinion.  And not for nothing, but I notice that pretty often the people who want to criticize fat people aren’t interested having other people making judgments about them, or interested in criticizing thin people for their “unhealthy decisions,” so it ends up just being a thin veil for size-based prejudice (since we’re ok with athletes, and rock stars, and cast members of jackass, and people who don’t get “enough sleep,” and choose stressful jobs, etc. etc. )

It’s simply not your place to tell people what they are allowed to look like. Fat people have the right to exist, in fat bodies, without shame stigma, bullying, or oppression and it doesn’t matter why we’re fat, what the “consequences” of being fat might be, or if we could (or even want to) become less fat/not fat. The rights to life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness (including not being concern trolled by sizeist strangers) are not size, or health, dependent.

So if you have an opinion on fat people’s health then congratulations, and keep it to yourself.

Did you miss the
Fat Activism Conference?
It’s not too late
Registration Closed 10/9!

You can still register to get access to all the recordings, transcripts, speaker handouts, and the conference goody bag! Get recordings of all 30 speakers talking about everything from “Re-Imagining Fashion from an Inclusive Framework” to “Activism for the Introverted and Anxious” to “Building Fat Patient Power While Accessing Healthcare” and more. The pay what you can option is still available so that money is not a barrier.

Click Here to Register!

Registration closes October 9th (though of course you’ll have time after that to listen and download.)

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.

You may remember Maria Kang from her fifteen minutes of “What’s Your Excuse” fame.

Now, like so many diet peddlers before her, Maria’s gained some weight and is not only making excuses about it, but also trying to co-opt the language of Size Acceptance.  I wrote about it for Ravishly and talked about culture, compassion, and co-opting. You can check it out at:

http://www.ravishly.com/2016/10/05/looks-no-excuses-mom-maria-kang-found-some-excuses

Did you miss the
Fat Activism Conference?
It’s not too late!

You can still register to get access to all the recordings, transcripts, speaker handouts, and the conference goody bag! Get recordings of all 30 speakers talking about everything from “Re-Imagining Fashion from an Inclusive Framework” to “Activism for the Introverted and Anxious” to “Building Fat Patient Power While Accessing Healthcare” and more. The pay what you can option is still available so that money is not a barrier.

Click Here to Register!

Registration closes October 9th (though of course you’ll have time after that to listen and download.)

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.