Last night was the Chicago premiere of America the Beautiful 2 and it was fantastic.  I met so many amazing people.  I got to see other cast members again (and their friends who are awesome, Hi Mama Laura), I got interviewed by rollingout.com (I’m in the video at the bottom of the article – I even got say “This is Rolling Out” which I was far too excited about).  A bunch of people came up afterwards to say that they liked what I had to say, that it made them think – some people even apologized to me for the way that they treated fat people in the past and promised me that they would do better.  My absolute favorite were four little girls (all traditionally thin).  The two youngest (who were braver) ran up and said that I was their favorite thing in the movie and asked me if they could hug me. As we started to talk and the other two came up they told me that they have formed several bands and even made their own music video.  One of them said that I was her hero and they all agreed hugged me again.

I asked them how old they were and two of them were the same age as the boy we talked about a couple of days ago.  He was an honor roll student who participates in school activities and whose only health problem is controlled sleep apnea, who was taken from his family because his obesity meant that he is “failing to thrive”. And that started me thinking about this whole idea of thriving because a whole lot of people are putting a whole lot of effort into making sure that kids don’t grow up to be like me.  I’ve worked my ass off and have had an amazing life so far – I’ve played Carnegie Hall, been the CEO of a million dollar company, been in a movie, and received thousands of e-mails from people who tell me that I’ve inspired them, and I just turned 35.  How did I become the nightmare scenario?

That’s the message that they try to give fat people – we are “failing to thrive” unless we are thin, unless we have a body that fits the social beauty norm.  All of the interventions put in place to “save” us failed (or we squandered them).  Nothing we do will ever be enough to make up for our fatness, we couldn’t possibly be truly happy living outside the cultural beauty norm.  We can’t possibly be comfortable at our size, some people can’t even process what we do because of their own prejudices and preconceived notions (someone who reads my blog called me lazy today, it’s not the first time.  The answer is in front of you, open your damn eyes!)

Some of it is guessing, some is projection, some is bullying, some is just BS but let’s remember that we don’t know why people are bigger now than they were (we have guesses, but nothing proven) and we don’t now how to make them smaller and our obsession with thinness has become a train wreck whose fiery explosion destroys more people every day, so now is probably a dandy time try sometime else – like focusing on healthy behaviors that we can control rather than just body size.

Regardless, nobody gets to decide what “thriving” means for us.  Let’s Occupy our Fat, Thriving Underpants. Being fat is not better or worse, it’s just one of many body sizes and every body is amazing.  Four little girls get it, why can’t everyone else?

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

I watched the 4 part videos of Dr. Oz with Dr. Glenn Gaesser as his guest and I was so annoyed that typing couldn’t do it justice – so I took out my frustrations on my Flip Camera.

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

Taylor Mali is a slam poet and a number of years ago his poem “What Teachers Make” served as my  introduction to slam poetry. I fell in love with the style and with Taylor Mali’s voice. (I’ve embedded all of the poems that I’m about to discuss at the end of this blog).  “I’ll Fight You for the Library” currently has 249,052 hits and it’s entirely possible that 100,000 of them were me and that 50,000 of those were in a row – this poem makes me want to be a better activist and a stronger person. “Totally Like Whatever” influenced the way that I communicate.  “Tony Steinberg:  Brave Seventh Grade Viking Warrior” makes me cry every time I listen to it, and still I click to listen. Taylor Mali is, for me, a clarion voice articulating the case for valuing education and for everyday activism. He has made a career out of speaking his truth and inspiring others to action.  He is a hero of mine.

Yesterday I heard a poem of his called “An Apple a Day is Not Enough” about kids’ health.  As soon as I saw the topic I got that twinge of worry- because for some reason we don’t seem to be able to get it together enough to be for healthy kids without being against fat ones.  As the poem went on I began to get excited as he talked about healthy foods and exercise and treating health as a skill. It made it sound a little bit like health is entirely within our control which of course isn’t true but I was thrilled to hear someone talking about healthy behavior instead of body size. Then it happened.  “What does it matter if we try to increase our scores in math and reading if scores are dying before their time because they got fatter and fatter.”  And my heart broke just a little as it does when it feels like a hero of mine has let me down.

I went to his website to see if it had an e-mail address listed.  It did.  And then I hesitated.  I’m obviously nowhere near as well know as Taylor Mali but I get e-mail everyday from people who don’t like my work and it’s not that fun so I was hesitant to become just another person criticizing his work. As an artist I was also hesitant to ask him to change his work of art.  But babies are being starved by parents so that they don’t become obese and fat kids are being bullied and stigmatized by everyone and so if a hero of mine thought of me as a nuisance or an idiot then that’s a small price to pay for standing up for those kids. I sent the following:

Mr. Mali,

I have been a fan for quite some time.  Today for the first time I came across the poem “An Apple a Day”. As the poem developed I was really excited that someone was talking about health for all kids, and then you said “Fatter and Fatter”.  I wish you would reconsider this.  We can be for healthy kids of all sizes without being against fat ones.  Hospitalizations of kids under 12 for eating disorders are up 119%, a study from Canada found that twice as many kids had eating disorders as type 2 diabetes.  Fat kids are bullied and stigmatized not just by their peers but by teachers and parents as well.  Kids don’t take care of things they hate and that includes their bodies.  As a healthy, athletic fat kid all too often the people I looked up to gave me the message that no amount of healthy behavior was enough if it didn’t make me thin and I ended up hospitalized with an eating disorder.

Now, as a healthy fat athlete I am a strong advocate for the Health at Every Size method which focuses on healthy behaviors rather than a number on a scale.

NAAFA has created a toolkit to help people working on children’s health, you can find it here if you are interested:   http://www.naafaonline.com/dev2/education/haesschool.html

If there is anything that I can do to support you please let me know, but let’s do better by our kids than to try to shame them healthy or hope that they hate themselves healthy.

Thank you for taking the time to read this,

~Ragen

Ragen Chastain

Dancer, Choreographer, Speaker, Writer, Fat Person

blog:  www.danceswithfat.org

 

I did not send it expecting a reply, nor did I expect to change his mind.  I sent it because I believed it should be sent.  So imagine my surprise 30 minutes later:

I totally see your point, and I wish I’d known that as I was writing the poem for Health Teacher. It was a commissioned poem so I had to use certain facts that they gave me. That’s my only excuse. You know the way the poem ends with the word “amen”? Some of the folks wanted me to take it out, afraid that it would insult Christians. So I’m afraid the poem as it exists on YouTube is a done deal. But I promise you, if I ever do the poem live, I will take out that line. Deal?

Metaphorically yours,

Taylor

P.S. Sent from the road so forgive odd spellings & apparent curtness.

I sent him an e-mail back thanking him and telling his that it was, indeed, a deal.  I have no idea if he ever plans to perform the piece live and I’m still not happy with it as it exists on YouTube but I am happy that I spoke up and I feel that this is another little victory.

So, let’s have a little victory sharing today in the comments. What have you done that you are proud of?  What victories have you had (big or small) post a video, post a link, write out your story whatever. Let’s inspire each other!

Here are those poems:

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

You probably heard that recently a 200 pound 8 year old boy was removed from his home because he did not successfully lose weight.  The identities have not been disclosed because the country considers this a child abuse case.

I wonder if all possibilities for this child were exhausted.  How certain are they that it is a lifestyle issue?  What proof do they have the foster care is likely to help?  If he loses weight in foster care and is returned home and gains his weight back (as 95% of dieters do) will he be pulled again?

Also, it’s worth noting that he was taken away due to “imminent danger” and “Medical neglect” but his only health problem is sleep apnea which is well controlled through a CPAP machine. He is an honor roll student who participates in school activities.

Having read more than 100 articles on the subject it seems that doctors really have no idea what to do.  In some articles doctors say that he would need to weight 60 pounds to be considered healthy, in other articles doctors said that his target weight should be 150 pounds.  One article quotes the CDC as saying that it’s possible to get to and maintain a healthy weight but the research doesn’t support that.

The lawyer for the boys mother said that in his decades as a public defender, he has seen children left with parents who beat them or who had severe drug problems with the reasonsing that the danger didn’t meet the criteria of being immediate.  But this boy was removed from his home based on health issues that he does not actually have, but might get.  Does this mean that kids caught smoking will be removed from their homes because they might get cancer?  Where do we draw the line?  Already, even in the few cases that we have of putting kids into failure because of obesity we have one massive failure in the case of Anamarie Regino.  She was removed from home at 3 years old but it failed to improve her weight.  She was returned to her family and diagnosed with a genetic disorder that caused the weight gain.  Oops.

There are many concerns here:

It’s tricky to use body size as a diagnosis: 

• What about families where there are more than one child who eat the same diet but only one meets the definition of “extreme obesity”? Do they do interventions with all the children?
• The idea that you can tell how healthy a kid is by how much they weigh does a disservice to all kids, telling larger kids that they if healthy habits don’t make them thin then they can’t get healthier and telling thin kids that they are healthy because of their body size and regardless of their habits.

We don’t actually know that much  about childhood obesity:

Despite the fact that everyone and their overbearing mother thinks that they know exactly why we have a childhood obesity crisis, the truth is that nobody is sure.  There is considerable argument as to whether a crisis even exists. We don’t know if there are things in the environment that trigger some kids to gain a lot of weight, we don’t know if it’s that we have a fast food culture etc.  Nothing is proven here so no matter how vehemently someone says that they know, they don’t.  That makes it hard to find fault and place “blame.”

We don’t know how to make fat kids into thin kids:

• Every weight loss method tested shows a less than 5% success rate over a five year period.  This is particularly bothersome in situations where children are placed in foster care, lose the weight and then return to their family with a 95% chance that they’ll regain the weight and their parents will be labeled as repeat offenders.
• If they go to foster care and do not lose weight or gain weight, are the foster parents then at risk for being accused of neglect? What happens next?

Determining “Fault”

• The system already deals with “failure to thrive” cases in which parents are suspected of starving their children.  Even those cases are problematic because sometimes there is a health issue with the child (celiacs disease for example or food allergies) that are causing the issue.
• Unless the parents are force-feeding these kids, there are serious issues determining causality and fault to charge them with abuse.

Slippery Slope:

• Where are we going with this?  Who is next?
• What about smokers who raise kids?  Secondhand smoke contains more than 250 chemicals known to be toxic or carcinogenic (cancer-causing), including formaldehyde, benzene, vinyl chloride, arsenic, ammonia, and hydrogen cyanide. Children who are exposed to secondhand smoke are inhaling many of the same cancer-causing substances and poisons as smokers. Do we remove the ones who develop asthma? The ones with elevated blood pressure? Those born pre-term or with low birth weight?

What I think we really need to get out of this is how important it is for people to have information and access to the building blocks of health.   Information about healthy eating and movement in combination with access to affordable foods and safe, affordable movement options that kids enjoy, affordable accessible preventative health care (not just reactive sick care).  PE in every school and options that encourage a lifetime love of movement, rather than a lifetime of bitterness about PE. Dodgeball should go the way of the dinosaur.  What if schools could offer more than just sports:  dance, walking/hiking, Kinect style video games that incorporate movement etc?   And not just during a PE hour but before and after school and during lunch and free periods, even on weekends? What if they offered busses and share-a-ride systems to the local YMCA or to the schools after-hours PE program? Wondering where you’ll get the money?

We’ve talked about this before but every year we give the diet industry $60 Billion dollars. Can you imagine what we could do if we could take that money out of their back pocket and use it to create access to food and movement options?  If we stopped body shaming and bullying fat kids, allowing them to have the mental health that can only exist when they don’t live in a constant state of stigmatization would they be healthier?  I think so.

 

It starts with a guess:  “I know that you don’t take care of your body because you are fat”

Then add an assumption: “You eat tons of junk food and don’t exercise”

Now make a judgment “You are lazy and don’t care about your body”

Confuse your experience with everyone’s experience:  “I once gained 10 pounds after I got in a fight with my boyfriend and I was able to lose it by drinking two chocolate shakes for breakfast and lunch and eating a tiny dinner.”

Draw an illogical conclusion:  “Since I lost 10 pounds on my first ever diet, you can lose 200 pounds on your 20th diet by doing what I did just for a longer period of time”

Confuse correlation and causation:  “Besides, if you don’t lose weight, you’ll get diabetes.”

Repeat something you’ve heard a lot but never taken the time to verify:  “Plus you cost the workplace billions of dollars –won’t somebody think of the tax dollars!”

Loudly misinterpret the concept of personal responsibility:  “You are personally responsible for looking how I want you to look and doing what I want you to do or there should be consequences!”

Make a broad sweeping generalization:  “Health at Every Size?  It’s just like a fatty to eat Twinkies all day and call it healthy.”

Try to tell other people what they need to do with their bodies: “I don’t know how much you’re eating or how much exercise you’re doing and I don’t care – you need to eat less and exercise more.”

Insist that we don’t get to tell you what to do with your body:  “It doesn’t matter that I partake in all the behaviors that I criticize in fat people, I’m at a healthy weight so as long as I’m thin I can do whatever I want.”

Ignore the facts and insult people:  “What do you mean there are unhealthy thin people and healthy fat people?  I don’t want to hear about these studies and this science – quit wasting your time justifying your fatness and do something about it.”

Become frustrated and call me names:  “Shut up, you’re just a big fat fatty fat pants.”

Repeat this conversation so often that people start to believe that it’s true.

I see this line of “logic” all the time and once you start to dig, you realize that it’s a house of cards built on a foundation of toothpicks.

First, if your argument starts with a guess then it doesn’t really matter what you say afterwards.  You absolutely cannot look at someone’s body and glean any information other than the size of their body, and what your feelings about that size of a body are.

Second, unless you are starting a campaign against Iron Man Triathletes, climbing Everest, sedentary thin people, and jaywalkers, (because none of these activities prioritize health) then you don’t get to pick on fat people.  Of course, none of it is actually your business at all.  You always have the right to remain silent, what you seem to lack is the capacity – maybe work on that.  Repeat after me:  Other people’s bodies are none of my business.

Most of this could be solved if people were self aware enough to honestly answer the question ” Do I actually know what I’m talking about or am I repeating things that I’ve never verified for myself” and “Would I want to be treated the way that I’m treating this group of people.” But most people either can’t or won’t be this introspective. So as a fat person this isn’t my issue per se, but it becomes my problem.  For me it helps to remind myself how utterly ridiculous this whole thing is and how much of it is based on someone guessing, assuming, misinterpreting, repeating without verifying, and just being an ass.

There is a revolution happening, but there are no guns or knives, and very few epic battles.  It’s a revolution of tiny acts.  In the culture we live in, every act of liking ourselves is revolutionary.  Get out of bed and don’t hate yourself – you are a revolutionary.  Go on a walk and enjoy moving your body (despite the possibility of having to deal with idiots)?  You are a revolutionary.  Enjoyed your lunch without guilt?  Viva la revolution!  Rest assured, all of these acts are adding up.  More people see what we are doing and choose to step away from the self-hate everyday, and soon all of the assuming, misinterpreting, repeating, asses in the world won’t be able to stop us.  It’s a fatty uprising, join in!

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

In this LA Times Article a judge sentenced a man to jail time for driving with a suspended license and then told him that she would let him out a day early for every pound he lost.  According to the article:

He had discussed his desire to lose weight with Miller in court while asking her to delay his jail stay for a week so he could retrieve his prescription medicine for high blood pressure.

She imposed a 29-day sentence and offered to assess his weight-loss commitment after 20 days behind bars. He credited his weight loss and nine-day reprieve to encouragement from detention deputies, bland jail food and Miller.

Put another way, in order to get out of jail, he went on a starvation diet (“he limited his intake mostly to vegetables on his dinner tray”) and lost 25 pounds in 20 days.  The judges response, contained in a personal note that she wrote to him upon release was a’Good job, Mr. McCovery!”

So I guess maybe the “vegetables on his plate” included tofu or legumes or something to give him protein over the 20 days, but it’s more likely that they were canned, devoid of most nutrients, and that a combination of starving and dehydration led to the weight loss.

How misguided is this?  Let me count the ways…

People want to get out of jail pretty badly – let’s not encourage them to starve themselves so that they can go home and act like we’re helping them with their health. And if we’re the detention deputies, let’s not encourage starvation.  And when they do starve themselves, let’s not tell them “hey, awesome job with that starvation, keep it up!”

This is what The Biggest Loser has wrought. We encourage and praise fat people as “working on their health” for the exact same behavior that we treat as a dangerous eating disorder in thin people.

This is what happens when we treat weight loss as the primary goal instead of as the possible, typically temporary,  side effect that it actually is.  Weight loss doesn’t cure anything.  Weight loss just makes you smaller, (and 95% of the time that’s temporary).  Weight loss is not the answer.  Health interventions improve your health (and may or may not have a side effect of weight loss that may or may not be temporary).

If  losing weight by any means necessary makes us healthier then we should just hand out crack to fat people.  It makes as much sense as starving us and injecting us with a hormone derived from preganant women’s urine. It also makes as much sense as acting like the hormone injections are what leads to weight loss and not the fact that people are on a 500 calorie starvation diet that would have a thin person in treatment for an eating disorder.

Fat is not a diagnosis and weight loss is not a treatment protocol and we should not prescribe for some what we treat in others.  Fat is a body size and weight loss is an attempt at changing that body size and starving is starving no matter what your weight.  That is why we don’t just give fatties crack and is exactly the reason why we need to take weight out of the discussion of public health and make health the topic of discussion around public health.

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

I am a fit fat person.  When people find out about this they will typically do one of three things.

1.  Deny what is right in front of them.  I was being discussed in a fat hate forum and someone posted one of my dance videos.  Another person on the forum said – “She’s definitely a fattass [sic] but I think it’s probably difficult to spin that fast that many times in a row.” Not even able to accept this half and half compliment/insult someone replied “If she’s doing it, it can’t be hard”.  I have to admire their consistency and willingness to stick by a belief that is obviously wrong.  Wait…no I don’t. Bite me.

2.  Acknowledge that they’ve been stereotyping and re-evaluate their world view.  Ding! Ding! Ding! This is the right answer.  Although we would also have accepted minding your own damn business and keeping your judgments and stereotypes to yourself.

3.  Try to find a way to deal with my existence while hanging onto their stereotype.  This is the one I  want to talk about today.

I like to call this Leprechaun Syndrome (there are actual psychological terms for this but I just finished a 13 hour drive so we’re going with Leprechaun Syndrome – just roll with it).  It’s as if they’ve seen a creature that they previously thought was mythical.  They can accept that this one Leprechaun exists and maybe a couple more, but that’s definitely it – they are right about all the rest of them not being real.  It sounds something like this “Maybe you are fit and fat, but you are the exception – most fat people are lazy slobs who don’t exercise…blah blah blah”.

Allow me to translate “I can’t deny your existence, but I don’t want to question my stereotypes because I like them.  So I choose to believe that you are a rare exception to the fatties who I will continue to stereotype, judge and shame because I so enjoy it (or because I just accept other people’s stereotypes without question, or because it makes me feel better about myself…whatever).”

First of all, you have no idea what “most fat people” do, you are making that up in your head.  There are a bunch of active fat people – we are not mythical creatures. we don’t all have pet unicorns that poop rainbows on our lawns.  We’re just active fatties.

If you’re confused about this I understand.  When I first found out that I was “Type 3 – Super Obese” according to the BMI chart, I eagerly checked my mail everyday for a month waiting for my cape and secret identity to arrive.  That never happened – it turns out that I’m just fat.  And it turns out that fat (even “Super Obese” is just a body size and not conformity to a list of negative stereotypes, or a lack of kinesthetic awareness, proprioception, or general athleticism.  My body is big, so by looking at me you can tell that…wait for it… my body is big.  The only other thing that you can ascertain is what your judgments and stereotypes about people my size are – but that’s for you to deal with.   I’m still thinking about making that cape and wondering if I could rock Clark Kent glasses…

If I’m an exception it has much less to do with my body size and much more to do with my ability to persevere in being active despite all of the negative messages that I’m constantly given about my body – that I am obviously  lazy and un-athletic, that the same people who insist that I should exercise to lose weight then claim that they don’t want to see me work out.  Then there’s the guessing – I was visiting my mom last week and so I worked out at a gym in her town and took a “dance fit” class.  The front desk attendant showed me to the workout room and then said “Be sure to tell the teacher that you are new to exercise so that he can help you modify.”  “What would make you think that I’m new to exercise?” I asked?  She gave me a perplexed look and then gestured to my body.  “So,” I said, slightly raising my voice, “We’re just looking at people and making guesses now – you couldn’t have asked me a question?” She just said “Have a good workout” as she speedwalked away.  Now, I got my revenge at the end of class when students came up to compliment me and one of them jokingly asked for my autograph.  But that doesn’t take away from how unbelievably frustrating it is to still have people assume that I’m new to exercise when I’ve been doing it consistently since I was in the 4th grade, or to have people “encourage” that if I stick to it I’ll  “definitely lose that weight”, or to have some idiot in a coffee shop tell me that my size makes it too dangerous to dance. Even from a purely practical standpoint, it’s next to impossible for me to get affordable decent workout clothes in my size.  If I’m an exception it’s because I’m willing to play against a stacked deck, not because I can haul my fat ass around the dance floor – plenty of fatties can do that and plenty more could if given a chance to enjoy it without fear of being shamed or ridiculed.

Most of the thin people I know struggle to fit movement into their busy schedules.  Imagine having to do that while buried under a constant stream of negativity.  It may well be a miracle that fat people are choosing to be active  but it has nothing to do with our fat and everything to do with the social stigma that gets lobbed at us from every side all the time. And we know that weight loss is not the cure for social stigma.  Ending social stigma is the cure for social stigma.

While I invite people to rethink their stereotypes about active fat people, as usual I’m much less concerned about what other people think of fat people being active and much more concerned with what fat people think about fat people being active.  If you want to do more movement or be more active, then find a way – over, under, around, or through the completely whackadoodle criticisms and stereotypes that you SHOULD NOT have to deal with.  If you want to be an active fatty but you let these idiots stop you from enjoying moving your body, you are the only one who is missing out. Dance in your living room, get a group of friends together to dance in your living room or go for a swim or do yoga or take a walk – whatever you want to do. Check out Jeanette DePatie, Abby Lentz, Anna Guest-Jelley, Kelly Bliss, and Tiina Veer.  ( By the way, I’m still looking for music for my online dance classe sso  if you know of a singer/songwriter, band etc. who has the rights to their music and would like them used for my classes pretty please send them my way ragen at dances with fat dot org).

When it comes to moving our bodies,  judgmental morons only have as much power over us as we give them. These people are like evil Tinkerbells – instead of needing applause to live, they need our pain and our shame.  I say we stop giving it to them, taking our happy fat asses out for whatever movement that we enjoy, and see what happens. Bees die without their stingers, maybe judgmental assholes (or at least their judgments) do too.  I’m willing to find out.

EDIT: Sometimes people  read my work and interpret it as somehow suggesting that in order to deserve respect, or to be part of size acceptance, one must choose health or healthy habits or fitness. Of course people are allowed to choose to interpret my work as they wish and I’m not interested in telling anyone how to think.   Though I have now addressed this subject very specifically a number of times,  I did not always  do a good job of expressing it in earlier blogs like this one. If you are wondering about my views on this subject I suggest the following post as a start:

https://danceswithfat.wordpress.com/2012/12/12/health-and-size-acceptance/

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

I have had about enough of fat bodies being used to represent everything from  greed to laziness to a supposed health crisis.  Pictures of headless fatties – who were typically not compensated or asked for their permission – litter the internet accompanying articles about rising healthcare costs (even though the CBO’s independent report showed that we’re not the issue), representing over-consumption of fast-food, even though there is no proof that fat people eat any more fast food than people of other sizes.  Our bodies are freely used for whatever the negative metaphor, comparison, or representation of the day is.  As if we have no feelings about seeing people who look like us constantly used to represent everything bad in the world, as if those feelings aren’t important.

People don’t take care of things that they don’t think are worthy of care, and so I consider the use of headless fatty pictures – which are designed to show fat bodies as shameful and bad –  to be detrimental to public health.

Our bodies are not yours to photograph and throw all over the internet as a metaphor for anything.  We are PEOPLE, these are our BODIES, and EVERY BODY deserves respect.

Of course we each get to choose how to deal with our oppression and nobody is under any obligation to do it as I’m suggesting.  I propose a little bit of simple at-home activism.  Every time you see a picture of a headless fatty on the internet representing something negative, leave a comment like “No More Headless Fatties – Every Body Deserves Respect!” If you want to take it one step further send an e-mail to the source of the story – tell them your personal story, send them this blog whatever, but let’s teach people that this behavior isn’t ok.  Also, I’ve found that this kind of activism can reframe this issue for me – now instead of feeling angry or hurt or ashamed when I see a headless fatty picture, I can look at it as a chance to educate and stand up for myself.

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I’ve spent this Thanksgiving with my Mom, which is a great reminder that I have the absolute best Mom every in the history of moms. She has always supported me in doing whatever I wanted to do.

When I gave up the opportunity to go to school for pre-law and decided to see if I wanted to be an orchestral clarinetist (the answer turned out to be no) my Mom didn’t even blink before supporting me.  Contrast this sharply with my friend’s moms, some of whom had actually refused to pay for my friend’s school unless they studied something of which the parents approved.  It happens reasonably often that parents have different dreams for their kids than the kids have for themselves.

The brilliant Virginia Sole-Smith from the Beauty Schooled Project sent me this article [trigger warning – weight loss talk] about a woman who was a very accomplished yogi who turned to a personal trainer to be thinner for her wedding.  I started processing through all of my feelings about this article, basically a lot of the feelings that I have whenever someone I know chooses weight loss.  I realized that what it boils down to, is that I have different dreams for these people than they have for themselves based on what I believe to be true.  And while it’s fine for me to ponder that in my head, it’s not my place to tell them that their dreams for themselves are wrong.

And I think that this is what happens a lot when people feel the need to tell me that I should lose weight, that my path to health is wrong, that my life be easier if I were thin, or whatever.  These people have different dreams for me than I have for myself because of what they believe.  And it’s ok for them to believe whatever and have those different dreams for me, but I’m not ok with them to unburdening their dreams on me – they either need to get on board and support my dreams, or learn to live with [silent] disappointment.

It turns out that dreams are like underpants – you are the boss of your own and nobody else’s.

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

As a fat person today, we live in a culture that gives us an unbelievable number of mixed messages. Some are nuanced and some are obvious but they are all correctable. Let’s look at some.

Your body makes you unattractive and unhealthy. You should be ashamed of the reflection that you see. Now, go take good care of your body!

I think that this one is the most prevalent. People don’t take care of things they hate whether it’s an ugly gift from their mother in law or their bodies. People don’t hate themselves healthy. People don’t care for something that they don’t think is worthy of care. Shut up already. Everybody is beautiful and amazing and if you disagree please feel free to apply your beliefs to your own body and leave the rest of us alone.

We are fighting a war against you. Say thank you, it’s for your own good!

Around here we call this “Pulling a Jillian”. Abuse is never, ever, called for. Wars have casualties and if you are fighting in the war against obesity then you’d better be ready to accept responsibilities for the injuries (mental and physical), deaths and collateral damage you leave in your wake. Or, you could fight for healthy options instead of against fat people all the while making choices for yourself and letting other people make choices for themselves.

When you go to the doctor they will humiliate you and provide subpar treatment. Now stop being such a drain on the healthcare system.

According to research from Yale over 50% of doctors find their fat patients awkward, weak-willed and unlikely to comply with treatment. This leads to fat people getting less time with the doctor and less respect. Often doctors will ignore whatever we came in for, do absolutely not diagnostic work, diagnose us as fat, give us a treatment protocol of weight loss and send us on our way.  I’m not too worried about being a drain on a healthcare system that treats me like yesterday’s bedpans.

If you don’t work out, we will complain that you are sedentary.  If you do work out, we will make fun of you for how you look working out.  Now, go out there and exercise because it’s good for your health!

Why is it always the same people who assume (outloud) that I don’t exercise who also have a problem with how I look when I exercise?  I would prefer that they just shut up but at minimum they should probably choose one or the other.

Speaking of shutting up, if you’re one of the people giving these mixed messages, how about doing that? You are not the Underpants Overlord so if you spend a whole lot more time being the boss or your underpants and a whole lot less time trying to be the boss of other people’s I’ll bet everyone will be happier!

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