I occasionally get e-mails from men who are Big Beautiful Women appreciators.  I got a particularly strange one today so I thought I’d share it with you:

“Hey Hottie,

I didn’t read your blog (not much interested in words) but I saw a video of you dancing.  You are so hot and sexy. Usually I only like girls who are 350lbs+ so you are smaller than what I normally like but I still think you are big and beautiful. Don’t worry,  a little of my cooking will put some meat on your bones!  See, it’s better than other guys, you could gain weight and that would be ok by me.  I have a house with a hot tub, and no one around so you don’t need a swimsuit.  Hit me back we could have an awesome first date, I’d appreciate every inch of you.  I just want you to know I like big girls, the bigger the better, I don’t care about race, height, hair color, brains or nothing as long as they’re big.”

Ok, let’s break it down:

“I didn’t read your blog.”

Points for honesty.

“You are smaller than what I normally like but I think you are still big and beautiful.”

I’m not sure I’d have lead with this dude.  I’m not getting that “I’m a lucky girl” feeling I think you’re going for because to you it seems like a plus that I’m not what you normally like but I still kind of make the cut.

“Don’t worry, a little of my cooking will put some meat on your bones!”

Points for originality.  Suffice to say that I do NOT hear this one everyday.  I’m feeling pretty good about my meatiness level, but thanks.

“See, it’s better than other guys, you could gain weight and that would be ok by me. “

Huh?  Way to make broad-based assumptions about other men.  Out of curiosity, what would happen if got sick and lost a bunch of weight?  I’m guessing the relationship prognosis would not be good.

“I have a house with a hot tub, and no one around so you don’t need a swimsuit.  Hit me back we could have an awesome first date, I’d appreciate every inch of you.”

Slow down there, Sparky.  I’m a “let’s go to a coffee shop on our first date so that if this is a disaster we can get the hell out”  kind of girl.  Not so much with the “Nice to meet you, let’s get naked” first date action.  It’s just a personal preference.

“I just want you to know I like big girls, the bigger the better, I don’t care about race, height, hair color, brains or nothing as long as they’re big.”

Gosh, I don’t know what to say.  No, seriously, I don’t.  Wait…it’s coming to me…

WHAT.  THE.  HELL?  I will never understand this.  It seems like whenever I get an e-mail like this they take great pains to say that nothing else about me matters, as long as I’m big.  How is that a plus? It feels a little manipulative, as if maybe he assumes that I don’t like anything about myself and I’ll just be overjoyed that someone is interested in me at all?

I’ve had people say that I would be the perfect girlfriend except that they aren’t attracted to big bodies.  While that’s frustrating,  I find it WAY less creepy than someone who is only attracted to me because of the current size of my body.

Dude, don’t feel bad that I’m going to reply with a “no thanks”, I’m actually saving you from a heaping helping of heart-ache.  You may think that you want me based on my body, but trust me when I tell you that you are wholly unprepared for the onslaught of  personality oddities that this body contains.  Let me state for the record that I have many qualities that make me an excellent girlfriend,  but only if you also find my “chock full o’ quirkiness” personality endearing. A few examples:

• I leave cupboard drawers open.  Sometimes I walk into my kitchen and every drawer is open and I have no idea how long it’s been like that.
• I sing.  Badly.  All the time.
• If I hear a song that I like, I will get up and dance to it..not dance…perform! As if there are people watching.  I might back up the track to get that choreography just right.  If you’re lucky my dance will be accompanied by the aforementioned bad singing.

The list goes on.  I’ve dated and been friends with lots of people who found my quirky awkwardness an endearing addition to the qualities that they appreciate.  It’s all part of my “charm” as it where.  But if you’re just here for my body, I think you’re probably going to head for the hills when I’m dancing and singing along to “Don’t Rain on My Parade” in the kitchen with every cupboard door open.

And that brings me to my point.  Physicality is fleeting and we all deserve better than someone who only loves us for what they can see in a picture.  Embrace the quirky awesomeness that is you and find someone else who does the same.

My Mom sent me this e-mail yesterday:

“I just read the blogs from Jezebel – Imagine all the women out there that you made feel good today ~  I am Sooooooo proud to be your Mom, you’re an amazing woman and I just love your positive attitude to all people, with all the negativity in the world I’m sure glad you’re in it~Love you to the Nth degree times infintity to the power of eternity and LOTS more”

My Mom has always been this awesome.

And trust me when I tell you that it wasn’t easy.  I was a “highly intelligent but difficult” child per my school records.   As she has told me any number of times I was born 4o years old,  a combination of Lisa Simpson, Stewie Griffin, Hermione Granger, and Sheldon from Big Bang Theory.   It seems that the same independence, veracity, and outspokenness that we admire in adults is somewhat less endearing in children.

I can’t even count the number of times my Mom went to bat for me when I was a kid – teacher’s who didn’t know how to handle me, a bitter band director who tried to hold me down, people telling me that something I was doing  was impossible and I should quit.  My mom is a natural peace keeper but you could not mess with her children without having to deal with her. I remember standing in the principal’s office while Mrs. Goggins said “Your daughter insists on correcting me in front of the class.”  Mom looked at her completely deadpan and said “Are you wrong?”.  Mrs. Goggins exasperatedly replied “That’s NOT the point.”  My Mom turned to the principal and said “This is a school, right?  Isn’t learning the correct information exactly the point?”

My Mom is just amazing and I know how lucky I am to have her.  She is the reason that I’m able to do the self-esteem and body image work that I do, she’s the reason why I’ve always been certain that I can succeed at anything I want to do, she is the (not so) secret of my success.

So, if you are a Mom, today might be a good day to really think about the lessons that you are teaching your kids about their self-esteem and their bodies.  Lessons that you teach directly, indirectly (How do you talk about your body?  What magazines do you have laying around the house?) and that you allow others to teach them all count. This is a huge thanks to all of the Mothers out there who are trying hard to raise children with high self-esteem and good body image in a culture that tries hard to make that impossible.

Since I know that she reads this blog I just want to say Happy Mother’s Day to the Best Mom in the Whole World.  I love you to infinity to the power of infinity and LOTS more!

Jezebel.com picked up my blog “Things I’ve heard about thin women”  http://jezebel.com/5531846/things-ive-heard-about-thin-women.  There are almost 500 comments.

I felt the need to blog more about this because I was so surprised by some of the comments.  Several  comments assert that, while bashing thin people probably isn’t ok, it’s not something worth talking about because thin people are protected by the tremendous privilege that the receive in our society and it’s distracting from the battle that fat people face.   Some of the commenters complained that talking about this takes attention away from the fat community and the horrible treatment to which we are subjected.  Some even seem to think that it’s ok to bash thin people because of the privilege they have in our society, saying “they’ll get over it, I promise you”.

Here is the thing though.  The fat community is extremely disenfranchised.  Many of the people of size who I talk to have internalized the oppressive messages that they get from society to the point that it has become an identity for them.  That’s not a foundation upon which you can build a civil rights movement.  It’s hard to demand respect when there are a chorus of your community members who are still convinced that they don’t deserve to be treated well.

So where can we start?

How about with our own actions?   This isn’t the Oppression Olympics – there’s no medal for being the group who has it worst.  I think that the most important thing I can do when I am looking for respect and equality is be an example of what that means in my day to day life.

Even if thin women’s privilege protected them from the pain of comments like “eat a sandwich”, “you’re anorexic”, “real women have curves” and other such bs (and I don’t think that it does protect them) I think it would still be an astoundingly bad idea.

Because even if it doesn’t hurt them, if I say it, it hurts me.  When I  do to others what I don’t want done to me, justifying it because it doesn’t happen to them very often, I think I become a bunch of things that aren’t good:

• hypocritical
• out of integrity
• part of a system I claim I want to end
• just as bad as everyone who has ever said anything to me about my size

To me this is not about someone else’s privilege, this is about my integrity.

Am I or am I not someone who believes that everyone, and their body, deserves to be treated with respect?  Are my actions consistent with who I say I am? If not then what the hell am I doing?

I know that fat people are hurting in our culture, and we absolutely deserve to be treated better.  But I’m here to suggest that the only way out is up – that we can’t get out of a hole by digging, and I don’t believe that we will ever get respect for our bodies by disparaging someone else’s.  Perhaps it’s a cliche but as I’ve said before I truly believe that you have to start by being the change that you want to see in the world.

While that may mean different things to different people I wish we could all be on the same page that it definitely includes not doing to others the exact thing we are asking people to stop doing to me.

Let me start out by saying that I’m not trying to harsh anyone else’s fat acceptance vibe, this is just about how I feel.  Plus, I’ll own up to being a bit of a word nerd so I may be splitting hairs, but hear me out on this and then tell me what you think.

Every time I hear (or try to use) the term “fat acceptance”, it gives me a moment of pause.  In my mind, the idea of accepting something comes with at best a little, and at worst a lot, of compromise.  For example:  My favorite thing about owning my own business is not that I sometimes work 20 hour days.  It turns out that I actually like to sleep (at least I have a vague recollection that I do).  But I accept working 20 hour days because I love what I do and  it’s worth it to me.   My mom is really unhappy that I choose to live so far away, but she accepts it because she loves me.

To me Fat Acceptance feels more like resignation…  “Well, I’ll accept it but I don’t have to like it.”

That just doesn’t make me feel all fat pride empowered and ready to face the world with high self-esteem and healthy body image.  But maybe that’s just my own sense of the word…

Next stop the dictionary (because, as previously mentioned, I’m a big nerd), where I found:

ac·cept·ance

Warning!!!!!!  This post contains spoilers about last week’s Glee (the episode named “Home”).  You have been warned.

Glee is a show about stereotypical misfits – the obnoxious over-achiever, the girl with the stutter, the kid in a wheel chair, the gay boy, the pregnant teen, and the fat kid.

In the first season, all of these story lines were explored except one – the fat girl.  The character of Mercedes Jones as played by Amber Riley.

…and I couldn’t figure out how I felt about that.  Was I glad that they didn’t make a thing about her weight?  Happy that it was assumed that she was talented and fashionable?  Or was I irritated that every other kid got to have an episode of empowerment, but not Mercedes?  Frustrated that they would be so unrealistic as to portray  that her weight was never an issue in this culture? I went back and forth about this, talked it over with other friends in the size positive community, and I still couldn’t decide.

That all changed last week.  It became apparent that they were going to do a story line about Mercedes’ weight.  Mercedes joins the Cheerios (the school cheerleading squad) and the cheer coach tells her that she has to lose 10 pounds in a week.  Her best friend tells her that Cheerios finally makes them cool and that she needs to lose the weight and not mess it up.  She goes on a diet.  I get nervous – I love this show and if they handle this in a way that is not size positive I know I will be heartbroken.  I hold my breath.  Mercedes  stops eating and faints.  Quinn (the pregnant former cheerleader) reminds Mercedes that she has always been comfortable in her own skin and that she should never let anyone take that away from her. Fast forward to a beautiful scene where she stands in front of her school and gives an incredible speech:

“So most of you know Cheerios is about perfection and winning, looking hot and being popular.  Well I think that it should be about something different.  How many of you at this school feel fat?  How many of you feel like maybe you’re not worth very much, that you’re ugly, and you have too many pimples and not enough friends.  Well I’ve felt all of those things about myself at one time or another.  Hell I’ve felt most of those things about myself today.  And that just ain’t  right.  And we’ve got something to say about it…”

Check it –  a real, live, healthy, active, talented, confident fat character on a television show, being supported by her friends and teachers.  How do I love Glee?  Let me count the ways!

I recently wrote a blog called 386,170 unhelpful things about the messages that I get from the world about my body.  While I was researching it, some of the messages I heard were:

"Fat isn't sexy, it's a fact."
"Men just don't want obese women"
"Everybody knows you can't be healthy and obese"

I don’t know about you, but I don’t enjoy getting those messages from society,  it’s frustrating and it hurts my feelings.

Today while perusing some “size positive” blogs I found the following comments:

"Stick women just aren't sexy, it's just gross".
"What man would want a twig anyway?"
"It's just impossible to be healthy when you are that thin,
you have to be anorexic or a drug addict to look like that"
"Real women are curvy and LOOK like women"

I absolutely understand why people in the size positive community say things like this.  It’s rare to see people on television and in commercials who look like us and that can be frustrating.  We’re getting hundreds of thousands of negative messages about our bodies every year and we are tired, angry, and hurt.  People with no health credentials feel completely justified in making assumptions about our health.  Doctors make the same mistaken assumptions.  It’s easy to transfer our  frustration onto the people who represent “the other side”.  Sometimes you’ve just taken all you can stand and you feel like you have to lash out. I get it – I really do, I’ve been there.  That being said:

I wish we would knock it off.

Seriously.

If we want people to treat us with respect when it comes to our bodies,  we should probably take a pass on bashing other people about their bodies.

If we want people to take a good, hard look at their size prejudices, we should take a good, hard look at our own.

Health at Every Size means health at EVERY size.  If we purport that some people are naturally larger, then it follows that some people are naturally smaller.   It astounds me that someone who screams “IT’S NOT FAIR” when they are judged as unhealthy because of their size would turn around and do the same thing to someone else.

I want a world of body positivity.  A world where everyone is treated with respect and dignity, where everyone knows that they are beautiful, and receives acknowledgment of that from society.   Nobody should be treated the way that fat people are currently being treated in our culture. Nobody.  So I want change, but not if it means treating  thin people like fat people are treated now – that’s too high a price to pay.

I believe that if you say that you want a size positive world, you have to mean size positive for everyone.  That means not making judgments about others based on their size;  sticking up for the model being called anorexic with the same fervor you would use to defend a fat women being called lazy; respecting other people’s decisions when it comes to their bodies – even when you don’t agree with them.

That’s what it means to be the change you want to see in the world.

Trying to hurt someone else in the same way that you’ve been hurt never works. You can’t improve your self-esteem by diminishing someone else’s.   In the end you won’t feel better and now there are two people in pain.

If you want to lash out do something really radical, something that really takes courage:  respect every body like it was your own.

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I blogged about this a couple of years ago, but based on a conversation that I had yesterday, I think it bears repeating:

I’m very vocal about being a fat dancer.  I bring up my size.  Reasonably often, someone asks me why – why do I have to be so “militant” about being fat?  If nobody else is bringing it up, why do I?

Two years ago a judge named Cindi came up to me after I had competed.  My waltz dress that year was a beautiful crushed velvet gown with spaghetti straps that I loved and got lots of compliments on.

Here I am in it:

At the end of the competition, Cindi caught me at the elevators and told me that she “couldn’t stand to look at me”.  She told me four times that she couldn’t stand to look at me.  I just kept saying “ok”, with no emotion.  She kept getting louder and angrier, I kept saying “ok”.  She put her finger in my face and said  ” you have  NO BUSINESS wearing spaghetti straps”. I said “ok”.   She said “You’re such a beautiful dancer…with your arms out like that I couldn’t stand to look at you.”  I made the (very difficult) decision to be classy, and said “In truth I probably won’t choose to change the dress, but I appreciate that you took the time to tell me it’s such a problem for you.”

For a lot of my life, I’ve been an “exception”, and I hear the same thing from a lot of my large friends.  People say things to us :  I’m not attracted to big women, except you.  I would never take a class from a plus-sized aerobics instructor, except  you.  I think of all big people are lazy, except you.    Plenty of people think that it’s a good thing to be the exception, I don’t.

It means is that if someone looks at us and we challenge their prejudice, instead of taking a hard look at their prejudice, they keep their prejudice and stick us in the “exception” category.  That’s not ok and I’m not interested in being the exception.

It’s been said that dancing gives you a Physical Voice, and I agree. But it’s not just dancing that provides a physical voice, it’s all physical activities – just the act of being in this culture .  When people discount us as non-physical beings, or as unworthy of being looked at  because we’re fat, they are trying to silence our physical voice.  When Cindi told me that I should hide my arms because they are just too disgusting to be  looked at she was trying to silence away my physical voice.

The reason that I bring up my size a lot when other people would like to pretend I’m “normal”,  the reason I don’t want to be the exception, is because when anyone claims our physical voice, we claim it for all people; when any large person claims their physical voice, they claim it for all large people.  When we stand up for ourselves and raise our physical voices, we start to change perceptions, change prejudices, and make a difference.

So, how do you raise your physical voice?

I sincerely believe that Michelle Obama has the absolute best of intentions with her war on childhood obesity.  Unfortunately, good intentions and $5 will get you a non-fat latte and not much else.

The war on obesity seems to be predicated upon the idea that there is a “thin person” buried in fat inside each obese person.  I think that’s why people feel that having a “war on obesity” is an ok thing to do. I’m betting they look at it like the “war on cancer”, where the goal is to remove the cancer and leave the person…they want to remove the “extra” weight and leave the thin person.

But I am not a thin woman covered in fat.  I am a fat woman.  I am my fat, my fat is me.  I may lose some fat or gain some fat, lose some muscle or gain some muscle,  and that’s fine. But all of me is always, well… all of me.

You can’t have a war against my fat and leave the rest of me out of it, so the war on obesity is a war against me and against the body I live in 100% of the time.

A war on childhood obesity IS A WAR ON CHILDREN.  These aren’t little walking statistics.  They are children.  Precious, impressionable children who already have to navigate a world of peer pressure, parent pressure, academic pressure, information overload, over-scheduling,  awkward social interactions, puberty, early sexualization, drugs and alcohol etc.   As if obese children don’t have enough problems without state sponsored teasing.  I’m already hearing horror stories of kids being weighed in IN FRONT OF THEIR CLASS and getting report cards sent home admonishing them for their BMI.

Look, in my childhood plenty of adults in my life, including family members, were just plain mean to me about my weight.   They did it under the guise that it was “for my own good”.   It was devastating and I know that I’m not the only person with a story like this (in fact I know some people who have never recovered).   I can’t imagine how much worse it would have been if their behavior was sanctioned by the school.

I’m not here to argue about causes or effects of childhood obesity.  I’m here to suggest that you can’t shame people into taking care of their bodies, and adding the stress of publicly being shamed about their weight just doesn’t logically lead to kids who are mentally healthy enough with high enough self-esteem  to make good choices in any area of their lives, least of all their health.  Making kids hate their bodies will not support them in taking care of those bodies.  Do you take care of things you hate? Neither do kids.  It’s not “for their own good” . Their own good is to be raised to believe that they are incredible beings who deserve to be respected and treated well by themselves and others, and taught true, correct information about what constitutes health.

If Michelle Obama was for childhood health, I’d be behind her 100%, but as long as she is waging a war against children I’ll find myself fighting on the other side, the side where we work to empower kids to be mentally healthy, have high self-esteem, and take care of their bodies without shame or self-hatred.

I’m about to tell you about an experience I had  that prompted me to ask you this question:

Are there things that you are scared to do because of the size of your body.  Skydiving?  Rockclimbing?

Tell me all about them!  I’ll put my 5’4 280 pound body through as many of the things as possible and blog about them here (if you’ve read my Fat Girl Waxing then you’ve seen the results of a similar experiment).

Just leave a  comment here or click here to send an e-mail (let me know if you want me to keep it anonymous) and I’ll try the things out and let you know how it goes!

Here’s my story:

I’m not afraid of airplanes because of my size.  I fit in a seat, I bring my own seatbelt extender, and if I ever get thrown off a plane for being fat I will calmly insist that anyone who has  shoulders that are too broad to fit in their space, or legs that are too long to fit in their space be carted off with me.   I’ve scripted and practiced exactly what I’ll say. (I’m very aware of how dorky that sounds  but absent the practice I just get all screamy and bitchy and emotional and then I’m just the screaming, bitchy, emotional fat girl and I’ve found that to be pretty ineffective).  So I feel comfortable with flying – expecting the best but prepared for the worst which is one of my general life philosophies.

Except that I went on a  trip recently and I realized walking into the airport that at least one of  my traveling companions would be really uncomfortable with me making such a scene.   I should have thought about it and dealt with it beforehand but I didn’t and I didn’t want to bring it up at the airport.

Had it come down to it I absolutely would have stuck up for myself on the plane, but as we were walking through security I started to feel really anxious.  I realized how much I just wanted everything to go smoothly, and how little control I had of the situation,  and I started to be scared that it wouldn’t go well.  Had I gained weight since the last time I flew?  Had the airlines become more strict?  Should I rethink my scripting?

Everything was fine.  In fact, the flight attendant at one point tried to take my seatbelt extender to give to someone else saying “I knew you didn’t need it, I figured it was left over from the last passenger”.  (I don’t typically need it but I figure it’s worth the $40 to travel with piece of mind).  I explained it was mine, and offered to let someone borrow if if they ran out of extenders.  She didn’t even know that you could buy one of your own so I got to do a little education there.  Anyway, it all worked out, and I didn’t have any problems, but I found myself feeling pretty panicked  getting on each plane, all the while acting calm and cheerful to make sure that my friend was comfortable.  Again, all stuff that could have been dealt with by better communication on my part and that’s a lesson I’ve learned (again!) for next time.  It was my first experience of being scared to get on an  airplane and it wasn’t fun.

Leave a  comment here or click here to e-mail me (let me know if you want me to keep it anonymous) and I’ll try the things out and let you know how it goes!

~Ragen “Ain’t Skeerd” Chastain

I heard someone the other day call “And I am Telling You”  (also known as “You’re Gonna Love Me”) the ultimate woman-power and fat girl  anthem.  I have some problems with that.

Mostly because in the song she is telling a man who know longer wants her that she is going to stay and that he is going to love her, but also for the following reasons:

********DREAMGIRLS SPOILER ALERT.  SKIP THIS PARAGRAPH TO SKIP THE SPOILERS*********

1.  He treats her horribly

2.  He has already cheated on her

3. He has already said that he doesn’t want her.

4. He leaves her in the end

**************End of Spoilers************************

Now, I’m fine with that being the plot of the movie.  I am NOT fine with that being my anthem.

Might I suggest Deborah Cox’s “Absolutely Not”

What song gets your vote for ultimate empowerment anthem?