After a year of working at The Blue Book Cabaret show at New Orleans club Lucky Pierre’s, Ruby Rage found herself off the schedule. Thinking it was a computer error, she called the show’s producer. Turns out there was no mistake, just blatant discrimination. She was told that the upper management of Lucky Pierre’s didn’t think her body was right for burlesque. When people went off on Lucky Pierre’s for blatant discrimination and giving Burlesque a bad name, LP doubled down with a Facebook response:

We would like to thank everyone for their opinion on Burlesque. Let’s face the facts, in the long history of the art there is an expected image. Josephine Backer, Gypsy Rose Lee, Bettie Page, Blaze Starr, Dita Von Teese, and Mae West. This image was carried to main stream by movies like Burlesque and Cabaret.

If this leaves any doubt of the worlds expectation of Burlesque let’s take a minute to look at the photos by Stephen Le Marche who says, “I love the old world charm of burlesque” and “Burlesque shows off the dancer’s amazing physique.”

This concept is carried through the many burlesque clubs around the world. The Crazy Horse Paris, X Burlesque, Volupte’, Club Noir, Hubba Hubba Revue, Jumbo Clown room and Moulin Rouge.

The world has a standard for burlesque and our dramatically comical musical show will achieve that standard.

Please also take a moment to help clear any more confusion on what is burlesque and watch the video from the burlesque hall of fame 2014 Miss Exotic World champion LouLou D’Vil. As well as this clip from Carson Daily show.

Thank you for the continued support as we create the greatest show in America.”

Many of those mentioned in the statement, along with other big names in Burlesque, spoke out against the statement in seriously strong language.  As they should, because this is bullshit.

Even if the statement wasn’t just chock full o’ lies, using past discrimination to justify current and future discrimination is an age old tool that must be recognized and called out (and not in a “but she’s not even that fat” defense.)  If you’re planning on making a “they are allowed to choose who performs in their show” argument, save yourself the effort.  The question here isn’t whether or not this particular type of discrimination is legal, it’s whether or not we’re going to stand for it.

I cannot wait to live in a world where we chose our performers based on their ability to perform and not based on some stereotype of beauty, and where people fight discrimination instead of arguing that it’s not technically against the law, and I’m going to actively work to create that world.  How about you? Nobody is obligated to do activism but if you get the urge, here are some things that you can do:

Head over to Lucky Pierre’s Facebook page and let them know what you think.

Let Yelp know what you think of Lucky Pierre’s policy of blatant discrimination.

Write a review of Lucky Pierre’s for Google.

Show Ruby some love on Facebook.

Get the word out – share this blog or other articles about this on your social media.

Random Requests:

1.  I’m want to get in touch with Beth Ditto for a possible collaboration – if you know her, I would love an introduction you can e-mail me at ragen at danceswithfat dot org

2. It looks like I’ll be in Europe later this year.  I’m putting together a European speaking tour so if you’re in the area and interested in having me come speak shoot me an e-mail at ragen at danceswithfat dot org and we’ll work out the details!

Like this blog?  Here’s more cool stuff:

I’m speaking tonight at the Brave Body Love Summit tonight at 6pm PST 35+ speakers (including me) offering tools to support and improve your relationship with your body.  Week one is over and the recordings are now available. Check it out here!

Become a Member For ten bucks a month you can support size diversity activism, help keep the blog ad free, and get deals from size positive businesses as a thank you.  Click here for details

Buy the book:  Fat:  The Owner’s Manual  The E-Book is Name Your Own Price! Click here for details

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

Dance Classes:  Buy the Dance Class DVDs or download individual classes – Every Body Dance Now! Click here for details 

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

A movie about my time as a dancer is in active development (casting, finding investors etc.).  Follow the progress on Facebook!

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

 

 

I get a lot of hatemail, but sometimes I get something that I would call more…patheti-mail.  People who perhaps think that they are being clever but are, in fact, simultaneously completely missing and illustrating my point.  Today the “Does Not Get it” Award was won by Chris S. Chris decided to spend time emailing me this gem:

In your blog you wrote that losing 5 pounds in two years is not a success and that you could easily do it.  So if its [sic] so easy to lose that weight why don’t you prove it?

Chris has missed the point in a way that I can only describe as epic. If you’re interested in what I actually say about this, you are welcome to read this post. But I do appreciate Chris perfectly illustrating for us the kind of ridiculous thinking that leads to the continued recommendation of weight loss as a way for people to get thinner and/or healthier (two different things) despite the mountain of evidence that makes it clear that it is terrible at both of these things.

First of all, a quick review about how weight loss works or, y’know, doesn’t.  Almost everyone can lose weight short term, almost everyone gains it all back within 5 years, a majority of people gain back more than they lost.  (Diet companies have figured out how to successfully take credit for the weight loss, blame the client for the weight gain, and make a ton of money on repeat business.)

This leads to people pointing to short term weight loss as proof of the possibility of long term weight loss.  I think that’s very much like suggesting that the time I spend in the air after I jump off the roof is proof that I could fly to avoid hitting the ground if I really tried hard enough.  Both the time in the air, and the impact with the ground are inevitable from the time I jump off the roof as, for almost everyone, are the short term weight loss and long term weight regain inevitable from the time they start the intentional weight loss attempt (whether they call it a diet, lifestyle change, eating plan or something else.)

This has also led to the claim that [ever decreasing x amount] of weight loss has a positive effect on health – the number that constituted x pounds started out as a specific weight based on height, but doctors weren’t able to get people to lose weight to that amount, so they started saying “20% of body weight” but they couldn’t get people to lose that so they started saying “10% of body weight” but they couldn’t get people to lose that so they started saying “just 5%” and when that didn’t work for Weight Watchers, they claimed that 5 pounds in two years (regardless of your starting weight) is a good result.

Just to make it crystal clear, the amount of weight one “needed to lose” to have “health benefits” started as an arbitrary number and actually got less research-based from there. It also leads to the ridiculous ideas that weight loss by any means is somehow a good thing which in turns leads to doctors prescribing things to fat people that they would diagnose as problems in thin people.

So the answer to Chris’s inquiry is that, while Chris may well be the kind of person who would do something poorly advised because of a dare from a stranger on the internet, I am not nearly so foolish. I have already done my time on the diet roller coaster and, having done the research and knowing that health is not an obligation, barometer of worthiness, entirely within my control, or guaranteed under any circumstances I am very comfortable that my decision to focus on behaviors (rather than trying to manipulate my body size) is best for both my mental and physical health.

Random Request:

1.  I’m trying to meet Beth Ditto for a possible collaboration – if you know her, I would love an introduction you can e-mail me at ragen at danceswithfat dot org

2. It looks like I’ll be in Europe later this year.  I’m putting together a European speaking tour so if you’re in the area and interested in having me come speak shoot me an e-mail at ragen at danceswithfat dot org and we’ll work out the details!

Like this blog?  Here’s more cool stuff:

Become a Member For ten bucks a month you can support size diversity activism, help keep the blog ad free, and get deals from size positive businesses as a thank you.  Click here for details

Buy the book:  Fat:  The Owner’s Manual  The E-Book is Name Your Own Price! Click here for details

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

Join the The Brave Body Love Summit: 35+ speakers (including me) offering tools to support and improve your relationship with your body.  Week one is over and the recordings are now available.  Week 2 is getting ready to start.  Check it out here!

Dance Classes:  Buy the Dance Class DVDs or download individual classes – Every Body Dance Now! Click here for details 

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

A movie about my time as a dancer is in active development (casting, finding investors etc.).  Follow the progress on Facebook!

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

In yet another stunningly horrific example of what can happen when the government involves itself in the weight of children, Gilberto Rodriguez, a member of the Puerto Rico Senate, is one of the sponsors of a bill that he claims will “improve children’s wellbeing and help parents make healthier choices” by fining parents for their kid’s body size.

“If, after six months, education officials determine that the child’s condition has not improved, a staffer can refer the case to child-family services authorities as one involving abuse or mistreatment.

“If after another six months the situation persists, the parents can be assessed up to $500 in fines.

“Six months after that, if the problem continues, the parents can be fined an additional $800.”

I think that a lot of fat activism, or at least my particular style of fat activism, is about simply showing up and refusing to leave, even if people are confused about what we’re doing there.

When fat people do things that challenge people’s preconceived notions of what we are supposed to do, or how we are supposed to act – like being happy with our bodies, wearing certain clothes, participating in fitness etc, we’re not asking people for their approval.  We are living the lives we want to live and also giving people an opportunity to examine their own prejudices and bigotry and make better choices moving forward. We’re doing them a courtesy.

When fat people refuse to be judged based on our bodies, our health, or how other people think we should look or act, we aren’t begging for acceptance.  We are saying “I set the terms and boundaries by which we interact and in the unlikely event that I want your opinion on my body or choices you’ll be among the very first people to know.”

When fat people refuse to bow to the pressure of the war on obesity to attempt weight loss (even if anyone could show that it is possible) we aren’t begging for mercy.  We are saying that we have the same right to life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness as everyone else and that includes the right to live in our fat bodies without the government waging war on us for how we look, so how about you back the hell off.

When fat people refuse to be hidden or dismissed by society we aren’t begging for recognition, we are demanding respect.

When it comes to respecting size diversity the world is seriously fucked up. It’s not our fault but it becomes our problem and I think it’s important to remember that there is absolutely nothing wrong with us, and that the way fat people are treated is completely, utterly, unjustifiably wrong. It’s not us, it’s for damn sure them.  We each get to choose how we deal with that and all of those choices are valid. I plan to keep showing up and refusing to leave.

Like this blog?  Here’s more cool stuff:

Join the The Brave Body Love Summit: 35+ speakers (including me) offering tools to support and improve your relationship with your body Check it out here!

Become a Member For ten bucks a month you can support size diversity activism, help keep the blog ad free, and get deals from size positive businesses as a thank you.  Click here for details

Buy the book:  Fat:  The Owner’s Manual  The E-Book is Name Your Own Price! Click here for details

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

Dance Classes:  Buy the Dance Class DVDs or download individual classes – Every Body Dance Now! Click here for details 

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

A movie about my time as a dancer is in active development (casting, finding investors etc.).  Follow the progress on Facebook!

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

I get plenty of ridiculous hate mail, but sometimes I get something even more ridiculous. A company that so completely misunderstands my blog that they sincerely ask me to help them market their weight loss bullshit.  Here’s part of a recent example:

Our first webinar addresses a sensitive topic: weight loss. We know what you are thinking (and feeling). But, we urge you to keep reading. Don’t close this email!

[Our Ridiculous Company] does not promote getting skinny; we promote being well. And, weight loss is part of many woman’s journey to wellness.

Weight loss needs to be talked about in terms of wellness not skinniness. It is a touchy, yet important topic that we are brave enough to discuss.

Please urge your audience to attend our webinar: “Eat More and Lose Weight.”

The link featured the headline in huge font red letters: “Are You FRUSTRATED with
Trying to Lose Weight and Have a Body You LOVE?” There was nothing about loving the body you have, just ridiculous claims that this doctor could not just help you lose weight but also “End sick days.” Right, this definitely has the ring of good science. Turns out it’s just another doctor (this one trained in “emergency medicine”) who has written another book claiming that she can help people lose weight with absolutely no proof that it will work, and a mountain of evidence to suggest that it won’t, trying to co-opt Size Acceptance and Health at Every Size for her own profit.

Some days I have it for the teachable moment, and some days I don’t.  These came to me just in time for Say Something Sunday, and so one of my Say Something Sunday suggestions was to e-mail these people and tell them to stop spamming me with their BS.  Many of you did, thank you so much! From what I’ve been told, everyone got back a form e-mail claiming that sending me an unsolicited request to promote something that I am emphatically against is not spam, and that they wanted to (I’m not even kidding here) “team up with Ragen to empower women.”  The e-mails ended with “p.s Please rethink blindly sending hate mail.”

First of all, not to go all Crocodile Dundee or anything, but saying “Your weight loss promotion is not appreciated.  In a blog like Ragen Chastain’s Dances with Fat  it is especially not appreciated.  Please just stop!” is not hate mail.  This is hate mail.

Also, when you go to a blog that is very specifically Size Acceptance and Health at Every Size, and waste the writer’s time asking her to help you promote that which she spends every single day fighting against, you might expect a little push back. Today I received yet another comment from them explaining that they don’t believe in dieting, just in losing weight for health reasons (right, and I’m not a brunette, I just happen to have brown hair.)  There is no magical phrase or reason for promoting or selling weight loss that makes it any less impossible, or less harmful, for the vast majority of people.

So these people struggle with the concepts of Health at Every Size, Spam, hatemail, bravery, and dieting.  But why am I telling you about this? First, because it’s funny and I don’t know about you but some days I can use a good laugh. Second, because I really appreciate everyone who sent them an e-mail and, hopefully, taught them a very valuable lesson about reading comprehension.  And finally, to say that you don’t have to put up with weight loss propaganda, or with people trying to co-opt Size Acceptance to sell dieting.

When people come into our spaces and try to promote something harmful, we don’t have to smile politely and say “no thank you” (though of course that’s an option)  I imagine someone will comment on this blog to say that I should have worked to build a bridge instead of reacting the way I did. I say fuck that.  I spend a lot of time politely asking people if they wouldn’t mind not oppressing me so much, and I don’t apologize for that, but I’m also not obligated to do it and it takes all kinds of activism to create change in the world.  Anger is a tool in the activism toolbox just as much as bridge-building is and each of us gets to choose how we respond to the bullshit that we face on any given day.

You can push back in any way that you feel comfortable: Mark every diet ad you see online as “deceptive” or “I don’t want to see this” or whatever, unsubscribe from magazines that advertise dieting and tell them why, return postcards from diet companies return to sender, declare your Facebook page/home/book club/game night etc. a Body Positive space – no diet talk allowed.  You can also go ahead and flip a table. You aren’t obligated to push back against diet propaganda, but you are allowed.

Like this blog?  Here’s more cool stuff:

Join the The Brave Body Love Summit: 35+ speakers (including me) offering tools to support and improve your relationship with your body Check it out here!

Become a Member For ten bucks a month you can support size diversity activism, help keep the blog ad free, and get deals from size positive businesses as a thank you.  Click here for details

Buy the book:  Fat:  The Owner’s Manual  The E-Book is Name Your Own Price! Click here for details

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

Dance Classes:  Buy the Dance Class DVDs or download individual classes – Every Body Dance Now! Click here for details 

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

A movie about my time as a dancer is in active development (casting, finding investors etc.).  Follow the progress on Facebook!

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

 

A question that I get asked pretty often is “If dieting doesn’t work, how is it possible that it’s such a popular recommendation even by doctors?”  I’m glad that you asked!

For the last 50 years the research that has been conducted regarding long term weight loss has shown that weight loss almost never works long term.  Yet we are constantly told by the media, the government, our doctors etc. that anybody who tries hard enough can lose weight and keep it off. Plenty of studies have shown that the body has a number of physiological reactions to weight loss that are designed to regain weight and then retain that weight.  Yet we are told that those who regain their weight have just “gone back to their old habits.” But what really happens?

So a person begins one of a thousand intentional weight loss  (also known as a “lifestyle change”) programs.  They lose weight at first, then between 2 and 5 years after the loss they gain back all of the weight plus more, despite diligently maintaining their diet behaviors (aka “lifestyle changes”). They report these happenings to their doctor only to be told that they must not have been properly counting calories, they must have overestimated their movement. Their experience, they will be told, could not possibly have happened, it is impossible because…physics!  Or they tell their doctor that they couldn’t mentally and physically continue their dieting behaviors (aka “lifestyle change”) and are told again that they just weren’t trying hard enough.

All this despite the fact that their experience is exactly what the research tells us to expect. When millions of credible first person accounts match up with what research has found, typically that’s a good time to jump out of your bathtub and run around naked yelling “Eureka, I’ve found it.”

So why is dieting such a popular recommendation?  Those who are perpetuating this “weight loss works’ culture are doing a couple of things frighteningly well.

First, they are doing a great job of obfuscating the evidence.  Remember when a study found that Weight Watchers participants lost around about 10 pounds in six months and kept off half of that for two years (giving them a 3 year efficacy buffer but who’s counting) and Karren Miller-Kovach, chief scientific officer of Weight Watchers International at the time won the “I Said It With a Straight Face Award” when she told the media: “It’s nice to see this validation of what we’ve been doing.” Five pounds in two years.  Five pounds in two years.  Five freaking pounds in two freaking years?!?!?!?!?!.  But every time I say something about Weight Watchers people tell me how well it works (often, defying all logic, telling me that they’ve “done Weight Watchers 6 times and it worked every time“.)

Or the National Weight Control registry claiming to prove that weight loss works when the truth is that they would need 32,990,000 more success stories just to show a 5% success rate for dieting over the time they’ve been collecting data.  They’ve only managed to gather about 10,000 success stories since 1994, so they just moved the goal post and claimed victory at the fact that their numbers indicate that dieting works .009% of the time which means that if you walk to your Weight Watchers meeting in the rain you are three times more likely to die from a lightning strike than lose weight long term.

The second thing that they do alarmingly well is to discredit what are actually completely credible first person accounts of dieting failure.  Hundreds of thousands of people have diet failures every year.  Some of them have been convinced that they suddenly lost the ability to accurately maintain their diet behaviors, like people are saying “that’s weird, last week I could totally measure a cup of pasta but this week I forgot what a measuring cup is or how it works, so I just ate the whole package of spaghetti.”  They are told that they must be doing something wrong if they are regaining weight.  They are excoriated and discredited as “trying to justify their fatness”  (as if we need justification to exist in our bodies.)

But the diet industry and its cronies do it with shocking success.  Millions of people saying “I had the exact experience that research said was most likely” and somehow the diet industry, the government, and the medical establishment are able to discredit all of us in the eyes of the greater culture, often while continuing to profit.

This is all by way of saying that if you’ve tried dieting and ended up regaining all of your weight, or all of your weight plus more, then welcome to The Almost Everyone Club, we aren’t exclusive and we don’t have jackets (yet!) but we do have evidence and experience.  You have the right to claim and own the fact that you are indeed a credible witness to your experience, and you can refuse to allow someone else to substitute their completely  fabricated (and highly lucrative) experiences for your actual ones, and you can insist that they stop the diet roller coaster because you want to get the hell off.

Like this blog?  Here’s more cool stuff:

Join the The Brave Body Love Summit: 35+ speakers (including me) offering tools to support and improve your relationship with your body Check it out here!

Become a Member For ten bucks a month you can support size diversity activism, help keep the blog ad free, and get deals from size positive businesses as a thank you.  Click here for details

Buy the book:  Fat:  The Owner’s Manual  The E-Book is Name Your Own Price! Click here for details

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

Dance Classes:  Buy the Dance Class DVDs or download individual classes – Every Body Dance Now! Click here for details 

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

A movie about my time as a dancer is in active development (casting, finding investors etc.).  Follow the progress on Facebook!

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

It’s “Say Something Sunday,” a day dedicated, at least on this blog, to personal Size Diversity activism. I’ve got some suggestions below and/or of course you can do your own thing and feel free to leave a comment about it. If you have ideas of things to do for Say Something Sunday I’d also love for you to share those.

I did the math and if everyone who views the blog each week did one piece of Size Diversity Activism a week, it would add up to over 1.5 million body positive messages put out into the world this year.  Multiply that times the number of people who might see each of those messages and things start to increase exponentially. To be very clear, nobody is obligated to do activism so if this doesn’t appeal to you that’s totally cool, I’ll be back tomorrow with your regularly scheduled blog post!

The theme this week is “Take this junk and shove it”  –  telling people to stop sending you weight loss propaganda (as always these are just suggestions, feel free to change them to make them work for you, and if they don’t appeal to you feel free to do your own thing!)

• Every time you see a diet ad on social media or online etc, click “I don’t want to see this” or “This ad is misleading” or whatever means stop with the dieting crap already.

• If you get random diet ads e-mailed to you reply and let people know that you aren’t interested/that you believe they are doing people a disservice etc.

• If you want to do me a favor, e-mail SexyDeliciousHealthy@gmail.com and tell them that you don’t appreciate them spamming the comments on my blog advertising webinars promoting weight loss with ridiculous language saying things like: weight loss is “a touchy, yet important topic that we are brave enough to discuss.” (You keep using that word, “brave.” I do not think it means what you think it means…)

• If you get diet postcards in the mail return them to sender, or call the company and insist that you be removed from their mailing list.

If you want to do more of this kind of thing, consider joining the Rolls Not Trolls group on Facebook, it’s a group created for the specific purpose of putting body positive things in body negative spaces on the internet and supporting each other while we do that.  It’s a secret group so if you want to join just message me on facebook (I’m Ragen Chastain)

Have a great Say Something Sunday!

Like this blog?  Here’s more cool stuff:

Join the The Brave Body Love Summit  – 35+ speakers (including me) offering tools to support and improve your relationship with your body Check it out here!

Become a Member For ten bucks a month you can support size diversity activism, help keep the blog ad free, and get deals from size positive businesses as a thank you.  Click here for details

Buy the book:  Fat:  The Owner’s Manual  The E-Book is Name Your Own Price! Click here for details

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

Dance Classes:  Buy the Dance Class DVDs or download individual classes – Every Body Dance Now! Click here for details 

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

A movie about my time as a dancer is in active development (casting, finding investors etc.).  Follow the progress on Facebook!

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

This topic has come up a lot this week, so I thought I’d talk about it. It is definitely tricky! Let’s examine two scenarios: 1.  You are interacting with someone who has lost weight, and 2.  someone is talking to you about your weight loss (either real or perceived.) As always, these are just suggestions and your mileage may vary.

You are interacting with someone who has lost weight

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

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

If they don’t bring up the weight loss I don’t bring it up. Weight loss isn’t always welcome – it can be from medical issues, medication, stress, grieving etc. and I don’t want to bring up something painful. Plus this conversation is awkward enough, I’m not going to go through it if I don’t have to.

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

If someone mentions your weight loss:

I don’t know about you but I’ve had people do this as a passive aggressive way of pointing out that I haven’t lost weight.  So I cheerfully answer “Nope!”  On my IRONMAN blog I recently talked about what I would do if I lose weight as part of the training.

If you have lost weight intentionally and you want to support Size Acceptance, from my perspective it would be awesome if you said something like “I’m smaller but I still love my body just as much as before.” or “It’s so weird, I had no idea how many people were keeping tabs on my body size” or “I wish we lived in a world where body size wasn’t a topic of conversation.”  It would also be fantastic if you would point out and negate any attempts to make it seem like you are better than fat people who are still fat, or that you deserve to be treated better now that you are thinner.

I look forward to living in a world where bodies of all sizes and shapes are completely respected and celebrated. But until that time I think it helps to be mindful how we talk about these things.

Like this blog?  Here’s more cool stuff:

The Brave Body Love Summit is starting tomorrow – 35+ speakers (including me) offering tools to support and improve your relationship with your body check it out!

Become a Member For ten bucks a month you can support size diversity activism, help keep the blog ad free, and get deals from size positive businesses as a thank you.  Click here for details

Buy the book:  Fat:  The Owner’s Manual  The E-Book is Name Your Own Price! Click here for details

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

Dance Classes:  Buy the Dance Class DVDs or download individual classes – Every Body Dance Now! Click here for details 

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

A movie about my time as a dancer is in active development (casting, finding investors etc.).  Follow the progress on Facebook!

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

I got an e-mail that said “I don’t care how athletic you are, there is no such thing as a fat athlete.”  Why would someone use their limited time on Earth to send me this is anybody’s guess.

It is definitely some extra special hater logic and it got me thinking about the way that so many people try to maintain their sense of superiority/maintain their stereotypes/oppress fat people by creating “thin people only clubs.”  They tell us that being an athlete isn’t just about athletics – but you also have to be thin; being stylish isn’t just about style, you also have to be thin; you have to be thin to be beautiful; you have to be thin to be sexy; you have to be thin to like your body and on and on and on.

At its base, this is about creating definitions that exclude people based on how they look – whether the club is athletes, fashionistas, or just confident people who are happy with their bodies.  I think a lot of it stems from people who have built their self-esteem on a foundation of weight bullying and fat shame.  Their self-esteem is predicated upon the idea that they are automatically better than a fat person because they are thin.  Since they can only feel good about themselves by convincing themselves that they are better than someone else, they have to protect this at all costs. Their self-esteem requires that the fatties go along with the idea that we can’t be part of their clubs until we are thin. When this is threatened, whether it’s by fathletes, fatshionistas, or just a fat person rocking a bikini on the beach, they seek to restore the balance of power by insisting that thin is a prerequisite for the “club”.

I suggest that we just say no, and insist on our place in the club.  You don’t have to want to be an athlete, but if you want to. you can be an athlete an any size (and the Fit Fatties Forum has over 3,000 fathletes of all abilities proving that.)  You don’t have to care about fashion but if it interests you then you can be a fashionista at any size.

Those who think that they get to decide the identities we claim for ourselves are making a massive Underpants Rule violation. They are laboring under the misapprehension that they are the Underpants Overlord of fat people’s identities –  that we need their consent or acceptance to claim our status as athletes, fashionistas, sexy, beautiful, or confident. We can eliminate the middle man and just claim and own these identities for ourselves, rejecting the idea that it’s anyone else’s job to tell us what we can or can’t be. So if someone tells you that you can’t be what you are unless you are thin, you have some options in reply. Remember that these are just suggestions, if they don’t resonate with you then obviously you’re free to ignore them!  If you have some ideas of your own, feel free to throw them in the comments:

“What in the world…I mean…what in the WORLD, would make you think that you get to tell me what I can be?”

“Bwa ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha, – you actually think you can tell me whether or not I’m a a fashionista? Dude, that’s hilarious.”

“I was not aware that you were made Underpants Overlord of the Athletes – I’m going to need to see the decree.”

(looking genuinely perplexed) “Sorry…I’m just having trouble imagining what would lead you to believe that I care what you think.”

“Oh, I see you’re looking for your beeswax. Sorry, but it’s definitely not here.”

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