Amazingly enough, I have realized the only one who is hurting me is, well, me.  Because nothing they say can really hurt me unless I believe it.

And, unfortunately, at this time in my life, I do.  I believe that I just can’t look good because of my stout, lumpy body.  I believe that because I’m forced to walk a bit slower then most that I am slow, and lazy.  I believe that every person who sees me on the street is disgusted beyond compare by the atrocity of me.  And, perhaps the most harmful belief of all is that no one will love me as long as I am 140 pounds overweight.

People, who am I kidding?!  I put to everyone out there reading, and most importantly, I put to myself this challenge – the next time you are walking down the street and you see someone who has what society (or you) would consider an imperfect body, take a good look and tell yourself what you see.  Do you see someone who could never entertain the possibility of looking good?  Do you see someone who is slow, lazy?  Are you disgusted by the sight in front of you?  Do you believe this person is so repulsive they are beyond being loved?

I can only speak for myself, but when I do this, I see none of those things.  I see people who are beautiful, fashionable, alternative, gorgeous.  I see people who are brave for still plugging along when the beauty myth is so against them.  I see couples holding hands and hugging and in love.  And, most importantly, I feel love for them.  I think, when you really look, you will find the same thing.

And then we come to part two of the challenge. I want you to look in the mirror. And I want you to see all these things in yourself.  They are there, you know. And extremely easy to find, once you know what you’re looking for. 

I’m not saying this will be a cure-all for everything.  I’m not saying snotty comments won’t hurt on some level.  But don’t you think they would hurt a lot less if you didn’t believe them?  Stop being so hard on yourself – you deserve the same caring and compassion I know you show to others.  Look at yourself, look at everything you perceive to be an imperfection – and know that someone else is finding it beautiful, and that you can, too.  See who can be the most beautiful of all. 

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01/10/29

Editorial #2

The Fat Rules

(And How I’m Going To Break Them!)

It’s not always easy to live up to your ideals.

Just one of the things that makes it hard is the fact that I wish to be involved in the arts and particularly love singing. And I have a special place in my heart for pop music. Not exactly the kind of environment that seems especially welcoming to a fat chick like me.

I find myself constantly pulling myself up, coming to the realization that Britney Spears is not a model of perfection, that I have just been successfully brainwashed for that moment. It’s very hard to keep longing out of my heart when I see her onstage, dancing and singing with a tiny, hard body and a little belly button ring gleaming merrily. 

And then I start to wonder – why do I feel this way? Why am I comparing myself to a body so wholly unlike mine and equating it with success?

It’s because, very simply, there’s nothing else out there.

Fat people like myself are encouraged to hide – not just their bodies in general, but specifically the main offender – their fat. So you’re not going to see a lot off overweight women sporting a belly button ring – simply because they would never dare show their bellies.  Society has gained a modicum of acceptance – showing fat arms has become less of a taboo, and I certainly applaud this as a step in the right direction. But, being the kind of person I am, I demand more. More freedom to be who I am and freedom to not feel ashamed about it.  Freedom to dance if I feel like it.

I remember reading Camryn Manhiem’s excellent book “Wake Up! I’m Fat” for the first time. (If you haven’t read it yet, head to your library! It’s wonderfully touching and funny and inspiring.)  I was amazed when I read her account of being filmed nude for the movie “The Road To Wellville.” She made the point that if this kind of body was to be accepted, it had to be shown more, to get people more used to it. I took it to heart, though never really acting on it.

Well, my time to not act is up. I truly feel in my heart that one of the most important steps to being accepted is being seen. I am not going to hide my fat, because I have nothing to be ashamed of. Lately, I have been wearing tighter clothes, for the first time in my life wearing a sleeveless shirt out in public, and wearing tight shirts that, yes, ride up on and show my ample tummy. To my surprise, I haven’t been embarrassed, or ashamed. I’ve been filled with pride and freedom and a new sense of – tentative, I admit – self-esteem.

And I’m going to take the next step. I love going to my local gym, and love working out on the machines and swimming, but I do avoid it a good deal.  It’s hard for me to feel completely comfortable there – one of the last times I went, some teenaged boys called out in loud voices various whale-related insults. They seem to have affected me more than I would like.

Well, I’m really gonna give them a show. I’m going to go swimming, and I’m going to work out in an outfit I’ve always wanted to wear to a gym – sweatpants and only a sports bra for a top, as I’ve seen many thinner women do (and envied them for it!).

This may not seem like much to many of the people reading this – perhaps it even seems infantile. But for me – it is a huge challenge and a huge step forward for me. I’m going to show my fat in a way I never have before – and the people at this gym may see fat in a way they’ve never seen before, in a way I hope will make them more accustomed to seeing it – and accepting of it.

I guess I’m just taking a small step – but think what a million small steps like it can do! I’ll be bringing my cousin along to take pictures so I can show everyone that I did it, and my next editorial will be a blow-by-blow of my experience. In the meantime, I encourage everyone reading out there to make a choice this week to take a small step. Godspeed!

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01/10/29

Editorial #3

Dance With You

It’s an issue that, for me, is fraught with emotional issues - from the joyous to the devastating.  You love it, you hate it, you long to do it or you're out there giving it all you've got.  Dancing.

I remember my first experience at a real 'grown-up' dance - in sixth grade the new gym teacher snuck my best friend and I into the off limits seventh grade afternoon dance.  I always had something of a soft spot in my heart for him after that. I stood at the doors to the gym, which had been transformed only with darkened lighting and my mind.  It seemed magical.  I could not wait for the next year, when I would finally be able to attend.

Of course, it wasn't at all what I expected.  Instead of the eighties style flouncy purple shimmer dress I had been harboring for a year in my closet (which, by the way, never actually got worn save for in my bedroom) I wore black pants and an oversized pink chenille sweater that I loved but made me find everything extremely hot.  My hair was in a messy ponytail and my pair of antique looking heart earrings were a pathetic attempt to look romantic.  And instead of thinking boys were pretty yucky, as I had the year before, I found myself hoping to be asked to dance.

It never happened.  Only twice in my whole school dance career was I asked to dance - and both times were meant as jokes at my expense.  Under all the fat that many people have told me was a shield - installed by myself - to keep me from romantic relationships, my heart ached.  I learned to leave the dance whenever a slow song was played.

How dismal! I hate those memories - and I wish that I had grown up in a world that encouraged me to dance and feel romantic.  Today, regardless, I will dance.  Perhaps if I hadn't been so hindered by my own self-loathing my whole experience would have been different.  Rejection is something that must be endured by everyone, but I expanded the significance of it so greatly in my mind that I would never take any of the usual risks taken at school dances.  Today, if I was back there, I would go over and ask the one who had captured my heart if he would like to dance.  What would I have had to lose, except regret?

So I end this by begging you to take a risk - if you are at all like I was, and so ashamed of your body that you won't dance, or think romantic prospects don't belong to you - wake up!! Picture me holding your hand like a very good, invisible friend and pulling you towards whoever has captured your fancy.  And remember I'll be whispering words of encouragement the whole way - go to that dance, go to the prom, go to a dance club or just bring someone you like home - and dance with them once for me. 

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02/11/12

Editorial #4   

Try Again   

As with everything in life, sometimes my ideas for this little editorial change. For instance, I was going to write about going to the gym in a sports-bra like outfit. It's never happened - not yet, anyway.

One problem has been money - just not wanting to spend it on a black sports bra I'd be likely to only wear once, considering I have about three white ones I like to wear. Another has been - it no longer feels important to me.

In the past few months, I have been working hard at my anxiety disorder, taking care of my beautiful beasts, writing a column for a newsletter, volunteering at an animal-welfare organization, and going to the gym. Yeah, for the first time in my life I've been regularly going to the gym. It's actually pretty cool - and I haven't felt nearly as discriminated against as I thought I would. I've also been going to aquasize class, which rocks - although I truly feel that walk in my bathing suit is much more daring than working out in a sports bra. I have to go down these stairs that overlook all the buff regulars of the weight room as I make my descent. Fun.  

Though, like I said, it hasn't been that bad. Although the first time I really had to steel my gut against the pure, unadulterated horror. (Can't you just see me grinning?) In my little black two piece with the goofy little skirt on it, I grasped the stair railing for dear life as I made that long trek to the pool. Why, again, can't there be a change area by the pool instead of two miles away? 

I swear, ninety percent of me wanted to just turn tail and never come back. But since I've started this whole self-acceptance journey I've been dying to take an aquasize class. But I had so many worries - how I'd look in my bathing suit, if I'd be able to keep up with the rest of the class (considering I hadn't actually actively exercised in oh, about 15 years), or if there would be any other Fat Chicks there to commiserate with spiritually. 

Well, it turned out that I was the fattest Fat Chick there, but it only threw me a little bit. (Really!) The class started, and while I did have a few problems in the coordination area (I can give up my dream of being a Broadway dancer now!) , I kept up well with the regulars and by the time the class was done I was ready to swim the English Channel! Well, I felt ready to, anyway. And it felt really good. 

I've had some setbacks to my self-esteem at the hands of the gym as well, don't get me wrong - I had one especially embarrassing experience at the Salsa Dance Aerobics class.  I was nervous enough about going - pretty much the same issues as aquasize, though with Salsa there's no water to break your fall - and for the first half did pretty well. Once again I was the largest woman there - and, apparently, the only person who didn't have a dance background - but I was fine with that. The first half of the class I really enjoyed it, and amazed myself by shaking my ass in front of the mirror as joyfully and beautifully as any other woman in that class. But then the steps started getting more complicated, and to make a long story short I felt humiliated and felt the need to leave the class. I was good and depressed over this for a bit, feeling like a failure. 

But something my mother was saying to me finally started to get through - that just because this one little thing didn't work out, did not mean that everything else I had done lately was suddenly null and void. So I couldn't do the Rumba. That doesn't keep me from doing my aquasize, or lifting weights, or doing the elliptical trainer. (I started out at 2 minutes, now I'm up to 24!) It doesn't keep me from running this website or my writing or volunteer work or the other hundred and one things I do that I'm proud of myself for. 

So my point is, don't get discouraged. (Well, for long, anyway.) Part of life is failure, so there's gonna be some things you just absolutely suck at. But don't let it keep you from being your brave gutsy self and getting out there and trying new things. You can never tell if it will be a failure - or a success! So your mission this issue, should you choose to accept it, is to go out and do something new, just for the hell of it. And if you should feel you've had a failure (and remember, as Dee Hakala says, "TRYING is succeeding!"), I wish you the same grit and determination that took you to that adventure's door to take you to another!

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Editorial #5

2003-06-16

"Mirror, Mirror"

Five immortal words have haunted womankind for much too long. 

Mirror, mirror, on the wall… 

Through the centuries, it has been guaranteed that one thing remains constant – whatever is most unattainable is what women must be. Years ago when food was much harder to come by and women were naturally thinner, the artwork of the time idolized a plumper, more voluptuous ideal. And now, when food is all over the place and survival instincts are muted, the ideal our society presents is that of the almost skeletal body.  

So whose mirror is this, anyway? 

Even worse than the beauty burden that society has imposed upon women is the fact that most of us have accepted that burden. We spend most of our lives trying to achieve an ideal we had no real say in creating.

Most of the women I come into contact with (not excluding all the women I know intimately through magazine columns!) seem much too concerned with how to lose that last five, fifty, hundred pounds. Their conversation revolves around how many crunches they do a day, or the latest fad diet so severe that they nearly fainted one day – but the woman who recommended it said it was ‘cleansing’, so it must be healthy. And, hey, it works. They become so concerned with living a ‘healthy life’ – the latest euphemism for thinness – that they don’t have much of a life at all. 

Besides all the years of dieting and self-abuse I’ve put myself through, I once went five days without ingesting anything but water. I remember feeling so incredibly proud. I always previously said that I thought I was beautiful, but I knew what everyone else thought of me. I knew that in society’s eyes, I was ‘ugly’. So I felt I had to change, to conform so I could be pretty. And when I conformed by not eating, I actually felt good. It took years (and discovering the fat acceptance movement) to realize how damaging I was being to myself, how hard I was trying to conform to a type of beauty that everyone else had voted on. That I had silenced the part of me that had once said I knew I was beautiful.  

The saddest facet of all this is that women seem unable to realize how beautiful they are – just as they are. They’re so occupied criticizing themselves through other people’s eyes they never take a moment to look at themselves through their own eyes, to decide for themselves what they think is beautiful. 

Think about it. Imagine you have thunder thighs (a phrase I despise, but it works well for this example since pretty much everyone knows exactly what I mean by it). Thighs that, in the mirror, appear so ugly you can hardly bear to look at them. Go out and find another woman, perhaps a friend. With thighs as large as yours – or larger. And turn that mirror towards her and look at her through it. How do you see this woman with thunder thighs? Is she grotesque? Hideous? Do you hate this woman and despise her for the size of her legs? Are you repulsed, and think that she could never be attractive?

I’m betting on no. I’m betting that you would think, upon reflection, that she was beautiful just the way she is. Now turn the mirror back on yourself, on whatever you think is unattractive, and ask yourself – is that woman really so bad? Is she really so imperfect? Or is she a beautiful human being, just as she is?  

For too long, society has worked as our mirror, reflecting not the reality of beauty but what the mainstream demands to see. And like Snow White fleeing from the evil Queen, so do women run from the realization that they are already beautiful, without a new nose, new thighs, new identity. That they’re already good enough, pretty enough. Beautiful.  

So take that mirror, look into it deeply, and shatter it. Discover your own image of how beautiful you are, instead of letting others dictate it for you. Go discover who can be the fairest of them all.

Editorial #6

2004-03-24

“No Fat Chicks”

I have now had a good twenty years of experience being a fat chick. For only a very few years of that experience have I walked around with the consciousness that I, as a human being, am okay. Acceptable. That the simple fact of having a big body does not, in fact, make me stupid, slow, grotesque or lazy. Does not mean that I will have no romantic suitors unless they think I am an easy lay because of desperation or because they are somehow sick and twisted. Does not mean that my life is somehow incapacitated because my body is my body. Does not mean, by God, that I will stand for drinking at the “Fats Only” water fountain. The time for that is most definitely over.

Years of my life have been spent apologizing for taking up too much space in the world and I am positive that millions of women futilely shared this load with me. Times of scrunching ourselves up on the bus or trying to sink into desks at school. Hiding in baggy clothes to create the illusion of not taking up quite so much space. Silently trying to tell people we’re sorry for this extra space we’re taking up that we’re sure they could probably make better use of. Because, of course, as soon as you are fat your stocks plummet, don’t they?

I’m sick of this attitude, people, and I have had ENOUGH! And I bet you’ve had enough as well. There are a million ways the world tells us that we don’t fit. Airplane seats, amusement parks, comedians on television, the spineless folks who throw insults out their passing car windows. The people who feel the freedom to approach you and try to ‘fix’ your ‘problem’. These facts of life and attitudes towards those of us with bigger bodies are not only unkind and thoughtless, but unsubstantiated as well.

We need to change the world. No one else is gonna do it for us. But how? This is a pretty huge prescription to swallow, hey?

The first step is to change the attitudes within ourselves. Whenever the world is saying no to fat chicks we have to stand up and say to ourselves that this isn’t right! And then we have to scream it out to the world in any way we can. Boycott those who treat fat folk in an unfriendly manner. Start talking to friends and family about it. Maybe start a zine or website. =) Find out about a protest or start your own. Sing it out, sisters and brothers!

Maybe what’s most important is to keep a sense of perspective. It is a hard world for fat folk right now. Everywhere we turn we are confronted by stereotypes, pity, and sometimes even anger. And it’s hard not to collapse under all that pressure from everyone around you – Hate yourself. Be thin. You’re gonna die. You’re never going to be truly happy as you are.

I remember watching an episode of Dr. Phil a while ago with some very articulate fat chicks on – who I later found out were quite high-standing members of NAAFA, though that was never mentioned on the show at all. Dr. Phil was attacking one of the women about her own self-acceptance (way to give good therapy, Phil!!) and he asked her, “So, if there was a pill you could take, with no negative side effects, that magically made you thin, would you take it?”

Haha. Trick question, isn’t it? I think it’s very possible anyone would truthfully answer yes. But that doesn’t get into the complication, the real meat of the issue – WHY would we want to take it? Do we really not like our bodies, or do we not like how we’re treated and how we must live because of it? If we hadn’t been brainwashed from birth, WOULD we want to take that pill?

I’m guessing there would be no need for it. So if you are one of those millions who hate their bodies, try thinking about why you do. I have a really good feeling that none of the answers came from you. And who wants to live by someone else’s standards anyway?!? Vive le freedom!!!!

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