WHAT WE'RE ABOUT
We are constantly redefining our own perspectives, and therefore tend to write a lot about our personal experiences. Many followers and contributors are living with anorexia, bulimia, body dysmorphic disorder, depression, and a variety of other body image disorders or mental illnesses, so please be respectful and remember that health applies differently to everyone. Any and all potentially triggering content will be prefaced with a trigger warning.
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We are not health professionals. Any and all advice provided on this blog is supported only by our own research, studies, and personal experiences; nothing more.
This blog is part of the Safe Space Network.
(tw: fat shaming, disordered eating, self harm, suicide)
Let me tell you a story.
There is a girl who is 7. She wants a snack but it is late at night. Momma, a great grandmother promoted due to absent parents, says no. It’s too late she says. Bed time is soon. But the girl begs and begs and before long Momma has her at the table with chocolate milk and a slice of bread, the girl’s favorite. Her father comes in, not absent for a moment, to yell and curse. His daughter doesn’t need that. It’s too late. She’ll get fat. Momma tells him to leave. Tells him he doesn’t have the right. The girl is in tears. Momma consoles. The girl gets bread and chocolate milk every night after that.
The girl is 12. Soccer has filled her out. Muscle beneath the sturdy fat frame. She loves it. She feels athletic. She watches Mia Hamm and feels like her. But other girls don’t feel the same. They say “Look at snow white. Look how pale.” “More like a marshmallow other girls laugh. The girl feels ugly and for the first time, feels fat.
The girl is 13 and wants to wear this cute tankini that she found to summer day camp. Mother, biological mother, disagrees. She says “You’ll just be embarrassed ” The girl asks why. Mother pokes her stomach and says “Do you want people to see that?”. The girl doesn’t care. She wears it anyway and is ridiculed by her peers but she won’t cry in front of them. She’ll hit them with the ball while they’re playing kickball and make them think it’s an accident. She won’t cry until she is at home and hiding and digging her nails so far into her thighs that they draw blood.
The girl quits soccer at 14. They won’t let her play anymore because they don’t think she’s “right for it”. She’s good, she thought. Great a defense. Just couldn’t really run. Too fat, her teammates whisper. The girl changes in the bathroom during her last practice.
The girl is 16 and holding a bag of pills. A bag she had made a year earlier just in case. An emergency escape when the scratches on her arms and thighs are not enough. When her mother and father screaming that she is fat because she is lazy is too much. She takes the pills out one by one and sets them side by side arranging them in a perfect circle and thinks. Today might be the day, the girl decides. But there is a knock at the door and little sister is there. She’s five and scared because the girl had been crying again. The girl puts the pills back in the bag and comforts little sister.
The girl is 18 and going to college. She flushes the pills. She’ll get thin in college. She’ll show mother she can.
The girl is 19 and mother has her on a strict diet. She finds a bag of chips beneath the seat of the truck. A friend of the girl’s put it there. But mother screams and ignores her and says she’s lying. That she wants to be fat and ugly.
The girl is 19 and sobbing. Mother said she never did anything to deserve the love that she gave the girl. Your my mother, the girl thought. But then she thought of Momma and that woman was not her mother.
The girl is 20 and at a family function. She gets a second burger. Mother says angrily, “One day you’ll regret having no control.” Later mother cries and says she’s just afraid of the girl dying. Fat people die, you know. The girl cries. She feels fine. She’s just fat.
The girl is still 20 and Momma dies. The girl feels she lost the one true source of love in her life. She wishes she had the pills. She uses scissors on her thigh instead. She feels ugly in her dress next to her thin mother at the funeral.
The girl is 21 and falls in love. She cries the first time they make love and asks “Why? Why me? You could have anyone.” Her partner is confused. “What do you mean? Why would I want anyone else?”
At 22, the girl is still afraid to eat in front of her mother.
The girl is 23 and finds blogs on tumblr that are fat girls and they love it. She begins to love it.
The girl is 24 and she joins a blog about body image. Hoping to make a difference.
The girl is 24 and she takes a hiatus, not realizing how many bad memories she had locked away.
The girl is almost 25 and she thinks it’s time to live.
The girl sits in front of her webcam and takes pictures and doesn’t have to find one she likes. They are all beautiful. Her stomach, her petite breasts, she loves them. Self love.
“Momma, I found someone else that could love me unconditionally,” the girl says, “Me.”
Hello again everyone. I’m Sam, your absent moderator. I’ve been on an unannounced hiatus for some time now because when I first volunteered I had no idea how triggering this would be for me. I found myself crying daily looking at my tracked tags and the asks/submissions and realized I was doing no one a favor hiding. I had to take a break. Well. I’m back. I’m ready. Let’s do this thing. Let’s do this together.
[Image: Typographic message depicted in pastel purple and peach: “I am forever working against a culture of shame.”]
It’s been a while. Here’s a thing I made for you!
Body positivity is about more than just fat. That is why I said in my previous discussion with Kendall that body positivity was for “all people …fat and/or otherwise marginalized people.” This term is probably too vague, but I think it includes disability, race, sexuality, gender, age, gender expression etc. I also don’t think saying FA is just as important/more political erases anybody’s experience with body positivity, or the importance of body positivity.
To the best of my understanding (which is always limited, and maybe my understanding of the term is not the same as yours, Kendall, in which case please correct me), body positivity is about encouraging everyone to love their bodies because all bodies have inherent value. This is something I completely endorse, and I think it is VITAL to all sorts of identity politics, including FA and anit-racism and feminism and queer and trans* rights and disability rights etc. But body positivity as a concept seems limited to each individual’s personal relationship with their own body: it doesn’t address the systemic abuse and marginalization of fat bodies, or POC’s bodies, or trans* bodies or disabled bodies. I could easily be wrong, and this focus on the personal as opposed to the structural is not how Body Positivity functions as a community, but that is what I have observed of the concept in the last year or so.
I believe we need to do more. In addition to being positive about our own bodies, we need to tear down the structures that do material damage to our bodies and teach us to hate our bodies in the first place. That is why I said that FA is more political/radical than body positivity: because it address and attempts to change those structures, rather than addressing itself to primarily to individuals’ relationships with their own bodies.
Body positivity is so important, but the fact that it is so broad of a term is both its strength and weakness. Everybody needs body positivity for their own body and for different reasons (race, ability, gender expression, size etc). But because it is so broad, it is, in my mind, less useful as a coalition building tool. What is the political agenda of body positivity? To get people to love their bodies and recognize that all bodies have inherent value? What are its goals?
Fat acceptance has specific political goals: expose the pervasiveness of fat discrimination/thin privilege, stop job and wage discrimination against fat people, make public space more open and useable for bodies of all sizes, make our health care less destructive and discriminative to fat bodies, stop discrimination against fat adoptive parents, get positive/any media representation of fat bodies etc. By focusing on fat specifically, as opposed to a broader idea of body positivity, FA can build an agenda and work towards it.
That is why, though I align myself with both body positivity and fat acceptance, I put a lot more energy into FA. Body positivity is a more powerful and fundamental concept than Fat Acceptance because it applies to everyone, but it is a less powerful political tool for the same reason.
The latter is a reaction to the cost of the former.
Any so called “segregation” between fat and slim happened when folks decided people could be re-classed as disease and when fat people accepted that as valid.
Unwittingly, because that was the only right thing fat people could do. The emphasis was on owning up. On seeking to recover one’s honour by making amends according to instructions given by professionals and those around us.
The distance started from there. You have to distance yourself from fat people’s humanity for the idea of them as disease to bypass its implausibility. And the upshot of fat people’s focus on making good the error of fatness was to create distance from our own selves.
This is Thin Privilege: Thin privilege is not being objectified and overly sexualized at a…
Thin privilege is not being objectified and overly sexualized at a very young age because of where your weight is distributed.
Thin privilege is not having men assume you’re older, or sexually mature, or promiscuous in any sense just because you have fat accumulated on your chest, on your…
THIS. SO MUCH THIS.
This is bullshit. You’re saying that thin women don’t get catcalled or general unwanted attention from men because they’re thin? That’s ridiculous.
Fuck this post.
^ Yes yes, TOTAL BULLSHIT. I can tell you now, it’s not only the unwanted attention and catcalls that you get when you’re thin, you also get abuse for being that way. Having “EAT A FUCKING CHEESEBURGER” or “ANOREXIC BITCH” shouted at you isn’t a fucking privilege. Stop thinking you know everything, you’re not immune to being insulted or hit on because of your body type/weight. Fucking hell.
So, right, that’s not what the post was saying at all. If you want to be willfully ignorant, that’s your business, and if you want to compare getting told to eat a cheeseburger to the pervasive and constant discrimination in dating, employment, parenting, traveling, obtaining respectful and proper healthcare, and just putting threads on their fucking body that fat people have, that’s also your business.
To clarify, the post wasn’t making light of sexism, which hits all women. It was a post that conveyed a person’s experience as being objectified for where their weight was distributed, with thin in this post meaning without those curves. And if you want to suggest that women who get curves in current culturally acceptable places at a very young age don’t potentially go through a fuckload of trauma for that, that’s on your conscience.
To say that’s in any way comparable to ‘go eat a sandwich,’ btw, just shows how privileged you really are.
I have to repeat that whilst certain aspects of thin privilege are problematic for me, slim people always lead with it. They either keep telling us or stand silently by whilst we are told how bad fatness is and how all our troubles will be over if we can just choose slimness.
So what’s all the whingeing about when they hear what this means from the other end?
The time to complain is when they are being set up and objectified as perfect people with NO PROBLEMS.
If there are no whines then, there’s nothing to complain about now.
Having developed at a very early age with an affinity for local music, I used to go out to bars all the time starting at age 13 to see my favorite bands play. It was always super fucking surreal to find grown men chatting me up/staring at my chest/offering to buy me drinks - although bringing my age to their attention always proved amusing.
But it was also frightening. You never expect to me made the focus of anyone’s attention at that age, or at least I didn’t. I’d been taught that the extra fat on my body meant that I was less attractive to men and I wasn’t used to being focused on. Whenever it happened I felt like I was meant to ~appreciate~ it, even when it creeped me the fuck out. It was like I was meant to be flattered but something in the pit of my stomach told me that it was wrong. Other men were sexualizing my body from a very young age, before I even understood how to comprehend it. No wonder I was confused.
People of all sizes are capable of experiencing this, but when you develop with a curvy body that is easily objectified and makes you appear older than you really are, it’s like being thrown into the deep end without being given the means to stay afloat. You’re just gasping for air, trying to find peace within yourself and your rapidly changing body, whilst being told “you don’t look like you’re in high school” or “I would never guess that you’re underage” on pretty much a daily basis while eyes make a bee-line to your rapidly ballooning chest and widening hips.
On the other end of the spectrum, thin bodies who don’t develop until a later date (or at all) experience feelings of inadequacy, not being “woman enough” or feeling less desirable.
I don’t have a way to summarize or bring about a final point to my statement, I just wanted to contribute my perspective.
The notion behind “glorifying obesity” does not equate to “glorifying poor health” - it is a battle cry.
It does not choose one body type over another - it is a celebration of fat bodies, a validation of rights.
It begs you to question why a public health crisis targets one body type. Why fat bodies are allowed and encouraged to be openly dehumanized and discriminated against. Why “health” is assumed and used as a weapon, oppressing fat bodies on an systematic level: in our government, during our doctor’s visits, in the media, entertainment and fashion industries.
Why, when push comes to shove, some people will admit “BMI is bullshit” or “fat people can be healthy” but most will stop short of comprehending that much of the damage that is being done to our society is being enforced through this war on fat bodies called the “obesity epidemic”.
Consider that the amount of shame and stigma surrounding fatness due to obesity paranoia is the true epidemic causing damage to our society’s physical and mental health. Consider what would happen if we actively started to work against and challenge it directly by stripping the word “obesity” of its ability to turn fatness into a medical condition.
We have been taught that fatness is to be feared and not revered. When we “glorify obesity” we turn that way of thinking on its head and I believe it is incredibly necessary that we do.
——
My personal sources: The Radical Fatty series and tagged relevant content on obesity and glorifying obesity.
Other sources: Lesley Kinzel’s article on the subject, a great article on Weight-Based Stigma and Bullying, and My Big Fat List of Resources for good measure.
people who say that fat people just need to “be honest with themselves” that they just eat disgusting amounts of food and are slovenly, insecure people
need to be the fuck honest with themselves that they are fatphobic fucktards
They tell you diet’s work, but not to call them that-call them “lifestyle choice”-so your body/mind won’t know you are on a diet.
It’s easy, they say, eat less and do more. When someone has or appears to have lost weight, they’re like, “What’s your secret?”
Diet peddlers themselves sell “weight loss secrets” all the time too. What exactly is secret about eat less do more?
Dieting is both hard and easy, depending on the wind.
The problem is you don’t know you’re fat. Yet, don’t accept that you are fat. That is “giving up” its what causes you to be fat!!!!!
Fat acceptance will cause an “epidemic” of ‘obesity’, even though that is supposed to already have happened.
Always playing fast and loose with history to suit their purpose.
They tell us we are fat because we want to be, but no one would ever want to be fat.
Fat children are created by their parents. Models create anorexic behaviours in children.
Yeah, stupidity, double talk and hate makes for lots of “honesty.”
This may sound stupid, but I’m not exactly fat. More like chubby. Am I allowed to be part of the Fat Acceptance movement? I support all the ideas and think it is a wonderful movement. I just don’t post about it very much because I’m a little wary of being… shunned? I guess because I know I don’t really go through the struggles that most fast people do. I’m generally accepted by society. :/This is not a stupid question. This is not a stupid question. This is not a stupid question.
There is no clear line between fat and thin. Fat is gendered (men get to be fatter with fewer consequences). Fat is seen through race/ethnicity (the myth of fat acceptance in POC communities, particularly Black communities [as if that’s a homogenous thing. I know. I’m talking about what white people write about in books.]). Fat is aged. Fat is seen through ability (Sarah Robles vs a fat person using a cane, scooter, wheelchair etc). Fat is contextual. This is important because we need to know how we are positioned in order to understand how fat hate works and how we can fight against it.
So, how do you act? Own your privilege. That’s a thing that gets said a lot. Here’s what I mean. Know that you’re not really that fat (insert whatever language works for you). Know that the ways in which you act will be read differently because of your size. Use your privilege. Challenge people who say fucked up things about fat bodies so that I and other fatties don’t have to. Don’t speak over fatties. If a fatty is making an argument or critique, cite your sources and let them speak. Remember that lived experience is expertise beyond some shit you saw on TV and even academic theory.
As for what you should do that is activism, do what you’re already doing but do it better. If you’re on tumblr, reblog shit fatties say. If you’re out with friends who say fucked up shit, challenge them. If you’re into art, make political art. Or not. Activism looks like a thousand different things, from loud public campaigns for law reform to quiet moments of everyday life.
In any case, with all forms of activism you’re going to fuck up. (Should I put a *spoiler alert* there?) We all fuck up because we’re enveloped in patriarchal, colonial, capitalist, white supremacist bullshit. Be ready to feel uncomfortable. Be ready to apologize. A real apology: “I’m sorry for [action]. I see that it’s hurtful because [explanation optional, but highly encouraged]. I will work to do better.”
Working to do better means continuing to educate yourself and challenging yourself to unlearn behaviors and ideas. And if you’re ever sorry for the way you made someone feel, you’re not actually sorry. There is no such thing as perfect activism. But there is thoughtful and compassionate activism.
I get this question a lot, how to be a good FA ally. This is a brilliant answer.
First of all, let’s call fat people what they are - FAT - not “fluffy” :)
Sure, Lady Gaga’s heart is in the right place. Anything that motivates discourse around body positivity is a good thing. It’s not what she’s saying or doing that’s the problem - it’s what’s NOT being said or done that’s the problem.
When thin-privileged people become icons for body positivity, there is often little opportunity to bring authentic discourse about fat rights into the discussion. The oppression of fat bodies in society is more prevalent than ever, but fat voices and experiences continue to be erased or deemed irrelevant.
Basically, it’s a different approach than I would take. Gaga is speaking more to people in recovery or struggling with eating disorders, promoting general outcry against societal norms, which is wonderful, but is very one-dimensional. She is still defending her weight gain in the press by saying she is in the process of dieting and trying to lose weight. She’s still entirely misinformed.
It’s a highly public statement coming from a place that basically says “Your body is a good body and you should love yourself…AS LONG AS YOU’RE NOT FAT, IN WHICH CASE YOU SHOULD STILL BE TRYING TO LOSE WEIGHT, BECAUSE FAT IS STILL UNHEALTHY.” Which is wrong, wrong, wrong.
Not to mention, I prefer messaging that focuses less on “loving” ourselves as it shifts responsibility onto the individual (as if a lack of love within oneself is the real problem), when responsibility actually lies with the fucked nature of society.
Considering all of these things, I know it’s unlikely there will be any opportunity for her to bridge the gap between her message and fat positive or fatty-political issues. Ending fat discrimination is often left out of the discussion to remain palatable for the masses, or just not embraced altogether. It’s kind of a problem.
Until fat rights issues become the focal point of high-profile body positive discussion, I will remain unimpressed.
I need photos of your bodies. All colors, all sizes, all kinds, all of them. Close-ups, far away, naked, not naked, whatever.
DETAILS ARE GOOD.
PHOTOS MUST BE AS HIGH QUALITY AS POSSIBLE.
NO CELL PHONE MIRROR SHOTS, I WILL NOT USE THEM.
I’ll be using these photos as design elements for the RBI community.
(See example above for use of photo as background element for RBI identity.)
By submitting, you give me permission to use your photos for any RBI-related design purposes across the internet (Tumblr, Twitter, soon-to-be-Facebook, etc).
Either SUBMIT or EMAIL haleycue@gmail.com
I need photos of your bodies. All colors, all sizes, all kinds, all of them. Close-ups, far away, naked, not naked, whatever.
DETAILS ARE GOOD.
PHOTOS MUST BE AS HIGH QUALITY AS POSSIBLE.
NO CELL PHONE MIRROR SHOTS, I WILL NOT USE THEM.
I’ll be using these photos as design elements for the RBI community.
(See example above for use of photo as background element for RBI identity.)
By submitting, you give me permission to use your photos for any RBI-related design purposes across the internet (Tumblr, Twitter, soon-to-be-Facebook, etc).
I am not sure if I will publish photos to the blog as I receive them or not, so please don’t expect them to be published or used or seen right away. But don’t be surprised if I use your beautiful bod for something, somewhere down the line!
Either SUBMIT or EMAIL haleycue@gmail.com
Lunch break doodles turn into truth-bombs.
I’ve said it once before but it bears repeating, now…
I don’t have permission to use their name so I’m going to keep them anonymous, but this BLEW MY MIND.
“I’ve been mulling over where and when I should post this as, while I think it is an important personal testimony that gives insight into the politics of BMI research, I also still work for a related organisation and there would certainly be severe personal consequences to an overly public critique at this time.
Over the last few years, my research management career (previously researching ecological toxicity thresholds) moved into the sphere of public health and back at the end of 2010 I found myself being offered an opportunity to coordinate the latter stages of a prestigious global metabolic risks project. The project was the culmination of over a decade of concerted efforts to collect data from across the globe on blood pressure, cholesterol, blood sugar and BMI. It was (and is) hosted at a major UK research institution and is staffed by an all-star team of public health statisticians, modellers, and demographers combined with several clinical research fellows with various non-communicable disease specialisations. As research coordinator, I oversaw all aspects of grants, budgets, contracts and reporting of progress to funders. I also tracked progress internally toward specific research objectives and helped ensure all the various researchers remained on track.
So…as the data collection phase came to a close, the analysis phase ramped up a gear. Our institution has excellent access to national (and international) mortality and disease incidence data and the researchers in the team went about the process of applying statistical models to examine the data trends by region and over time. They were able to extrapolate with a very high degree of certainty the trends in each of these metabolic factors. In the case of BMI, the trends were of a general and very slow increase worldwide. Various countries had differing results and there was variation within countries by sex and by age but the general trend was clearly shown to be that the increase in BMI is slowing and will continue to slow over time and then level out.
This was not what our primary research lead had expected to find and so, where there had once been talk of publishing findings to verify the gravity of the soon-to-be-apocalyptic `obesity epidemic’, instead the directive that came down to me was that we would not seek to publish our predictions. The researchers I worked with were serious people who had invested a lot of life into their work and there was quite a lot of frustration at this decision.
The next phase of our research plan was to put our global data set to use to compare country metabolic risk (BMI, blood pressure, cholesterol) trends over time with incidence of cardio vascular disease (CVD) over time. To the greatest extent possible, all other factors were controlled for within the models used for this with the aim of demonstrating the direct relationship between CVD and each of the risk factors on their own.
In the case of cholesterol and blood pressure, there was a clear relationship between those countries with higher recorded data and their heart disease outcomes and mortality. In the case of BMI there was a very weak negative correlation. That is to say that the countries with the highest BMI levels showed lower rates of CVD than those with the lowest BMI levels… and that, generally speaking, the relationship between BMI and CVD wasn’t anything to write home about once other factors were controlled for.
This was when the primary research lead (my boss) started to get really concerned. The statistics were sound. The models were sound. The results of the models went as expected for blood pressure and cholesterol. He wanted to publish but, in his words; “the BMI lobby will destroy us if we publish a negative correlation between CVD and BMI”. I asked him what he meant by `destroy’ and his explanation was that we would be blacklisted for research money… and worse than that become a target to be discredited by `some people with a lot of money and power’ with the result that his credibility as a researcher would take a serious hit.
Kudos is everything in the prestige pyramid that is the world of medical research (and, I suspect, all high-level research). Driven by the ever-increasing scarcity of research grants, the way that such senior researchers often behave toward one another could probably be most politely described as `Darwinian’… it certainly isn’t the kind of collegial or collaborative way in which you might imagine science to be conducted.
So, from the perspective of my boss, there was a problem. He commanded the researchers to change the research specification whereby instead of just looking at the relationship between BMI and heart disease, they were to only consider the BMI data in conjunction with diabetes prevalence. This essentially created a forced relationship in the data between BMI and diabetes that ended up demonstrating a correlation that wasn’t specific to BMI. The actual relationship was one between diabetes and heart disease.
Again… for clarity… the largest data set in the world shows us that the relationship between BMI and heart disease is weak and negative. The relationship between diabetes and heart disease is positive. Countries with higher BMIs often (not always) had slightly higher rates of diabetes but there is no statistical rationale to lump the two together as a conflated variable.
No rationale… unless you have a pre-existing bias to confirm and your future research funding to secure I suppose?
End result… ten years of data… and many years of constructing a statistical model is thrown out of the window. No results are published. The world carries on assuming that there is a positive causal relationship between BMI and heart disease.
I was appalled by this. However, while I am a scientist, I wasn’t qualified to the same level of my colleagues and was aware that my own bias could have been stoking a fury in me that wasn’t entirely justified.
A week later, one of the most senior statisticians (who had lovingly – there is no other word – spent the previous 2 years building the over-ruled statistical model) decided to leave the team on account of the `farce’ that was the senior researchers decision not to jeopardize his career by not publishing the ‘negative’ result with regards to BMI. I admired her sense of principle and followed suit
(albeit one month later as soon as I had secured another job!)”Thoughts?
I have no words.
In the past, my Twitter was strictly personal and mostly design-related. I’ve decided to start integrating my beliefs as a fat activist and body/size acceptance advocate into my online persona throughout the internet (here at RBI, on my Twitter, and eventually on my Facebook).
I’m also toying with the idea of refocusing my personal Tumblr to fall in line as a more personal extension of RBI but I don’t even know.
Making myself more visible and accountable across all internet spectrums is kind of an intimidating thing but we’ll see how this goes.
Either way, I hope you’ll follow me on Twitter for some extra RBI-goodness as I’m looking to follow some new people as well and extending my reach in this community.
Signal-boosting cause I wants to tweets with yous!
In the past, my Twitter was strictly personal and mostly design-related. I’ve decided to start integrating my beliefs as a fat activist and body/size acceptance advocate into my online persona throughout the internet (here at RBI, on my Twitter, and eventually on my Facebook).
I’m also toying with the idea of refocusing my personal Tumblr to fall in line as a more personal extension of RBI but I don’t even know.
Making myself more visible and accountable across all internet spectrums is kind of an intimidating thing but we’ll see how this goes.
Either way, I hope you’ll follow me on Twitter for some extra RBI-goodness as I’m looking to follow some new people as well and extending my reach in this community.