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.
RBI supports all races, genders, classes, and sizes. We try our best to make this a safe space for everyone. If we are not doing our job or checking our privilege, we invite you to please inform us.
Some of the artwork you see here has been created by our founder or moderators, some sourced when applicable. Please be kind enough to source this blog whenever you share it's content.
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.
Don’t know if this really fits with FATshion February but I love this outfit and picture. I’m on the right, my lovely small sized friend and I having some fun. Happy, silly superfatty FTW!
Dress and leggings: Old Navy 26/28
Caveman and cheetah cutouts: posterboard and pure skills :)
ASK:
i think i FINALLY understand the overall concept of privilege. now i’m not saying i don’t understand how as a white healthy non-disabled woman i’m privileged. i do. i struggle with mental illness which is very hard but that’s another issue. what i’m saying is i never understood FAT privilege. as a fat woman i’ve felt marginalized by society, judged poorly by all other women and men, and disgusted by my body. i never realized, though, how much better i have it than so many other fat women. i’ve been so busy with self-loathing and obsessed with dieting that i’ve not realized that at being at 5’8” and 240 and size 20 i’m actually very privileged. i’m still been able to find relatively cute clothes and ‘pretty my fat up’. i don’t get glares in public at my fat. i don’t have to worry about needing two seats on an airline. i get it now. i’m privileged. oh and can i add i’m finally okay that i’m fat. i’m finally understanding through all of this that i’m beautiful just the way i am. i don’t have to lose weight to become a worthy human being. if i never lose another pound it’s okay. your blog has helped me. thank you.
EDIT:
Thanks for the wonderful note! Seriously, when we get messages like these it really matters to us, because we know that we are actually reaching people. So thank you so much!
I just wanted to make a clarification, on a semantic note: I don’t think there is any such thing as “fat privilege”. What you and I have, as smaller fatties, is relative size privilege. We don’t have thin privilege, because we are fat and fatties (even smaller fatties) are hated and discriminated against. But we have some privileges that larger fats don’t have, which you named. We don’t have “fat privilege” (again, no such thing, if there was then larger fats would be more privileged than we are, and they are not, they are more discriminated against). We have “less-fat-but-still-fat privilege” or “size privilege” or “relative size privilege”. Semantics, I know, but in identity politics semantics are really important.
Thanks again, and good luck with your journey to self acceptance!
Yahoo posted an article about the fixation on thigh gaps leading to/encouraging anorexia and other eating disorders today. It barely scrapes the surface of body image issues, but it’s a start.
Hi, in 2011/2012 I lost a total of 150 pounds, leaving me with the body I have now. I’ve always felt a little insecure but since the weight loss I genuinely have had a hard time keeping my head up. I’ve stopped losing and have been about a size 20/22 since June. I’m trying my best to embrace my new body, and little-r belly :)
That first photo is the exact moment I looked in the mirror and for the first time in… over a decade… thought, “Yeah! I’m a total babe!”
Then I took off my sexy librarian glasses, flipped my hair, and was all -BAM!- Covergirl.
(If by posting these, I can reach one person, —one—, and inspire them on[to] their path of body positivity… showing m’ knickers to the internet will have been worth it.)
Hey, I post asking for submissions from larger fats and here they come! Thanks guys, keep submitting images of your awesome selves, and I will keep posting them. You all rock a lot.
Hi there!
Thank you for the call out for submissions, and I figured I’d add in my piece.
I’m a fat black disabled woman, size 22. I have an Illeostome bag that when I’m naked or in revealing clothes show plain as day. The scars and the bag added that extra layer of shame that not everyone experiences. “sure I can wear revealing clothes, but what if this shows? Even if they don’t mind the rolls there’ll surely be SOME teasing about this. This is not MY movement, this is for the people who don’t have these issues.” I almost always wear not revealing long baggy clothes because of those thoughts.
I’m still new to the FA movement, and all the women I see in it are lovely, but I agree that I almost always see the small end of the spectrum of white women. The last fat black woman I reblogged had all of my extra bits and spots and I nearly cried. I want more women to have that moment where they see someone in a movement and say “they look just like ME” and realize this is their movement too.
Since you requested bodies above a size 24/26, I thought I’d submit. My clothing size varies, but I generally fall in the 28 to 32 range.
TW: Self harm, ED,
Hello all! My name is Mel and I am 17 years-old.
I’ve been diagnosed as being Bipolar and what is now, a mild eating disorder. No-one who looks at me would ever imagine that I struggle with eating and keeping it down, but all I can say is; I’m ill, and there’s nothing wrong with that. I’m trying to be as strong as I possibly can, and I’m determined to be mentally strong enough to be on my own in a few months. I have scars, and I have days where I don’t do all too well, but you always have to remember that your disorder does NOT define who YOU are.
Big girls have eating disorders, and that is never going to change. That’s what people have to realize.
tw: weight loss, body shaming
During my first year of college I lost 20 pounds, & although I wasn’t thin I felt the most confident I had ever been, was more active and overall felt healthier. But, during a rough relationship & after, I gained a lot of weight back & overall it totaled almost 40 pounds. This brought my self-esteem to a new low. Recently, I’ve been working really hard to lose weight, and thought I was succeeding because little by little I began to feel smaller - I’d look in the mirror before a shower and smile at myself because I was less disgusted with what I saw.
Anyway, I went home this weekend and actually got on a scale to see how much I weighed, and to my complete disappointment saw that I had actually gained a few pounds. I felt like…all that work…all that trying…it was for nothing. So, if I hadn’t been losing weight, I figured maybe I was just learning to love myself, maybe I was just seeing myself more as just me and less as a body full of flaws. But now…I’ve stopped. I look in the mirror and am more disgusted, I feel like a failure, I worry that I will look in the mirror and be disgusted my entire life…and that’s something that makes me want to just sit and cry sometimes.
I stopped loving myself, after realizing I was loving myself I made it an effort to stop, because in my mind I believed that my body was not worth loving - it is too ugly.
Either way, I don’t know what to do anymore…
I just wanted to share my story with you, in hopes that maybe it could be used to help someone else.
When I was 18 years old I was involved in a severe accident that I only made it out of by the grace of God. The accident left me scarred, both physically and mentally, and it also left me struggling to re-define myself and my place on the Earth. I live with a traumatic brain injury now but, with the help of my friends and family, I am able to live a fairly normal life.
I guess you’re wondering why I’m even telling you all of this? Well, I only just came across this blog a few days ago so I don’t know how familiar you are with TBIs but, people with TBIs often have to deal with bouts of depression, some worse than others, learning disabilities, and heightened paranoia, among other issues. The depression is the worst though. I used to be fairly active but now, sometimes it’s hard for me to even leave the house. This, of course, affects my weight negatively, but I am fighting back! Over the last few weeks I decided to stop letting my TBI symptoms hold me back. I found that if I make myself, absolutely push myself, then eventually my mood turns around. I am already making positive steps towards a healthier me and much brighter future!
I guess I just wanted to come on here and say “Thank you!” for offering a safe haven like this. I’ve been in that place where it feels like everyone has turned their back on you and just need somewhere to go and I love that I have finally found somewhere safe to just be.
(Oh, I am now 24 and I’ve been married for a little over 3 years to an amazing man! I did have to drop out of college because of my injuries, but I plan on going back very soon!)
I created some artwork based around features that are deemed “ugly” by society, when in fact are perfectly natural and wonderful.
I want people to be more aware that being hairy, having asymetric or having large labia is not abnormal or bad and for people with these bodies to be proud of it.
<3
Recently I’ve accepted my body. I’m still working on losing weight, but my main goal is being healthy. I’ve learned that positive thoughts lead you to a positive place. I’m 18, 5’7 200lbs and very proud of my body and what it’ll become in the future. I’ve also recently shaved my head as a fresh start. I think it brings out the beauty I missed before.
tw: weight-related internalized body shaming
In high school I was very thin. I couldn’t gain weight as much as I tried. I had my family up my butt about it, scolding me every time I did not finish a meal or if I was not hungry. I had friends and other peers always commenting on it as well. Either they aspired to be as thin as me and asked me my “secrets” or they accused me of having an eating disorder even if I was sitting right beside them eating a whole cheeseburger. I was not healthy, this I knew, but there was nothing I could do about it. I tried my best to gain weight, but failed. The words people said about me were hurtful. I hated hearing accusation of how I maintained my weight. I hated hearing healthy people wishing to look like me. It was painful.
I lived with that through most of high school. By the end of high school I grew into my body a little more so I looked more “normal”. I was still underweight, but I did not look it as much. So in college I did not receive the same remarks I did in high school and it was fantastic. Yes, people noted my weight. But it seemed normal, non accusatory. And that’s when I started to gain weight. I didn’t quite gain the freshman fifteen in a year, but I did that in more in two years. And finally, I am comfortable in my body. I have a butt! Haha. My current boyfriend who dated me at the beginning of this transformation has noticed the change and said I look a lot healthier (and to him sexier) and that makes me very happy.
I guess what I’m trying to say here is I wish I could have been comfortable with my body before now. If people had commented on my weight less in high school maybe I would have finally stressed less about it and gained weight earlier.
I know most discrimination toward body image is directed toward curvier women, but it does go both ways and I was a victim of that.
I think everyone has the right to be comfortable in their own skin no matter how much they weigh. And people should stop commenting on us unless they have something nice to say. We’re all beautiful. Everyone has a story. Don’t assume you know everything about a person because of their weight.
—-
It’s horrendous to me that someone could perceive someone to “look a lot healthier” simply based on their weight.
WEIGHT DOES NOT DICTATE HEALTH OR WORTH.
YOU CAN NOT MEASURE HEALTH THROUGH VISUALS ALONE.
GOD FUCKING DAMNIT.
(Sorry, frustrations, whatnot…)
It is a total shame that commenters and outside perspectives can have SUCH an impact on our true sense of self. I wish it wasn’t so, that the people we’re surrounded with will inevitably have an impact on how we feel about ourselves…
But we can fight against it in our own little ways.
Thin bodies are not systematically oppressed in the same way fat bodies are. There is not an entire institution against shaming and dehumanizing thin bodies as there is against fat bodies. But that doesn’t make stories like yours less valid in the slightest.
<3 Thank you for sharing.
