Why you mad at fat people?

Apparently talking about fat hatred and stigma makes some people really angry.  So I figured, why not address it all at once, and then maybe we can put this all behind us and move on.

I'm aware that this is probably an unachievable dream, but you can't blame me for trying.  At the very least, I can just throw out a link and keep it moving.

Here's the tl;dr version in big, bold letters--

If someone saying that fat people deserve to treated like human beings and not punished or demeaned makes you angry-- You are the one who has a problem.

Maybe you should take a moment (or several) and figure out why someone insisting on their right to exist in the world makes you feel furious and threatened.

Look, it's not easy to confront that you are in a group of people that has privileges.  That you- through nothing you've personally done- have benefited while another group of people has been pushed down.  But that is the reality of the situation.

I am talking about institutional discrimination.  I am not talking about one on one personal interaction, which depending on the situation, can be hurtful/devastating for anyone.

I think we can all agree that no one should be shamed or bullied or insulted about their body or anything else.  Hell, if we could institute a ban on commenting on other people's bodies at all, I think that would probably be better.

But I am not going to stand by and let people say that there is no organized, institutional discrimination of fat people. Not without a rebuttal. Because it's a lie.  Just because you choose not to see it, doesn't mean it doesn't exist.

And here's another fact for you--

If you can choose to ignore or dismiss the oppression of a group, that is privilege. 

I don't have that luxury.  

Angry people, I'm not trying to insult you, but it sure does look like you've made up your mind to be angry before you even finish reading the entire post.

I keep getting comments/emails from people screaming at me for insulting/ridiculing them, for attacking them for being too thin.  I never did.  I've gone out of my way on several occasions to say that body shaming is never ok.

Also, a lot of the comments just go to prove my point, as they thinsplain to me that I'm lying about my life.  Do you see how you are proving the point that people call me a liar about my fat life experience all the time?  

They also want to know why I don't acknowledge the suffering of very thin people.  Well.  For one thing, I have no idea what you're talking about.  I'm not a very thin person.  I would suggest that you go get your own blog and write about that yourself.

And also because if you want me to say that the discrimination of very fat people and very thin people is the same-- I won't.  I can't do that, because I don't believe it is.

Oh, I believe that people say ugly and vicious things to the very thin.  I believe that you have a harder time finding clothes in some places at a US size 0 than someone who is a 6.  I believe you.  

BUT!  Is the government engaged in a war on your body type?  The War on Obesity is real.  Is there a War on the Underweight?  I'd like to see some links, please.  

I included a whole bunch of links in my last piece about fat people- women especially-- making less money as a group, about not being able to get health care at all, about juries not believing fat women.

I'm not even going to get into thin people who keep comparing that they have trouble finding clothes sometimes to fat people who can't find ANYTHING.  I can't with y'all. 

Maybe the next time you get angry feels about something I've written, you could read the whole thing before coming at me, including the links.  I took the time to look this shit up for you, the least you could do is read it before you try to put words in my mouth.

And oh yeah-- don't put words in my fucking mouth.

Now let me address the women who scream at me that they don't want to hear about fat people because they used to have an eating disorder.

Excuse me.  You are not the only person on earth with an eating disorder.  I HAVE AN EATING DISORDER. I have disclosed my ED multiple times on this blog, and if you would have cared to read the entire piece, you would have seen me disclose AGAIN.  It is my unscientific hunch that you would be hard pressed to find a fat woman in the West who doesn't have some kind of disordered eating patterns/thoughts from all the malicious dieting crap we are subjected to.

I am sorry you have struggled with an eating disorder.  Again-- me too.  But your eating disorder is NOT an excuse for you to hate fat people.  It's not an excuse for you to ignore my actual words to spew vile hatred at me.

Do you hate and fear the idea of being fat?  Of fat people?  It's no surprise to me that you would, if you have an eating disorder.  BUT.  I am not willing to be the walking embodiment of what you hate and fear.  I am a PERSON.  

Learning to not hate the idea of fat and my own fat body has been helpful to me in my continuing recovery.  Maybe it could help you too.

But it's not my job as a Fat Person (tm), to eat shit from people with eating disorders.  Having an eating disorder isn't a free pass to be bigoted.  I'm sorry.  But that's the truth.

If you want to see your story of recovery from an eating disorder out there-- go start a blog.  It's free.  But I can't tell your story for you.  Only you can do that.

I'm happy to talk to you about my ideas.  If you don't agree, or you think I've gotten something wrong, you can contact me, and I'll talk to you.

But I am not going to talk to people who scream at me on the internet without even having read the entirety of what I have to say.  I'm going to ban you for being a troll.  There's too many screaming, angry people and just one of me.

I'm too busy to deal with that, and I value my mental health too much.

So.  That's that.  Let's see where it goes from here.

Thinsplaining- Part Two

I was really thinking about letting this go, I swear.  But since Fucking Gawker decided to double down on the hideous Washington Fucking Post article where a bigot who also happens to be a doctor spends an entire article discussing his disgust at a fat patient. (Check out this Shakesville article for a breakdown.)

This asshole at Gawker decides to explain to fatties that they're delusional, that doctors only really really care about their health when they don't listen to their fat patients, and that fat people are a bunch of lazy whiners who could all lose weight if they just tried hard enough.

He's hit a thinsplaning home run here.

Let's review what thinsplaining is.  We'll go point by point.

It is thinsplaining when a thin person tells a fat person that their experiences didn't happen or that their interpretation of the experience is wrong. 

When you tell me that the doctor didn't fat shame me, or that woman on the street probably wasn't laughing at me, or that thin people have a hard time finding clothes too.

Thin people do not get to tell fat people what is and isn't fat shaming.

If you aren't fat, then fat shaming is not a part of your life.  Most decent people can recognize that being called a fat bitch is a part of fat stigma, but the same people will think it's perfectly ok for a doctor to refuse to listen to or treat their fat patients for anything.  

There are a lot of doctors out there who suck at their fucking jobs, and all they diagnose a fat person with is being fat.  No fucking shit, asshole.  I have had better luck diagnosing myself with Google that I'm gotten out of most doctors. Doctors refuse to help fat people ON THE REGULAR, and we fucking know it.  We have LIVED it.

But, please, thin person, do tell me that I'm being "too sensitive". If I say someone is laughing at me because I'm fat, it's because I've had a fucking entire lifetime to know what that looks like.  

Your thin person experiences are NOT THE SAME as mine.  Do not come to me with some derailing bullshit about how you have it hard too.

Not being able to find clothes as a thin person is not the same as not having anything available to you as a fat person.  And before the sneering assholes get their mockery ready-- these fat bitches are just concerned about clothes-- try living in the world WITHOUT CLOTHES.  

Try starting your first office job with a business dress code, and not being able to find anything to wear.  It took me years to build a wardrobe I could wear in an office job, and I have been given warnings at work for "looking sloppy" in the limited clothes I could find.  Or for being "inappropriate" when wearing the exactly same clothes as a thin person. 

Let's say Josh and I were to fly somewhere and our luggage gets lost.  We could buy him enough clothes to get through a week with very little trouble.  It would be annoying and who wants to spend the extra money, but it would be doable.

But I would be fucked.   Completely and utterly fucked.  There is one physical store where I can buy clothes, Lane Bryant, and their selection is bullshit AND 4 times as expensive as other stores. 

I would be devastated, because a week's worth of my clothes represents months of scouring the internet for options.  Because I have put so much time and care (and money) into finally being able to control my outward presentation and the loss of those clothes would be a huge blow.  

For years, I have never been able to participate in fashion, never been able to control how I look, never had an option.  And I am one of the lucky ones.  People who are sized out of online fashion, people who don't have a lot of disposable income, people who aren't interested in dressing femme but still want clothes- those people still don't have options. 

You don't get to dismiss that as not important.  If you are a thin person, you have a range of options I could only dream of.

It is thinsplaning when you tell me that the doctor only cares about my health when they ignore my actual health to just tell me to lose weight.  If you are thin, you have no idea how doctors treat fat people.  Let's say this again and be clear--

There is no proven link between someone's weight and their overall health.

None.  In fact, there is something called the Obesity Paradox, where studies have shown that being fat can actually improve health outcomes sometimes.  Why is this a "paradox"?  Why, because everyone knows that being fat is bad for you.  They know it so hard that they ignore evidence to the contrary and label it a "paradox".

Here's what we do know.  Dieters fail to maintain weight loss over the long term about 95% of the time.  Losing and gaining weight over and over is called weight cycling and that is actually proven to be bad for your health.

". . . overweight people who are metabolically healthy could increase their risks of the very diseases they tried to avoid in the first place if they lose weight and gain it back again.”

We don't know how to make fat people thin permanently.  It doesn't matter that "everybody knows" that you should just diet and exercise.  Everybody used to know the world was flat too.  Common wisdom doesn't mean shit to me, especially when weighed against my entire life's experience, which proves it wrong. 

Medical professionals ignore their fat patients and refuse to help them ALL THE TIME.  It is super fucking common.  Maybe the bad health outcomes of fat people have more to do with the fact that they can't get any medical help and less to do with their fatness?  JESUS WHAT A CONCEPT.

This is why I hate and fear going to the doctor.  It's bad enough to be abused and shamed in every day life, but in a doctor's office it is almost intolerable.  I already feel vulnerable, just by having to be there in the first place.  And to have a doctor refuse to help you?  Or make fun of you?  It leaves a mark.  

So don't thinsplain to me what the doctors actually mean.  You aren't there.  You haven't had those experiences.  How would you know?  

No one owes you or anyone "health".  All people deserve basic human rights and dignity, no matter what. 

And to the next person who comes at me with some bullshit about me costing you tax dollars-- I'm laughing in your face, you stupid asshole.  

I believe in single payer, but until we get that in the USA-- my health care is a part of MY WAGES which I earn through MY LABOR.  Go fuck yourself.

Finally--

It is thinsplaining when a thin person explains to a fat person how to lose weight.

If you just did X, Y, and Z- you could lose weight.  It's easy!  

If you weren't such a pig who eats (insert troll amount) of food/calories a day, you wouldn't be fat.

You can't be eating just (whatever amount of food I actually eat), cause you wouldn't be fat if that's all you ate.

Have you tried just walking around the block?

Calories in, calories out!  It's physics! 

How stupid you must think fat people are.  I wonder if that's what people think when they see me.  Do they think I'm so stupid that I've never even heard of dieting?  That I don't know what exercising even is?  

I am a woman in America.  Please let me assure you that I know what a fucking diet is.  I spent the entirety of my childhood on a diet, as I've written about before.  And what did I get for it?  Just an eating disorder.  That's all.

And even when I was fully in the throes of my restricting and purging, and taking diet pills every day-- I still wasn't thin.  I think the diet pills and other eating disordered behavior have a huge part in the mental breakdown I eventually suffered in college.  But it never made me thin.

Running every day for miles didn't make me thin.  Swimming every day didn't make me thin.  NOTHING EVER MADE ME THIN.  I haven't been thin since I was 5 years old.

Do the people who push these diets think that those of us who say no are getting away with something?  That everyone else has to suffer, but we've somehow gotten a free pass?

I wouldn't describe my history with diets and people who can't stop abusing me about my weight as a "free pass".

If you are a very thin person who has been accused of being anorexic or who was told to "eat a sandwich"-- I am sorry that happened to you.  It's not right for people to comment on your body.

BUT!  Other than your feelings being hurt (which is a real thing and I'm not discounting it)-- what else is the bad outcome for you?

Did it make people think you are a liar?  Did it make your job pay you less?  Did it make it less likely for a jury to believe you?  Did it make it impossible for you to get medical care?  

I'm sorry that someone was mean to you, truly.  It's not acceptable.  But it's not even close to being the same thing.

Here is the bottom line.  If you are thin (and for the sake of this discussion, I'm defining thin as someone who can shop in non plus-sizes)-- you don't have the same life experiences as I do.  You don't have the right to erase my life by derailing me or telling me that my life didn't happen.

Knights of Badassdom review

You've probably seen the Knights of Badassdom trailer.  Maybe you wondered- hey. Whatever happened to that movie with Tyrion from Game of Thrones in it and that guy from True Blood?

Well, it's out now, for streaming rental.  And maybe you're wondering, should I see this movie?

I'm gonna say, no.  Don't see it.  If you liked the trailer, don't see it.  It's not anything like the trailer.

I thought it was going to be this light send-up of LARP (live action role play) comedy thing.  It wasn't.  Look, I'm not a LARPer-- the theatrics of LARP don't appeal to me.  I'm not that social, and I don't enjoy the performance aspects .  The parts of role-playing that appeal to me are the more strategic fighting parts (like which spells to use in what order in a Final Fantasy game) and the parts of Assassin's Creed where you upgrade your ship.  I really like upgrading things!

So I don't come to you as a LARP expert.  But I have known people who are into it, and I'm here to tell you, Knights of Badassdom doesn't know SHIT about the LARP.  It's got role-playing confused with SCA (Society for Creative Anachronism).  There was no dice, no rock-paper-scissors-- no way to determine if your spell worked or if you actually landed a hit.

Peter Dinklage dies way too early.  The movie isn't really very funny.  It's more of a half-assed horror movie.  And there are lots of places where the continuity just doesn't make any sense.

Firefly River and True Blood guy start walking in the middle of the day to a parking lot that couldn't  be more than 500 yards away, but they are still walking into the middle of the night.  A book that the movie said couldn't be destroyed by anything (ANYTHING! EVAR!) is set on fire. (No one tried burning it ever?)  Lots of stuff like that.

But the biggest problem is that it's got a load of contempt and attitude for the people this movie is supposedly about.  Who is this movie supposed to actually be for? Really.  Who is the audience for this? It mocks the subculture (and not in a jokey way), but those are the people who would actually be most likely to see this movie.  This movie is making exactly no one happy.

If you want to see this, my advice is to wait until it's streaming for free and bring very low expectations.

Doctors hate fat people

So.  I had this entire post written out about the horrible HORRIBLE fat shaming 'article' by a doctor that was in the Washington Post.  

And Squarespace ate it.  Apparently, you can click and drag entire blog posts into the trash, which the website will happily save for you automatically, which makes the entire thing impossible to recover.

FLAMES.  FLAMES ON THE SIDE OF MY FACE.

I was maybe 3 sentences from being done with that post.  Two hour's worth of work, just wasted. *cries in frustration*

So here are the things I wanted to say- in a much more condensed nutshell.

1- Go read this piece at Shakesville for a complete take down of this nonsense, hateful article.

2- Fat hatred is so rampant and accepted that this doctor feels completely comfortable using his real name to 'admit' he was an unprofessional jackass that hates fat people.

3- Fat people are people. Not fucking object lessons.

4- I'm not surprised this patient died, if all his doctors treated him this way.

5- Fat acceptance isn't just about clothes. Fat hatred kills people.

6- Shit like this is why I hate and fear doctors.

Online dating!

Hello, lovely peoples!  It's Valentine's Day, so I thought I would give some tips on online dating, with some specific advice for fats.

Fattin' with my boo

I was on OkCupid, off and on, for about 3 years before I met Josh.  I dated an ex prior to Josh, and I was on it before that too.  I have a lot of non-productive time on OkCupid under my belt.  So, for Valentine's Day, I thought I would try to summarize what I learned and now am no longer using.

For me, online dating was really the only way to go.  None of my friends seemed to know anyone they would hook me up with, and I've successfully picked up a guy in person only once.

I did not love the dating process, I have to admit.  I find meeting new people to be very stressful. I've never been one for randomly hanging out in bars, trying to get picked up.  I'm an introvert, mainly, so I like staying home.  But I had a medical crisis that led me to re-evaluate my life, and I made the decision to quit messing around with online dating and really give it a go.

Try to use a service that has a decent amount of members in your area, and treat that shit like a 2nd job.  I made a commitment to write to at least 4 or 5 people a week.  I decided it was important to me to find someone, and I started treating it like was important, which meant devoting time to it. Towards the end, I was writing to 2 or 3 people a day, but writing short things.  I think the first thing I wrote to Josh was only a couple of sentences in the email.  

Let people know you're fat right in the profile.  I wrote at the very top, before any of my other totally witty and awesome profile-- "I am a plus-size girl. If you aren't into that, it's cool. But I'm not for you."  Then the chips fall where they may.  If you don't act like it's something to be ashamed of, you'll do better.  And a lot of people won't get back to you, but the ones that do will be worth your time.  

Dress up the way that makes you feel most awesome, and have a friend take loads of photos of you.  Try to use a nice camera if you have one, and don't just use mirror selfies. Take lots!  Close up and full body. Don't let the bad photos bum you out. Delete the bad ones and keep going.   I used feel really bad about shitty photos of me, but really, it's just a question of taking a lot and getting more comfortable.  Almost everyone takes bad photos sometimes.

Include at least one full-body photo on your profile.  Lots of thin women say they're fat, so I think straight guys sometimes have a filter on where they don't actually hear that.  I'm not looking to surprise anyone with my body, so I want them to know-- I am an actual fat person, not a thin woman looking for compliments/validation.  My body is nothing to be ashamed of.  But I'm not looking to surprise anyone with it.   

Go on tons of dates and don't fuck around with chatty people.  Talk to someone maybe twice and then propose a date.  If they don't want to go on the date, move on to someone else.  There are SO many people who are just fucking around and never actually intent to meet you or anyone.

See multiple people at the same time.  I never actually did this because I find that much going out to be exhausting, but it's a good idea.  

Numbers, numbers, numbers.  There is no one person for you.  There are multiple people you could like, so the more you churn through, the more likely you are to find someone you really like.

If someone doesn't want to date you, don't take it personally.  As fat people, I know this can be hard.  I was told for years that no one would want me ever, and it was easy to allow dating to feed into my self-loathing.  But dating is a natural winnowing process.  You aren't going to want to date most people either.  I'm not offended if people don't find me attractive, for whatever reason.  It's not a referendum on my worth as a person, no matter what patriarchy and sexism say.

Someone totally does want to fuck you.  I promise.  Being fat or weird or whatever it is that you may think makes you an untouchable plague person-- someone out there wants to fuck you.  Someone wants to have a relationship with you.  These people are not always the same people.

If you want to fuck people, then fuck them.  If you don't, then don't.  If you want to treat dating like a game to see how many people you can fuck-- they sell condoms in bulk on the internet.  You go, you!  Have fun.  If you don't want to fuck people until the 3rd date (or whatever), that's cool too.  If you don't want to fuck ever, you should make sure you're honest about that, and then you go, you too!  Maybe you put that in your profile tho, cause most people are looking to fuck at some point, and honesty will save you a lot of time.  Example- I was not interested in dating people in poly relationships, so I appreciated when people said that up front in their profiles.

Straight guys are sometimes really terrible.  Many times, I have had a guy I'm not interested in come at me with some version of- "FUCK YOU, FAT BITCH".  Motherfucker, YOU came to ME.  You think I should be grateful for your weird, creepy attention, cause I'm fat and no one would want me any way.  *BARF*  I think you can block people on OkCupid, and you should just block these assholes.  Look, dudes.  There is plenty of peen out there.  I can find another one. It's not that difficult.  And the fact that you just freaked out and screamed at me is an excellent indication that you are a scary creeper that I don't ever want to see in real life.

And finally-- Guys who say 'I'm not a creeper' are always creepers.  Always.  ALWAYS.

My health is my business

I hate the word "health".  As soon as someone starts talking about doing this or that for health reasons, I wanna Hulk smash the world.  Especially if they're telling me what I should do for my health.

As a fat person, people seem to want to 'help' me with my health all the time.  And it fills me with rage.

Why?  Why would I be so angry about the word health?

Let's see.  Maybe it's because people have used their ideas of health to demean me my whole life?  To stigmatize and punish me.  Maybe that's why.

The same behavior that in a thin, white teenage girl would be immediately recognized as an eating disorder is just normal behavior for everyone else, you see.  You don't have to hide ED when you're fat.  People will encourage you to eat even less.  Wow.  What a success story, girl who manages to live on less than 1000 calories a day and exercise for hours and hours.  Here's some diet pills.  Keep going.

The part of my brain that has ED, I think of it as just being broken.  It's broken, and it tries to get me to hurt myself.  I have to build walls around it, that part of my brain that I can't fix and I can't change.  I can't go back and undo the abuse and the 'kind' concern to stigmatize a fat little girl-- all the things that gave me an eating disorder in the first place.

It started when I was a little kid and my mother told the pediatrician that I has food allergies.  "Well, they must be working in reverse, because your daughter is FAT!"  He couldn't stop chuckling at his little joke, and I don't remember my mother saying anything.

Almost every single doctor or nurse I have ever seen in my life has had some fucked up bullshit to say to me about my weight.  I tell the doctor I hurt my knee in a car accident-- he tells me to lose weight.  I tell the doctor my birth control is giving me panic attacks, and she dismisses my concerns and says maybe I wouldn't get panic attacks if I just lost some weight.  The doctor asks me if I eat junk food all the time and calls me a liar when I say no, because I'm "SO FAT" that I must eat McDonalds for every meal.  The physical therapist who listens to me say I hurt my back playing soccer and then suggests I lose weight.

Doctors never believe me.  And why should they?  No one else does.  People don't mind making all sorts of comments about what I eat.  They're surprised, you see, that I eat what they consider 'healthy' foods, because someone as fat as I am should be eating 3 or 4 full size bags of Doritos every day, or whatever they fuck they think when they're judging me.

I hate to break it to you, world, but weight doesn't equal health.  And here's another shocking thought-- no one owes it to you to conform to what you have decided is healthy.  Some people can't do those things.  And some people don't want to, or don't have time, or whatever their lives look like.

Everyone deserves the same dignity and consideration, even if we think they're unhealthy.  I am fat, and I have a panic disorder and an eating disorder.  As a society, we have decided that the panic disorder is ok (kind of) because it's "not my fault", but the ED isn't real because I'm not thin and the fatness is definitely my fault, so since I'm at fault, I get to be punished by society.

Never mind that 95% percent of people who diet will gain the weight back, usually plus some, and that gaining and losing weight on the regular (weight cycling) is known to be very bad for your heart.  Never mind that we don't know how much of the bad health outcomes of fat people can be put down to people being afraid to go to the doctor and the constant stress of living in a world that hates your body and wants to force you to disappear.

We live in a world where anyone on a diet is encouraged to comment (at fucking length) on their weight loss and hoped-for weight loss and their exercise routines, so much so that if you find that kind of talk triggering, it is nearly impossible to get away from.  

Fat activists, who have the radical idea that fat people are PEOPLE and should be treated as such, are accused of promoting obesity.  While any dudebro with an internet connection can insult a fat person and then turn around and claim it's for our "health".

Fat stigma isn't just when someone calls me a fat bitch.  Fat stigma is where I can't go about my life without fear that some rando is going to try to "help" me by talking at me about my health.  Fat stigma is making fat people pay more for insurance, even though there is no evidence that being fat costs health providers any more money.  Fat stigma is that I have to buy all my clothes on the internet because I can't find any in real life.  Fat stigma is the partners of fat people being made fun of, sometimes to the point where they would rather keep the relationship a secret or end it.

And on and on and on.

Let's not pretend this is about health.  There is a group of people society has chosen to demonize, and that's on society.  Don't pretend it's for my own good.  Everyone is sooo concerned about the physical health of fat people, but no one gives a DAMN about their mental health.

Also, let's be clear.  I reject the idea of cutting anyone out of the health care system.  I support socialized, single payer health care.  I think health care is a human right- for everyone.  This includes smokers, fat people, drug addicts, or anyone else that people think have made choices that should exclude them from health care.  No one should be excluded from health care, no matter what they do.  That should one of the very basic principles of a functioning and compassionate society.

But Jeebus Christ, if that's the paradigm you're going to use to decide who gets health care-- whoever costs the most-- then I guess we're cutting off all the athletes.  Cause no one gets injured more than athletes.  And hey-- no one made you ski down that mountain and break your leg.  No one made you run that marathon.  That was YOUR choice.  No health coverage for you.

Or hey, maybe we can cut off anyone who gets an STD.  No health coverage for you!  That was your choice.  

No health coverage for pregnancy or birth!  YOU decided to get pregnant! 

Fat hatred is just in the air, so internalized that most people never even question it.

But please, come at me with your fake concern about my health.  Because that's so very valid.

We're cuties.

I love photo booths!  ADORABLE!

My fat childhood.

This may not come as a shock, but I was a fat kid.  Behold!  9 year old Ali.

The 80s!

Being a fat kid is not any kind of fun time.  I got the message that something was wrong with my body and with me.  I got it early, and I got it hard.

I remember times when the entire class would get candy, and the teacher wouldn't give me any.  "That's not for you."  

I can almost still feel the sensation of having a teacher pull a cookie out of my hand, in front of the entire class.  "You don't need that."  I remember the sick crawling sense of humiliation.  And I remember the never-ending, relentless bullying by other kids.  

I was weird.  I had moved there in the middle of a school year, and I had a weird accent.  And I was fat.  Fat fat fat.

When I came home one day at age 7, crying to my parents that no one liked me, no one wanted to be my friend- my father said, "Well, it's because you're fat."  And they put me on a diet.

I would be on a diet every day for the rest of my life in that house.  Everything I ate was monitored, and when I didn't lose weight, my father said I was defiant.  I was rebellious.  I didn't obey.  My family is evangelical, Protestant Christian of the fire and brimstone variety.  

To not obey is a sin against your father and the Lord.  Sins get punished.  And my father didn't have time to wait for the Lord to do His punishing so he hurried the process along.  I can't remember a single day of being small where I wasn't being punished in some way.  And I can't remember a single day when I wasn't hungry.

I used to wake up in the middle of the night and sneak into the kitchen to steal food. Because I couldn't sleep.  Because I was hungry.  Because what I was allowed to eat got smaller and smaller, but my body never did.

Stealing is a sin.  And sins get punished.  "You never listen to your father".  I never got thin.  And no one at that school ever liked me much. 

The rules always change.  You can eat this but not that. No, wait, THAT but not THIS.  Starches are bad.  No red meat. Red meat is good, it's fruit sugar that's bad.  Drink more water.  Thick, disgusting, sickly sweet shakes instead of meals.  Drink skim milk. No, 2% milk.  Wait, it's carbs that are bad.  

Cut all your food into 5 pieces before eating it.  Chew everything 30 times before swallowing.  Never eat everything on your plate.  The cabbage soup diet.  The grapefruit diet.  Take these herbal supplements.  Eat these packaged meals.  Take fiber pills.  Take laxatives.  Take these potassium pills because the diet you're on now doesn't have enough potassium in it by itself and without these pills, you'll get an irregular heart beat.

The worst was the fiber cookie diet.  I would choke down this huge fibrous 'cookie' then I was supposed to drink 3 glasses of water.  The fiber would soak up the water and expand the 'cookie' on your stomach, making you feel full.  And that was a meal.

PE was a special kind of torture.  Some schools would weigh all the kids and announce the numbers out loud.  My number was always the biggest.  Too big. Too much.  More bullying.  

At one school, they had a fat caliper, which is a special pincher that they used to grab as much of the flesh of my back as they could.  The pinching hurt, and when it was done, the gym teacher announced-- Obese.

Despair.  I was 13, and I had been living on Diet Coke and pretzels for months.  I read fat and calorie counts like the Bible.  I prayed to Jesus to make me thin.  I ran after school, every day, until my legs hurt.  I felt faint and dizzy much of the time, and I was still fat.  Still.  Always.

When I was in 16, my father used to wake me up every day to go running before school.  I ran and ran.  I ran until I threw up.  I made myself throw up more, after meals.  I lost track of how to tell if I was hungry.  

My father said if I couldn't get my weight under control, no one would ever want me.

I dreamed that maybe something awful would happen to me, something bad, but not too bad.  Something that would put me in a coma or maybe wire my jaw shut so I could lose weight, finally finally.  

So I could finally be ok.  So I could finally live without being ashamed.  Without the despair and pain.  

You don't get diagnosed with an eating disorder when you're fat.  Disordered eating is how fat people are supposed to act.  I was never offered help for purging or severely curtailing my food.  I was given diet pills and encouraged to go further.  I was still fat, you see.  And anything that turns a fat person into a thinner one is good.  Even if it only lasts for a couple of months.  Even if it wrecks your mental health.

These are difficult memories for me, and they contain a lot of pain.  Why am I dragging all this up, to lay it out for people to see?

Two main reasons.  I find that I am scalded by the shame of these memories, more so than I would like to admit.  But I know there are other people out there who have been through similar abuse.  I feel such relief in seeing other people talk about their experiences as fat people.  Maybe someone else can feel some comfort in my shitty memories.

And second reason is that I constantly hear people talking about fat kids in ways that make me want to scream.  The War on Obesity is a war on fat people.  It is a war on our diginity, our sanity and our very lives.  Weight loss surgery KILLS PEOPLE.  A LOT.

So when people discuss the problem of fat kids, that pisses me off.  Fat kids endure extreme levels of bullying.  Do we know why some kids are fat and other aren't?  No, we fucking well don't.  

So if you're using kids being fat as a short hand for "I think kids should exercise more and eat better", cut it the fuck out.  You are shaming SMALL CHILDREN.  No good comes from shaming, and especially little kids! YOU should be ashamed, if that's your attitude.  What the FUCK is wrong with people??

If whole foods and exercise is good for kids, then it's good for ALL kids.  It seems like people think that bullying is super bad, until it comes to fat people.  Then it's just 'motivating'.

Fuck that.  And fuck you, if you think that.

ERH MER GERD!

So, this thing happened on Saturday...

Josh and I got engaged!

ERH MAH GERD!

If you follow me on any social medias, you probably already know this, cause I was posting like a crazy face all weekend, but still.  This is the blog announcement, y'all.

And since I'm announcing our engagement, let me take a moment to just tell you more about Josh.

Josh is amazing.  He's so handsome and adorable and smart.  He does nice things for me, all the time.  Big things and little things.  

He saves articles for me to read and buys books for me he thinks I will like.  He washes dishes and takes care of cats.  He has the most gorgeous blue eyes, and he has a dry and witty sense of humor.  He makes me laugh.  

He is my favorite person, he loves me, and we are getting married.

How awesome is that?  More awesome than I thought I might ever get in my life.

Thin Shaming. Not a thing

Ok, so it's come to my attention that there are people who think thin shaming exists in opposition to fat shaming.  I do not agree, and I want to talk about it.

For one thing, I am hearing a lot of defensiveness when we, as fat people, try to discuss our experiences.  And there are people who are claiming that just by talking about fat positivity, we are thin shaming people.

"I don't like what you are talking about and I want to you stop, otherwise you are the bad one, for making me feel bad."-- This is what I'm hearing here.

So.  Let me walk you through it.

There are systems of oppression that lift some people up and shove other people down. Almost everyone has some ways in which they are raised up and other ways in which they are shoved down.

This is called intersectionality.

So here is another list of things that are not the subject of systemic oppression/discrimination--

White people, men, straight people, cis gendered people, Christians in America, rich people, etc.

You can't be discriminated against if you are in the group with the power.  

We have watered down the definition of discrimination so much that people think if they perceive that a gay person or person or color or non-Christian (etc.) is mean to them, that means that they are now the legit victims of discrimination or oppression.

Or to put it another way, and paraphrase prominent atheist, Matt Dillahunty-- "If I see you beating someone with a stick, and I take your stick away, I'm not oppressing you."

Ok, but almost every woman in the world has stories about how they were made to feel shamed about their bodies, and many of these stories are women who have been mocked or shamed for being too thin or "skinny" or called anorexic, or for losing weight.  

Am I trying to say that these things don't happen?  No.  Absolutely not.  I know that this happens, and it is very painful for the women at the receiving end of it.  

But it's still not thin shaming.  I propose that it is mostly misogyny.  Society sets women up to compete with each other for the attention of men.  And if being thinner is considered more attractive (and we all know it is), then some women will respond in a competitive and angry way at the women who are winning the body wars.

Why would individual men need to oppress individual women when we are so very willing to do it ourselves by internalizing the culture's misogyny and enforcing it on other women?  

Hence-- body policing.

This obsession with forcing everyone's body into a mold that almost no one can ever fit is very convenient for the ruling class.  Almost no one cares about what they do, while everyone is expected to perform the required rituals of dieting.  And if people destroy themselves through weight cycling and eating disorders, why should they care?

Which brings me back to the point at hand.  Fat people are not able to shame thin people.  We would have to have some sort of power in this equation, and as it stands-- in the war over people's bodies-- we have none.  

For thin shaming to exist, fat people would have to be ascendant, and we clearly are not.  So therefore, thin shaming is not real.  You are thinking of misogyny and enforced gender roles.