I Am Living

[Content Note: Fat hatred.]

"I would die if I looked like that."

The words floated across the space between where I was sitting and where a group of 20-something women were sitting in the interior of a crowded mall at the holidays. I was waiting for Iain, who was making a purchase inside a small store that didn't need any additional bodies, and I was people-watching happily while I waited.

They were people-watching, too, but for an entirely different reason. We were all unwitting contestants in a pageant they were judging.

I would die if I looked like that. It hadn't been said in that faux-concern for fat people's health way, but in the I would die of embarrassment way. The I would kill myself way.

I assumed they were talking about me, but when I glanced over, I saw that they weren't. They were talking about a woman who might as well have been me.

Some of them caught me looking and registered the expression of contempt that must have been on my face. They had the decency to look slightly ashamed. I greeted their shame with a bright smile, not because I felt like smiling, but because I needed to communicate to them with a single look that I was not dead, and that their hatred wouldn't kill me.

One might reasonably imagine that I had an urge to respond angrily to this open hostility. And I suppose part of me did. But what I know is that people who hate fat often fear it — and those words, I would die if I looked like that, are words of fear as much as hatred.

What I wanted to tell them, and what I will tell any of you reading this who might regard my body as a figure of hatred or a cautionary tale, is that you probably wouldn't die if you looked like this.

I look even fatter sitting down!
People who look like this have varied experiences with looking like this, have all kinds of different relationships with their bodies, have wildly disparate lives, as the human experience prescribes.

So I am not speaking for everyone who looks like this when I tell you that I am not dying, of shame or humiliation or self-loathing.

I am living.

And I am living more contentedly than many people who are certain they would die if they looked like me.

I have a job that fulfills me. I have a spouse who complements me; who loves and likes me. I have pets who make me happy. I have friends with whom I actually have the amount of fun it looks like we're having in our Instagram photos. I have a home in which I feel lucky to live every day. I have some minor talents that I try to put to good use or good fun. I have a big laugh that carries across a room.

And I have a body that has (at this size or bigger) carried me across the sandy shores of the Indiana Dunes and up the slopes of the Scottish Highlands and through the waves of the Caribbean and back and forth in the lanes of a pool for a mile at a time. I have a body that cannot sweat, which makes physical activity difficult and has limited me more than being fat ever has. I have a body that is strong and a body that is disabled. I have a body that holds a mind that thinks complicated thoughts valued by lots of people, and a heart that loves fiercely and loyally.

I am living in this fat body. And I am doing it well.

What I wanted to tell them is that someday they might look like this, and, if they do, they can also live well.

And that they could do a lot better not looking like this, too. Judging others, publicly and loudly, is unkind. But it's also a kind of death — the death of something you can allow yourself to be. It puts up walls, ever more rigid walls, around a life that gets smaller and smaller by what options are set off-limits by judgment. It's a thousand tiny deaths of your own possibilities. And your own self-love.

They were dying in the constrictions of their own judgments.

I know, because I have felt it myself, long ago, long before I knew how to live well.

Open Wide...

Shut Up!

Feel the Breeze

NEW ON TRAITOR RADIO:

Fucking up a culture of fat shaming with @Shakestweetz, who teaches us how to feel the breeze https://t.co/2sV147K36w pic.twitter.com/xAaz4c2wtB

— andrea grimes (@andreagrimes) September 20, 2017

I had the distinct honor of being a guest on the latest episode of my friend Andrea Grimes' Traitor Radio podcast. If you can't listen to it, no worries! Andrea provides a complete transcript for every episode, which you will find at the link. (Just scroll down.)

The format of Traitor Radio is really cool: Following an introduction by Andrea, guests tell a story, then do a brief Q&A with Andrea before giving "homework" — that is, practical advice for making change in their own lives and the rest of the world.

For my episode, I told a story about being a fat woman seeking the breeze, which may be familiar to some of you.

I hope you enjoy it! My thanks to Andrea for inviting me to be a guest on Traitor Radio. ♥

Open Wide...

Shut Up!

Don't Look Away

[Content Note: Fat hatred.]

Your Fat Friend has written a terrific piece about thin people who find comments sections on fat advocacy pieces too harrowing to read: "Your Fat Friend Wants You to Read the Comments."

I shared a few comments with you in the hope of finding a witness to the cacophony in response to my handful of tweets — someone who could confirm the absurdity and harshness of strangers' responses. I should've anticipated what you would say.

Don't read the comments. I never do.

You, like so many other thin friends, were shaken, and found the comments too harrowing to continue reading.

I was surprised. These comments weren't anything I didn't hear regularly. These are words that strangers will readily say to me, face to face. Passersby shout epithets on the street. When turned down for a date, men snap "fat bitch" back at me with startling ease. Family members offer an unwelcome and unsolicited onslaught of diet advice and surgeon recommendations. Coworkers complain loudly about sitting next to passengers smaller than me. These comments are as ubiquitous as the air that I breathe. And like the air, they are invisible to you.

[...] I don't read the comments. I never do.

But, my darling friend, the comments are the one passage from your world to mine. The comments are what I breathe every day — the heavy smog that thickens in my lungs. The cloudy mess I exhale when I tell you what has happened. The thick skin that has brought me this far, and allowed me to take so much in stride.

I need you to peer into the world I walk through every day. I need you to read the comments.

There is much, much more at the link, and I strongly encourage you to read the whole thing.

It's a very good companion piece to one I wrote in October 2013: "I Wouldn't Even If I Could." That's about the advice that I should "just ignore" fat hatred, while Your Fat Friend's is about thin people confessing that they just ignore it (because they can).

Both of those dynamics are part and parcel of entrenching thin privilege by pretending that marginalization and abuse of fat people doesn't exist, even as such insistence is rooted in evidence of fat hatred's harm.

To posit that ignoring fat hatred is a viable option for fat people is absurd and cruel.

And any thin person who wants to do effective ally work in solidarity with fat people will never ask us to salve their discomfort at evidence of our abuse by ignoring it. Read the comments. Don't just ignore what our lived experiences really look like.

Open Wide...

Shut Up!

Fatsronauts 101: Gaslighting the Mocked

[Content Note: Fat hatred; body shaming; invasion of privacy; threats.]

As you may recall, last year, a woman named Dani Mathers, who had a large social media following by virtue of having been a Playboy model, took a photo of a naked 70-year-old woman in the locker room of a gym, then posted it on Snapchat next to a photo of herself giggling with the caption, "If I can't unsee this then neither can you."

After massive blowback, Mathers claimed she had only meant to send it privately to a friend and shared it publicly by mistake. Oh.

This public fat-shaming was not only profoundly unethical and cruel, but it was also illegal—and Mathers recently pleaded no contest to invasion of privacy charges, for which she'll have to complete 30 days of community service. She also received three years probation.

Now Mathers is doing a round of media, because of course she is, to talk about how she's been victimized (she has gotten death threats, which I condemn without qualification) and also to whine about how she never intended to hurt the woman that she victimized.

"I didn't have an intention of breaking a law. I just wasn't thinking, to be honest," she said, noting that she meant to send the photo privately to a friend. "My intention was to reply to the conversation I was having with my friend. I know the difference between right and wrong and I chose wrong."

Mathers told ABC that she has never met the woman involved, although she has wanted to apologize in person.

"I never meant to hurt her," she said. "I never ever intended on showing the world this photo … I hope that she could forgive me."

"I just want her to be able to move on and move forward in her life and not feel judged or that she what she was doing was being ridiculed, because it had nothing to do with that and I'm so sorry," Mathers told ABC.

This is the same sad refrain we've heard from thin people getting caught fat-shaming over and over. That they didn't intend to hurt anyone; that what they were doing didn't have anything to do with judgment or ridicule.

Bullshit it didn't.

Time and again, people who are fat-shamed are revictimized by their abusers, who insist that what they were doing wasn't really what it seemed. As if we don't know. As if we haven't been subjected to the same disgusting fat-hatred and shaming our entire fat lives.

They abuse us, then gaslight us—trading on the ubiquitous narrative that fat people aren't that bright.

I cannot begin to sufficiently convey the profundity of my contempt for people who fat-shame and then implicitly accuse the fat people who call that shit out of being too stupid to understand what really happened, trying to convince us they're not actually fat-haters, even as they leverage the cultural fat hatred that marks fat people as stupid in order to get away with harming us.

Suffice it to say, if your play after getting caught fat-shaming is to claim that "no judgment or ridicule was intended," I'm not convinced that you care about harming fat people.

If you want me to believe that, then the place to start is admitting what you did, and frankly addressing that it was intended to harm, and forthrightly discussing your own anti-fat biases.

Because, I gotta tell ya: Not only are fat people not as stupid as you think, but y'all fat-haters aren't as clever as you think. We are well aware of all the judgment and ridicule that has happened at our backs.

We know what it looks like and what it sounds like. We recognize it clear as day, even if you won't.

Open Wide...

Shut Up!

Fatsronauts 101: Fat Halloween

[Content Note: Fat hatred.]

Halloween is right around the corner—and thus Halloween costume parties—and, every year, after Halloween, I see pictures circulated on social media, without their subjects' consent, of fat adults dressed up as recognizable characters who aren't fat. (Very occasionally, I see this done to fat kids, too.) These pictures are inevitably shared to mock the fat costumed person, often under the presumption that the fat person doesn't understand how they look and frequently accompanied by resentful accusations that the fat person is "ruining" the character.

Don't do this.

Let me tell you that fat people dressed as thin characters understand we look different than the thin character. It's not that we don't know how we look; it's that we don't care what you think.

And why should we, when you think that a fat woman dressed up as Trinity or a fat man dressed up as Spock "ruins" the character? That's a garbage opinion. You're telegraphing to us that your opinion shouldn't be valued.

I have seen arguments on social media in which mockers of fat costumed people justify their mockery, their assertions that the characters are "ruined" by fat people, on the basis that "Batman could never be fat" or "Wonder Woman could never be fat," literally without a trace of fucking acknowledgment that Superman and Wonder Woman could never exist at all. It's a fantasy.

What they're saying, with their also-bullshit contentions about what fat bodies can and cannot do (which are almost always wrong), is that a fat body ruins the fantasy for them. Which is really their problem. Not the fat person in the costume.

And frankly, if one can imagine a man who can lift an entire skyscraper with one hand, but couldn't lift his own ass into the air if it were fat, one really doesn't have much of an imagination.

But the problem isn't a lack of imagination so much as it is a lack of decency. All year long, fat people are expected to hide ourselves away from view—to not take up space; to speak softly; to exercise, but not in public; to cover ourselves in yards of fabric to conceal the shapes of our bodies; to carry ourselves hunched and bowed, so that we might be smaller and convey the shame we are obliged to communicate for our very existence—and it's the same on Halloween. Best that we don't show ourselves at all, and certainly not dressed as a thin character.

The message is clear: You don't deserve to be that character, because you are fat.

Fuck that.

We aren't required to wait to live our lives, to do the things we want to do, unless and until we lose weight. We can live and do and thrive right now.

The public mockery of fat people in thin character costumes is explicitly designed to shame us back into hiding, into not living, unless and until we earn the right of participation by making ourselves thin.

I repeat: Fuck that.

And then there's this: I am a fat person who actively wants to dress up as fat characters for Halloween. And before Melissa McCarthy made it so that I could be a cop, a spy, a goddamned Ghostbuster, three whole characters, there wasn't a hell of a lot from which to choose. Not if you want to dress as a person. A fat person. Like yourself.

So, you know, if you're mad that a fat woman like me comes to your Halloween party dressed up as a fat Lara Croft, direct your ire at the rest of the fucking world, which denies us a delicious array of visible fat characters we can cosplay.

And if you really want to be mad at a fat Halloween costume, how about the costumes that treat fat people's personhood itself as a costume?

Because, honestly, if you're angry about a fat person dressing like a thin fictional character, but not angry about thin people dressing like fat people as though we're monsters, you have derailed.

[Originally posted October 27, 2015.]

Open Wide...

Shut Up!

Fat and the Bikini Body Meme

[Content Note: Fat hatred; body policing.]

It's again that time of year where a popular meme starts showing up on social media. It tends to feature silhouettes of what are meant to be read as female bodies, including or sometimes exclusively very fat bodies, and text which is some variation on: "How to Get a Bikini Body: Step 1: Buy a bikini. Step 2: Put it on your body."

Let me first say, once again, that fat women are not a monolith, and different fat women will have different reactions to this meme. I don't purport to speak for all fat women, some of whom like this meme very much, and I am not seeking to police or criticize their individual reactions to it.

I do, however, want to do some awareness-raising on behalf of the fat women who aren't so keen on the meme, because I know there are a lot of thin and in-betweenie women who spend time in this space who want to do good fat ally work and may not have considered some of the reasons not all fat women find it a strictly positive or supportive message.

So, here are a couple of things to consider before you share this image under the auspices of being a fat ally (or even as a fat person):

1. Not all fat women can buy a bikini. That's not just a consideration of financial realities, which are always at issue in consumerist memes, but it's also a reflection of the fact that even off-the-rack (or off-the-website) "plus-size" bikinis have a finite size range.

There are sites who will custom-make bikinis for women of any size based on their individual measurements, but that is, of course, a costly option. And naturally there are women who are skilled enough to make their own bikinis, but that is not an option for anyone who lacks those talents.

Casually suggesting that all fat women can just go "buy a bikini," without any acknowledgment of the fact that purchasing a bikini in one's size might not be an option, especially for very fat women, is not supportive. It also reinforces the idea that there's an "acceptable" level of fatness which tops out at the maximum size of most "plus-size" fashion lines, and anyone whose body exceeds those standard sizes is thus "unacceptably" fat.

2. Putting a bikini on one's fat body is not just about the physical act of getting into a swimsuit. There are all kinds of cultural disincentives to be a fat woman in a bikini in public, and we are obliged to navigate them no matter how much we might love our own bodies.

There is a vast difference in being a woman who has insecurities about a body in which she sees imperfections but is broadly culturally acceptable, and a woman who has insecurities about a body that significantly deviates from what is considered culturally acceptable. That is not to diminish, at all, the seriousness of body insecurities no matter what one's size. It is merely to observe that even if fat women get okay with their own bodies, there is not an existing cultural space in which we are accepted.

There's no equivalent for fat women to the narrative "we all have flaws!" No deviation from some impossible ideal should ever regarded as a "flaw," anyway, but fat is not regarded as a mere flaw.

And we are not, outside fat acceptance spaces, celebrated for a willingness to show our bodies "despite" their imperfections. We are not considered brave. We are harassed, shamed, policed, threatened, attacked.

The thing about "love your body" campaigns for my fat self is that I can love my body all the fuck I want, but the bigger problem for me is other people hating my body.

It's so much more complicated than just putting on a bikini, for lots of fat women. We need to respect and recognize that.

* * *

This isn't a comprehensive list of potential objections. I hope if fat women share in comments any additional concerns they may have with the meme, not-fat women will listen to their perspectives.

Open Wide...

Shut Up!

Quote of the Day

[Content Note: Fat hatred; bullying; harassment; abuse.]

"It's astonishingly rare to see a thin person intervene in the kind of commonplace bullying of fat people that happens. Even rarer to see a non-fat person say something proactively about accepting fat people. I can understand why. Some think poor treatment of fat people is warranted: if fat people don't want to be shamed, rejected, excluded, they should just lose weight. Poor treatment is the price of admission for having the body you have. Others become uncomfortable when they see a type of behavior they wouldn't otherwise tolerate. They shrink back, feeling a knot in their stomach as they witness something harsh and unwarranted—something they wouldn't otherwise tolerate. And what would they even say? And who would back them up? It's unnerving to witness, and isolating to interrupt. But that isolation, dear friend, is where fat people live every day. When we decide to stand up for ourselves, we are deciding to go it alone."—Your Fat Friend, in an extraordinary piece, "A call to action: your fat friend is going it alone."

Open Wide...

Shut Up!

Quote of the Day

[Content Note: Fat hatred.]

"In that way, air travel is sadly familiar, a microcosm of what happens so often as a fat person. I am watched—and judged harshly—as I try—and fail—to fit into a space that was made for someone else. I am always too big, always too much, always unacceptable. I must make myself smaller and smaller, reducing and reducing endlessly, my stubborn body resisting at every turn. Still, I am never quite small enough to make anyone else comfortable."—Your Fat Friend, in a powerful essay which resonates strongly with me: "What it's like to be that fat person sitting next to you on the plane."

[H/T to Elle. Related Reading: A Life of Having.]

Open Wide...

Shut Up!

Fatsronauts 101

[Content Note: Fat hatred.]

You cannot be at war with your body and be at peace with yourself.

Open Wide...

Shut Up!

Fatsronauts 101: Representation and Visibility

[Content Note: Fat hatred; invisibilizing; eliminationism.]

So, here's a thing one hears a lot during discussions of fat visibility—or, more accurately, the lack thereof—in popular media, especially on television and in films: "We don't want to glorify obesity."

"Glorifying obesity" is shorthand for the idea that even to merely show fat people is to give tacit approval of fatness.

This is an interesting, ahem, argument for a number of reasons, including (but not limited to):

1. Conversations about the "glorification" of violence and/or other unethical behavior are nuanced discussions in which every position tends to be treated with credibility. People who argue that, say, Walter White, the protagonist of Breaking Bad, glorified criminal behavior are generally treated to be making their arguments in good faith, even if others disagree and cite the context of the show and intent of the creators to defend their opposing view. But there is no such nuance nor the presumption of good faith in debates (such as they are) about fat visibility, despite the fact that, contrary to popular opinion, being fat is actually not a moral failing.

2. Those making and supporting this argument axiomatically conclude that to communicate approval, tacit or otherwise, of fatness is A Bad Thing.

Any pushback on that reflexive contention is immediately met with Statistical Concern about how 1/3 of the population is "obese" (never mind that the definitions of "obesity" are arbitrary and many of the people technically meeting the definition deviate significantly from the image an average person conjures when they imagine someone "obese"). It's irresponsible, so goes the argument, to "glorify obesity" when fatness is an epidemic.

People who talk about "epidemic" fatness and the "scourge of obesity" are primarily thinking about people who look like me. People who are my size and bigger. But I don't go anywhere where 1/3 of people look like me.

[Photo by Deeky.]
I am the sort of person whose body pop culture creators are afraid of "glorifying."

But a large number of the people who meet the bullshit specifications of "obesity" don't look like me. So this is a specious argument, in addition to being a profoundly indecent one.

Still, because the people making it insist on again and again taking to fainting couches while moaning about 1/3 of the population being "obese," in order to justify their shameful lack of representation and visibility of fat people, let's just take that argument at face value for a moment. On the one hand, they are communicating that we do exist by citing that garbage statistic to fearmonger, and then, on the other, communicating that we shouldn't exist by refusing to show us, despite our being 1/3 of the population.

There's a word for the belief that 1/3 of the population shouldn't exist. It's eliminationism.

The fat eliminationists employed in content creation telegraph fear of two primary things: Of a thin person looking at a fat person and thinking their body is to be emulated; and of a fat person looking at a fat person and thinking that maybe it's okay to be fat.

Naturally, these fears are ostensibly rooted in concern for people's health, but fat is not a reliable indicator of healthfulness—although fat hatred is a demonstrable cause of a lack of healthfulness.

What it really comes down to, this handwringing about "glorifying obesity," is the same old tiresome (and only reluctantly admitted) perception that fat bodies are gross.

And wouldn't it be just terrible if someone got it into their head that fat bodies aren't gross? Especially fat people. Imagine the horror of fat people feeling okay about ourselves. Why, that might give us the idea that it's okay to be fat!

The people who worry about someone seeing a fat person and—the horror!—wanting to look like them are keenly aware that the people they put in visual media are viewed as aspirational figures. Consumers of that media want to look like stars; desire to look like them. And many of us strongly yearn to see people who already look like us.

Which is why—apart from the fact that I don't imagine greater fat visibility would result in scores of thin people suddenly wanting to be fat, thanks to the pervasive fat hatred in our culture that strongly disincentivizes fatness and privileges thinness—I am not concerned about the legions of hypothetical thin people who will be inspired to fatness by fat visibility, but about the actual fat people who are desperate to see ourselves represented.

Like thin people, we want to see styled celebrities with bodies like ours to give us ideas about how to dress and style ourselves. Especially since, for fat women, being "put together" is part of the way many of us convey to a judgmental world that we are worth caring about.

The content creators know that trendsetting and emulation is a key part of their business, and yet they want to deny it to a population for whom it is exceedingly difficult to access fashion and replicate popular style, even as our being taken seriously and given service and employed frequently depends on looking "put together," even more than our thin peers.

Visibility is about survival. It's about inclusion. And it's straight-up just about getting to see fat people doing "normal" things. Fat people need to see that to validate our lives and acknowledge our very existences, and non-fat people need to see that because they are used to seeing fat characters only when fat serves as a lazy shorthand for undesirable traits.

If only these folks were half as concerned about the consequences of demonizing fat people as they are about "glorifying obesity."

Showing fat people as typical human beings isn't "glorifying obesity," but let's say that it were: If the worst possible outcome of "glorifying obesity" is more fat people, so what? Being fat, in and of itself, isn't a problem for lots and lots of fat people.

I'm fat as fuck, and I have a roof over my head, a job I love, the greatest friends, and a partner who loves and respects me. If my body weren't used as an excuse by fat haters to treat me like a pariah and a plague and an object of ridicule, I'd be doing just fucking fine.

Which, of course, is the worst fear of the fat eliminationists.

Being fat and happy, or content, is something about which I've been writing for a very long time. It's a subject that interests me a lot, for what I'm guessing are obvious reasons.

Fat people aren't supposed to be inspirational figures. We're supposed to be cautionary tales. And hoo boy are there a lot of people who take it personally when we refuse to fill that role.

A lot of people think we should be miserable, and make it their mission to make us so. Because that's easier than the hard work of finding your own confidence and contentment.

Choosing to be fat has to be okay—and so does choosing to be fat and happy.

It remains a radical act to be fat and happy in the US. If you're fat, you're not only meant to be unhappy, but deeply ashamed of yourself, projecting at all times an apologetic nature, indicative of your everlasting remorse for having wrought your monstrous self upon the world. You are certainly not meant to be bold, or assertive, or confident—and should you manage to overcome the constant drumbeat of messages that you are ugly and unsexy and have earned equally society's disdain and your own self-hatred, should you forget your place and walk into the world one day with your head held high, you are to be reminded by the cow-calls and contemptuous looks of perfect strangers that you are not supposed to have self-esteem; you don't deserve it. Being publicly fat and happy is hard; being publicly, shamelessly, unshakably fat and happy is an act of both will and bravery.

I choose to be visibly happy. Both because I have moments of genuine incandescent happiness in my big fat life, where I am meant to have none, and because it is my protest against the people who would deny all of us such visibility everywhere else.

Open Wide...

Shut Up!

Fatsronauts 101: Fat Halloween

[Content Note: Fat hatred.]

Halloween is right around the corner—and thus Halloween costume parties—and, every year, after Halloween, I see pictures circulated on social media, without their subjects' consent, of fat adults dressed up as recognizable characters who aren't fat. (Very occasionally, I see this done to fat kids, too.) These pictures are inevitably shared to mock the fat costumed person, often under the presumption that the fat person doesn't understand how they look and frequently accompanied by resentful accusations that the fat person is "ruining" the character.

Don't do this.

Let me tell you that fat people dressed as thin characters understand we look different than the thin character. It's not that we don't know how we look; it's that we don't care what you think.

And why should we, when you think that a fat woman dressed up as Trinity or a fat man dressed up as Spock "ruins" the character? That's a garbage opinion. You're telegraphing to us that your opinion shouldn't be valued.

I have seen arguments on social media in which mockers of fat costumed people justify their mockery, their assertions that the characters are "ruined" by fat people, on the basis that "Batman could never be fat" or "Wonder Woman could never be fat," literally without a trace of fucking acknowledgment that Superman and Wonder Woman could never exist at all. It's a fantasy.

What they're saying, with their also-bullshit contentions about what fat bodies can and cannot do (which are almost always wrong), is that a fat body ruins the fantasy for them. Which is really their problem. Not the fat person in the costume.

And frankly, if one can imagine a man who can lift an entire skyscraper with one hand, but couldn't lift his own ass into the air if it were fat, one really doesn't have much of an imagination.

But the problem isn't a lack of imagination so much as it is a lack of decency. All year long, fat people are expected to hide ourselves away from view—to not take up space; to speak softly; to exercise, but not in public; to cover ourselves in yards of fabric to conceal the shapes of our bodies; to carry ourselves hunched and bowed, so that we might be smaller and convey the shame we are obliged to communicate for our very existence—and it's the same on Halloween. Best that we don't show ourselves at all, and certainly not dressed as a thin character.

The message is clear: You don't deserve to be that character, because you are fat.

Fuck that.

We aren't required to wait to live our lives, to do the things we want to do, unless and until we lose weight. We can live and do and thrive right now.

The public mockery of fat people in thin character costumes is explicitly designed to shame us back into hiding, into not living, unless and until we earn the right of participation by making ourselves thin.

I repeat: Fuck that.

And then there's this: I am a fat person who actively wants to dress up as fat characters for Halloween. And before Melissa McCarthy made it so that I could be a cop, a spy, a goddamned Ghostbuster, three whole characters, there wasn't a hell of a lot from which to choose. Not if you want to dress as a person. A fat person. Like yourself.

So, you know, if you're mad that a fat woman like me comes to your Halloween party dressed up as a fat Lara Croft, direct your ire at the rest of the fucking world, which denies us a delicious array of visible fat characters we can cosplay.

And if you really want to be mad at a fat Halloween costume, how about the costumes that treat fat people's personhood itself as a costume?

Because, honestly, if you're angry about a fat person dressing like a thin fictional character, but not angry about thin people dressing like fat people as though we're monsters, you have derailed.

Open Wide...

Shut Up!

Quote of the Day

[Content Note: Fat hatred.]

"Nobody knows for sure the long term health effects of living in a society that constantly stigmatizes you and tells you that you can't possible be healthy. Nobody knows what would happen to fat people's health if they didn't live in a society that constantly stigmatizes them."—Ragen Chastain, brilliantly stating what should be obvious but is anything but, in "What 'Everybody Knows' About Fat People."

I love this quote with one million hearts.

Open Wide...

Shut Up!

I Write Letters

[Content Note: Fat hatred.]

Dear Fellow Fat Person:

You and I both know that fat people can be cruel to each other, sometimes even in ways that thin people aren't cruel to us.

We've spent a lifetime internalizing fat hatred, and some of us get so overwhelmed with directing it at ourselves, that we start directing it at each other, as a futile attempt at self-protection.

You know the things we can do to one another: Playing the Good Fatty, saying things like "at least my fat is proportional," drawing lines between acceptable and unacceptable fatness (thresholds usually drawn just to make sure that we're on the side of "acceptable"), telling each other that "all you need is some confidence," using each other as an excuse to eat something we wouldn't otherwise, cajoing and coercing each other to eat things, not so secretly suspecting that other fat people really eat too much and exercise too little, being not so secretly embarrassed when we see another fat person who fits some fat stereotype, pretending that we are Superior Fatties if we manage to have the financial and emotional wherewithal to locate and purchase the "right" clothes.

And on and on and on.

I just want you know I'm never going to do that to you.

I am never going to look at you and judge you for being fat, or think I know the reason, believing that being fat myself gives me some special insight into other fatties' lives.

I am never going to think my fatness is better than (or worse than) yours.

I am never going to think you should be wearing anything other than what you want to be wearing. And if you are not wearing what you would ideally like to be wearing, I would be happy to go shopping with you! And if shopping is hard, and you need to cry, you can cry with me.

In fact, you can cry with me about anything. I will cry with you and laugh with you and listen to you and share my own stories with you. And I will never, ever, think that you are weak. I know how much strength it takes to be fat in a world that hates us.

I will never hesitate to go anywhere with you, because we're both fat. I will belly right up to a buffet with you, and I will go swimming with you, and I will squeeze into a tight seat on public transportation beside you. I will never be ashamed of your fat, or mine, or ours together in the same place.

I will take up space with you.

I will be your ally, because I want you to live. I don't ever want to make you, or anyone else, feel like they have to make themselves smaller, make their voices quieter, make their lives less than, because they are fat. I want you to live a big fat joyful life, and I want to live one, too.

Not at your expense. Alongside you. There is plenty of room for all of us.

And there is enough fat hatred in this world already without my contributing even more of it.

You, my fellow fat traveler, will never be my target.

And I hope I will never be yours.

With abundance in both body and spirit,
Liss

[Related Reading: Big Fat Love; A Letter About Food and Judgment.]

Open Wide...

Shut Up!

A Letter About Food and Judgment

[Content Note: Food, fat, body, and choice policing; disordered eating; privilege.]

Dear You:

I will not judge you for what you eat.

I won't judge you for the things you choose to eat—or the things you eat because you have no choice—or in what quantity you eat them.

I won't judge you for why you eat the things you do, or how much of them you eat.

I won't judge you negatively—nor will I judge you positively. I won't assess your character on your diet, or where you procure food, or how you procure it. I won't judge you negatively for using food stamps, and I won't judge you positively for buying organic, or artisanal, or farm fresh. These things don't tell me anything about you—besides, perhaps, how many financial resources and access you have or lack. And I won't judge you for that, either.

I might, however, if I'm being totally honest, judge you if you brag incessantly about buying organic, or artisanal, or farm fresh, or "clean," or even "healthy," in a way that is wholly intended to convey that it's superior, that it makes you superior, without even the merest hint of awareness that such bravado is indicative of privilege.

I won't judge you based on what your body looks like, or make conclusions about your eating habits based on your appearance. I won't presume to know anything about your health.

I won't judge your dietary choices, because I don't know a thing about your individual dietary needs. I won't judge you favorably if you are a vegetarian or vegan (although I may judge you unfavorably if you use your own choices to shame and demean people who don't make the same ones), and I won't judge you unfavorably if you are not a vegetarian or vegan, because I know too many people whose bodies can't be sustained that way. Did you know that there are people who can't eat dairy and nuts and cruciferous vegetables? Some of them find it difficult to survive without meat proteins.

I won't judge the amount I see you eating, if I have the pleasure of dining with you, or the groceries in your cart, or your order at a restaurant. I won't judge you if you have dessert. I won't judge you if you pass on dessert, either.

I won't presume that what's best for me and my body is necessarily the best for you and your body, or that what works for me will work for you, because we are different people with different needs, and I respect that you know yourself better than I do. I respect you as an authority on your own life.

I will never offer you unsolicited advice about food, or your health, or your appearance. (Although I would love to trade recipes with you, if you're interested!) I will never comment on your weight—not that it is too much, and not that it is too little, and not that you look like you've gained weight, and not that you look like you've lost weight.

I will never treat weight loss as a reason to compliment you, because I don't know why you've lost weight, or if you even wanted to, or if maybe you're sick. And because you looked great to me before and you look great to me now.

I will not judge you if you are a "good fatty," or even a "good" thin person, who can afford to buy and prepare and eat the foods we mark as healthy (even though there is no universal thing, owing to food allergies and the like) and who is able and has the time and opportunity to exercise. I will not judge you if you're "bad," either.

I will not judge you if you have disordered eating. I will not judge you if you overeat, by your own definition, for emotional reasons. (Nor if you undereat, by your own definition, for emotional reasons.) I will listen if you need someone to talk to about that, and I won't judge you.

I will listen from here to eternity and back again to someone who wants to honestly discuss their emotional realities, but I will not listen to you berate yourself about your eating habits or your appearance, and I will not listen to you talk endlessly about your calorie consumption, and I will not listen to any other manner of "diet talk," and I will not respond when you are fishing for compliments by putting yourself down, and I will not keep quiet when you tell me that you "feel fat," and I will not tell you whether you look fat in those jeans.

And I won't listen to you talk shit about other people's eating habits or bodies. And I won't let you do it to me.

But if you want to talk about your personal insecurities, or the cultural pressures that reinforce those insecurities, or the family dynamics that contributed to those insecurities, or the trauma which is inextricably attached to them, or the bullying you survived, or the totally amazing experience you just had of wearing a bathing suit in public for the first time in years, or the tattoo you're getting to celebrate finishing your first triathlon after being told your whole life that fat people can't can't shouldn't aren't can't, I will talk with you as long as you need, and I will grieve with you and be joyful with you.

And I won't judge you.

This letter is to anyone who reads it, and this letter is to myself—the one person at whom I still levy judgments I would never aim at anyone else.

With warm acceptance,
Liss

Open Wide...

Shut Up!

Fatsronauts 101: The Inspirational Fatty

[Content Note: Fat hatred.]

So, one of the many reasons I do public fat advocacy is because visibility is important. It's been important to me to connect with other fat women and their individual experiences; to listen to them share their stories; to see images of them living their lives.

I have been validated by them, and I have been inspired by them.

Being a fat person who publicly discusses her own lived experiences, who tells her story and shares images from her big fat life, is my way of paying that forward. My hope is to validate other fat people's experiences, if mine resonates with their own—and if I happen to inspire another fat person in some way, that's humbling and happy-making.

I also hope to encourage thin people to reject the fat-hating narratives with which we're all indoctrinated, and to invite them to see fat people as fully human.

Occasionally, thin people will tell me that I've inspired them. And, in rare instances, what they mean is something like: You've really encouraged and helped me deconstruct my thin privilege and become more sensitive to the issues that fat people face. Which is great.

But much more frequently, they mean something like: I've stopped hating my body because I figure if a fat mess like you can love her grotesque body, then I can, too!

Of course, that's not what they think they mean. They think they mean (which I know, because they tell me, when I try to politely reject being used as The Inspirational Fatty) that we both have flaws and, sure, our flaws aren't equal, not because mine are worse, that's not what they meant, but because society treats me so much worse for my flaws, because god society is so unfair, and if I can overcome all the terrible things that fat people have to deal with, like being fat, but not because fat is so much worse, just because fat people are treated so much worse, then they can overcome their issues with their bodies, because we're all expected to be perfect, you know, and none of us are, and I'm just a good example of someone who loves their body despite that, and yeah I'm fat but that doesn't have anything to do with it, I mean IT DOES but it's not the main thing, well, maybe it's the main thing for me, geez they're just not articulating this very well sorry.

My fat is irrelevant, except for how it's totally the whole point. This is the fundamental conundrum of The Inspirational Fatty. There's really no way for a thin person to tell me how inspirational I am without invisibilizing the central piece of my body advocacy, or alternately by conflating their thin-bodied flaws with my fat body full-stop.

Now, I understand why it is that, in a profoundly fat-hating culture, there are thin people who might actually think and feel, with no malicious intent, that they can learn to love their bodies, far less deviant from the Beauty Standard than is mine, if I can love mine. Cool. But I don't need to hear about it.

When a fellow fat traveler tells me that they finally threw caution to the breeze and went sleeveless after years of hiding their fat arms (just like my fat arms), I am thrilled in a way I can only describe as feeling like every part of my insides to the furthest recesses of my gut are glimmering with luminescent joy.

When a thin woman tells me: "I'm not fat, but I've always hated my arms, and you inspired me to go sleeveless," I don't feel thrilled. I feel exploited. And I further feel gaslighted when I'm accused of reading something that isn't there, when I say that this "compliment" is rooted in a comparison with my less than body. As if the "compliment" doesn't start with a differentiation: I'm not fat.

This is not, in case it isn't clear, an invitation for thin people to splain at me about all the good intentions that allegedly underwrite The Inspirational Fatty.

This is my request to thin people to please reconsider how your words may be received.

This is my informing you of a context of which you might not be aware, given that you aren't a fat woman who lives a public life.

Maybe you haven't seen eleventy-seven incidents of a fat woman posting a picture of herself in a bikini, only to be "complimented" by thin women who tell her: "If you can do it, I can do it, too!"; of a fat woman sharing a story of falling in love and being loved, despite aggressive cultural narratives about how we will never be and don't deserve love, only to be "complimented" by thin women who tell her: "You go girl! You've convinced me there's someone out there who will love me despite my flaws, too!"; of a fat woman telling any anecdote, anywhere, about struggling to extricate some pernicious bit of internalized fat hatred in order to hate herself a little bit less, only to be "complimented" by thin women who tell her, point fucking blank: "If you can learn to love your body, I should be able to learn to love mine!"

And maybe you aren't aware of what it's like to be a fat woman who once upon a time made friendships with thin women, maybe even back when they were thin girls, long before that fat woman loved herself at all, only to discover that loving herself makes her longtime thin friends regard her with resentment, if she has anything they don't have, if she is perceived to have a cooler job, a kinder husband, a happier home, more stylish clothes, or anything viewed as "better" than what her thin friends deserve, because they deserve that more than she does, before she does. That there is just a world of thin women doing comparing, comparing, comparing.

Maybe you're not aware that, for many fat women, navigating friendships with lots and lots of thin women means either being The Inspirational Fatty or The Resented Fatty, because lots and lots of thin women are incapable of building connections with fat women outside of a construct of competition. Which is pretty damn typical of friendships on either side of any privileged/marginalized divide.

Maybe you've never considered that a thin person treating a fat person like The Inspirational Fatty is just as fucking gross as able-bodied people treating people with disabilities as inspirational, even if you're able to articulate the abject fuckery that is some able-bodied person being awarded an Oscar for playing a person with a disability in some Tale of Triumph nearly every damn year.

And maybe that's because fat people aren't even allowed our own marginalization, because, despite a metric fuckton of fat hatred we are obliged to navigate, we're constantly admonished to center the experiences of thin women, because we all have body image issues geez.

And maybe if you can understand how colossally shitty it is that fat people's oppression is flattened and silenced and appropriated by thin people who want to ignore the unique hatred, the life and death hatred, that fat people face, then you can try to understand why it is that I don't want to be your Inspirational Fatty.

The thing that I've noticed about other fat women who tell me that I've inspired them is that they are inspired by me because of my humanity. And the thing that I've noticed about thin women who tell me that I've inspired them is that they are inspired by me because I am fat.

That isn't incidental.

And if you're thinking, hey, I'm a thin woman who has been inspired by you because of your humanity, then I'll say once more: Cool. If the shoe doesn't fit, don't wear it. And please don't oblige me to make you feel better about your privilege.

Of course, if you really see me in my full humanity, rather than a Fat Person Here to Make You Feel Better About Yourself, you already knew that.

Open Wide...

Shut Up!

Fat and the Bikini Body Meme

[Content Note: Fat hatred; body policing.]

It's again that time of year where a popular meme starts showing up on social media. It tends to feature silhouettes of what are meant to be read as female bodies, including or sometimes exclusively very fat bodies, and text that is some variation on: "How to Get a Bikini Body: Step 1: Buy a bikini. Step 2: Put it on your body."

Let me first say, once again, that fat women are not a monolith, and different fat women will have different reactions to this meme. I don't purport to speak for all fat women, some of whom like this meme very much, and I am not seeking to police or criticize their individual reactions to it.

I do, however, want to do some awareness-raising on behalf of the fat women who aren't so keen on the meme, because I know there are a lot of thin and in-betweenie women who spend time in this space who want to do good fat ally work and may not have considered some of the reasons not all fat women find it a strictly positive or supportive message.

So, here are a couple of things to consider before you share this image under the auspices of being a fat ally (or even as a fat person):

1. Not all fat women can buy a bikini. That's not just a consideration of financial realities, which are always at issue in consumerist memes, but it's also a reflection of the fact that even off-the-rack (or off-the-website) "plus-size" bikinis have a finite size range.

There are sites who will custom-make bikinis for women of any size based on their individual measurements, but that is, of course, a costly option. And naturally there are women who are skilled enough to make their own bikinis, but that is not an option for anyone who lacks those talents.

Casually suggesting that all fat women can just go "buy a bikini," without any acknowledgment of the fact that purchasing a bikini in one's size might not be an option, especially for very fat women, is not supportive. It also reinforces the idea that there's an "acceptable" level of fatness which tops out at the maximum size of most "plus-size" fashion lines, and anyone whose body exceeds those standard sizes is thus "unacceptably" fat.

2. Putting a bikini on one's fat body is not just about the physical act of getting into a swimsuit. There are all kinds of cultural disincentives to be a fat woman in a bikini in public, and we are obliged to navigate them no matter how much we might love our own bodies.

There is a vast difference in being a woman who has insecurities about a body in which she sees imperfections but is broadly culturally acceptable, and a woman who has insecurities about a body that significantly deviates from what is considered culturally acceptable. That is not to diminish, at all, the seriousness of body insecurities no matter what one's size. It is merely to observe that even if fat women get okay with their own bodies, there is not an existing cultural space in which we are accepted.

There's no equivalent for fat women to the narrative "we all have flaws!" No deviation from some impossible ideal should ever regarded as a "flaw," anyway, but fat is not regarded as a mere flaw.

And we are not, outside fat acceptance spaces, celebrated for a willingness to show our bodies "despite" their imperfections. We are not considered brave. We are harassed, shamed, policed, threatened, attacked.

The thing about "love your body" campaigns for my fat self is that I can love my body all the fuck I want, but the bigger problem for me is other people hating my body.

It's so much more complicated than just putting on a bikini, for lots of fat women. We need to respect and recognize that.

* * *

This isn't a comprehensive list of potential objections. I hope if fat women share in comments any additional concerns they may have with the meme, not-fat women will listen to their perspectives.

Open Wide...

Shut Up!

Fatsronauts 101: Heinous Questions

[Content Note: Fat hatred.]

So, one of the things about existing as a fat person in a fat-hating culture is that you get lots of heinous questions. (At least, many of us do.)

Many of these questions, as you'd expect, are centered around our eating habits, our exercise regimen, our medical "numbers," and other attemps to ascertain why we're fat and/or whether we are unhealthy.

But then there are the questions that are just absurdly heinous, invasive, personal, and utterly dehumanizing—questions that remind us that we are regarded as a whole other species by a lot of our fellow humans.

Questions like:

* How do you find clothes that fit you?

* Can you reach your ass to wipe it?

* Are you able to get pregnant?

* How do you have sex?

(Well, maybe not.)
Sometimes, it's not strictly a question, but expressed amazement that we are able to do something, like walk a long distance or tie our shoes.

Now, not all fat people can do all of these things, especially when fat intersects with disability. But, in my experience, when I've been asked these sorts of questions, or have been commended on my ability to accomplish some task, the person asking/commenting has no reason to presume I can't do these things, except for the fact that they see a fat person standing in front of them.

And, of course, not everyone (of all sizes) can do all of these things, and, even among those of us who can, we don't universally do them the same way. But, again, that's not the context in which these questions get asked of me, and lots of other fat people. They get asked in a way that implies our capabilities must necessarily be limited and different and less than because we are fat.

They are asked in a way that essentially questions our humanity, our likeness to non-fat humans.

So, fellow fatsronauts: What is the most obnoxious, intrusive, contemptible, and/or ignorant question you've been asked, in relation to your being fat?

And if any thin commenters feel like sharing the most heinous question they ever asked a fat person before learning how heinous it actually was, please feel free to share that, too.

Open Wide...

Shut Up!

Quote of the Day

[Content Note: Fat hatred; hostility to consent.]

Yesterday someone stole pictures of my friends and me from FAT: the Play and uploaded them to a subreddit dedicated to hating fat people. This has created a space for people to openly talk about how disgusting we are, how we are a problem, how we are specifically not-sexy, how we are motivations and warnings for them to be Not Fat, and for them to threaten us with violence. Today I'm thinking about the Myspace days of the Secret Internet Fatty and how that made me feel like if people knew how fat I was (or that I was fat at all), they wouldn't like me, and how that is because I grew up with not many friends. I'm thinking about how that was because I was targeted a lot for bullying because of my size and because of the queerness I was never able to hide, as much as I wanted to. I'm thinking about how I've grown into a beautiful, confident and lovable adult who still has trouble receiving that love because the experiences of my childhood still trick me into believing that any love I might receive is fake, is a joke, is a misunderstanding.

...I'm thinking about the radical potential of public vulnerability and the self-disciplining mechanisms that prevent us from being close to one another and to our selves. I'm thinking about the fat people who were able to show love to themselves and in turn, show me how to love myself, and how grateful I feel that so many of those people are in my life today. I'm thinking about how every day for me is full of pain and sorrow and anger and fire and laughter and joy and resistance. I'm thinking about how fat hatred is insidious, and how it is a Hydra. I'm thinking about this is merely the latest incarnation of centuries of people attempting to discipline fat people for daring to live unapologetically. I'm thinking about how the ways in which we think about bodies are defined by legacies of colonialism and white supremacy. I'm thinking about how this isn't the first and it won't be the last and it was here before me and it will be here after me. I'm thinking about how this is why we do what we do. I'm thinking about how we are a threat, about how powerful that is. I'm thinking about how we're not stopping.

—Queer and Present Danger, who has also posted beautiful photos of his fat self at the link. Photos which should not be radical, but are. Photos which put air in my lungs.

This has happened to me. More than once. My pictures stolen and posted in a fat-hating forum, for mockery and contempt. I get emails about them, alerting me they have been posted in a hostile space, and the emails are from people I don't know who feign concern for me—but I am not a fool. They are usually from the very people who posted them, who get off on knowing that I've seen what they've done to me.

My picture has been stolen for use in a racist meme. My picture has been stolen by people who Google "fat feminist" because they're seeking an example to show that all feminists are fat and ugly. My picture has been stolen by all sorts of people, who know who I am or don't know who I am, for a variety of nefarious uses.

If I complain about that, I am told, "That's what you get for posting your picture."

But I won't stop posting my picture. Because my picture has also been used by other fat people to help them look at themselves a new way. To take to a hairdresser to get a short haircut for the first time. To take to a tattoo artist as inspiration. By thin people to help them work through their thin privilege and center the humanity of people with fat bodies.

Visibility is vulnerability, and it is power. I'm thinking about that, and I'm thinking about Queer and Present Danger, and I'm thankful for him and his beautiful words.


Cheers.

Open Wide...

Shut Up!

Fat Hatred Is Unhealthy for Fat People

[Content Note: Fat hatred.]

This is something I—and other fat activists—have been saying for a very long time, and now there is research to back it up: Fat hatred is unhealthy for fat people.

Weight discrimination is linked to significantly lower quality of life, and accounts for approximately 40% of the negative psychological effects associated with obesity, finds new UCL research funded by Cancer Research UK. The study, which analysed data from 5,056 UK adults, found that those who felt discriminated against on the basis of their weight had a 70% increase in symptoms of depression, a 14% drop in quality of life and 12% lower life satisfaction relative to those who did not perceive weight discrimination.

To assess weight discrimination, participants were asked whether they experienced day-to-day discrimination that they attributed to their weight. Examples of discrimination include being treated disrespectfully, receiving poor service in shops, and being harassed. Psychological wellbeing was assessed with standard measures of quality of life, life satisfaction and symptoms of depression.

The data come from the English Longitudinal Study of Ageing (ELSA), a study of adults aged 50 or older. The researchers analysed the results to check whether the known association between obesity and poorer psychological wellbeing could in any part be explained by weight-related discrimination. They found that when perceived weight discrimination was accounted for, differences in wellbeing between obese and non-obese individuals were reduced substantially, suggesting that discrimination may be an important cause of low wellbeing for obese people.

Emphasis mine.

Lead author of the study, Dr. Sarah Jackson, UCL Epidemiology and Public Health, additionally notes that there are no legal protections from discrimination for fat people, equivalent to protections from discrimination "on the basis of age, sex, race, disability, religion of beliefs, sexual orientation, marital status, pregnancy, or gender reassignment," which "might send the message to people that weight discrimination is socially acceptable."

Maybe!

In fact, "weight discrimination"—also known as fat hatred—is not merely considered "socially acceptable," but is often cited, even by health and ethics professionals, as an effective tool to promote weight loss. This is, of course, rank garbage—and senior author of the study, Professor Jane Wardle, director of the Cancer Research UK Health Behavior Centre at UCL, reports that they have done previous work "showing that weight discrimination does not encourage weight loss."

"Weight bias has been documented not only among the general public but also among health professionals; and many obese patients report being treated disrespectfully by doctors because of their weight. Everyone, including doctors, should stop blaming and shaming people for their weight."

Because it does not promote health at all. To the contrary, it is profoundly damaging to fat people's health.

[H/T to Shaker K.]

Open Wide...

Shut Up!

Welp.

[Content Note: Fat hatred; diet and surgery advertisements.]

A couple of weeks ago, I was thinking about writing a post on the ubiquity of weight loss and/or body shaming advertisements. They are everywhere in my every day: I see them on the television, in magazines, in junk mail, in billboards along the roadways, in content-generated online ads prompted because I often use the word "fat" in my work. (Oh the irony.)

They are ads for diet pills, diet programs, diet food delivery services, weight loss supplements, fat-busting miracle elixirs, gyms, workout equipment, restrictive "shaping" garments, body mutilating surgeries, and every other conceivable variation on weight loss and/or body shaming one can imagine.

This is the time of year when there's a lull between the "New Year's weight loss resolution" theme and the "get your body ready for a bathing suit" theme. So, at the moment, it's mostly just run-of-the-mill "you're fat and you shouldn't be" stuff.

Anyway.

I thought that I would keep track of how many of these ads I saw during one 24-hour period. A typical day.

So, one day I started counting, while I was watching the morning news. By the time I'd turned off the television, I realized I'd already forgotten to keep counting.

I had another couple of false starts, where I'd lose track during the day, so I decided to carry my notebook around with me, to write down a mark for each ad.

By midway through the day, I'd again failed to keep up.

The problem is not that I get distracted, or that I don't care about the project. The problem, I realized, is that I am so inured to advertisements admonishing me that my body must change that they barely register anymore.

This is a commentary on their terrible pervasiveness, but it's also a commentary on the coping mechanisms fat people must employ. I have to turn off my conscious mind to these things, to this incessant messaging that my body is gross, sick, less than, because if I stopped to register every one, I would never escape the crushing oppression of being urged to loathe myself.

I literally wouldn't have enough psychological capacity to process each one of them, if I let every one of them penetrate.

So I am obliged to turn off part of my mind, part of myself, to the world around me. Because the world is so intent on telling me that I am broken and need to be fixed.

Ultimately, that realization felt even more important than reporting the number of ads I'd seen in a day. The realization that I can't even see all of them. If I want to survive.

Open Wide...

Shut Up!