I was browsing through the status updates on Facebook yesterday when I came across one from an ex-workmate which said "...is sick, think I'm dying - still at least I'll have lost a few pounds.". I'm sure she's exaggerating the 'dying' part but her status struck me as a perfect example of women's mania for being thin, regardless of health concerns.
A common criticism of the Fat Acceptance movement is that we are promoting an unhealthy (and potentially life-threatening) lifestyle choice in much the same way as Pro-Anorexia sites do. The main focus of most FA blogs is 'Thou shalt not hate yourself just because you are not thin' - Pro-Ana sites on the other hand have the central tenant 'If you hate yourself more, you can be even thinner.'. FA is about self-love, pro-ana about self-hate. Pro-ana is an exaggeration of the the status quo (diet sites and pro-ana sites have almost identical content). FA is a rejection of it.
Health is more than numbers on a scale. Part of the reason I'm fat is side-effects of medication I've taken for mental health problems. It may have made me fatter, but it saved my life - and to me that's far more healthy than welcoming illness to make you thin.
Sent using BlackBerry® from Orange
Friday, October 30, 2009
Thursday, October 29, 2009
A whole new blog
So I'm resurrecting an abandoned blog and putting it to an entirely new purpose - blogging about my body, my health and my life as an above-average sized woman in the UK.
Launching myself into the Fatosphere has, in itself, proved more difficult than I would have imagined. Firstly, this blog used to be registered under the moniker "another diet coke head" and it's creation marked yet another diet-attempt-cum-bulimic-episode in my life. So I've had to rename it. Paralysed with indecision as to what to call myself, trawling through thesaurus entries on the word "Fat" (beefy, big, blimp, bovine, brawny, broad, bulging, bulky, bull, burly, butterball, chunky, corpulent, distended, dumpy, elephantine, fleshy, gargantuan, gross, heavy, heavyset, hefty, husky, inflated, jelly-belly, lard, large, meaty, obese, oversize, paunchy, plump, plumpish, ponderous, porcine, portly, potbellied, pudgy, roly-poly, rotund, solid, stout, swollen, thickset, weighty, whalelike courtesy of thesaurus.com) - as "the rotund" is already taken and the majority of other's excercises in torture (if anyone ever dared call me "elephantine", believe me when I say that they'd not be conscious for long). I figured I'd go with my normal online moniker of BB (short for Babyblue from the Bob Dylan song) for 2 reasons - firstly "BB" usually stands for Big & Beautiful in the Fatosphere and secondly because this blog is supposed to be about NOT hiding so making myself recognisable to friends, family and the world seems appropriate for this blog.
The second problem was with finding a photograph of myself for the blog. I went through every single photo on my hard drive and could find not one, single photo which shows off my sexy curves without the aid of corsetry (I love corsetry, but it kind of laughs in the face of "natural beauty" - kind of like Aunty Gok telling us to show off our curves by stepping into an all-over "miracle-suit"). I've had to settle for one that just shows off my tits and face for the time-being, but now have "get some photos taken where I'm not hiding my body" onto my list of Fat Acceptance things to do.
It's a pretty long list, but I think I'm getting there with the not-hating-my-body objective. My search through the photos has made me re-examine some photos of myself that, on first view, I thought I looked ugly in. I now look and see that I really don't. The only photo I came across in the search where I did look ugly was taken when I was 17 and 7st (at 5'6" this makes my BMI 15.84 - and me look like a bit of a hideous freak). I am not made to be a skinny girl - as evidenced by the fact that when I was that hideously underweight, I was still a clothes size 12 due to, well, bone. There's nothing wrong with being skinny, there IS something wrong with starving yourself to get there (just as there would be something wrong with bingeing on junkfood to try to gain curves).
Today I make a promise to myself.
I promise that I will never abuse my body to reach a false ideal of beauty ever again.
Launching myself into the Fatosphere has, in itself, proved more difficult than I would have imagined. Firstly, this blog used to be registered under the moniker "another diet coke head" and it's creation marked yet another diet-attempt-cum-bulimic-episode in my life. So I've had to rename it. Paralysed with indecision as to what to call myself, trawling through thesaurus entries on the word "Fat" (beefy, big, blimp, bovine, brawny, broad, bulging, bulky, bull, burly, butterball, chunky, corpulent, distended, dumpy, elephantine, fleshy, gargantuan, gross, heavy, heavyset, hefty, husky, inflated, jelly-belly, lard, large, meaty, obese, oversize, paunchy, plump, plumpish, ponderous, porcine, portly, potbellied, pudgy, roly-poly, rotund, solid, stout, swollen, thickset, weighty, whalelike courtesy of thesaurus.com) - as "the rotund" is already taken and the majority of other's excercises in torture (if anyone ever dared call me "elephantine", believe me when I say that they'd not be conscious for long). I figured I'd go with my normal online moniker of BB (short for Babyblue from the Bob Dylan song) for 2 reasons - firstly "BB" usually stands for Big & Beautiful in the Fatosphere and secondly because this blog is supposed to be about NOT hiding so making myself recognisable to friends, family and the world seems appropriate for this blog.
The second problem was with finding a photograph of myself for the blog. I went through every single photo on my hard drive and could find not one, single photo which shows off my sexy curves without the aid of corsetry (I love corsetry, but it kind of laughs in the face of "natural beauty" - kind of like Aunty Gok telling us to show off our curves by stepping into an all-over "miracle-suit"). I've had to settle for one that just shows off my tits and face for the time-being, but now have "get some photos taken where I'm not hiding my body" onto my list of Fat Acceptance things to do.
It's a pretty long list, but I think I'm getting there with the not-hating-my-body objective. My search through the photos has made me re-examine some photos of myself that, on first view, I thought I looked ugly in. I now look and see that I really don't. The only photo I came across in the search where I did look ugly was taken when I was 17 and 7st (at 5'6" this makes my BMI 15.84 - and me look like a bit of a hideous freak). I am not made to be a skinny girl - as evidenced by the fact that when I was that hideously underweight, I was still a clothes size 12 due to, well, bone. There's nothing wrong with being skinny, there IS something wrong with starving yourself to get there (just as there would be something wrong with bingeing on junkfood to try to gain curves).
Today I make a promise to myself.
I promise that I will never abuse my body to reach a false ideal of beauty ever again.
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