Fat Girls in Swim Suits

There have been some CRAZY things going on around the internet. Like real cray. I thought I need to weigh in as well. It seemed to start from a blog post from one of my favorites GABIFRESH. She posted pictures of herself in a bathing suit, oh excuse me, a fatkini. From the words of Gabi:

As always, I truly encourage you guys to get to the beach (or a pool) this summer--don't let body shame keep you from having a good time! I don't expect everyone to feel comfortable in a two piece, but hopefully I can inspire some of you to take the plunge. I can't tell you how freeing it is to just have fun without worrying about what other people think.

Of course the world went crazy over a fat girl in a swim suit. This lead to an oxjane article about fat women and swim suits from the again amazing Gabi. The article also featured a photo slide show of women of all sizes wearing bathing suits. I loved it.

Then That Cortnie Girl posted a picture on of her in a swim suit on her Facebook, resulting in over 90 comments! Most positive, but of course, there was some body shaming as well. You can see her video response here.  

I thought, what a better way to celebrate my birthday (PS, yay I am 25, my brain is developed and ready to make some mad crazy sound decisions)  than to reaffirm my commitment to fat acceptance and the healthy at every size lifestyle then posting some pictures of myself in a bathing suit! It all really worked out perfectly, because I needed to pick a suit for my trip to Georgia this weekend anyways! 

Low a behold, a living, breathing obese person in SEVERAL bathing suits! Gasp! 

Here is me and all of my body, standing in solidarity with all other people that have been told their body does not deserve to wear a swim suit in public. 

Bodies and Victim Blaming

I follow healthy living blogs. I also follow healthy-at-ever-size, or fat acceptance blogs. In reading these blogs I saw an interesting reaction to emotional triggers related to bodies.

One HAES blogger wrote a post the other day about an emotional trigger for her, bad pictures. I think this is very relatable.

Her response was to realize most bodies she sees do not look like hers. In addition, she does not spend much time on a regular basis looking at her own body. She notes that unless people spend time looking at their bodies in full length mirrors regularly, they might forget what they look like, and start to think their bodies look like ones they are visually exposed to. The bodies we are mainly exposed to come through mainstream media – ads, TV, magazines and so on. These bodies are not real, and they are usually unattainable and non-representative of the majority of people.

Some bloggers in the healthy living community also had recent experiences with triggers. One of the bloggers is pregnancy and talked about the difficulty of accepting that her clothes no longer fit. She expressed feeling upset loosing a body that she worked so hard to achieve and maintain. When she reached her pre-baby weight she vowed never to gain weight again. Obviously this isn’t possible during pregnancy. Another blogger wrote about feeling upset and shocked after stepping on a scale.

In these examples, women felt the blame or cause was not unrealistic images in the media, but instead themselves. The thought was that either they needed to just feel better about their bodies, or actively do something to change their bodies till they were happy with them.

Here is what I understood:

HAES blogger

• cause of anxiety – a culture that only finds certain bodies acceptable, causes individuals to become disconnected from ]their own body.
• solutions – normalize all bodies. This can mean taking time to actually look at your own body, or see other images of real bodies.

Healthy Living Bloggers

• cause of anxiety – I am unhappy with my body.
• Solution – learn to love my body, or change my body.

I feel blaming a person for feeling anxiety about their bodies is victim blaming. An individual is given a warped sense of what bodies should look like from being over exposed to certain bodies, and under exposed to others (ones that actually look more like theirs). Wrongfully, some argue being affected by these environmental factors makes an individual weak. They need to rise above these influences.

I can already hear voices saying – only a weak person would let images in the media impact their sense of self. Then the individual is told, be strong, foster body image and so on, but the root cause of the anxiety, societal pressures, unrealistic images, are never addressed.

Kind of sounds like this other example of victim blaming – you knew dressing that way made people think you wanted to have sex, you were “asking” to be sexually assaulted. That is victim blaming, and telling someone they are weak because they have body anxiety caused by a culture that promotes unrealistic bodies is also victim blaming.

The real solution to these problems is societal-level change in how we view and express bodies. Our society does not accept bodies unless they look a certain way. To create cultural change I need to normalize my body. There needs to be MORE pictures of my body, and people, including myself, need to look at them. One example of normalizing different bodies was Fa(t)shion February.

Ok, I am getting on a ramble – night folks.

My Big Bliss experience

Whenever I got to Toledo I watch unnecessary amounts of TLC and HGTV. After a long week, I love vegging out to an episode of Say Yes to the Dress on a Friday night. I could write a whole book (and maybe somebody has) detailing feminist critiques of that show and wedding culture. Regardless, its my guilty pleasure.

         
(source, source)

This past weekend I was in Toledo and enjoyed my usual dose of cable TV. Friday night after a few episode of Say Yes to the Dress a new show came on. It was a spin off of Say Yes to the Dress featuring plus size brides, called Big Bliss.

I felt so angry watching this show. Woman after woman came into the shop and express their inability to find themselves beautiful. They would put on amazing dress after amazing dress and still look in the mirror and feel terrible.

They hated the way they looked, hated their bodies, and in turn, hated themselves. I found all of them beautiful. I understand beauty is subjective, but still in each woman I saw grace, elegance, and style. No – I saw a PERSON who had value and deserved dignity. It was literally painful to see the self hate.

Say Yes to the Dress: Big Bliss Clip

(source)

The whole thing made me angry. 

I was angry at a wedding industry that says only thin brides are beautiful. I was angry at the fashion industry that doesn’t make clothes that fit all people, and perpetuates unreal expectations of beauty. To me the world needs to change not these women, yet I am sure other viewers felt exactly the opposite. I hated that other people are watching this show and victim blaming. I can see them now saying to a friend, if only they would lose 50 or 60 pounds they wouldn’t have a problem. Even the comments on the video posted above made my blood boil.

These women don’t need to change, the world that creates stereotypes, stigmatizes, and disenfranchises people based on the size of their body needs to change. This is blatant discrimination and should not be tolerated. In my rage I vowed to never let anything, a dress, an industry, or a society make me hate myself and my body. I am, like every other person, too valuable to be minimized in this way.

I haven’t mentioned this lately on this blog but personally my body has been changing. I have alluded to the terrible eating and inactivity habits I adapted while trying to finish school and find a job. My clothes fits differently so I was aware my body had changed, but this weekend I became strikingly aware to the magnitude by which my body had changed.


(source)

This realization came at the mall. I went to the mall to spend a coupon I received for my birthday. I was excited to go to the mall and find some new clothes. When I got there I grab literally two arm loads of clothes, and rushed to the changing room. There were so many things on the rack I loved. I thought that I had hit the jackpot.

But then, shirt, after pants, after dress – nothing fit. Not one item I brought in fit. I knew my body had changed, I even made sure to get bigger sizes than I would have 6 months again, but still not one item fit.
I was paralyzed. Less than 12 hours ago I watched women go through these terrible shopping experiences that inevitably fueled their body hate. Less than 12 hours ago I vowed never to let something as silly as a dress make me feel less valuable. Yet there I was, exactly in their shoes.  I was ashamed, frustrated and sad.


I went back out to the store floor determined to feel better. I grabbed more clothes, in even bigger sizes, and even grabbed clothes that wouldn’t traditionally be considered “flatter” for a woman my size. Specifically I grabbed a white dress. I got a size I knew would fit, and rushed back into the dressing room.

Some of the clothes looked ok, and they now fit, but there still was no wow. The usual rush and excitement of new clothes was gone. I was too far in the hole by this point. The last item I tired on was the white dress. It fit well and was comfortable, but still all I saw in the mirror were my flaws. The rolls of fat on my back, the bludges around my hips. There I was, in a dressing room, in a white dress, feeling exactly like those women on TV, also in a dressing room, in a white dress.


I don’t have any answers or profound statements about this experience. I am still processing all my emotions and perceptions.

I guess I wanted to share this story because I know I am not alone in these feelings. I hope to keep thinking about this experience and figure out where I can grow from it. Right now I still feel hurt. I am hoping that time will bring wisdom, and I can share that wisdom here.

I guess the only advice I can give, and am giving to my self, is to not give up. I need to stand strong in my beliefs and figure out how I can use my skills in self reflection, self care, and social justice to address this problem. If anything I hope sharing this story makes others feel less alone, and make people aware that if you feel this way, there is someone with you in your corner trying to find a way to make things better – whatever that means.

What it means to me to be a 3rd waver

I don’t know a lot about feminism. I remember the first time I was asked, why was I a feminist, I had no response. I had never identified that way. I started my journey promoting health, because to me health equaled happiness. When I learned people could not live healthy lives because of social structures and factors outside of their control, I have became an activist for social justice.

My love for health, and comfort talking about sexuality and sex led me to reproductive justice, which opened my mind to feminist. I really claimed that work when I got engaged last summer. That was the first time I felt so much social pressure to perform, as a woman, and fit neatly into a construction of femininity that I did not identify with at all.

To me, being a 3rd wave feminist is being thankful for all the women before me that gave me the right to speak, to vote, and pursue ventures outside of the home. These women gave me the ability to go to school and pursue the career I wanted to. I never questioned going to college, because of these women. I was raised to believe I was intellectually, emotionally, and any other way as capable as my male counter parts to pursue my dreams in life.

These women gave me the pathway to an education, now my job as a 3rd waver is to figure out how I can make the world more justice with the privileged education I was able to receive. My job is to understand the intersects of race, gender, sexuality, abled-bodiness and any other identities or classes. My job is to work with environmentalist, organized labor, LBGTQA groups, and others that fight for justice and fairness of all people and the planet. My job is to make the world more fair for men and women, and fight more subtle battles of internalized and systemic oppression.

My job is also to prevent women and others from going back in time, when it comes to their rights. Everyday a war is fought over the rights of women’s bodies, their ability to receive equal pay as men, and many many other fights. There have been large gains within the women's movement, and it is my job as a 3rd waver to protect those advances and not let them go. The moment I think they will be there forever, is the same moment I leave myself and other sisters vulnerable.

My job is to work between generations, and foster hope and enthusiasm among youth within my movement. With out young people, the movement will not move forward.

Today was a long day. I saw a fetus testify, and was last to be heard in the hearing. I was one of few women in that room that spoke for themselves, and were not a prop for a radical anti-choice stunt.
This post rambles, I did not proof read it, but these words are true, honest and from my heart.
Trust me, a more substanial post will follow soon with all the details from the now infamous fetus hearing.
Thank you to all the amazing women in my life who inspire me!

This is where I have been so far …

(please note, this post rambles a bit, and I don’t feel like proofing, so deal or don’t read)

This is where I have been so far on my journey to healthy.

The first moment of my life I was aware of my weight was in the 1st grade. I remember before going to school for the first day giving myself a little prep talk. I told myself, you are fat and people will make fun of you for it. If you are nice and don’t cause problems no one will have a reason to be mean to you, and you will be safe. Looking back in breaks my heart that someone at the age of six would already be aware of the social implications of their weight.

My struggle with my weight continued as I got older. Growing up my weight was just part my identity. I was the fat girl and I completely understood how that impacted my life. I had the usual teasing but I don’t look back and think of myself as unhappy because of my weight, but I did always desired to be thin.

Here and there when I was younger I tried to "diet" (i.e. eat only granola bars, terrible idea) but my weight loss journey really began when I was in the 8th grade. January 2000 I began weight watchers with my mom. The whole experience was amazing. I was losing weight and I couldn’t believe it. I thought I was physical incapable of losing weight, but now I was. I hit my goal weight of 144 pounds sometime during the summer 2001, which was the summer before my freshmen year of high school. That fall my crush all through junior high asked me out, I was more outgoing at school and I felt more confident than ever.

Then that winter I moved to Ohio. This was the first time in my life making friends came easy. People wanted to talk to me and get to know me. This was a strange comparison to the way I had been treated in the past.

 

I internalized the idea that it was easier for people to accept me as a thin person. I think this impacted my opinion on weight gain. As silly as it sounds, it made me wonder, if being thin made me likable, what will I be if I gain the weight back? Maybe my change in self-perception is what made it easier to make friend. Maybe the fact that I as older, and people were more accepting at 14 then 12.

 

This question was answered my senior year of college when I gained all the weight, plus 10, back. This experience was well worth it. I learned that when I gained weight, my boyfriend still loved my. I was still able to do everything I did as a thin person, and the people who mattered didn't care. This is an important lesson to learn. While weight has an impact on the way others view you, it doesn't have to impact the way you view yourself, or the way you live your life.

 

Even though this experience taught me that I could be any weight and still accomplish my goals, I still wanted to return to a healthier weight. Losing weight the second time wasn't the same as the first time. When I was younger it was easier. I really didn’t have a negative relationship with food. Weight Watchers gave me the tools to lose weight and I could use them with ease. My mom was on program with me, I had a GREAT support network, and mainly ate at home. In high school new challenges came. I started to harbor resentment and self pity. It wasn’t fair other people didn’t have to think about what they ate. I wanted to go out with my friend, and do everything everyone else did without worrying about my weight.

 

College added a lot of new challenges as well. I was eating in the dining halls, away from home, and really pushing myself academically. My freshmen year I did great, but as I got busier and more involved managing my weight became increasingly difficult.

 

Now here I am. All the experience I have had with food up to this point has led me to where I am. I think the best sentiment to explain how I feel is something I read from another blog. One commenter said, you didn’t get unhealthy overnight, and you don’t get healthy overnight either. I really I identify with that. A lot of the habits I have developed over the years are good while others are not.

 

Also at this point in my life I am tired. I am tired of being told I am the problem and being told If I wanted to lose weight, I could just go do it. Trust, life is not that straight forward, in this matter, or any other matter of self reflection or development.

 

Also I harbor resentment. I resent the diet industry, even Weight Watchers, something that gave me so much hope growing up. While I wasn’t living a balanced lifestyle when I was overweight, I also wasn’t living one at my lowest weight, yet I still received external positive feedback for my “accomplishment.” The whole Weight Watchers thing is a whole other post!

 

Its funny too, I think my insecurities around weight is what lead me to health promotion as a career. I wanted to figure out what was wrong with me, but I ended up completely changing my perspective. As a student of public health, I know all the facts about the relationship between weight and health outcomes, yet there is more to life than that. There is more to life than just finding every way to reduce your risk for certain health outcomes. While maybe diet culture and body shaming brought me to public health, in the end public health brought me to feminism.  My growing ideals and beliefs about feminist and size acceptable (as aspect of feminist theory) have influenced my opinion on healthy living.

 

I know weight loss was never just about reducing my risk for ill health. I feel shame and guilt when I gain weight. I don’t feel shame and guilt when I forget to floss or wear my seat belt. Therefore, it isn’t just reducing risk, it is about something else.

 

My personal experiences from this story reflect a belief that to be loved one must be thin. While my experiences have also discredited this belief, culture constantly throws the message back into my face and faces of other women. See, there is the feminist in my talking.

 

All in all, I am just trying to figure it out from here. I don’t want to be part of the diet culture, but being active and learning about healthy eating is something I genuinely enjoy. I love running, and to run the distances I want to there is a certain level of self care I need to engage in. Being skinny, not so important, fueling properly, a little more important.

 

It is dirty work trying to dig through emotions, beliefs and ideas to find what you truly care about, and what someone over and over has told you to believe or think about yourself (cough socially constructed ideas of beauty, cough). Obviously I am a nurture over nature kind of girl when it comes to the social sciences.

 

Therefore, all I can do is try, and that folks, is what this blog is all about. I thought if we were going to chat about all the crap I have going on in my mind about food/weight/dieting/exercise, I might as well catch you up to speed.