Category: fat and the female body

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Call for Stories from People Who Have Considered Bariatric Surgery

Photograph of surgeons around an operating table.
Photo credit: Wikimedia Commons

I’m writing a piece about fat acceptance and bariatric surgery. So far, it’s mostly from my perspective, but my editor suggested that I do some research into what other people have to say about it. As you might imagine from my previous posts, I have an opinion on the matter. But a big part of the article is exploring the intersection between fat politics and personal healthcare decisions.

If you’d like to share your experience with me, you can submit a comment via this post. Please use your real name and provide contact information so a fact-checker can verify your identity — you can choose whether or not I use your name in the piece. The comment won’t appear until I approve it unless you’ve already commented on the site. If you prefer, you can use my contact form or email me at gardenofwordseditor at gmail.

Anything you share with me is welcome, but here are some questions that might help:

  • Have you considered weight loss surgery for yourself?
  • What made you decide to do it or not do it?
  • Did your doctor suggest it?
  • Was the suggestion unsolicited, or did you bring up the topic first?
  • What sort of research did you do before making your decision? Was there something you learned that influenced your choice?
  • Did you talk to other people who had the surgery? Did this influence your choice?
  • If you did get the surgery, what has your experience been with it?
  • If you had the surgery more than a few years ago, did you gain back the weight or some of the weight?
  • Did it cause or alleviate any other health problems?
  • Would you do it again?
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Using Haters Wisely

A clever way to repurpose hate speech into something helpful to your cause. It reminds me of the Repent Now letters I used to post on my old site about paganism.

Dances With Fat

Haters Walk on WaterCivil rights change always happens against the vehement objects of those who cling to the old beliefs, typically for whatever it buys for them – privilege, a false sense of superiority reinforced by social contract, fear of change, there are plenty of reasons.  In fat civil rights that brings us fairly quickly to haters, a group of people who are so upset that there are fat people who won’t hate ourselves and spend our lives dieting and professing our inferiority, that they dedicate significant amounts of their own lives to obsessing about us and everything that we do.

In fat rights activism for the foreseeable future there will be sad people who spend their time spewing hate and bigotry trying desperately to feel ok about themselves by putting others down (and, based on the ridiculously overwrought death threats I receive, playing a lot of Call of Duty.) Each of us…

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The Paradox of Body Acceptance

Image of street art reading "Love your fat body"
Photo credit: Green Kozi, via Flickr

Fat acceptance isn’t always about loving your body. It’s not always about standing up and proclaiming that fat is flabulous. Sometimes fat acceptance is just about accepting your body as it is at this moment.

My road to fat acceptance has been a long and winding one. Unlike some of the larger voices in the movement, I’m not a lifelong fattie. I’ve fluctuated up and down in body size since childhood, although I’ve been holding steady at my current size for the last decade or so. My first introduction was back in 1996, when my mother gave me a book called Nothing to Lose: A Guide to Sane Living in a Larger Body, by Cheri Erdman. This was long before the fatosphere — even before the blogosphere — and it was the first time I was exposed to the idea that fat people shouldn’t be ashamed of their bodies. I’d already gone through two large fluctuations in weight at that point: once in the sixth grade, and once again in college. In the sixth grade, my mother took me aside one day and told me that obesity ran in our family, and that I “had to be careful.” I joined the YMCA and began to run every day. I still remember one of the neighborhood kids looking at me incredulously and saying, “You can’t run!” I went ahead and ran anyway. Puberty caught up with me and I grew out of my ugly ducking phase.

Continue reading “The Paradox of Body Acceptance”

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Okelle’s Guide to Online Shopping for Curvy Ladies

Despite the fact that my blog is mostly devoted to poetry and other arcane topics, the top search term bringing people here lately is “North Style.” Back in April I posted a strongly worded letter to North Style — a company I’ve never actually done any business with. They send me catalogs on a fairly regular basis though, like a lot of other companies do. That’s because I do, in fact, buy clothing from catalogs.

“Why buy your clothing from catalogs?” you ask.

“Funny you should ask,” I reply.

Continue reading “Okelle’s Guide to Online Shopping for Curvy Ladies”

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Open Letter to North Style

Dear NorthStyle folks:

About once or twice a year I receive a catalog from your fine establishment. I’m a big mail-order shopper, so it’s very appropriate that you would send me one. Each time I receive it, I think “hmmmm… stylish, understated, affordable.” I mark off a few items. And then I notice that you insist on a $5 surcharge for me to order your clothes in my size.

Perhaps you haven’t noticed, but fat ladies all across the world are getting fed up with this kind of treatment. Countless times every day, I get messages — covert and overt — that there’s something wrong with me because of the size of my hips and the number on a label inside my clothes. These messages persist in spite of assurances from my doctor, my boyfriend, and my loved ones that I am healthy, lovable, and actually pretty attractive.

North Style, if you really want my business — and you should, considering what I spent on new clothes last year — then you’ve got to get with the program. I don’t hang out with people who make me feel ugly. And I’m certainly not going to hand over my hard-won dollars for the as-yet-unproven privilege of purchasing your merchandise. Take a number from retailers like Simply Be, Woman Within, and Ulla Popken, who treat me with the same courtesy and respect as a lady who wears a size 10. Then maybe I’ll take the next step and actually place an order with you.

Sincerely,

Me

[EDITOR’S NOTE: The main focus of this website is not fat politics, fashion, or online shopping reviews. Comments on this post have been closed. If you would like to discuss haiku, poetry, spiritual practice, gender, sexuality, or social justice, please feel free to follow me. If you would like to debate the pros and cons of fat acceptance and America’s so-called “obesity epidemic,” please troll someone else’s blog. There are lots of people being wrong on the Internet. You can’t fix them all.

Oh, and for the record, I never ordered from North Style. And I never will. Their parent company sounds like it has a culture of lousy customer service, and not just for fatties. ]

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Open Letter to Get in Shape for Women

Dear Get In Shape for Women:

Thank you so much for your congratulations on my new house! Nothing says “welcome to the neighborhood” like a postcard from a company that found me via an automated report from the United States Postal Service. I’m also touched and gratified that you care enough about my health to offer me an affordable, convenient option for losing weight so close to home.

Here’s the thing:

I don’t want to lose any weight.

I have no interest in losing any weight.

And if I decided I *did* want to lose some weight or join a gym, your marketing approach has completely ruined any chance of your getting my business. I’ll spare you the diatribe about the way constant media messages and images screw with women’s perceptions of what constitutes a normal, healthy body. I’ll refrain from quoting the statistics that show how much money the weight loss industry collects from women in their vain attempts to lose weight and keep it off.

Continue reading “Open Letter to Get in Shape for Women”

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Emo Femme Shopping and What It Won’t Give Me

A while back, a friend of mine posted on Facebook that she wanted to indulge in some “emo femme shopping,” but that she was resisting the impulse. And she summed up the post with a phrase I wish I were uninhibited enough to write: “world love me NOW!”

I knew immediately what she meant. This friend and I have a lot in common. We’re both queer femmes, we’re both plus-sized girls, and neither of us had Mrs. Cleaver for a mother. Her post also made me aware of how I’d been indulging in my own emo femme shopping for quite a few weeks. And what, pray tell, is emo femme shopping? It’s an attempt to lift one’s mood via the purchase of a pink/fluffy/sparkly/cute/fashionable item. And given the nearly unlimited number of pink/fluffy/sparkly/cute/fashionable items available via the miracle of the Intartubes and Paypal (not to mention the nice bump in salary I enjoyed when I came back to work full-time this April), it can reach dangerous proportions.

I’m sure we’re all familiar with the phenomenon of attempting to change our moods via some outside mechanism. Some of us use booze. Some of us use food. Some of us use sex. And some of us use things like this! or this! or this!. I’m actually not very interested in any of these items, but they do a good job of representing the kind of twee, impractical things I tend to crave when I’m in a particular kind of mood.

Emo femme shopping can very quickly turn into the hell of the hungry ghost — a hell of intense craving that’s impossible to satisfy. A tiny mouth and a huge belly. Like most hells, it’s an illusion. In this case, it’s the illusion that more material possessions will fill the god-shaped hole inside of me.

Continue reading “Emo Femme Shopping and What It Won’t Give Me”

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You can take your BMI, fold it until it’s all sharp corners…

This flickr set is one of the best things I’ve seen in a long time. It does a good job of illustrating the amazing, beautiful variation of the human form. And, in my opinion, also illustrating why the BMI is just a marketing tool for gastric bypass programs. Which can kill you a lot quicker than diabetes and a heart condition can.

Illustrated BMI categories

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