Now they want to talk about fat. I don’t know when it will air, but I do know that if you are an NYC fatty with some free time on Friday afternoon, I’d love to see you in the audience.

The “Face Off” will be moderated by co-anchor Cynthia McFadden and held at The Cooper Union’s Great Hall in New York City on Friday, February 5th at 4:00pmET.

What:

“Nightline Face-Off – Is It Okay to be Fat?”

Who:

Crystal Renn, model and author of “Hungry: A Young Model’s Story of Appetite, Ambition, and the Ultimate Embrace of Curves

Marianne Kirby, co-author of “Lessons from the “Fat-O-Sphere”

Meme Roth, President, National Action Against Obesity

Kim Bensen, author of “Finally Thin”

When:

Friday, February 5, 2010
4:00pm-5:30pm

Where:

The Cooper Union’s Great Hall
The Foundation Building
Continuing Education & Public Programs
7 East 7th Street
New York City

The event is free and open to the public. It will be first come first serve for seating. The hall seats about 900 and we’ll probably open the doors about 3:30.

Of course, not writing it down here doesn’t mean the thoughts – both analytical and angry – go away. FAR FROM IT. I’ve missed y’all like made and I’ve been occupied by two primary thoughts during my downtime here.

1.

For a person who is 5’4”, the maximum allowable weight to be a bone marrow donor is 233 pounds. The official reason given is donor safety. And, you know, I can respect that they want bone marrow donors to be safe, not to suffer for the sake of their donation. But I also can’t find any reason WHY donating bone marrow is more dangerous for fatter people.

And since there IS an upper-limit chart and there is not a lower-limit chart…. It just seems a bit not okay.

Leukemia sucks. I would still like to point out that bone marrow registries and donations do a world of good even while I question the whole “If your BMI is greater than” restrictions.

2. The systemic fat hate in our culture works, in part, through depersonalizing “the obesity issue” – it pathologizes bodies and erased the identity of those people. That’s why we all cringe at the headless fatties so common on tv and in print. The most effective thing I’ve found to combat that is making it personal.

Because it IS personal. This is my body. This is your body. These are the bodies we live in, move in, experience our world in. It cannot be an impersonal fight.

Which, of course, is always implied but I think explicitly stating it has a certain power.

As such, I want to frame things here a bit more personally. I mean, obvs, I have done a lot of that anyway. *grin* But I want all of us to think about this from that very specific viewpoint – the war on obesity is a war on each of us as individuals.

3. Okay, I liked, one more item: Avenue, I damn well love that you have interesting fishnet tights but there is no reason the crotch should rip out on every single pair upon first wearing. Can we deal with that, please? Thank you.

You are amazing.

Right now, though – and man, does it feel early in the morning right now, I have this link to my most recent piece for Comment Is Free.

They recently received a comment wondering if… wait for if… fat people know they are fat.

*facepalm*

Fat is a humanist issue

The “eat less and exercise more” comments are making quite the showing, as are the “it’s your own fault for being fat” comments. But there’s some good discussion that is cropping up, too. I’m always surprised by how that goes.

Also, for the visitors wondering about the tagline – that’s a direct response to an accusation by a radio caller that I could justify my existence however I want; fat people don’t need to justify their existence!

Point is, in an effort to locate some “winter” clothes, I got my closet and dresser a bit more organized and realized I had some clothes I haven’t worn in a long time – like, a year or more.

Part of the beauty, for me, of not dieting is that while I had a sort of left-over habitual moment of worry about whether or not those clothes would still fit, it was easy to shake that off. OF COURSE they still fit. Once I stopped trying to force my body to change, my weight and shape stabilized and is happily sitting at pretty much exactly the same point it has been sitting for about 4 years now.

Some of my clothes are older than that – they are the clothes I have left over from before my last “I’ll get healthy and that will make me lose weight” attempt about 5 years ago. And those clothes? Still fit. They got a bit big when I was staving myself but I went right back to the same size (give or take a little bit) as I was before.

There’s this hot pink skirt I bought at Wal-Mart of all places, in 2004. Still fits. Still love it. There’s a black peasant top from Old Navy (I wore it yesterday as a matter of fact). There’s all of these clothes that I love and do not have to remember fondly because I can still wear them fondly.

It’s kind of amazing.

I often hear the “I can’t afford to not diet; I have to stay in these same clothes.” Buying new clothes is expensive and a pain in the ass, I get that, I really do. But buying clothes for the skinny phase (whatever counts as skinny) of your diet is not a sound motivational technique.

I have some concert t-shirts from high school. They still fit, because I was a fat kid then, too. They 14 years old, yo.

When I realized that, hey, I actually did not need to worry about whether or not those clothes would fit, it was kind of like a huge anxiety I didn’t even know I was feeling disappeared.

And getting dressed got even more fun – I had been sort of unconsciously limiting my choices without thinking about it and now…. Now I don’t have to do that anymore.

This is what I mean when I say FA is a constant process. There is so much pressure from all sides, so many internalized messages, so many past experiences rearing their heads – it all goes so deep.

So, we’ll just keep moving deeper, too, eh?

Just saying.

I’m under no delusion that I get to actually make these decisions for everyone, of course. But there was recently a lot of commentary on how I should take my responsibility seriously, after all, and, well, I’m responsive. Maybe not in the way people want me to be but no one got that specific.

Just in case I’m ever granted the power, it seems like a good idea to have a little something prepared. That’s why I’ve taken the time to write this down, in convenient ten commandment formatting. One hopes I do not have to do a satire disclaimer but…. I do not really think I am the boss of anyone else, much less god.

2 I am the Rotund, your fatty friend, who walked with you out of the land of self-hatred, out of the house of self-deprivation;

3 Do not have any other blogs before me.

4 You shall not make for yourself a blogroll, whether in the form of anything that is in livejournal, or that is on the dreamwidth, or that is in the yahoo groups.

5 You shall not bow down to them or favorite them; for I the Rotund, your favorite blog, am a jealous blog, punishing fat children for the iniquity of fat parents, to the third and the fourth generation of those who reject me,

6 but showing steadfast love to the thousandth generation of those who buy Lessons From the Fatosphere and keep my fat acceptance commandments.

7 You shall not make wrongful use of the name of Fat Acceptance, for the Rotund will not acquit anyone who misuses the movement.

8 Remember to eat and enjoy it.

9 For 7 days shall you practice HAES (or not because health has no moral value).

10 But whatever day you like is a day of rest and if that day of rest includes exercise then that is okay, too; you shall not believe in the good fatty/bad fatty dichotomy.

11 For in social justice movements of all sorts, the Rotund found allies and became an ally; therefore the work of anti-oppression must be approached from an intersectional framework without a hierarchy of oppressions to derail our conversations.

12 Honor your father and your mother, for theirs are the genetics that have been passed on to you.

13 You shall not diet.

14 You shall not pursue weight loss surgery.

15 You shall not wear Spanx.

16 You shall not say crappy things about what your fat neighbor wears.

17 You shall not covet your neighbor’s thinness; you shall instead, accept your body and live your own damn life.

Now, this isn’t going to fly as a mission statement for the movement, obviously. But it’s where I’m starting. What’s important to YOU? What do you think is vital to the movement?

I don’t want to be part of a fat acceptance movement that doesn’t take other oppressions seriously. I don’t want to be part of a fat acceptance movement that is only for “healthy” or “acceptable” fatties. I don’t want to be part of a fat acceptance movement where we have to all disagree and play nice.

I want to be part of a fat acceptance movement that represents a variety of viewpoints, that has room for a variety of methods and tactics and approaches and concerns. I want radicals and not-so-radicals. I want thin people to be part of the movement. I want fat people to change themselves and thus change all of us.

What do you want?

This is not because there are not awesome fat people. It’s because if I dressed up as Lesley (which would crack me up no end, honestly, I think it’d be the funniest thing ever if fatties from the blogs dressed as each other), no one who doesn’t know Lesley would know who I was.

The theme at work this year was rock stars. I could have been Mama Cass. Or Meat Loaf.

I considered being Beth Ditto.

But in the end, I dressed in some of my more outlandish clubby clothes and I was a groupie.

I didn’t want to wind up doing what one of my coworkers spent the day doing – explaining that I was the fat version of someone.

She was the fat Lita Ford. As Lita Ford kicks ass, I thought it was awesome.

But I didn’t want to be the one having that conversation over and over and over again. As it was, I know there were snickers because fat goth groupies? Really? But yes.

It’s the same dilemma every year. Do you go as a fat person or do you make the vaguely apologetic comment about how you’re the version of Debbie Harry that gained weight?

That gets old to me.

Throw in the way women are relegated, for the most part, to playing “slutty” ________ (fill in the job description here) on Halloween, and it’s just a recipe for me sitting on my sofa kind of hating one of my favorite holidays.

THAT IS NO FUN.

So, what’s a fatty to do?

On a practical level, I’ve found going for a more creative but less specific costume helps a lot. “I’m a flight attendant” does not require a fat disclaimer.

That’s the kicker, y’all. I am sick of having to give the fat disclaimer.

But beyond that practical level, remember that, if you’re dressing up, this is a time designed for visibility. Standing out in a crowd is not always easy, especially if you are just getting into the whole body acceptance game. But Halloween is such a good time to play with that.

It is, of course, totally cool by me if you aren’t into costumes at all. Lots of people are not.

But I thought I’d mention: Playing around with another identity, even just for a night, can be super liberating and a lot of plain old fun. Especially if that identity is not competing with some thin ideal of itself.

OMG, y’all, I could not disagree more!

And my reasoning is even related to body politics though not specifically fat. *grin* I’m so excited to get to explicate this.

A douche is a device that, in theory, cleanses a woman’s vagina via a nozzle that is inserted. The douche bag portion of this program holds whatever liquid is being used, whether it is water or some water/vinegar/perfume mix or, historically, an antiseptic like Lysol.

But what a douche really does is wash away the natural secretions of the vagina and totally fuck up the ph of, if you’ll excuse the term, your pussy. The vagina has a self-cleaning process and messing with that opens you up (no pun intended) to everything from yeast infections to bacterial vaginosis.

The “benefit” of using a douche product regularly is that you can perfume the general area and, during your period, prevent a certain amount of the mess that happens if you’re going for some penetrative action.

I don’t know about you, but I’d much rather just clean up than risk bacterial infection. Because omg, no, thank you no.

So, douches are bad for you. Douches themselves are cloaked in this concept of health but are, in reality, kind of dangerous.

And that’s why, as a general rule, it strikes me as a feminist term when used as an insult or warning.

I don’t call people bitches. That is an anti-woman term in my opinion. I don’t call people pussies or cunts or any other common term based on women’s genitals. Because there’s nothing inherently bad about genitals, yo.

But I will surely use “douchebag” if there is something going down that purports to be harmless or even good for you and is instead, in fact, kind of dangerous.

As a final note, while there are always exceptions, I’d just like to say: Let’s keep douchebags away from our vaginas, in every sense of the word.

There, do we all feel warm and fuzzy? I KNOW I DO.

*grin*

So, harsh realities. The harsh reality is that, while we might all want it, there isn’t really any such thing as a safe space on the internet. What we can do, however, is try to make some spaces safer. That’s why there’s no diet/weight-loss talk here. I mean, dude, we get enough of that shit almost everywhere else.

But at Wiscon earlier this year a women named Ladyjax had something to say about safe spaces that seriously stuck with me – that safe spaces are not comfortable. They are some of the most challenging spaces around. And I think she’s right about that. We’ve created a space that is safer so we can talk about bodies and fat and oppression and social justice and clothes. But those conversations are not going to be easy and they are not always going to end with every single one of us holding hands and singing.

I am so freaking glad of that, too.

One way to look at this: when we are comfortable, we are too busy relaxing to get things done. It is not time to relax yet.

Like I said earlier, we are not obligated to be nice. I LIKE being nice – I don’t feel good in snarky environments. But it is not a requirement and, frankly, sometimes it is a liability. We think that if we are just nice enough, just pretty enough in a mainstream sort of way, just “fatties can be healthy, too!” enough about our message, that we will be more palatable, that eventually we will be embraced. I hate to compare social justice movements but, damn, y’all. Have we learned nothing from watching other oppressed groups? Have we not learned that, yes, it is good to be nice and have reasonable discourse with people. It is also good to sometimes just raise a damn ruckus. Internally to the movement and externally with the rest of society.

Wow. I think I just became an actual agitator. *grin*

I’m not sitting here saying you have to be rude to people. We’re adults here, even those of us who aren’t yet legally. You can judge for yourself when a bit of the angrypants is necessary. And if you can’t wear clothing with a specific emotional purpose in a safer space, where can you?

Angrypants – wear them well