How to dress for your shape:
Are you human-shaped? Play up your natural sex appeal by wearing whatever the fuck you want.
Life Tip: As the weather gets warmer, continue to wear whatever the fuck you want. Flaunt everything or keep it cool under cover. Dress to make yourself feel rad.
So, it’s pretty common to see an image like this with like an article about body image or eating disorders or whatever.
And then they go on to talk about what a problem it is and how sad all these young women are hating themselves and hurting themselves because they think they are fat, when they aren’t.
Implying that if they were actually fat, then there wouldn’t be a problem, it would be totally normal and expected (as it is) to hate their bodies and hurt themselves over it.
Thin bodies shouldn’t be used to represent poor self-image and low self-esteem, just the same way fat bodies shouldn’t be used to represent greed, laziness, gluttony, disease, or any of the other nasty shit that fat bodies too often symbolize
You know who sees a fat girl in the mirror every day? fat girls. And I wanna see a picture of a fat girl seeing her own reflection in the mirror, and I wanna see the article talking about why that girl doesn’t need to hate herself or starve herself or think herself unworthy of love.
Don’t worry about your body.
It isn’t as small as it once was,
But honestly, the world needs more of you.
You look in the mirror
like you’ve done something wrong,
But you look perfect.
Anyone who says otherwise is telling a lie
to make you feel weak.
And you know better.
You’ve survived every single day,
for as long as you’ve been alive.
You could spit fire if you wanted.
“
| — | “For My Mother When She Doesn’t Feel Beautiful” |
[TW: threats of rape, suicide, homophobic bullying, abusive slur]
PSA:
So things like this happened.
And then this.
And more stuff.
And some other stuff.
I don’t want to live on this planet right now.
So I will be indulging in some self-care blogging (aka mainly pictures of animals) for the next week or so.
I need a break from politics.
Study finds fat acceptance blogs can improve health outcomes:
“Fat acceptance” blogs urging overweight people to shed negative feelings about their body image can lead to healthier diet and exercise choices, a study has found.
The fat acceptance movement, which seeks to foster a support network among overweight people, has inspired a plethora of blogs and web forums such as Corpulent, Fat Heffalump and The Rotund — an online community that’s become known as the “fatosphere”.
In a study published in the journal Qualitative Health Research, researchers from Monash University, the University of New England and the University of Canberra interviewed 44 fatosphere bloggers from Australia, the US and the UK about how their involvement in the movement had changed them.
“There’s been a lot of criticism of the movement that it promotes obesity and encourages people to give up on weight loss and makes their health worse,” said one of the researchers, Dr Samantha Thomas, a Senior Research Fellow at Monash University’s Department of Marketing.
“We saw there was a lot of opinion about the movement but very few people had actually studied it.”
Interviews with the respondents revealed many had experienced feelings of worthlessness, shame, crash diets, cycles of starvation and binge eating and laxative abuse before discovering the fatosphere.
“Having that support and feeling empowered, people slowly found that their health behaviours began to change dramatically. For example, many people suddenly felt confident to do swimming, something they would not have done before,” she said.
“People shifted their focus away from weight loss and more toward health. A lot of people started to take part in physical activity not as a way to lose weight but because they enjoyed it. Instead of pounding it out on the treadmill they start playing with their kids. It’s actually a massive shift in the way they looked at things.”
Shifting the focus away from restricting food and toward listening to the body’s needs could also lead to better food choices, said Dr Thomas.
“There are actually a lot of lessons for public health here,” she said.
“The term fat acceptance is really confronting for people. That’s why we have seen a lot of blame and criticism. Society tells us it’s not OK to be fat for a whole bunch of moral and medical reasons,” she said.
“This study shows that far from promoting obesity and promoting negative health behaviours, the movement is really positive for some people’s health.”
Diet culture, even when it doesn’t involve surgeries or starvation or physical harm (although it very often does involve these things) is violence. Even the language of diet culture is about hurt: burn those calories, zap that fat, I’ve been so bad, no pain no gain, beat the hunger, crush the cravings, fight the fat, battle the bulge, waging war on obesity. See? All about the hurt. It’s no wonder then that some people seem to perceive fat acceptance as a new kind of danger. Some assume it’s a movement that promotes harm to one’s own body or to the health of others, or even to taxpayers. It doesn’t. It simply illuminates this fact: if there is a war on obesity, there’s a war on ‘obese people’ and those people have a right to resist. So we do, often by opting out of the war altogether and making peace with bodies. I don’t want to fight my body anymore and I sure as hell don’t want to fight yours, whatever size it is. In fact, I don’t even want all that rhetoric about fighting. Why are softer words (embrace, accept, listen) less utilized? Traits commonly seen as ‘feminine’ and therefore weak — like kindness – are actually some of the most effective mechanisms we have to use against fat-hate. It’s hard to sell diet pills to someone who’d like to be gentle on themselves, accept themselves for who they are, listen to what their body needs and embrace size diversity. And it’s hard to see how creating a world without diet pills wouldn’t be a win for feminism.
“
| — | Spilt Milk, “Fat acceptance: when kindness is activism” |
One day I decided that I was beautiful, and so I carried out my life as if I was a beautiful girl. I wear colors that I really like, I wear makeup that makes me feel pretty, and it really helps. It doesn’t have anything to do with how the world perceives you. What matters is what you see. Your body is your temple, it’s your home, and you must decorate it.
“
| — | Gabourey Sidibe |
You either like me or you don’t. It took me twenty-something years to learn how to love myself, I don’t have that kinda time to convince somebody else.
“
| — | Daniel Franzese |
Eat like you love yourself.
Move like you love yourself.
Speak like you love yourself.
Act like you love yourself.
“
| — | Tara Stiles |
Six websites I go to when I am upset:
