I Stand

No doubt, by now, many, if not all, of you have heard about Marilyn Wann's I Stand project. If you'll remember, the Georgia anti-fat group, strong4life, posted ads around the state shaming fat kids. Well, Marilyn and a small team of photoshoppers have joined forces and created dozens of protesting posters with people of all shapes and sizes stating what they stand for or against. The amazing Pattie Thomas has made a great slide show of many of them and there's also a tumblr!

For me, strong4life's campaign as well as Marilyn's I stand campaign are personal. I was that fat child and the bullying from peers, family, the media, and even strangers contributed to a decade long struggle with an eating disorder, self destructive behaviors, and severe depression. So for my poster I wanted to specifically address the increased risk of eating disorders and suicide associated with weight stigma and weight bullying. You'll notice the word 'love' written on my arm as well. The TWLOHA organization (to write love on her arms) is dedicated to awareness of depression and self injury. The majority of people know someone who self harms or has, whether they know it or not.  These are two very important issues and I'm happy to be part of this project.

If you want to participate email a photo of yourself and what you stand for or against to Marilyn Wann at Marilyna@fatso.com. make sure the photo is a reasonable size!

The Blue Wall

All photographs by Bill Welch Sr from a group shoot at the Health and Beauty Institute with the North Carolina Photography Group. I had changed out of my ballgown back into my casual clothes and Bill took a few photos against the blue wall. These are cute and just for fun so expect some silliness!

 

Masquerade!

I went to a great group shoot in High Point with a ballgown theme. I worked with a lot of photographers and many fantastic model friends were there as well! Some gr oup shoots can be a struggle, but this one was an absolute pleasure. Because I don't get all of the photos at the same time this will likely be a part one post. Though I love all of the photos I've received I will only pick one or two from each photographer to show on this post. Also, this is not only the first photo post of 2012, but also the first shoot with my new lip ring :) What do you think?! As usual, all images are copyrighted.

Andrew Gentry Photography

Dragon's Lair Photography

Susan Bryan Photography

Tony Marquez Photography

AJ's Photography

Photo by Anthony Piraino Photography

Photo by Anthony Piraino Photography

Brian Leon Photography

Lee Bryan Photography

Tony Marquez Photography

It's hard to be a little girl when you're bullied

I realize this is the billionth post you all have seen about the Georgia ads which bully fat children. In case you've just happened to have had a prior engagement under a rock and are only now emerging from the gala, here are the ads that the fatosphere has been buzzing about:

The videos on the website show Bobby (above) in black and white sitting across from his (also fat) mom asking, "mom, why am I fat?".

Tamika, the girl in the last photo above is seen in her video fidgeting uncomfortably in front of the camera with her (supposedly) mother saying, "Being thick runs in our family. As her mom, I never noticed Tamika eating any different from the rest of us. She likes junk food, but what kid doesn't? When the doctor said she had type two diabetes, I never thought what we eat made her sick. I just always thought she was thick like her mama.

Tina, the girl on the right in the third photo above says, "I don't like going to school because all the other kids pick on me. It hurts my feelings."

Maritza (not pictured) is a girl of color and says, "My doctor says I have something called hypertension.. I'm really scared"

Lastly, Jaden (also not pictured), a boy of color says, "Playing video games is what I like to do by myself. I don't have to be around the other kids.. cause all they want to do is pick on me"

If this is the first time you've seen these ads, it may take you a moment to take it all in. Other than the fact that fat people can be just as healthy as thin people, some of these are downright absurd. They're not based in fact and they're downright stigmatizing and bullying. These things are why fat children are more at risk for eating disorders and suicide. Let's go through these things one by one.

"Chubby kids may not outlive their parents"
This is a bald faced lie. Firstly, "chubby" is not the same as fat as we already know that those in the "overweight" category live the longest. But when they say chubby they mean fat, right? But according to the same study (as the 'overweight' live longest study) obese people live just as long as normal weight people- the same study says that obese patients are even less likely to die from heart disease and that the healthiest fat people were people who were fat when they were.. *ding ding ding*!... kids! More so, according to the predictions on life expectancy- it's still going up.. no worries.

"Fat kids become fat adults"
Excuse my language but, no shit sherlock. That's because genetics play a pretty big role in weight and there's more than one gene that helps out. This is what makes this kind of fat shaming particularly cruel and useless.

"Big bones didn't make me this way. Big meals did"
Ahem- except that no study has ever shown that fat people eat more than thin people, although a few have shown that fat kids eat less than thin kids. In other words: liar liar, pants on fire.

"He has his father's eyes, his laugh, and maybe even his diabetes"
Considering that diabetes is genetic then yeah, he just might. If the kid was thin (controlling for lifestyle) he'd have the same risk. Did anyone see Captain Obvious sail by?

"75% of parents of overweight kids ignore the problem"
Well this is the first good news I've seen- that means that 75% of parents are (hopefully)  not being assholes and fat shaming their children, instilling in them lifelong body image issues. Of course, we have campaigns like this to do this for them.

"Fat prevention begins at home. And at the buffet line."
I'm sorry, but what...? Because thin people never eat at buffets? Or are we just assuming they have more self control? Wait.. didn't we just say that fat kids eat less than thin kids? Yes.. yes we did.

I'm skipping the next two because I want to talk about them a little more in depth. So the next one is, "My fat may be funny to you, but it's killing me." Excuse me, please show me any evidence that fat directly kills anyone. Lack of exercise, poor food choices, lack of health care, discrimination, bullying, weight cycling, weight loss drugs- those things may be killing you, but fat certainly isn't. How many times do we need to repeat that one can be fat and healthy or thin and unhealthy? The thing is- this is Georgia's poverty rate is at 14.4-  it ranks #5 in states with the highest poverty rate. In fact, if you look at the fattest states and the most impoverished states, there's quite a crossover. Stress, depression, lack of medical care, lack of access to nutritious foods or safe areas for activity are all issues that may contribute, but one thing is for sure; the war on obesity is also a war on woman and a war on the poor.

Okay, let's go back to the two we skipped:
"It's hard to be a little girl if you're not"
and "being fat takes the fun out of being a kid"

These two really caught my attention because I was a fat kid and I have an excellent memory. Being fat never interfered with me being a kid. I wouldn't have even known or cared that I was fat if people didn't point it out to me. To me, I was just a kid, swinging, climbing trees, and playing Star Trek during recess with my best friend. If you take out all of the bullying, the abuse, the attacks, and the nasty "well meaning" comments from adults ( in other words, still bullying), then being fat has absolutely zero impact on my being a kid or a little girl.

What did make it hard to be a little girl and what did take the fun out of being a kid was fat stigma, discrimination, and bullying. In other words, ads like this. This campaign accomplishes the very thing it speaks out again- making kids miserable. A lot of their campaign hinges on how fat kids get bullied and how much that sucks. Yes, it does suck. But let me tell you, fat kids aren't the only ones who get bullied. When the news picked up stories of gay kids killing themselves and homophobic bullying did we see state and nation wide campaigns to cure homosexuality? Did I see any ads that said, "I don't want to go to school. The kids make fun of me for being gay" with "stop the homosexual epidemic now" stamped across the bottom? As a member of the lgbt community I would have been outraged just as I'm outraged now at this kind of fat hate. In any other circumstance we create sensitivity programs, anti bullying campaigns, and massive awareness campaigns to combat the problem. But with fat kids? We blame them, blame their parents, tell adults that it's their job to bully them (and other adults) and all because it's good for them. I can't think of a single form of bullying that is as socially acceptable and even encouraged as the bullying of fat people. I hope the parents of these children realize how detrimental this is and I hope the children themselves can grow up to find the fat acceptance movement and throw off the horrible abuse that Georgia has perpetrated against them.

Happy New Year everyone! Welcome 2012!

costume from last night's masquerade ball 

Happy New Year! Wow, is it 2012 already? 2011 was a special year to me; it was my first full year of body acceptance and fat activism. My first exposure to fat acceptance was in October of 2010 so most of my year was spent hating my body with horribly destructive habits. In 2011 I got to go through it all- making new friends, having to move, parties, holidays.. all being fat and happy the entire time. Wow, how completely liberating! 2011 was a good year for me.

No, I don't have a new year's resolution and I don't plant to. Most resolutions fail (I wonder how much of this failure is because one of the top resolutions is weight loss which, itself, fails 95% of the time?) and most are focused on our flaws and what we need to change about ourselves. More so, though, it sets you up for disappointment if you can't go through with it. I feel confident that I can change and progress and do some awesome things in the coming year without making promises to myself or anyone else . This year, I'm going to try to just be. I get the whole 'new beginnings' metaphor, but really.. any time can be a time for new beginnings and any time can be a time for progress and change.

If you're going to make a resolution, make it to love, respect, and appreciate your body more from now on. And that's a goal that's good all year round. This is a time for diet scams and false weight loss promises- so counter it with some of your own fat activism

Happy Holidays!

These are a little late for the winter solstice which was yesterday, but happy holidays and enjoy! 

What's it like to be a 200lb 8 year old?

So this story has been making the rounds and I'm sure you've all seen it- 200lb third grader put into foster care. People are talking an awful lot about what constitutes child abuse, throwing in quite a bit of vague future health threats. They're calling it medical neglect and insisting that he's in imminent danger despite any actual evidence of any life threatening danger. The whole thing started when the boy's mother took him to the ER because he couldn't breathe (medical neglect? That seems pretty responsible to me). It turned out that he had sleep apnea, something that thin people as well and can be treated and controlled. Even if his sleep apnea was proven to be caused by his fat, it doesn't matter since we don't know how to make fat people thin.

 What terrifies me is how many parents also agree with this decision (try hanging around some parenting message boards where this is being discussed.. whew! You have to save up your mental health points for that one!) and how few people are actually thinking about how this will effect the child. Fat people, including children, are often dehumanized and objectified (sexual objectification is not the only way to objectify someone). We are reduced to our bodies, to our fat, rarely being seen as actual human beings. But for this boy, he has to live the real life consequences of stigma and discrimination. While the boy's identity has been kept secret to protect him (not that he's currently being protected thanks to the system that removed him from his home), below is a photo of another eight year old boy who was 200+ lbs, Connor McCreaddie.

How fat is this really? It sort of blows my mind that this is what everyone's ruffled about. It's true that you don't often come across a child this large, but it's not exactly new either. More so, it's not a death sentence. The number of people who have proclaimed, as if it's fact, that the boy removed from his home would be dead by 30 without intervention, is ridiculous. I've posted it before, but here's a photo of me from the beginning of my 6th grade year at 10 years old:

Ignore the 80's style dress and gigantic glasses and take a look at how fat I was. By this time I was actually about the same size I am now- a size 22 or so. And, while the vast majority of kids in my school were slimmer than I, there were two children who were larger. I'll be 30 in a few years and I don't have any "obesity related" diseases and I'm pretty sure I'm not going to drop dead by 29. But if all fat people drop dead before they turn 30 someone really needs to tell all of the fat old people, including my fat 83 year old grandmother, that they've somehow outstayed their welcome among the living. Silly fat people, didn't they know they weren't supposed to live that long?

Now, full disclosure, I didn't weigh quite as much as the little boy being taken away from his family. I weighed closer to 150lbs. I think, it's safe to say however, that at a size 22/24 at 10 years old, I was pretty fat. While reading comments about how this boy's been treated I'be seen a lot of people accuse the mother of feeding the child a terrible diet that made him pack on the pounds. I grew up with two, slim, siblings who ate exactly as I did. We were all only a year apart in age (with myself being in the middle) so our diets were almost identical. Same school lunches, same after school snacks, same meals at home. And we were banned from snacking between meals. We had the same chores, all ran around like wild things during recess, and all had the same activity level. So why was I fat and they were slim? I'm sure there are a hundred and one things that could have caused my weight gain, but that didn't stop people from blaming me, just as they tend to do now, but the fact is there is nothing my mother could have done because there was nothing that was different about me other than my fatness.

This child already has to face bullying from peers. He seems lucky that he has a loving mother and doesn't get bullied at home as well. By the time this photo was taken I had already been fat for about two years. I already blamed myself, blamed my body, and hated them both. I started weighing myself and dieting thinking, "if I can stay this weight and not gain anymore then I'll grow into it".  The emotional turmoil that led to self destructive behaviors that I experienced is likely nothing to what I would have experienced had I been taken away from my home because of my weight.

This child, this eight year old child, will blame himself for what's happened. I realize that fat children often seem older than they are, just as tall children seem older as well. A friend has a young child who's two heads taller than the other kids his age and everyone who deals with him has to constantly remind themselves to treat him like a five year old, not a seven or eight year old. No one's really considering how this child feels nor do I think they truly grok that he's only 8. I want every single person to just stop and think back to when they were that age, really remember it. Playing with your friends on the playground, holidays with your loved ones, field trips, vacation. Now think about being taken away from them, put with strangers, only allowed to see your parents or siblings for a couple of hours a week, all because you could do something right, because you couldn't change enough. You, you, you. You failed, all your fault. Now why, why, would you think it's okay to do that to a child who is loved and wanted?

And to all of the people who say that this boy will, without a doubt, get diabetes and heart disease, I put myself forth. I never developed either. Maybe I'm not quite thirty, but I have no signs of developing them either with my cholesterol, blood pressure, and blood sugar all well within the normal range. It's not a guarantee. Fat doesn't guarantee poor health or death and him losing weight certainly wouldn't guarantee good health or a long life.


200 lbs. Yes, that's fat, but it's not so far outside the realms of reality that we need this moral crusade. Shame on everyone who would destroy this child's life, with no actual consideration of his well being beyond the borg like thought "he needs to be thin", bleated out by sheeple who haven't bothered to actually consider the consequences of what's being done. Shame on those who dehumanize a child, reduce him down to his body without a single thought towards his mind or his wholeness as a human being. Shame on those who demonize a struggling mother simply trying to do the best that she can while being threatened with the worst thing a mother could ever go through- losing a child. This case is being handled and commented upon with an almost sociopathic lack of empathy. Put yourself in this child's shoes- just for a second, and remember that he is a human being and he deserves the love of his family.