I love to swim. It is hands down my favorite exercise. Floating almost weightless is the closest I will ever come to being in space. Not to mention that I am a strong swimmer.
Am I graceful in the pool? No. I've been fat since I was nine but even before that I was a girl with almost no coordination and two left feet. I swim laps and I don't do anything fancy. I am there for movement and to enjoy myself. I'm not an athlete and I never will be. I could never hit a ball, I barely got the ball over the net playing volleyball. However I find that if I don't regularly exercise I got tired and depressed.
Dancer Ragen Chastain recently posted how her body was put up to ridicule in a fat hate forum.
They took the heel pull picture that you see on the left and put it beside a thin person doing a similar move – they claimed that because we looked different mine was wrong. They said that I lumbered and waddled and that I lacked grace, which is interesting because the most common compliment I receive is about how graceful I am.
Attacking Ragen's dancing boggles my mind. Ragen is a a fat person and she is dancing, doing exercise and movement. This is a woman who regularly wins international dance competitions. Fat haters scream how we should just put down that doughnut and go for a run but when we do, we are told we look stupid. We can't win.
And that stigma about fat people exercising is causing them to exercise less.
“Some stated they were unwilling to participate in exercise because they “expected” that people would “laugh at”, “ridicule” “stare at” or “abuse” them. One participant (a 34 year old female) said that she rarely participated in physical activity, because she felt constantly “on display”.
This was a study in Social Science and Medicine of 141 fat people and found that that about 2/3 of them suffered from stigma.
As I mentioned before I am Queen of the Klutzes. I don't like to dance. My wedding dance consisted of my husband and I rocking back and forth because I lose count during waltzes.
However everytime Ragen comes to New York to teach a dance class, I am there. Why? Because Ragen is a fantastic teacher. Not only does she make the room comfortable and fun because there is no judgement or stigma but she makes the moves so easy that I don't lose count.
But if fat haters had their way, she wouldn't dance anymore. I know Ragen is a strong, very self assured woman who is unapologetic about her fat. I don't see her giving up her life to appease the fat haters any time soon. And she is a damn good dancer.
But what about the other fat people who are not good dancers but love to dance? Should they give it up because they don't look graceful or should enjoy the movement?
Fat haters seem to think we should quit.
So I say fuck fat haters. I will dance like an idiot and swim like whale.
i love to swim and i miss it a lot , i exercise daily at home in a back room hidden away ,i really would love to swim again but i am looked upon like some kind of freak how dare the fat person want to exercise go away dear and starve your self first they seem to say
Posted by: Debbie Hargroves | May 28, 2012 at 01:42 PM
Please do! please keep this awesome attitude. We all need role models like you and Ragen so that we can be that ourselves, too
Posted by: louisa | May 28, 2012 at 02:53 PM
I won't go to gym because of this. I was mocked in a gym thirty years ago. I feel embarrassed because I think people are looking at me. I take walks because I'm going some place. I can't even take a walk or bike for the heck of it. I have to go somewhere. I'll only exercise at home or if the movement has another purpose. I feel too self-conscious to exercise in public for the heck of it. I'll swim for fun, but not for exercise for the same reason. I don't want people to see me exercising.
One insult years ago make me feel uncomfortable. It's foolish, but my inner voice tells me people are laughing so I can't do it.
Posted by: Marilyn | May 28, 2012 at 05:16 PM
This kind of BS puts the lie to the notion that people are "concerned for our health." No they aren't. They say they want us to exercise, but they don't actually want us to exercise. What they want is for there not to be any fat people - whether we do that through exercising under a blanket in our house with the shades drawn until we are thin enough to be allowed into public, or just by magically disappearing, doesn't matter to them. They just don't want to see us around.
They don't want us to exercise, or to exist. Scratch all this ho-ho look at the fat lady funny ha-ha bullshit and you get neoeugenic, eliminationist concepts and mindsets.
"We will shame you for existing, even if it is while doing something that we continually say you should be doing. Because you shouldn't be doing anything at all, since you shouldn't exist in the first place."
Posted by: Michelle | May 28, 2012 at 07:00 PM
I can totally, 100% identify with people in the study who exercise less than they would if it wasn't for the whole stigma of being fat in public thing.
There is a pool, to which we have passes, within an easy walk of my house. I've never used it, because walking in the first time someone started shouting to get the harpoons ready and everyone laughed. I just can't bring myself to face that ridicule again, which is utterly ridiculous in someone who's 36 years old! But there it is.
Babysitting my sister's dog right now, and we walk mostly in the very early morning (6-7am) or occasionally very late at night (after midnight) largely because I want to avoid people as much as possible for fear of ridicule. One would think that a 90lb rottweiler mix would be enough deterrent to mitigate random hate, but it really isn't. Crossing the street at a crosswalk with the walk signal the other day and had someone yelling at me to get my fat ass out of the road.
I know it says a lot more about them than it does about me, but there is still a lot of baggage that comes tagging along when you have experiences like that, and it really sours one on putting oneself in those situations again.
Posted by: Erin S. | May 29, 2012 at 08:09 AM