Fat Chicks Rule

An Open Letter to Dear Abby. Re: Bikinis

Dear Abby,

For the first time in my adult life as a fat person, I wore a bikini top in public. I wore one before at a NAAFA (National Association to Advance FAT Acceptance) convention knowing there I wouldn’t feel body shamed but I never wore one outside a fat loving environment. Before I gave up dieting and learned to love my body I never went swimming without a t-shirt. I was terrified I would be judged as a big fat fattie and thought covering my body would magically make me look thin.

After I gave up dieting, I stopped wearing a t-shirt but I wasn’t quite ready to show my belly in public. Deep down I knew I should--that exposing my beautiful body for the world to see would be my final step for loving my body completely.

Like the letter you received  from “Offended Daughter”, my arcane BMI makes me about 70 lbs overweight. Weight, I might add, which came less from overeating and more from genetics and yo-yo dieting. I love to swim more than anything. But it took an article about a brave fat (and gorgeous) woman who wore a bikini in public to inspired me to buy a bikini top from Love Your Peaches and then wear it in public. Did I need advice? No. I'm loving my body more and more everyday and I love my bikini. I continue to swim, walk, and ride my bike.

I’m here to talk about your unwarranted advice and your fat shaming.

“Offended Daughter” didn’t ask you about her doctor or her health. She asked about what to do with her fatophobic mother who couldn’t bear to see rolls of fat on her daughter. Fat people live with this alienation all the time. We are told to cover up (especially when we exercise.) We are constantly bombarded to lose weight, yet the options for weight loss include high failure diets and dangerous weight surgery and pills. You should have told “Offended Daughter” that she should wear her bikini proudly not just at her childhood home but everywhere she swims. If mom doesn’t like it, tough shit.

Lara Frater

Gather, Rather than Hunt

On Saturday morning, I decided to go shopping for pants. Being 10 am the morning before Easter, I figured I'd avoid the lines and the crowds at Marshalls, a close-out department store.

I've a hard body to buy for: a rectangle with an apple belly and large boobs, I usually have to try on many things before I can find maybe one item that fits me nicely. Most of the times pants that fit my waist make my legs look like tree trunks and pants that fit my legs make my stomach look like a giant sack. Tops are worse: clothes that fit my chest make me look pregnant or else I'm popping out of my shirt (Something my husband doesn't mind but work might.)

I don't really like to shop at Department stores. I prefer stores that stock only larger sizes (my issues with them are another story). No offense against thin folks, but at least I know the entire store is catered to large bodies including my size. However, I usually can get one or two things at Marshalls if I hunt. My local venue has gotten worse as far as plus sizes go. They used to have a large section in the middle of the floor. Now they are pushed over to the side and are limited to two large racks, and a few smaller ones. Dresses are the only sizes that are integrated.

Some days I go there and find some good pieces. Other days I don't know why I bother.

I was semi-successful on Saturday as I managed to snag Lauren pants that fit me nicely, and a pair of loose yoga pants that for $20 were good enough. Together they were $60.

Remember this is the “discount” store.

On May 4th is the Big Fat Flea in NYC. Last year I spent about the same amount at Marshalls and bought home a much cheaper and better selection. This is a flea market. Selection is based on donation, not a department store which is theory should be serving their customer’s needs. And knowing that two-thirds of the population need plus sizes, I’m surprised that Marshall’s plus size selection has shrunk.

Marshalls was a hunt. A hope that a wild pair of pants would appear and fit me properly. My hunting ground was only a few feet but still not a lot wild pants to be found.

At the Flea, it's a gather. I go through stacks and stacks of pants, dresses, shirts, jackets and miscellaneous. My size is located all in the same place, often towering because there is so much selection. I stuff things to try on in my bag which becomes heavy in my arms while my follow shoppers dig around with me, being friendly, giving advice. No one seems upset when someone grabs an Igigi dress before you can. You feel great when a person tells you, “This doesn’t look good on me, maybe it will look good on you.”

I come home exhausted but in a good way. My spirits are high as I check out my new clothes (and some are brand new with tags). And as I model my new clothes, I feel confident and happy.

I never feel this way at any department store.

 

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The Tankini

Ditching BMI for All.

A recent study has said people considered “underweight” have a death rate 1.8 times higher than “normal” weight people. Us fatties were only 1.2-1.3 times higher (yippie?)

 

After reviewing more than 50 previous researches, researchers of a new study have found that excessive thinness is also not good for health. Clinically underweight people have a higher risk of death than obese individuals.

Are we going to break out the term: morbidly thin? Are there going to be Diet programs to help the poor, unfortunate, and stupid thin people, who can't help but not eat?

Are we going to have a national program to help the morbidly thin somehow get to magic BMI number 18.5?

No-- because a campaign like that would be ridiculous.

Or would it?

 

Recently, Yale student Frances Chan was forced to gain weight because the university health center Yale Health deemed her as having an eating disorder as her BMI wasn’t past the magical number of 18.5. (Yale later dropped it, I assume because they realized how ridiculous it was.) I’m not quite sure what Yale’s obsession with weight is but apparently Chan wasn’t the only student forced to gain weight or leave school. I just know when I went to college the school seemed to care about our academic achievement rather than our personal lives.

 

Even if she had anorexia (which she doesn’t, she’s naturally slender), forcing an anorexic to gain weight doesn’t cure the eating disorder.  In order to get Yale Health off her back, she ignored her natural hunger cues, overate, and didn’t exercise.

 

If someone goes to the doctor, they should not get a weight lecture, especially if they aren't there to talk about weight (in Chan’s case she was having a lump checked). The only time a doctor should talk about your weight is if you lose or gain it rapidly.  While Yale and other schools need to have outreach to students because eating disorders tends to hit college age women, there is outreach and then over reach. Like with many fat people, Frances Chan’s health was judged solely on her BMI.  

 People have different body types and BMI says nothing about their health. Being as healthy as you can trumps weight loss/gain.

...but for the people who have been losing the battle of the weight, if they can at least become fit, then they can have a very good prognosis and good overall health.

Further than before

I have written multiple times about the stigma fat people face when they try to exercise. They feel uncomfortable with stares and ridicule. Recently dancer Ragen Chastain completed a 26 mile marathon because she was slower than the rest, she was ridiculed. Including a comment such as this:

This is ridiculous. The author wasn't trained to do a marathon and wallowed through the course at 28min/mile pace. How is doing any physical activity at barely over TWO MILES PER HOUR anything other than just sad?

I recently came back from Colorado. On vacation I'm often move more because I have the time. On the second day I was there we went to the hot springs where I swam as much as possible in bath-like water.

The next day we did the Mantiou Incline. The incline is a railroad track with the steel beams removed and the wooden tracks used as steps. There are three points up. The half-way point (More like 60%), the false summit, and the actual summit. I knew we were planning to do it and even though I'd rather swim three miles than walk up one, I had planned to at least do it part of the way. Because it was later in the day, we planned to just go to the halfway point.

It was extremely difficult. About half-way there, I thought my heart was going to fall out of my chest. I had my friend screaming at me to get moving because the sun was going down and we were all going to freeze to death (we weren't) while I had my husband quietly assuring me I could make it because I was the strongest woman he knew.

This was my response to my friend.

Feeling bad about my body has always lowered my self-esteem and made me think I was incapable of finishing anything that meant success for me. I wasn't surprised as I got closer to the end, I stopped more and more frequently. A fat person was not allowed to make this feat. After all, fat people aren't supposed to be athletic, they are supposed to be lazy slobs.

Coming down off the mountain, I got a lot of kudos from people who passed me as I huffed and puffed up the mountain. Part of me felt this was condescention, that yes a fat person made it to the halfway point, but instead I thought they were just being supportive and didn't want me to give up.

The point here is not that you have to make it up the Manitou incline but that fat people not only deserve movement without stigma and that we cannot allow stigma to block our way to the top.

Next year I will get to the summit.

 

 

2014 the year to love your body all over again.

Happy New Year!

I guarantee this year all woman (and now even men) will hate their bodies. They will think it's too fat, too skinny, too old, not enough or too much hair, too curvy or not curvy enough. They’ll hate their nose, lips, eyes, ears. Women will cover their lovely complexions with make-up, while men will cover bald spots.

January is the time that we reflect on what changes we want to make for the year. Some people make resolutions. One of the big ones is to lose weight and/or get in shape. Some will do DIY dieting, others will commercial plans like Weight Watchers. Gyms will fill up. Since late December, I’ve been getting a ridiculous amount of groupons for gyms, gym equipment, diet supplements, and diet foods.

Usually things are fine in the beginning then results taper off. Weight loss stops, hunger takes over as the body rebels against not getting enough food. Then the diet ends with the person feeling like they not the diet fails. Not everyone who diets is "fat". We are far too pressured to fit into what I call the Hollywood cookie cutter that considers Jennifer Lawrence and Kate Winslett fat. Women feel they need to get into a body that doesn't belong to them instead of learning to love the body they are in.

I believe if you can't love your body with all its "flaws" you cannot love yourself. I say for 2014, let’s make a resolution everyone should do. Skip the dieting and instead work on loving the body you are in.