Hmph! She's Just in Denial

Let's continue on the subject of End Fat Talk shall we? End Fat Talk week starts on the 19th of October and I think it's a great movement, so I'm going to keep up with this one through October.

One of the biggest challenges I face with ending fat talk at the moment are not those that are openly nasty or rude, nor those that loathe their own bodies and are finding it hard to let go of the self-fat talk, but those that are patronising. You've probably all experienced them, the ones who go quiet in a conversation about body image and fat talk, only because they're thinking "Listen to the poor fatty, deluding herself that she can be healthy like that." One is tempted to write it off as paranoia or self consciousness when one gets that feeling, but unfortunately I've caught a few people out on it, either talking to others when they think I'm not there, or others have told me that they've done so after I've left. I've also heard other fat friends talking about experiencing the same thing.

I'm not entirely sure how to work with people who believe that those of us who follow fat acceptance and health at any size are deluding ourselves. That we're in denial about our weight.

Sometimes just being really open and reminding them that I know that I am fat helps. A lot of people who are trying to be polite are very confronted by the word fat. I've referred to myself as a fat woman and seen people blink in shock, as if I've just said "Fuck" or called myself the N-word. To so many people, "fat" is the ultimate insult, so to hear someone call themselves that openly and unashamedly they find it confronting.

I've even found myself censoring the word fat when referring to myself, not because I'm ashamed of it, but just because I've seen some pretty intense reactions to it. I try not to, because I consider it MY word and I want to remove the negative power from it, but it's very hard when good people react so intensely to it.

Often I find myself letting it go when someone is clearly of the opinion that I am in denial about my fat. This still doesn't sit comfortably with me because I am trying to actively challenge any shame and stigma about fatness in my life, no matter who it be from. But there are times when it does hurt when someone assumes that I haven't armed myself with as much information as possible and haven't made an informed decision about fat acceptance.

I guess each situation is different and I'm still really learning how to challenge the attitude that fat = unhealthy/morally wrong. Sometimes I'm successful, other times, not so much.

What are your thoughts on ending fat talk from those who believe that fat people are in denial about their bodies? Have you had any successful experiences? Are you someone who used to have this belief about fat people, but have changed that?

Please share in the comments and let's work on this together.

Combatting Fat Talk

In a comment on my last post, reader Maria raised the issue of how to combat fat talk from others, without being annoying or pushy about it.

I think that's an excellent topic to talk about tonight.

So, how do we go about it? How do we combat fat talk from other people? In particular, other non-fat acceptance people? It's fairly straight up if you're hearing it from someone who is working on fat acceptance, because they've already got a head start. How do you work on it from family, friends, co-workers, your boss, neighbours, shop assistants etc?

It's a tough one. Some people will listen, let you explain. However it's unfortunate that lots of people are so deeply immersed in fat loathing that they just can't see any point but the one that they've had presented them to their whole lives.

Family is probably the toughest. I'm certainly no authority on how to do this with family as I'm estranged from mine. I no longer have to deal with it from them. But if you do have your family in your life, and in fact they love you, you have to deal with the often well intentioned fat talk.

Then there are the friends. Close friends are one thing, but what about the wider circle of friends? Do you talk to them one on one or as a group? I am a bit of a brazen bitch, so I tend to just jump on in when it happens. Not everyone is quite as extroverted as I am though. Often it's subtle fat talk you get. Comments about their own bodies or how bad they've been with diet and exercise.

What about the workplace? I don't know about yours, but mine has all kinds of "health and wellness" initiatives, most of which boil down to diets and weight loss. I actually participated in one, back in my obsessive, fat-loathing days, and in hindsight I can see how insane it was. A big ra-ra club for "let's lose weight fatties!" You actually had to be obese to qualify for it, like some kind of exclusive club. There are constant emails about exercise and healthy living circulated in my workplace. Some of it is very much fat talk, and I find a lot of it perpetuates the poor body image in employees.

Of course, closer to home are the colleagues who love to talk about what diet they are on, how fat they are, how they can't eat this or have to exercise to pay for that. The worst place for it is the lunchroom table. People comment on each other's food, they comment on their own food and how they're "being a bit naughty today" or "Oh, I can't have that, I'm being good." like food has some kind of morality attached to it.

Even when you compliment someone, they often toss back some fat talk. "That's a great dress, you look lovely!" gets the response of "Thanks, I'm having a fat day, this hides all my sins." or similar things.

Shop assistants are a biggie. This is one that I refuse to accept. I used to be terribly hurt and heartbroken by shop assistants either ignoring me or being rude to me. Nowdays I let my dollars do the talking and refuse to shop there. I always love the scene in Absolutely Fabulous when a snobbish shop assistant is rude to Patsy and she looks back and says "Why are you looking down at me? You work in a shop." I will straight up tell a shop assistant that they're rude and what they can do with their merchandise these days.

So there you have some of the areas that you will hear fat talk. I don't know the answers, I just know that it's difficult and there are a lot of factors in the way you handle it. If you're confident, or close to the person, I think it's easier for straight talk, but otherwise it's very difficult.

Here's where I throw it open to you, my dear readers. How do you combat fat talk? Share a story of when you've really been able to nail it and open someone's mind. Or maybe share one where it's gone horribly wrong. What is the hardest type of fat talk to combat? Have you broken the fat talk cycle yourself, or are you still learning.

The floor is open...

No Fat Talk Allowed. Ever.

Let's keep this one simple. This is aimed at college women, but I think it needs to be for EVERYONE. Men too.

I'm going to become a bit of a nag about this one for that week, and hopefully the message will get through to SOMEONE. It shouldn't just be for a week either, it should be a rule we set for always.

Altered Reality

The old black dog of depression has been plaguing me over the past day or so. I'm sure a lot of you know what it's like, you go from normal to just not being able to see the good in anything very quickly, and you don't feel yourself. Things all feel really bad, and a big sadness just overwhelms you.

I know it will pass, it's just sucky while it's here, you know?

What I did notice is that I'm REALLY hard on myself when I'm depressed. REALLY critical about my body, which I am not when I am in a "normal" mood. Instead of being able to see the positives about myself, and remembering that I am more than just my body, I get really critical and caught up in myself as "parts" rather than as a person.

Does this make sense to anyone?

The difference these days though is that I catch myself doing it. Once upon a time it would have been a total spiral into self loathing and further depression, but after years of professional counselling and working on my self esteem and self image, I can see when I get in that headspace now.

It was looking in a plate glass window at my reflection that I busted myself this time. I was walking back to work at lunch time, feeling crap, when I spotted myself in the window of a bank, and my thought was so full of self loathing, I shocked myself. For a moment there, I really hated what I saw and felt shame about myself. Which is something I NEVER feel outside of the realms of depression any more.

I'm glad I can recognise it now when I find myself thinking that way, because then I can work towards removing my head from that space. But it still sucks when it happens, because it's really painful to think of myself in that way.

How do you deal with the negative self-talk? Are you able to recognise it when it happens?

Still a Long Way to Go

I want to talk a bit about body image and body confidence tonight. I've been following a lot of fat acceptance blogs and Tumblr accounts over the past few months, and it's great to see so many positive representations of fat women. The fellas aren't getting that much representation much, but isn't it always the way when it comes to pictures of bodies?

Some of the good ones I regularly read are The Adipositivity Project, Fuck Yeah Fat Bitch and Hey Fat Chick. There are others out there.

One thing I am noticing though, is that the only fat bodies that seem to be acceptable to post, are those with seemingly flawless, soft, white, creamy skin, no trace of body hair, stretch marks, scars or other flaws. Occasionally you might get a gorgeous fat black woman, but again, miles and miles of perfect skin. And often it's quite obviously through snazzy lighting, flattering photography and post camera editing that we're being presented these images.

While I do think it is amazing that we have come this far, I do think we have some while to go before we're really getting the message ourselves, let alone sending the message out further to the rest of the world.

I think perhaps these arty, flawless shots, sometimes contribute to some of the body image problems we have. While it's good to see these gorgeous fat bodies, and we feel like we're closer to being something to admire, I wonder does the fact that EVERYBODY has flaws and blemishes somehow get missed with the message?

I know the guys are used to seeing their porn retouched for many years so that women are flawless or some image of flawless, and then the fashion mags picked up on it and have run like crazy with it too. But I'm wondering what the point is having "body positive" blogs and such, but still filtering out things that are labelled as "unsightly" or "unattractive" in the content?

The reality is though, that human beings are big old lumpy creatures, and they have hair, scars, stretchmarks, zits, pores, freckles, scratches, bruises, moles, pigmentation and all kinds of other marks all over them. It's all part of the complex system that the human body is. And despite all of these blemishes, the human body is still beautiful. Even because of these blemishes in a lot of cases.

How many other women look at photos like the one above and say "But she's gorgeous, I couldn't be seen in just my underwear, I look nothing like that."? How many men think that all women are as flawless as the young lady above? Are we striving even now for an unrealistic perfection, even though we're allowing fat bodies to be seen?

I wonder is it time we need to start being even more honest and realistic about human bodies?

Be Good to Your Daughters... And Your Sons Too

Well here I am, back at Fat Heffalump. Tonight I want to talk a bit about the messages we give to young girls about their bodies, and weight. And while I'm at it, you're going to get to see some photos of me when I was a munchkin.

Let's start with this one:

I think I'm about 7 years old in this one.

I can remember, from a very early age - about 5 or 6 is my first memory of it, being told by my parents that I was fat. I was called porky, told I had "lead in my arse" because I was "so heavy" and couldn't run fast, and of course I've mentioned earlier my brother's taunts of "fat heffalump" and "tub of lard".

I did have a barrel shape (no waist at all), but how many girls before puberty do have waists?

And consequently, I believed it. All my life. I believed it right up until I found the photo above, about six months ago in a box of old photo albums.

Can I ask you something. Is that little girl there fat? Does the child in the photo above look fat to you?

What about this one?

I think I'm about 9 or 10 in this one. Would you say fat there?

Here I am just before puberty hit me:

Age 11. Just before my 12th birthday. Jesus look at those legs. Fat legs? I don't think so.

So what are people telling girls that look like this, that they're fat? Why was a girl of this body shape, being led to believe that there was something wrong with her? Maybe it was in jest. Maybe it was a way to "keep her in her place" and not let her get "too many tickets on herself." But I think it's a seriously sad reflection on people's attitudes that anyone could think a girl with this body could be considered fat.

In that last photograph, I was taller than my aunt, who is 5'2". Very tall for an 11 year old girl. I towered all of my classmates. I stopped growing in height by the time I was 13, and I'm 5'6" now. I was the tallest girl in my class for a long time, until the others caught up later on in their teens. Consequently, I needed women's sized clothing, from a very young age, otherwise I'd have been exposing what was at the top of those long legs! If I remember correctly, that school uniform was a women's size 10 (Australian), a bit loose around the middle and under the arms, yet that's pretty proportionate for a 5'2" female body about to sprout boobs and stuff.

Yet I remember my mother complaining in shops that I shouldn't be in women's clothing. Girls in school made fun of me because I shopped in the ladies wear section. I was referred to as a "big girl". However I look at those photos and I don't think I was big at all. Tall yes, but certainly not big or fat.

But of course, I did get fat. Puberty hit just after my 12th birthday, and boy did it hit hard. Within 12 months of that last photo above, I actually was a fat girl. A fat girl with all sorts of hormonal shit going on (I won't go into the gory details but let's just say that I know now that it wasn't normal). I also had D cup breasts by the time I was 13 and they weren't just fat. Even in my late teens when I dropped a lot of weight, I still had huge breasts.

Consequently, I don't have any photos of me in my teens. There is the odd school class photo, but until I turned 18, there really weren't any photos taken of me. I wouldn't allow it. And there were huge chunks of my life since then that I wouldn't allow photos to be taken of me, because I believed I was hideous and didn't want any record. Those were also the years that I was sticking my fingers down my throat to purge anything I ate.

Nowdays, I relish having my photo taken. I love to have those reminders of the times in my life, the outfits I wear, the laughs that I have. Here I am today (well, ok, a couple of weeks ago, smart arses):

Oh yes, I am a fat lady. By many labels, I am "morbidly obese" - do I look morbid to you? I am probably at the fattest I have ever been (give or take a bit!) but I'm also at the happiest I have ever been, because my worth is no longer measured by the number on a set of scales, the tag on my clothing, or the size of my body.

My worth is measured by the size of my heart, the number of beloved people in my life, the use of my brain, the strength of my laugh and the depth of my respect for others and myself.

We need to think about what we say to our children. Not just the girls, but they do cop the double whammy because of the whole sexualisation thing, as well as body image. Even if they are fatter than their peers, instead of crushing them down with criticisms, we should be building them up with encouragement and strong self esteem. I can't say I wouldn't be fat if I hadn't been criticised so much as a child (remember those hormonal problems I mentioned), but I can say I wouldn't have done so much damage to my body with crash diets and eating disorders. I can say I wouldn't have wasted so many years hating myself, and would have achieved so much more in life had I been allowed to believe in myself.