Fat Heffalump is Relocating

Yes, I'm taking Fat Heffalump away from Blogger, over to Wordpress. For several reasons. Firstly because the comments keep erroring, which I know is REALLY annoying when you're trying to leave a comment. It even does it to me, and I'm the blog owner!

Secondly because Wordpress is a lot more stable and has a lot more features that I can tinker with and polish the blog into exactly how I like it.

And finally, because it has a comment system that I can block the trolls out of better. It wastes a lot of my time dealing with these douchebags here on Blogger, and Wordpress has a much better filtering system than here.

So, I do hope you'll come on over to the new site. You can find it...

Fat Heffalump on Wordpress

If anyone has set up RSS feeds to here, do remember to go over and grab the feed from the new Wordpress location. I'm sorry for any inconvenience, but it will be better for all of us in the long run.

Please bear with me while I tinker about with it and get it all up and running.

Fitting In to the Fatosphere

I've had a few conversations lately with various folks regarding the feeling of "not fitting in" to the fatosphere. It seems that this is a common feeling for several fatties out there, and thus their hesitance to jump on in.

For me, fat acceptance is not a club. It's not about fitting in to a group or movement. It's not about being part of some kind of clique, though I do see a LOT of cliques forming, some of them more poisonous than cliques out there in the thinosphere (I just made that up, maybe it could be notfatosphere).

I believe fat acceptance is about two things.

1) Acceptance of myself. For who I am, how I am, what I am. Finding good self esteem and confidence to be who I am, and to live a full positive life. To live my life to the fullest as I am.

2) Acceptance of others, by others. For me to accept others as they are and leave them to be as they are for one, but most importantly, for others to accept me as I am, and leave ME to be as I am. That means accepting that I am fat, without prejudice or discrimination and that I and other fat people are under no obligation to stop being fat, and that we are not lesser beings for being fat.

That's what it boils down to at the very core of what I believe fat acceptance to be.

That doesn't mean that you're never out to improve yourself, challenge yourself or expand your horizons. It means that you accept yourself right here, right now and any changes, improvements, or challenges you make are made for you, not anyone else. There is always something we can improve about ourselves, but we have to be doing it for ourselves, not because other people say we should. Because positive striving to improve yourself is part of living a full life. I will talk about this more in another post I think.

Fat acceptance is not about joining or being anything to fit in with others. I don't feel the need to be a fat fashion plate, just to enjoy the clothes and accessories that I like. I don't feel the need to be BBW and become sexualised as a fat woman, just to feel beautiful as I am.

However, that doesn't mean that these things don't interest me in elements. I like fat fashion, without having to be a fatshionista. I find images sexy fat women empowering and good for my self esteem, without having to join their ranks in the BBW communities.

I understand that Kate Harding is seen as the goddess of all things Fatosphere, and that to many fatties, criticism of Shapely Prose or the contributors is seen as the ultimate betrayal of fatz. I disagree with this - while I find elements of Shapely Prose and it's contributors highly useful, articulate and sometimes inspirational, I don't feel the need to take on board everything that is said there. It's opinion and opinion will always differ. Don't let that stop any of you visiting Shapely Prose either - I am sure everyone will find something of use that they can take on board.

That goes for all the other fatosphere communities and contributors out there - get out and read as much as you can, find what resonates with you, share it and don't worry about the stuff that doesn't sit right with you. It's ok, there is no compulsory reading or community for fat acceptance.

But here's the thing. Your life is your life. You need to live it to it's full. Find what helps you live your life to the full and expand upon it. If something doesn't contribute positively to you being able to live your life to it's fullest and best, then you are under no obligation to continue with that activity, community or school of thought.

If I in any way help you live your life to the fullest with this little blog, then I am deeply honoured.

Fat Heffalump Goes 2.0

Hello all,

It's still me, still The Sleepydumpling, only I've set up a profile specifically for this blog. I wanted one with my little heffalump artwork there, done by the lovely Luke Bamkin, and that I could modify to reflect this site a bit more. So unless I forget to change accounts, you'll see me posting as Fat Heffalump here from now on.

Another thing I have done is set up a Twitter account specificially for Fat Heffalump, so that I could aggregate all of my fatosphere tweeties there and focus on fattitude solely from that account. I'll be following lots of fatosphere tweeties there, and sharing all the interesting stuff I find. If you are a tweetie yourself, you can follow me here:

Fat Heffalump on Twitter

I'm also setting up a blanket rule that I won't be friending anyone on my Facebook unless I know them in real life, or we have a mutual real life friend. Not because I've got any concerns, I just want a private space for myself. We all need one!

However, I also want to meet new folks in the fatosphere, so instead I have created a Facebook page that you can "become a fan" of and join in the conversation there, and get to know new people. Plus I can block out the time wasters and trolls.

Fat Heffalump on Facebook

I will also add buttons on the sidebar later (I'm going out shortly, being on holidays is awesome!) for these sites etc.

I look forward to further interaction with you lovely folk.

When the Fatosphere Impacts the Mainstream

I've got an interesting tidbit for you all today.

In my journeys across the fatosphere, I stumbled across this snippet from The Colbert Report, take a look:

The Colbert Report	Mon - Thurs 11:30pm / 10:30c
The Obesity Epidemic - Amy Farrell
www.colbertnation.com
Colbert Report Full Episodes Political Humor Michael Moore

Now I must confess I'm not that big a fan of Stephen Colbert. I find him obnoxious even though I often agree with him. Not to mention that I hate how he interrupts his guests and changes the subject mid-stream. I much prefer Jon Stewart, who I feel is a better interviewer and gives sharper commentary. (I must confess, I have a crush on Jon, his sharp wit is uber-sexy.)

However, I do quite often agree with Stephen Colbert, he is an intelligent man behind the arrogance. After watching the piece above, I think he touched on some great fat acceptance points in amongst his slightly random rantiness. The best thing is that he has a fairly broad audience, and perhaps he's given them some food for thought (no pun intended) and perhaps one or two of them might even read Amy Farrell's book.

It's when fat acceptance hits the more mainstream media that we really need to sit up and take notice, because this is what REALLY broadens the message. Besides, it's thanks to our hard work here in the fatosphere that it is doing so.

Oh, I've just found where I first saw this video, it was thanks to Fat Grrl.

Falling off the Wagon

Ahh this fat acceptance malarkey is a bit of a process isn't it?

I have fallen off the wagon of fat acceptance. I've been a bit mean to myself over the past few days. You see, I have noticed that I have gained some weight. Ok, I don't know for sure that I've actually gained weight as I don't have scales and refuse to find some to check, but my clothes are a wee bit tighter and I'm feeling sluggish and heavy. So I'm assuming I've gained some weight.

I know why I am having these changes - I'm on holiday. I'm not living my usual breakneck paced lifestyle of rushing around for work and my social life. I'm also out of my routine. So I'm a spending a lot more time relaxing. It's great, I needed it. But I have kind of relaxed enough and am now feeling sluggish and blah.

Of course, the minute I go to put on a pair of pants that were a firm fit before, and now don't fit me, what do I do? All the fat acceptance and gaining strong self esteem slides out the window and I get on hating myself. Yep, I have been berating myself for about two days now. Today I realised that THAT'S ENOUGH.

I was getting ready to go out last night, to see Elvis Costello in concert (my favourite male singer ever) and I had a new dress that I loved, new shoes, and I've just coloured my hair a very bright, intense red. Normally I would be getting ready and feeling all great, but all I could do was criticise bits of myself. For the first time in a long time I even shied away from photographing my new sandals and posting them to Twitter because all I could see when I looked at my feet was how fat they were. Usually I LOVE showing off my shoes.

Thing is, what does it achieve to be hating on myself? I KNOW that it achieves nothing, rationally speaking, but somehow crappy self esteem seems to smack rationality down pretty quickly.

I tried to get over it by taking some photos of my outfit, but found myself taking dozens of pics because I hated every single one that I took. I really thought I'd got over that, but it's silly because the truth is, everyone has days where they feel crappy and are critical of themselves - it's no point being even more critical over that too.

This morning I woke up feeling crud, but kind of turned a corner later in the day as I was getting ready to go out again, and started to feel a bit of a lift.

I have to admit the real lift came when I went to get on a bus into town (I took myself off to a movie) to find that the cute bus driver that I usually only see on the trip home after work had made a completely random shift swap, and there he was on a bus I would never normally take! Not to mention that we've progressed our usual brief flirty hello and goodbye for a 40 minute conversation for the whole bus trip. I believe there may even be an exchange of contact details next time. That's gotta make a girl feel better about herself, hmmm?

Anyway, what I'm trying to say with this post is that all of us will have times that we fall off the self esteem/fat acceptance wagon, that it's a learning process and we have to remember to be kind to ourselves. To do the things that make us feel good, and read lots of positive material (oh the wonder of the fatosphere!) and with time, it does come back.

And in celebration of me finding my mojo again, here is one of the pictures of me in my new dress from last night. Most of the pics are pretty good, now that I'm looking at them through mojo-rich eyes again!

Cross Promoting.

I just want to share with all my lovely Fat Heffalump readers a blog post I wrote over on my "everyday" blog. Tonight I got home from the movies to find some loser had left a comment on my other blog saying something like "Wearing black isn't going to help you any you fat bitch." Only it wasn't spelled correctly, but I can't remember the exact spelling because I deleted it.

So I had a wee bit of fun and made up a post over there that I thought my folks with fattitude might like to read. Here's the link:

Somethin' For Da Haterz...

Pop on over, have a look, leave a comment if you like.

Housekeeping Dahlings

Hello lovelies.

Just a quick housekeeping notice - I've added a wee blogroll to the right hand side there, underneath the Fat Heffalump herself. Just scroll down a bit, you'll see it.

This is only a small slice, I will add more later, these are just the ones I've read today.

In fact, if you have a blog with fattitude, or you would like to recommend one, leave me a comment doing so please.

Now, back to your regularly programmed content.