GET OUT THERE AND CHEESE THE DAY!

It's arrived......January! It is that time of year that "Fat" people are inundated with ads aimed directly at our fat bodies, and the idea that our troubles lay with our body size and our body image!

It's time to stop asking how we can get fat people to love themselves. I know the pain of hearing the way I talk about myself. I know the isolation of being the fat person surrounded by thinner people; the constant expectation that I should, or must, explain my aberrant body to those around me. There is a New Culture on the horizon, a culture that screams, "Body Love", "Body Acceptance", regardless of our size. This culture is responsible for one thing, asking themselves, "How can I help fat people love themselves?" While heartfelt, it is also misguided. Like many fat people before them, they assume that the trouble lay with our body image. Often, fat people who have struggled with their own body image, interpret the struggles of other fat people through that lens, assuming that, like theirs, our struggles are largely internal, borne of a brain stubbornly thinking unwanted thoughts all the time.

While the message behind body love and body acceptance is compassionate, this new culture is assuming all fat people’s struggles are borne of a internal negative body image; an assumption that fat people’s bodies face the same challenges, as all other fat peoples bodies. But for some fat people, their experiences of anti-fatness may include eating disorders, body dysmorphia, or other struggles with body image, that may stem from something as complicated as Inattentive ADHD or Trauma.

There are fat people that are perfectly comfortable in their own bodies. But regardless of how fat people feel about our own bodies, we live in a world that does expect fat people to be deeply ashamed of ourselves. That expectation can often be reinforced by our families, our friends, and even our partners. Some of us may want or need help in addressing our own body image, but all of us need and deserve a world in which it is possible for us to simply be in our bodies as they are.

For many of us fat people, there exists a belief we have been taught, time and time again, by those closest to us, by every weightloss commercial or social media sponsored ad, and every book ever written on health and weightloss. Anti-fatness is a learned behavior, and one that is often required of us by the world around us. In order to access health care, we often have to disavow our own bodies, insisting and promising that we will shed them as quickly as we can. In order to get food at a restaurant, we may face long stares from servers and fellow patrons—a silent expression of their expectation that we justify or explain the bodies they find so unacceptable.

Instead of asking what’s gone wrong in the mind of a fat person, look at why we are being asked to show that we hate ourselves. Look at the ways the world around us demands our shame as a toll for services or survival. Instead of looking at how to fix the symptom, cure the ailment itself. Body Love and Body Acceptance, just like Diet and Exercise Culture, is preying on fat people with every body love and body acceptance book that is written. "Weight" and "Beauty" Culture is a Trillion dollar industry. It requires people to remain in a state of hating their body.

I have personally been accused before of Glorifying Obesity. I want to be very clear here: I do glorify obesity. I also believe that health is subjective, and that I am under no obligation to strive for what other’s consider “healthy” if I do not want to. Nobody is. My health is no one’s concern. It is not a determining factor in my value. My body lets me walk sandy beaches, play with my dogs, ride my horses, walk 3 to 6 miles a day, toss 60lbs hay bales, shovel snow, and fuck like a goddamn queen. My body is beautiful and I am tired of having to add qualifiers to that.

I am glorifying obesity. I am glorifying this body that does not, and has never, got enough praise for its existence. I am glorifying the pounds I gained, after years of continuously starving myself, and believing the all the books I read on weightloss, health, beauty, body acceptance, and all the trainers who worked so hard to change my body and health. I am glorifying every moment I am alive in this fat body, that so many other’s discard as worthless. I am extremely proud of myself. I am proud of how far I have come to understanding myself, my body and my mind. I celebrate that by sharing my life and my experiences with other people.

It's time to stop asking how we can get fat people to love themselves. It's time to start asking, "What are you going to do, to create a world in which it is possible for people to simply be in their bodies as they are?"