Image taken from: http://www.nytimes.com/2008/01/22/health/22fblogs.html?_r=1&oref=slogin

Found today on the New York Times website is an article titled:

In the Fatosphere, Big Is in, or at Least Accepted

Within this article a reporter discussed the emergence of fat positive blogs. The title of this article leaves the reader to assume that being fat is "in" and is accepted. However, all of the blogs mentioned are produced by self identifying fat people These people want the world to accepts their bodies they way they are and to no longer discriminate based on size.

The first few lines of the article are as follows:

"For years, health experts have been warning that Americans are too fat, that we exercise too little and eat too much, that our health is in jeopardy.

Some fat people beg to differ.

Blogs written by fat people — and it’s fine to use the word, they say — have multiplied in recent months, filling a virtual soapbox known as the fatosphere, where bloggers calling for fat acceptance challenge just about everything conventional medical wisdom has to say about obesity."

I do not feel that this is the message behind fat positive activism. I find that fat positive activism is an attempt to battle the negative stereotypes surrounding people of size, a way to battle corporate size discrimination, and a way to embrace body's of all shapes and sizes.

I felt like this article should have been posted within the Cultural of Lifestyle section of the news paper. However, it was found in the Health section of the paper. Thus, undermining the ultimate goal of fat positive activism.

Fatty Fat Fat Talk Part 2

I have been looking into the way the world looks and interacts with me and all that I represent. I am a dark skinned, black, woman, who self-identifies as lesbian, clinically obese, nappy headed, glasses wearer. How do people look at me and interact with me? For the most part on just a physical level I seem to go unnoticed. That is from the neck down of course. My intellect can be titillating for some. My eyes can draw some closer. And my pretty face, oh my pretty face allows the ladies to acknowledge that I have a pretty face and if I was a little smaller I would probably be fine.

This is the problem. I am currently at a point in my life where many a things are in transition. I am not happy with lost of things, on this list of many is my body, body image, and self-love. I have grown to hate this bodythis temple that I have been given to navigate through life with. I can no longer fake the funk and pretend like I love the body that has brought me much pain. I can remember when I was a little girl about 6 or 7 and I was so skinny. My family and peers at school would make fun of me for being so small. Calling me tooth pick. Then during the 4th grade I gained some weight and I was so happy. No one was going to call me skinny anymore. Thats when the other words came into play. I began to be known as Fat Alysia. That phrase followed me up to high school. I began to see how people acknowledge the beauty of my two best friends in high school and totally ignore me. In college I had a new best friend and the same scenario played outI was ignored, she was beautiful, men and women would talk to me about her beauty, and place me in the realm of the cute-girls-funny-and-smart-best-friend.

Now as an older me I am still having problems with my body. I have come to the realization that I have an eating disorder. I under eat or eat in secret. I know that people associate big girls with eating everything in sightso I have developed my own coping mechanism by not eating in front of people or only eating two meals a day; usually a small one in the morning and a big one at night. I have lived a couple of years this waythusly my body has changed. I have gained weight and put my body into starvation mode. Im trying to combat this by actively discussing my thoughts, feelings, and experiences surrounding my body.

I am sick of being fatthat means that I have to work at not being fat. The whole thing that worries me is how am I going to react to the worlds new way of interacting with me at a smaller size.

Fatty Fat Fat Talk Part 1

I am a feminist, and what that means to me is much the same as the meaning of the fact that I am Black: it means that I must undertake to love myself and to respect myself as though my very life depends upon self-love and self-respect. - June Jordan

Many a times I fall wide eyed and bushy tailed over the words of intellectuals whom I fancy to be like and wish I could embrace in both a sisterly and romantic way. Yet I find myself kissing the words that they speak as if they will never be spoken again.

Within the this world rotation and growth are always constant. You can never be still with an always moving axis..yet you must find your center. Within this life, as I know it today, I am a self-identified black-jamaican american-lesbian- black feminist- revolutionary- meat eater, in a heterogendered homosexual relationship-with nappy hair, a plus sized woman trying to create my own space by honoring all of me, I am an artist trying to carve my way out of books and intellectual boxes I have placed around myself. This is not an easy task. I sit here today getting ready to face the world.

I have come to the understand that I am my own revolution...I have to treat my body as such. As a woman who is on the path of self love I must acknowledge the pains of the past if I want to grow. It is from here on out that I will begin to share pains of my past open and with out apology or sorories.

Lets begin....

I have recently been dealing with my weight and what my weight means to my health and quality of life. Through a quick evaluation I have realized that my wieght has caused me to feel less then a woman. I look at my body and find every imperfection and flaw...its hard for me to see beauty, feel sexy, or feel pretty. For the most part I can admit that I am cute from time to time. Last monday I had a breakdown at my WeightWatchers meeting and began to felt as if I would never lose weight or begin to love myself. It was suggested to me that I get a book about body image and read it. Being that school is over I picked up..."Hungry For More"...so far it has been a wonderful read. The book has resulted in me thinking about my weight and experiences that I have had with them. So I shall share one as a way to cleanse...

Scene Sixth Grade, Ranchero Middle School (Hesperia, Ca.)

- I was walking across the quad making my way to class after speaking with a counselor (that I saw in secret of course, I was sad all the time and I always felt like crying so I went to the counselor and began going to group therapy and never told my family). As I entered the dipped out section of the quad I looked up at the sun and hurt my eyes...I closed them and enjoyed the light show my eyes embrace with the bright sun provided. I began to think about taking off my jacket and enjoying the heat (I always wore a jacket as protection so that people wouldn't see how big I was and make fun of me). I began to walk and take my jacket off when a group of boys ran from around a corner and starting yelling at me. I knew two of the boys...Mike (a black boy I meet in 5th grade) and Jose (a mexican boy I had a math class with)...the other (white) boys I didn't know. They started yelling at me, calling me a fat cow, they were mooing at me. I tried to get through and walk to class....thats when the ran towards me and tripped me. I was trying to hit them...but I couldn't hit all of them. They started kicking me. They spit on me and called me a fat nigger, I didn't understand why they were doing that and why Mike (the black boy) would let them do it....I felt like he should know better. I held on to my bad, close to my stomach so that they couldn't kick me in the stomach. They kept spitting on me and started pulling my jacket off. They ripped my jacket and I started crying. That's when I heard a whistle and they ran off, the principle Mr. Smith came and helped me up. I ran back to the counselors office and asked if I could stay there with him. He said sure and gave me a pink stuffed pig. The principle came in and told my counselor what happened. I stayed there a for a long while. When I got home I tried to tell my mom what happened...she didn't care. She was mad that my jacket and my jeans were torn. As punishment for not taking care of my clothes I had to wear that jacket and those jeans with out them being patched up.

Based in Atlanta, Georgia, The Body Positive is an activist organization, with a stated mission to deconstruct, challenge, and obliterate societal notions about what the body should be. We assert that our bodies are not inherently flawed and that we desire to love our bodies as they are. This group is the first of its kind in that it hosts members from an assortment of diverse communities. Women of size, women of color, trans persons, intersex individuals and the disabled have united under this banner of The Body Positive to challenge hegemonic constructions of the body. In efforts to meet this goal, members engage in a variety of activities designed to facilitate a positive relationship between themselves and their own bodies as well as actively challenge systems in society that they feel hinder this endeavor including the fashion industry, advertising agencies, and the medical community. As members of these diverse constituencies, members have both knowledge of their own groups’ particular body “problem” and conscientiousness about the ways in which their issues are interconnected.