#fatstudies

[tavie]

Excited to crack into @yrfatfriend’s brand new book which arrived on my doorstep today! #fatstudies #fatacceptance #bodypositivity #fatactivism https://www.instagram.com/p/CH36EL5pKNA/?igshid=gcm2lfa3y1r1

[kagansetera-blog]

Hunger as a Feminist Issue

Throughout history and especially in the US in recent history women have been taught to curb their appetites. We must eat small portions cut up into tiny manageable pieces. We must not crave sexual encounters deep in our bodies.  We must not be competitive or have the drive to succeed in our careers.  

If we eat the foods that we crave and eat in quantities that satiate our hunger we will start to develop thicker bodies.  Bodies that are not mainstream. Bodies that society and media tell us are not acceptable or beautiful. To be loved and wanted and enjoyed we allow ourselves to not access the simple pleasure of food.  So we don’t eat. Or if we do we experience serious bouts of self hate and shame.  

To listen to our bodies urges, to our deepest desires and fantasies makes us whores.  Our society tells us that whores are not close to god, they carry disease and are not suitable for long term monogamous relationships.  Well and if we are not suited for those types of relationships can we really exist in this capitalist white heteronormative society?  We can but not in a way that is easy so we ignore our urges. We cover them up and develop shame.

To achieve your highest goals in your career in this society is to be competitive with other women, and to be a ball buster. To be a ball buster is really just being a woman who confronts the fragile masculinity that impacts many men in our patriarchal society. So we play it cool. We reach for second best to make going to work easier and so that friendships can be maintained. If we don’t, we risk being ostracized from our friends that have chosen different lives more suitable for women.

This seems bleak but I believe that curbing our urges, ignoring our hunger, and not paying attention to our passions must be a feminist issue. Truly this does not just impact women but any people who fall outside of the streamlined white able bodied cis male.  If we can do anything to have small acts of rebellions each day it is to explore and satiate our hungers of all types.  

[brytney92-blog]

Food and Pop culture

When looking at the social classes in America in correlation to a population who are considered fat or overweight, we can see there is a huge connection between these two. We all know of the research that stats “individuals that are considered a lower class do not have the money to spend on the healthier whole foods that do not contain preservatives as well as pesticides”. This means the lower class is more likely to pick up the food that are full of these chemicals that could case health issues. However we can even look further into our culture and see the difference in the pop culture (this is because it is a higher social class) and obesity. Individuals that are in the higher social class in the media can play a huge role on how one eats. For an example most stars in the pop culture have their own chef’s that cook meals three times a day, this makes it so the star does not have to go to the store and decided what is healthy and what is not, this also limits them from eating fast food. Where the lower class can not afford to have a chef, and some may not have the time to cook each meal. Which then leads these individuals to choose fast food which can be a cause of ones obesity. Another aspect that we know is if you are lower class and are eating healthy you can still have the gene that causes the obesity, where as the celebrities can have the same gene but since they have money they can no afford weight loss surgery. 

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[valiantlyblueobject-blog]

Sizeism

It is clear that today in the United States discrimination against size is very much alive. Some are small cases, such as just stereotypical thoughts as you pass a fat person on the street. Some are larger, when doctors and other medical professionals misdiagnose something or someone as they do not even give fat patients a chance. They believe that they are just fat and lazy and that is their problem. They believe that losing weight will solve everything, it has even been the case with broken bones. Broken bones have gone untreated in fat people because the doctor believed they were just being a crying lazy fat person who wanted an easy out. This isn’t merely just being embarrassed or being insecure in your own skin and feeling comfortable with yourself, this is an actually growing health issue that needs to be addressed. When addressing the public we can’t put much emphasis on their words as it really can’t do much to the person, but this is where it all stems. The stereotype believed by the general public, if allowed, will progress into something much more serious, in this case the doctors missing diagnoses’. When people don’t have something to hate or discriminate against they typically find something new to occupy themselves. As racism is still alive, it is slowly fading, and as it fades sizeism takes its place. Size and build are very much genetic dependent and therefor can only be controlled so much. Some people stay thin with x amount of effort and some stay thin with 2x amount effort. Then there are those who aren’t even trying to be thin, people need to be looked at as exactly that, people, not a size.

[erinaree]

This is the overarching theme of my makeup journey (and as much as I can, my life!). Thank you @fat_therapist for expressing it so well. #senegenceaustralia #senegence #lipsense #blushsense #lipsenseaustralia #makeup #effyourbeautystandards #Repost @fat_therapist (@get_repost) ・・・ On behalf of a society that doesn't express this enough through behaviours, actions or words you are free to occupy space, be heard and be seen for all the worth you are. For a society that portrays fat bodies/disabled bodies and bodies outside of the western sociocultural "norm" as the other and feared (let's face it even though the words might not be said - images speak a thousand words), I'm sorry. I'm sorry that you and I are seen as a problem, a crisis, an epidemic. I apologise and feel deeply sad for how I have treated myself as a result of internalising harmful rhetoric. Regardless of external appearances, we all deserve dignity and respect. 🙌🙌 ❤️❤️ #psychology #selfcare #selflove#mentalhealth #arttherapy #expressivetherapy #sociology #compassion #humanrights #gratitude #wisdom #fat #fatrights #fatstigma #fatstudies #life #friends #earth #wellbeing #relax #anxiety #depression #spirituality #creativity #happiness #psychologist #effyourbeautystandards #bopo #bodypositive #fat #feminist

[kagansetera-blog]

A re-imagining of a body positive day in an elementary school

I think that in our society today there is a crisis in our public education system. We are teaching kids only certain things that seems to be producing a bunch of folks that have little empathy and a lot of competitiveness, few critical thinking skills, and many crunching and memorization skills.  I think that our public school systems have great potential to confront many of the issues that our society is facing today in terms of bigotry and hate. In specificity I think that there are many ways that schools could combat fat phobia and sizeism. This will not only impact children's lives and mental health but also help in improving a culture of hate.   This will be a reimagining of a school day for kids that could create a “healthy” food culture and self love expectation.

When kids arrive at school they are greeted warmly with check ins. Kids will share how they are feeling for the day.  This will be less about teaching kids to share because I think kids generally are better at doing that than adults. This will be more about kids learning to listen and hear what their peers are feeling and why, and what they can do to respond to those interpersonal needs of others. Personalizing the classroom makes it harder to be mean to folks that you can love and see for who they are.

The kids will spend time in a garden daily helping procure food for their meals. The gardens will be culturally appropriate based on the demographics of the school and kids will be able to find foods familiar to them at home as well as try new things and expand their palates and connect with folks of different backgrounds on a whole new level.

Activity will not be a sectioned out mandatory time of day but learning will involve more moving and less sitting.  Sports that are played will be removed from traditionally masculine sports that breed attitudes of body elitism and violence.  Students will be given an athlete of the week that will entail folks of all body types and sizes doing all types of activities so that athletics don’t just look a certain way.  Activities will be created with folks with differently abled bodies in mind so that they are not excluded from these activities.

At the end of the day there will be a debrief and light stretching.  

I think that part of the sizeism and fat phobia of our society is part of our total disconnect from our physical selves. Learning to be in touch with your emotions, your physical body, and the food you eat should create a healthy environment with no mention of weight or pounds lifted or miles ran or points earned.  

*I am aware that this is problematic in ways that it is not a realistic representation of what we can attain in schools nowadays in the US. Additionally, this is a re-imaging that would assume that schools were not detrimental disproportionately funded and also segregated.

[bodypositivity-unpacked]

Some of My Favorite Body Positive Blogs

http://beautifullyundressed.tumblr.com/

http://fuckyeahfatpositive.tumblr.com/

http://chubby-bunnies.tumblr.com/

http://queerfatfemme.tumblr.com/

TW: Text below has mention of disordered eating

Never doubt how powerful representation can be. When I started my first Tumblr blog, I was fourteen years old. I still have that same blog. I find it so interesting to look back at the things I was posting and reblogging back then, the ways in which I perpetuated and glorified the internalized racism, sizism, and queerphobia that I had internalized due to the conditioning of society. Most of the time, I was reblogging Fitspo pictures, low-calorie recipes, and meal substitutions. This was back when I would tape pictures of Victoria’s Secret models to the fridge to stop me from opening it when I wanted to get something to eat. Back when I didn’t treat my body with any value, love, or respect.

Today, due to intersectional feminism and my almost eight years on Tumblr scrolling through body positive blogs, reading personal experiences, and learning to love myself, my outlook on so many things, including my weight and size, has completely changed. There’s not enough positive representation in terms of fatness in the media or in our society, and when you add the intersections of Black, queer, and femme, it becomes virtually non-existent. Tumblr has allowed for me and others to thrive through shared experiences and collective dismantling and decolonizing in terms of combatting our internalized sizism and anti-fat bias. 

[snaxqueen]

In the U.S., obesity in "food deserts" is above average. However, it isn't solely -- or even primarily -- access to grocery stores that is the issue -- it appears that higher obesity rates are mostly linked to lower incomes.

i'm curious about this. i'm not a gentrification specialist, but just from watching the neighborhood changes in brooklyn, i'm wondering if these statistics even really mean anything. where the areas that are becoming more gentrified, the lower-income areas are becoming smaller and more packed - but because those higher-income areas and folks are moving in, more supermarkets and access to food are coming up for folks who are low-income, so while they might not technically be in a "food desert" anymore, if they still don't have access to it, what is the difference? 

i also get annoyed with this social drive to have one source for obesity. culturally, we are always looking for the one defining aspect, and it just isn't that easily explained, which def. bugs people out. i'd be more into people trying to really flip bmi on it's head. i feel like many folks have talked about the ineffectiveness of bmi, yet is used continuously, over and over again, as a barometer for obesity. if something is being noted as not a precise analytical tool, why do we still use it for analysis projects?