Tag Archives: love your body

Jillian Michaels Co-opts Body Love Messaging (This is why we can’t have nice things…)

Body love courtesy of Jillian Michaels.

In an epic moment of facepalm, my facebook feed threw up this little fact: Jillian Michaels has published her “Top 3 Guidelines for Improving Body Image” at EverydayHealth.com. (No, I’m not gonna link to that ish. Nope.) This seems in line with her recent move to distance herself from Biggest Loser after she made untold millions from screaming at fatties on the show.

Now the irony of Jillian Michaels would be really funny if it weren’t so very sad. This woman styled her entire career on being the queen of mean. She came into our living room every week screaming at the fatties–about how ugly we were and how we were killing ourselves. And some might suggest that Jillian Michaels might be making a genuine change or shift in attitude. And I might even consider believing her if she started pulling products like her “6-week Six Pack” or her “Banish Fat, Boost Metabolism” or her “No More Problem Zones” off the shelves. Nope, no, nopety nope. You don’t get to give advice like “Be realistic about your body type.” when you are actively marketing a product called “1 Week Shred”. And you don’t get to advise people to “Stop negative self talk.” while marketing a product called “No More Problem Zones.”

And if that didn’t tickle my sarcasm zones quite enough, this little gem is posted on EveryDayHealth.com with the tagline, “Always choose well.” Seriously? You put the queen of scream in charge of body image on your site? For REALZ? Is that choosing well? Look, I’m sorry guys. Just because Jillian is wearing a nice soft stripy sweater, and you’ve got her on a white set with a soft filter, it doesn’t make her nice. And it certainly doesn’t make her qualified to talk to women about body image.

But can we talk here? This is really a bigger issue than the Biggest of the Biggest Loser Meanies trying to change her image. The real issue is the co-opting of important messaging in the body acceptance movement by people who just see it as the latest way to add market share to their products. And I think as we go forward, and we start to gain traction, this is likely to become a bigger and bigger issue.

Let me take a moment and disclose some facts about me. First, I acknowledge that even as “The Fat Chick”, I have an awful lot of privilege. I’m white, middle class, and heterosexual. That makes a lot of things in this society a lot easier for me. Also, in terms of my size, I’m what you might call a mid-size fatty. I’m certainly “plus-sized”. But my size and my shape make certain things a lot easier for me than for many other fat people. I face discrimination, but nowhere near as much or as intensely as many of my brothers and sisters in the movement. I don’t receive these privileges as a result of anything virtuous I’ve done. I was born with them. And thus, while I can sympathize with people of all sizes, I can’t say that my experience is the same as all other fat people. It just isn’t true.

I also have to admit that, having been in this space for many years, some messages are easier to sell. Some messages are more palatable for the general public and as such, are more fun to say. I get a lot more rewards for telling people to love themselves than I get for saying that society is brutalizing entire segments of the population, and that it is not okay and it has to stop. A lot of people look at my midsized status and nudge me and say, “Well you’re okay, you’re not THAT fat.” To which I usually respond, “ALL bodies are good bodies. And people thinner than me are okay and people fatter than me are okay. You don’t get to decide what sized body is acceptable for the general population.” I say usually. Because sometimes I just don’t have the spoons to deal with it and I just walk away. I am not a persona. I am not perfect. I’m just a person.

But I think it’s important going forward to acknowledge that it’s not really okay to co-opt body diversity, size acceptance and body love language just to soften a campaign of ongoing body hatred. It’s not really okay to call yourself an activist against weight bias or weight stigma if you still adhere to the “fat but not that fat” ideal. It’s pretty easy to accept that nobody looks like a supermodel. “Not a supermodel” is a pretty safe position to take. Only a few of us in the world look like that, and even those few are Photoshopped beyond recognition. But true work against weight bias and weight stigma includes recognizing that weight stigma and weight bias are institutionalized, rampant and ubiquitous. It includes recognizing that even if most of us hate our bodies, that stigma and bias are likely to be different at size 12, size 22, and size 32. And that weight stigma is not allowed once you are beyond a certain size. Body acceptance is not just loving your body, unless you are, you know, really fat. Body acceptance is for EVERY BODY. And this work demands that you accept that you can’t simply solve the problems of weight stigma and weight bias with a poster and a little boost to your self confidence. Working on your own feelings and confidence are important first steps to coping with weight stigma and weight bias in your own life. But they are only first steps. If you really want to fight these problems, you have to move on to finding these oppressions out in the world and making things better–no matter how uncomfortable or unpalatable these messages might be.

And for those of you who want to feel better about your body, here are three pieces of advice:

1. Don’t listen to Jillian Michaels.

2. Don’t listen to Jillian Michaels.

3. Don’t listen to Jillian Michaels.

Love,

Jeanette DePatie (AKA The Fat Chick)

P.S. Want to hire me to speak about size acceptance, weight bias and weight stigma? CLICK HERE.

Want to join me in making the world a safer place for bodies of ALL sizes? Click here and join me!

In EPIC Wardrobe Malfunction, Target Creates Thigh Gap by Removing Young Woman’s Lady Bits

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Close up of gruesome wardrobe malfunction. EEEK!

In it’s quest to ensure that all its models are sporting an appropriate thigh-gap, Target PhotoShop artists appear to have removed a junior model’s vagina altogether. The image was pointed out by several watchdog groups and blogs not only for it’s garish wardrobe malfunction, but also for the fact that it appears the junior model in question may have also been mutated into an alien creature with a very long torso and very long arms, best seen in the larger version of the photo here:

The photographic evidence of Target’s tampering have since gone viral and Target has issued an “apology” stating:

“In response to your query about the swimsuit image on Target.com, this was an unfortunate error on our part and we apologize. We have removed the image from our Web site,” a company spokesman said. Asked how the mistake occurred, “It was the result of a photo editing error on our part.”

Which leaves me with a few things to say to our friends at Target. First of all, in your “apology” I have to say that I don’t think that word means what you think it means. Sure, your PhotoShop guy or gal messed up. I can certainly understand how that happened. I doubt that it’s some sort of malicious protest on the part of the graphic designer as some have suggested. I really don’t imagine that some designer wanted to point out the brutality inherent in the system of PhotoShopping images by blatantly messing up and releasing a picture. I’ve produced websites and games and DVDs. I understand that stuff slips through the cracks. That poor graphic artist is probably not being paid less per hour than your minimum wage checkers and is probably working 80 hours per week on “salary” in a web sweat shop somewhere. And the junior manager or producer doing Quality Control on those images is probably working just as hard and not getting paid very well either. And if anybody gets fired over this whole mess, it will probably be them.

Apology? Hmmm. Maybe not.

But I’m sorry to say Target, that you apologized for the wrong thing. Don’t apologize to me that a graphic artist messed up and released a photo that makes it blatantly obvious that you drastically altered a young woman’s body to convince 12-year old girls that they need to be seven feet-tall, size 00 and have a thigh gap that could hold a soccer ball. Don’t apologize to me that you got caught. Apologize to me for feeling the need to PhotoShop these images this way in the first place. Apologize to me for altering photos to create impossible beauty ideals to products aimed at 12-year-old girls in an environment where hospitalizations for eating disorders in kids under 12 are up 119% (see Pinhas et. al.) Apologize to me for being so certain that your model needs to sport a thigh gap, a trendy body trait that is nearly impossible to maintain for all but a microscopic percentage of the human race, that you were willing to graphically stretch her on the rack and excise critical bits of her anatomy to accomplish it. (You could consider the techniques shown in the video below. These are kinda cool actually.)

Target, you make me sad. I adore your wide, bright aisles and fun POP displays. I love your colorful and fun, yet generally affordable housewares, camping gear and sporting goods. But this has GOT to stop. It’s time for you to retract your fake apology and give us a real one. Then tell us how you are going to stop digitally dissecting the already beautiful bodies of your models to sell us a dose of unreality we just shouldn’t have to swallow.

Love,

Jeanette DePatie (AKA The Fat Chick)

Don’t miss out on another day of body loving, booty shaking fun! Join me here.

Because I’m Happy…

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I think one of the most difficult barriers I’ve encountered on my journey towards self acceptance is the constant barrage of input telling me that people in larger bodies can’t really be “happy”. In stark contrast to the “fat and jolly” stereotype is the notion that all fat people are unhappy deep down. And this information is everywhere. From our television and magazine advertising to barroom pop psychology to well meaning friends and relatives, it seems like a lot of people are pretty sure I would be a lot happier if I would just lose weight.

“But I am pretty happy,” I tell folks. Their reply, “Not really. If you were really happy you wouldn’t be fat.” Sigh… One of the pieces of prejudice I find most daunting is the notion that all people who are fat are eating to compensate for some life deficiency. Either we were sexually abused as children, or didn’t get enough love at some stage or are facing some buried psychological trauma. “It’s not your fault you’re fat,” they state, while patting you on the head. “We just need to fix what is broken with you emotionally, and the weight will just flow off your body.”

Think I’m making this up? No lie, when I was getting one of my fitness certifications, one of the teachers pulled out a magic marker and headed towards the big paper pad she was using to sketch out the “fitness wisdom” she had to impart. She drew a picture of a fat person (small oval over big round body–it was no Monet). Then she drew another circle inside the fat tummy circle. “Fat people have a hole in their lives,” she stated. “There is something missing inside them that they attempt to stuff full with food.”

I was mortified. And I was pissed. This clearly wasn’t in any of the written materials that she or we had received with the course. This teacher was just making this stuff up and stating it as fact in a training course that is designed to train people to teach exercise to other people.

But most of the extremely thin people in the room simply nodded their heads knowingly and accepted it as fat fact. Along with this notion is the notion that if we lose weight, if we become visibly and socially acceptably skinny, all our problems will melt away and we will finally be happy. This idea is so pervasive that people spend billions of dollars in pursuit of the happiness level of thinness. I believed it. I got thin. For a little while after a ridiculous diet that made me very sick, I was thin. And I waited for the happy. And waited. And waited…

There was some euphoria over increased clothes shopping opportunities. There was some afterglow from the constant validation and encouragement I got about how much better I looked. (Although there was also frankly a lot of pissed off wondering what people thought about how I looked before.) But did I experience magical, mystical happy–smiling while eating a salad, orgasmic swooning over eating yogurt happy? I’d have to say that never arrived.

Oh God, I think I’m… AHHHHHHH!

And now that I’ve lived and loved in a fat body for a while, I can say I’ve found a modicum of relatively reliable happy. Am I happy all the time? Nope. Do I swoon over yogurt? What, are you kidding? But I’m pretty happy most of the time.

That is why I was so very, VERY excited to see this music video by Pharrell Williams and what seems to be half the population of Los Angeles. Take a look. I’ll wait…

Honestly, this music video is what got me on this whole subject with you in the first place. First of all, I have to apologize. This great song is likely to leave you with an earworm that lasts for days. Sorry about that. But on the upside here we have a video with lots and lots of people who are boogying down and singing about being happy. And remarkably none of these people look the same. There are kids, young people, middle aged people and old people. There are men and women. There are single people and families. There are people who are extremely mobile and some who are less mobile. There are people of all different colors. There are thin people, fat people and in-betweenies. They all look happy as hell, and there is not one single carton of yogurt or salad in the entire music video!

The video is actually compiled from a much bigger project called 24 Hours of Happy. Go check out the website. It’s the coolest! I’ll wait. The website contains a 24-hour long music video to this song compiled by Pharrell and his team. I have absolutely no idea how much raw footage they shot, but I imagine it must have been epic. The net result is a web-based clock. At any given moment, you can click in and watch Angelinos of all stripes shaking their thing.

Aside from being a super cool project, the thing I love about this is that it helps demonstrate an idea. Happy doesn’t look the same on everybody. You don’t have to be a particular color or size or shape to be happy. You don’t have to be young. You don’t have to be thin. You don’t have to eat dairy products of any kind. But it is still possible for you to be happy.

Now don’t get me wrong. Privilege and wealth and security and a lot of other things can certainly make happy easier. And there is absolutely no doubt that the rampant discrimination that accompany fat stigma can make it much harder to find happy. But I do know that I found it extremely helpful on my journey to learn that happy was at least possible at any size. It made it much easier for me to fight for happy for myself and for all my fat brothers and sisters.

So I will continue to blog, because, I’m happy…

Love,

Jeanette DePatie (AKA The Fat Chick)

P.S. If you like, you can join in the happy RIGHT HERE.

Does this Blog make my Butt Look Big? Why “Fat Talk” may be Bad for your Social Life.

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La, la, la I’m not listening…

“Fat talk” is a bonding ritual that many of us learned at our Mother’s knee. Many of us have participated in fat talk over the years because we felt social pressure to do so. But according to a recent study, moaning about the size of our thighs or asking if our butt looks big, might not be the best move for our social lives.

We’ve long known that fat talk is bad for your self esteem (and the self esteem of those around you). We’ve talked about that in the blog a fair bit. But a recent study led by Alexandra Corning, research associate professor of psychology and director of Notre Dame’s Body Image and Eating Disorder Lab seems to indicate that fat talk may make you less likable to your peers. In the study, college students were shown pictures of noticeably thin and fat women. Each of these pictures depicted women engaged in body talk–either positive body talk or fat talk. Those participating in the study were then asked to rate the women in the photos in a number of dimensions including likability. When the results were tabulated, it seems that women who engaged in “fat talk” were considered less likeable than those who engaged in positive body talk. In fact, according to the study, the fat women who had positive things to say about their bodies were considered the most likeable. This result is very interesting to psychologists who have long thought of fat talk as a way that women “strengthen social bonds”. But the study seems to indicate that women who engage in this behavior may be perceived as less likeable than their peers.

But, and this is a big but*, it’s important to remember this test simply measures personal perception. It doesn’t indicate what is actually happening in a social setting where fat talk is happening or measure anything related to peer pressure. This may explain why many of us may still feel pressured to engage in fat talk even in an environment where we may privately be perceived as less likeable for doing so. And it is only one study.

That said, I am encouraged by the results of this study. I decided long ago to refrain from engaging in fat talk with my friends, family and colleagues. I’ve taken heat for not participating. I’ve been teased for it. But I for one, will choose to believe that I am also secretly liked and respected for my refusal to fat talk. Because believing the best about myself seems to be working pretty well for me so far.

Love,

The Fat Chick

*You see what I did there?

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What we Said BEFORE Meme came on…

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Hi everybody. There’s been a lot of talk about Meme’s hate speech approach to people of size on Dr. Drew’s show yesterday. And I want to especially thank Ragen for standing up for Julianne and I. I DO think it represents a minimal step forward that hosts feel the need to have people like Ms. Roth on the show. In the past, the host would have simply belittled and mocked us directly. So I think the fact that hosts are bringing in a proxy to do the fat bashing represents a small but significant shift in public opinion. (YAY!) But before the clip that’s currently highlighted on the HLN site, Julianne and I did get to say quite a lot and I want to share it here.

Thanks so much to everybody for all your support and cheering. It’s hard to be up there in the lights being attacked. But I know we can bear it because we have such a strong, POSITIVE, SUPPORTIVE community behind us.

Now it’s time to share a little of that love. I suspect that HLN chose that clip to highlight on their site because they thought it was the most outrageous and would solicit the most comments. So I’d like to ask you to go to that comments page and share some positive thoughts about size acceptance and HAES. Here’s the link. I think saying negative things about Ms. Roth will only encourage them to have her on again as she “solicits a strong response”. So I’m going to suggest that you refrain from bashing her in the comments. If you need moral support, please see Ragen’s excellent and wonderful post here.

I think it would be more helpful to shift the focus somewhat and say something positive about size acceptance or how something said about size acceptance resonated with you or was helpful to you. Sorry to give you MORE HOMEWORK, my little chicklettes but we still got a long row to hoe. But before you leave here’s how Julianne most beautifully and eloquently got in the last word: