Tag Archives: size acceptance

Thursday Theater: The Second Candy Crowley Debate about her Weight

I have to say that Candy Crowley did a pretty good job of being tough in the most recent presidential debate. And it’s no surprise that some folks are pretty up in arms about the fact that she did her job and told the leader of the free world and the man who is competing for that position to sit down and be quiet at times. And there is some concern that she added information to the debate when perhaps she should not have.

But most people seem to agree that she did a much better job of managing the dialog between two of the world’s most powerful men than had been seen in the first debate. So are people on Facebook singing her praises? Is the Twitterverse glowing with her awesomeness? Well yes, and then again no. Because what some people feel the need to talk about right now is Candy Crowley’s weight.

Here’s one post I ran across on Facebook:

Since it’s the 21st Century, why do we even need Moderators? Siri can ask the questions, refrain from interrupting, and 5 seconds after the red timer light goes on, cut off the speaker’s mike. Also, we can save the Rain Forest from devastation by not having to raise all the beef cattle necessary to feed Sliders in the hospitality tent to Candy Crowley.

I found this truly offensive, so I said “This is offensive”. Here’s the response I got:

LOL! I think the above two responses are even funnier than the original post (wink). Talk about what’s wrong with America! We need a tickle prison for people who live by strict PC rules; maybe enough laughter will lighten them up. And I’m not talking about their weight.

And this one:

She’s a big fatty, and she’s demonstrably biased towards Democrats, that’s enough for me.

Okay here’s the thing. Declaring that a debate moderator is biased towards one political party may or may not be true in this case. But at least the question is relevant to the discussion at hand. What does the fact that she’s a big fatty have to do with the price of fish in Finland? Nothing. It’s just a form of hate speech against an extremely intelligent, successful and powerful woman that someone is pretty sure they will get away with. It’s a cheap shot, and it’s lazy thinking. But it’s so pervasive in our society that people are appalled when called out on it.

I don’t want to dwell a great deal more on this particular Facebook exchange. What I really want to talk about is the idea that a woman can ever be powerful enough, successful enough, or strong enough in this world to avoid being called a “fatty, fatty 2×4”? Is there ever a moment that she’s free from this sort of playground harassment? Based on what I see coming through on my Facebook feed, I’d have to say no.

And I’m not saying this to depress you. I’m saying this to make a different point.

For many years I lived under the delusion that if I were smart enough and funny enough and successful enough and dressed well enough, and so on, I would finally be free from childish taunting about my weight. But at a certain point I realized that I won’t ever be “good enough” to avoid this kind of nonsense. I had to learn to deal with it when it came at me. And I have to work to change the world. Because I’m unlikely to permanently change my size to a level that’s acceptable, and I can’t change the rest of me enough to make this kind of mindless, petty, playground nonsense not happen to me.

And you know what? This afforded me a freedom of a sort. I started focusing my energy on getting what I really wanted in life rather than avoiding pain. I realized that I had no moral obligation to be jolly and I only needed to be funny when I really wanted to.

You don’t have to be nice all the time. You don’t have to be funny or jolly. You don’t have to be tame or quiet or good. Pain will happen anyways. People will say stupid things anyways. So you might as well be the person you always wanted to be. And join me and my colleagues in our quest to make the world a better place for people of all sizes.

Love,

The Fat Chick

P.S. Why not start by joining The Fat Chick Clique? It’s free and it’s liberating!

Big Girls on the Red Carpet

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Jeanette working the Red Carpet with the two directors of the Haute Curves Fashion Show for LA Fashion Week: Angela Rene’ AKA “The Purple Diva”, CEO of PurpleDivaDesigns.com and Jasmine Epperson, CEO at Kris Eliza Boutique

On the list of things we big girls are told we will never experience, you can add wearing beautiful clothes. As a kid, I never thought I’d get to wear gorgeous things and the idea that there would be plus-sized models seemed extremely remote.

So in my week of saying “neener, neener, neener” to the list of stuff we fluffy folk “shouldn’t expect to enjoy,” I’m telling you that the models ROCKED THE HOUSE at this past weekend’s Haute Curves fashion show for LA Fashion Week. For over two hours we watched unbelievably gorgeous men and women of all sizes, small to super-sized, strut down the runway in some extremely gorgeous clothes. And folks, these were not your mama’s muumuus. There was an awful lot of extremely beautiful clothes from delightfully weird to sporty to super sexy on that runway. Angela and Rene put on an absolutely spectacular event!

The Fat Chick near the runway at the Haute Curves fashion show.

So besides the need to feed my considerable ego by showing you pictures of the cool thing I got to do on Saturday night, why am I sharing this with you? I think it’s important to bust myths about what people of size can expect for their lives. I know for me, the panic over the things I thought I would miss as a plus-sized woman, like true love and a kickin’ black leather skirt I could wear, once filled me with feelings of panic. And I think in some cases our loved ones (especially our parents) are unduly fearful of the things we will miss out on or can’t have if our bodies are larger than societal ideals.

It took several decades, but I now realize that there is virtually nothing completely unavailable to me as a person of size. (Well maybe a comfortable coach-class airplane seat, but I’m not sure ANYBODY feels comfortable in one of those.) And it has taken several decades, but those who love me most have come to realize that I can do all that I want and have all that I dreamed of without losing 100 pounds first. And let me share with you, it has been an absolute blessing and a joy for all of us to just calm the heck down about the whole thing.

Yes Virginia, there is a Sexy Santa Claus costume just for you. There’s even a fabulous black leather skirt in your size, just waiting for you to claim it.

Love,

The Fat Chick

On being a Shameless Woman: How Forbes Got it Right

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Ooooo, I’m so excited about THIS article from the Forbes.com site She Negotiates! In this piece, author Brooke Axtell talks about why shame doesn’t make us thinner OR healthier, and she rounds up an amazing group of experts including Dr. Michelle Segar and Dr. Linda Bacon. And I’m resonating so deeply with what is said here that I’m ringing like a big old bell! The article starts out asking a simple question:

The U.S. Diet and Weight Loss Industry produced over 60 billion dollars in revenue last year. With all the available information and products, why do many intelligent women continue to diet and exercise without achieving lasting results?

Good question! Why do we keep banging our head on this same wall over and over again? Why do we keep doing the same things we’ve always done before and expect different results. Why are we behaving in a way that could be defined as insane?

The article goes on interview Dr. Michelle Segar. And while I don’t intimately know her work and can’t comment on her personal feelings about weight loss, I couldn’t find much to fault in her interview here. Basically, her research indicates that if you start trying to change your health and wellness from a point of self-hatred you are doomed to fail before you even start. The article goes on to state:

Many of the behaviors that improve health, such as getting more sleep and making better eating choices, also lead to experiences, such as reduced stress, that contribute to happier lives. It is the positive experience that we crave and it is far easier to measure on a daily basis. Although many claim that their health is a priority, the truth is that we are far more motivated by wanting to feel good than to improve our health.

Yes, yes and YES! In my experience with all of the folks that I work with, it’s the immediate pleasure of having fun, of building relationships with classmates, it’s the better sleep and higher confidence and improved sex life that comes with exercise that keeps them exercising. You can create charts. You can pull out your calipers and scales. You can give the “deathfat” speech all you want. You can even give them a “gold star” for being “good”. But what keeps exercisers coming back for more is having a good time and feeling good both during and after exercise. Period.

This is such an important idea. So often people ask me why I call myself The Fat Chick. They ask why I can’t just skip over the issue of being “curvy” and tell people to have fun while they are losing weight. They ask why I can’t just “suggest” that they could or should lose weight. But I can’t. Because telling people to have fun while they are on the way to being worthy, while they are in the process of becoming okay just doesn’t work. I have to tell them that they are okay now. I have to let them know that they are worthy even if they never achieve the BMI or number on the scale they are seeking. I have to let them know that we will experience joy right from the beginning of our work together, not after some magic number or arbitrary goal is achieved. As the article states:

Ultimately, it matters why we exercise and eat healthy foods. This is important not only to sustain our efforts of authentic self-care, but also to resist the toxic messages of a 60 billion dollar industry that depends on women feeling ashamed of their bodies.

Amen, sister. Amen. So I’ll keep calling myself The Fat Chick, and I’ll keep focusing on feeling good and having fun. I will refuse to fuel the industry built on shame that keeps us down and holds us back. I’ll keep working with people of many different ages, weights and abilities. I’ll call myself and all of my students worthy on the first day and the last day and every day in between. To put it simply, that’s what works in the short term, the long term and the whole term.

Thanks for listening.

Love,

The Fat Chick

Stuff that Weighs More than Me: World’s Biggest Pumpkin

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Well it IS fall even if the weather in Southern California doesn’t seem to reflect it. 106 in October? Are you kidding me? It makes me sad for the kids that go and buy pumpkins to carve in early October. Sure, where I grew up in Wisconsin, the weather is cool enough for those pumpkins to last a week or two. But here? In 100+ degree temperatures? A carved pumpkin has a shelf life of a day or two at most.

Speaking of which, did ya see the pumpkin in the video up there? Did ya? Now that is one giant gourd! I love watching how excited everybody is at the weigh in. And it is pretty amazing. This pumpkin utterly crushes the previous world record holder–outweighing its nearest competitor by over 200 lbs. These pumpkins are really amazing–growing by 40 or even 50 lbs. per day in peak growing season. In fact, rapid growth can lead to bursting, which is one massively messy problem to have.

I think even Linus would agree this is one Great Pumpkin!

I don’t have a lot of stats for this one other than the fact that the pumpkin is the first ever to reach the one-ton mark. And at 2009 pounds the world’s heaviest pumpkin weighs more than me.

Thursday Theater: The Fat Chick Talks About Bullies

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My response to Jennifer Livingston’s amazing video and my entry for Ragen Chastain’s Amazing New Project.

:o)

Jeanette

PS: We. Will. Win.

The Ongoing Costs of Bullying

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It seems like everybody is talking about what television anchor Jennifer Livingston said on air on WKBT in La Crosse, WI. If you haven’t heard it yet, go on up and watch the video. I’ll wait. In her video she talks about how we not only need to stand up to bullies, but also be an example to our children and show them how not to be bullies.

October is National Bullying Prevention month, and I can’t tell you how glad I am that Jennifer has helped bring bullying about weight to the forefront. It seems to me that much of the discourse on bullying has been dominated by discussions of race or gender or sexual preference. It also seems to me that in many of the discussions about bullying, weight has been left right out of the equation. So I’m thrilled that weight is coming into the discussion and that “concern trolling” is being called out as a form of bullying.

I admire Jennifer so much for standing up to bullies in such a public way. She’s not only standing up in public, but she’s standing up at work. And working in television news is no picnic. I know she worked very hard to get that coveted morning anchor spot. She undoubtedly won that spot over a lot of other competitors. A lot of those competitors were probably thinner and more closely mirrored current societal standards of appearance for a television anchor. Just doing her job every day in such a public and competitive sphere is pretty darn brave. To risk all she worked for, to risk the wrath of television viewers and pundits alike, for ‘coming out’ as a fat person, takes amazing strength. And as a Midwestern girl, raised in Wisconsin, I can tell you that calling attention to herself in this way, putting herself forward like this in the town of La Crosse, WI flies in the face of a lot of our “nice girl” training. It takes unbelievable courage.

As a fellow producer, I also want to call out the producers at WKBT for having the guts to put this on TV. I’m talking about morning show producer Kelli Hoff andnews director Anne Paape as well as the rest of the producing team. News at the local level is an extremely competitive business. Allowing Jennifer to take that much airtime to share an extremely controversial and polarizing viewpoint takes serious guts. That producer’s job is on the line for this. It was a big risk, but luckily the response seems to be largely positive.

I am so glad that a light is being shined on this bullying business. Because I think it’s time that we understood the real costs associated with it. There’s the cost to kids concentration levels and education. Can somebody who’s being tortured every day really focus on school? Can they get the grades? Can they do what they need to do to compete for those rapidly dwindling and extremely valuable spots at their favorite college? Will they even survive school? Or will they take their own precious lives and thus deprive the world of themselves? And if they survive school, will they survive intact? Or will they commit suicide a little bit every day by being smaller, being less than, blending in, and not being noticed? Will these kids be what they were meant to be? Will they dare? Or will they let that part of themselves that is responsible for seeing that torture never happens again, that they are never hurt that way again, take charge?

That is what is so very exciting to me about what I saw morning anchor Jennifer Livingston do on television yesterday. She wasn’t just standing up to bullies that are after her now. She was standing up to every bully she’s ever faced. She was standing up to that part of her that told her that she had a good thing going with her anchor job and she shouldn’t blow it. She was standing up to the part of her that told her she should be quiet and blend in. She was standing up to the part of her that said she should be lesser so as to present a smaller target.

I want to thank both Jennifer and WKBT for standing up not only to the bullies they face now in the public and the board room but also to all the bullies they have faced their entire lives. Your courage is an inspiration.

Sincerely,

Jeanette DePatie

AKA The Fat Chick

Why does doing good sometimes feel so bad?

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In yesterday’s post, I shared with you a glowing report about an amazingly awesome activism event–Take Back the Beach. It was powerful and wonderful and moving. It was a special and discrete moment in time where things went well, everyone got along, and changing the world seemed not only possible, but inevitable.

And then I came back home to my email inbox. And that mailbox was filled with the real-life frustrations that come when many people within many groups try to make the world a better place. Along with the magic moments of transcendence and transformation come many days of messy arguments over who holds what power and who is making the rules and who is following the rules and who gets the credit, and who gets to speak and who is heard. Sometimes it’s really hard to hold the thread and keep the focus. It’s easy to forget that it’s really about making the world a better place.

I wish I could say this experience is unique to one group, but I’ve experienced it in so many places and with so many organizations. Sometimes it’s tempting to go off into a corner and just try to do activism all by yourself. But that doesn’t work either. To make change you need a lot of people, all working at the top of their game, all sharing to the best of their abilities. Everyone needs to be valued. Everyone needs to be recognized. And each and every time, you have to realize that there is no group of people, anywhere in the world that is going to get it right all the time. People are fallible and relationships are messy. We are all by turns proud, defeated, aggressor, and victim. All you can do is try to build groups with enough strength and elasticity to bend and not break when the wind blows through. And then you try again. And then you try again some more. Wash, rinse and repeat.

That’s why it’s so helpful to have those special moments in the sun, like Take Back the Beach. It helps me so much to have these memories to treasure and hold close and remember why the heck we’re doing this in the first place.

My little Chicklettes, please remember that the road to making the world a better place is never a smooth one. Sometimes reaching a wing out to help somebody else simply results in two feathery butts bouncing on the ground. But sometimes you and the entire flock will soar! Here’s to remembering your days of high flying.

Love,

The Fat Chick

Beach taken Back by Cool Kids in Bikinis (News at Eleven)

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This last weekend I participated in an activism event at Huntington Beach called Take Back the Beach. The event was a coming together of a number of size acceptance groups including the newly formed Size Diversity Task Force. The event was full of fun for people of all shapes and sizes including a Hot Flash Mob for Menopause Awareness Month (video coming soon), a Flesh Mob (pictured above and led by national dance champion Ragen Chastain), a weenie roast, body surfing, sand, s’mores and well, more. The weather was perfect, and I think we all had a wonderful time.

The event was fun and wonderful and powerful. I have to admit however, that the event didn’t match the picture in my mind for a “stereotypical activism event”. We didn’t march. We didn’t chant or shout. We didn’t camp out in tents or form human chains. We simply put on our swimsuits and sunglasses, grabbed our “Know Fat Chicks” towels, slathered on sunscreen and relaxed.

But in a quiet and gentle way, activism happened. People saw how much fun we were having and asked what we were up to. Some people came by to say that they loved our energy. Some little kids adopted us for a while and asked questions and spent time with us. We danced in our swimsuits on the sand and on the boardwalk. We smiled. We laughed. And we didn’t apologize.

Sure, there were stares. For the most part, we met those stares with smiles and openness. And by just getting together and relaxing and sharing our joy and baring some skin we made the beach a brighter and warmer place.

And it made me think of how we are activists when we are fully and deeply ourselves. Feeling comfortable in our skins and sharing our joy is an act of quiet and peaceful rebellion that ripples out and radiates like a big round stone dropped in a quiet pond. Being open and inviting to those who stare at us is a shot across the bow for those who would categorize and stigmatize. And just being there created a precedent for others who have been too afraid to feel the sun on their skin.

So my dear Chicklettes, I’d like to invite you to be an activist. Whether it’s joining the new task force or putting on a swimsuit and dancing at the beach or marching with a sign or simply returning a stare with a smile, I invite you to reach out. Stretch. Shine. The world is better with you in it. So fully inhabit the planet with all of your awesomeness!

Love,

The Fat Chick

Why my Body has no Comment Button

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Today on facebook I came across two different posts about how people in the world feel compelled to share their disappointment that not everybody in the world chooses to meet their personal standard of beauty on a 24/7 basis. First, I came across this post from the truly awesome Fat Fox. (Note: frustration leads to some colorful, sailor-like language.) In this guest post on Fat But Not Afraid’s Blog, she talks about the “always wear a bra” requirement some feel compelled to share. She also notes that those folks can just kiss her–well like I said, sailor talk.

And then I ran across this story shared on facebook by Atchka Fatty of Fierce Freethinking Fatties, in which a girl who is simply standing line and texting on her phone is photographed and made the subject of ridicule on reddit. Be sure to read her beautiful and thoughtful response at the link above.

Honestly! What is it with people? Last time I checked, there was no comment button pasted on my body, ANYWHERE. Just exactly how much ego is required in order for you to expect everybody in the entire world to continually live up to your personal rules about how they should look? I don’t know, but I’m pretty sure that amount of ego weighs more than me.

My dear Chicklettes, are you starting to see how it is not your responsibility to look the way other people think you need to look? Are you starting to understand that the problem is not how big your butt is, but rather, how small their mind is? Are you starting to understand that you can choose to make the fact that somebody doesn’t like you just because of your outward appearance, NOT YOUR PROBLEM?

Good!

Because you are awesome, wonderful, gorgeous and deserving of love exactly the way you are right this very moment.

Love,

The Fat Chick