The Big Fight BACK

Fighting Talk for Fat People

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Pride in London

A platform for every part of London’s LGBT+ community

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Sometime, After The Rainbows...

I’m mega excited today!  Tomorrow I am leaving the green and pleasant lands of South Wales, and heading off to the Big Smoke with my daughter (no, not to Cardiff!  To Actual London!).  While we speak, the British Summertime weather is doing its best to cause maximum disruption and misery in London by pouring copious amounts of rain onto it.  But these girls are Welsh – and it takes a hell of a lot of rain to put us off going on our holidays.

So – why?  Why are we going to rainy ol’ London?  Because the streets are paved with gold?  No!  No, NO! It’s not the gold we’re chasing.  It’s the RAINBOWS.  For, my friends, with many a YAY and WOOHOO, I am thrilled to bits that it is LONDON PRIDE weekend and we are going to smile and laugh and sing and dance and celebrate all the wonderful love and freedom and diversity that Pride has to offer.    We are truly blessed to live in a country, and in a time, where we can celebrate in the streets with thousands of people just because we are free to love who we please. 

But, here’s the thing.  This morning I was listening to Radio One (if you read my previous blog, you will know I have ‘growing up’ issues) and on the news was a feature about the three quarters of LGBT folk who admit that they have felt it necessary to lie about their sexuality.  75% of LGBT people in our wonderful, tolerant, free society are hiding their true selves because they are scared that they will suffer discrimination.  That actually makes me want to cry.  And this is why…

I suppose that now that I am very much a grown-up (chronologically at least), I have to accept that I am straight.  I have always been very much in the ‘prefer not to say’ camp, but now that I am in my 40s and I have only ever chosen men as sexual partners (with a few notable drunken ‘close calls’ with girls), I guess ‘straight’ is an accurate description of my sexuality.   I have always been mates with lots of LGBT people.  I love PRIDE, I love gay clubs, I love my lesbian best friend, but I am not gay.  Not bi.  Not really a person who fancies other ladies – however awesome I think they are.   I am straight.  And so I do not know what it is to be an LGBT person, because although my life is hugely enriched by having LGBT friends to share love and fun and friendship with, I do NOT share their struggle. 

But I am fat.  And here I feel I might tread on some toes (and, yes, it might hurt).   Because I think the Big Fight Back can learn a hell of a lot from the fight that LGBT people have fought and that they are getting closer and closer to winning.

Let me explain.  When I was a wide-eyed and not so innocent young lady of 19 or 20, it was the late 80s, and the UK was still reeling from the shock of finding out that going out, meeting a hottie and having some uncomplicated fun in the sack could actually kill you.  And when people are scared, they get vicious.  And the people that got the blame for the horror of HIV and AIDS were gay people.  It simply was not safe for my vivacious, fun, fabulous gay (mostly male) friends to come out with me to ‘straight clubs’ because, quite frankly, they would have gotten their heads kicked in.  So we went to gay clubs and had some of the most awesome times I have ever had.  We danced, we drank, we laughed, we flirted and, yes, there was the sex too.  I discovered that I rather liked bisexual men – er…yes, well,  let’s leave it at that.

Then one night I was having a drunken heart to heart with one of the very brightest of this shiny, happy bunch of friends and he told me that if he could have taken a pill that turned him straight, he would take it.  Without a doubt.

I was stunned.  These were the first people I ever knew who were fiercely proud of their sexuality.  They were OUT.  They sang it from the rooftops.  But I talked to my other gay friends and it turned out that they all felt the same. 

And here’s where I see the similarities with this Big Fight that I’m always banging on about.  I don’t want to pretend to be thinner – I don’t want to squeeze my body into tight underwear and wear black constantly.  I don’t want to apologise for eating a biscuit when I want.  I don’t want to constantly feel that I have to be on a diet, or tell people about the last time I went to the gym.  I want to love myself exactly like I am.  I want to feel loveable to other people I want to come OUT as a proud, fierce fat woman.  But often, I don’t. 

My friends respond with the same shock and upset as I did all those years ago when they find out that I - their loud, bolshy, sociable, confident, flirty friend - would not hesitate for a second if, offered the chance, I could take a pill and 'turn slim'.  And the reason is surprisingly similar to the reason given by my gay friend all those years ago.

It is EASIER to be straight.  And it is EASIER to be slim.  If you are straight you don’t need to justify why you are the way you are.  You don’t need to try and prove you ‘can’t help it’ because you ‘were born this way’.  You don’t have to be frightened of being humiliated, bullied or attacked because you are straight.  You don’t have to spend your life feeling that you are not part of this society, where the only people who truly belong are people not like you.  And you won’t spend your life wishing that you could just live your life as you are and be happy.

All of those things apply to fat people too.   And it might make people uncomfortable reading this – I know that some people will think that it is disrespectful to try and equate people’s struggle to love themselves in the bodies they have, with those who struggle for the right to love who they want.  But it wasn’t so long ago that doctors were trying to ‘cure’ homosexuality – or at least find a genetic cause.  It is all about leaving people alone.  Letting them live.  Letting them care for themselves and be cared for by others.  Letting them make their own choices about who they are.   It’s THAT important.  It’s about freedom and human rights and tolerance.

So that’s why this proud fat woman is getting on a train with my awesome, gorgeous teenage daughter.  We will wear our rainbow t-shirts.  We will drape rainbow flags around our shoulders.  We will paint rainbows on our faces.  And we will shout and cheer and dance and celebrate the joy and love and diversity of the fabulous LGBT people around us.  And I will wait until the time when I can join all the happy, singing, cheering fat people - OUT and PROUD and DANCING IN THE STREETS.

See you soon gorgeous people.  Keep fighting!

Peace and Love,

Tana 

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The Day I Threw My Bathroom Scales Out of the Window (in my head)

Hey.  I’m Tana and I’m chuffed to meet you.  Yes, I’m new to this site, so be kind now.  Please play nicely.

I had to tell you something. Right now.  I’m all excited.  And I’ll tell you why. Because today I started my BIG FIGHT BACK.  Not only my big fight back.  But THE Big Fight Back.  It’s not just big.  It’s HUUUGGGE.  

Recently, my reading seems to have been heading irreversibly in one direction. Not about One Direction – that phase has passed now (Phew!  I’m old enough to be their Mum FFS) – but a particular direction.  And that direction is towards the awesome and empowering and very happy direction of BODY LOVE. Yes, YES!  What? (you shout).  She’s only just found this?  Er...yes. OK so I’m a little late to the party.  I’ve only just found that my own personal little fight back, which I kind of thought I was doing all on my own was really a BIG FIGHT BACK – one that thousands and thousands of people are engaged in right now.  And that makes me very, very happy.  And also reminds me that if I have a good idea, I should get the fuck over myself and realise that lots of other people will have had the same one.

I read lots and lots and lots and lots about how we need to love ourselves in the bodies that we have regardless of weight, size, height, skin colour, gender, ability…the very body that we have right now.  And it sang to me.  It made me pump my chubby fist with joy (yes, I need to stop doing that – see previous 1D comment) and it made me realise that there is hope for us all to stop hating ourselves and stop judging people around us. YES!  But guess what…

My reading about this stuff started because I had been to the doctor, and yet again (and again and again and again) I came out of there thinking that she didn’t listen to one fucking word that I said.  She waiting for me to stop talking and sighed, and said ‘well we could send you for some blood tests and see if there’s anything wrong, but what you really need to do is lose weight’.  Really? Well, OK.  But the problem is Doc, that like millions and millions of other people, I CAN’T FUCKING LOSE WEIGHT.  My body does not lose weight.  It stays this weight.  The weight that it has been since I was 15 years old.  This weight that it has been for thirty fucking years!

And what’s more, there’s an angry little voice inside me that I have never had the guts to let out in that surgery. And it says ‘she’s wrong’.  It says that her assumption that I NEED to lose weight is based on fattism – pure and simple.  It makes me question her professionalism and her intelligence and her scientific curiosity to fall back on such a well-rehearsed response.  But I remind myself that those thoughts are childish, and disrespectful and that I’m not a doctor so what the hell do I know?  So I didn’t say it. I felt embarrassed.  I felt like I had wasted her time.  And I still felt unwell, but with no idea why.

So I went home and cried. Then I went online for diet advice (again).  And I read up on new breakthroughs in weight-loss (again).  And I read about insulin resistance (again).  And I decided that I would go on a diet and lose ALL THE FAT (again).  And even though it had never ever worked before, and I had never maintained any weight loss in all of the thirty years that I had been trying…this time it was DEFNITELY going to work.  So I went out to the supermarket and bought all the ‘right’ food (again).  And I started that very day.  Well…not that very day, because it was a Friday and everyone knows that diets start on Monday.

Then I started reading. I read about HEAS® (Health at Every Size)  www.lindabacon.org/haesbook.  I watched the awesome TedX talk Why It’s OK to be Fat by Golda Poretsy www.youtube.com/watch?v=73SXX0w4eY8. I read Jes Baker’s FATABULOUS book Things No One Will Tell Fat Girls  www.themilitantbaker.com And when I was reading about throwing my scales away I thought ‘Ooh, I was really GOOD yesterday, I wonder what I weigh?’   So I went to the bathroom, and I stood on the scales, and I saw the number…and I felt like shit.  Because despite the salad, and the four mile walk, and ALL that water I drank yesterday, I had put on a pound.

And after putting myself through this pointless, daily masochistic ritual, I then I went back to the book.  I mean…how fucked up is that?  What is the matter with me?  So I had a damn good word with myself.   Then I went back into the bathroom, picked up my scales and THREW THEM OUT OF THE WINDOW! Smashed the oppressive fuckers to bits! Rid myself of the tyrannical, misery inducing bastards!  Right there and then.

Uuuumm…well, no. OK.  I couldn’t actually bring myself to do it.  I loved imagining myself doing it, but chickened out.  But I DID take the scales, and put them under the bed in the spare room, behind a whole load of crap that I really, really will clear out one day.  Tomorrow I might just fish them out, DEFINITELY NOT WEIGH MYSELF, HONEST, and take the battery out and chuck it away.  It’s one of those stupid round flat ones, and it’s a proper arse-ache to find a new one.

So there you have it my friends.  Day one of my real, non-weighing, wearing-whatever-the-fuck-I-want, body loving day.  And I just had to share it with you. Because I know that there are so many of you out there who feel the same as me.  And the more of us that are talking and sharing and encouraging and loving our – and everyone else’s – bodies, well then the quicker we win this FIGHT.  

I’ll see you again very soon.  Keep fighting you beautiful people.

Love and Peace,

Tana