#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]

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.

[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.  

[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?