fat naked women: it’s a good thing :)

picfrom just jared. Don;t know where i’ve been this was taken last year, dont watch tv but i’m totally looking to watch this. HOLLA!!

but wait: am i the only one or does monique looks smaller and BETTER than everyone else. I think it would have been better with indv. shot where the women could at least get one or two good shots of themselves individually in a pose that worked for them instead of looking like frightened deer in front of headlights. I can understand though: what with fat bodies constructed as diseased, nasty and to be hidden, i can understand the courage and amount of work it might have taken to get naked and try and look sexy for the camera. I like the rolls everywhere, i like the shape. I don’t like the set up/props or whatever you gotta change the landscape entirely you can’t use a setting that typically works for skinny girls for fat girls, they would have looked better if they appared to be in action, in motion (like she tiger there) i like seeing other bodie that look like mine. iTs a good thing.

According to Shuler Deardra of Afrocentrc News “Mo’Nique’s F.A.T. Chance is about loving one another and building up each other’s confidence and saying it’s OK to be me even if I am fat. There is a difference between being obese and fat and there is a difference in being healthy and unhealthy. Some people say how can you encourage women to be fat? I am not encouraging anyone to be fat but I am saying love the body you are in” explained the charming comedienne who began her career on a dare from her brother.

wait for it: the requirements ARE: “The eligibility requirements are: contestant must be 21 years or older, size 14 and upwards, a citizen of the United States, and be in excellent physical and mental health.” I’m not hating on monique cos i think she is taking a step forward no a huge ass mofo leap in the right direction (there is a niche market for BBW women in porn by the way, I know, I modelled for one a couple of years ago) But why the whole excellent health thing without a deconstruction of what it means to have a ‘healthy body’: she lost me there. Guess no ‘disabled women are welcome to a fat chance so how can i say it’s a good thing then? ‘

how can i be a feminist when i periodically will not eat? (pt 2)

Rachel Said:

I am a feminist and I still struggled with an eating disorder. An eating disorder isn’t about food or weight or how one looks; it’s a psychiatric illness, a way of coping with other unresolved issues in life.

On another note: I’m conducting an anonymous survey of bloggers who blog about eating disorders or eating disorder recovery in partnership with a clinical psychologist for joint research and publication purposes. I’m hoping our survey generates lots of responses so that our findings are well-rounded, inclusive and convincing. If the scope of the study pertains to your own experiences, I invite you to participate by taking it.

More information and a survey link can be found here.

Thank you!

Rachel Richardson

Hey Rachel,

Thanks for dropping by and commenting by your comment made me squirm, to be frank.

Yes, it is good to know that there are other feminists, besides me, out there that struggle with eating disorders. I can think of quite a few that i know who bike everywhere they go cos its “cool”and secretly they know it keeps them “fit”, who like being vegan/vegetarian for other reasons that saving the planet, less fat apparently, who are obsessed with walking, exercising and other fitness stuff for these reasons as well. But who also will not eat or eat and through up or who will over use diuretics/laxatives. But we never talk about that at dinner parties or while training young women at self esteem/body image lifeskills workshops.

My point is i thought of the following questions?

1. Given that the medical and psychiatric/psychological/medical industry has a history and managed to succesfully construct a field of expertise based on the pathology and othering of human characteristics without dealing with the socio-political factors involved while maintaining an objective and superior stance, how is your surve/research going to be “inclusive” and address this reality while refraining from further contributing to the “objective” marginalization, othering and pathologizing of women/people?
2. Since when did feminism start to embrace the psychiatric medical industry, what went wrong? Self help books and other random psycho lingo and counselling/therapy that is not neccessarily from the women are thier own experts anto establishment, mad pride stance have become a staple of some the people that are activists that i knew, myself included (it all started with the courage to heal). As we continue to pathologize and call our selves and willingly label ourselves as ill..blaming ourselves and letting the social, economic,political system of domination and oppression of the hook so that it becomes “a psychiatric illness?”
3. My intention was the highlight the places where in choosing not to eat because i wanted to look cute, look powerful, i was failing to address and resist oppressive images and lookism against fat women like myself, when i should be concentrating on feeling sexy and attractive regardless of my size. That is my understanding of my choices not to eat sometimes or to overeat at other times. PLUS i really resent the term disorder especially when all these anorexic bitches who are accessing skiny priviledge get to claim “disorder” and then if you are fat then it just helps and maintains the fatphobic thinking that you have a disorder.
4. I prefer to find a way to centre my own experiences with language that comes from my own experiences and not download constructed psychiatric mumbo jumbo and the authority that comes with that as i attempt to comprehend my “issues”

how can i be a feminist when i periodically will not eat?

Question: how can i be a feminist when i periodically will not eat, how  can i even allow people to call me a feminist or tell myself that i am a feminist??? that don’t make no sense, i can easily point out that i have “body image issues” but if body stuff and thngs located in the woman body  is a major point of contention as in site of struggle and neccesary resistance suffice to say  that say that i am far from a resister. i am a full on colluder, traitor behind the no fo enemy lines…watch out cos i’m sneaky. i mean really my shit looks like this i’m the fat bitch who you think and gets props over the skinny bitches but i really want to be like the skinny bitches just am too lazy and not committed enough or sometimes i tell myself to get over it and feed my starving body but my rolls of flesh are decieving so i get to pretend to everyone like i really like my body when truth be told i really really don’t.

thats a good starting point : i hate my body.

I claim to be a feminist:

I like it when peopl e who i work with, am friends with to give more job lead, people i want to fuck, want thier respect tell me that i’m soooo confident, that its great that i’m not skin and bones. Yes I agree fat is a feminist issue (thats the name of a book, i have it on my shelf collecting dust couldn’t quite bring myself to read it …just yet).

Anyways….i’ve always been fat a minimum of size 16 as soon as i step foot into canada and it just kinda stayed that way well not really i would have gained weight but i just realized that throughout that tuime i had conveniently forgotten that as a teenager which i was then i took diet pills and correctol and threw up regularly just to stay a size 16. i also did aerobics to loose weight i was aspiring to return to the size 10 i was before i came to canada.

anyways 2 summers ago i got into the habit if not eating as in if i ate breakfast, i’d puke and then eat lunch (never more than) a sandwich followed by diner at 6 or 9 and very modest servings…i started enjoying getting humger pangs…and i’d tell myself that that meant that i was losing weight because my body had enough fat to feed of itself anyways…

Since then i realized/faced the fact that i was a relapsing bulimic or that it was indeed getting worse since i’d been in denial about it for so long so here i am.

seee i know that its a north american thing/ priviledged thing to consciously starving yourself, i know i’m buying into lookism..but its soo much easier for me to feel sexy, top feel like i have a shot, to feel like i have POWER just by the way i look but i know thats not real power. Real power is the power that you have within yourself but sometimes i think thats a load of bull because we exist in a matrix of domination and one of the VERY real ways of acquiring power within that matrix no doubt in collusion and therefore losing power to the gods that be is to be skinny.

thinking in the mean time

i’m doing a journal of what i eat everyday:

3 slices of pizza: est calories of 899

drinks: 200 calories

Homemade noodles with chicken, veggies and shrimp: 400

1400 which is less than 2000 which i think is WELL below what i usually consume without any exercise unless you count sex.