Fat Acceptance (Wherein I Fail at "Fatshion")

Whew.  OK, I think I'm back on track.  Postings have been slim around here, and I'm going to blame Will.  He came to visit and it was like I was on vacation myself.  And while I did put him on his plane on Thursday ... well, the point is, here it is Monday, a fresh start.  Actually, I woke up today feeling a little like crying because I have to really buckle down from here on out doing prep work for the new course I have to teach this fall.  On one hand, teaching new courses is cool because you get to learn about different things that you might never have even considered before.  On the other hand, teaching new courses sucks because you have to learn about different things that you might never have even considered before.

So later today I have to go pick up umpteen library books and stop into my office in Oakland (I hate Oakland).  I also have to get dinner on and pay bills today.  But I thought it best to start with some tea and a blog.

I've got a blog topic I've been mulling over for literally months, and I figure today is as good a time as any to tackle it.  Here goes.

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As I'm sure I've mentioned here and certainly have in other places, I am fat.  I prefer the word "fat" to "overweight" because ... over what weight?  The weight I'm supposed to be?  According to my experience, having been fat for almost my entire life, this is the weight I'm supposed to be.  Over the weight other people would like me to be?  Fuck them, my weight is none of their business.  I also prefer "fat" to "obese" because that is a very medical-sounding, pathologizing term.  My body is not pathological.  It is just my body.

This is an "outfit of the day" picture I took during "Fatshion February", which is a thing on Twitter where fashionable fat folks post OOTD pics of themselves. I was making a point about how we're not all fashionable, or want to be.

If you're curious, I don't diet, and plan never to again, though I have in the past, intensely.  I try to eat pretty healthily, or at least wholesomely: lots of fresh vegetables and fruits, lots of food made from scratch, easy on the meat and sugar.  I don't really exercise, which I know I should, but my relationship with exercise is its own ball of wax, and perhaps one I'll get to on another day.  This can be a two-part series: Being Fat in the World: Sabrina Edition.  Anyway, I don't diet because I practice Body Acceptance.  I won't tell you what to with yourself, because it's none of my business, but if you were to ask me, I would recommend that you practice Body Acceptance, too.  Letting go of the shame and anxiety of trying to look the way other people think is acceptable (and who the fuck are they to say?) was, quite literally, the best decision I have ever made -- I am happier and more confident than I ever was before I chose this path, and, amazingly, even though it's fatter now after years of metabolism-destroying yo-yo dieting, I am more comfortable in my body now than I was when I was starving my body thin.  Also, accepting your body in the size and shape it is in does not mean that you cannot practice healthy habits and try to improve your health -- the practice of engaging in healthy eating and exercise behaviors without a focus on weight loss is called Health At Every Size, and it is endorsed by the United States government among others as effective.  One can be fit, strong, and flexible, and enjoy positive health indicators like good cholesterol, blood pressure, and blood sugar numbers while fat.  Trust me: you really can!  (Example: my last blood pressure reading was 110/69, and I am DeathFat, yinz.)

I was not always so accepting of being fat.  I'm sure almost no one in this country is comfortable being fat when they are young, because they are subject to a tremendous amount of bullying, from peers, family, and society at large (I'm looking at you, Michelle Obama).  Literally every day I was in school between the ages of five and eighteen, I was bullied for being fat, some days relentlessly, mercilessly, until I was shaking and crying.  At home, my grandmother reminded me constantly that I was too fat, that I should diet, and that boys would never want to date me as long as I was too fat.  My mother, who I know was well-intentioned, sometimes encouraged me to diet too, probably thinking that my life would be easier if I were thin.  She was probably right -- this is called Thin Privilege, and I assure you, it is real.  But not all bodies are thin, or can be thin.  In any case, I buckled down and endured.

Are you noticing a pattern? This is how I dress for work basically every day I have to dress for work.

The irony is, I cannot recall hating my body on my own at any time in my life -- I hated my body because other people hated it.  Does that make sense?  My disgust and shame were not only learned behaviors, I was acutely aware of them as learned behaviors -- hating my own body for how it looked felt unnatural and silly to me, even at a young age.  But when every peer, family member, doctor, nurse, and media figure assures you your body is not just wrong but disgusting, what are you to do?

As a young adult, I did try to diet.  My most "successful" diet coincided with my time living in Michigan for graduate school.  Moderate dieting had never helped me to become thin -- I had tried the kinds of supposedly gentle, "healthy" methods one might encounter in a Weight Watchers meeting or in a women's health magazine, and they had made not the tiniest dent in my fat.  So, living alone for the first time and homesick, in Michigan I really went for it.  I counted every calorie except those contained in whiskey, and tried to eat no more than 800 calories a day.  (I am six feet tall and very sturdily built -- now that I consider it, I bet I burn 800 calories a day by just existing, let alone other exercises.)  I exercised four or five times a week, for an hour or two at a time, despite my great loathing of the gym.  I mostly smoked and drank, liquor and black coffee.  I lost a lot of weight -- I lost about 100 pounds.  My hair fell out and I was often awake with insomnia for literally days at a time, but everyone I knew told me I looked great and to keep it up.

But here's the thing: 95% of diets fail.  It's been demonstrated over and over again in scientific studies.  Scientists know that for a variety of reasons, it's virtually impossible to keep (not make) a fat adult thin.  Statistics didn't spare me - my weight came back within two years and brought friends.  I tried again to diet.  I lost weight again, but then it also came back, also with more pounds.

And finally, at the age of 26, I decided that this was a very stupid way to live my life, and I stopped.

I didn't stop alone.  I had resources.  Great websites like Shapely Prose, Two Whole Cakes, The Rotund, Dances with Fat ... these women bloggers shared their stories of giving up on trying to make their fat bodies thin and accepting themselves, and provided an example for me.  They tied their individual experiences to cultural criticism and an expansive feminism that helped me to understand how truly fucked up it was that American cultural attitudes about fat had driven me to literally try to eliminate myself, and how those attitudes are part of a kyriarchical system of oppression.  These ladies don't know me, but I owe them thanks.

But while I have since then become comfortable as a fat lady, a few anxieties remain.  One of the things that still traumatizes me is shopping for clothes.  I hate shopping for clothes.  Hate it.  I have always hated it.  Very tall, very fat, as a child, there was little in the kids' section of the department store that fit me.  My mother and grandmother would dress me in clothes for petite adult women; I remember my grandmother picking out clothes for me by Alfred Dunner, a brand of clothing old women wear -- off I went to elementary school dressed like a little fat old lady. Later in life, I would go off to the mall with my friends in junior high and high school, and while they had a jolly time in teen stores, I stood off to the side, mortified, lingering at the jewelry racks because nothing in the trendy teen stores fit me.  In college, Lane Bryant was the only brick-and-mortar store around that had clothing that fit me -- I hung around campus dressed like a 30-year-old on her way to the office.

I have drawers full of knit shirts and thin cardigans. You can't see all the knit skirts, but they're there: plain knit skirts in uninteresting colors.

Now that I am a 30-year-old, things aren't much better.  Once or twice a year I brave an Old Navy, buy a lot of cheap knit tops and skirts, and despise the entire experience.  I get nervous; I sweat.  I remind myself that I don't have these feelings of inadequacy and ugliness anymore, but something about clothing is ... triggering.  I'm not in control of my feelings when I'm in the dressing room (or even ordering clothes online); self-acceptance, in those spaces, is not an option.

But here is the problem.  One of the key ways that fat ladies on the internet, including some of the bloggers that I most love, have formulated resistance to the cultural narrative that degrades fat people is through "fatshion".  Let me say, I take their point entirely.  Fat women are told over and over again by many sources that because they are fat, they cannot be desirable, or feminine, or attractive.  It is even suggested that by providing nice clothing for fat people, one is "encouraging obesity", and we can't have that, can we?  So by being fashionable, by cultivating a means of expressing themselves through clothing that society would like to deny them, I completely understand, academically, how these women's fashion statements are actually feminist statements and Fat Acceptance statements, and why they are concerned with fashion.  Plus, it is the case, I suppose, that some people, fat and thin, just really like clothes -- and please, you do you.

But here's my problem (and I would be interested to hear from other people who might have brushed up against the Fat Acceptance movement's Fatshion component what their take on the subject is): I still hate clothing.  I still hate shopping for clothes and getting dressed in the morning.  And I sometimes feel, because of the emphasis on fatshion in the FA community, that I'm ... doing FA wrong because I'd prefer to just bury myself in some cheap knits and get the day over with.  It's not that any of the bloggers I'm familiar with suggest that unfashionable fatties are setting the movement back or anything like that; it's just that the focus on cultivating a femme, fashionable appearance in many of these spaces creates in me a burden and a sense of "ur doin it wrong".  I fully concede that this could be entirely my own problem -- in my head, and reflective on FA bloggers not one whit.  But I often wonder if there are other people out there who aren't fashionable, who aren't femme -- for whatever reason, be it past experiences that can't be overcome, predilection, gender expression, or anything else -- who want to come to Fat Acceptance, but who feel like because they're not into dresses and nail polish and suchnot that there's not a space for them, or that the space is ill-fitting (oh, the irony!)  Or maybe there is some corner of the FA universe that's like "fuck fatshion" and I just haven't found it?  I don't know.  If you do, please point me there.

I was happy in this one because my t-shirt was awesome (and I was not going to work). The look is basically the same though. BTW, the t-shirt is from www.exocomics.com, which is an awesome web comic.

In conclusion, I love that I've made my peace with my fat, I just wish I didn't feel a vague pressure from the community -- that I owe so much to and am so grateful to in general -- to go out there and express myself through clothing.  Because it ain't gonna happen.  I'm happiest in jeans in a t-shirt.  I just wish I could find a fucking pair of jeans that fit.

[And something that I failed to address above, but that is also worth considering, is the way that a focus of fashion marginalizes poor fatties who, even if they dearly would love to be femme and fashionable, cannot afford to be.  And don't give me some crap about "thrifting" or learning to sew -- sewing is very time consuming and difficult (especially given the dearth of nice patterns in large sizes, and the extra difficulty in trying to draft patterns up in size), and thrifting as a fat woman is practically motherfucking impossible; if you think there aren't many options for large sizes in the whole world, try the thrift shop.  Fat folks, because decent fat clothing is so hard to find, will hold on to clothing until it is literally falling off their fat fucking bodies -- I personally have shirts and sweaters that are more than a decade old.  So.  Also that.]