A great distance separates me from my family. Not just geographical -- they live in Maine and I live in Georgia -- but also the distance of identity. I am a leftist agnostic who practices a vague form of religious expression that encompasses paganism and Catholicism. They are right-wingers with a strong belief in evangelical Christianity. Conversations at the Thanksgiving … [Read more...]
When You Call Me Skinny (Hint: It’s Not a Compliment)
Content note: This article contains extended discussion of familial fat-shaming, attempted weight loss, dieting, and eating disorders. In a radical self-love webinar I took with TBINAA founder Sonya Renee Taylor, she asked participants to recall their first memory of body shame. Everyone had one. I went blank. I had none. The truth was, I had far too many. My entire life … [Read more...]
Reclaiming My Eroticism After Sexual Assault
Content note: This article discusses sexual violence at length. After my rape, I thought of my body as a series of open wounds and wounded openings sutured together. I had to learn how to rewrite the poems, the stories, the words I wrapped around my flesh. After certain types of trauma, sometimes the only way we can see our bodies is as spaces for harm, spaces for … [Read more...]
“Look at My Butt!”: How I Reclaimed My Right To Wear Whatever the Heck I Want
My life has been plagued by people telling me what I can and cannot wear. They tell me not only what is supposed to look good on my short, pear-shaped body, but more distressingly, what I have to wear to be “acceptable.” I've been living a life of “good girls don’t wear that” as a youth, to “successful women don’t wear that” in college, to “female ministers don’t wear that” … [Read more...]
7 Things I Wish People Knew About Being a Fat Woman
This article originally appeared on SHESAID and has been republished with permission. I used to spend a lot of time wondering if people were polite to my face and rude behind my back, probably because I’ve caught people doing that before. To my face they’d tell me how cute my outfit was. Then I’d turn around and they’d make a comment about how “brave” I was for wearing a skirt … [Read more...]
Rethinking Beauty, Ableism, and My Own Self-Loathing: What Raising My Disabled Daughter Teaches Me
“Mama, a little girl said Jude has an ugly face,” my six-year-old told me tearfully. Tears stung my own eyes as I lead us through the lobby to the van. Looking down at my youngest daughter, Jude, who has Down syndrome, I felt my chest contract. You know these things are coming, but still, when they arrive? It feels like it’s with the force of a trailer truck. And I knew that … [Read more...]
6 Ways I Was Taught To Be a “Good Fatty” — And Why I Stopped
This article was originally published on EverydayFeminsim.com and is republished with permission. I wasn’t born fat. I came into fatness as a teenager. This was in part because of medication that increased my water retention drastically and in part because puberty gave me huge breasts, with a belly and thighs to match. And I was lucky, in some ways. My mother was also fat, and … [Read more...]
The Crisis of State-Enabled Violence: 4 Ways Homelessness Is Body Terrorism
“The idea of freedom is inspiring. But what does it mean? If you are free in a political sense but have no food, what's that? The freedom to starve?” -- Angela Davis Where I live, in the Bay Area, we are in the thick of a homelessness crisis affecting thousands of people. In San Francisco in 2015, close to one in every hundred residents was homeless. It's similar in … [Read more...]
“I Can’t Believe She Wore That!”: What Shaming Others Reveals About Our Own Body Shame
One day at the grocery store, I saw three young people walking through the parking lot. One of the girls wore short shorts. Very short shorts. And Ugg boots. I commented -- a lot. My children were with me. I didn’t think at the time about what they processed as I ranted about how short the shorts were. How ridiculous she looked wearing Uggs in July. My own words came back to me … [Read more...]
Mixed-Race, Non-Binary, Queer Fat Femme: How I Fail and Succeed in Finding Liberation
I am a Black, mixed-race, fat, queer, non-binary person. Most saliently, I am femme. I have come to understand radical femmeness, femme magic, femme community, femme love, and femme power through my relationships with other womxn and femmes of color. While femme communities evoke safeness and security for me, they also often exist on the basis of trauma. Femininity leaves us … [Read more...]
Summer Is Not for Street Harassment — Regardless of Gender, Race, or Size
Ah, summer. Enduring six months of a freezing New England hellscape in order to re-enter the world of soft, swirling sand dunes and jeweled salty ocean waves. The perfume of sunscreen. Living in the city, battling the humidity as I take my dog to the park. Existing as a curvy, white, queer femme, cisgender woman. Feeling men’s eyes travel over my ass and my boobs as I walk down … [Read more...]
5 Dehumanizing Myths About Fat Men and Dating That We Can’t Excuse
About a month ago, one of my sisters tagged me in a video she recorded of Family Feud, a game show where two families compete for a cash prize by trying to find the most popular answers to a variety of questions. On the episode she recorded, host and comedian Steve Harvey asks the contestants to answer a rather loaded statement: “Name a reason a woman might decide to be with a … [Read more...]
#CloseTheCamps: No 4th of July While Children Die
On July 2nd, I participated in a #CloseTheCamps rally demanding that the illegal concentration camps for undocumented children and their families -- with 71% of migrants being held in for-profit facilities as of November 2017 -- be shut down. I stood on the sidewalk of a local park with about 60 other protesters as we held signs and rattled noisemakers, chanting and begging our … [Read more...]
Are My Stretch Marks Worthy?: My Journey to Radical Self-Love
I was 11 when I learnt all about stretch marks. That they mean you are fat, and these marks will be there for everyone to know you are a fat person. My mum was looking at the marks on my arms, quite worried about some sort of strange rash I might have. At school I showed my "strange" marks to a friend. She calmly told me that they're just stretch marks, something you get if … [Read more...]
