Welcome 2012.

So. New Year’s. That time when everyone makes huge resolutions about spending the year building world peace, inventing cures for cancer, and losing huge amounts of weight. This time for sure!

Yeah, right.

Me? I still make some resolutions… small ones. Goals I can actually reach if I put in a bit of effort. I make resolutions about finding ways to be slightly better organized, kinder to other people, and more thoughtful about how I spend some of my time. And while I make a couple for January first, I don’t necessarily make all my resolutions then, either.

There’s an art to making resolutions that stick. You have to choose things you’re actually ready to do, make them big enough to challenge you in some way, but not so huge that you’re doomed from the outset, and you have to recognize that even if you don’t succeed at all of them, that doesn’t mean you’re an utter failure. Oh, and it helps a lot to keep the list fairly short.

Me? I’m vowing to be a better, more active FA activist this year. I’m going to keep right on being visible and fat. And while I firmly believe that others have every right to do as they please with their bodies – including dieting for weight loss and having bariatric surgery – I do not believe that this right requires me to agree with their decisions or actively support actions I believe to be more harmful than otherwise. I will continue to wear my scarlet Fat proudly, eat what I darn well please in public, talk loudly about human rights, and wear my new bright orange coat with great elan. Anyone who has a problem with that? Is cordially invited to eat a great big bowl of Mind Your Own Business Flakes.

I’m resolved to re-organize my kitchen this year. I haven’t done it since we moved in in 2001 and things have gotten a bit cockeyed, what with getting more kitchen stuff and just kind of jamming it in where I found a dab of space. Now there are cupboards that are unholy vortexes and I fear I will be sucked in. It’s time to pull everything out and put it all back together in a way that makes more sense… and maybe even get rid of a couple things that aren’t worth keeping.

Yeah, those are pretty much the resolutions I’ve made for this year. More will probably pop up along the way, but those are my big goals.

How about you? Anyone out there in Big Girl Land got a good one to share with the class? Do you have a secret for keeping resolutions?

‘Tis the season of giving!

Of course, most of us on hearing that phrase think of… stuff. Blu Rays, and X-boxes, and designer scarves, and jewelry, and fine cookware, and… yeah, lots of things. Don’t get me wrong, I love opening a box and finding something shiny in it as much as the next person. Quite possibly I love it more than a fair number of people. I fully expect to spend some time on Christmas morning opening some really superfantastic packages full of things. I expect to put them to use and enjoy the hell out of them, too. I’m giving some pretty awesome things to people, as well.

The anti-material girl I am not, no matter how little other resemblance to Madonna anyone can find in me.

But far too many of us think that if we can’t afford the big ticket items, we have nothing left to give. Really, though, we do. When we don’t have a lot of money, we still can come up with time.’

Even that doesn’t need to be much. A few minutes here, and hour or two there. It all adds up.

Some people find the time and energy to make huge commitments, like spending all their weekends helping build houses for Habitat for Humanity. That’s fantastic. Others find less time, but spend it consistently doing something fabulous. One friend of mine has spent years tutoring children through the Boys and Girls Clubs wherever she lives. Another volunteers for an organization that gets free books donated from bookstores and gives them to school teachers for their classrooms. She also spends a lot of time crocheting hats for cancer patients going through chemotherapy.

And there are the scattershot volunteers like myself. I’ve done probably a hundred charity walk-a-thons in  my day, and I never pass a Salvation Army Santa without putting my pocket change in his kettle. I spent a summer volunteering as a counsellor at a day camp for kids with Cerebral Palsy, I’ve donated handmade goodies to charity auctions, and I spent nearly two years volunteering in a museum.

Then there are the good neighbors. There have been times when Mr. Twistie has been in the hospital and I’ve been going out of my head with worry… and suddenly I hear the kid from next door mowing my lawn for me, or someone shows up with some tasty treat they just cooked. Then I remember how long its been since I ate, and whatever they brought looks like it just might hit the spot.

If you’re low on cash this holiday season, it’s okay. It doesn’t mean you can’t join in the festivities. You can still offer to help out somehow. Open a door for someone whose arms are full. Ask someone if they need a hand with their groceries. Listen to a friend going through a rough patch. Spend a little time with someone who’s lonely. Give someone a compliment.

Thoughtfulness and compassion are gifts, too. Best of all, random generosity doesn’t need to be wrapped.

And you can do it all year long, too.

Ah, the winter holiday season! There’s a crisp snap in the air, homes are filled with the aromas of peppermint and ginger, the malls are potentially lethal, a very few people recall that there are holidays other than Christmas being celebrated, and the world is awash in body shame.

I can’t turn on my computer or television without being assaulted by messages that I’m going to gain gigantic amounts of weight this winter if I don’t stop being so greedy at the same table I’m supposed to fill with homemade goodies until the legs give out. Every ladymag in the universe has a picture of the perfect pie, cake, or souffle I’m supposed to make, alongside a reminder that gaining a single ounce from eating it means I will die well before my time, alone and unmourned as Scrooge in the vision shown him of his potential future. Every year some fanatic out there starts a campaign to make Santa skinny so that he can use his role model status to shame those who carry more meat on their bones.

But you know what? We can opt out of the insanity. We can spend this special time of year failing to hate ourselves. We don’t need to create the false dichotomy of too much food  that we are not allowed to eat. You know what we can do?

We can take care of ourselves.

First off, those extra holiday pounds everyone warns us about? Are a natural function of being mammalian. During the cold months, most mammals put on some extra weight as insulation against – wait for it – the cold! You know? That snow outside? The biting winds? The heavy rains? Yeah, that cold. Fur-bearing mammals also add more fur. That’s why cats and dogs and horses and so on look shaggier in the coldest couple months of the year. So don’t panic if you suddenly weigh five or ten pounds more in January than you did in September. You’ll probably shed it again in a couple months when the weather warms up. It’s part of the ebb and flow of nature.

Remember that even when you’re fat, you still need to eat. Yes, even if you weigh eight hundred pounds, if you don’t eat, you will starve, and starvation leads inevitably to death. In fact, it’s a much more reliable predictor than how many pounds you happen to weigh. So do eat regularly, and let yourself eat until your hunger is sated. Then eat again when you’re hungry again.

Just because the food is on the table doesn’t obligate you to be the one to eat it. Look, there will be a lot of good food set out at this time of year, and the temptation on the part of a lot of people is to assume the fat people will take care of any leftovers. It’s not your job. Once you’re not hungry, it’s okay to stop eating. If you would like to take more for later, that’s okay. If you don’t want it, that’s okay, too. If there’s food left over, there’s food left over.

Find ways to tune out the body shame. I don’t know about you, but I’m in love with my DVR. It allows me to watch my favorite shows and zap through the commercials so that I don’t have to see so many diet ads, and promos for shows devoted to telling me my body is disgusting. I don’t buy ladymags. I don’t own copies of any film that someone wore a fat suit in for comic purpose. In fact, I don’t think I own a film that uses a fat suit at all. I do, however, have a book with paintings by Rubens in it. After all, there’s a reason people talk about ‘Rubenesque’ women.

Avoiding shame is great, but finding support is even more vital. Seek out people who are more interested in who you are than what your weight is. Find a community that accepts you precisely as you are this moment. Bask in the love. It’s good for you.

Keep moving, and get your Vitamin D. It’s easy for those inclined that way to fall prey to depression during the darker months. The cold and dark makes getting out for a jog a trickier proposition than it is the rest of the year. The shorter daylight hours mean more of us don’t get out in the sunlight for a good Vitamin D fix. But the fact is that physical movement and Vitamin D do help us maintain our emotional equanimity. So if you can’t get out for your usual walks, at least get up from your desk and do a few stretches. Go dancing one night with friends. Do some wall push ups. Just make sure you do some physical activity every day, that’s appropriate to your physical abilities and fits into your schedule. Oh, and remember: housework or a physically demanding job? Is exercise, too. If you wait tables or fix peoples’ plumbing all day, or spent the day scrubbing your bathroom until it sparkled, relax. You’re getting plenty of exercise on the job! As for the Vitamin D? Drink your milk, if you aren’t lactose intolerant. Take a supplement if you are. It may not be the ideal, but every bit helps. Just keep in mind that it’s possible to overdo even very healthy things, so don’t scarf down half the bottle in one go.

Laugh. It’s a small thing, but laughter really is good for you, both physically and emotionally. It’s a great way to relieve stress, and it tends to make people around you smile. So when the stress is piling up, the traffic is bogged down for miles, every mall in your state is out of the must-have toy that is the only thing in the world your child asked Santa to bring… find the funny. Oh, do let yourself experience the frustration first. After all, I’m not asking you to bottle up your emotions. That’s a recipe for disaster, too. Just once you’ve vented a little, take a moment to find the lighter side of the situation, too. There usually is one.

Help someone else. Look, it’s easy to look around ourselves and think we’ve got it rough. Every time you turn on the television, there’s Martha Stewart showing you that she lives a far more beautiful life than you do. The Kardashians make more money every day for being rich and willing to expose their dirty laundry on basic cable. Someone featured on Yahoo headlines just found a lost masterpiece hiding in their attic worth tens of millions… and you’re looking at that overdue credit card bill and wondering why your life sucks so hard.

But if you think about it a minute, you’re probably not in that bad a place. You’ve got a roof over your head, an internet connection, and probably a few things you don’t actually physically need in order to survive. So share a little. Take a day to volunteer serving dinner in a homeless shelter, go read to someone in a nursing home. Donate a couple sweaters and coats you’re done with to someone who needs them. Ask a neighbor if (s)he needs help hanging Christmas lights or shoveling the driveway. Drop a can of chili in the food drive barrel on your next trip to the grocery store. It’s funny how good it can feel to do something for someone else, even if it’s a very small thing.

If you need help getting through the holidays, ask for it. Look, I can sit here and blithely tell you to avoid toxic situations all I want, but if your job or your family is what’s giving you grief… well, you need more than a breezy blog entry to help you find a way to deal or a way to fix things. If you suffer from clinical depression, ten extra minutes in the sun isn’t going to be enough to balance your moods. If you fear you might do something drastic and irreversible, please don’t wait. Call the National Suicide Prevention Lifeline at 1 (800) 273-TALK. If someone in your family is hurting you, call the National Coalition Against Domestic Violence at 1 (800) 799 – SAFE.

Your well-being is important. You are important. Take good care of you, now and always.

Remember, everyone: there’s still time to change your plans.

I’m talking about having Thanksgiving with your family.

No, I’m definitely not saying that Thanksgiving with your family is a horrible idea. I don’t know your family. A family Thanksgiving may be just what you need to make you feel fantastic and confident and joyful for the rest of the year… I’m just saying not all families are created equal. And not all families are healthy for us to interact with during the holidays.

If your family feels no meal is complete without a side of body shame or the ritual humiliation of the fatty at the table, don’t go. Don’t do this to yourself. Really don’t do this to yourself if you’re expected to cook the feast, but accept that every mouthful will be accompanied with snide remarks about whether you really need the calories.

Nobody deserves to be treated that way. You don’t deserve to be treated that way.

Now if you have already made the plans, bought the turkey, and polished the silver, well, okay, you may have to go through with the dinner as planned. But that doesn’t mean you need to put up with abuse at your own table. Here are a few tips to help you get through the ordeal, and a couple to break the cycle afterwards.

Stand up for yourself. You are not a doormat. You do not deserve to be walked upon. Your raison d’etre is not so that others may wipe their muddy souls on you. I know it’s much easier said than done, and believe it or not, I do sometimes struggle with this one. But it gets easier the more you do it, so don’t hesitate to practice. Sit down in front of the mirror or in a room by yourself and practice telling people that yes, you have every right to a slice of the pumpkin pie you baked. No, you do not need to discuss the latest fad diet, and no, you do not wish everyone else at the table to discuss which sort of bariatric surgery you ought to have. It’s your body. You get to decide how to care for it, and it’s not up for general discussion.

Set the ground rules beforehand. If people are coming to your home, they need to follow your house rules. Even if you are going to them, you get to set boundaries around your body and your personal decisions. Let your guests know that the house rules include not commenting on what any person at the table has or has not put on their plate. If you are going to them, inform everyone in advance that comments on what you choose to eat or pass by are not welcome. Tell them your weight is not something you wish discussed.

Be prepared to follow through if the rules are broken. If it’s your home and the insults get bad enough, you can tell people to leave it. Yes, even your own mother. If you’re at their house, you still aren’t glued to the chair… and your pie/cake/stuffing/cranberry sauce/whatever you provided isn’t nailed down to the table, either. You can leave… and take your goodies with you. It won’t be fun. It will be talked about. People will take sides. It could get ugly. All the same, you deserve respect simply because you are a person. If others are unprepared to treat you with that respect, they need to understand that you can still respect yourself.

Don’t stoop to a schoolyard level. I’m not advocating simply taking your toys and going home at the first slip of the tongue, mind you. Nor do I in any way condone being rude about this. Don’t get into shouting matches, don’t call people names, and don’t hurl a pie in their faces. There are much better uses for pie. If someone snottily asks if you need that helping of stuffing, I recommend the Miss Manners approach: raise one eyebrow (if you can), stare icily at them and reply with  ’I beg your pardon?’ This immediately identifies the etiquette faux pas as theirs for asking, not yours for choosing to eat.

If you cannot muster up the icy stare and raised eyebrow, you can also just look them in the eye, say ‘yes’ and go back to eating. Either way, you have demonstrated that you will not be shamed into starving yourself at a feast. If the inquisition continues, see the previous rule.

Your health includes your mental and emotional health. A lot of body shamers are quick to tell us that they are only doing it for our health. This is a combination of horse hockey and weasel language that deserves to be laughed at until tears of mirth stream down our faces. Teaching people to be ashamed of their body size/shape is toxic, both mentally and physically. There are studies out there that demonstrate that people who feel good about their bodies are healthier physically and emotionally than those who dislike their bodies, regardless of the actual size of those bodies. Anyone who tells you to hate your body for health is actually part of making you unhealthier. Don’t let them do it to you.

Plan to opt out for next year. Look, you can set rules, you can refuse to accept a side of shame with your dinner, you can stand up for yourself… and Thanksgiving with your family may still be a form of torture that would make Medieval witch hunters blanche at in horror. If they can’t find a way to include you at the table without making you the ritual whipping girl, don’t eat with them again. Eat with friends. Go serve Thanksgiving dinner at a homeless shelter or soup kitchen. Make a perfect Thanksgiving for one for yourself and share it with a good book.

Look, I love me some tradition, but only when that tradition offers comfort and joy. If you’re doing something you hate simply because it’s expected, it’s time to throw off the shackles of expectation. Go do something that heals you and gives you joy.

The point of Thanksgiving is appreciation of whatever level of bounty you have available to you. So do what makes you feel comforted and thankful. Being abused is never something that will do that for you.

Find your happy place. Be there.

Happy Thanksgiving to you all!

There were some fabulous comments to my article last week about Thanksgiving dishes we love and loathe. It’s a meal most people have wildly strong opinions about, in large part because of our histories with the holiday.

So I’m not going to even attempt to tell you what you have to have on your table or what you must needs avoid for fear of winding up in Food Hell. Where one person adores green bean casserole, another hates it. Where one can only eat homemade stuffing straight from the bird, another will only eat Stove Top cooked on, well, the stove top. Where one thinks sweet potatoes are naked sans miniature marshmallows, another holds any sweetening of sweet potatoes as an abomination. Where one wants a Jell-o mold, another longs for green salad. Pitched battles can be fought over pumpkin pie vs pecan.

In the end, I’m not too exercised about which dishes make it Thanksgiving for you and which you hold in contempt. I’m curious, but not worried too much about your individual decisions.

I do, however, have a few tips if you’re floundering about wondering what to cook for this Important Meal.

Know your audience. Before you can make any decisions, you need to know how many people are coming over to eat with you, and have a general idea of their Thanksgiving preferences. Be aware of any dietary restrictions, whether from religious belief, moral choice, medical issues, or just plain old preference. The great thing about the fact that Thanksgiving is usually served family style with platters and bowls being passed around the table is that you don’t have to limit every dish so that every person can have some… but you do need to know what to quietly warn people they won’t find appropriate.

Really think about what makes it Thanksgiving to you. See? There was a method to the madness of asking that question last week. You need to know what still makes it Thanksgiving if everything else is different. But once you know that, you are free to consider a Thanksgiving without the things you really hate, or that your family never touches despite your efforts. If the Thanksgiving thing you can’t stand is the turkey, you can serve ham or roast beef or sweet and sour shrimp, or pumpkin barley casserole instead. So long as you’ve got your beloved dish of green bean casserole or that special Jell-o mold or cranberries in some form on the table to make it the holiday you know, it’s okay to think outside the box. Just be sure the rest of your family is ready to experiment, too.

Play to your culinary strengths. This is not the time to try out something you aren’t absolutely sure you can do. Just be aware of techniques you’re good at and go with dishes that use those techniques. I’m just plain brilliant with baking and roasting… but sauces, not so much. I can do them, but they aren’t my strong suit. Knowing that, I look for recipes that allow me to show off what I do best and don’t rely heavily on the stuff I’m not as good at. So if you poach like a whiz, but aren’t very good at frying, look for something you can poach and pass the fried dishes by.

Know your resources. I’ve got one stove with five burners and a single oven to work with. I’ve got a sadly slender bank account. I’ve got a bajillion cookbooks. I’ve got a beautiful marble pastry slab. I’ve got great taste buds and a lot of food knowledge. I’ve got a kitchen table that seats four in reasonable comfort as long as nobody needs to get into the refrigerator. I’ve got Mom’s silver, but no formal china. I’ve got plenty of time. That’s what I’ve got. You may have more or less burners, a second oven or just one that’s really tiny. You may have more money but less literature to work with. You may have half an hour here and there to work with. Each of us has resources that help and lack of resources that hinder us in creating the perfect menu. Be aware of both your options and your limitations. After all, if you have one oven, you can’t cook two dishes in it at the same time unless they cook at the same temperature. And when the money’s gone, the money’s gone. But once you know where your strong and weak points are, you can get creative about exploiting one and mitigating the other.

Once you have a good idea of what you’re cooking, take a moment to work out a prep timeline. See what can be prepared in advance and how long things need to cook at the last minute. When you see  a conflict, either figure out a way around it or change your menu. This is where you get the best grasp of whether you’ve created a truly workable plan. And be sure to give yourself a bit of leeway here and there. Things come up at the last moment, we all lose track of time once in a while. If your schedule is too rigid, you’ll have no room if you fall behind. Besides, you’ll need time to relax a little and make yourself presentable before people show up hungry!

If you’ve got another cook coming to your table, consider farming out a dish or two. This is actually the deal I’ve got with a good friend. Mr. Twistie and I go visit her, and bring along a couple dishes. Basically, she makes the turkey and stuffing (homemade, in the bird, sausage and cornbread), a salad, and opens the can of cranberry jelly. I make the mashed potatoes (my mother’s recipe with sour cream and cottage cheese in it, topped with melted butter and toasted almonds), a fabulous fresh cranberry ginger orange relish, and the pumpkin pie. Then I spend a couple days with my friend eating leftovers and watching insane amounts of Criminal Minds and the occasional Bruce Campbell movie while Mr. Twistie goes home and plays in his studio for a couple days without worrying about whether I’m feeling oppressed by it. All is well. Then she sends me home with a rabbit to put in my freezer until such time as Mr. Twistie will be gone for several days. Yum.

Having Thanksgiving at your table without my mother’s annual meltdown that signaled the official start of the holiday season is mostly a matter of preparation. If you know what you’re doing, avoid things that make you crazy, rely on your strengths, know where to delegate and what to just punt… you can have a lovely meal with good friends and family that will please them all and leave you smiling.

This is my very good friend, Kat, and her horse, Joe, participating in a recent gymkhana.

They came in last place, alas. Still, considering that Kat hadn’t been on a horse in two years and had only just gotten Joe, she feels that getting through the entire course was plenty of win. And, in point of fact, it is. Rising in the ranks can come later.

Sometimes the most important thing isn’t whether we competed well or got precisely the result we would wish for on a star, but the fact that we got up and did something we don’t normally do.

I did a couple of those sorts of things on my recent vacation. I tried my hand for the very first time at making lemon curd. Why in the name of all that’s delicious did I put this off for so long??? I am now officially a curd-making fool! I’m eager to play with various citrus fruits, adding different flavorings, and making bigger batches.

Of course, trying out a new dish (especially a pastry-related one) isn’t that huge a risk for me. I have a natural affinity for the kitchen, and if I fail… it’s a few wasted ingredients and an hour or two, not the end of the world.

But I did do something much scarier for me. As some of you are aware, Mr. Twistie is a musician. He gigs with a couple bands in addition to the one he heads and writes for. One of these bands had a gig at a KOA campground with a nightclub and docks, and the idea arose that it would be fun if all the guys in the band brought along their wives. I had nothing else on that weekend and our next door neighbor was happy to look in on the cat, so I said sure. That’s not the scary part.

The band was hot, the room was dark, and I have night blindness. When the lights dim, I can’t tell what’s a foot in front of me. It’s the worst inheritance I got from my mother. So on the incredibly rare occasions when I go to clubs, I tend to park myself in a chair and not move for the rest of the night.

After a while of sitting in a room that looked like this to me:

… one of my friends came over with a parrot. Someone had brought a pair to the party and R had one of them on her shoulder. She wanted to introduce me. Well, I reached out and gave the bird a pet, and what did he do? He reached out with his beak, took a firm but gentle grip on my shirt, and hopped straight onto my shoulder! I’d never held a bird before. There was something intoxicating about this creature choosing to come be with me.

And then I did something else I hadn’t done before. I got up into the darkness, made my way onto the dance floor, and danced solo with that parrot on my shoulder. What’s more, I managed to dance around with no visual clues in a sea of seriously drunken people without physical harm to me, any other dancers, or the parrot!

Now that was a chance taken!

Would I do it again? That kind of depends on my mood and the situation. Am I glad I did it once? You bet your sweet bippy, I am!

Sometimes you just have to do something utterly unexpected. It’s how you know you’re still really alive.

It has several ardent admirers, but even the intoxicated appreciation of the Toothless Vagrants Local 310 could not hide the sad truth: While I’ve got plenty of boom boom up front, I am noticeably lacking in the posterior pow.

When I was in Mexico not only was I surrounded by Latinas of all shapes and sizes, sporting big, bouncing backsides (many trying to catch the attention of my Hot Latin Boy and giving me the stinkeye when he was clearly not having it), one of the villas up the street had been converted into a plastic surgery recovery house where, according to my neighbor, 8 out of 10 of them were there for butt enhancements.

I reminded myself that as a rule, I do not have body issues and Something Must Be Done before I drove myself insane.

I couldn’t reasonably change how it looked and besides, there was nothing objectively wrong with it.

It’s not that nice perky bubble, but it’s strong, firm and still relatively young.  Sure there’s cellulite but, I’ve had cellulite since the fourth grade. That dimpled ship sailed before glasnost and it’s not coming back. I’ve got bigger fish to fry.

The only thing I could really do is change the way I felt.

In the movie version of this story there would be a montage of hilarious yet endearing moments of me consciously trying to bond with my backside, possibly with a Sonny and Cher soundtrack  but what really went down is this:

I saw Orfeu Negro.

Orfeu Negro (Black Orpheus) is a 1959 masterpiece from French director Marcel Camus that sets the Greek tragedy of Orpheus and Eurydice in a shanty town outside Rio de Janeiro during the dizzying days before Carnival. It’s a beautiful piece of cinema, but what stuck out –literally and figuratively– were the behinds.

They were aspirational.

The extras were women from the local favela and samba schools and they all walked around with this amazing regal walk, carrying their rumps like royal orbs, especially the older, fatter women and especially while they were dancing.

I needed to learn to samba.

One night, I prevailed upon one of the waiters at the only restaurant in my village to take me to a place in a nearby town that offered the Brazilian export and we went, I in my white dress and he in approximately six gallons of Aspen cologne.

The club was loud and there were chickens in the parking lot.

They did NOT serve gin and tonics.

Gentle reader, I do not think it will surprise you when I say I am not the finest samba dancer in the state of Baja California. Frankly, I wasn’t all that surprised myself. I WAS surprised I was so actively, aggressively bad.

I am a good dancer. The steps looked easy. Surely it couldn’t be that hard.

Ha.

Again, in the movie version I’d go from hapless gabacha to samba queen in the span of a few minutes, thanks to the instructive caresses of my sexy Latin waiter and we’d realize, despite our social and economic differences and his flagrant abuse of drug store fragrance, we were Meant To Be Together.
Meaningful exposition of self.
Jump cut to bedroom scene.
Slow fade to black.

What actually happened was this:

“YOUR BUTT IS IN JAIL!”

“WHAT?”

“YOUR BUTT. IT IS IN JAIL! LET IT GO!!”

“NO I ALREADY HAVE A DRINK!”

“PUSH YOUR BUTT OUT, LOOSE! LOOSE!!”

 ”WHAT??? TEXAS!! I DON’T THINK I’M DOING THIS RIGHT!!”

And then somehow –and honestly I have no idea how– it happened. I found my inner Brazilian butt.

No one was surprised as I when things started shaking ’round the back 40. Maybe I was tired or maybe it was cachaca margaritas, but I started channeling those broad-beamed broads from Orfeu Negro and it felt so good, so strange and wild and not even remotely Episcopalian that I couldn’t help but let those months of ugly self-talk steam out of me with my sweat.

(French theatrical trailer for Orfeu Negro. Seriously. Watch it.)

I was still the worst samba girl in the club, my waiter friend, while admittedly very sexy, still smelled like my first boy/girl dance circa 1992 and no amount of magical thinking is going to give me one of those fantastic Latin backsides, but that’s not the point.

The point is I made friends with my body, with a part of my body I wasn’t –even if was just a very short while– especially fond of.

I didn’t do it through external praise or by changing what it fundamentally (ha) was. I did it by finding a way to make “LOOK WHAT I CAN DO!” trump “Look what I don’t have!” and if I can do it, you can do it; and if you can do it, why don’t we all start right now?

Now I’m going to watch Orfeu Negro again…the big samba scene is coming up and frankly I still need a few pointers.

Next time I don’t want to scare the chickens.

PSSST: Do you follow @missplumcake on Twitter? If not, today might be a good day to start. I’m answering readers’ questions all day. Personal, professional, just keep it (moderately) clean! –ed.

… do all those things that are frowned upon. You know, indulge yourself.

Whether it’s a bubble bath, another shot of espresso, a pair of wicked heels your calf muscles will regret loudly in the morning, an evening of Lifetime movies and Cherry Garcia, a gloriously fudgey brownie, a bottle of good wine that’s just a little bit too expensive, or the joy of really speaking your mind to someone without considering the consequences, there are things in life that really need doing.

Of course you can’t do all of them, and you can’t do them all the time. That’s why they’re indulgences and not physical necessities. Food, water, air, shelter, caffeine… these are basic necessities. Without them we literally cannot live for long. Okay, maybe caffeine is an exaggeration, but only a tiny one.

But indulgences are the things that make life feel really, really good. Any one of them  may be completely extraneous to the business of staying alive, but without them we don’t feel all that much like keeping on keeping on. That’s why along with the Red Cross bringing food and medical aid to disaster victims, there are also organizations that provide the children in those disasters with stuffed animals and groups that bring handmade quilts to people who are suffering dread long-term illnesses in hospitals. Sure, the quilts and the Teddy bears aren’t strictly needed. They just make surviving worth it.

So remember to indulge yourself in the rough times. Heck, even in the not-so-rough times, it doesn’t hurt to say yes to something every twice in a while just because it makes you smile.

Speaking of which, my friends, I’m off on a month of vacation from blogging. It’s been a couple years since I took more than a few days off, and I’m not quite sure what I’ll be doing with myself. It is, however, time to get in touch with a few things inside me.

Fear not, though. Come September, I’ll be back and tilting at windmills seven days a week. That’s kind of my indulgence. I just have the wonderful good fortune to get paid to do it.

Take care of yourselves! See you all in September.

Being a child of the sixties, I’ve been thinking a lot of late about one of the catchphrases of the era: If you’re not part of the solution, you’re part of the problem.

And then I ran across the quote from Alice Walker that is currently festooning the head of this article. I think I like that version of the sentiment better. It’s not as accusing. It’s more welcoming. And  by being less aggressive in tone, it makes it easier for others to look at it and think to themselves ‘have I been paying my rent like a good citizen of the planet?’ rather than raising a mental middle finger and saying ‘and you’re telling me this while wearing those shoes?’

As I contemplated all of this, along came some fabulous news from Brit Fat Activist Charlotte Cooper. Her Bad Art Collective has been accepted to be Artists in Residence at the Researching Feminist Futures symposium at the University of Edinburgh in September.

Their project is called Bombarded By Images a multi-media performance based installation.

Cooper et al are tired of the phrase ‘Bombarded by images’ used in so many cultural discussions. For one thing, they feel that ‘media’ gets used to describe an impenetrable monolith, while the fact is that media… well… covers a heck of a lot of things that are approached from radically different angles. What’s more, the Bad Art Collective have decided they can be a medium, too, and bombard the world with very different images of fat, of womanhood, of feminism, and of random ponies.

And you know what? They can. I can. You can. We all can.

I don’t care what your cause is. I’ve chosen several for myself, and I write about them, talk about them, donate to groups fighting for the causes that matter to me. Your causes may be quite different from mine. That’s no biggie to me. I’m not even that much bothered if our causes are in direct conflict. I will disagree with them, but I can still engage with you as a human being without rancor. Each of us must find our own beliefs that work for us as individuals, and then act on those beliefs as our consciences direct us.

If you’re worried that you can’t be an activist because you can’t devote your whole life to one cause or you don’t have a lot of money, don’t panic. Just read this article from last year at All Things Wildly Considered about activism. Then figure out what matters to you.

Whether you choose feeding the hungry, FA, feminism, literacy, drug abuse prevention/treatment, fighting a disease that has affected your life, your church, atheism, animal rights, your favorite political party, free speech, the care and feeding of attractive rugby players, something else, or half a dozen different causes at once, just get involved in something. Care. Engage.

We all have something to give. Each and every one of us will need help at some point in some way. It feels good to pay the rent.

And there is nothing more superfantastic than passion.

That being said, we ought to differentiate between Fashion and the Fashion Industry.

The mainstream fashion industry and media has its head so far up its own emaciated backside that it can use its own lungs as convenient and ergonomically sound in-flight neck pillows.  That’s not going to change any time soon, so take whatever good you can find from it as a pleasant surprise and leave the rest. My current scientifically bangin’ measurements are 53-36^1/2-54 and I cannot buy ready-to-wear from any major designer.  That is screwed up.  I have –albeit on a larger scale– pretty the exact same proportions as Marilyn Monroe, Sophia Loren and the Venus De frickin’  Milo.  If you can’t design clothes that look great on my figure *coughMiucciaPradacough* the problem? Is not with me.

But Fashion? Fashion is by no means the exclusive provenance of 15 year-old Eastern Bloc automatons with bones but no faces. Sure that may be what we see on the runways right now –although admittedly with the revival of the early 90′s looks, we’re getting a bit more diversity of look on the catwalk– but after poring through thousands of editorial fashion images this weekend, particularly from the How to be a F**king Lady tumblr stream which is beyond fabulous I’ve decided one thing:

When you create something unusual, maybe even shocking, put it on your body and  sell it so hard that it becomes fabulous by sheer force of will, THAT is Capital F Fashion. It doesn’t belong to the thin or tall or blonde or rich or whatever actress has a new movie coming out. It belongs to anyone with courage and courage doesn’t give a damn about measurements.

Which isn’t to say there’s anything wrong with wanting to be pretty, but good Fashion –like all good art– is challenging and challenging ain’t always pretty.

So take this as a call to arms.

If we want to do Fashion, we can do Fashion. In fact, as big girls, we might actually even have a natural advantage because we command more attention with our physical presence. After all, there’s a reason Cadillacs are in parades but those little SmartCars aren’t. BE the Cadillac, girls and go commit some Fashion.