Manolo for the Big Girl

Manolo for the Big Girl has an extremely intelligent and well-read readership!

In the next few weeks, Francesca will highlight comments from various readers in which they tell us about their favorite books. Francesca has not yet read these books, but plans to! Thanks to all who tell us about their favorite reads so we can all feed our minds and souls as well as our voluptuous bodies!

Leah wrote:

Speaking of books that change your body image, my two cents is to recommend Eve Ensler’s The Good Body, which is not specifically for big girls but does a beautiful job of putting body insecurity and the market frenzy that feeds on it in perspective. At the end of a book that is alternately poignant, hilarious, and shocking, I found I was able to see myself in a much more appreciative light. I’ve shared it with most of the women in my life and now, I suppose, I am sharing it with you! It’s a quick, easy read that you will find hard not to pass around to women you love, no matter what their shape.

In response to Francesca’s recommendation of Guy Gavriel Kay’s fantasy novel Tigana, Icy wrote:

Try The Lions of al-Rassan if you’re looking for another fabulous read, and the  Sailing to Sarantium two book series.

And regarding the idea that some books improve with age (that is, our age), class factotum says:

Great Expectations  changed from a boring chore in 9th grade to a “I can’t wait to see what happens next” my sophomore year of college.

Oh, yes, Great Expectations! Francesca loves! (now, but not in 8th grade)

For the funny bone, Das Boots says:

To share the love of David Sedaris, I very highly recommend Barrel Fever and Other Stories. Mr. Boots and I made the mistake of getting the book on tape for a road trip, and had to pull off the road several times until we could stop crying. It’s seriously that funny.

Readers also recommended other books by Sedaris:  Me Talk Pretty One Day(a favorite of Francesca’s, too!), Naked, and Holidays on Ice. Here is a Box Set of audio cassettes of four of his books!

(At a reader’s suggestion, Francesca bought  Dress Your Family in Corduroy and Denim and loved it. She warns that Sedaris is best enjoyed like rich chocolate, in bits and pieces; don’t read it straight through.)

More to come next week. Happy reading!

If you are fat and single this Valentine’s day, get thee right now to Shapely Prose to read this post and all the comments.

Francesca hath spoken.

Five minutes and 58 seconds into her amazing first Fat Rant video, Joy Nash points out that sometimes, we blame things on our fat that are really not about our fat, but about others of our flaws (we all have them), or about factors that have nothing to do with us at all.

And, when we finally admit that not everything revolves around our fat, it can be quite liberating. Paradoxically, admitting that we’re flawed and make mistakes and turn people off for reasons like, say, our bitchiness, is actually quite freeing and empowering . . . more empowering than blaming everything on being fat, just to avoid the pain of examining what else might be “wrong” with ourselves.

Here is Manheim’s take on this idea, from her book “Wake Up, I’m Fat!” (a.k.a. The Best Fat Girl Book Ever):

What if I stopped blaming [my anthropomorphized fat] for everything? What if I stopped using him as an excuse? What if I stopped hiding behind him and entered into a covenant with myself that if I failed as an actor or a lover, it was my fault, my responsibility? It wouldn’t be easy. I would have so much more at stake, which meant I was going to have to work harder, prepare more thoroughly, and redouble my commitment to my art. From that point forward I wouldn’t let myself off the hook so easily with a simple “They didn’t choose me because I’m fat.” No, if they didn’t choose me, it was because I didn’t wow them. I stopped relying on my ever-present alibi and put all my energies into wowing them. These were my first baby steps on the journey of self-acceptance. And a funny thing happened on the way to the self-love forum: I learned that confidence, courage, and a little bit of sass can be very seductive.

Francesca has mixed feelings about this idea.

On the one hand, it ignores the fact that there are many, many people who — consciously or subconsciously — do indeed deny jobs or service or love to fat people, no matter how confident, talented, and giving the fat person may be.

On the other hand, there’s no denying that confidence, talent, and generosity of spirit go a long way, and that sometimes, the reasons people deny us what we want are not about our fat. They are about something else entirely, like our messiness or lateness or our having blonde hair when the guy likes brunettes.

Or they are about the frown we put on, the negative vibes we emit, when we worry and fret about how much our fat might stand in our way, instead of focusing with a smile on our gifts.

In honor of the recent TV airing about the “health at every size” issue and fat acceptance, I bring you this timely excerpt from the Fat Girl’s Bible: The superfantastic Wake Up, I’m Fat! by the large and fabulous Camryn Manheim.

It is from the chapter about her time at the New York University Tisch School for the Arts, where the professors and administration of the Drama “hocked” her (as they say in Yiddish) about her weight and her admittedly bad attitude (”Camryn, you have a bad attitude!” “Did you say I have a fat attitude?” “No, I said you have a bad attitude!” “I heard you! I’m too fat for class!”). Now, pay careful attention, ladies, to this paragraph from page 64:

I was doing speed in the morning to get through the day and Valium at night to get to sleep. Speed in the morning to get through the day and Valium at night to get to sleep. Speed in the morning. Valium at night. Speed in the morning. Valium at night. Speed. Valium. Speed. Valium. Speed. Valium. (Pant, pant) Speed and Valium . . . it’s got a certain rhythm, but you can’t dance to it. Life was going by at a hundred miles a minute. I wasn’t eating a thing and I was exercising more than ever. I was playing tennis, racquetball, swimming. I was really improving my cardiovascular system and destroying it at the very same time. By the end of the summer, I had lost about thirty-five pounds, and when I returned to NYU I was celebrated by my peers. My teachers took a brand-new interest in me and I felt like a star. I was afraid if I stopped taking the speed I would gain all thirty-five pounds back, so I decided to keep taking it during my last year at NYU. I was a wreck but a trimmed-down wreck, and that kept NYU happy. By spring I was the thinnest I had ever been in my adult life, about eighty pounds less than I am now. I don’t think anyone ever noticed that I was on speed, but then, ya know, I could have been in denial.

Remember, boys and girls: You cannot tell just from looking at someone how healthy they are. If they used to be obese and are now thin(ner), the question should not be “how can we celebrate your new-found health and beauty?” but rather “did you lose the weight in a healthy way? Are you actually healthier now than you were before? If so, congratulations! If not, is worrying about your (subjective) beauty more important than worrying about your mental, emotional, and physical health? How can I support you in what you really need?”

Turns out that, in response to the negative publicity they received after Manheim wrote a one-woman show about how awful they’d been, NYU’s Tisch school completely revamped their attitude (fattitude?) toward overweight students. Want to know how Manheim found out? You must buy the book!

Happy reading!

xoxo,

Francesca

So much superfantastic activity in the Fatosphere! The New York Times article garnered much attention. Here, via the Fat-Blogger par excellence, Kate Harding, is the fascinating TV spot featuring 2 of our Blogging Sisters! See how beautiful and articulate they are!

The F-Word

Big Fat Deal

And here is the Kate Harding post where you can join in a discussion. Francesca bows down on her knees to the Kate Harding!

And here is the supplemental video, which was not aired on TV. You must watch this supplement!

And now for Francesca’s commentary:

1. Here you have two Fat Bloggers vs. The Wicked Witch of the West, Meme Roth of the National Action Against Obesity. (Francesca feels the doctor was pretty neutral.)
The Fat Bloggers did a great job of staying “on message,” their 2 messages being:

a) You cannot assume that because someone is fat they are necessarily unhealthy and

b) Being fat does not mean that a person isn’t worthy of respect, equal pay, etc.

Notice that at no time during the on-air segment did Meme Roth or the doctor acknowledge that fat people are human beings worthy of respect. Francesca understands the reasons they think the country would be healthier if everyone stopped gaining weight, but she is PO’ed that they couldn’t even bring themselves to say ” . . . that having been said, it is inappropriate and rude to make fun of fat people. Fat people are, indeed, human beings - we just think they have a problem to work on.” Were they, too, just trying to stay on-message? Or do they think that being fat is a legitimate reason to throw garbage at someone (literally)? See the supplemental video to find out!

2. Francesca feels that Roth does have one point, about which Rachel and Monique were not quite intellectually honest: the fact that, for example, Rachel does not currently have diabetes, high blood pressure, or high cholesterol does not mean that being fat is perfectly healthy for her. Type-2 diabetes often does not set in until a person is in her 40’s or 50’s, and so it could be that Rachel will, indeed, someday get diabetes — and that her risk is higher because she is fat. The anti-fat folks are correct that we aren’t just talking about people’s current health but their long-term chances for remaining healthy as long as possible.

That having been said, in her introduction Rachel explained that for her, staying at a “healthy” weight involved starving herself, and that the dieting, for her, led to malnutrition, cessation of her menses, and severe depression with suicidal thoughts.

Frankly, Francesca believes, for all the dangers associated with diabetes, that malnutrition and suicidal thoughts are much, much worse. If Francesca had to choose between the two, she would choose the diabetes.

3. All that having been said, Francesca wonders how long a pole someone must have up their you-know-what to decide to devote her life to running an anti-obesity organization. I mean, seriously. To crusade against something like, say, smoking I do understand, because making smoking less socially acceptable has indeed led to a decrease in smoking in this country. I also could understand if the organization were called National Action for Nutrition and Fitness or National Action for Weight Education, because who could argue with either of those? But being “against obesity” does not make anyone lose weight. Telling Americans that being fat is bad, and that all those increasingly-fat people are expensive and are ruining America, does not help anything. Because, guess what? People get fat for a whole lot of reasons much more complicated than, say, the decision to start smoking. No one becomes fat because their friends say it’s cool. No one becomes fat in order to fit in. And no one stays fat because they are “addicted” to it. You can’t stop eating cold turkey. (I mean, you can stop eating turkey if you want, hot or cold, but you can’t stop eating everything altogether. Hah! Francesca jokes!)

You have to be a very angry, un-compassionate person to spend hours every day being anti-obesity. And, guess what? Being angry and lacking compassion do not help America.

Francesca hath spoken!

4. Gotta love that line “we’ll hear what these men think about their wives.” As if feeling anything but love and pride in your wife is surprising and news-worthy if she’s fat. Give Francesca a break. So much about our society is warped and depressing.

But, things can change. Once again, congratulations to our now-famous blogging superstars!

Lookie! The New York Times has an article about our internet friends in the Fatosphere!

Blogs written by fat people — and it’s fine to use the word, they say — have multiplied in recent months, filling a virtual soapbox known as the fatosphere, where bloggers calling for fat acceptance challenge just about everything conventional medical wisdom has to say about obesity.

Smart, sassy and irreverent, bloggers with names like Big Fat Deal, FatChicksRule and Fatgrrl (“Now with 50 percent more fat!”) buck anti-obesity sentiment. They celebrate their full figures and call on readers to accept their bodies, quit dieting and get on with life.

The message from the fatosphere is not just that big is beautiful. Many of the bloggers dismiss the “obesity epidemic” as hysteria. They argue that Americans are not that much larger than they used to be and that being fat in and of itself is not necessarily bad for you.

And they reject a core belief that many Americans, including overweight ones, hold dear: that all a fat person needs to do to be thin is exercise more and eat less.

Francesca loves this quote from the fat male blogger, Red No. 3: “See, I don’t have a problem with fat. My body is simply adorned, and I’ll take that.”

Congratulations to all who were linked in the Times! You are superfantastic!

Be sure to scroll down to Francesca’s previous (and prophetic) post, which links to many superfantastic fat blogs.

xoxo!

Fabulous posts from around the world of fat blogging . . .

Kate Harding: That’s a lovely straw fatty you’ve constructed there

Big Fat Blog: Not being able to put an armrest down doesn’t equal a disability.

Big Fat Deal: Am I crazy to think that unconditional and true love still exists?

Chewing the Fatz: No one stopped the traffic and accused me of committing atrocities against the human race.

The Rotund: accepting that BMI is crap does not need to come with a fat-shame rider attached.

Loving My Belly: It really isn’t difficult for me to see fat as a genetic variation rather than a personal failure or a lack of moral character.

Feed Me!: These three little sentences are about as radical as the Declaration of Independence was 225+ years ago.

When Francesca was a young girl of 17 or 18, and wore a size 14-16, she pitied herself because most stores with fashions for the young girls stopped at size 12. Oh to be thin, Francesca often wished, so that I could shop at regular stores!

My, my how times have changed!

Recently, Francesca attended a workshop on how to use guided imagery to lose weight. Hold on! Before you berate Francesca for fraternizing with the enemy, allow her to say two things: 1) Just as Francesca is interested in fashion, she is also interested in the world of health and diet and thinness and fatness, and the world of what people are saying about thinness and fatness, and she was curious to see what would happen at such a workshop, who would show up, what would be said, and what messages would be imparted. She was there not as a person desiring to wear a size 2, but rather more as a spy. 2) Although Francesca does not feel a need to be thin, she does want to be healthier, which is not compatible with her current penchant for eating a box of cookies every single day. Especially since Francesca is in a high-risk categories for diabetes. Francesca can stay at size 24 for the rest of her life for all she cares, but if guided imagery can help her eat more fish and fruit and fewer Entenmann’s cupcakes, it might prevent her from having to give herself insulin shots down the road. Francesca has a great fear of the insulin shots. It is her conscious choice to try to avoid them.

Anyhow, there were many, many superfantastic Big Girls at this workshop, extremely accomplished and attractive women! Francesca was somewhat appalled by some of the things said by the presenters, who equated gaining weight with “being in big trouble” and did not allow for the idea that choosing to eat more and choosing not to lose weight at a particular time is a legitimate option for an intelligent woman who understands the implications of her decisions. Ayyyy! Enough with the thin-centric assumptions!

However, Francesca did indeed learn much about herself from the guided imagery.

In one exercise, we were instructed to imagine ourselves looking into a mirror, seeing ourselves as we are. Our fat, our clothes, our hair, everything we like and everything we dislike about our bodies. (Francesca could write a whole book about that last line alone, but she will move on for now.)

Then, we were told to imagine ourselves looking into another mirror, and imagining ourselves as we’d like to be.

Francesca imagined herself only slightly more lean and fit for doing more exercise and laying off the cookies - and with happy, happy insulin!

But the epiphany was: In both mirrors, Francesca was wearing exactly the same outfit!

With a wardrobe full of beautiful clothes from Igigi and Talbots and Saks and Nordstrom and Avenue, who needs to fantasize everything different?

Francesca’s dream body was wearing exactly the outfit she was wearing at the workshop.

Happy, happy day. One less reason to “need” to be a “normal” size!

Francesca agrees with the Twistie that life is too short to resolve to lose weight. To improve one’s health, that is one thing, but “better health” does not equal “losing weight”! It equals, perhaps — depending on your own lifestyle and medical profile– getting more exercise, or remembering to take your medications, or adding more fiber to the diet, or getting more sleep. Remember sleep? It has all to do about whether you are getting stronger physically and emotionally, and preventing illnesses, and nothing at all to do with what size you wear.

Also Francesca points out Manolo’s advice that the best resolution for the New Year is this: To make the world more superfantastic!

So here are Francesca’s New Year Resolutions, and she hopes you will notice that “lose weight” is not on the list. For 2008, Francesca resolves to . . .

• spend less time at work and more time with friends
• be more compassionate toward my boss (Francesca speaks here not of Manolo but of the Boss of the Day Job)
• engage in more philanthropy, giving to causes which support positive systemic changes against poverty, or which support religion, education, or the arts.
• get more walks, which are good exercise and will get Francesca more into the fresh air
• eat more hearty soups with vegetables in them, and more fresh fruit, because vegetables and fruit are sorely lacking in Francesca’s diet (unless you count the grapes in her wine)
• hydrate Francesca by drinking more water
• hydrate Francesca’s plants by remembering to water them, instead of letting them die as she usually does

Seriously. If a slender, famous actress or singer would say in an interview:

“It’s really important to me, personally and professionally, to have as pleasing a body as possible, so I work really hard at it. I work out for an hour and a half every day, do 200 abdominal crunches daily, and am really, really careful about what I eat. It’s hard work and sometimes I wish I could relax about it, but in this business, a slender, toned body is a career asset. Plus I feel great, really fit and energetic, so it’s worth the work.”

Would that be so bad? Would anyone think any less of her? Would it mar her image in any way?

First, Star Jones has “weight loss surgery” of some undefined type, and for months tells us that she’s been doing pilates. Why not be honest? Why not say “this surgery carries a lot of risks, but I discussed it with my doctor and researched it thoroughly and decided that for me it was the best decision, for personal, health, and professional reasons. I wish I’d been able to lose weight by diet and exercise, but we all know how that goes - so I did what I needed to do, with the time, resources, and body that I have. I don’t expect anyone to applaud me for it. It was a personal decision.” Could anyone argue with that? Why lie? Why make women around the world think “If Star can do it, so can I,” when in fact Star did NOT “do it”? She did NOT do something that any woman can do if she puts her mind to it. She did something that any woman can do if she has the money AND is willing to take the very real risks of surgery. Remind me to tell you some time about the woman I met who suffered kidney failure and was in a coma for 2 months as a result of complications from her gastric bypass.

Now, Geri Halliwell tells People that the way she got these abs — which, in her words, “just pop” — a year and a half after giving birth,

is this:

“I never go on a diet – at all. I go for walks, a little bit of yoga. That’s it. I eat literally every two or three hours,” adding that she drinks “loads of water.”

Yeah, right, Geri. I have news for you: Even people with fast metabolisms and “skinny genes,” who stay thin with no effort, do not get toned with no effort. You are totally doing 1,000 crunches a day.

And, good for her! If she wants rock-hard abs and is willing to do 1,000 gazillion crunches a day to get there, then fantastic! We’re all for women reaching the goals which they set for themselves!

But what virtue is there in pretending that it’s all effortless? Why not tell the truth: That, yes, other women can get abs like that if they are willing and able to work out for hours every single day. That is, if they have the time, if they aren’t working long hours at the office and they have a nanny to look after the kids and a housekeeper to do the vacuuming and dusting. Or if they’ve decided that they will sacrifice other things in their lives — date night with their husbands, or girls’ night out, or a clean home, or sleep, or all of the above — to make the time, because having washboard abs is a priority for them, or simply because they really crave exercise.

It’s a legitimate decision to make time for reaching a personal goal. But what happens, when stars lie about how much work it takes, is that women’s inner voices say “if dieting and exercising is so easy for these entertainers, why is it so hard for me? I must be a lazy bum.”

You are not a lazy bum. Weight loss is not easy. They are lying. They had surgery or they work really, really hard.

That is all.