Well, my little chickadees, I didn’t win last night’s Mega Millions six hundred freaking millions jackpot, so I guess it’s back to work for me today, isn’t it?

Oh well.

Don’t worry. I’m not in need of an intervention. I spent a whole two bucks, which I could just as easily have spent on a decent quality bar of chocolate or a small espresso drink.

What? A girl’s gotta dream sometimes.

Anyway.

Back to it.

It’s been an exciting couple weeks in the Fatosphere. There’s been a lot of good stuff going down, and here are a few examples.

Deb Burgard PhD did a lovely post at the Health at Every Size blog analyzing a recent study done on the Jenny Craig program by the folks at – you guessed it! – Jenny Craig. The title? How to Photoshop a Research Study.

The Fat Nutrutionist has been doing a fabulous series on eating without drama that is a must read. She published the seventh lesson, Finding Fullness, the other day. If you haven’t read it, I suggest doing so now… as well as the other lessons in the series, particularly the one on giving yourself permission and the one on nutrition agnosticism.

Back to the Health at Every Size blog, Dr. Linda Bacon has some great tips for de-stigmatizing your workplace.

Not actually a codified part of the Fatosphere, but I loved this article by Kate of Eat the Damn Cake on her musings about Fifty Shades of Grey. Oh, and while you’re in the neighborhood, check out her gallery of women eating cake. Beyond delicious.

If you’ve been anywhere on the Fat-o-Sphere lately, chances are you’ve heard about Georgia’s new ‘Strong 4 Life’ campaign against childhood obesity. Don’t even get me started on state programs that use numbers instead of the homonym words they represent. We don’t have the next five years.

Anyway.

The real thing that’s getting my knickers in a major and painful twist isn’t the revolting assault on correct grammar, it’s the fact that this campaign boils down to government sponsored bullying of children ‘for their own good.’

It consists mostly of black and white images and short videos of children talking about their experiences being fat. They talk about being bullied, having no friends, and generally being miserable. And that’s when the message  begins that it’s all their own fault. If only they ate their vegetables instead of deep fried Twinkies, if only they played baseball instead of video games, if only they really cared about themselves, they would be thin and happy and healthy.

What message does that send fat kids who love broccoli and run around outside already? That these things are worthless if they don’t make you thin.

What message does it send fat kids who do eat some sweets and really prefer television to soccer? That they’re lazy, unloveable slobs who don’t deserve to live if they don’t stop what they’re doing and get thin,

What message does it send thin kids who eat some sweets and prefer television? That fat kids must be the laziest slobs on the earth and that they, themselves, are perfectly healthy and therefore morally superior.

What message does it send thin kids who can’t get enough spinach and love spending time shooting hoops? That if they ever eat a slice of birthday cake or spend a couple hours reading they might become fat and disgusting, so they’d better never stop even for a minute. Oh, and if  they bully a fat kid, that’s extra anti-fat brownie points.

What message does it send to parents? That the only thing that matters about their children is whether or not they are thin. That they must bully, restrict, and terrorize their children for their own good.

This makes me want to put on my Fat Avenger Super Suit and go knock some heads together.

Luckily, someone else beat me to the punch. There’s a petition up on Change.org asking the state of Georgia to end this public policy disaster. Regan at Dances with Fat and Harriet Brown at Feed Me have both talked about this petition, but it will take more voices to make change happen.

Sure, you’re just one voice, but yours could be the one that tips the scales. Sign the petition, spread the word. Let’s think of the children.

It’s been a while since we’ve done one of these roundups, and a lot of good stuff has been posted in the Fatosphere and elsewhere about living larger than average. So here are some of the highlights.

First up, Adios Barbie has a great interview with the fabulous Marilyn Wann, pictured above. Wann  has a lot of great things to say. Here’s just one example:

 There is kind of an attitude that bullying or teasing is somehow a necessary or required part of growing up. And I think that it’s just adults being fearful and cowards because this is not necessary. This is something anyone can stand up to. There is even a wonderful book by an eight-year old girl in Chicago about how she didn’t choose to be fat and she shouldn’t be teased for it. I think it’s up to all of us as human beings to stand up against hurtfulness.

One of my personal favorite blogs, Family Feeding Dynamics, has a great two-part series on food insecurity and how it affects how people eat. The second part is mostly a link to Morgan Spurlock’s experiment on living on minimum wage for thirty days… but it’s worth clicking for Katja’s concept of a really compelling potential reality show. Seriously, Katja, I think you should shop that concept to the networks. I’d totally watch that show and laugh my well-padded posterior off. Heck, if I had the money, I’d produce the sucker!

The always amazing and glorious Sleepy Dumpling at Fat Heffalump has a great essay on how dieting really affects many people in terms of both physical and mental health. The essay itself is powerful, and the comments are quite interesting, too.

Ragen at Dances With Fat has an excellent article on David Letterman’s recent fat-joke attack on Chris Christie. If you don’t like a politician, fight the politics, not the waistline. It wasn’t right when people pulled that on Bill Clinton, and it isn’t right when they do the same to Chris Christie. Believe me, if you’re talking about someone who has ever held elected office, you can find something to disagree with and make it funny. The same subject is given another excellent dressing down by the ever-awesome  Red No.3. I highly recommend reading both, because they have different points to make.

Happy reading, folks! There’s a lot of great fat to chew over.

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.

Half Jennifer Patterson of Two Fat Ladies:

and 100% the fabulous brainchild of Stacy Bias.

It’s the Badass Fatass Superhero Name Generator!

Who will you turn out to be?

As it turns out, my superhero name is: The BMI Bustin’ Tornado. I think that has rather a nice ring to it.

So who wants to go superheroing with me? What’s your superhero name?

In other news, tomorrow Mr. Twistie and I celebrate eighteen years of ridiculously happy marriage. If I had it all to do over again, I would definitely make the same choice. May all of you make major life choices that make you every bit as happy as this one has made me.

Dr. Samantha Thomas over at Discourse has a lovely project we can all share in if we please. It’s the I Love My Bum Campaign. To join, send a photo of your backside to Samantha and tell her why you love your bum. The image above is one of the contributions she has already received and is captioned on Discourse with the simple legend: “It’s true.”

The fabulous Shaunta over at Live Once, Juicy (see her header for her lovely entry to the I Love My Bum Campaign) has had a brilliant idea. Encourage it. After a discussion with someone trying to set up a fitness program that isn’t really about weight loss by talking a lot about weight loss, Shaunta has decided to create a curriculum to get people stared on an HAES program for those who want to feel better and build their strength without concerning themselves about their weight. Good on her!

Not Blue At All has a lovely, touching Love Letter to her body. Read it with a hanky at the ready.

And last but far from least, the always amazing Sleepy Dumpling at Fat Heffalump raises her middle fingers on high to someone who tells us everyone is beautiful in their own way… unless they happen to be fat.

The image above is from the flooding in Brisbane, Australia. The images have been scary, but the reality of the devastation is far worse. People have lost their homes, their businesses, their clean water and electricity, and some have lost their lives.

If you want to help with this – or with another great cause, hie thee over to Fat Heffalump where the glorious and charming Sleepy Dumpling is raising money.

A couple months ago, Sleepy Dumpling announced that she was going to shave her head for charity later in January. The original plan was to raise money for the Cancer Council of Australia, and the money she has raised thus far is still going there. But in light of the flooding (which came precariously close to where she lives, but missed her), she wishes to donate any further funds raised to the Queensland Flood Appeal.

Please, if you have funds to spare, consider this excellent cause.

But I’m not.

Because rule one of being a decent human being is not to beat someone when they’re down.

Mostly I feel sorry for her. That is not the writing of a happy camper. If her body issues are so severe and long-lasting that she’s still making physical size into a moral issue to the point where she would be:

“…grossed out if I had to watch two characters with rolls and rolls of fat kissing each other … because I’d be grossed out if I had to watch them doing anything. To be brutally honest, even in real life, I find it aesthetically displeasing to watch a very, very fat person simply walk across a room.”

That’s just sad. I mean it’s outrageous and embarrassingly immature and ignorant, but mostly it’s just sad.

Think about it: Would you ever want to feel like that? What kind of life is that? How much self-loathing does one person need to have where watching fat people in the act of EXISTING is an offense? I don’t hate her: I pity her.

So Ms Kelly, here are some things you need to hear:

–You are beautiful. You are beautiful at whatever weight you are now and you’d be beautiful 100 pounds from now. You might not feel it if you were fat, but I’m not all sure you feel especially beautiful now. Beauty has breadth, it has depth and the more you look for it, the more you will find. Wouldn’t your life be better if it had more beauty in it? The way to find it isn’t to narrow your definitions.

–If you rely on having a certain socially-accepted body to feel good about yourself, you are fighting a losing battle. It will hurt you. It’s probably hurting you now. It’s a shell game, sweetheart. There will always be someone younger and prettier than you are, with a “better” body. Always. God-willing you’re going to get old, you’re going to get wrinkles, you might even get fat. Gravity will take its toll and someday you and everyone around you will refer to your looks in the past tense. You will be someone who once was pretty. If that’s all you’ve got, I hate to break it to you but not liking to watch fat people will be the least of your worries.

–Since you don’t have fat friends, I’ll give you a pass for not knowing that a lot of stereotypically Great Catches –you know, those David Beckham body doubles with great jobs and healthy emotional boundaries– are into big girls. Not just because “beauty is on the inside” but because they actually physically prefer overblown curves. So those rolls that make you sick are incredibly sexy to a shocking (even for me) percentage of traditionally hot guys. Being fat doesn’t mean you have to settle, it just means you’re fat. I’m a size 20. My gentleman caller is an athlete and fitness model who should be on a Calvin Klein billboard, which a) is bragging b) illustrates my next point:

– The only thing you’ll get with a man who likes your physique to be just so is a guy who will leave you when you don’t look that way anymore. How can you have a successful romantic and sexual relationship if you’re constantly worried that once your package has expired (and it will expire) you’ll get tossed in the trash? I couldn’t handle that sort of insecurity and I don’t exactly suffer from a lack of self-esteem. It’s useless at best and dangerous at worst to assume you have to have a certain body to attract a man with a corresponding one.

–Not all science is good science. You know how the little trope about how women’s brains are smaller than men’s was used for more than a century to support the idea that women are intellectually inferior to men? That’s bad science and it’s dangerous because it perpetuates dangerous biases. You’ll find equally incendiary-to-our-ears biases about other minorities in old textbooks. Blacks are such-and-such, Jews are such-and-such, Gays are such-and-such, all with the same result: it dehumanizes the group and by making them Less Than, thus giving society permission to treat them without basic human decency. There’s a lot of bad science out there that will “support” popular ideas. Don’t swallow them wholesale.

–Fat people can be healthy, check out the Health at Every Size community. Or heck, check out my friend Kerrie and all the women like her who run marathons and triathlons as a big girl. Are you really going to call someone who can run 26 miles unhealthy? Crazy yes, but not unhealthy.

–Don’t kick someone when they’re down.

Listen, Ms Kelly, the reason I’m not laying into you is because I’ve been where you are.

I’ve made an ass out of myself in print before. I said I didn’t want to look like a tranny in a pretty major publication. It was a cheap throwaway joke and because I’m so vocal about my support for GLBT issues –I’ve even driven the big convertible in a pride parade– it didn’t even occur to me that I’d offend anyone.

Wrong. I got hate mail by the bucket.

It took a bizarre personal experience of having my OWN gender questioned –and I’m just this side of Jessica Rabbit on the femininity spectrum so imagine MY surprise– for me to realize how wrong I was. I can’t know what it’s like to be born in the wrong gender. I can’t know the pain of coming out, either as gay or transgendered and having my entire world turn against me –or feel like it– just because I want to live my life honestly, and because I can’t know I have no business talking about it or making high-handed moral declarations about it.

You can’t know what it’s like to live as a fat girl in a world where fat girls are treated as less than fully human. You just can’t. All we can do is empathize and do our best to remember that everyone wants the same thing: to be loved and happy, just as they are.

What you did was dangerous and hurtful.

It was stupid too, but I don’t really care about the stupid part. I do stupid stuff all the time. Generally I’m smart enough not to publish my stupidity, but hey everybody makes mistakes.

You know first hand what it’s like dealing with an eating disorder. Do you have any idea how many of my readers –not to even think about the Fat World in general– are recovering from eating disorders and have gotten fat because their metabolic system has been permanently damaged? Do you have any idea how easy it is to slip back into disordered eating and the psychological shame spiral? I have a feeling you do. I also have a feeling that you know what a trigger is. Your little post was a great big trigger for a lot of people, I guarantee it.

Finally let me make this clear: It truly doesn’t matter to me what you think of the way I look. You don’t hold any power or authority by right of your thinness. My life is great. I’ve got a great job, oodles of fans, love, happiness, flawless tits and a freakin’  Birkin I didn’t have to pay for. I’m doing Just Fine.

What does matter to me is that you learn something.

This ugly situation can be a great jumping-off point for an open and honest exploration of your fairly apparent body issues. With any luck this will lead you to be a little more thoughtful about the reasons behind your body image issues and help you develop a more loving relationship with your own body. Other people don’t need to be bad to make you feel good. Other people don’t need to be ugly for you to be beautiful. It’s not a zero-sum game. Never has been. Your bio says you’re in your 30s and have never been in love. That’s unfortunate too, but not surprising. If you don’t love yourself, regardless of measurements, how are you going to love anybody else? Think about it sweetheart, and try to get better.

Gin and tonics,

Miss Plumcake

For those who didn’t follow the link, here are a couple of the blanks filled in:

Fat People: Falling Over, Insults, Names

This was the most benign category.

Fat People Are: Harder to Kidnap, Hard to Kidnap, Lazy, Gross, A Burden on Society, Immoral, etc.

Fat People Should: Be Killed, Die, Be Shot, Be Ashamed, Pay More to Fly, Pay More, etc.

To be fair, sugaredvenom did find a couple of positive concepts in there as well, such as Fat People are Strong, and a few that might turn out to be neutral or positive, depending on what the results were when you clicked the link, but they were by far the rarest Google trends.

And this morning, sleepydumpling over at Fat Heffalump decided to post the results of her own attempt to replicate sugaredvenom’s experiment. Depressingly enough, she comes up with not only a lot of the same phrases, but plenty more besides. A few of her finds:

Fat People Make Me Sick

Fat People Must Die

Fat People Go Be Fat Somewhere Else

Fat People Have Smaller Brains

Fat People Have No Reason To Live (Yeah, I remember Randy Newman telling me that about my tiny Shetland people, too. Didn’t listen then, don’t intend to now.)

These aren’t full phrases sugaredvenom and sleepydumpling entered into Google and found results for. These are the ways Google offered up to finish the partial phrases they did type in. That means that there are large numbers of people out there looking up reasons why fat people should be shot.

Think about it.

I’ve decided to go with it and provide you with some links and random thoughts about stuff and leave you to sort through it all as best you can.

First off, check out this brilliant and awesome Riot Nrrd comic. And always remember what they say about assumptions.

Big Fat Blog has some interesting thoughts on weight loss maintenance, including links to a blog that supports weight loss, but is completely honest about the toll it can take.

If you read Letters to a Young Fat Girl: Lesson the First, and are looking for more support, go check out this touching post at The Rotund. Remember: it does get better, and you are not alone. And if you catch someone bullying someone else, DO SOMETHING. That last bit is from me.

I’ve been thinking about Halloween. I love Halloween. I love costumes and I love candy and I love the campy end of spooky stuff, and I even love The Monster Mash. My Halloween will probably consist mostly of handing out candy while watching a Hitchcock film. What about all of you?

And speaking of holidays, my thoughts have also included Thanksgiving. In fact I spent some of my time laid up poring over my lightest (in terms of their physical weight, not in terms of diet foods) cookbooks and plotting my ultimate Thanksgiving meal. Lo and behold, as I was doing this, the phone rang and Mr. Twistie and I were invited to spend the holiday with some good friends and their rottweilers.

We’re going. We’re going to have a great time. But it does bring up something about me: until quite recently I was terribly phobic about dogs. Any dogs. From teacup poodles to great danes, they freaked the sewage straight out of me. Then one day about five years ago, I decided I was going to get over this crippling phobia. I had no money for therapy, so I girded up my loins and started doing my best to interact with dogs one on one on my own.

It’s taken a long time and a lot of effort, but now I can talk merrily about visiting with rotts. In fact, one of them loves to sit on my lap. My only problem with it at this point is the fact that when she climbs up there, it feels like she’s going to break my knees.

Next I shall attempt to overcome my terror of heights. Or possibly fire. Or… yeah, yeah, I know. I’m a ball of phobias. Still, dogs are no longer immediate cause for panic attacks, and I call that pretty awesome.