So here is my rant for the day.

It seems that after my minor girly bit surgery I have lost more weight. A normal person may or may not be happy about this development; but it my world its hell. I am now considered "underweight" according to the BMI calculators, and I am avoiding going to my regular doctor because I know I am going to hear about it. I cant help that I am this way, its not on purpose!
I do the opposite of people trying to lose weight, I eat A LOT. I eat unhealthy foods, I eat high fat healthy foods, I eat whatever the heck is put in front of me. None of these things do a damn bit of good. So instead of looking like a healthy woman, I look scary thin right now. The worst of it is, I am not comfortable with where I am at right now. Normally I <3 every part of my body, its bony parts, its knobbly parts. At 98 pounds, I just don't have it in me to love the emaciated look.

Just give me a couple weeks, I will gain back that 5 pounds I lost.

Update:
It seems I have a nasty something called "Crohn's Disease". So in fact my weight loss has been explained!

Beth Ditto at MAC

Adorable Gossip singer Beth Ditto has a limited edition line coming out from MAC Cosmetics in June! Here's one of her videos, being talented and beautiful and stylish and fat.

Love her.

On being fat and modified.

So you might have noticed in my bio post that I am tattooed. I have two tattoos, one on my left bicep and the other a pair of hearts on the inside of each wrist with a little text. I also have several piercings, and am in the process of stretching my earlobes.

I was self-conscious at first about getting the first of my tattoos, the one on my bicep. I chose this placement for a few reasons; the bicep is probably the least painful place for a tattoo, an easy place to hide, and it was a fairly large piece, not well suited to less-chubby areas. I have pretty good-sized upper arms, and I was worried that tattooing this area would only draw attention to my fat.

I don't want to be Zune Guy! (Okay, Zune Guy's problem is not fat, it's being the owner of the lamest tattoo ever. EVER. My tattoo is nowhere near as lame as Zune guy's)

The internet, of course, is absolutely no help. If you Google "fat girls shouldn't get tattoos," you are rewarded with an astounding 28,700,000 results. Try "fat girls shouldn't get piercings." 21,700,000 results.

If we're honest, these results are all really saying the same thing: "fat girls shouldn't draw attention to themselves." You see the same thing if you go into the plus size section of most department stores; dark, drab, shapeless clothes. Sometimes there are violent, noisy florals intended to take attention away from rolls and bulges. The bras are all beige, white, black, and if you're lucky, a sort of vomitous pink. The panties look like enormous taupe ass-tents.

Upside - your innards will be well insulated against cold, and they double as a shelter in case you're lost in the Himalayas. Downside - enjoy trying to wear skinny jeans.

If you go to a specialty store like Torrid (good god do I love Torrid), you can find some pretty amazing stuff, but it's a little pricey for me. Consequently, when I hit the sales, the good stuff is already taken! I need to either make more money, or spend less of it on the jewelry for my aforementioned piercings.

I want this outfit pretty badly, but not for $152.50

But back to the main point of "fat girls shouldn't draw attention to themselves." Screw that noise. My artist and I blew that tattoo up as big as it could get and plastered it on my fat arm. As she worked, I noticed that my artist had a fresh TARDIS tattoo on her own bicep, which is about the size of my wrist. I mentioned it, and she said:

"Yeah, I just got into Doctor Who and I'm in love! I'm running out of room on my arms, though..." she trailed off, and we both looked down at her arms, which are both a rainbow of color.

"I guess that's the beauty of having big arms - I can fit a lot on them," I replied, and we both laughed.

As it turns out, the beautiful tattoo on my arm has made me love my arms, both of them. All that skin is just an extra-large canvas for art.

ART!

Daytime TV, and a pep talk

Well, I've hurt my neck somehow, and pretty much all I can do is apply heat to it and watch TV. Since it's January, this means weight loss ads. These ads put a lot of emphasis on the idea that you cannot love yourself if you are fat: You're fat! You have no self-control, because you ate yourself fat! You must hate yourself! Skinnies get the same message: Gross! I can see your ribs! Eat a sandwich! You must hate yourself!

Both of these assumptions are garbage. There are healthy and unhealthy fatties, just as there are healthy and unhealthy skinnies. Not that it matters; your health is your own business, and if intervention is needed for a real, actual physical or mental illness (not just "being fat" or "being skinny," I'm talking intentionally untreated thyroid disease, eating disorders, et cetera), the business of your family and close friends. Your health is not the business of random jerks on the street who feel that they have not only the right to judge your health based on your shape, but the right to let you know about their opinions. This is always rude, and never okay.

This leads me to the overarching point of this blog, and size acceptance itself. Body shape has no moral value and therefore should not have any effect on self-worth, or your worth as a member of society. I say "should not," because for a lot of people, it does. I with I could replace that with "does not," but for now, it'll have to do. So if you are reading this and basing your self-worth on the shape of your body, I am calling shenanigans. Shenanigans, I say! Your body is awesome. Learn to love it. I've learnt to love every fat roll and acne scar, and I want you to do that as well.

So, please enjoy this video from Ragen Chastain of Dances With Fat.

Thin One Checking In

This is me in my bathroom showing off my Lolita outfit.

You may call me “N” I am a 24 year old mother of two daughters, I am a recovering anorexic, and weigh 98lbs. My journey to where I am now is long and complicated, so I will try to keep it short and to the point.

When I was a teen I wanted to be thin, though I worked out every single day for hours. With the way I bulked up when working out, this wasn’t exactly easy. I had legs that the incredible hulk would have been jealous of; in fact I may have ripped out a few pairs of pants with my leg muscles alone. So what does a teenager do to become thin? Why she stops eating of course! Combine that with severe teenage depression and you have yourself a nice case of anorexia nervosa.

It turned from something that I did to be thin into something I did because I felt that I had no control over anything in my life. I also have generalized anxiety disorder that was untreated for years. I felt like I had no control over anything that happened in my life, so I manifested it into not allowing myself to eat. The oddest thing about this is that a love for cooking and for the tastes of food is what has changed me from anorexic to recovering. I can and will delve into more detail about my anorexic days, but today is not the day for long sad tales.

After my battles with anorexia I discovered something after having my second child. My metabolism is crazy stupid fast. I look anorexic when in fact I eat like a garbage disposal. I mean I love cake; I would eat it every day for a light snack. No matter what I do I can’t gain weight and I had a really really hard time with this for a while. I wanted to look like the ideal “healthy” woman, with some curves! I wanted to yell “I am healthy now look at this butt!”! It didn’t happen, and it won’t happen. So I guess my point is I have learned to love my bones haha. I like the way I look, and despite comments from people I hold my head up high. I don’t care if you think I look to thin, I am in fact healthy for the most part! (I have the blood work to prove it)

The Fat One, checking in

That's me up there. I was looking good in my new corset and decided it deserved a bathroom-mirror phone pic.

You can call me A. I'm twenty-six years old, of mixed race, and fat. Sometimes people insist that I'm big, but not fat, but if we're going by my BMI (35.1) I am obese. A fatty mcfattington indeed.

My journey toward acceptance of my body (fat or thin, which I have been in the past) was a little bumpy. Being mixed race, in elementary school I was too light for the black kids and too dark for the white kids. I always wanted to look like my mom, who is blonde-haired, blue-eyed, and who I thought (and still think) was the most beautiful woman in the world.

I inherited my dad's mutant height, and was teased for being tall and skinny until twelve, when puberty hit like a freight train. Overnight there were breasts and hips and thighs, and I was still a head taller than anybody else.

Eventually the boys caught up to me, but so did my dad's crazy genes. I was always a little neurotic, but now I was the owner of a full-blown case of Generalized Anxiety Disorder. I developed emetophobia, fear of vomiting. Combine that with a tendency to feel a little queasy when nervous, and you have a lovely recipe for a problem with food. I stopped eating in public.

I never weighed myself back then, but I know for damn sure I wasn't healthy. I was pale and skinny and my hair was like straw. I felt nauseated pretty much all the time, and had panic attacks almost every day. I almost failed out of high school, but somehow managed to graduate and get to college.

I learned to eat in public, and the freshman fifteen (or thirty, or something) settled in. I lost weight after moving out of the dorm, due to the lack of readily available cookies. Overeating sweets is a vice I've only recently beaten, I think because I severely restricted sweets on and off for years (I now practice Intuitive Eating). I graduated with a respectable GPA, and went on to work.

I went on medication. I will take this moment to say that Lexapro is the greatest ever. I can actually live my life the way I want to with the help of meds. I won't say that medication is the best for everyone, but for me it was a blessing. It did, however, come with a side effect. Fat. Mounds of fatty fatty fat. I dieted. My GP at the time was convinced there was something wrong with my thyroid, and administered many tests that came up negative, and were pretty expensive even with insurance. When she finally gave up on that, she decided I was fat because I had diabetes, and that was when I'd had enough of that.

I found a new doctor, but by the time I saw him, I was on a 1000 calorie a day diet and working out at least an hour every day. My doctor helpfully pointed out that this was ridiculous, and dangerous. To put it in perspective, a girl my size needs about 2300 calories a day to maintain her weight, about 2000 to lose. I was holding firm at the same weight.

"Listen," my doctor said. "You're a very healthy girl, your last blood panel was great. You're not going to lose any more weight unless I take you off your meds, or try you on something else. But it sounds like it's working well for you, so I don't want to change. You're at more risk for ill health effects from anxiety than from being overweight. Just eat healthy and exercise, that's all you need to do."

Well, shit. I thought. I could be fat and happy or skinny and miserable. I'd like to say that I made my decision and never looked back, but there have been rough patches. Everyone has rough patches, though, skinny or average or fat.

That's why size acceptance is so important, because every body is a miraculous natural machine, every body is beautiful in its own way, and nobody should feel shamed by or for their body. Maybe someday we as a society can stop shaming people for their bodies, and there won't be any more rough patches for anybody, fat or thin or anywhere in between.

Auspicious Beginnings!

We are off to a good start!