Success-tacular! Of the constant variety! And thoughts on eating, and another article.

It's been a while, I know. And I'll be fairly sporadic for a while yet, I'd say. I've been getting more into LJ lately. They've been holding an auction there to raise money for the earthquake, and I've offered a few items, and I have a nasty feeling that my inability to say no will mean that I'll have 4 fics to write, as well as a fic for a fest I'm in. It's going to be a writing-heavy April.

ANYWAY, so the last post had me announcing that my eating that day has been fantastic. Guess what? For the most part, my success has been continuing!

I won't lie - there always seems to be a time every day (normally dinner time) where i seem to eat too much, so I'll leave the table feeling quite uncomfortable. It happens most days and I'm not thrilled with it, but considering what I used to do (which was, buy 1000 yen's worth of snacks at a convenient store, or 1000 yen's worth of macca's, and scarf the lot before the evening was done, I'm doing much better. I'm eating, I'd say, 3 meals a day. Not many snacks, surprisingly (in Japan it was all about the snacks, pretty much), but three reasonably solid meals, with dessert and drinks, and no binging! At all! Just about!

I'm not prepared to declare myself completely cured yet. Right now I'm in England, with my family, and life is good, mostly. That might be why things have been going well. But I've also been taking inspiration from Health at Every Size, and paying more attention to what I'm eating and how I'm eating it.

Now for what might have been a slight slip. Tonight Mum announced that she was making omelettes. As somebody that has had to occasionally eat her mother's cooking, my reaction was a completely understandable "oh, fuck". She sent me off to procure ham and capsicum, and I ducked into Co-op, withdrew a tenner and bought three small bags of chips (they were going for 1 pound). Turns out Mum's omelettes were lovely and I think I'll be making some for myself in the future (for someone who likes eggs like me it's weird that I don't eat them often), but a few hours later I ate all three bags of chips, amounting to about 120-odd grams.

I've done worse, believe me. To be honest though, I don't feel too terrible about it. The last bag, I think, I may have eaten because of the binge-instinct, but the first two I felt I was eating because I was hungry and genuinely felt like eating them. I still want chips now, at any rate. Before I started writing this I was hungry again, and I made myself a ham and cheese roll and poured myself a glass of pineapple juice, and it was soooooo good. I find I'm starting to appreciate how food tastes more, now. I still feel a bit hungry, but I dunno... there's nothing I really feel like eating now, so I think I'll just let it go. I don't like eating right before bed anyway. I might be making spag bol tomorrow night for us all, and I'm SO excited about that. Spag bol! Yum!

Also, LJs Fatshionista community's posts today included a link to this article, which was written by a doctor called David Katz, on the 16th March (I know. I think his last name is awesome too). The person who posted the link said that it was nice to see an article like this, because what this doctor does here, essentially, is apologise on behalf of everybody in his profession who has abused fat people in their offices. I shall offer a few choice phrases, and my commentary:

I quickly ascertained that seeing a doctor was quite a novelty for her. She avoided us ... like the plague.

How ironic, that expression, for professionals bequeathed the proud legacy of predecessors who risked their own lives to treat such antique scourges as plague!

I quite liked how he phrased this. Sadly this is not uncommon, which is ironic. People complain about us using up billions of pounds worth of NHS money (or whatever the equivalent is in other countries. Medicare, in Aus), but the truth is, a lot of us, particularly those of us who are VERY fat (I'd say, 200kg or more), do not go to the doctor because we fear this sort of reprimanding, or we think that the only treatment we'll be recommended is to lose weight (and that's for just about everything, from back pain to high blood pressure to, I dunno, the common cold. Last I checked, thin people got colds too) so we feel there's no point in going through the humiliation of having a doctor criticise us for our weight. I'm going by heresay here, because as a size 20/22 I barely enter the ZOMGFATTIE!!!!! spectrum and I've never been reprimanded for my weight while I've been in this FA sphere (rest assured if I got reprimanded now I'd give them an earful), but yeah, some of the stories I've heard are pretty bloody scary.

She avoided our kind like the plague because we had been that virulent in her life. Across an expanse of medical encounters for an array of reasons across a span of years, a whole battalion of us had abused her. We had treated her not as a patient, but as a fat patient.

She couldn't quite bring herself to tell me the specific words of insult and injury she had encountered, again and again. She came close -- she told me I wouldn't believe the harsh words (although, alas, I'm sure I would) -- then squared her shoulders and wiped incipient tears not quite escaping the brim of her lower lids. She managed in a combination of few words and silence to convey very eloquently the vile, venal, vituperative reception we had given her, again and again.

The Unknown Fattie here is not alone.

In this public forum, I say to my new patient and all others like her: I am sorry. I am sorry for the sins of ignorant brutality originating in a profession that espouses to "first, do no harm." I am saddened. I am ashamed. And I am profoundly sorry.

Wow, thought I. I can't lie, people. I was excited. This is huge, and to those of you who do not understand how huge this is... you've never actually BEEN huge, have you? There is an argument (an argument that I'm sure many doctors fully support, let alone most of society today) that the abuse (and YES, it's abuse! Fat Kid on the Playground, hello?!) fat people suffer is deserved. Talking harshly, reprimanding, scolding fat people is considered OK, because goddamn it, how else are they going to learn that they are JUST NOT HEALTHY? Because fat people are so unhealthy, they deserve this abuse. If you think I'm being overdramatic here, think about things like fat jokes. Think about times when you've seen fat people holding Macca's bags and shaken your heads in disgust, but when a thin person walks past holding a Macca's bag you pay it no heed. It's astounding to see that somebody (and a DOCTOR, no less. As much respect as I have for the professionals who work tirelessly to save people's lives, I'm prepared to acknowledge that many think they cannot possibly be wrong, ever) has humbly acknowledged that fat people are people too.

To my professional counterparts who have perpetrated this abuse, I say in no uncertain terms: shame on you! Have you looked around? Have you noticed that two-thirds of American adults and a rapidly rising proportion of the global population are overweight or obese? Has it not occurred to you that something larger than the will power or motivation of an individual might be in play?

Yes, yes, a thousand times yes. You've hit the nail on the head here, buddy!

There is, of course a need to address weight control among other medical priorities; obesity can conspire mightily against health. And there is, of course, a role for personal responsibility in addressing the challenge of weight control. But sharing in responsibility for the solution says nothing whatever about being to blame for the problem

...here's where the sound affect of screeching brakes would have been appropriate. What? a need to address weight control among other medical priorities; obesity can conspire mightily against health? Crap. He doesn't quite get it.

To one degree or another, it disempowers legions of us endeavoring to lose weight, and find health. It can be overcome, but most lack the skill set to do it.

It can be overcome?!?! He REALLY doesn't quite get it. C'mon, dude, you're SO CLOSE to seeing the light here! If you want to find a group of people who know more than anybody else about how to lose weight, go to fat people. We. Know. Shit. The problem. The shit we know, *ahem*, DOESN'T WORK.

The prime directive of the medical profession is "first, do no harm." In deriding patients for their struggle with weight, we are doing harm. In denying patients the compassion that was the hallmark of our profession long before the cutting edge of biomedical advance was quite so finely honed, we are doing harm. In driving patients away from the very services we are charged to provide them, we are doing harm -- and violating our professional oath.

I absolutely agree. This was the point of his article, and despite his not quite getting that pesky Diets Don't Work part of fattism, I admire him and appreciate him, for saying something that has needed to be said for a long-arse time. Let's hope some of his colleagues have paid attention.

I've checked out his website, and all of his books are, like, Lose Wight Without Eating Cardboard! and Learn to Tell That Pesky Biological Urge Called Hunger Off and Lose Weight - Permanently! and that sort of crap. My smile and thumbs-up of approval for this bloke wavers slightly upon seeing this, but I will say that if you're desperate enough to spend a few months trying in vain to do what your body will fight tooth and nail to prevent you from doing - lose weight - you'd probably be better off checking out his work than Atkins, or whatever.

PS diets don't work so don't even bother. You're fabulous the way you are, all right? And unlike popular women's magazines I actually mean that, because my next page is not littered with titles like 10 Top Ways To Get Him Into Your Pants (Hint: Wonderbras Work Wonders!) and The Thigh-Friendly Eating Plan

...I am having fun coming up with these titles, yeah! How'd you guess? :P

Success-tacular, on the eating front! And my thoughts on Glee and Fat Positivity

*sigh* goddammit. I'd written a fairly substantial post, and was still going with it when my computer decided to have a cry and freeze up on me. So I'm going to have to re-write the whole fucking thing again.

Oh well. It'll give me something to do before I inevitably have to get up, shower, get dressed, go for a walk and contemplate the afternoon's activities. Maybe I'll finally start working on that dance I want to learn.

Anyway, yesterday, I achieved something amazing. People reading this may or may not know about my disordered eating, but essentially I have a (very mild, I believe) form of binge eating disorder. So I'll eat normally for most of the day then go a bit crazy at night because I'm longing for that sensation of full-ness, and then I'll achieve it to the extreme and realise I don't want it any more, and leave the table feeling bloated, sick and disgusting. I do not want to believe that I have a serious case of it, because I think it oversimplifies the problem in that it makes it easy for me to blame any weird eating-related behaviour I may have (and the consequences of that behaviour, such as spending shitloads of money on food) on a disorder, and I think that's a lazy excuse, like alcoholics blaming every drinking decision they make on alcoholism.

Of course, in saying that, it has been a while since I have been able to look back at what I've eaten during any particular day and felt that it was a decent day's eating (not too much, not too little, not all of only 2 food groups (fat and carbs), no trace of a vegetable, etc), but yesterday I believe I realised that goal. Thanks to the books I've been slowly working through, I have been thinking about intuitive eating, which is the practice of trusting your body to make food-related decisions for you. Yesterday I did my best to follow what my body was telling me, and this is what I ended up consuming:

Breakfast: Two slices of toast with grilled tomato and cheese, one small glass of strange breakfast juice that dad likes and I also found not entirely horrible

Lunch: A chicken pie with salad (that's right, salad), a small tub of yoghurt, two (I think) shortbread biscuits

Afternoon snack: A Kinder Surprise, some lollies.

Dinner: Chinese-style duck with pancakes and Hoisin sauce, half a can of soup, three dessert pancakes with butter and brown sugar (it was a pancake-heavy meal).

I'm really pleased with myself. I did not eat too excessively (I felt a little bit over-full after dinner, but not uncomfortably so), and I actually ate the equivalent of a vegetable or two. Obviously it was not nearly as close to the 5-a-day status that I would like to achieve, but I'm hoping that that will come in time, and if it doesn't then perhaps my body doesn't need that much fruit and veg, which is totally OK too. Also, during the shortbread biscuit-eating, I had the option of having more shortbread, and I didn't. Not because I was restraining myself from something I wanted (at least, I'm pretty sure I wasn't restraining myself), but because I honestly did not want another biscuit.

I learned also that salad is not necessarily something I will have a problem with eating like it has been for me in the past, but oil and vinegar dressing is really not my thing. I don't think I'm the biggest fan of vinegar. As a result I think I will invest in a bottle of french dressing, so that I may eat more salad without wanting to die. I like salad, I've discovered, but I'm fussy about it. It needs some kind of dressing, and that much plant matter really needs an accompanying volume of animal matter to make it palatable (ie. do not think about giving me a plate of lettuce, rocket and capsicum if you cannot guarantee a seasoned chicken breast or several plump sausages will follow soon after), but I do enjoy it. I prefer a bite of sausage with rocket and capsicum than the bite of sausage on its lonesome. Perhaps I'm not as unable to enjoy anything conventionally considered "good for me" as I'd previously thought.

Today seems to be all right so far as well. I had some toast with peanut butter and another strawberry yoghurt. I would perhaps have had a more satisfying breakfast if I'd minus'd one piece of toast and added a piece of fruit. And now I'm thinking about grapes...


Anyway, the other thing I wanted to talk about was Glee. I've been meaning to talk about Glee on this blog for a while, because I find glee to be fat-positive, and fat-positive in a non-confrontational way.

To give an example of being non-confrontational, let's consider women in film/TV for a moment. The feminist movement has done a lot to stop women in cinema from being solely the weak, male-dependant creatures they largely were before that time. Nowadays a large portion of female main characters are extroverted, loud, kind of rude, successful, smart, kind of quirky, sassy, etc. That's great, obviously. These sorts of characters are fun, they're entertaining, they're essentially positive portrayals of women, because these characters show that, yes, women are allowed to be just as extroverted, loud, often kind of rude, successful, smart, kind of quirky, sassy, etc, as any man. But I would argue that these sorts of characters, while arguably quite a necessary development in cinema at the start of the feminist movement, are not strictly necessary now. If we consider men in cinema, they come in all sorts of flavours. You have the weak-willed men and the strong-willed men, you have the quirky men, the straight men, the lazy men, the sporty men, the feminine men, the masculine men, the bad men, the good men, the pretty men, the ugly men, etc. Women, I would argue, still do not have that same variety of representation. Introverted women, lazy women, ugly women, predominantly silent women... these types of women are sorely underrepresented, I believe, and I would argue that it is the same way for any of the minority groups out there (I mean, seriously, when was the last time you saw a token black character... who was not a token black character?). With regards to women in cinema, however, directors like James Cameron are oddly good at portraying women. He doesn't give women these sorts of strongly extroverted characteristics or anything; his strategy is more to have the same bizarre situations that happen to men in movies happening to women instead. If you think about the female characters in his movies (the wife in True Lies, played by Jamie Lee Curtis, Sarah Conner in Terminator 2, Rose in Titanic), they were none of them the ludicrously "feminist" character archetypes, and I would argue that they are some of the best female characters ever written on the big screen.

Fat people are another minority group. Generally in film/TV they're portrayed as lazy gluttons, unable to run far or be in a scene without wolfing down crepes or whatever. It's a pretty horrible archetype and not one I take great joy in. The most blatant recent example I saw of this archetype was in Gokusen, a Japanese drama that featured a group of young high school lads, one of whom was fat and always eating. It makes me facepalm most epically, but Japan is still ridiculously immature with most of their dramas, which is why it was so amazing that they got so many things so amazingly right in Smile. Lately in America this has been starting to change. You've got shows like Huge, which represent a great range of fat people, and a sort of fat sub-culture (life in fat camps) that most people would not have been exposed to before. It is a serious shame that that show was cancelled. Shows like Mike and Molly, while hardly what I would call a great leap in cinematographic story-telling, at least take fat people and put them in the limelight, and show audiences that, yes, fat people are people too.

And then, there's Glee. The thing about Glee is that there are a lot of different characters, and quite a few of them represent different minority groups. There's the gay guy, the black girl, the disabled guy, the asian guy, the asian/gothic girl, etc. Some of these minority groups are perhaps a bit too stereotypical (the gay guy is BLATANTLY gay, the black girl is full of stereotypical black girl sass, etc), but I would argue that they are better and, believe it or not, more realistically represented in Glee than they are in other shows (the gay guy actually has gay-related issues, the disabled guy once dreamt of being a dancer, there's a bit of a story about the asian guy coming out of his shell, etc). It is refreshing to see this side of these minority groups.

And it is particularly refreshing, in my opinion, to see it with regards to fat people. Let us not forget that, unlike many of the other stigmatisations out there, fat stigmatisation is still widely accepted and often encouraged by modern-day society. I made this point once on a livejournal entry and, thanks to exceptionally poor wording on my part, was greeted with a hailstorm of comments by angry and predominantly black members of the community. To this day I get scared when I read that somebody has commented on any comment I've made on livejournal.

I understand and appreciate that my personal experience with stigmatisation has been entirely on the basis of my being fat, because I also happen to fit into pretty much every other advantageous majority (white, straight, middle-class), and I also know that racism, gender discrimination, class discrimination and all of those other discriminations are still being carried out, and that saddens me. But I think that if you were to ask your average young unbiased American/Brit/Australian/Canadian/Native English speaker in general, they would say that, yes, racial and gender stigmatisation is terrible, but fat stigmatisation is not so bad, because after all, fat people could choose not to be fat if they wanted. This is all to do with perception and what we as a society have been taught to believe and accept. We are told to accept people of colour, women, and gay people (and believe me when I say that I think this is something society is absolutely getting right, and it should definitely continue this way), but we are reversely told not to accept fat people. This is mainly done covertly, through scare tactics about obesity and warnings about weight gain and the total lack of obese people modelling and all of this sort of thing.

So because fat stigmatisation is encouraged, it is refreshing to see Glee take fat characters and treat them as the people they deserve to be treated as. More than that, however, they give these fat characters storylines and put them in situations that I honestly have not seen before.

Glee has two fat characters. The first character, who has been on the show since its start, is Mercedes. Mercedes is also the token black girl, and I would argue that her blackness is more prevalent than her fatness for the most part. From the start, Mercedes has been portrayed as a character who, against ALL ODDS, does not act like a typical token fat girl. She doesn't eat, unless it's a lunchtime scene or something. she isn't constantly huffing for breath if the characters have to run around or something, she isn't always sitting down and watching as all of the thin characters jump up and start dancing - she's dancing right along with them. This sort of character is exactly the sort of thing that we need more of on the small (and big) screen, and it is absolutely fantastic to see.

In episode 15 of season 1, entitled "Home", Mercedes is told that she has to lose 10 pounds to remain on the Cheerleading squad. She attempts to diet, and after a few days she's weighed again and has gained two pounds (strike 1: dieting very often does not lead to weight loss). She starts to starve herself. Everybody else is concerned for her, and at one point everybody around her starts looking at food before she faints. At the infirmary she is told that her blood pressure is low and that's probably why she fainted (strike two, fat people do not always have blood pressures so high that they're under constant risk of exploding at any given moment). Then the nurse leaves the office and Quinn, the pregnant girl who was in the cheerleading squad but had to quit because of the aforementioned pregnancy, comes in.

And here is probably my favourite scene in Glee so far (except maybe for all of the funny scenes that I love). I'm going to write exactly what is said during that scene right here:

Quinn goes up to Mercedes, presents her with a Granola bar
Mercedes: Thanks, I'm not hungry.
Quinn: Yes you are. You're starving. I know, I've been there. Did all the other kids start looking like food right before you fainted?
Mercedes: (surprised) Yeah. How'd you know?
Quinn: Been there. *pause* Eat the granola bar.
Mercedes: *takes it dubiously* Why are you being so nice to me? I can't remember the last time you said two words to me that weren't 'you' and 'suck'.
Quinn: Because I was you. Scared. HATING myself for eating a cookie. But I got over it--
Mercedes: Yeah, course you did, Miss, Pretty-Blonde-with-the-White-Girl-ass--
Quinn: When you start eating for somebody else, so that they can grow, and be healthy, your relationship to food changes. What I realised, is that if I'm so willing to eat right to take care of this baby, why am I not willing to do it for myself?
Mercedes starts crying
You are so lucky. You've always been at home in your body. Don't let Miss Sylvester (the person telling Mercedes to diet) take that away from you.
Mercedes: (after a pregnant pause) I'm so embarrassed. This isn't me. How did I become this person?
Quinn: YOU are beautiful. You know that.

It's a kind of cheesy scene, I'll freely admit. And I think Glee does paint it with a pretty simple brush, but we are trying to cater to the average-IQ-of-100 crowd here. And the scene does make me cry every time. The thing about it is, you see this scene everywhere, but rarely do you see it being applied to somebody who is actually, properly fat, like Mercedes (you rarely see it happening to ugly people too, but ugliness is subjective, and Amber Riley is hardly ugly).

The interesting thing about this is that Mercedes is a character who is normally VERY secure about herself. Right at the beginning of this episode she says that she's worried about "showing off too much skin and causing a sex riot". Like Quinn says, Mercedes KNOWS that she's beautiful, but then something happens to make her doubt that.

When Quinn, who is a stunningly beautiful girl, says "you are so lucky", it kind of makes people go "wait, what? The beautiful blonde white girl has just said that the fat black (also beautiful, but would people who find fat people unattractive also think that?) girl is lucky? That makes NO sense." But it absolutely does. For somebody, particularly a FAT somebody, to be completely comfortable with who they are and how they look, is a rare and wonderful thing. To be that secure with yourself is something to be envied, because with it comes a constant satisfaction that all of us should have but do not, thanks to modern society.

Also, when Mercedes says "I'm so embarrassed", that's another interesting point. She's not embarrassed, as some would expect, of having fainted or of not being 'strong' enough to keep on eating nothing. No, her embarrassment comes from her temporarily becoming the sort of person that Sue Sylvester, and much of modern society, expects her to be: ashamed at how she looks and desperate to change it.

Later on in the episode she sings "Beautiful" by Christina Aguilera, which had me lol'ing somewhat. I mean, really, how cliche is it possible to be in one episode? However, I am able to forgive, because I was so impressed by the whole concept and it actually being applied to a properly fat person.

So that's Mercedes. The other fat character is a new addition to the Glee squad, Lauren. She's white, so 'fat' is the only minority group she represents. Sadly the Glee people have gone back on their good work and made Lauren an eater. She's frequently eating in scenes and that is kind of annoying. However, another thing she does is wrestle. There have been a few times so far where she's been seen doing push-ups, or doing her thing in wrestling training, or in one instance quite casually fending off an irate Santana. Admittedly wrestling is probably one of the most cliche big-girl sports for Lauren to do, but I'm glad that at least she's doing a sport and isn't completely immobile, so snaps for Glee there.

Anyway, the thing about Lauren that impresses is that Puck falls completely head over heels for her. That's right: Puck, a bad-ass bad boy who is known for sleeping around and being primarily interested in conventionally 'hot' chicks, falls for the fat girl. In the Valentines Day episode he tries to woo Lauren in several ways. He gives her chocolates (which she declared all sucked, and she ate them all just to be sure), he sings a song for her ('Fat Bottomed Girls', which offended her to no end), he does... some other stuff. This is the episode where she defends herself from angry Santana, and after Santana has been defeated, as it were, Puck is all "Please go out with me... please?" But what really impresses is the reason why, Puck realises, he likes her: "I'm not into you because you... have curves. What I like is that you're a girl who's an even bigger bad-ass than me."

I find that refreshing. Also, Lauren, like Mercedes, is so secure with herself. And that's a beautiful thing.

So yes, Glee is a fat-positive show. I recommend watching either of the episodes I mentioned if you need a "fat-people-are-awesome" shot.

Alter-tacular! And, another interesting article and its moronic comments.

It's been a while! I apologise! I've been busy travelling and doing such other things.

I've been reading Health at Every Size by Dr. Linda Bacon (what a fantastic name for somebody who has a profession that concerns eating and nutrition), and it's been an interesting eye-opener. It's pretty intriguing finding out about the variety of reasons that exist for people being overweight (more now than ever, allegedly) and the health impacts of that (such as they really are, not as they're said to be by people hoping to sell you a diet or pill or surgery). I'm enjoying it, but my attention to it has been side-tracked somewhat by my going on little holidays and watching Korean dramas and reality shows.

I needed a break from watching shit in Korean (a language that, despite my listening to it pretty much constantly for the past three days, I still do not understand the workings of. I'm going to have to investigate it in more detail, because I'm kind of fascinated now), so I thought I'd do what I've been wanting to do for a while, and alter my purple skinny jeans.

For those not in the know (so, pretty much everyone), these jeans were purchased for 20 quid (a really good price for jeans), and they are purple and skinny. Yay. Unfortunately "skinny" is a difficult term to fulfill for jeans for fatties, because fatties come in different sizes. These jeans I felt did a pretty good job, but they were still baggy down to the knees. I put up with them for a while, all the while thinking that i'll eventually tighten them up and make them the true skinny jeans they should be. And this is the result:

Picture one: one knee bent.



Picture two: other knee bent.



I know. My variety of poses astounds even me sometimes. :P

Basically I took up two inches at the bottom and took in different amounts from the side seam. It took me a few tries to make the bottoms of the legs wide enough for me to be able to fit my foot in, but I think it's all right now. The tightness of these is such that I feel a bit like Taemin from SHINee during the Hello video:


He's second from the left, and it basically looks like he had to be sewn into those trousers. He looks good though, which is kind of weird because the trousers seem to have been matched up with his mother's best going-out knitted jumper. hmm...

Anyway, they're tight, but comfortable. I don't feel constricted or anything. My only concern is that they might be susceptible to falling down. My shape is a bit funny. I carry my weight on my belly, and as a result I have something of an overhang, and since I only wear waist-high trousers the top part (the part I wouldn't have if I were to wear hipsters, or as I like to call them, the most effective method out there for showing your arse crack to the world) has to be comparatively roomy. So I've kind of altered these with that in mind, and they're not a weird shape at the top. I'll only be wearing them with shirts that cover my body to the tops of my legs, that much is certain.

Anyway, on to my other topic. A month ago some Biggest Loser spinoff involving family members came out in Australia. I dislike The Biggest Loser as a concept in itself, since it sounds pretty degrading and the contestants are putting themselves through hell to lose weight that they'll most likely put back on. One thing I will say is that it apparently teaches good eating and exercise habits. I wonder if any fatties already practising good eating and exercise habits ever get on the show... anyway, this bloke in Brisbane decided to write about it, and he says a few things that I thought I'd copy/paste onto here:

They (the writer's children) also thought it was a bit unfair to people who really needed help that most of them would be kicked off the show. “Why can't they just stay on until they're better?”

The post criticises the nature of these sorts of TV shows. It's not really realist TV, there's still directors and crew there, etc. Interestingly enough the writer was quick to say that his children, having him for a father, understand very well about it all being set up for the camera. I'm amused by his indirectly implying that the rest of us are gibbering morons who wouldn't have told our kids the very same thing at some point in time. Anyway, I object to the "really needed help" and the "until they're better" part of this quote, obviously. To imply that obese people are either in desperate need of help or in someway ill discredits both the obese people in question and the people who are sick/in desperate need of help.

as a parent fresh fruit, oatmeal for breakfast, drinking lots of water, and playing sport rather than Nintendo DS, is a hell of a hard sell. The grotesque obesity on display in Biggest Loser makes explaining the benefits of good nutrition and exercise that much easier.

Well, perhaps. I'd argue that it's more likely to make children utterly terrified of becoming fat, which will ultimately lead to incredibly unhealthy weight-loss and dieting practices. The reporter talks about shows like the biggest loser being a great way to get kids to see the supposed dangers of being overweight. He doesn't like these shows, he says, but the way they present their "grotesquely obese" participants is stark, cold, "real", and that will make said kids "careful". I kind of wonder if his opinion would change if any of his kids ended up fat anyway.

Also, for explaining the benefits of good nutrition and exercise... well, no, I don't think these shows would make it easier. Even if good nutrition and exercise were an iron-clad guarantee for thinness, the biggest loser is showing one benefit to looking after yourself, and one benefit only: not being overweight. Bugger all that shit about living longer and feeling healthier and being able to do more physically. Those things are small players compared to the "not being overweight" benefit. "not being overweight" is the only benefit kids need to know about.

There is another element to the movement, however, that's more problematic; a belief that obesity is not so much a health problem as a political or cultural construct. In the face of constant warnings from the medical profession about the dangers of letting ourselves get fat flies an argument that it's really not a big deal.

And to take issue with this argument is to hazard yourself to being described as a douchebag for hating fat people.

I've been seeing this sort of argument everywhere. It seems as though the issue many have with FA is that obesity is a severe health issue, and people actively involved in the FA movement are just as actively ignoring that.

News for you, mate: it's not an issue of us ignoring something. It's an issue of us refusing to acknowledge a lie that has been propegated by a society concerned with image and conformity. It actually kind of boggles my mind how much the world has been influenced by the diet industry. You will scarcely find a person alive that believes there is hardly any direct correlation between fatness and poor health, and that is just astounding. I think that one of the biggest hurdles the FA movement will have to address in the future is this widely-held belief. People seem so unable to, even for a small period of time, enter what is apparantly a bizarre alternative universe that says, well, no, actually, it is your conscious actions that effect your health, not how much extra weight you carry.

As for "taking issue with this argument", which this reporter obviously does, I would personally like to invite him to have a cry. We're hating on people like you because you're refusing to listen to us. That's all.

I will admit though, there are some pretty sensitive people in the FA movement.

The original article is here, and I recommend having a read. Unlike past blogs I've read, I think this chap is pretty clever and his arguments are relatively sound, if based on misguided information. The article is as much on exploitative TV as it is on the FA movement, so there is some worth in the article.

Because I'm the kind of sad masochist that enjoys upsetting herself at 2:30 in the morning, I had a scan down and read some of the comments. It was your usual fat-hating masquerade, but I thought I'd show some anyway. These are commonly-held opinions, people!

I'll say it, Obesity is disgusting, unhealthy and almost without exception the result of someone who did not know when to say no. I am 37 and recently looked over some old primary and high school photos, the fatties where a slim (boom tish) minority, now they are everywhere. Sorry, but there has not been some mysterious illness that has stuck the population in the last 30 years that has lead to the condition, nothing more than idleness and complacency.

Stop whining, eat some vegies, step away from the burger and get some bloody exercise, it is not difficult. When there are millions of people every day not knowing where their next meal is coming from it is revolting and selfish to sit on your fat acre cramming garbage down your neck and moaning about being so fat.

Go on, skip a meal, know what it feels like to be hungry, remember what it feels like to be hungry; it is not something to be feared, once your body looses the ability to gauge hunger and fullness obesity is luring around the corner. Try not eating until you really feel you need to, then have some veggies and wholegrains and lean protein, walk away before you feel like you want to spew, in fact go for a walk!!!!

Looks like SOMEBODY'S on their period and just saw a fat person having lunch.

While it's true we've not been struck dumb by some horrible fat-causing illness in the past 30 years, I think any gibbering moron who's in the 50s can say that the food we eat has changed. There's now much more pre-packaging, more of a reliance on fast food, etc. Are you sure it's not that that's making us fatter?

I like to think that, as you go about your daily life, you're surrounded by fat people jiggling their fat rolls at you, giving you nightmares. That's the only image I really get when you say that fat people are "everywhere". Believe me mate, we're not. If we were than we'd be the norm.

I'm actually really insulted by that second paragraph. How dare you say that we're selfish, or that we in some way don't know about how many millions of people in this world are starving? It is not US in the FA movement that are moaning about being fat. It is fat people who are NOT in the FA movement that are moaning about being fat. The fatties who are on YOUR SIDE. As for it not being that hard to lose weight, I'd like to see you try to do it.

And also, "go on, skip a meal"?! Yeah, like THAT'S good for you.

I realise this guy wasn't worth my time, but the comment is (mostly) kind of amusing, don't you think?

I'm a health worker and several times we've had patients come in who are morbidly obese and yet appear to be in denial of the seriousness of their illness. One gentleman was unable to walk more than a few metres yet he claimed he didn't eat a lot at all (there were no underlying pathologies).

Again with obesity being an illness. C'mon, guys. Placing obesity in the same category as heart disease and cancer is doing an incredible disservice to all parties. Obesity is a state, OK? Just like being black, female, or gay. Of course, homosexuality is considered an illness in some places as well.

Also, how about entertaining the possibility that that one gentleman might be telling the truth?

The fact of the matter from a casual observance at any local shopping centre is that the average aussie is indeed getting bigger. Unfortunately this idea of fat politics that fat people have rights too ignores the looming health sector catastrophe of rising proportions of the general population contracting diabetes, heart disease, and cancers all related to everyone being heavier.

All right, let's consider something else. Recent rises in diabetes, heart disease and cancers? During the last 30 or 40 years, maybe? Is that recent enough for you? All right, well what else, I therefore ask, has risen substantially? If you answered 'medical diagnoses', you're smarter than I thought. Can we therefore not entertain the possibility that the actual cases of these conditions has not risen, but the diagnosed number of cases has? Is that an unrealistic idea?

A thoughtful piece, JB. I just hope that the people who comment will exercise a fraction of the sensitivity you have today.

They haven't so far I'm afraid, buddy. And I dunno about sensitivity. He was eloquent, sure, but there was a fair amount of self-righteousness and cockiness there too.

Well people still continue to smoke despite the fact its lost a fair bit of its cool factor and it still kills more people than anything else going around.

Humans can be incredibly selfish and hide behind "its my right to do what i want" without actually thinking through the consequences.

This one interested me. Yeah about the smoking, but is 'selfish' really the right argument here? Selfishness implies that you're doing something without care for the consequences towards other people. Does smoking, or any other unhealthy behaviour, damage anybody else's health (ignoring all that second-hand smoke stuff)? I'd argue that it is a person's decision to do what they want to themselves, but is it a selfish decision if the decision doesn't impact on you, and everybody else has that same right as well?

Obesity's unhealthy and ugly (unless you're a fat fetishist - look it up) but something uglier is the revulsion most people feel comfortable airing about it.

So somebody's fat. Who gives a damn? By and large, fat people aren't ignorant, and are well aware they're fat. So what purpose does disgust and mockery serve, apart from making fools feel superior?

This incessant need people feel to control others and demand they behave a certain way, makes me far f**kin sicker than some half-tonne hippo gorging themselves to an early grave on extra-cheese pizza.

Ending on this one. OK, "unhealthy" is something society's led you to believe, and "ugly" is your personal opinion. But you know what? To the rest of your comment, I have but one thing to say: Fucking SPOT ON.

So what say the rest of you?

A past ranttacular!

Hey all.

I'm not feeling particularly creative today (and my outfit SUCKS), so I won't be posting any new hilarious stuff. But I thought I would post something on here that I posted a few months ago on my Livejournal.

First, a bit of back story. On 25th October last year a blogger named Maura Kelly posted this article on the Marie Claire website about fat people on television. Well, that was how the article started out, anyway. Eventually it sort of morphed into a fairly detailed synopsis of her opinion of fat people and obesity in general.

I encourage everybody to read this article, and before you read either a) her subsequent apology in italics, and b) some of the comments below, have a really good, honest think about what Maura says in the article. Think about whether or not you agree, at least in part, with what she's saying. If you think she's being an insensitive, uneducated, misunderstanding prick, then please read on and enjoy the comments from many people that agree with you. If you do agree with Maura, I hope I can show you another side of the coin with what I'm about to post on here.

When I first read the article (lovingly linked at Fatshionista), I felt my insides burn up with outrage and anger and a bunch of other generally undesirable emotions. After spending a few hours calming myself down by reading the comments posted about the article (for once the comments were of the sort of calibre that I found soothing... once I'd waded through the pathetic waffle), I decided to spend some time picking out some of the worst parts and ranting about them separately.

Here is what I wrote on my Livejournal:

Seriously. Whenever someone posts an article in fatshionista I make an effort to read it, and I've been kind of annoyed before, but this? This is really, really shocking. And my emotions are dulled from lack of sleep right now. This article screams ignorance, prejudice, and such a laughably inaccurate perception of the subject matter (ie. fat people) that I would almost pity her, if I didn't currently hate her so much.

"the show centers around a couple who meet at an Overeaters Anonymous group [and] has drawn complaints for its abundance of fat jokes [as well as] cries from some viewers who aren't comfortable watching intimacy between two plus-sized actors." (not her actual words, but I'm going to comment on it anyway)
erm... there there? Would you like the makers of this show to come, kiss your bruises better and give you a lollipop from what most people are sure to probably believe is an ample back-up supply? Is the idea of fat people being in love, or hell, even engaging in casual sex, just too horrific for most thin people's minds?
Does anybody else feel that this blurb is insinuating that the general public is bigoted enough to not want fat people being happy on television? Or am I overanalysing this?

I also think it's at least equally crazy, albeit in the other direction, to be implicitly promoting obesity!
Exactly how is having fat people on TV promoting obesity? That's like saying that having tall people on TV is promoting platform shoes.

Yes, anorexia is sick, but at least some slim models are simply naturally skinny. No one who is as fat as Mike and Molly can be healthy.
*sigh*. I know I don't have to say ANYTHING about this quote to ANYBODY who's a member of this comm, but dammit, I'm going to say it anyway, and at least provide some relief by putting everything in bullet points
* Anorexia is "sick"? That's really, really nice. I'm sure the approximately zero or so anorexics out there not struggling with crippling body image issues will be DELIGHTED to read that their condition is viewed in such a casually insensitive way.
* Some slim models are simply naturally skinny, that is very true. Doesn't mean that they're healthy though. If a person is naturally skinny, that generally means that they will remain skinny whether their daily food consumption is an exact copy of the food pyramid, a blatant disregard for the bottom three levels of said pyramid, or a complete tossing out of the pyramid altogether in favour of a bag of carrot sticks and several packs of Marlboro Lights. But you know what? Who cares if they're healthy or not? It's their fucking lives. Evidently this author agrees with me, since she was totally fine with those people existing. They're skinny, after all.
* All right, I admit, I did agree with the bit about Mike and Molly not possibly being healthy at that size. Because you know what? It's TOTALLY possible to divine, just by looking at their bodies, that these two people could not POSSIBLY have a healthy diet, and they could not POSSIBLY exercise regularly, and their fatness could not POSSIBLY be the result of the dozens of other reasons, besides an unhealthy lifestyle, that cause people to be overweight. It's nice to see that at least a small part of this article is completely logical. Now, where did I put my shotgun...

And obesity is costing our country far more in terms of all the related health problems we are paying for.
Ahh, you're the Treasurer of the United States, are you? Good show. I'd have thought the cabinet would prefer somebody who isn't a total fucking idiot, but what do I know?

So anyway, yes, I think I'd 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.
Yeah, I hear you. And you know what really sucks? We fats have to cope with the ABSOLUTELY HORRIFIC SIGHT of fat people being in any way functional human beings, every time we look in a mirror. Your empathetic heart must bleed as you wonder how we cope.

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 — just like I'd find it distressing if I saw a very drunk person stumbling across a bar or a heroine addict slumping in a chair.
OK, all joking and sarcasm aside (particularly in reference to your mispelling the word 'heroin', yes, this was brutal. So why the fuck did you write it? And I'll tell you why it was brutal. Because what you have just done here is equate fat people to alcoholics and drug addicts. Do you quite understand the gravity of that? You have taken fat people, and equalled them to a group of individuals who have serious, life-threatening, life-CONSUMING, disaster-inducing behaviours. You have placed fat people under the same telescope as people who are dealing with horrific conditions that require serious will-power, time and determination to overcome, and have said that fatness, like alcoholism and drug-addiction, is a serious, life-threatening, life-consuming, disaster-inducing behaviour. This is so far off the mark that even the Hubble Telescope at its strongest couldn't see the mark from where you stand.
But even if what you had said was TRUE, you said, without any trace of subtlety, that all of these people disgust you.
Well you know what? Fine. Because insensitive, unaware, pathetic bullies like you disgust me.

Now, don't go getting the wrong impression: I have a few friends who could be called plump. I'm not some size-ist jerk.
yyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyes you are.

I think obesity is something that most people have a ton of control over.
A quote that will go down in history as really hammering down the fact that you know absolutely nothing.

I'm happy to give you some nutrition and fitness suggestions if you need them — but long story short, eat more fresh and unprocessed foods, read labels and avoid foods wi--BLAH BLAH BLAH YEAH WE'VE ALL BEEN HERE BEFORE.
*sniffle* I'm truly touched that you would deign to help us poor, helpless fat people with your weight-loss knowledge and infinite wisdom. Because until this point none of us had EVER been told how to lose weight. If only somebody out there had been kind and considerate enough to butt into our lives and force preachy weight-loss bullshit down our throats at every opportunity, and feel that doing this is not something that they should feel remotely ashamed of, because, after all, they're trying to "help" us, and we, as the lesser-beings that have let ourselves go so far as to be fat, should be eternally grateful.

Do you think I'm being an insensitive jerk?
You know, I'd snappily say "what the hell do YOU think?" and point at the rest of this essay-length comment, but I honestly think that you would still not actually be sure of my opinion. And I'll be honest with you - you can't fake stupidity like that.

Dessert-buffet-tacular! And why having a belly can be awesome.

Greetings, watchers! Have you all noticed the subtle change in my name? It seemed criminal of me to have a blog that talks primarily about fat acceptance stuff, and for it to have a title that doesn't reflect its content well. For this reason, I decided to add a T, thereby changing "Fashion" to "Fatshion"; a blend between "Fat" and "Fashion", because that is what this blog is. Or at least what it aims to be.

So, today was pretty fantastic, I have to say. You'll all be relieved to hear that I wore clothes:



I've GOT to start turning my light on before I take these shots. Anyway, my outfit today was admittedly not very interesting, but I wanted to show you all a picture of my purple skinny jeans. Unlike that sorry excuse for skinny jeans I presented a 'before' shot of in my sewing outfit, I can actually call these babies "skinny" without feeling the need to demand that they explain themselves. However, they are INCREDIBLY baggy on the top half. I won't be criticising Asos for this, because fatties are so diverse in their body proportions that it is impossible to make trousers that will fit correctly on each and every one of us. However, needless to say, these jeans require a makeover. And I'll be getting to that arduous task in a few days' time, hopefully.

Anyway, today I gathered up a group of merry men (myself and my friends B and R) and headed to a dessert buffet place in Shibuya, called Sweets Paradise. If anybody out there, anybody at all, is vaguely interested in the prospect of all-you-can-eat cake, this is the place for you.

Behold! Pictures!







And the remaining debris:



After licking our plates clean and thinking that we will quite possibly never have to eat again, we went to karaoke and ended up staying there for three hours. Some of the songs I showed considerably prowess in mimicking (ie. B and R's ears weren't bleeding after I was done with them) were "Telephone" by Lady Gaga, "The Sweet Escape" by Gwen Stefani, "You're My Best Friend" by Queen, and "In My Life" by the Beatles. I wanted dearly to sing "On My Own" from Les Miserables, because the damn song has been in my head for the past three days, but they didn't have it in the song catalogue. We headed home afterwards, feeling full, happy, and as though we'd done something, if not necessarily worthwhile, certainly incredibly fun, today.


People appear to have arrived back here from an event that was taking place tonight at a nearby restaurant (an event I would have gone to, had it not cost 2,500 yen and only been for two hours). And of course, they aren't troubling to keep their voices down. Most considerate of them.

One thing I noticed while sitting in the karaoke room listening to B and R singing obscure K-pop songs, was how I was sitting. I was slouched on the couch, my feet resting on a footstool in front of me. My hands were clasped lightly together and resting on my stomach. And because of the shape and size of my stomach, my hands were able to rest there, quite comfortably, without any danger of falling off and lying to rest awkwardly by my sides.

This got me thinking. If I did not have a stomach that stuck out like mine does, I would not be able to attain such a comfortable yet non-threatening position. If I wanted to put my hands somewhere comfortable like that, but I didn't possess my sort of stomach, I'd probably have to fold my arms. Indeed, I do do this on occasion. But that is a very threatening-looking position, and probably the sort of position you want to avoid when you're out with friends. So instead you're stuck with putting your hands on your legs, or to your sides, which can be kind of awkward. I, however, seem to carry a personal "handstool" (as opposed to "footstool") with me wherever I go.

So amused was I by this discovery, that I decided the time was right for me to make a list of the advantages to having a protruding, squishy belly, flabby arms, a well-padded posterior and wide legs like mine. The disadvantages to having such appendages are plentiful, but I think we can all already name a great many of those so there's not much point in me repeating them. This angle, however, is pretty new. So, here we go:


Fatshion Hustlings' List of Awesome Advantages to Having Body Fat

1. The fat stomach's aforementioned "handstool" use. Very handy when your hands are bothering you and you want to put them somewhere vaguely accessible, so that they can be called on easily when you next need them.

2. Fat people make excellent cushions for other living creatures. So far the only living creatures that have utilised my body for this purpose are my brothers and a few past and present cats. But none of them have issued any complaints about the comfort of my body. In fact, one brother used to use my arm for a cushion, and he once said "It would be sad if you lost weight, in the sense that your arm wouldn't be so comfortable anymore." And I can vouch for that - I use my arms as cushions often. I think this is a particularly good point, however. Let's consider intimate relationships for a moment here. I'm admittedly no expert, but I think one of the great things (and certainly one of the things I'm looking forward to) about a romantic relationship is the ability to draw comfort from each other's bodies. At the moment when I want comfort, I will stroke a cat's fur. In an intimate relationship I can absolutely see myself stroking my lover's hair for comfort. I'll also breathe in the familiar (and really, really nice - don't ask me why) smell of my cat. You get the idea. There's comfort in the familiarity, the warmth, the affection, the uniqueness of it. And fat bodies, in my opinion, are so well-equipped at being a source of comfort for people. We are squishy everywhere, so our hugs are fantastic. We make excellent cushions, so leaning on us is wonderful. And we carry that squishiness with us everywhere. You can even squeeze our arms to relieve stress, if we permit it. I'm kind of happy to know that I can provide that sort of support to people, just by being me.

3. Our fat is kind of fascinating to watch. It jiggles when we move! You can press down on it for ages! It can be poked and prodded and played with! Come on!

4. It protects more vital organs. OK, not entirely sure if that's true. But if it is? Awesome!

Edit: A mate of mine, D, provided me with this link, which shows that, yes, this is in fact true. Or at least it was in the past. :P

5. It is a form of stored energy, so we could potentially live off it for a long while, should food ever become scarce. This is a weak point for a number of reasons, but I'm putting it up anyway. Admittedly, if our bodies were starving, they'd eat up muscle before going to the fat cells, and fat in itself is hardly nutritionally sound enough for humans to survive using their deposits up. But yeah, if I were to be in a famine-like situation (extremely unlikely of course, but for argument's sake let's say it happened) I would last for far longer than people without that sort of emergency storage.

6. It protects us from the cold. I don't really like wearing jumpers. Mainly because in the course of one day I have to wash my hands a few times, and I HATE how wet sleeves feel on my hands. As such I'll avoid wearing jumpers whenever possible. And because I'm fat, that's so much more doable than it would be for a thinner person. My brother is frequently cold.

7. It protects us from injury. An image of Homer Simpson being hit by a cannon ball comes to mind. But yeah, it's true. I rarely get badly injured, even though I'm pretty klutz-y. When I fall down (an event that in itself measures on the richter scale) I'm normally OK to jump right back up again, because it's rare that I'm going to directly hit some bone or joint or something. Most of me is surrounded by a layer of blubber, or the blubber sticks out enough to protect protruding bone in its wake. On the other hand, one very thin friend of mine has bruises down her spine. She says she gets them from lying down, because her spinal column has no protection from the ground, or whatever. Um, OUCH! That would MAJORLY suck. I can't imagine getting injured just from lying down. All around me is soft, reliable padding. You've got to feel sorry for people without it.


That's about all I've got for now. But I think it's a pretty good list so far. And I think that for all fatties it is worth bearing this stuff in mind. Fat acceptance is about "accepting" our fat (because people like things to be spelled out in titles, and all), and that's absolutely great. But maybe part of doing that is to figure out what about our fatness is actually BETTER than what other people have, so that when other people start talking about the disadvantages of being fat, you are able to turn around and say "touche, old boy, but we can ALSO..."

Just a thought.

Outfittacular! And what I do with my razor.

This probably is not a post you'll want to read if talk about body hair makes you squeamish. I will try to be as tasteful as possible, but, yeah. You've been warned.

So, to kick things off, here's what I'm wearing today:



And to the side:



I am truly sorry about the shitty lighting. If you click on the photo and enlarge it, you should be able to see it fairly well.

I've worn this outfit (or at least the top half of it) a few times now, and I quite like the purple/light pink combo. The shirt is one of the many items of clothing I got for my 21st birthday last year, and the cardigan thing is something I purchased off yoursclothing.co.uk. The jeans are Marks and Spencers, purchased before I left the UK to come to Japan. They're nice jeans actually - quite thick, but stretchy and comfortable, unlike the other pair I bought there that digs into my stomach like it knows for sure there's buried treasure under there.

I'm also kind of liking what my hair's doing today. I gave it a pretty decent wash last night, so it's feeling pretty soft and the curls are quite bouncy. The issue of taming the curls is one I will have to deal with at some point in the future.

All right, that's the outfit out of the way. The main thing I wanted to talk about is something that I think a lot of women, and certainly a lot of fat women, have to deal with. Body hair.

Body hair is not fun for women, particularly in this day and age when even hair that EVERY woman has in abundance is considered unsightly, and the only hair that is really, truly permissible is what grows on your head. This irks me, as someone who struggles to grow adequate hair on her head but has absolutely NO trouble growing it on the rest of her body.

Now, hair comes in a variety of formats, as I think most people know. The hair that grows on the head is different to the hair that grows on the arms and legs is different to pubic/facial hair. This is why many men grow beards that are vastly different in colour to the hair on their heads. My brother's beard is alarmingly ginger-y. Even if you didn't know this, you probably had some kind of intuition about it because of differences in the characteristics of the hair (it feels different, looks different, etc).

Everybody has the light arm and leg hair from childhood (with some rare exceptions, of course). When puberty hits, a lot of this hair will turn into the thicker, more noticeable hair that exists on the more stereotypically "manly" of men in more abundance than on anyone else. Some men don't grow much of this hair at all, and such men are often teased about never having gone through puberty. Of course, in this "hair is horrible!" age those men are at a considerable advantage, but whatevs.

On women, this hair is only really supposed to grow on our nether-regions and under our arms, and for the women that I personally would deem "lucky", this is the case. On many of the rest of us, however, this black, thick, unsightly hair appears on many other parts of the body. To anybody who reads this blog, has this problem, and thinks that they are utterly alone in their suffering, take it from me: YOU'RE NOT.

And so at this juncture, I would like to talk about the wonderful (*cough*) dance that my beloved razor and I have to do every two or three days in the shower.

First, after I have put conditioner in my hair, I apply facial soap to my face. This done, I take the razor and carefully remove the past few day's worth of growth that has sprouted under my chin and along my lower jaw. This can be tricky, as I can't really see how it looks in the mirror, but I've been doing this for several years and haven't yet had a problem.

Next come the underarms. Not so embarrassing a procedure, because everybody has underarm hair.

Then comes my breasts. Yeah. See why I put the warning up at the start of this entry? It's common for men to have this thick hair growing around the nipples, and I can tell you now that it's not so rare on women either. I have to be really careful when I complete this part of the ritual. I'm only removing a few stray black hairs that grow there, but they grow alarmingly close to my nipples, and also if I don't pay attention I can easily miss them.

I really don't like the word 'nipple'.

Next comes the area under my navel. I'm guessing the hair grows here because it's near my nether-regions. I don't know. But anyway, I get quite a few thick black hairs growing there, so off they go.

Last comes my nether-regions. Now, I realise that many people choose to either leave this area alone (and good on you if you do), or just shave or trim along the outside, to tidy everything up a bit, present a nice bikini line, and all that good stuff. I just get rid of it all. This started a few years ago, when I was kind of curious about what it would be like to not have any hair down there, and I got a strange rash. In order to see the rash better I decided that now was the time for me to see what it was like to revert back to the genitals of my childhood. Since then it's become something of a habit. To be honest, it isn't the nicest of habits. It gets very prickly after a few days and it's always at least scratchy. I have a feeling that some day I'll get sick of the prickliness, or a future boyfriend will get sick of the prickliness, or I'll be unable to reach properly down there, or something, and I'll let it grow back. And I'd be kind of OK with it all growing back too. But for now I'll stick to my bizarre ritual.

And that's the end of it. I don't regularly shave my legs at the moment, because it's a pain in the arse to do and nobody sees them anyway. If I'm about to wear a dress I'll make the effort, but there seems to be little point otherwise. I don't do any waxing, because I'm a wimp. Although I wouldn't mind investigating more long-lasting methods for removing facial hair, because the prickly feeling is particularly undesirable there. My face feels like sandpaper.

The reason why I wanted to talk about my hair-removal rituals was to outline just where exactly body hair grows on some women. I am, I believe, fairly hairy for a white overweight chick. I would wager that black people and brown people often have far more extensive hair trouble than I do. As for the asians, well... yeah, bugger off. Lucky bastards. :P

But yeah, as I said before. Everybody who is both female and somewhat mortified by the unsightly hair that grows under their chin or under their navel, you are certainly, CERTAINLY, not alone.

Outfittacular!! And my personal history with sewing.

I thought I'd take a break from my usual angry rants about fat stigmatisation (fun and hopefully educational though those are), and talk about a few other things that people might be interested in with regards to me.

First, what I wore today!


A more full profile:


And a close-up of my annoyed-looking, double-chin-tastic face:

I am watching you...

My face is looking a bit spotty at the moment, which is irritating. It always happens when I regularly apply the 3-way cleanser toner moisturiser thing. Nothing against Clinique's system or anything, but my skin seems to fare better when I'm not using any type of cleansing product. I'd stop using said cleansing products, but I use the cleanser as shaving cream (more on that unfortunate aspect of my my beauty routine in a later post)

Anyway, so, the shirt is one of my new favourites. Purchased from yoursclothing.co.uk, I love the two-tone off-the-shoulder style. There's something subtly sexy about it, as far as I'm concerned. And I'm all about subtle sexiness.

The trousers are also a pair of my favourites. Loose cargo-type affairs that I got for my 21st birthday (along with many other clothes). There's nothing flashy about them, but they're light and comfortable and I don't feel like I'm having difficulty breathing when I sit down in them, which if beyond fantastic for a fattie in these jeans-enlightened times. My one complaint about them is that they keep falling down, so I'm forever hoisting them up while walking. This problem could easily be solved by me wearing a belt (or my "belt-scarf", as I have christened it), and I've only just realised that these trousers have belt loops, so I think I'd better start doing that, hehe.

I was also really pleased with my hair today. My hair is... difficult, at the best of times. And it always has been. It has come to my embarrassingly recent discovery that my hair is naturally quite curly, and that if I start treating it as curly hair then I should notice a difference in how it looks and feels. I've been looking up ways in which to give my hair the lovin' it deserves, and some of them have proven quite positive. I've stopped brushing it and I've stopped using shampoo. I apply liberal amounts of conditioner instead and work that into the scalp. I also don't towel-dry it, instead using an old t-shirt to scrunch my hair up and let it fall down. And I don't straighten it any more, although I might be wont to do that on very special occasions. So now my hair feels amazing and there is certainly more curl coming through, but the frizzy bits are still a bit problem. I'm beginning to think the only solution for that will be to use some kind of mousse or gel. dammit. i hate mousses and gels - they make my hair crunchy.

The sacrifices me make for beauty, hey?

Anyway, onto my second topic for today, sewing. I talk often on various journals and comms about my sewing efforts, so I thought that I would outline my history of sewing and why I've recently gotten into it as a way to extend my wardrobe for the better.

I learned how to sew when I was... young. :P Six or seven, I think. I really enjoyed it, even then. There was something about the rhythmic action of pulling a needle and thread through fabric over and over again that had a calming effect on me. I also enjoyed the idea of creating something with my hands.

As a kid, I grew up in a poor household. I wouldn't say that we were part of the working class, and I've never identified as somebody of the working classes, but we certainly did struggle with money, often. As a result we got a lot of hand-me-downs from family friends a few houses up. Among these hand-me-downs was, I remember quite clearly, a coat. I wore that coat to school all during the winter, and I loved it. After a while, however, I noticed that the stitching under one of the arms was coming loose, and it occurred to me that I should try to sew it up again. Tentatively holding needle and thread (scrounged up from god-knows-where in our impossibly messy house), I performed the familiar motions carefully, knowing that this would effect something that I was intending to wear. When I was done, the result was messy, clumsy, and certainly not a selling point if I had wanted to put the coat up for auction, but there was no denying that the coat was fixed. I was incredibly pleased with myself.

In year 7 I was taught how to use a sewing machine in high school. The thought of using a sewing machine was beyond exciting for me. This was the machine that my grandma tinkered on a lot of the time, after all. And my grandma is awesome! With my newly-acquired sewing skills I made a pair of shorts, which upon reflection were ugly as sin. But it was the process that mattered. I could now use a sewing machine. Also during year 7, I made a large library bag, with my grandma, on her sewing machine, which is so much more amazing than the sewing machines at my high school.

My love for sewing continued all through high school and unto university, but the sewing I did in those years was mostly of the fixing-things variety. I shortened the hem of my skirt for year 12, I fixed one of the poorer-quality of my soft toys, several times, I fixed a lot of my clothes, etc.

Then, during the second term of 2nd year uni (about a year ago), I was looking for a picture of a French horn with which to create a default icon for livejournal. The picture on the left there was the icon I eventually created, but during my search I came across the picture on the right, which, as a Guitar Hero fangirl, AND as a horn player, I thought amazing.
Upon further scrutiny I discovered that the picture came on a shirt, and I felt myself practically come with happiness. The question at that juncture was not so much "would I get the shirt?" as it was "how fast can I get it sent over?" To my amusement, I discovered that the only size left was a 2X in men's. Whatever, I thought. At least it wouldn't be too small.








It was like a tent:



Clearly something had to be done. After taking some time to ask my loyal band of brothers at fatshionista what they would recommend me do, I ended up taking something like four inches off the hem, shortening the sleeves and widening the hemline. My final result?



While far from perfect (in fact I was to do some more altering with it when I have it in my possession again), the process awoke something in me. My love for clothes-altering had truly begun.

In Japan, my love intensified when I got this baby:



Cost me about 6,000 yen, and it is everything I want in a sewing machine and nothing more. It's perfect.

So far I have completely changed the design of three t-shirts, taken in two more shirts, and (my proudest, though still kind of unfinished, moment yet) altered a pair of jeans. And so, people, I present to you: The Hustler Sewing Gallery (so far)!

Befores:










Afters:


This was the first of the three shirts I altered. Overall I was really pleased with the result. I liked the wide neckline - again, that subtle sexiness appealed to me. I think I liked showing my shoulders. The photo doesn't do the shirt justice, unfortunately.


This one was supposed to be a similar shape to the red number, and I think I succeeded in that, but there are little differences. The main one is that this shirt's neckline isn't as good. It's a bit wider (and in my opinion, too wide), and it's a bit wonky as well. I like the shirt and I wear it (the picture on it is hilarious, for one thing), but it's not my best effort.


This one was a major accomplishment for me, because it involved me doing more with the original sleeves than just getting them off. With this shirt, I cut off the sleeves, took in the rest of the shirt, took in the sleeves (after doing every single appropriate arm-hole measurement about three times apiece), shortened the sleeves, and finally sewed them back onto the shirt again. My sewing machine played up a bit for this shirt, so the sewing isn't as good as it is on the other clothes I've done, but the style is great. I'm very proud of this one.


I was so excited about how these turned out! When I first put these jeans on (jeans that were advertised as "skinny jeans", I'll have you know), I had to resist the urge to laugh. As I've said time and time again to anyone who'll listen, the jeans were skinny like I am. So after spending a lot of time pulling them on, pulling them off again, measuring, measuring, and doing some more measuring, I took in from the top of my thigh down, doing my best to sew according to the shape of my leg. I think I did pretty well. However, the jeans sit so high up my waist that it would not be inaccurate to say that the waistband is more like a below-breasts-band. So I've still got a bit of work to do on these babies.


So, that's about it. For my next trick, I'll be altering another pair of jeans (purple ones!), but that won't happen for a while yet. I've still got an exam or two to think about.

Peace out, y'all.