I am fat and happy

I've had this post in unpublished status for awhile, mostly because I wasn't quite sure how to end it off or where I was going with it. That was until the total babe Tess Munster AKA Holliday took the world by storm being the first size-22 model to make it big. 

When I first read about her success as a model I was super excited. There is someone who doesn't fit the typical thin, pretty, flat-stomached model mold. While I'm all about the plus sized models and diversity in body types, plus size models seem to have a very similar body shape - very hourglass, flat stomach. For lack of a better term or explanation the modeling industry has now gone ahead and created an "acceptable" amount of fat that is still considered attractive. 

Enter Holliday - not flat stomached, rocking the non-conventional hourglass who is blowing up the modelling world. 

And the world is pissed.

Why? Because this woman is happy with her body. She thinks that her size 22 body is glorious - and it is! She is the embodiment of what makes people uncomfortable and unhappy. She's a size 22, successful and happy woman breaking the conventional mold of happy women. 

I was reading through some of the comments and filtering out the blind hate one notion or theme kept coming up. People are ticked off and think that this woman is glorifying obesity and being unhealthy. I feel like many people (although this seems to be starting to shift slowly) still live by this Biggest Loser/before picture mentality. If you're not skinny or "appropriately" curvy you are a before picture. You should automatically feel the need to change the way that you look because you can't be happy with the way you are.

I've had this idea reinforced in many places of my life. The most memorable was actually when I was going through the sign up process to go to a gym in Toronto. The trainer there kept busting out the "you'll look better, you'll find love because you'll look better, you'll love going to the beach and wearing bikinis" sales pitch.

I felt the need to shut him down right there - Excuse me, but I am confident. I am already deserving of love looking the way I do and I already love going to the beach - in a bikini - because I love my body. I got the polite almost "yes yes dear" brush off which frustrated me. I just couldn't understand why this person couldn't understand that I was at a gym to increase my fitness level - not decrease my waistline. My want to just get fitter physically had me whitewashed as a before picture because I didn't fit this person's mold of a confident person. 

I think it makes people who buy into this confident, perfect body type pissed when someone doesn't put in the work (dieting, working out, limiting to maintain the perfect body) and gets the result (loving their body, accepting their body). It makes people really fucking pissed when that happens and in turn they lash out with negative comments about glorifying being unhealthy.

The thing is - happiness, self-respect and self-love don't glorify anything. My shameless self-love doesn't glorify anything but body positivity. It doesn't glorify health issues, it doesn't glorify being unhealthy. You don't have to hate your body to want to improve it you can still absolutely love yourself while changing your body. Because my body doesn't fit the traditional perfect body image it's automatically assumed that I hate it, and that makes people feel better. They work hard for their socially-accepted looks, of course it makes them feel better when we hate the way we look.

It makes people angry, it makes people upset, it confuses people, but the thing is - my body is not responsible for anyone's happiness but my own. 

My body and I are not responsible for your personal happiness.

Fat shame, fat shaming and being body-positive.

Recently, thanks mostly in part to my fantastic Tumblr crew, I’ve been on a body love and body acceptance kick. Having a good-sized background in media, I’ve been through many a discussion on how both men and women are portrayed in the media compared to everyday life. Of course, making my opinion known on the internet has come at the price of an onslaught of anonymous hate-messages filling up my inbox. It’s with this post that I’m going to address the big ones, not out of spite, but because I feel like these are the most common things women are told when they come out and love their bodies.

You loving your body is just you trying to validate the fact you’re fat and live an unhealthy, sedentary lifestyle and are too lazy to change it.

False. Yes, I could be healthier, I could forego the coffee with cream every morning and cut out all the “junk food” that I love, but I don’t. I balance that with healthy options and plenty of exercise.

There’s a huge dysmorphic mentality about a “fat” person and their ability to be healthy. It seems that everyone and their dog want to be concerned with your health when you decide that as a fat person you’re going to love your body. There is barely a connection between size and health, except in absolute extreme cases. People honestly don’t realize that you can be fat AND healthy, at the same time! (Blasphemous, I know.)

Healthy does not equal thin. Perfect examples are the Olympic weight lifters and shot putters as pictured below.

Sarah Robles - Olympic Weight Lifter

 

 A perfect medley of Olympic body types.

 

These are not people that live sedentary, lazy lives. They are athletes! I’m not promoting unhealthy lifestyles by loving my body. I’m promoting the fact that ANYONE can be healthy. You can’t fat-shame someone into believing their unhealthy because they jiggle a little more than society deems acceptable.

People like you, accepting yourself as fat are contributing to the obesity epidemic.

                Ha! Yes, I agree there is an obesity epidemic currently and we can all strive to be healthier, regardless of body type but loving your body DOES NOT promote obesity.

                Obesity is measured through the BMI (Body Mass Index) chart that charts what your weight should be based on height and corresponding weight. Every height has a weight-range that indicates healthy, overweight and obese weights. The greatest part of that, is at 5’6 my top “healthy” weight should be 120-150lbs. At my healthiest, with daily workouts, modified diet, and three-times weekly horseback riding lessons I was not in this “healthy” weight. Meaning, that I will live the rest of my life either overweight or obese according to this chart, no matter how “healthy” I am. I believe that we need to look at a more complex way of measuring health and obesity than just this, because there are plenty, PLENTY of healthy obese and overweight people who happen to not be 6’8 to justify their weight.

 

People out there think you’re sexy, stop complaining

                Why thank you, I’m glad there are people out there that think I look good, I think I look good. Saying that, I’m not an object. I’m not spouting body-positivity so that boys/girls can look at me and think I’m sexy, I’m doing it so that I can hopefully empower women and men to love their bodies, despite their shape and what society deems of it.

                Being positive about your body image isn’t about looking for people who think you’re gorgeous enough to sleep with or have sex. This is not what this is about. I’m not looking for people to want to be with me based solely on the fact that I think I look great.

You fat people out there are shaming skinny women into hating their bodies for not having curves

                I agree that this is happening, and I DO NOT agree with it. The purpose of (and I can only speak for myself) body positivity is loving your body in WHATEVER shape that it comes in. Tall, short, thin, fat, straight or curvy. Body shaming as a whole needs to end, in saying that, to be considered a plus-sized women it’s my experience that you have to fight more to be allowed to love your body. Society is more accepting of “thin”, pretty women; curvy is starting to come back into the swing of things, but media and advertising still stresses that to be desired by “the perfect” man, you need to be thin.

                To be big and confident you need to fight twice as hard and face all of the advertising that just isn’t targeted to you. Who doesn’t read a magazine and love the clothes that are shown in there? Too bad as a bigger person you know none of it is being made for you.

                Body-shaming is a practice that society needs to stop. People are not meant to be all the same. We’re human, we’re unique, we’re not all modeled after the one “ideal” image.

I support and love curvy women, but only the hot and pretty ones that are all confident in themselves

                This is why so many fat women have such low self-esteem, there’s even a set of guidelines that you need to meet to be considered beautiful when you are bigger. People do have  a personal preference as to what they think constitutes attractive, I agree 100% that one person can have the choice to not find people 100% attractive all the time. It all comes down to personal taste, BUT, do not make yourself “body-positive” if you’re going to only accept the bigger women you think should be allowed to love themselves. If you’re abiding by that thought process you are only feeding into exactly what society on a whole is doing.

                Check your thinking, see who it affects and don’t label yourself as body-positive unless you truly are body positive.

You’re only body positive because you’re fat.

                I am fat, and if I wasn’t I would still be saying the exact same thing. Instead of being picked on in school for being thin, I was made fun of for being fat. That’s the background and the experience that I bring to the discussion, but I know people who are on the other end of the ridicule as well. I’m not bod-positive because I want people to accept me, I’m body positive because I know how a negative body image affects people of any size. You can call my fat and stupid and a lazy-ass if you would like, but I will continue to state my thoughts about body-shame.

                Nobody should ever have to feel bad about the way they look and someone’s personal health should not be a strangers concern solely based on the way that their body is shaped. To give context, I was messaged by a man in the US who “lifts weights and does cardio everyday” therefore “is an expert on what being healthy looks like”, enough of an expert to know that I’m fat and super unhealthy masquerading around as confident when I should just be ashamed. I know I’m not the only one who is verbally attacked by people like this and to all of them I say:

A) You are not my doctor, you have never had access to my medical records or health records. You do not know how healthy I am or am not. Your “concern” is misplaced ignorance that exists to validate your own personal body-image issues. Anyone who is confident in themselves is confident regardless of what other people look like. True confidence comes from not needing to bring other people down because they don’t look like you.

B) You are not an expert on health because you work out every day. I also work out every day and I am no more an expert than the next person who works out daily. Your fitness schedule does not dictate your ability to tell me what I am.

C) I am fat. Thank you for pointing that out, I’m also healthy and confident. Human beings  are complex and multi-faceted with layers. To quote a rather wise ogre, “Layers. Onions have layers. Ogres have layers. Onions have layers. You get it? We both have layers” Swap out ogres for humans and there ya go! (Shrek, 2001)

D) Cinderella, the only person masquerading confidence is the man who justifies his health and good looks on the fact that he isn’t fat.