it literally HAS to be okay to choose to be fat in order for fat liberation to mean anything at all tbh

i literally wrote this as simple and straightforward as possible and still most of the notifications i get on this post are "yeah, some people have the Fat Curse, cursed by fat, and theres nothing they can do abt it. its not your fault uwu" which is wild, bc why did you write all that nonsense when you clearly refused to read?

i am slamming my head on the bars of my enclosure. i am screaming into the starless sky and shouting that some people do want to be fat actually, and are fat because they want to be, whether they are "natually" fat, or they eat intentionally to gain weight, or they simply enjoy eating and choose not to limit that joy. there is nothing wrong with choosing to be fat. and there is nothing wrong with being fat and happy. the fact that this is so inconceivable to so many ppl, even those who claim to be body positive/neutral/fat liberationist is literally just fatphobia and nothing else. how are you expecting to make the world a safer place for fat ppl when you can't even twist your lips to admit that fatness is desirable?

A few imperfect thoughts about writing fat characters respectfully

By me :

A short (5'2"), fat (approx 300 pounds), middle aged (turning 42 thank god), married to not a fat man, mother of a pre-teen, white, CIS, Anglo, Canadian, upper-middle class woman who writes fic (including smut) about a character who is fat by TV and Hollywood standards (Penelope Garcia)

Note: fat hate or debates about whether being fat is healthy or not will not be tolerated on this post. That is not what this post is about. This is about giving some insight into what writers may want to consider when trying to respectfully include more fat characters in their work and generally moving towards writing doing less harm to fat people.

Everyone knows it's that time of year when many people feel compelled to set goals to alter their body and restrict their food. The pressure to be thin is everywhere---it's the water we swim in. If you want to take care of your body, I hope this is the year you learn more about weight-neutral approaches to health! The Health At Every Size movement and books by fat activist Aubrey Gordon are great places to start!

body paintings by Karen Turner

hey these are some tips for some of the little details in drawing fat folks that some people might not know!

everyone has fat on their bodies so its a worthwhile skill to have, but most art tutorials leave it out. heres some other good tips from artists!!

the leftism leaving people's bodies when you tell them making fun of someone's appearance is always objectively scummy even if the person they're making fun of is bad

"lol are we really surprised that the dude who said eating puppies is good and morally correct looks like THIS" and then it's just a picture of a completely normal looking person who is fat or has acne or just in general doesn't meet the societally imposed standard of conventional "hotness," which is bizarrely being posited as an indicator of morality

MY TWEETS? ENCOUNTERED IN THE WILD?

Chinese painter Yu Xiaodong

Every time I hear someone much older than me talking about how their shame about their bodies and weight have robbed them of all kinds of fun experiences and simple joys and delights in life, it breaks my fucking heart. Older women, in particular, have been shamed into and forced into (and perpetuated themselves) so many stupid narratives about what one "can't do" if you look a certain way. Sometimes they don't even notice it...they'll just casually be saying something like, "I would have loved to play volleyball back in school but this big ass wasn't going to look right in those shorts tee hee" and I'm like that's??? actually??? tragic???????? Especially when it's something they COULD still pursue or try but they've got a fixed mindset about it.

My 84 year old aunt really spent all of her 30s-60s believing that she COULDN'T just put on a swimsuit and enjoy the water in the summer. I have so many memories of this mindset affecting her all summer. Just casually existing by a pool in a swimsuit was something that women who looked like her Could Not Do. This is someone who broke so many gender barriers in her field, who was a pioneer and a bad ass, but who held herself back from something she truly enjoyed for DECADES because she's fat. A couple of years ago she told me how stupid she feels having thought like that now that her age has changed her mobility and safety in going to a pool and it's no longer literally possible for her to do so.

She bought the bullshit and deprived herself of happiness when it was possible, so she lost her chance at hundreds of moments of simple enjoyment she now looks back on sadly.

Really sadly.

I think this is a topic where we can literally see a huge generational change among society right now. The bitchy boomer who says something like, "oh she should NOT be wearing that" when a happy, chunky Gen Zer bops by in a crop top sounds like the death rattles of an ancient relic to most of us in younger generations. After we get over the overt hate that surges when we hear things like that, most of us can see right through that prickly exterior into the deeply damaged, sad, and vulnerable person inside who is the one that's the real problem in the equation.

And yet, while it can be easy to think, "Thank god I'm not like THAT" none of us are truly immune to the messages that are blasted in our faces all the time that still shame fatness and make us feel like we owe society a certain kind of "beauty."

Just keep an eye out for any limiting beliefs you have that are depriving you from joy and delight you want and need. As anyone like my aunt could tell you, you won't someday look back and think, "I sure am glad I didn't do what made me happy all those years!"

Growing up in the 70s and 80s I cannot overstate how heavy the pressure of body conformity was, but it was *weak* compared to what was pushed on my mother, who grew up in the 50s and 60s.

I can't help but think that a whole lot of the backlash against trans people has to do with people who grew up in this mindset.

I grew up with a rock solid message that I must never, ever wear horizontal stripes because they would "make me look fat".

I *AM* fat. And one day I found this dress with horizontal stripes made out of the softest knit fabric, a maxidress, with pockets, the kind of thing you toss on and don't have to wear anything else at all when it's hot... the fabric is literally cool to the touch...

And it dawned on me that there were no number of vertical stripes in the world that were going to make me look not-fat and I bought the damn dress and I still sometimes wear it. It's one of the more comfortable things I own, though I've almost completely replaced my wardrobe to be sensory friendly fabrics. My 40s were about unpacking all the bs my mother fed me, which was, still, tame compared to what she had shoved at her her whole goddamn life. Things like, "You have the wrong head shape to wear a buzz cut." Like really, that's a thing that was said to me when I had literally never tried it. I've been clippering my hear now for eight years and you know what? There's no wrong shape to go nearly bald.

The cost of nonconformity was much, much higher back then. We're not so very far from the times when failure to dress "correctly" could land one in a mental institution or jail.

As we move towards the summer months, this is a healthy reminder that:

unibrows arent ugly being fat isnt ugly being dark-skinned isnt ugly having an asymmetrical face isnt ugly having a big nose isnt ugly being bald isnt ugly. i hate you ugly-to-pretty challenges i hate you "breed out the ugly" challenges i hate you whitewashed townie makeovers i hate you fat-to-skinny challenges

Midsize and plus sized men appreciation post

Credit to Tiktok

What do you like about being FAT? 

FaT GiRL Zine Issue No. 3 (1995)

A surprising article to find on the Huffington post. I think, especially towards the end, there's still a saturation of healthism and diet talk (just of the "clean eating" variety), but the information about weight discrimination is absolutely on point, especially within the medical field ignoring decades of research.

Not only do we know that weight loss isn't sustainable or possible, we also know that weight discrimination kills, in a myriad of ways. If you actually care about "health" then start unlearning your weight bias NOW and realize that fat people are just people who are a different shape.

And this article doesn't even touch on "the obesity paradox"(the fact that fat people survive heart attacks and injuries BETTER THAN thin people) or the fact that dieting, especially "yo-yo dieting," is a better predictor for heart disease than weight, and that many of the fat people who have cardiovascular diseases have a long history of dieting that (understandably) didn't work.

encouraged to rb but fatphobes will just be blocked.

breast positivity is very important, especially for those who feel their boobs aren’t pretty. and yanno boobs are great and everybody likes them, but when you start drawing extremely large boobers on every character, even ones who are smaller chested or flat, then you’re not being positive about breasts, you’re just projecting your standards for attractiveness in women onto these characters.

and also if you draw every boob the same, and no one’s boobs are ever a bit lopsided or have the nipples pointing different ways, or if the boobs don’t “squish” realistically if someone lies down…ffs I should not have been worried about my nipples being too small (of all things) when I was a teenager and yet I was

this too, like there is literally never any nipple diversity

Its time to see some more male body positivity. Cheers to all my fellow men!!