Unconscious Fat Shaming

I said that I would not be posting on the blog for a little while given circumstances at home; but today I want to think about something that isn't sadness, worry and hospitals so I went looking for something to pique my interest.

I ended up on the Women's Rights Page on Facebook reading this post about a lady called Brittany Miles who runs a blog on Tumblr called Full Bodied Lovin She tells her story of overcoming depression and anorexia and her journey to finding self acceptance. She describes her blog as "a place to nurture my own self love, and help create a culture of acceptance for others".

Now, whilst I am rapidly discovering that the Women's Rights Page isn't all it is cracked up to be, with many many adverts, strange off topic statuses and mixed messages; I read this post as the lady in question sounded inspirational, and she was.

The comments however soon began to make my blood boil and I needed an outlet for my thoughts, which is why this post is coming to you now.

Remembering that this was a woman who had overcome fat shaming, who had gotten through anorexia and depression as a result and brought herself out at the other end; wanting to share her story and inspire and encourage others, some of the comments were in my view harmful.

It wasn't so much the troll type comments of which there actually were few, it was the misguided ones that really bothered me.  The "she isn't fat, she's lovely", the "she isn't fat, she's gorgeous" the "you're not fat by the way, you're beautiful!"  The last comment was directly in reply to her own personal comment on the page thanking them for sharing her story.

All of these messages I know came, in the commenter's eyes, from a good place.  An encouraging place.  But that therein is the problem.  What they are actually saying is "It is ok, you are not fat now.  You are good enough".

Do you not understand how harmless and dangerous it is to saying that to someone who is recovering from an eating disorder?????

I questioned one of the said commenters saying "Why can she not be both fat and lovely" and someone else responded with:

"I think because fat has a negative connation to it"

The word fat only has a negative vibe to it if you allow it to.  If you call someone fat as an insult, that says more about you as a person than it does anything else.   

In my opinion using phrases like "You are not fat, you are beautiful" is just a sugar coated version of saying that fat is bad, you shouldn't be fat, but it is ok because I don't think you are so that is alright.  It isn't the classic version of fat shaming, but it isn't too many steps away from that.  It is unconscious fat shaming.

I believe that we need to tell people when we hear this happening, whether the comment is coming from a place of malice or a genuinely wanting to be nice.  I know when someone says something like that to me it really rattles my cage.  I am fat.  I am not shying away from that.  Those people trying to sugar coat your weight  in an attempt to what they think will make you feel "better" are actually trying to justify your weight to themselves.

To understand why you could be happy at a certain size when they could not.

The lady in question is a US size 12-14 now and is happy and body confident.  This is so amazing and she inspires me so much.  What worries me however are the people who didn't read her Tumblr page as clearly many didn't.  What would they have said to her if they knew what her dress size was?  Would the sugar coating have been dropped and replaced with venom?

I am aware that a lot of my anger and frustration in writing this post is as much about what has been occurring (unrelated) in my personal life as the comments on the Women's Rights post. With that said, I am curious as to what anyone else's views are on this topic.  What do you think about unconscious fat shaming?

The Power of the Selfie

You may be aware that one of my favourite sites FashionWorked allows me to take over once a month and write about whatever takes my fancy in a column called "The Plus Perspective".  (Not sure if he knew what he was letting himself in for!!).

 

Anyhow this month I am talking about taking selfies and confidence.  Here is an extract:

 

Strangely what I have realised whilst writing this post is that from my neck down I would never dream of apologising to someone about the way that I look. Indeed, my brain is saying to me “What? Why would you apologise you idiot”.

 

You can read more here

Model Behaviour

I have been waiting to do this post until I managed to collate a few photographs together of me on the catwalk for Plus North.  I only have a few here which I have managed to grab from other people, but I love them all.  If I get more at a later stage I will add them on.

 

Courtesy of Becca Simmons

 Image Courtesy of Yours Clothing

 

 

It was one of the most amazing experiences of my life walking down the catwalk for Yours Clothing, Curvissa and Evans and is certainly something I will never forgot.

There is one thing that I have been waiting for to happen since Plus North ended which hasn’t happened yet.  I hope it never does.  The come down.

Plus North has boosted me so much, in so many ways that I feel like one person walked into Plus North and another walked out.

For one thing; getting changed.  I had four outfits to model on the day.  There was a side room to get changed in with all the other models, or the disabled toilet if you wanted more privacy.  I hadn’t got changed in front of people like that, even my best friends for more years than I can even count. 

Inspired by the other girls who were just happily getting changed all around me, I threw off my inhibitions and by the second outfit (changed into a millisecond as I was number 12 and 14 on the catwalk!) I didn’t give it a second thought.

The other thing that I have kept with me since Plus North is that I no longer worry about what strangers think of me.  I am me, this is the way that I look and if people don’t like it, they can go to hell.   The first thing my best friend asked me when I called up after the day event was “Please tell me that you were yourself?”  She knows only too well the front that I normally put up in public. 

I am so used to being judged, silently or verbally by strangers about the way that I look that when in public there is always a self preservation wall that I put up.  That wall was torn down within the first ten minutes of being at Plus North.  All thanks to the AMAZING people there.

The sparkle that I felt when modelling has stayed with me.  I even smiled at the cute guy walking down the street this morning.  Unheard of for the girl who always looks down at the floor.

I cannot wait for next year.

 

Flash the Flesh Challenge - Part 2!

When a group of bloggers join together for a chat you know that the final result has to be super!! This happened once more when, a few weeks ago, we were talking about our preferences between mini and maxi and Becky  thought that it would be great to create a challenge which goal was to show a little bit more skin and our body (but with style and no vulgarity) showing proudly our curves. And so it was born “Flash the Flesh”.

Last month on the Flash the Flesh challenge I showed a part of my blog that I like.  This month, I wanted to do something that I wasn’t as comfortable with showing, in this case my legs.

Although I don’t have an issue with my legs from the knees down, I don’t like my knees/thighs and any hem that came above that I have always made sure was worn with either tights or leggings.  I recently bought a dress for the summer from +Very.co.uk  though which is so pretty, but wouldn’t look right with anything but bare legs.

I tried this dress on several times, with different shoes and heels and in the end, I really like this dress so why should a little insecurity hold me back from keeping it? 

I really like this time and it is perfect for an afternoon out in the Summer.  I am not normally one for white dresses but I loved the style of this one.  It can be found here for the bargain price of £22.00.