The Fat Chick Diaries

I learned two new phrases today: “thin privilege” and “diversely-bodied.”

Things are busy, and I’m a bit behind in reading the fat-related articles from the New York Times. I just finished this one from way back on May 14. (See? I told you I was behind!)

The article is about the experience of fat people in yoga classes, and how separate courses for fat folks are springing up all over the country. It notes specifically the inhospitable climate in many regular yoga courses, due in part to the inability of many yoga instructors to offer appropriate support and pose modifications to accommodate the needs of people who, for example, have breasts and bellies to big to allow them to get into the standard child’s pose. That’s me, by the way– I do mine with my knees spread apart so my belly has a place to go. But then, I do my yoga at home with Megan Garcia’s wonderful DVD put out by the folks at Just My Size. Well worth the money if you’re a beginner.

As usual, the comments that follow the article run the gamut from enlightened and supportive to ignorant and hateful. A few suggest that fatties need to be in classes with thin people so we can have thin role models who did the hard work of losing the weight. This, of course, falsely presumes that all thin people are thin because they work hard at it, that all fat people are fat because they haven’t bothered to work hard at it, and that we’re looking to be (or need to be) inspired by thin role models in the first place.

But then there is this comment by Anna from Atlanta, which I just loved:

It’s amazing that a practice meant to bring about awareness can operationally be so closed! I’ve practiced yoga for many years and have always very much enjoyed the rare opportunities to practice in diverse communities…it brings a whole new level of joy into movement! But before reading this article, I had never considered the fact that diversely-bodied groups are so rare because lots of teachers don’t know how to adjust the full spectrum of bodies.

It’s “thin privilege” to be blind to the ways some are included and others excluded in this society….thanks for opening my eyes! In the future, I would like to train as a teacher, and I will remember this article.

We all struggle, and we can all benefit from enjoying and exploring our bodies…my practice helps me manage depression and be less aggressive toward myself. Until there are more integrated classes with well-trained teachers, I think it’s wonderful that there are separate classes for plus-sized yogis. If yoga is about accepting ourselves as we are and playing mindfully at our edge, then our community of practice can acknowledge its exclusivity (and the underlying issues that inform it) and work intelligently at becoming more inclusive.

— Anna, Atlanta

Among the things I liked about Anna’s enlightened comment is that it taught me two new phrases: “thin privilege” and “diversely-bodied.”

Thin privilege if, of course, an adaptation of “white privilege,” which is a concept that covers all of the ways that white people, even those who work hard to eschew racism, still experience benefits of being white whether they want to or not. It ranges from having no dearth race-mates in positions of power and authority and the vastly different treatment white people receive when they come into contact with law enforcement (nobody gets pulled over for Driving While White) to being able to buy band-aids that match your skin tone. If you Google the phrase you’ll find extensive lists of examples of white privilege.

I’m a bit surprised at myself that it never occurred to me to use the term “thin privilege” to describe the range of privileges that accrue to thin people in society because they are thin, especially to thin women. Next time you go to the mall and see the number of clothing stores for thin women compared to those for fat women, even though the majority of American woman are considered fat, well, that’s thin privilege: a wider range of clothing options, including professional attire. Next time you watch the news and realize that Candy Crowley is virtually alone as fat chick in the world of television journalism, well, that’s thin privilege. Thin people make more money and face less workplace discrimination. Thin students never have trouble fitting into the desks at school. And let’s not even talk about airplane seats. That’s thin privilege. The scapegoating of fat people because certain health issues are associated with weight while thin people with unhealthy habits get a pass from society because they can’t be identified on sight, well, that’s thin privilege too.

This is a phrase I need to use more often. All of us do.

Sometimes I just don’t get fat haters. Not the hating part– I understand the world is full of biggots and people who just need to feel superior by knocking other people down. I get that part. It’s that I just don’t get what it is they think we ought to do about ourselves. Let me explain.

In 2005, I gave up my car. I figured it would save me enough money to get through grad school without loans, it would force me to exercise more, and it would just feel really good to thumb my nose at Bush’s blood-for-oil foreign policy. All three things proved to be true. Because of a particular flaw in the public transportation situation where I was working at the time, I could get directly TO work by bus, but to get home I had to walk two miles from the office to the nearest functioning bus stop. So I was walking two miles a day, five days a week.

This is what the skinny people want, right? Aren’t we all supposed to be out there exercising all the fat off?

Apparently not. On a frequent and regular basis, carloads of young, skinny assholes would roll their windows down and shout abuse at me as I walked from my office to the bus stop. So…. let me understand. You don’t want people to be fat, but when you see a fat person out exercising, you will discourage them from doing so by shouting abuse at them? I just don’t get the logic. Unless… oh wait, I think I get it now– they want us to shut ourselves up in our homes and jog in place where nobody has to see us, until we have burned off enough fat to be acceptable to them. Then, and only then, can we be seen again in public. Got it.

I am still carfree, and I still take public transportation, and I am still fat. (Oddly enough, all of that walking did no lead to the loss of a single pound.) So in the past few years, I have developed an interest in the attitudes of people about fat people taking public transportation. One of these days I will finish my epic post on fat people who ride the subway and the people who love to hate them. But for now, let it suffice to say that a simple web search shows there are a lot of people who just hate, hate, HATE it that there are fat people on subways and buses. They don’t want us to sit next to them. They don’t want us to stand near them. In short, they don’t want us there at all.

So once again, I must ask–what is it that they DO want us to do? Run through the tunnel behind the subway train until we have burned enough calories to be acceptable as fellow passengers? Quit our jobs and stay home, locked in our houses and apartments starving ourselves until we are deemed thin enough to be seen out in public again? What?

So now comes the latest “I just don’t get the logic” occurrence. I am a long-time subscriber to Newsweek, but I’m almost always at least a week or two behind. So this week I’m working on an issue from the beginning of May, and I came across this quote on the Perspectives page, which you can find on their website here.

“We’re on the Titanic and, rather than forcing our children into the lifeboat, we’re telling them to join the band.” –MeMe Roth, president of National Action Against Obesity, on new clothing lines aimed at plus-size teenage girls from retailers Target and Forever 21

Once again, I just don’t get it. Roth objects to CLOTHING? Or is it just that she objects to attractive, fashionable clothing for fat girls? Is that it? She doesn’t want them stuck at home with no clothes to wear– she just doesn’t think they should be allowed to dress fashionably, because that might cause them to… what? Feel good about themselves? Not feel disgusting? Have good self-esteem? Heaven forfend! We can’t have fat chicks feeling good about themselves– that would undermine Roth’s plan to make them hate themselves so much that they will do whatever it takes– healthy or not– to conform and become thin. No, fat girls should wear burlap bags with a big scarlet “F” stenciled on the front.

So it really is just all about hate after all. Nice.

Daily pug count: Three, plus a brace of puggles in front of the laundromat.

I haven’t done a Daily Pug Count in a while, so here’s today’s figure as of 4:04 p.m.: Four pugs. One in Queens, three in Manhattan. I’m telling you, NYC is Pug City, y’all.

Anyway, back to business. I saw Megan McCain on the Rachel Maddow Show the other day, and Rachel mentioned Megan is on Twitter, so I went and checked her out. Having seen images of Megan throughout the campaign and having just watched her during her interview with Rachel, I was very surprised to see among her Twitter entries (I guess they’re called “tweets”) a statement defending her own curves and encouraging the rest of us to love ours, too. I thought… did somebody make fun of her for being fat? If so, how is that possible? She’s not rail thin like her mom, but she’s certainly slim. Have we really gone that far over the edge that we’re fat-bashing Megan McCain now?

As it turns out, the answer is yes: Megan McCain, who is a size 8, got fat-bashed by her own fellow Republican. Tara Parker Pope writes about it on Well today.

That just stuns me. I mean, really? To me, a woman who wears a size 12 shouldn’t be considered plus size, because in terms of her clothing needs, she has a heck of a lot more in common with a size 8 than a size 18. A size 10 looks thin to me. But a size EIGHT??? Come on, REALLY? We’re fat-bashing in the single digits now?

You’d think there are no more pressing issues facing this country right now. Yeesh.

I can’t recall where I first heard about Re/Dress, but there is a recent review at Fat Chicks Rule.

Bottom line: If you live in or near Brooklyn, gather up all your cash and credit cards and go to Re/Dress. It’s worth it. The staff are extremely helpful and friendly, and there is something there for every taste. And I do mean EVERY taste. The store itself is big, clean, brightly lit, and absolutely the most gorgeous vintage/resale shop I’ve ever been in. The owner, Deb Malkin (who is also involved in my beloved Fat Girl Flea Market), has assembled a truly amazing inventory, including some really amazing vintage coats. I went a few weekends ago and I had an absolute blast. I dragged my boyfriend along, and this was the first time I think he ever enjoyed being dragged along on a shopping trip. He got comfy on the couch in the lounge and just chilled out while he waited for me to come out of the dressing room in outfit after outfit. I came home with a number of really great pieces, including some Jones New York, Josephine Chauss, and other names you’d know. Several of the pieces I bought still had the original tags on them, so I essentially got brand new pieces at resale prices. I’m already getting compliments on pieces I’ve worn to work.

Re/Dress is on Facebook as both a store (”Re/Dress NYC”) and a “person” (”ReDress NYC”), the latter so it can be tagged in photos where happy customers are showing off their recent purchases. If you’re on Facebook, friend them and browse the photos to get a feel for the variety of pieces they sell.

Shopping at Re/Dress makes sense for a number of reasons. First, giving a second life to some gently used pieces is environmentally friendly. Second, Deb has gone to all the trouble to create a shopping paradise just for us fat chicks, and we should do what we can to make sure she stays in business. Third, there’s a recession on, people! Vintage/resale is just smart shopping!

One word of warning: If you go via subway, you might want to avoid the bodega on the corner by the F/G subway exit. The staff in there apparently don’t realize that driving off customers isn’t good if you’re in retail, and they love to verbally abuse customers and cheat them out of money. I’m just sayin’.

Brace yourselves, skinny New Yorkers, because this fat chick is getting back in the pool.

My parents are beach people, so when I was a kid, they put my brother and me into swimming lessons at the earliest possible age so they could take us to the beach and we wouldn’t drown. I spent an absolutely enormous chunk of every summer at either the local community pool, the reservoir, or the ocean. So much so, in fact, that I’m almost certain that at some point I will keel over dead from a melanoma. But I digress.

I love to swim, y’all. I love everything from lap swimming in a heated pool to just bobbing up and down in the ocean like a cork. But when I reached adulthood and I started getting fat, I became extremely self-conscious about my body and refused to be seen in public in a swimsuit for nearly a decade. In other words, I let society’s hatred of fat folks drive me away from something I really love.

Shortly after the turn of the century, I was working at a small liberal arts college in Ohio that happened to have a pool, which happened to be free of charge for faculty and staff. I finally worked up the nerve to go out and buy a swimsuit, and I got my fat ass back in the pool.

You know what’s weird? I can’t sink now. When I was a kid, the most fun thing to do in the pool was to go to the deep end and let all the air out of your lungs so you could sink like a stone, then see how long you could sit on the bottom of the pool before you had to come up for air. As it turns out, this trick only works for skinny people. Fat is very bouyant, and so I can no longer sink. Bummer. The good news, though, is that I have more or less become my own flotation device, and I’m almost certain never to drown. The backstroke is a hell of a lot easier now, because I don’t feel like I’m sinking all the time. It sort of makes me wonder how competitive swimmers with almost zero body fat manage to do it at all. Maybe it’s because they’re going so fast, kind of like Jesus lizards.

In any case, once I was back in the water, I was hooked. I swam laps several nights a week and got into really great shape. I even lost a few pounds, but only a few. When I moved to Long Island, the college where I had my next job also had a pool, free for faculty and staff, and I was able to continue swimming laps at night. In fact, it was necessary for my survival, since lap swimming is a great way to relieve stress, and the job itself was a neverending nightmare. Fortunately, it only lasted a little over a year, and then I was free. Unfortunately, I haven’t had decent pool access since that time, so I haven’t been in a pool in several years.

But that is about to change. Apparently, $75 gets me an annual pass to use any NYC rec center with a pool, and there is one with evening hours about a block away from where I work. Holy shit, y’all, A BLOCK AWAY!!!!!! I cannot believe my luck!

So listen up all you skinny New York lap swimmers: Get ready to circle up! If something about the sight of a fat chick in a swimsuit offends your delicate sensibilities, now would be a good time to practice averting your eyes and zipping your lips, because I’m comin’ in! Woo hooooooooo!

I do have a suit that fits, but just for this occasion, I may have to head over to Junonia and see what’s new in fat chick swimwear. I’ve bought my last three suits from them, and they’ve been fantastic.

A date has finally been set for the 2009 Fat Girl Flea Market! Whew, I was starting to worry! I love this event, and they didn’t have one at all in 2008!

If you are in the NYC area and you have no plans for April 4, then make plans to come to the flea market. I’ve been there twice now, and both times I had a blast and came out with tons of “new” clothes at insanely low prices.

Here’s how it works: Over the course of the year, various fat chicks donate their used clothing to the flea market. Clothes are sorted according to size. On the day of the flea market, you show up to the LGBT Community Center in the East Village in Lower Manhattan. You pay a very small cover charge, then they unleash you into the room with all the clothes. You find the tables with your size, and you lose your mind completely. This is a GREAT place to pick up simple pieces like jeans and sweaters, but they also have blouses, dress pants, suits, formal dresses, and just about anything else you can think of. It’s used, so you have to be careful, but it’s well worth the time it takes to dig through everything. I have a pair of dress pants that I wear to work virtually every single week of the year, and I got them for five bucks. Ditto for one of my favorite pairs of jeans and at least two tops. There’s an open dressing room, and it’s actually kind of refreshing to see other fat chicks in their underwear engaged in a mutually supportive fashion frenzy, as clothes shopping can sometimes be a big downer for us.

The money raised at the flea market goes to NOLOSE to help pay for their annual conference, so it’s all for a good cause. The clothes that don’t get sold are donated to charity. It’s a win-win-win situation. You can’t do better than that!

So here’s your way-in-advance notice. If you’re a fat chick and you’ll be around in April, mark your calendar. Just don’t buy the stuff I want!!!!!!

Today’s daily pug count: four, and counting. Now, down to business:

People are sometimes shocked that I use the word “fat” so freely. I guess that word has taken on such an extreme negative connotation that people don’t know how to react when they hear it from me, a bona fide fat person, especially in reference to myself. Here’s the thing: I like it because it’s unambiguous, and everybody understands it. Sure, there are a fair number of sadly misguided skinny people who muddy the definition of fat because they like to torture themselves and/or fish for compliments by calling themselves fat when they’re not. To wit:

Skinny chick to other skinny chick: “Oh my God, I’m sooooo fat!”
Other skinny chick: “You are NOT fat!”

But for the most part, it’s a pretty unambiguous word. In fact, that reminds me of something I’ve been meaning to post about. Here’s how you know when you have become officially fat:

When I was in high school, I was not fat. Like all high school girls, I would whine about how fat I thought I was, and my friends would say, “You are NOT fat!”

When I was in college, I started to actually get fat. I would whine to my friends about how fat I thought I was, and my friends would say, “You’re not THAT fat!”

When I graduated from college and proceeded to eat my way through grad school hell, a serious health crisis, and a bad marriage, I became officially fat. The reason I know I was officially fat is because nobody even bothered to deny it anymore. Instead, they looked for mitigating circumstances to make the fatness not seem so bad. I would whine to my friends about how fat I thought I was, and my friends would say, “But you’re TALL!”

Now, I am in my 30’s, and I am uniquivocally, undeniably a Bona Fide Fat Chick. I have long since stopped whining to my friends about being fat, but I do sometimes whine to my boyfriend about it, and my boyfriend says, “True, but I love you that way!”

Did you catch that transition? First comes the denial of fatness. Then comes the concession that yes, there may be some fat present, but not in an “ewww, you’re fat” kind of way. Then comes the pointing out of the tallness, which is meant to mitigate the fatness. Then comes the point where it really jsut can no longer be denied nor mitigated. So if you’re wondering whether or not you’re officially fat, test it out.

I just like the word fat. It’s descriptive. It’s unambiguous. It’s also short and easy to spell. Yes, it has negative connotations, but only because people allow it. Other than that, it’s a really useful word. Having said all that, I have to tell you that most euphemisms for fat really irritate me. For example, I really cannot stand department stores that call the fat chick section the “women’s” section. Fat chick sizes are called “women’s” sizes, and often have a “W” next to them on the size label, as if the numerical size itself was insufficient to make the point. What are we supposed to learn from this? That thin women aren’t really women? I bet if you asked them, they’d disagree. Just guessin’. Another one that bugs me: Zaftig. As in Salon Z, the fat chick section at Saks Fifth Avenue. Hello… Salon Z? Could you possibly be any more cryptic? Is it THAT scandalous for a highbrow shopping destination like Saks to sell clothing for — gasp — fat chicks that it has to be kept a great big secret not just with a euphemism, but an abbreviation for a euphemism? Come on, Saks. We’re big girls (literally and figuratively). We can handle the truth. Just called it the Groovy Fat Chick Section and we’ll know that’s where we need to go. If your other customers can’t handle the fact that we shop at Saks too, you can take comfort in the fact that if national trends continue, pretty soon virtually all women will have to shop in Salon Z.

Yep, euphemisms for fat kinda bug me. Don’t even get me started on “big boned” or “pleasingly plump” lest I experience reverse peristalsis all over you.

However, today I learned a word for fatness that I actually find quite charming, maybe because it’s so sing-songy and French-sounding: Avoirdupois. I love it. It makes me want to go out and get another fat cat, just so I can name is Avoirdupois. I think tomorrow morning when I run into some work colleagues in the elevator and somebody asks me how am I doing today, I will say, “I’m just brimming with avoirdupois! Thanks for asking! And yourself?”

I can sort of imagine Snagglepuss from the Hannah Barbera cartoons saying, “Heavens to Murgatroid! You have such fabulous avoirdupois!”

Avoirdupois. See if you can use it in a sentence today!

There are two things that piss me off about clothes as they relate to fat chicks.

First, there’s the thing where I’m at work, or doing volunteer work, or at a conference, and there are tee shirts. Somebody got the bright idea to order tee shirts for everybody as a morale building, team-building thing, reward for showing up, or whatever. They find a vendor, think up a design, and order awhole mess of shirts in sizes S, M, L, and XL. And then the shirts come, and they get passed around, and everybody puts on their shirt. Everybody, that is, except the fat people. Because the geniuses who organized this alleged morale-builder didn’t order anything in extended sizes. Because, I guess, fat people don’t matter. If we wanted shirts, we should have darn well got on a treadmill and burned off enough poundage to fit into the shirts that were ordered. Vendors that carry, say, XXL shirts are harder to find, and those shirts sometimes cost, like, a dollar extra. So, no shirt for you, lardass. That’s what you get for being a lardass, lardass.

Oh sure, somebody still hands us a shirt. But whereas everybody else in the room dons their nifty new shirt so as to look like part of the team, invariably the person handing out the shirts looks at the fat chicks sheepishly and says something like, “Maybe you can give it to your kid?”

Nobody else’s shirt is for their kids, right? Then why is MY shirt for my kid? (I’m actually childfree, but these moments are usually not the ones in which to bring up this point)

The bottom line, insensitive and clueless tee-shirt organizers, is this: If you’re going to get some type of group garment, make sure you buy it in sizes to fit EVERYBODY in the group. To do otherwise is thoughtless, exclusionary, and arguably even discriminatory, m’kay?

The other thing about clothes that really bugs me is this: Fat chick clothes are rounded up and segregated from the “normal” clothes like downer cows that need to be quarantined from the rest of the herd. I generally do not go to the mall to shop for clothes with my thin friends, because instead of being a social activity, it is an awkward ritual that only serves to emphasize the difference between me and them. On the rare occasion that I do shop for clothes with skinny girlfriends, the trip follows one of two formats: Either we split up and agree to meet back at a designated time, in which case we might as well just have gone separately altogether, or we take turns. Taking turns involves me standing there awkwardly in the skinny-chick store while they shop for the clothes they want, followed by them standing there awkwardly in the fat-chick store while I buy the clothes I want. I invariably get the short end of the stick here, because as everyone knows, there are dozens of skinny-chick stores in the typical mall but only one Lane Bryant.

This pattern also exists in department stores, which typically quarantine the fat chick clothes in the most remote, least accessible part of the store, so as to hide the fat shoppers from the view of everyone else. We’re either in the basement or in the farthest corner of the top floor, next to the photo studio, the bathrooms, and/or place where senior citizens who don’t want to waste a stamp come to pay their charge card bills.

I do have to give snaps to the Herald Square Macy’s, though. While it’s true that you have to trek all the way up to the 7th floor to get to the fat chick section, once you’re there, it’s like a wonderland of clothes. I have never, ever seen so many choices, and they carry such dreamy labels as Alfani, Anne Klein, and Jones New York. I think every fat chick on earth owns a black Jones New York pantsuit. Except for jeans and underwear, which I religiously buy at Lane Bryant, I do virtually all of my clothes shopping at Macy’s. They love me so much they gave me a platinum card.

But outside of Macy’s, LB, and the occasional Avenue, there are precious few options for tog-shopping in the city. There certainly isn’t much in the way of boutique-style shops for us, that’s for sure. That’s why I was so excited when my dear boyfriend, bless his heart, caught a piece on NY1 about Abby Z, the new boutique in SoHo selling a line of clothing by Abby Zeichner. As soon as I recover from my next tuition bill, I will be there with bells on. Here’s the story from NYi.

You can see the Abby Z web site here

Go, Abby Z!!!!!!!!