Twists and Turns!

Kelly put on her glasses, smile wide, and pulled out a piece of paper which she read from. The paper was from an article (which I have issues with, but I will leave alone for now) by ABC news. Kelly proceeded only to read the opening of it, which reads: ‘Americans work more than anyone in the industrialized world. More than the English, more than the French, way more than the Germans or Norwegians. Even, recently, more than the Japanese. And Americans take less vacation, work longer days, and retire later, too.’

And everyone cheered.

And they kept cheering when Kelly put her paper down and smiled at everyone. (not continuing with the rest of the article which suggests that this may in fact be a problem).

And I just couldn’t BELIEVE that anyone was cheering. America. AMERICA you work more than the French, who are entitled by law to have 5 weeks off a year for vacation and can not work more than 35 hours per week. You work more than Norway, who average 33 hours per week and 44,000 dollars a year. Germany, where AGAIN, we see a shorter work week and better pay! And all of these countries have health care and better pay and free/affordable education!

WHY ARE YOU CHEERING?

I have a different interpretation of this information: the American worker is the most taken advantage of worker in the industrialized world. It’s plain and simple. You work long hours and get horrible pay. You take multiple jobs and work and work and work just to get by. Unions are disappearing, jobs are always looking for part timers and all you are doing is giving up your time for less money, less vacation, less safety and stability and less education than anyone else on the list.

Celebrate Labour day. Celebrate the accomplishments of the common worker, but don’t let these people trick you into thinking you should celebrate the theft of your time and energy, or the fruits of your labour.

Okay, first of all, I don’t hate skinny people. But I hate how they treat me, how society treats me, how thin people are praised and worshiped for doing literally anything, even doing things that cause fat people to be mocked and attacked. I hate the way they speak over fat people in conversations about fatphobia, how they deny fatphobia’s existence while perpetrating it, how they speak about fatness like a disease, how they speak about fat people like we are less than human. I hate when they derail posts about fat people and make those posts about them, or how they justify harassment, bullying, and discrimination against fat people by saying we deserve it for “being unhealthy” or for “being unattractive.” I hate how they take every opportunity they can to make me feel undesirable, unlovable, unwanted. I hate the way they refuse to give me the same medical care as thin patients, and the way they prescribe weight loss as a cure for all life’s problems. I hate a lot of things that skinny people do. And I hate the fact that people think it’s all perfectly okay.  

But even if I did hate skinny people, I would have every right to. As long as I am not bullying or harassing someone just for breathing, I am allowed to hate my oppressors. I am allowed to be angry at them, to feel hurt by them. And I do feel hurt by them. All the time. Because they never leave me alone. They never let me just exist. They always have to find an excuse to attack me, to degrade me, to humiliate me, to punish me for existing as a fat person. And that hurts, buddy. That hurts. 

Second, no, no one thinks skinny people should die. No one would ever say that, and if they did they would be a horrible person. What we think is that skinny people shouldn’t be treated better than fat people just because they are skinny. That’s not an unreasonable thing to think. We think that thin people and fat people should be treated as equals, and should be judged by character rather than size or beauty. We think that all people of all sizes can be beautiful, but that beauty doesn’t determine one’s value as a person and neither does health. We think that bullying, harassing, and discriminating against people for their appearance is wrong. That’s what we think. And that is not the same as thinking skinny people deserve to die. No one deserves to die.

Third, please don’t use “obese.” Just say fat. Obese is a really disgusting word that medicalizes our bodies and has a lot of negative connotations. 

You should educate yourself on fat acceptance before making ignorant posts like this. 

Just The Fat Facts, Ma’am

What Is the Body Positive Movement?

The Real Deal On Body Acceptance

6 Things That I Understand About the Fat-Acceptance Movement

9 Signs That Your Body Positivity Could Be More Open-Minded

3 Important Lessons From My Mistakes as a Thin Ally to Fat Acceptance Movements

Back Off, Thin People – Here’s Why Body Positivity Wasn’t Made for You

How I Know the Body Positive Movement Will Never Be Mine to Claim

Why It’s Okay To Be Fat

Celeb weight loss teas won’t give you a flatter belly or a firmer booty. They’ll give you diarrhea.

If you’re a woman and have a Facebook and/or an Instagram account, you’ve come across someone celebrating their supposed weight loss due to some combination of the words “tea,” “tummy,” “flat,” “booty” and/or “fit.”

That’s because someone in your life or your follow list, eager to figure out “the secret” to a leaner body, has decided to plunk down an exorbitant number of dollars for a product that promises to “detoxify your intestinal tract free of built-up toxins and reduce water weight,” claiming that these are “two of the main reasons why some days you look and feel five months pregnant.”

The first “toxin cleanse” I remember trying involved drinking water mixed with lemon, cayenne pepper, and a small amount of maple syrup. You weren’t supposed to eat at all, and you were supposed to drink a gallon of this stuff every day for a week. I saw it in a magazine targeted for teens, and I was probably 14 years old. It promised to make my skin glow, clarify my mind, and help me drop all that unnecessary fat I had developed as part of, you know, growing into an adult human.

It seems like some people think that since we no longer glorify super-skinny bodies *quite as much* as we did in the 80s-00s, we must be moving in a healthier direction. But we’ve just shifted to promoting lifestyles where average people (i.e., not professional athletes) are encouraged to spend hours at the gym every day, obsess over every ounce of fat lost or muscle gained, and drink tea that makes them shit out all their water weight. This lifestyle is aspirational.

We label this behavior as “healthy”, and tie that health to our morality – Your body is a temple and you need to honor your temple by keeping it “clean”, meaning free of “excess” fat, free of “bad food”, free of “toxins”. You need to “stay active and centered”, meaning hours of squats & running & yoga. If you don’t do those things, well no wonder you’re depressed, no wonder you’re sick, no wonder you can’t find love. If you’re “honoring your temple” and you’re still unhappy, you just need to try harder.

My crop top just got tons of dirty looks from old ninnies at a craft store, but it’s fine. They wasted their lives stifling themselves to observe social conventions, and my nonconformity reminds them of that.

realdreams–Thoughts of a Silver Fox (via realdreams)

❤️

You are more than capable of accomplishing ANYTHING you want to do, Only you can stop you. Stay Classy