Just Keep Dancin

One of our baby girls is fat, in the 99th percentile for her age. She is super cute and sweet. Lately, she has been sick with various breathing issues, so she has been reluctant to take her bottles. Normally, she’ll take 4 ounces of formula at lunch and 8 ounces in the afternoon. Today, I was lucky to get to her take 5 all day.

There was a substitute covering a lunch break in my classroom today. We emphasized to her that we need to keep trying to get the baby to drink her bottle until she finished it. She said, “Why are you guys so worried about taking her bottle?”

My coworker replied, “That’s where all her nutrients are. She needs the nutrients and the water.”

To which the substitute replied, “But she’s so fat. She doesn’t need it.”

By starving her. She insisted that her baby was ‘too fat’ and had an aim to remove any and all ‘chubbyness’ so her baby would be thin. She’d already been warned by her doctor about the baby not getting enough food, but insisted she knew best.

After several months of this her baby passed out cold one day and was rushed into hospital where the doctors found her to have severe malnutrition, a low body temperature and low pulse rate. They asked my cousin what she’d been feeding her daughter and she said “one bottle of skimmed milk a day. I don’t want her growing up fat.”

Even after nearly killing her daughter my cousin maintained her view that fat = bad and ended up with all her kids taken from her because she was starving them and neglecting them.

When your fatphobia leads you to starving your own children then you’ve got serious problems.

Is

Real

She backed off saying, ‘Well he looks fine!” – proving once again that weight bias is not truly about health – But I know many other parents who are not as informed as I am about weight science and size diversity would react to this interaction by policing their child’s food intake, if not as an infant, then when he was an older child. This is exactly the type of seemingly-inconsequential interaction that starts the ball rolling on a lifetime of dieting, disordered eating, negative body image, and weight-based abuse for too many fat people.

Years later when he was five, another doctor measured his weight and height and commented that he is off the charts on both, but “at least he is in proportion.” And if he was not “in proportion,” I am sure I would have been advised once again to “watch his weight.” 

I no longer allow healthcare providers to weight my children unless it is absolutely medically necessary. They are unable to control their weight talk, which is a known harm for children.

1. The 4 years old daughter of a friend of mine came to our house to spend the weekend. She gave me a letter from her mom that said that the child was in a glutenfree diet because she was getting ‘awfully fat’ when eating cookies or bread (my celiac ass; who gets dhiarrea and loses a scary amount of weight whenever I eat something with gluten was like ’???’).

You can bet that I went to the supermarket with the kid and told her ‘go & take whatever you feel like eating’ and the poor child came back smiling with her arms full of biscuits and cupcakes.

She didn’t got sick (as a celiac would get) and told me later that she hated the diet her mother made her follow; because her cousins didn’t had to pass through that.

And what’s the scariest thing about this story? Her mother was a NURSE. A fucking nurse who didn’t have a clue of the harm that she was doing to her daughter’s body!

2. My little sister started to feel fatigued and dizzy at 9 years old. She felt nauseated at the sight of food and had abdominal pain that increased with physical activity.

Mom got her to the ER and the doctor dismissed it saying: ‘she’s fat and probably is feeling ill after eating too much burgers, get her to make some exercise and she will be better in no time’.My mom didn’t felt ok with the diagnosis and took my sister with a second doctor who also told her that ‘the child was just fat’.

My sister’s skin was starting to get yellow as the days passed and the abdominal pain was getting awful so my mom (heaven bless her!) got her to the ER for the third time:

SHE HAD STAGE 4 HEPATITIS AND WAS ABOUT TO DIE.

She survived after a long and painful recovery who involved being in bed for a whole year (remember that we’re speaking of a 9 years old child). Luckily they saved her liver and she didn’t went through a transplant… but let this sink:

If it weren’t for my mother, fatphobia would have killed her. Fatphobia kills kids and teenagers, fatphobia kills inocent people everyday. It treats human beings as lesser than others and hurts them in their most vulnerable times.

FUCKING TAKE NOTE OF THIS!

“How can I help you my child?”

“So the Chair I got from you and your dad is great, but I tripped over it and it broke, I was hoping you could fix it?”

“Go home and be at peace, your chair is fixed.”

“Lord, did you really just use a miracle to fix his chair?”

Its theorized that Jesus actually worked in - essentially - construction. Laying bricks and building buildings. This would have made Him very muscular and healthy, and would have provided enough income for Him to realistically leave His trade to become a Rabbi.

This also means he would understand the complexities of building the Temple and why it took so long. So add that to the shock value of Him saying He will rebuild it in 3 days.

And like I’m like. Oh great, a horse themed gender reveal party.

complete with like … just truly excessive foods and of course, themed cocktails

and this sign which like… the fragility of like *not* italicizing the word ‘colt’. Like imagine being this weird abt gender

with like, a bucket that eventually ‘revealed’ the gender

But like… the picture that really just completely undid me, for this party which surely was more money than many weddings -

“5 Ways White Women Center Themselves in Conversations About Race

1. Crying

I don’t care whether you’re crying because you feel attacked or crying because you feel guilty — either way, you need to stop. When you cry the natural focus shifts to you because many folks don’t feel comfortable continuing a conversation with someone who is so visibly distraught. You’ve created two scenarios: either I have to console you, or I have to put away the conversation. Neither is fair and both are to appease you — the white person who is not harmed and is actually *benefitted* by racism.

2. Redirecting to Your Trauma 

Trauma and mental illness are both very real and should be taken seriously. That said, conversations about racism are not the time and place to focus on the struggles you’ve been through in your life, nor are they sufficient excuses for not engaging in the intentional work of anti-racism.

I always find these redirects ironic because *racism* is traumatic. Constantly dealing with *white fragility* is traumatic. By re-centering the conversation to be about you and your trauma you are contributing to the racial trauma of the person you’re speaking to.

3. Bringing Up Times When You Were A ‘Good Ally’ 

Please stop. You think we can’t tell, but I promise you —we can. I don’t want to hear about that one time when you stood up for a Black person I don’t want to hear about how inspiring the book you read last month was, and I certainly don’t want to hear about that one friend you have who you noticed did something racist once. I’m sorry you just not going to be getting a biscuit for *any* of that. Save yourself some energy, girl! Quit the show. We’ll know if you’re a good -ally if you show us with your actions. When you recenter yourself in this way it forces us to reassure you that you are in fact a ‘good person’ and ‘not a racist’. Exhausting.

4. Credentialing

This is something that Robin Diangelo discusses in her book White Fragility shaped by her learnings from Black folks. Stop talking about all the qualifications you have in this area. Having Black friends, living in a Black neighborhood, getting a degree in ethnic studies, working in social justice, writing a book. I don’t care how “official” the credential sounds. If you are white there are not enough credentials in the world to immunize you from racism.

This really builds off the last point because you are again centering yourself in a way that expects the person you re speaking to to validate your ‘credential’ as sufficient credit to excuse you of your racism. Yet again, the conversation has become about you.

5. Apologizing For White People And Expressing Your Guilt

Unless you are being called out for a specific harm *you caused* I’m not sure why you’re apologizing. I certainly don’t understand why you re apologizing for people other than yourself!! You can’t do that. Often when I’m talking to white people about race I’m looking for active listening, for empathy, compassion and solidarity. Not apologies and not guilt. I can’t do anything with your guilt. When you recenter the conversation this way the person you’re speaking with is forced to ‘accept your apology’ or attempt to ease your guilt.

A Final Note

While this list was created from my, and other Black folks, experiences with white women, I think some of these items are also relevant to any of us in dialogue about oppressive systems that we benefit from: whether it be transphobia, colorism, xenophobia, or any other form of oppression, those of us who benefit from an oppressive system need to be aware of the way we show up in conversation with those of us who are harmed.”

Cat: Arr-rar! (weird chirp noise)

Cat: [weird mechanical-sounding hiss]

Cat, while licking finger, in a very gravelly voice: Ah mlem-a-mlem-a-mlem-mlem-a-mlem-a-mlem… mrowr rowrrr…

Person holding camera: I love you.

Ferret sees snow for the first time

Turns out, the lil’ ghost redwoods benefit their hosts by filtering toxins and acting as a sort of backup immune system.