#bodypositive

Clothing budget update. I still desperately need bras I actually like, & a new jeans. I found a replacement hoodie for 🦴⭐️ using the $55 I've been saving for months, hoarding my acorns for 420 winters.

I feel gross about the cost of basic care. Deadass, I'm too poor to try this hard.

And I mean that. Most movements are based on a victim–perpetrator dynamic. Shame culture—meaning the practice of shaming people who don’t meet the body and beauty standards of the time, which shift every decade or so—created what we now know as the body‑positive movement.

Just as the civil rights movement arose from racial injustices against Black people, and LGBTQ+ labels emerged as a response to discrimination and oppression under heteronormative propaganda. Making heterosexuality the default has harmed everyone, forcing us to create labels simply to understand one another—because everyone is unique in who they are. The issue is that we’ve normalized bullying as a method of compliance.

I’m late to the game, but I did watch Jillian Michaels vs. 20 Body‑Positive Activists, and I have thoughts. First of all, that woman is the wrong person to represent or handle anything related to obesity and health as a whole. I would’ve had her removed from the premises the moment she said “fat body.” But this is an entertainment platform that thrives on negativity and poor bedside manners. What she said right out of the gate was unprofessional and passively fatphobic, making her biases front and center and the environment unsafe. Jillian is not a safe professional to debate or even discuss obesity with the public. When someone uses a passive slur and refuses to retract it, they should be removed entirely.

“Fat body” is a passive slur—just like when someone says, “You look cute for being a Black guy.” That’s passive racism. Some people are unaware, while others know exactly what they’re doing—being racist, homophobic, or fatphobic, as Jillian was, by making backhanded comments. To maintain integrity, I would’ve given her an ultimatum: “Retract your statement and apologize for your behavior, or leave the premises. You’re done.”

Jubilee is not an ethical debate channel, by the way—it’s entertainment. Real debates have rules of decorum. On entertainment platforms like Jubilee, those rules are lifted because viewership matters more than maintaining a safe space or having meaningful discussions.

I noticed people saying Jillian was composed and “ate the activists up.” Peeps, she lost. Nothing she said made a difference. The point of a debate is to plant a seed of understanding and possibly change someone’s perspective. She lost brutally. She reacted like a rabbit backed into a corner by wolves—horrible analogy, but it fits. By saying “fat‑bodied” right at the start, she invalidated the debater’s feelings, triggering everyone in the room. When people feel threatened, they stop focusing on the question and instead plead emotionally for the perpetrator to see their perspective. Jillian became the perpetrator of that debate.

We, the viewers, aren’t going to feel as threatened—but the people in that room did. It’s a different experience when the bully is physically present. People who shame others are perpetrators. It doesn’t matter if they claim to “mean well.” No—well‑meaning people are careful with their words and make every effort not to say anything that could be perceived as threatening. I’m always aware of that with people I don’t know or care about. But with ill‑mannered people who do horrible things, I take intentional jabs—because I’m human, and I absolutely detest people who act cruelly toward others.

In Jillian’s case, throughout the debates, she was not mindful of her words and let her extreme biases slip out often. That’s the “rabbit backed into a corner” effect Jillian was experiencing—she felt threatened because the activists were revealing their trauma as a defense.

I’ll say this again: Jillian created an unsafe environment. She needed to be removed. The entire debate was doomed from the start because of that. There were no “gotcha” moments or Jillian “owning” anyone—she lost. And not only that, she made herself look bad on social media to professionals.

Jillian always makes herself look bad. People forget that she and her co‑star on The Biggest Loser almost had someone die on their watch. If that person had died—and she technically did, flatlining while being medevacked out—that would have been Jillian’s fault, her co‑star’s, and the production’s. Just because contestants sign a disclosure agreement doesn’t mean they aren’t responsible if someone dies. Jillian was lucky no one died on her watch. I’ve met people who have had someone die under their supervision, and they left their careers entirely because of it. Some have even taken their own lives because they couldn’t live with the guilt of being directly or indirectly responsible for someone’s death. Others, even when not directly involved, left their careers after such tragedies.

My father once experienced something similar. He was in charge of training cyclists and wasn’t even on site—he was on vacation with my mother and me—when he got the call that one of his students had suffered from hyponatremia during an outdoor training course. It was a hot day, and the man had been drinking gallons of water. He collapsed suddenly, and by the time the ambulance arrived, he had died. Let me tell you, men can cry. My dad had to pull over and bawl his eyes out. The student was young, and my father knew him and his family. After that, every precaution was taken when training in heat—how to hydrate properly without risking water poisoning.

So Jillian, as a fitness influencer, should not be anywhere near the body‑positive movement. She’s primarily an entertainer, focused on her career rather than people’s well‑being. I’m not saying Jillian is evil—she just cares about herself and wants to make money as an entertainment fitness influencer. Many influencers are like that; it opens more pathways to upward mobility. That’s why Jillian, a conservative lesbian, is completely out of touch. As a white, cisgender lesbian woman, she has more pathways to success under capitalism than she would if she were progressive or humanitarian. Capitalism drives people’s focus.

Jillian is also egocentric. It was obvious right away when she used medical terminology as a tactic of superiority—even after her debaters asked her to use words they could understand, saying, “We are not doctors.” The twenty activists were trying to get Jillian to respect them and meet them at their level of understanding. Jillian struggled to do that. If she truly wanted to connect, she would’ve used accessible language from the start. But for Jillian, it was a “smart person contest.” That was another indicator she lost—she treated it as a superiority contest.

Debates are supposed to plant seeds of understanding and help people see different perspectives. That’s not what happened.

It’s why I can’t debate anyone on the topic of a cosmic creator. There’s no evidence to prove or disprove that a cosmic creator exists. Neither side has conclusive evidence, so it’s always a stalemate. When someone argues that point, they reveal how little they understand about how knowledge expands. As I’ve said in other blogs, radio waves existed before we created radios—we had to invent radios to discover and use those waves.

That’s why I say humility is the opposite of arrogance. Humility allows expansiveness—the ability to admit we don’t know everything yet. You can tell when someone is rooted in arrogance because they refuse to acknowledge that. It’s a matter of introspection—asking, “Why do I want a cosmic creator not to exist?” or, in Jillian’s case, “Why am I in the health industry? Why am I in entertainment fitness?”

She has to admit to herself that it was never truly about helping people. Jillian prefers being an entertainer to being a figure of health and fitness. That’s why she was capable of acting so horribly on camera—being filmed gave her permission to be the worst version of herself. She chose to present that persona, and even in that debate, she continued to embody it.

The way to deal with people like that is to remove them as credible voices in fitness and health—because biases get in the way of helping others.

I would never in my life say to any of the women I know with a larger body mass that they are “fat‑bodied.” And if something I say ever comes out the wrong way, I apologize immediately when called out. I deeply care about the people in my life and their well‑being, no matter their body type. Many of them are beautiful to me because of their sense of fashion, their humor, their kindness toward my own well‑being, and the way they carry themselves—letting their personalities shine.

One friend’s fashion sense blows my mind. Every time she walks into a room, I notice her outfit of the hour. She’s adjacent to goth but far more posh and upscale with the brands she wears. She’s witty with words and makes it her mission to tease me as much as possible—but always respectfully. I usually play along. Both she and her husband are a joy to be around during group meetings and events.

Most of my long‑term relationships have been with women who are body‑shamed by society for their size. I always gave them extra love to remind them they were the most gorgeous women to me. Fuck everyone else who’s a hater.

Now, I was concerned about their health, so I cooked often and made a habit of doing things together that benefited both of us. Most people with larger body mass are aware of their health circumstances. More mass around the belly can be concerning because visceral fat surrounds the organs—but in many women, midsection fat is often linked to hormonal imbalances.

During my four‑year relationship, my partner needed hormonal therapy because her midsection carried most of the fat, while her limbs were muscular—she could easily lift a hundred pounds at the gym and worked heavy manual labor. But she couldn’t afford hormonal therapy because of the broken healthcare system here in the U.S. So, you make do in life.

But I’ll end it at that.

Shaming people is the reason the body‑positivity movement exists in the first place.

We can’t heal shame with more shame. The body‑positive movement isn’t about perfection; it’s about reclaiming dignity.

Take that as you will.

When I retired, I never imagined I'd become an author.

Since then, I've written and published 20 books, 18 of them weight-gain/fat-fetish novelettes. Over the past two months, I've stepped away from writing new stories so I could go back and revisit the ones I'd already published.

So far I've completely rewritten 6 or 7 of them.

It's been a lot more work than I expected, but it's also reminded me how much I've learned as a writer. Every rewrite has given me the chance to deepen the characters, strengthen the stories, and make each book closer to what I originally wanted it to be.

I honestly think they're becoming better books.

I hope those of you who've been following along notice the difference too.

I'll leave you with one of the images I recently created for one of my books. You all always seem to enjoy those.

Thank you for reading my stories, following my journey, and continuing to support an old retiree who somehow became an author.

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