#militantbaker

Hey.  I’m Tana and I’m chuffed to meet you.  Yes, I’m new to this site, so be kind now.  Please play nicely.

I had to tell you something. Right now.  I’m all excited.  And I’ll tell you why. Because today I started my BIG FIGHT BACK.  Not only my big fight back.  But THE Big Fight Back.  It’s not just big.  It’s HUUUGGGE.  

Recently, my reading seems to have been heading irreversibly in one direction. Not about One Direction – that phase has passed now (Phew!  I’m old enough to be their Mum FFS) – but a particular direction.  And that direction is towards the awesome and empowering and very happy direction of BODY LOVE. Yes, YES!  What? (you shout).  She’s only just found this?  Er...yes. OK so I’m a little late to the party.  I’ve only just found that my own personal little fight back, which I kind of thought I was doing all on my own was really a BIG FIGHT BACK – one that thousands and thousands of people are engaged in right now.  And that makes me very, very happy.  And also reminds me that if I have a good idea, I should get the fuck over myself and realise that lots of other people will have had the same one.

I read lots and lots and lots and lots about how we need to love ourselves in the bodies that we have regardless of weight, size, height, skin colour, gender, ability…the very body that we have right now.  And it sang to me.  It made me pump my chubby fist with joy (yes, I need to stop doing that – see previous 1D comment) and it made me realise that there is hope for us all to stop hating ourselves and stop judging people around us. YES!  But guess what…

My reading about this stuff started because I had been to the doctor, and yet again (and again and again and again) I came out of there thinking that she didn’t listen to one fucking word that I said.  She waiting for me to stop talking and sighed, and said ‘well we could send you for some blood tests and see if there’s anything wrong, but what you really need to do is lose weight’.  Really? Well, OK.  But the problem is Doc, that like millions and millions of other people, I CAN’T FUCKING LOSE WEIGHT.  My body does not lose weight.  It stays this weight.  The weight that it has been since I was 15 years old.  This weight that it has been for thirty fucking years!

And what’s more, there’s an angry little voice inside me that I have never had the guts to let out in that surgery. And it says ‘she’s wrong’.  It says that her assumption that I NEED to lose weight is based on fattism – pure and simple.  It makes me question her professionalism and her intelligence and her scientific curiosity to fall back on such a well-rehearsed response.  But I remind myself that those thoughts are childish, and disrespectful and that I’m not a doctor so what the hell do I know?  So I didn’t say it. I felt embarrassed.  I felt like I had wasted her time.  And I still felt unwell, but with no idea why.

So I went home and cried. Then I went online for diet advice (again).  And I read up on new breakthroughs in weight-loss (again).  And I read about insulin resistance (again).  And I decided that I would go on a diet and lose ALL THE FAT (again).  And even though it had never ever worked before, and I had never maintained any weight loss in all of the thirty years that I had been trying…this time it was DEFNITELY going to work.  So I went out to the supermarket and bought all the ‘right’ food (again).  And I started that very day.  Well…not that very day, because it was a Friday and everyone knows that diets start on Monday.

Then I started reading. I read about HEAS® (Health at Every Size)  www.lindabacon.org/haesbook.  I watched the awesome TedX talk Why It’s OK to be Fat by Golda Poretsy www.youtube.com/watch?v=73SXX0w4eY8. I read Jes Baker’s FATABULOUS book Things No One Will Tell Fat Girls  www.themilitantbaker.com And when I was reading about throwing my scales away I thought ‘Ooh, I was really GOOD yesterday, I wonder what I weigh?’   So I went to the bathroom, and I stood on the scales, and I saw the number…and I felt like shit.  Because despite the salad, and the four mile walk, and ALL that water I drank yesterday, I had put on a pound.

And after putting myself through this pointless, daily masochistic ritual, I then I went back to the book.  I mean…how fucked up is that?  What is the matter with me?  So I had a damn good word with myself.   Then I went back into the bathroom, picked up my scales and THREW THEM OUT OF THE WINDOW! Smashed the oppressive fuckers to bits! Rid myself of the tyrannical, misery inducing bastards!  Right there and then.

Uuuumm…well, no. OK.  I couldn’t actually bring myself to do it.  I loved imagining myself doing it, but chickened out.  But I DID take the scales, and put them under the bed in the spare room, behind a whole load of crap that I really, really will clear out one day.  Tomorrow I might just fish them out, DEFINITELY NOT WEIGH MYSELF, HONEST, and take the battery out and chuck it away.  It’s one of those stupid round flat ones, and it’s a proper arse-ache to find a new one.

So there you have it my friends.  Day one of my real, non-weighing, wearing-whatever-the-fuck-I-want, body loving day.  And I just had to share it with you. Because I know that there are so many of you out there who feel the same as me.  And the more of us that are talking and sharing and encouraging and loving our – and everyone else’s – bodies, well then the quicker we win this FIGHT.  

I’ll see you again very soon.  Keep fighting you beautiful people.

Love and Peace,

I. Am. Brainwashed.

I’ve been waiting for years to do stuff. Go here or there, wear this or that, talk to this person, make plans with that person etc etc etc etc etc etc so many etc

I realize tonight really hate myself for not being attractive. (I’ve always known it, I guess.)

Like really. Poisonously hate myself. Self sabotaging my work, my art, my sex life. Every aspect because I do not think I deserve it. So much so, I long for easy, sweet, peaceful death, not being bound in this body that stops people from loving me. That stops me from loving me.

Because society treats me as if I do not deserve it.

I see successful female artists local and national. They are all thin. I visit their pages to admire the work and try to figure out how to squeeze some success out my work. I often wonder if they would be as successful as they are if they looked like me. I always think “no, they wouldn’t, no one would give a shit about them if they didn’t have the fuckability factor.”

I know this isn’t the right way to feel about my fellow female artists.

I'm proud to be on the steering committee for The Body Love Conference.  Please take a moment to check out this fabulous (and embarrassingly human) fundraiser promotion video starring our founder The Militant Baker.  

We need your help to bring body positive advocates to Tucson and to make this an event of a lifetime.

Support our cause here.  $5 or $500, everything helps!!! 

What is The Body Love Conference?

The Body Love Conference is a high energy, positive and progressive event where women can come together to build a community in a supportive environment while participating in revolutionary presentations and workshops. Backed by an all-volunteer staff of dedicated body-positivity activists and artists, Baker’s  Body Love Conference dream is well on its way to becoming reality. Among the body-positivity celebs already booked to attend are EffYourBeautyStandards founder and model Tess Munster, and local celebrity photographer Jade Beall of A Beautiful Body Project. With over 400 anticipated attendees and an all-day program of presentations and workshops on a range of subjects – featuring the history of the beauty myth, social concepts of aging, post-birth bodies, clothing alteration, body-positive dance, overcoming self-hate with love, and why it’s crucial to challenge and reform social norms, among others - The Body Love Conference is sure to attract enthusiastic participants from Tucson and beyond. It's huge. It's never been done before. We've needed something like this forever, and it's finally happening.

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