I am not Fat, I Have Fat....There's a difference...

As I get near my graduation this year, I am finishing up classes and making up missed classes.  Last night was a class on Diversity and we went over size-ism in the media.  It was a class I could've taught.  Maybe someday.  I do want to teach at my school once I have graduated and been released into the world.

This topic is very close to my heart because I have survived an eating disorder or several in my time.  While the actual act of starving, purging, and overexercising had stopped in my 20's, it still took several years to look at my body without condemning or insulting it.  Surviving cancer helped, but it wasn't a magic wand to cure years of body hangups.  I finally had to look in the mirror until all I saw was ME, not a combination of horrible body parts that people called Jo Anna.

I remember a close family member always making comments about me "sitting around getting fat" and that sort of thing.  It hurt my feelings back then, but I thought he was just in a bad mood or something when he said it, so I forgave him and let it go.  That was only a year or so ago.  I just spoke with him recently and updated him on how great D is doing and what a great kid he is and how he's growing up so fast and eating everything in sight.  His reply, "You better watch that, you don't want him getting fat."  What?  Um...he's going through puberty, he'll be 13 soon, he's about to have a major growth spurt.  "Oh, yeah, I didn't think about that."

This makes me wonder where he picked up the programming that fat is bad.  Why does he care?  My family was all about teasing, still is.  Everyone calling each other fat and grabbing love-handles and poking bellies.  I did not resonate with this kind of love.  It hurt my feelings.  I felt bad.  I was called a "tank" by one of my parents' friends' son, a "fat, ugly, pig" by the neighbor boy and any number of names at my Lutheran grade school that I will not repeat.  That's a lot to take when you are 12.  I was not "fat".  I had some fat, I was a healthy 12 year old girl!!!  I look at the pictures of that girl now, and she is beautiful!

I remember comparing myself to other girls, and women in the media and I was not like them, of course, since I hated my body, I wanted to look like girls who were not built like me, who were taller and had smaller bones.  I would never look like them, because I am not them.

Now, I love myself!  I would love to help you love yourself!  I truly feel that keeping women down and hating themselves is the best way to keep them from using their brains and running the world.  If every woman woke up today in love with herself, the economy built on diet pills, clothes, makeup, girdles, etc. would collapse as women started focusing on really important things, not the made up story about how wrong their body is.

PS.  As far as advertisers are concerned, you'll never win.  Love yourself now.  Look at clothes and makeup as toys and treats, not camouflage and war paint.  You'll have more fun.  Promise!