All Fat Considered

collateraldamagesurvivors:

I am thirty years old and I am crying my heart out. This makes our fifth therapy session about body acceptance and self-esteem. I cried the the whole time during those sessions too. 

“What did he say?” my therapist asked.

I’m too embarrassed to tell her. And she’s been my therapist for four years. She knows my inmost thoughts and dreams, but I can’t manage to tell her this. So I tell her the story, hoping that by the end, I’ll have the strength to say what he said. 

“I’ve been called all sorts of things. Bitch, cunt, much worse. They roll off me and don’t mean a thing. I’ve had internet trolls tell me I should be raped to death. Doesn’t keep me awake at night. But the thing that’s hurt me most, the worst thing I think anyone has ever said to me was when I was 12. We were getting ready for church. The whole family was already in the car, and as usual, I was the last in. I remember exactly what I was wearing. A blouse. A black, knee-length skirt. Some horrible early nineties dress shoes. And some dark hose, almost tights, to cover what I already thought were my huge, fat legs.”

I stop here, remembering standing in front of the mirror, looking at myself in that outfit. 

“My dad stopped me. He said “Your legs look like tree trunks.” I’m not sure what he said after that, the blood rushing to my ears and my pounding heart made the rest of what he said a blur. I knew he told me to go back inside and change.

So I did. But I lingered another moment before the mirror, staring at my legs. I had started to get hips and thighs. I know now, that I wasn’t fat then, wasn’t even overweight. 

But I changed into a long dress.

And I never wore another skirt that showed my legs again. I didn’t wear a bathing suit for nearly twenty years after that. I still haven’t worn shorts. I never wore another tank top. Or sleeveless shirt. I stopped participating in sports because I’d have to reveal too much skin.

It helped start a terrible cycle of self-hatred, low self-esteem and obsession with my weight. I’m still fighting it. 

-Amy from Wellington

shewhorollswithrolls:

II’m horrified and disgusted by Comedy Central and Tosh.0 in a way that I can’t even voice- they have stolen an image from the Adipositivity Project, a website whose aim is to promote size acceptance and body positivity, and are using it to fan the flames of bigotry and hatred. I’m copying a blog post below from James Carter, which includes information on how to contact Comedy Central and ask that the image be removed, lest they incur legal action (action which is already underway, I might add).

I urge you to write to Comedy Central and add your voice to stop this hatred:

fat shaming and stealing: tosh.0 style

I want to let you know about Daniel Tosh’s theft of Substantia Jones‘ photograph that features my friend Janie Martinez. If you need to see the vitriol currently being spewed out onto it at the Tosh.0 website, go here.

Over and over, fat people are the butt of jokes, and it must stop. To add insult to injury, Comedy Central and Tosh.0 are using Substantia’s photo illegally. Substantia is a professional photographer who features professional models and every day folk celebrating their beauty and life.

To have Mr. Tosh or anyone steal these photographs for the explicit use of mean, snarky jibes continues a cycle of bullying culture. We wonder why people, especially women, have body image issues, yet the fat shaming entertainment industry encourages this belittling of people. It perpetuates a myth that one cannot be beautiful at any size, and it encourages trolls and bullies to believe what they write is actually funny. It’s not. It’s angry, spiteful and hurtful.

You can do something about this illegal, immoral activity. Please contact comedy central to protest Daniel Tosh’s theft of intellectual property:

Phone: (212) 767-8600
Fax: (212) 767-8592
Email:mail@comedycentral.com

It may not seem like a big deal in this day and age where we right click on photos and share them like toys in a sandbox, but Comedy Central and Daniel Tosh make money off stolen images like this. Reach out, stand up for artists, and help renounce sizeism.

Here we have a photo that included a watermark, but saw that watermark edited out so folks could pass around the photo to mock the subject (who is awesome, by the way!). I suspect Tosh.0’s defense will be that someone else stole it first as they have the audacity to credit the photo to some shady pic dump site. Yeah, folks on Pinterest and Tumblr do this all the time, but they are actually all wrong, too. Comedy Central is just wrong in a different way since they are profiting from the infringement.

While the comments on this post are especially odious, I was pleased that Substantia Jones’ response was right up on top.