Just because your body isn't where you want it to be doesn't mean you shouldn't take care of it

fat folks voices should be the ones centered in conversations on fatness, we don't need straight sized folks being our saviours.

aspoonfulofalice

i don’t know about you, but i’m really struggling to understand the world’s obsession with going ‘back to normal’ ✨

oh, your body’s changed during pregnancy? better get it back to normal as if you haven’t just spent 9 months growing a human inside it!

gained weight because of a global pandemic? god forbid you step outside before you’ve lost the ‘extra’ pounds.

and it’s not just about bodies, either.

what’s that? your priorities have changed and you need more downtime these days? don’t worry — you’ll be back to normal in a flash once you get back into the swing of things.

but why on earth would we want go back? going backwards suggests that our experiences (both mental and physical) are worth nothing — and if we’re always striving to go back to how we were before, how on earth can we be expected to grow? 🌻

both our minds and our bodies are designed to change and develop over time. our skin doesn’t split if it’s stretched — it cleverly creates more room, resulting in those wonderful little marks that tell our own individual stories. we are literally built for growth.

i’m different now, in so many ways. just know that it’s okay if you are too 💗

But where is the body positivity content focused specifically on physically disabled people or people who look different because of their disability

I would like to see it

fat men deserve so much better. you don't have to be skinny or muscular to be worthy of anything in this life. you shouldn't have to dress to the nines or try to conform to society's idea of a "real man" in order to be taken more seriously.

there's nothing wrong with being fat, soft, comfy, casual, queer, disabled, or literally anything else society tells you you shouldn't be. you can just be yourself - whatever that means for you. your body does not dictate who you are or who you can be. you do. you're a person and should be treated like one.

please be kind to yourself and stick up for yourself when people put you down. surround yourself with the support you deserve.

A List of Fatphobic Things People Might Not Realize Are Fatphobic

1. Trash talking food. Not by saying you don’t like it, or that it’s not cooked to your liking, but by calling it “bad”, “bad for you”, “unhealthy”. Ditto when you say “I’m being so bad eating this cake. It will go right to my hips”, and all the multiple iterations of complaining about food being fattening, wrong, sinful, evil, or bad. 

Why? Because food is morally neutral. Food doesn’t make people unhealthy. Sometimes the types and amounts of food some people eat will contribute to health problems, but you’d be shocked at how rare it is to be able to tell someone’s health status from ONE meal that they happen to be eating across from you. If you are in fact being so “bad” and morally destitute by having cheese fries or a piece of pizza or a slice of cake, then maybe... don’t eat it? But please hold back from the verbal self flagellation. It tells fat people near you that being like them is “bad and unhealthy”. 

2. “ohhh that outfit is so flattering!” 

Why? 99.9% of the time, ‘flattering’ is a code word for “makes you look less fat.” It’s rarely about how your shirt matches your hair color, or how those pair of pants highlight your strong calf muscles, and is usually just another way to say “That makes you look less like yourself, and that’s a good thing.” Ever notice that thin people are rarely told their outfit is “flattering”? 

3. Talking about your diet in public. 

Why? You’ve decided to start eating less and cutting out foods from what you eat in an attempt to shrink your body. Fine. That’s your decision. But when you talk incessantly about calories, fat grams, pounds lost, avoiding dairy, avoiding carbohydrates or all the long list of things you’re not allowed to eat, you’re basically promoting an unhealthy, fat-hating life choice you’ve made, and that will make fat people around you who’ve tried multiple times to lose weight without success, or people who feel bad about the size and shape of their body that are within earshot feel like crap. I did this for years. Talking all the time about my diet to people. It was because I was making a grand sacrifice for the sake of being thinner (everyone says ‘healthier’ now, but it’s always been about being thinner). I was being a brave and virtuous soldier in the war on my body’s size. I wanted praise for being a good person for fixing the obvious problem of my body.

People talk about diets being about health all the time, but they’re not about health. With the exception of medical interventions for pressing medical emergencies, no diet that involves eating less food in an effort to make yourself smaller is healthy or beneficial to your body in the long run. It causes problems for your metabolism, puts strain on your heart, causes issues like night sweats, obsessive food thoughts, fatigue, and mental exhaustion as you move through a world where food is a constant temptation, and if you eat it, you’re a bad, weak, unhealthy person. Yuck. I get why people diet. With the way diet culture has a stranglehold on all of us, I’m always way more surprised by someone who doesn’t want to diet than I am by someone who does. And I get why people talk about them so much. Your diet will swiftly become the main thing you think about all day long, as your body contorts itself to try and make you eat more. This is a panic response to a perceived health risk (a sudden and inexplicable lessening of food intake = starvation). So you’ll definitely want to talk about it, and everywhere you go, people will pat you on the back and congratulate you for changing your body. Shrinking it. Proving that you’re “good”, just like the food you eat. But still, have a care for who is around you when you talk this way. Fat people are listening. 

4. Complimenting people on weight loss or on specific body parts.

Why? This should be obvious, but when you compliment someone on weight loss, you are saying that people who weigh more than them are a problem to be solved, and that the thinner person is someone they should admire and emulate. 

We all treat dieting and weight loss as if it were essential to being a healthy and above all good person. It’s not OK. Sometimes people lose weight due to illness. Or an eating disorder. It is saying ‘good for you! you’re less fat!” So if you can’t understand why that’s fatphobic, I don’t know what else to say to you. 

A friend of mine was babysitting for a neighbor’s child recently. The little girl was very slim, and my friend made sure to say “wow you’re so skinny!”. I told her shouldn’t remark on the child’s body type, either positively or negatively. Kids should be allowed to just be in their bodies, without societal judgments on what that means. I never compliment people on their size or shape. Just their strength or beauty outside of the size of their body. “Your hair looks amazing!” or “I love that shirt you have on”, are good replacements for “your waist is so narrow” or “Wow, you’ve lost so much weight! Good job!”

5. Calling bodies around you “good” or “amazing” because they are thin and muscular. Look, I get that if someone with a slender, muscular body scrolls by on tumblr, you’re tempted to say they have an “amazing” “great” or “good” body. How about just saying they look hot or sexy? I think fat people are hot and sexy all the time, but I don’t use moral qualifiers like “Good” or “nice” when talking about bodies. We’re all allowed to have personal preferences, and if the cut line of a guy’s deltoid makes you drool, feel free to say he has sexy arms, but why would you say his arms are “good”? So people without muscular shoulders have “bad” arms? It’s not helpful. 

This one is subtle. But just like the food, it gives a moral value to thinness and muscularness that’s exclusionary and critical of people who don’t look like that. How often have you seen fat men with muscular arms praised for having “amazing” or “good” bodies? How often have you seen a voluptuous, plus size hottie described as having a “good” body. Ugh. Or the worst of them all: Perfect. “She has a perfect body.” Or “flawless”. *shudder*. It is awesome to tell your lover that you love their body and find them “perfect just the way they are”, and if you use the terms “perfect” and “good” for all kinds of bodies, then you rock. But most people only reserve those labels for thinness. 

I am fully aware that a lot of this sounds nit picky or might not immediately make sense, but I assure you, it makes sense to a lot of fat people who’ve had to hear their shape and size passive aggressively vilified on a daily basis. Next time you go to compliment someone on their weight loss around fat people, or when you call your food “bad” because it might make you fatter, just stop to think how that might affect people around you. 

CottageWhoreDiaries

Getting my butt back into into $kripper condition 🫧

I recently discovered that I am nowhere near as flexible as I used to be. I know I should have expected it because I have not been practicing at all… I still got kind of sad when I realized that I hadn’t been doing something that I found so much joy in. I decided that I was going to start back. I will admit these last few days I feel like incorporating yoga and stretching for mobility/ flexibility into my morning routine has generally made me feel better. Now the hurdle is being consistent. I believe the best way to hold me accountable for making sure that I am continuing this journey is to document it!

So far I’ve been using a few creators on Instagram to begin my journey into yoga 🧘🏾‍♀️

Payalagarwalmukherjee | literally my favorite

Tiffanycroww | “Accessible yoga for beautiful bellies”

Dorianeleibel | Really great inclusive alternatives for beginners

This month im going to be looking into finding some free YouTube videos too. It feels really nice to have a hobby. Hopefully I will have others to share it with once and a while. Fingers crossed 🤞🏾If you are someone interested in seeing my journey or joining in pls feel free to follow me 🫶🏾☀️

So cheers to my first post !

BodySuit Link 🤍

Body Liberation Photography; no photoshop, just you and the lights, camera and emotion. Creating mementos of our movement into our raw, sensual, electric power.

In the beginning it is said that God created the heavens and the earth. So I ask myself exactly how many heavens did They create? Did They put one on earth or are all of them in the cosmos? I want to know why They gave us these bodies only for them to be ordained by false standards of what is acceptable and what is not. When did Eve realize her husband was stealing the sovereignty out of her spine? Was it slowly seeping or did he violently suck it out through a straw. I imagine it tasted sickly sweet, like the forbidden fruit he forgot to tell her not to eat. A sugar rush for control.

I want to ask Eve: How bad did he scold you when he caught you laying with Lilith? How many times did he tell you that the only time you can wrap your body around another woman is if a man is watching? Why did you listen when he told you that you were made for his consumption? That you belonged to the world and not yourself from the moment of your conception?

Do you hear the heavens rejoicing? They said don’t let this world rob you of your streets of gold. You have the right to govern your body as long as you are in your truth. Skinny dip yourself into the colors of the sunrise if you want to. You do not exist to serve and please others. Your menstruation is not a scarlet letter, your blood is a war cry. Your non-conforming body an act of revolutionary rebellion. Do not curb your emotions, pacify your speech or soften your tone. Don’t be afraid to cut someone with the blade of your tongue. It’s sharper than any two-edged sword. They have always been afraid of gnashing teeth. I hope you learn how to bare your fangs without the presence of a smile.

And show them that there is a heaven. Do you hear the rejoicing? There is a heaven. And it’s inside of you.

-jamera naquai, There Is A Heaven

i'm 38 and i've been in the Body Liberation mentality for a long time, but man the way your own internalized fatphobia slips in is kind of wild - like i've spent the past five hours in pretty significant discomfort, trying to find a position that will let me relax, then getting up and moving around, because my muscles ache, right? and obviously it must be because i need to move around, obviously the problem is me, because i am fat.

no, man. the problem is actually that i'm PMSing and i get deep muscle aches as part of my PMS, and i deserve to take some pain killers when my body hurts. jfc. take the ibuprofen. you don't have to earn it.