Fat visibility and the Fattylympics

I was lucky to be stallholding at the fantastic Fattylympics, which was held in East London this weekend and organised by Charlotte Cooper, Kay Hyatt and so many other amazing people. The event was a satirical community event, protesting the impact of the Olympics upon East London (and London in general). I loved being present at the event for so many reasons – diversity, fun, laughing and being able to spend time in a community of people that I value so much. I went feeling nervous (I am not great at stallholding, or talking to people) and a bit worried about whether I’d be able to cope, and left feeling light hearted, full of ideas and empowered. I still can’t quite articulate how amazing the event was, how funny and life affirming the activism was. Fat acceptance is so often about SERIOUS BUSINESS STUFF – not that this wasn’t also, but the silliness and use of humour on our own terms was just so energising and necessary. Before I start moaning about what else happened on the day, please have a look at these photographs and Charlotte’s beautiful account as organiser.

I found out early this week that reporters from the Daily Mail had reported on the event, producing an article which, of course, pokes fun at the abundance of the attendees, makes inevitable jokes about how much food was consumed on the day and managed to get the entire point of the event wrong, as well as confusing the organiser with an attendee. The reporter and photographer came to the event despite the organisers publicly requesting that no journalists were present – they hadn’t asked permission, neither did they bring up their presence at any point, and the images taken from the day were published without so much as a model release or a fact check taking place. I don’t expect anything from the Daily Mail, I’ve never read anything from them apart from sensationalist, spectacularly incorrect and hate mongering writing, but it did make me think a lot about the price of visibility. This was a relatively small community event, with maybe 150 attendees, a peaceful protest that gained the attention of the mainstream media because of our fat – not because of the politics of the event itself, just because it was an easy opportunity to exploit for their own benefit.

I am angry about representations of fat in mainstream media because it perpetuates the idea that it is necessary for our collective health – it will help to make us all realise that changing our bodies is necessary, that it’s all for our own good instead of for what is largely an aesthetic norm. The thing is, the majority of reporting about fat isn’t about health or anything with any rational reasoning behind – it’s about hate. If the people that reported about the obesity epidemic actually gave a shit about our physical and mental health, they wouldn’t photograph us without our permission, sell our (generally headless) bodies on – and if editors really cared, they wouldn’t fill their articles with this imagery. They’d focus their lifestyle articles on health at every size, and on healthy food without attaching an inevitable weight loss/diet goal alongside it. It’s not essential to include this with a recipe, or an exercise review – but it happens constantly, nonetheless, because it’s presumed to be a common goal.

Similarly, if anyone really gave a shit about my health, maybe they’d make it easier for me to exercise in a public space without verbal and sometimes physical harassment. I get shouted at on my bike constantly – sometimes in tunnels and on main roads in ways that could make me swerve and hurt myself. They’d make it possible for me to be in public without the fear that someone is photographing me, or possible to walk through the city centre at night without being verbally abused. The thing is, all of this fat hate is nothing to do with health at all – it’s all to do with aesthetics, with how we look and how we use our fat. The people that abuse me don’t want me healthy, they want me to acknowledge my inferiority or to become invisible/not there at all. Visibility is not an option.

Hearing about this hit pretty close to home with me, because it’s a prime illustration of what the price of being visible is. We were having fun, hell, we were being active, and this had to happen. I wish it were possible to find accounts of the event in mainstream media that understood the point of the event, but it’s perhaps too much to expect anyone to see past such an easy opportunity. 

Phew! After a month or two of hard work, I'm very excited to be able to show you all the next issue of Make It Work. This is available to purchase now from etsy here. There are also copies of Make It Work #1 still available (though in limited amounts now!) and a cute mini zine on the politics of self love and care that I made earlier this year. 


Here's the blurb for Make It Work #2:


"This is a copy of my second issue of "Make It Work". Make It Work is a radical fat positive zine centred around DIY fatshion and craft projects. It contains a mixture of personal pieces, tutorials for a feather fascinator and a gathered skirt. This issue there is also talk about depression, self care, make up, health, taste, gender play and a bonus fat pin up centrefold! As always, there's also some bad art and general garishness. Contributors include Cynthia (Life of Cyn), Lauren (Pocket Rocket Fashion), Claire (Monkey Fatshionista) and Rebecca (Fat Girl Living), as well as others! 

Half size (A5) with 40 pages total. The zine is colour and has a medium coloured card black and white cover. Sewn binding with wool."

Find it on etsy here!

On a side note, I'm just taking a bit of me time after clothes/zine making manically for the last month, so for now, my custom skirts aren't up on etsy. I'll be back soon, with a massive update of clothes which didn't sell at the Fattylympics. xxx

Transformation Narratives

There have been a few fat positive books released over the last couple of years, which is awesome. I’ve read some, but not all (though I want to), so this post is not targeted specifically at any particular book, more generally at the way publishers and editors seem to appropriate the movement.

I’m interested in the ways in which body acceptance narratives are presented in a more mainstream setting. Generally speaking, fat activists are introduced into mainstream discourses through history – I experienced this myself when I was filmed to be on Cherry’s Body Dilemmas last year. It’s necessary to justify our position as fat activists through the reiteration of suffering that we’re experienced before getting to that point. I am NOT interested in denying that we all face abuse on different levels, but it’s interesting that our acceptance is always framed around it. How would I have been portrayed if I’d always been happy, and never dieted, rather than having gone through eating problems, fad diets and lots of abuse in various settings? Would my acceptance have been presented as more or less valid? Would I have had different reactions?

My interest in fat narratives has developed recently as more books have been published with a “how to love your body” slant – self help, but from a fat positive, more radical angle. I get that books need to offer something unique, powerful and individual that makes a reader pick it from a bookshelf (rather than the many alternatives), but I find these prescribed narratives frustrating for a whole bunch of reasons, which I’m going to try and explain here:

-          The process of “transforming” is often used when talking about fat people – i.e. the before/after process of dieting, the abjection of fat bodies etc. The presentation of us as inadequate subjects/humans means that we have to undergo a process to become an acceptable member of society – normally dieting, but I wonder how these narratives fit in here too? Yes, they’re subversive in some ways, but they’re also still reliant in this transformation in order to become acceptable.

-          I get frustrated with the before/after presentation (i.e. before I hated myself, dressed in just black and now I am really happy and wear bright, tight things) because it makes it impossible to complicate the process – you’re either just happy or not happy at all. The truth is that body acceptance is a process, and it doesn’t happen overnight, and neither is it easy to completely shake off self hate. Everyone has ups and downs, whether you’re super body confident or negative – the levels just change. I cannot stress how hard it is to completely shut out fat negativity and hate when it’s around you constantly – however, what’s important is learning to decode these messages, how to compensate and deal with feeling upset by them, and how to support your body in spaces which don’t do the same. It’s okay to be upset and angry – but try and find ways to channel that upset and anger at the source, rather than at you or those close to you.

-          Focusing on an end point (when you completely love yourself and EVERYTHING IS HUNKY DORY) is kind of unproductive – like I’ve already said, that end point is tough, and you might not ever get there entirely. However, if you’ve made any progress at all, that’s fine, because you’re still resisting at some level.

-          Body acceptance is different for everyone!! I can tell you how I started to accept myself, and I can see commonalities between my methods of acceptance and self-care and others’, but our own methods and backgrounds are incredibly different. Fat acceptance is incredibly diverse, and to me, is built on difference – some of us got into it through academia, some clothes, some exercise, some community activism, some sex positivity, and the list goes on! Also, I find these “how to” narratives frustrating because they exclude people without certain resources, and always seem to be written from a privileged position in society, and targeted at a similar group.

It’s not that I don’t appreciate the contribution to publishing that fat activists have made (I wouldn’t be here without having read some of these books!), but I’d like to see more people queering and actively questioning these transformation narratives and the structure behind them.

Finding your own voice

OH NO A TEXT ONLY POST. (sorry)

Being creative is really important to me. I find being in spaces where creativity isn’t valued to be really tough going because it’s such a paramount part of the way that I engage with an environment – it’s in my choice of clothes, my approach to work and my hobbies, even the dynamics in my relationships. However, being a creative person is also pretty tough on me – most things I do feel like an extension of me, so therefore I take criticism badly and can often shut off when I fear I might face it, which in turn can have a negative effect on me.

I wanted to talk about creativity because it’s really central to my own fat activism – I’m passionate about making things, playing with my identity and producing content (both blogging, zines, and academic writing) that creatively counters what institutions have put in place about being fat. Mental health stuff means that being able to do this is very hard on me sometimes, which explains why I am sometimes less present or vocal on here and other places – sometimes what I deal with is just too tough and I need substantial periods by myself to recoup and move on. I’ve not really spoken about mental health and depression on here before, because it’s something I’ve only just acknowledged myself.

Often I’ve felt as if the best way to counter these negative patches is to make my creative output as good as it can possibly be – however, as I’m also a perfectionist, I never seem to reach the lofty heights of my ambition, so what I actually let out into the public realm is very limited. To illustrate this, I thought about starting this blog for about three years before I actually did – I’d been a part of fatshion communities both as a participant and through selling vintage clothing on eBay (which I did alongside my postgrad degree), and always really admired fatshion bloggers, but I wasn’t confident in my own ability so I put it off. Eventually I was unemployed for a bit and I started this space as a bit of a diversion – within a couple of weeks and after a miniscule amount of self-promotion, my first readers (most of whom are still here I think!) passed on my links and images, and I had an audience which began to grow and hasn’t stopped since. This blog has become much more than I ever anticipated it could be, and the support and kindness I’ve received has always massively outweighed the critiques and fat hatred that I also sometimes receive. I’m still very much not a “proper” blogger – most of my pictures are unedited, badly exposed and generally full of questionable facial expressions – but it doesn’t matter (maybe it would if I was trying to make money out of this, I don’t know).

I love the blogging world because it’s accessible to a much wider variety of people than traditional fashion platforms – I’m not saying that anyone can blog, because I also know that it takes a certain amount of resources to be able to do so (computer, internet access, camera, money for clothes), but rather that some of the hierarchies that have controlled the production of fashion culture have been removed. It’s a more democratic space, even if there are still prevalent norms and levels of privilege that often go unmentioned. I think the fashion industry looks down on blogs now, because they’re two a penny and everyone and their dog has one. However, I think this is what I love most about it. To me, I see a connection between this method of communication and zines and other DIY methods of counter culture – I created this space because I wanted there to be a fat fashion space that was also politically engaged and budget/DIY focused, and because I didn’t know many other similar voices out there. I used to have to imbibe substantial amounts of fat hatred to get my fashion fix, but now there’s no need for that, and that in itself is awesome.

I’ve said this before and I’ll say it again – bloggers are awesome, but we could be better. If you feel that your voice is missing from the fatshion world and you feel that you have the time and resources to change that, then do it! I’ll support you, and I know many others who will too. You don’t have to be a fashionista to write a blog, you don’t even have to be a particularly capable writer or photographer, and you certainly don’t need to look a certain way, contrary to what you might think. One of the most powerful aspects of blogging to me is the way that it has highlighted difference and variety in body shape, personal style, gender, sexuality, ability and colour – I love seeing how different people make a similar item of clothing work, because it’s such a contrast to the way I see clothes presented in shops and online (on a uniform, non-relatable body).  

I guess that what I’m saying is to myself as much to anyone else who’s gotten this far (congratulations!) – you don’t have to be perfect to have a creative output (whether that’s blogging, art, academic work, craft, music, whatever). I’ve always railed against the idea of perfection in aesthetics (being in possession of what society would determine a flawed body), and I guess it’s taken a while to apply this logic to my own creative projects too. Process is a really important part of our creative growth, and focusing on only the end point makes taking any steps towards it a very daunting prospect. If you feel you have something that needs saying, then find a basic forum to start working on it (whether this is yours or someone else’s blog, tumblr, a zine, a painting or art piece, anything) and just take it one step at a time. 

Make It Work!

How's that for a goofy grin?! So today I went to the printers and picked up my zine, Make It Work, at last! I've been working on this for a while now and it's really exciting to see it in paper form at last. Here are some details for you:

Make It Work is a radical fat positive zine centred around DIY fatshion and craft projects. It contains a mixture of personal pieces, tutorials, craft tips, guides to pattern upsizing, event organising and some fairly bad art. Contributors are awesome people from the fat-o-sphere including me (duh), Charlotte Cooper, Claire, Mel, Bronny, Brenda Jean and Kelsey and more.

“Make It Work” has been a mantra within fatshion communities since I can remember, and I’m interested in exploring it as a radical premise of fat positive politics. Fat people have and have always had very limited options in ready-made clothing, and, whilst retailers are starting to produce more on trend pieces, the process is slow and in the meantime, we have to come up with our own radical alternatives – whether it’s making clothes, thrifting, altering clothes or making straight sizes work for us. This zine is about sharing the resources, skills and knowledge that we’ve gained, and for it to provide strategies for people to move forward with.

Half size (A5) with 48 pages total. The zine is hand typed and has a medium pink card cover. Staple binding.

You can buy the zine from etsy here, or, alternatively you can leave your paypal email address and location in the comments below (or let me know it via email at fattyunbound@gmail.com) and I will send you a paypal invoice directly.

On bodies, respect and blogging

Okay, so as a blogger, I consent for my images to enter the public realm. This has been good for the main part, and I've made new friends, established myself in a body positive online community, and gotten a lot of support for my body from lots of people. However, there are horrible aspects too - images being taken without my consent, lots of internet snark, and occasional abusive comments. This also sometimes comes from within the fashion community (sometimes within the plus size blogging community too, which really makes me sad, as that's a space where I believe we shouldn't be exposed to diet/weight loss chatter).

The main thing I've wanted to explore lately is the interconnection between being a fashion blogger, a visible female, and being body positive. More mainstream fashion communities are intensely body policing and based around body hierarchies that mean that one body can look better in another. Even plus size stores like Evans preach dialogues of "flattery" and dressing to "suit your shape", which means that even shopping often involves the ongoing repetition that your body is inferior to others. These communities often seem to fragment our bodies, and I've seen my own body receive the same treatment quite a lot lately, because I don't hide my fattest parts. My belly is on display too much, my necklines are too high, my skirts are too short, and this must make me a bit delusional (because I wouldn't show these parts if someone just pointed my error to me!). We're almost told to "take responsibility" for our bodies and hide these fat parts for the sake of others - as if our bodies are public property that must be managed appropriately.

I've participated in fashion communities for years, when I was dieting and since I've become fat positive. I do so because I like clothes, and that's something I refuse to be made ashamed of. However, I don't believe that as a fat woman, I have to made any sacrifices for my body. Following these set rules and conditions to dress acceptably mean that shopping and dressing is no fun for me, as I'm constantly trying to fit within a strict set of variables, and hey, shopping for fat sized clothes is already tough enough as it is without rules to add to the mix!

I believe that one item of clothing can look amazing on a variety of different shapes. There isn't a body hierarchy to me because of this because of this. I don't believe that, as a female identified person or as a blogger, I am obliged to dress in any way - and I don't believe that anyone else is either. If you're fat and you want to wear spandex, or a unitard, or leggings as pants, or mini skirts, hot pants, body con dresses, and it makes you feel good then wear it. Similarly, I don't believe that anyone is obliged to dress "on trend" or in anything other than what they want to wear. Fashion is fun for me, but if it's not for you, then you don't need to spend time on it. I believe that part of feeling good in your body is finding a way to feel comfortable in it, whether that's dressing high fashion or low maintenance. I'm not interested in making anyone feel bad for having less (or no!) commitment to fashion than me.

It's disrespectful to comment negatively on someone's body in clothing (and out of clothing, and ever!) to me, for a variety of reasons. For one, you don't know what access they have to certain resources (I get pretty angry when people ask me to get a better bra, for instance, because large back small cup bras are pretty hard (and expensive) to come by), or how they feel about their body, or anything about their relationship to themselves. Also, dressing is personal expression for me, and, controversial as this opinion may be, I don't really believe in a right or wrong way to dress - just what works for me, personally. If you don't like the way someone dresses, don't read their blog. Learn to comment in a way that respects the poster (you can constructively criticise an outfit, but in a way that leaves body commentary out). Don't presume you know better than them, or anything about them.

Right now, fashion isn't a democracy (sadly it probably never will be). It's an industry that makes money out of telling people to "better" themselves constantly. Most of us will never be the person in fashion advertisements, but brands will have you believe that with the right amount of money, commitment, and weight loss regimes, we can become that. I believe that blogging can help to shift these attitudes, and help to focus on inspiring people of different shapes, gender identities, colours, abilities to dress the way the want to, not the way they've been told to. I appreciate the diversity I see in fashion blogging now, but I also acknowledge and hope that there could be a lot more. However, this won't happen unless fashion blogging becomes a friendlier, and more respectful, space.

Jeans and a casual rant

Wide legged jeans! I can honestly say I never though I'd see the day when I gave up my skinnies. Well, I haven't at all really, but with the 70s silouhettes I'm loving for the summer I wanted another option to wear with my luxurious flowing tops (and because I love dressing like a 70s nerd, complete with flares, big glasses and a tank top. Ohhhh yes.). Dorothy Perkins have £5 off all their jeans in store and online at the minute, and after the style I wanted sold out online but appeared in a branch local to where I work, I jumped on them. These are a size 20/short fitting, which is particularly odd given that I am neither a size 20 or particularly short at 5'9"! I wore this to travel to another archive to prepare some nitrate film for scanning, which is hazardous and potentially explosive, so needless to say I was dressed for comfort and ease above anything else.

Jumper, £3, charity shop

Belt, old vintage stock

Wide leg jeans, £21, Dorothy Perkins

Dunlops, £2, car boot sale

Duffel coat, £12.50, River Island sale (though it was way too hot for this in the end! Yay for sunny weather!)

Also, on a related note I wanted to say how awesome I thought this post on Corpulent was. There is a tension, I feel, in the fatosphere about posting casual outfits. As I have moved back to embracing wider legs and baggier silouhettes, I'm really interested in this debate. Is dressing up a comment on our bodies as inferior when dressed down? Obviously as a person who overdresses frequently, I don't believe this is true (I do it for many other reasons though - to amuse myself, sometimes to engender responses from others and mainly to feel fantastic in myself), however I do feel that there is a pressure on fat bloggers to dress up. This is certainly connected to the stereotype of the fat slob in jeans and tracksuits. It's a tricky balance to strike - by posting pictures of ourselves dressed up, we are refuting this stereotype, but, at the same time, I don't believe that as a fat person, I should be obligated to dress up in order to make my body acceptable or attractive to people who wouldn't otherwise deem it so. Jeans and t-shirts can look amazing on any body, and neither should cultural implications of a particular style of dress make you avoid such clothing. This is why I enjoyed fatshion february so much - it presented images of fat femmes on both up and down days - I felt like it was more of a representation of lived experiences in clothing than more formal blogs.

I post the outfits I wear most days - mainly otherwise they're repeats, hideous mistakes or else I'm sat in my pajamas! This blog is about everyday dressing for me - that's why my photographs and editing are haphazard, and why I sometimes don't post huge chunks of text. I would rather there were lots of outfits updated regularly, which show how I live and what I live in as a fat woman, than more formal photoshoots (though I like these on other blogs also, it's just a personal preference).

I'm always faffing on about this, but the only person I believe you should dress for (as a fat person or otherwise) is yourself. Dressing for me is a way of showing that I like my body, and before that, a strategy of acceptance. Don't dress to make anyone else happy! Wear something that makes you feel fantastic, that you love, and that fits you as well as is possible, and that you feel comfortable in. This could be jeans and a t-shirt or it could be a sequinned ballgown! I feel that wearing the right clothes for you (whatever it may be, regardless of fashion, cultural implications as a fat person or any other social pressures) is one of the most amazing things to do along the way to self acceptance and love.

Self Love and Fat Acceptance

So this week, I've been re-reading Brazen Femme: Queering Femininity on the train to work and on lunch breaks. I had only really skimmed through it for my MA dissertation in 2009, so reading it cover to cover has been a new experience. I'm pretty hardened in general, but it's brought tears to my eyes on a number of occasions and generally meant that my walk to the office has entailed lots of looking at the floor and repeated blinking to straighten myself up for the work day. It's been a week of self reflection, and I've spent a lot of time thinking about my own history, which I'm often a bit scared of doing.

Part of my relation to the stories in the book comes from the growing up and needing to be fiercely independent, and from knowing that I had to support myself because I haven't always had the traditional support net of friends and family that others can rely on emotionally and otherwise. Anyway, I got thinking about fat acceptance and the act of self love (here I mean the act of providing this emotional support and care to yourself), and the ways they are interconnected. The act of radical self love is written about a lot by Bevin of Queer Fat Femme fame, and is something that I feel is the hardest, but ultimately the most rewarding, part of body acceptance.

I read a lot of stories online, on communities and blogs and whatnot, ways of coming to accept yourself, and sometimes I feel like too many people begin their acceptance journeys with a lover or an engagement or through someone else's acceptance of their fat. There's nothing wrong with this I guess (I'm all for fat love and fat sex, fat friends and allies), but to accept yourself seen through someone else's eyes sometimes feels like you need the approval of another person (and often these dialogues are heterosexual love stories) in order to accept yourself. It sometimes strikes me as very normative - like getting "socially acceptable in the big wide world" or "LOOK, SOMEBODY LOVES ME" stamped on your hand - I've been there, I know it really helps, but sometimes the most radical form of love comes from loving yourself whether you are alone, in a relationship, surrounded by friends or lonely as fuck. It comes from loving your very unacceptability. It comes from not changing just because your lover would rather you lost a few pounds or wore matching underwear or always shaved, or would rather you didn't wear that dress out of the house, or would rather you were the "marrying kind". It comes from not settling for second best, even if the world tells you that you ought to.

Because, ultimately, loving yourself is a pretty radical stance to take. Society tells you constantly that you need another person - and that person completes you, and allows you to function. Being single is a temporary state, monogamy, babies, marriage and the family unit are the ultimate goal. We don't celebrate our individual selves (beyond birthdays) at any point in our lives, however we celebrate union in endless ceremonies - marriage, christenings, engagements etc etc. We never really celebrate being alone, even if it's good for us. Refuting this, choosing yourself over a relationship that hurts you (something I never did when I was younger, and which caused me a huge amount of self-hate) even when the world tells you that the clock is ticking, is an amazing stance. It works both ways too, sometimes for me it has meant allowing someone to love me or to get closer to me than my defence mechanisms will normally allow.

I guess to me, the radical nature of self love kicks in when I get heckled. I remember once last year I was on my way to a sorting office. A guy walking across the street from me starting shouting "excuse me, excuse me, excuse me" repeatedly. I am still unable to gauge whether this will be an innocent request for directions or a bastard. I have faith in humanity and respond. I can't even remember what he said exactly, but I know the words fat, whore, desperate and suchlike were mentioned. It was a torrent of abuse that shocked me. He was with his mother too, who was embarrassed but I think ultimately still oppositional to me, because she didn't tell him off (which to me is indirectly condoning his behaviour). I told him to fuck off and went on my way.

Also, at one point last year I remember my boyfriend got egged out of a car when we were walking home in Leeds. We lived in a fairly rough area, and he's super skinny, and has long, unruly hair and an equally unruly beard. He dresses in jumpers, shirts, tees and jeans that are older than our relationship, and generally falling apart (I call him a semi-hobo). It's why I love him, and it gets him a lot of shit. Normally if someone shouts something, I'll generally stick my finger up or something, but you can't do that with a flying attack in a car. It's why people who shout out of cars are the biggest cowards - it leaves no chance for retaliation.

Anyway, both instances were horrible, and if it happened to me when I was a kid I would've locked myself inside for days and bawled my eyes out. But these times, I walked away and the first thing I thought (beyond the initial GWARGH WHAT A STUPID ARSEHOLE anger) was essentially to remind myself that essentially I'm fat and awesome (and my boy is the hottest scruff in Leeds), and that I don't really give a fuck about the opinion of someone who needs to validate their existence by shouting at strangers or throwing things out of cars. And that in fact, if people are throwing things at us, then I must be doing something right, because I'm not just blending in. I'm not necessarily acceptable, and that's a good thing. And it is that love that acts are my safety net.

I guess what I'm trying to say is that, for me, fat acceptance has to begin with your self. It begins with a self portrait (as discussed in this amazing post at The Busty Traveller, which seriously, you all need to follow), it begins with seeing yourself through new eyes. It begins with accepting the facets of yourself that you thought you could never accept, until you look at them differently. Fat becomes power, strength, curves, rage, energy, excitement. My body has become my own safety net.

I guess to come back to Brazen Femme, I think the messages that I took from it, the messages which resonated so hard with my teenage self, who was (and still is) a survivor, tough as boots and often angry as hell, was essentially this... Don't wait for someone to love you. Don't rely on anyone, and don't need anyone in order to survive. Don't wait to become who you want to be. Realise that, beneath everything, you already are the person you want to be. Love yourself.

Fatty Scavangers

Okay, so I'm operating on not too much sleep and a bit too much cherry yoghurt, but I wanted to get some thoughts down here on being a fatty and a thrifter. I just spoke with Charlotte Cooper for her super amazing phd research, and, when I was talking about my background I realised exactly why scavanging and thrifting form such a huge part of my identity.

I grew up in a pretty poor household, as previously discussed, and when I was younger we never really had the money to shop in "proper" shops. This used to irk me constantly, as where I grew up (bar the estates in the town) was generally an affluent town. This meant that the kids that I went to school with never really seemed to want for anything, and always got given money to shop with (I had a ever dwindling paper round that paid me about £10 a month).

At the weekends, my dad Steve and I used to go around all the charity shops in town. There are about 8 within a fifteen minute bus ride. We'd get a day ticket on the bus, and travel between all the hot spots for second hand shops, and then also sometimes big markets with budget clothes resale stalls. Also, on bank holidays there used to be an awesome car boot sale in a Waitrose car park (it shut because it "degraded" the area! Oh Surrey, how I don't miss you). These were the only resources I had available to me, and so I would spend hours in them. Whenever we went to a new area, we'd hunt out new shops, and start rummaging.

Mostly it'd be full of mediocre things (they still are), but sometimes you'd find a gem at the bottom of a 50p bin. I wish I had my family photos with me now to show you some of the horrible things I acquired and treasured - a zig zag patterned fleece jacket, neon green trainers, orange dungarees. Everyone at school thought I was a weirdo (I guess I was one), but finding these obscure unusual items gave me a way to escape from my background. I could be anyone I wanted, as long as I could fashion a "costume" from a 20p bin. It was a challenge that started my obsession with clothes, and which spurred what later became my body positivism. I think this is why I find it hard to write a guide to thrifting (which a few people have suggested I post) - because largely what I find, I've found through being incredibly stubborn and willing to root through bargain bin after bargain bin, and to hunt even after hours of disappointments - because realistically that's all I could do given those circumstances.

There are other things I found as well, books, for instance. I remember my library used to sell off their old books in a 50p a carrier bag sale (whatever you could fit in all came to 50p!). They did the same with VHS, which is how I discovered world cinema as a slightly precocious 16 year old (well, that and going up to the Prince Charles Cinema in London for £1.50 matinees, which I could travel to for free as my dad works on South West Trains). I found a copy of Shadow on a Tightrope for 99p in a charity shop, for instance, and later Fat Is a Feminist Issue. I found Blondie and David Bowie LPs, and fashioned myself as a second hand glam kid ultimately (after a bad period spent in goth-land). Later my scavanging became online scavanging - hopping from place to place, forums, blogs, communities and profiles to scour for new friends and resources. My feminism, my fat activism, my friends, my boyfriends, my band, my heroes and my support network grew out of being an internet nerd, and through this online scavanging as an extension to my physical scavanging.

This evolved into vintage shopping, ebay hunting, clothes swapping, bookmooch and online trading. Most everything I own comes from an obscure source - a flea market on holiday, a vintage store in a tiny nook of London, a charity shop I visited when seeing an online friend in real life, and so on. Every item comes with a story, and can be shaped into a new story. In turn I pursued a career in archiving because of these stories, and because of these amazing objects that connect to so many different histories and people. I guess thrifting for me is a way to create spaces, people, stories and identities that I never really had access to - and in doing so to deconstruct them perhaps. This is why I love clothes, and why I'm constantly changing/trading/swapping mine - because in doing so, I can play with a new self, and I can connect with so many different people.

I guess I love that through thrifting or scavanging, in any format, you can find yourself in a million other people's possessions, stories and blogs/communities, and also you can find the space to create a new self or identity through the remnants of others.

And on the note of clothes, here's a quote by Iris Marion Young, in her essay 'Women Recovering Our Clothes', that makes me think about how innovative and revolutionary this sort of fashion play can be:
"One of the privileges of femininity in rationalised instrumental culture is an aesthetic freedom, the freedom to play with shape and colour on the body, to don various styles and looks, and through them exhibit and imagine unreal possibilities. Women often actively indulge in such theatrical imagining... Such female imagination has liberating possibilities because it subverts, unsettles the order of respectable, functional rationality in a world where that rationality supports domination. The unreal that wells up through imagination always creates the space for a negation of what is, and thus the possibility of alternatives."
from On Female Body Experience; "Throwing Like a Girl" and Other Essays.

This to me, is what is so exciting about a life spent scavanging. Kx

I have been meaning to post about the Marie Claire thing for a while now, and how it makes me even more aware of the many different types of activism and their importance. I'm sure everyone has read about the fat-phobic article in general, and I don't want to give them more traffic so instead I'll just link to this article at Fatshionista, which gives background to those who need it.

I can't even begin to express my anger at this, but I think what I am more is incredulous that someone maintains that Kelly's opinion is anything other than a blind prejudice. Sometimes I almost can't believe that there is a general consensus that all fat people should be eliminated from public viewing - and in many ways I don't feel like we can blame one writer for this opinion - it's what we're told constantly, and ultimately what she is repeating is just what we are expected to feel about fat bodies that are not displayed with the ongoing connotations of ritual humiliation, shame, unhappiness and grotesqueness.

There's been an immense amount of commentary on the piece itself, and I don't feel that I can add to it (beyond just going RARGH WHY THE HELL IS THIS STILL GOING ON?) but what I do want to comment on is the role of activism in dispelling these myths of what being fat means as an experience to most people. I'm a believer in activism being a great many things, and I believe this because, whilst fat remains so intensely connotative and symbolic of doom, gloom, death, the obesity apocalypse and whatever we're responsible for next, every step taken by a fat person is a step made towards tearing these stereotypes apart. Activism is conscious and unconscious - to me it can just be walking down the street, it's eating in public, it's wearing a short skirt, or showing bingo wings or thighs that rub together, it's owning your body and claiming it as your own (rather than as a symbolic substance determined by others). It could be telling people your weight, it could be saying "fat" proudly, or kissing, or dancing, or cycling, exercising. It is about being in spaces that we are consistently told that we do not belong in, and owning them. It's about being exactly what we are told we are not - happy, confident, in charge of our bodies and not ashamed.

So, for every person that says that fat love is disgusting and repulsive, and that we don't deserve the pleasures and loves that anyone else who fits within the "normal" BMI categories does, I am so glad that the fat-o-sphere exists. I am so glad that for every headless fatty there is represented on the internet, there is also an empowered, angry and awesome fat person somewhere else. My fat acceptance began with the internet, it began with Fatshionista's flickr pool and led on from there, and without the constant stream of images of fat people being amazing and vibrant and so alive (and the people I have been lucky enough to meet in person, at conferences and events and clothes swaps), without the blogs and videos and photographs and media that runs against the mould, that constantly challenges what we are told to be, I really do not know where I would be right now.

Also, I think everyone should look at The Museum of Fat Love. I'm definitely fairly unromantic, and the be all and end all of fat acceptance is not just about romance fo me, but beyond the smug-coupledness, this still makes me smile from my heart.

/endrant

Comfort Eating

I have been thinking about food a lot lately, not least because an awful cold has finally left me behind and I have my normal appetite back, and I am now eating more than toast and doritos on a daily basis. Yay!

I have been thinking particularly about comfort eating as a practice, and as a "disorder". This is largely because of aforementioned cold and eating a lot of junk food last week. I've never really understood why comfort eating is construed as always negative personally - for me taking comfort from food is a given, and I love nothing more than curling up with real stodge or sweet things when I'm having a down day. I don't understand why that is negative when it makes me happy - should I only eat food that leaves me completely indifferent instead? That's no fun.

I grew up in a single parent, working class household, and my dad Steve always worked shift patterns, so from when I was 13, I just used to eat whatever I could make myself. I never learnt to cook until the first year of university, though I knew how to sustain myself. I used to eat loads of processed foods, junk food and some really odd concoctions of my own making (one of which I still make now is a barbeque bean bake, which is essentially cheap sausages fried with onions, with baked beans stirred into and bbq sauce, then topped with mashed potato and baked in the oven. It's still my favourite comfort food dish, despite it's lack of any form of value!). Treats were McDonalds or cake from a bakery.

I left for university and met a lot of friends who already knew how to make amazing food. They introduced me to fruit and veg, good meat, proper bread and cake, and I loved eating this way. I stopped eating rubbish and I'm really happy to be a good cook now. I spent a long time trying to be just healthy - I think this was tied into feeling like I needed to be an "acceptable" fatty, who was at least healthy as some form of compensation for my unacceptability. I still cook well, and there are healthy treats I love, but I've also come to admit exactly how much I love junk food and comfort eating for the sake of it. I also feel that this part of my upbringing is part of me still, and I don't think I should be ashamed of this to appease people. Sometimes I'll cook a roast dinner for tea, sometimes I'll make something super fancy sounding (dinner on Monday was spaghetti with anchovy, chilli and garlic sauce, with garlic breadcrumbs and parsley garnish), sometimes it'll just be soup or pesto, and often it might be junk food. Last Sunday, my boyfriend and I ate an entire tub of Mackie's ice cream with toffee sauce - that was dinner. In the past we've also called lunch a box (or er two) of chocolate fingers dipped in cheap chocolate mousses. Sometimes we eat the food that you always wanted to when you were a child, but were never allowed to. Sometimes I eat breakfast for dinner. Sometimes it's chips and processed cheese sauce (processed cheese is my absolute childhood weakness - the more neon, the better), sometimes it's an entire pizza. The point being that it's fun, and I always think that food should be fun, and unruly, and oh so wrong-but-right at the same time.

I take a lot of issue with the "healthy eating" brigade, and sometimes I even have issues with HAES for the same reasons. I feel like too many foods are still made out to be bad for us, when in fact I find refusing to satisfy cravings to be much unhealthier in the long run. It's so much more liberating to allow yourself to eat the most excessive and luxurious combinations - just to let yourself go with it when you want it. Life is too short to spend it umm-ing and ahh-ing over calorie counts and too short to substitute out the double cream and roast potatoes you "shouldn't" eat.

And now... um, I'm hungry. /rant