Hiya folks, long time no see! Just a quick post to let you know that I'm going to be hosting a fat positive clothes swap on 7th September in London. There'll be clothes and zines and cake and lots of opportunities to meet other rad fat people. The one in February was fantastic so would love to see more of my readers at this one.

RSVP via facebook here and you can make donations in advance here (if you can do this, please do as we're paying to hire a venue this time!). If you have any questions feel free to get in touch.

K x

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. 

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