Bad American

A little-known factoid about me: I’ve never voted.  Never, as in not once in my entire life.

Now this didn’t start out as an intentional thing.  I turned 18 at the very end of 1993.  Clinton had just been elected the previous year, so there wasn’t going to be another election until 1996.

But in 1996, I was homeless, living in a homeless shelter in Joliet.  Because I had no “fixed address,” I couldn’t register to vote.  Simple.

By the time the next election came along in 2000, I simply hadn’t gotten my registration information back in time to vote.  Not that it would have mattered anyway; that election was rigged to begin with.

By 2004, we were already living in the UK.  And while it was possible for me to get a mail-in ballot out here, I didn’t see the point.  I didn’t want either of the candidates to win, so I was fucked either way.

And here we are again.  Another election, and another year when I’m not going to bother going through the trouble of voting.  For one thing, the election in 2000 proved to me that my vote doesn’t really count anyway.  If the individual’s vote really counted, then we would have had a President Gore.  (And personally, I think the U.S. would have been a hell of a lot better off if we had.)

For another, I’m back in the position of not wanting either side to win.  Had Hillary gotten the democratic nomination, I honestly would have considered going through the trouble of getting a mail-in ballot.  But she didn’t, and now I’m stuck contemplating two candidates that I would never, in a million years, choose to run a country.  This, for a lot of little individual reasons.  McCain I honestly just don’t like, period.  Everything about him rubs me the wrong way.  Obama because while I agree with some of the things he’s come out with, the things I disagree on are too important to me to compromise on (Obama: addressing the “role” of “obesity” in healthcare??  RED FLAG!!!).

And I know that some people would say that my deliberately NOT voting automatically makes me a “bad” American.

Why?

Why is exercising my right to choose considered bad?  I could understand if there was one candidate that I really wanted to elect and I didn’t vote (assuming my vote actually counted for something).  That wouldn’t just be bad, that would be downright stupid.

But when I KNOW that, no matter who gets elected, it’s going to make me more determined never to go back and live in my home country, the country of my birth, the country that so much of my heart still lives in, then why would I spend my time and energy to vote for one of these people?  If you were in prison and you got to choose the warden, wouldn’t you choose one that made your life a little bit easier, happier, better?

But it doesn’t really matter whether I vote or not.  America isn’t the democracy it’s fooled itself to believe it is.  It’s a Republic - a government having a chief of state who is not a monarch and who in modern times is usually a president (taken from here).  The fact is, it’s the upper class that holds all the power, and we’re placated with our “right” to vote.  Don’t believe me?  Go learn how the electoral college is set up, and then get back to me.

So if my choosing not to vote makes me a Bad American, so be it.  Honestly?  I’d rather be a Bad American than a hypocrite any day.  Voting for someone whom I truly don’t wish to be elected would, in fact, make me a hypocrite.

(I should credit Vesta44 and Big Fat Dynamo for inspiring this post.  It was after reading theirs that I got to thinking.  Dangerous, I know.  )

Holy crap, Batman! I got tagged!

I didn’t even realized I’d gotten tagged until I followed the link from Nudemuse’s post (cuz she got tagged, too).  Sorry, Boobs I Has Dem!  I don’t know why the link didn’t show up on my dashboard!

So here we go:

What are five things you’ve said or done in the past twelve months that you’re most proud of?

1.  Finally finding my way on the road to self-acceptance. Having started therapy at the age of 8 and going continuously for 10 years, as well as many intermittent periods of therapy after that, this is a big deal to me.  All those years of therapy did absolutely nothing for me.  Less than a year with FA?  Has made such a huge difference that there aren’t even enough words in the English language to describe it.

2.  Learning to dress myself. I know that sounds odd, especially coming from a 32-year-old woman, but I had hidden myself away in my clothes for so long that I honestly did not know what kinds of things would look good on me and what wouldn’t.  I’ve come full circle, wearing things that I NEVER, IN A MILLION YEARS thought I could pull off.  And I look GOOD.  I’m by no means an expert, but the progress I’ve made is amazing.

3.  As Joy so wonderfully put it, I stopped letting the tiny little minds get me down. There was a point where I seriously considered deleting my blog because of the troll comments.  To be quite honest, they really got to me at first.  But then Hubby brought up a good point.

“So you’re going to let some anonymous assholes undo all the hard work you’ve done over the last few months?”

Short answer: NO!  Longer answer: My ingrained belligerence came in handy.  I simply stuck my heels in and REFUSED to ALLOW them to upset me.  Now, if a troll comment does seem to bother me, I’m more bothered by the blatant stupidity the troll reveals than anything.  Stupidity is my biggest pet peeve, so it’s not a surprise that troll stupidity would bother me.  (I do distinguish between ignorance and stupidity.  An ignorant person can be taught.  Stupid people are hopeless.)  Most of the time?  They’re just ridiculous.

4.  I spoke up to my chosen family* about my views on FA and fat in general. I posted about it here.  Honestly, I was a little scared to say anything, but I was too drunk at the time to care.  But now that I’ve said it, I’m glad I did.  My chosen family did not look at me like I’d grown a second head or gone crazy or anything like I had feared.  As a matter of fact, one person verbally agreed with me.  I hope I’ve given them something to think about.  If nothing else, I hope I’ve given them a seed with which to grow a better sense of self-worth.

5.  Through loving myself, I have built a better relationship with my husband than I ever thought I could have. This is another thing I’ve blogged about, here.  I’ve gone from thinking I needed an action plan for WHEN we got divorced (I had seriously come to the point where I felt it was a foregone conclusion) to thinking I was an idiot for thinking that way in the first place.

Wow.  That was actually really hard to do.  I had to save this as a draft for a couple of days in order to get through it all.  I’m glad I did, though; it was definitely worth it. 

* - When I say “chosen family,” I’m referring to my best friend’s family.  I believe I’ve mentioned it before, but they have completely absorbed me into their family, to the point that I’m being invited to birthdays, weddings, anniversaries, etc., not just in my best friend’s immediate family (kids, grandkids, etc.), but in her extended family as well (sisters, nieces, nephews, the lot).  There is only ONE person in her ENTIRE family that doesn’t like me, and I don’t care, ‘cuz nobody likes HER, either!

Stephen Fry, HIV, and Bipolar Disorder

Stephen Fry

I would like to preface this by saying that I realize that some of this may not be “news” to some people. I purposely stay away from the news as much as possible. Honestly? It’s because I’m depressed enough as it is and I don’t need more to bring me down. So I would have absolutely no idea if some of the things that shocked me have been reported by the media. Please keep that in mind as you read.

I have to admit I have a thing for Stephen Fry. Not only is he ridiculously intelligent, but he’s funny, and handsome* to boot. I admit I was more than a little disappointed when I realized he was gay (honestly, I thought he was just stereotypically British, not gay). I’ve been working on a crochet project and I prefer to have some sort of “background noise” - television, a movie, that sort of thing. So I’ve been periodically sitting here at the computer desk, playing YouTube vids. Eventually I surfed my way into some Stephen Fry territory, and found the documentaries he made on HIV and Bipolar Disorder.

I missed these when they were originally aired.  I don’t watch all that much television any more, and what little I DO watch is rarely, if ever, BBC.  Had I known about these at the time, I probably would have wanted to watch them, though.

Stephen Fry: HIV and Me

I originally thought that the HIV documentaries (part one and part two) were just going to be about his experiences with HIV as a gay man.  Because of course, a person’s life experiences are going to color their view of any major event.  A gay man’s experience of HIV is going to be different than a mother’s, etcetera.  What I saw shocked me.

• The levels of infection in Britain have risen by something like 400% in the last ten years.  (I could be remembering wrong, but I’m pretty sure that’s what Fry said in the documentary.)  There are more people with HIV living in Britain than there were 10 years ago.
• A large percentage of the population are having unprotected, risky sex - gay, straight, and everything in between.  Fry went out to the bars and clubs in one particular city and found that the majority of women would ask that their partner wear a condom, but most of the men would refuse, even when asked.
• There are large numbers of young gay men purposely going to sex parties to become infected.  They call it “the Gift“.  (See another good clip about it here.)  One interviewee goes into great detail, explaining how these parties work.  I try my hardest not to be judgemental as a rule, but I have to admit that hearing about these parties made my stomach turn.  Not from the thought of gay sex; from the perspective of why in the hell would somebody want to go out and get themselves infected with HIV ON PURPOSE??? While science and medicine have made it easier to live with, and not such a quickly killing disease, HIV is still deadly.  Why would you want to subject yourself to that?  If you’ve got a death wish, there are other, quicker, and less painful ways of killing yourself!
• There are African goverments that won’t allow certain types of medications for HIV/Aids because they actually don’t believe that Aids is caused by HIV.  They have huge numbers (one statistic I remember hearing was 300,000+ deaths in one year attributed to Aids alone) of people dying from this disease, people who could live longer, healthier lives if given these medications, and they’re being denied them by their own governments.
• Also, because some parts of Africa are very Catholic, promoting the use of condoms to help prevent the spread of Aids is actually seen as taboo; abstinence only.  There is one interviewee that has made it his mission in life to educate his people about the truth of Aids and to try to help prevent the spread.  So he took it upon himself to start distributing free condoms to the men in the area.  Because of The Church, he is only allowed to distribute a fraction of what he was handing out just a few years ago.
• While the panic surrounding Aids might have died down a little bit, the numbers are ever-increasing.  People are constantly putting themselves at risk, thinking it could never happen to them.  Society has become complacent with the idea of Aids and is reaping terrible consequences.
• I wasn’t alone in mistakenly thinking that the Aids epidemic was getting better.  Because these things aren’t reported as often as they were 10, 20 years ago, people are coming to the assumption that things are better.  When that’s the farthest thing from the truth.
• There is still a social stigma surrounding Aids, and some of the fallacies that took root 20 years ago are still being spread as fact.  There’s a part about a 60-something-year-old woman who is very vocal about her status and has been harassed several times because of it.  Fry says in the documentary that he would have thought that being open about one’s HIV status would garner sympathy and kindness, not hatred.  So would I.  But apparently we were both wrong.

I’m still reeling in a state of shock over the HIV & Me documentaries.  Some parts made me sad, some parts made me angry, and some parts just made me sick to my stomach.  But I honestly think that this is something everybody should watch.  It’s illuminating, if nothing else.  And I think it’s something people should talk about more.  Because we’ve stopped talking about it, we’ve fooled ourselves into thinking it’s something that’s going away.  It’s not; and it’s not going to until we are honest with ourselves.

The Secret Life of a Manic Depressive

The first time I had an inkling that Stephen Fry had Bipolar Disorder was when I had gone to a doctor’s appointment.  While giving my name to the receptionist, I noticed a little pamphlet on Bipolar Disorder and there was a picture of Stephen Fry on the front of it.  I took one to look at as I waited, and it was one of those “don’t be ashamed!  See your doctor if you think something’s wrong!” kind of things.  Nowhere on there did it actually say that Stephen Fry had Bipolar Disorder, but I thought, “why would they plaster his picture on here if he didn’t have it?”

Then I heard about The Secret Life of a Manic Depressive (see them here and here).  I had missed them when they were originally aired, and I couldn’t seem to find a copy on DVD.  On top of that, we couldn’t find a copy to download.  So I was pleasantly surprised to find it on YouTube, in its entirety no less.

As a Manic Depressive myself, I was quite interested to see what Fry had to say on the subject.  And I was shocked to find out how many celebrities there are that have some sort of “mental illness”.  I was disappointed to see that they never mentioned the link between Bipolar Disorder and brain chemicals.  When I was diagnosed, my doctor explained to me that my Bipolar was caused by a chemical imbalance in my brain; the medication would help with that (and it did, I admit).  I “manage” it all right on my own, but I have to admit that the medication really did help.  I no longer take medication for one basic reason: side effects.  I am naturally the kind of person with little to no energy, and every drug I’ve tried so far would make me even more tired.  With the exception of Prozac; that made me LITERALLY bounce off the walls.

What surprised me was the amount of fear attached to the condition - on the part of the sufferers.  A lot of us fear being seen as a “loon”, to the point of avoiding treatment.  Which, as you can imagine, makes things worse, not better.

It made me realize something, though: while there’s no doubt that I AM a Manic Depressive (/have Bipolar Disorder), I definitely have a “milder” case of it than some people do.  My manic episodes were never as dramatic as what some of the people on there have described.  However, for ME they WERE definitely Manic.

I was a little surprised to hear the one doctor say that going off Lithium (which is the first drug I was ever on) could be disastrous.  Other than the fact that my mood swings came back, I can’t say that my depression was any worse than it would have been had I never had treatment.  And it just so happens that that particular period in my life also happened to be one of the most difficult (I became homeless; had to live in a homeless shelter [just like the ones you see portrayed on television], Number One Daughter became very ill [croup], I met and became engaged to The Little Helper’s sperm donor, and he turned out to be an addict AND abusive).  So you would think that I would have become immobilizingly depressed during that time.  I didn’t.  I can’t say that I was happy, but it felt just like every other depression I’d suffered through before.

And I’m kind of in a quandry about this question surrounding diagnosing children and teenagers with the condition.  On the one hand, I have my own experience: I was diagnosed at 15, and it was the best thing that could have happened to me.  I finally had an answer to WHY I was different, and was given tools to help me deal with it.  On the other hand, I have absolutely NO DOUBT that there are scores of children being misdiagnosed, or diagnosed without REAL cause.  So I can’t really say where I stand on that issue, because I really don’t know myself.  I can vividly see both sides of the argument, and they’re both valid.

I’m a jumble of emotions after watching these.  On the one hand, I’m infinitely grateful that these documentaries were made.  They NEEDED to be made, and now that I’ve seen them, I can’t think of a better person than Stephen Fry to do them.  He approaches the subject with respect and compassion without ever hiding the fact that he wants to learn.  On the other, I’ve seen some things that have shocked and disgusted me.  But the more I think about it, the more I think it’s a small price to pay.

* - Stephen Fry is EXACTLY the kind of man that makes my head turn.  As a matter of fact, he reminds me of my high school sweetheart, and I’ve ALWAYS thought he was good looking.

Friday Fun: If I won the lottery, I would…..?

This is, of course, assuming it’s one of those huge multi-million jackpot lotteries.

If I won the lottery, the first thing I would do is get a cashier’s check for $500,000, get on a plane to Chicago, and when my grandmother opened the door, I would just hand it to her.  She’s been trying to sell the house for a couple of months now, and I have a problem with the idea of someone outside of our family owning in it (my grandfather built that house! Grandma designed it!  I grew up there!  My children started out their lives there!), so it would be a win-win situation all around.  Then I would go over to my childhood best friend’s parents’ house and hire them as property managers.  Hell, if S (the childhood best friend) and her husband wanted to live there, they could rent it!  (I don’t have a problem with other people LIVING in the house, just OWNING it. I didn’t say it was a rational emotion!)

I’d give my mother $100,000.  My stepfather died back in March, and while he did leave her a good amount in life insurance, she’s currently going to college and only working part-time as a tutor.  I’d be happy to help her be able to finish her degree without having to worry about money until well after she graduated.

I’d pay for my little sister R to hire a lawyer.  She’s currently going through some trauma concerning custody issues with her son.  She’s being railroaded by both her ex and the state, and is in quite a bind.  She needs professional guidance but can’t afford to get it herself, and I would be more than happy to help if I could.

I’d get all of our immigration paperwork sorted out, finally.  Actually, I’d probably have to do that FIRST, in order to be able to come BACK to the UK after surprising the hell out of my grandmother.  The only reason we haven’t gotten it all sorted out before is MONEY.  It costs money, just to have the government LOOK at your application.  Money is not something we have in abundance in this household.  So we’ve never done it.

I’d put trust funds away for all of my children.  Money they can use when they first go out on their own, or, if they so desire, to go back to the US.  I have explained to them that because of their nationalities (dual nationality in the case of the 2 youngest), they will have the choice between staying here or going back to the US when they’re old enough.

I would, of course, buy a house.  Or possibly have one built.  As much as I like the house we live in now, it’s not ideal.  The house itself needs work and the neighborhood leaves a lot to be desired.  Unfortunately, in our present financial condition, we didn’t have too many options when we were looking to move last year.  Not to mention the fact that we only had 6 weeks to find another place to live - that limits your options even more.  I do feel that, considering everything, we ended up lucky.  But if I won the lottery and had more money than I knew what to do with?  Oh yeah, we’d be movin’.  We’d probably leave most of the stuff we own and just take the sentimental items!  (At least that’s what Hubby’s always said.)

A lot of people would want to buy a car, but I’m not really sure that I’d want to.  Honestly, most of the time it’s simply unneccessary.  Sometimes it’d be nice to have a car, sure, but there are always taxis.  (And they’re not insanely expensive out here, either.  That helps.)  I have a feeling, though, that Hubby wouldn’t last a day or two without wanting to buy a car.  He’s the one that’s always complaining that we don’t have a car, whereas I don’t mind walking/riding the bus/taking taxis.  Especially now that Number One Daughter has a wheelchair.  It makes taking her out of the house a lot easier.  (She can walk, but she gets tired easily and then absolutely refuses to move anymore.  Believe me, trying to literally drag a 13 year old around is not easy.  The wheelchair makes it a win-win situation.  If she wants to walk, she can walk.  If she gets tired, she can go for a push instead.)

I’d get Hubby all the equipment he needs to set himself up as a professional photographer.  Hell, maybe even buy him a studio if that’s what he wants to do.

I’d start my own business - a yarn/craft store.  I already have an idea of what I’d sell and what I’d call it.  Winning the lottery would give me the capital I’d need to get it up and running.  And would allow for a cushion if the whole thing went belly-up.

I’d put a lot of money into savings/stocks/bonds/whatever - to earn interest and make more money.  If we win a multi-million ££/$$ jackpot, then we’re going to want this money to last the rest of our lives.

As you can see, I put a lot of thought into this.  Hubby and I actually do play the lottery every once in a while, usually when the jackpot is insanely big, and sometimes we get to daydreaming together.  While we don’t exactly hold our breaths expecting to actually WIN the lottery, the fact is, SOMEBODY’S going to win it, and it’ll never happen if we don’t buy a ticket!  :)  So when we’ve got the cash to spare, we drop a couple quid on it.  Like the old McDonald’s commercials used to say…. “it could happen!”

Edited for hebetudinous troll Tara: bad at math tax?  What is a math tax?  Is the U.S. taxing you on mathetmatics classes now?  Do you have to pay the government a portion of your income for learning how to add?  Is there a Science tax?  A History tax?  A Social Studies tax? An English tax?  Should we start a fund?  Because you obviously need remedial English classes, and we wouldn’t want you to not be able to afford them.

Oh, and Britain doesn’t tax lottery winnings.  They’re viewed as gambling, which is also exempt from income tax.  Which works out well for me, I admit.

How did I become a feminist without knowing it?

Answer: I was raised by my grandmother.

I started thinking about this after reading a post that The Rotund has up on her LiveJournal*, dealing with a blatantly sexist comment.

Here’s the part of my comment that really got me thinking:

But then, I was raised to believe that I was just as good as any man. I didn’t learn about feminism, as such, but a lot of the standards by which my grandmother raised me were, in fact, feminist. We just didn’t call it that.

See, my grandmother came of age in the 50’s.  You know the stereotypical image of a 50’s housewife?  That was her.  She would bake cookies and was on the PTA and all that shit.

But she had another side to her.  Once her children were old enough to be left on their own (or to be left in charge of their older siblings), she went to work.  Not on a permanent, full-time basis, but when they needed the extra money, she would work.  (My grandfather was a carpenter, which meant money would get extremely tight in the winters, or when the housing market was slow.)  And when she went to work?  The family helped.  She didn’t go to work all day and then come home and do all the housework.  My father and aunts and uncles had jobs, and they did them.  She did every job you could think of - including working in a bomb factory during the Korean War.  Seriously.  If you ever piss this woman off, she could literally blow your ass up.

And she raised her children, even then, to believe that they could do or be anything they wanted, regardless of their gender.  In fact, when my aunt B became pregnant at 16, the biggest problem my grandmother had with the whole situation was that it would prevent aunt B from getting an education (meaning beyond high school) and being able to “make something” of her life.  She had the same problem with me when I became pregnant with Number One Daughter at 18.

She taught all of us girls - my 2 aunts and me - that we didn’t need a man for anything.  Despite the fact that she was married, she was a very independent person, always.  (Of course, the fact that my grandfather seemed to think that his role in the family was simply to go to work and then come home and sit in a chair might have something to do with that; my grandmother had to learn to do a lot of things herself, simply because my grandfather refused to do them.)  But she didn’t teach us to hate men.  While she seemed to give up on men after the one and only relationship she had after divorcing my grandfather, I don’t remember her speaking hatefully about men in general.  Specific men, maybe - but if that was the case, then believe me, they deserved it.

My grandparents divorced in the early 80’s.  Shortly after that is when I went to live with her full-time.  And I think, being raising me (in a single-parent setting; by that time all my aunts and uncles had left home so it was just her and I) after having gone through all of that may have had an effect on the WAY she raised me.

The first time I remember hearing the word “feminist” was in high school.  I studied Sociology and Current Affairs and the word kept coming up.  Thankfully for me, my sociology teacher was a great woman that did a whole section on Feminism.  At the time, I was more concerned with learning and getting good grades than really thinking about what I was learning, but now that I look back on it, I realize why I agreed with everything she taught us.

Because that’s how my grandmother raised me.

I don’t think - even now - that my grandmother would have ever called herself a feminist.  But that’s exactly what she was and is.  She has never let the fact that she is a woman stop her from anything.  And I’ve always admired her for that.

And I would never stoop to call myself an expert on feminism, nor a perfect feminist, but it’s struck me repeatedly the surprise I’ve felt when I learn more and realize that the beliefs I’ve always had were right in line with feminism.

Why the hell should I be surprised?  I was raised by a strong, independent woman.

* - The Rotund has mentioned her LiveJournal before, but as she has it friends-locked, I didn’t think it would be appropriate to link to it.  Normally I would have, but I don’t think that would be right in this case.

What *I* want for Fat Acceptance.

Quite a few blog posts have had me thinking about this.  One of which I have to admit, I sparked.  And because we’re not a monolithic group, because we’re made up of many different people from many different walks of life who have many different personal goals regarding FA, I decided I needed to be completely clear about my wishes for FA.  These are my opinions only and do no reflect on FA as a whole.  Please do not read this as me speaking for the whole group.  This is just me, one person in that group, saying what I want to happen.

I want Fat Persons to be given the basic human rights they deserve. No one should have to worry about discrimination or harassment.  No one should have to be fed fatphobia in such quantities that it makes their lives miserable.  The bullying, emotional torture, and harassment needs to stop.

I want this for every fat person alive. Able-bodied and not.  Black, white, and every color and shade of color in between.  Neurologically normal or not.  Whether you exercise every day or prefer to spend your days reading (as an example).  Whether you eat a “good, balanced” diet or you eat junk food.  Whether or not you have an ED of any kind.  There is no reason on earth that you should be subjected to having your basic human rights taken away from you just because you happen to be fat.

I want to dispel the misconceptions and unfair stereotypes of fat people. That doesn’t mean that if you are lazy and do over eat that you don’t have a place in “my” movement.  Not at all.  But just because _______ fat person overeats and doesn’t exercise doesn’t mean it’s true for all fat people.  But those of you that do overeat? Don’t exercise? Are lazy?  You all deserve respect, too.

I want the world to wake up to the realization that thin =/= healthy and fat =/= unhealthy. Being fat in and of itself does not make one unhealthy.  There is a wide spectrum of fat and health, just as there is with thin and health.  But being healthy is not a moral obligation.  Whether you are fat and healthy or fat and unhealthy, it is no reason for you not to be treated like a human being.  It simply does not matter.

I also want the world to wake up to the realization that diets do not work. Even when you don’t call them “diets.”  Telling me to call Jenny Craig is not going to magically make me thin.  Assuming I eat like a glutton all day and telling me “just try eating less, fatty” isn’t going to work either.  There is absolutely nothing on this earth that is guaranteed to work in making a fat person permanently thin.  The key word here is permanently.  Sure, some diets work in the short-term.  I personally have known quite a few people that went from VERY fat to thin on a diet - I’ll use my Aunt D’s best friend K as an example.  Guess where her body size is now?  Yep, you guessed it - even fatter than before.  I honestly believe, had this woman never dieted in the first place, she’d probably be fat, but she’d probably be around the size I am now (which I admit is on the smaller end of the fat scale).  As it is now, the last time I saw her she was somewhere near the vicinity of 500 lbs.  I truly believe all the dieting she’s done is what has brought her to this point.  I’ve known her all of my life and have seen her go up and down and up and down.  Diets don’t work.  And she’s a great example of that.

Saying that I want all fat people to be accepted as human beings is not the same thing as saying I want the rest of the world to find us all attractive. You don’t have to be attracted to me, or any other fat person.  A person’s level of attractiveness should not factor in to whether or not you treat them with basic dignity and respect.  You don’t have to like me to be respectful to me.  Shit, I can’t stand my mother-in-law, and yet I still treat her with respect and courtesy.  Why?  Because she’s a person.  I don’t have to like her to be polite to her.

However, beauty and attractiveness are two different things. You can find the beauty in a person without wanting to jump their bones.  It might not even be physical beauty.  And you know what?  That’s okay!  It’s okay to say that you can find a person beautiful for one reason or another and not find them attractive.  It’s a good thing, even.

I want the world’s governments to stop trying to “regulate” our bodies. People are designed to come in all shapes and sizes.  And if you bureaucratic anal-retentives would get your collective cranium removed from your collective colon, you’d realize that what you’re being spoon-fed by the mainstream media is being dispelled left and right.  It’s just not being advertised as much as the bullshit you’re swallowing.  Obesity is not a disease, and there is no epidemic.  You can’t catch it, and you can’t “cure” it.  It doesn’t need to be cured.  All the regulations you could come up with are not going to get you the results you want.  It’s just not going to happen.

I want BMI thrown out with the bath water. BMI is an antiquated, arbitrary, ridiculous standard to which no one should be accountable.  It simply doesn’t measure anything except for height and weight.  Human bodies are much more complicated than that.

That’s all I can think of right now.  This is, by no means, a complete list.  This is just what I’ve come up with in one sitting.  I may decide to edit this later on, I don’t know.

Movie Meme

I’m totally stealing this from several people on the Fat Liberation feed (see sidebar to the right).  I’ve had so much fun reading others’ quote choices and trying to guess, I just couldn’t NOT steal it. 

1. Pick 15 of your favorite movies.
2. Go to IMDb and find a quote from each movie.
3. Post them here for everyone to guess.
4. NO GOOGLING/using IMDb search functions.
5. Strike it out when someone guesses correctly, and put who guessed it and the movie.

1.

XXX1: Ow! It bit me!
XXX2: What’d you expect fairies to do?
XXX1: I thought they did nice things, like… like granting wishes.
XXX2: Shows what *you* know, don’t it?

Amanda got this one!  It’s Labyrinth.

2.

Suddenly I heard a tapping, as of someone gently rapping, rapping at my chamber door. You heard me rapping, right?

Congratulations, ladykuri! You got it!  It’s The Crow.

3.

XXX1: My mom had to get a restraining order against my stepdad. He has emotional problems.
XXX2: Oh, I have those too! What kind of emotional problems does your dad have?
XXX1: He stabbed my mom four times in the chest.
XXX2: Oh.

Devi got it!  It’s Donnie Darko.

4.

Becky! Come here. Somethin’ I ought to tell you. Guess now’s as good a time as any. You’re going to have every young buck west of the Missouri around here tryin’ to marry you - mostly because you’re a handsome filly, but partly because I own everything in this country from here to there. They’ll think you’re going to inherit it. Well, you’re not. I’m going to leave most of it to, well, to the nation really, for a park where no lumbermen’ll cut down all the trees for houses with leaky roofs. Nobody’ll kill all the beaver for hats for dudes nor murder the buffalo for robes. What I’m going to give you is a 500 cow spread on the Upper Green River. Now that may not seem like much, but it’s more than we had, your mother and I. Some folks are gonna say I’m doin’ all this so I can sit up in the hereafter and look down on a park named after me, or that I was disappointed in you - didn’t want you to get all that money. But the real reason, Becky, is because I love you, and I want you and some young man to have what I had, because all the gold in the United States Treasury and all the harp music in heaven can’t equal what happens between a man and a woman with all that growin’ together. I can’t explain it any better than that.

Hey, MizH, you got it!  This is another one I didn’t think people would get.  It’s McLintock - the one and only John Wayne movie that I actually like (that I’ve seen; I don’t think I’ve seen ALL of them, but a lot of them, yeah.)

5.

You wouldn’t want to have children with three heads, would you? I mean, you wouldn’t want to set up housekeeping in a padded cell. Oh, it would be bad.

Oooh, Karin, you’re good!  I wasn’t sure ANYBODY was going to get this one!  It’s Arsenic and Old Lace - my all-time favorite Cary Grant movie. 

6.

Components. American components, Russian Components, ALL MADE IN TAIWAN!

Yes, PK Tech Girl, it’s Armageddon! :)  (Actually, this is my absolute favorite line from the entire movie! Heehee)

7.

Y’all got on this boat for different reasons, but y’all come to the same place. So now I’m asking more of you than I have before. Maybe all. Sure as I know anything, I know this - they will try again. Maybe on another world, maybe on this very ground swept clean. A year from now, ten? They’ll swing back to the belief that they can make people… better. And I do not hold to that. So no more runnin’. I aim to misbehave.

Amanda got this one, too!  Serenity (God, I love this movie!)

8.

XXX1: Jesus didn’t have any brothers or sisters. Mary was a virgin.
XXX2: Mary gave birth to CHRIST without having known a man’s touch, that’s true. But she did have a husband. And do you really think he’d have stayed married to her all those years if he wasn’t getting laid? The nature of God and the Virgin Mary, those are leaps of faith. But to believe a married couple never got down? Well, that’s just plain gullibility.

The Bald Soprano got it!  It’s Dogma.

9.

Well, it’s good to see you’ve got your priorities in order. You care about a $75 bottle of wine, but you don’t give a fuck about killing a nine year old boy.

Karin got it!  It’s Mercury Rising.

10.

Why shouldn’t I work for the N.S.A.? That’s a tough one, but I’ll take a shot. Say I’m working at N.S.A. Somebody puts a code on my desk, something nobody else can break. Maybe I take a shot at it and maybe I break it. And I’m real happy with myself, ’cause I did my job well. But maybe that code was the location of some rebel army in North Africa or the Middle East. Once they have that location, they bomb the village where the rebels were hiding and fifteen hundred people I never met, never had no problem with, get killed. Now the politicians are sayin’, “Oh, send in the Marines to secure the area” ’cause they don’t give a shit. It won’t be their kid over there, gettin’ shot. Just like it wasn’t them when their number got called, ’cause they were pullin’ a tour in the National Guard. It’ll be some kid from Southie takin’ shrapnel in the ass. And he comes back to find that the plant he used to work at got exported to the country he just got back from. And the guy who put the shrapnel in his ass got his old job, ’cause he’ll work for fifteen cents a day and no bathroom breaks. Meanwhile, he realizes the only reason he was over there in the first place was so we could install a government that would sell us oil at a good price. And, of course, the oil companies used the skirmish over there to scare up domestic oil prices. A cute little ancillary benefit for them, but it ain’t helping my buddy at two-fifty a gallon. And they’re takin’ their sweet time bringin’ the oil back, of course, and maybe even took the liberty of hiring an alcoholic skipper who likes to drink martinis and fuckin’ play slalom with the icebergs, and it ain’t too long ’til he hits one, spills the oil and kills all the sea life in the North Atlantic. So now my buddy’s out of work and he can’t afford to drive, so he’s got to walk to the fuckin’ job interviews, which sucks ’cause the shrapnel in his ass is givin’ him chronic hemorrhoids. And meanwhile he’s starvin’, ’cause every time he tries to get a bite to eat, the only blue plate special they’re servin’ is North Atlantic scrod with Quaker State. So what did I think? I’m holdin’ out for somethin’ better. I figure fuck it, while I’m at it why not just shoot my buddy, take his job, give it to his sworn enemy, hike up gas prices, bomb a village, club a baby seal, hit the hash pipe and join the National Guard? I could be elected president.

And The Bald Soprano does it again!  Good Will Hunting

11.

I’d like to share a revelation that I’ve had during my time here. It came to me when I tried to classify your species and I realized that you’re not actually mammals. Every mammal on this planet instinctively develops a natural equilibrium with the surrounding environment but you humans do not. You move to an area and you multiply and multiply until every natural resource is consumed and the only way you can survive is to spread to another area. There is another organism on this planet that follows the same pattern. Do you know what it is? A virus. Human beings are a disease, a cancer of this planet. You’re a plague and we are the cure.

And Amanda does it again!  The Matrix.

12.

Men are rats, listen to me, they’re fleas on rats, worse than that, they’re amoebas on fleas on rats. I mean, they’re too low for even the dogs to bite. The only man a girl can depend on is a daddy.

Elisabeth gets the prize!  It’s Grease.

13.

If there’s something wrong, those who have the ability to take action have the responsibility to take action.

Well, it’s only taken 8 days since I first posted this, but FINALLY somebody got this one.  thegirlfrommarz got it, it’s National Treasure.  I like it, and I don’t care what you say. 

14.

From my mother I inherited a love of language and an appreciation of nature. She could turn a walk around the island into a voyage of purest discovery. As a child, I thought she was the most extraordinary woman on earth. I wasn’t the first son to be wrong about his mother.

Pyewacket got it!  It’s The Prince of Tides.

15.

XXX1: What’s the challenge, then?
XXX2: Rescue the damsel in distress, kill the bad guy, save the world.

Aaaaaaand Karin does it again!  It’s The Mummy (oh, how I drool for Brendan Frasier!)

Fat Positive thoughts in the oddest places.

What do YOU see?

I just got on the desktop computer* and opened up a webpage, which is set to iGoogle under my username.  I have it set to “random themes” and I get a different one every day.  This is one part of what came up today.

At first, I just looked at the colors and thought “oooh!  I like that one!”  But then I looked at it a little closer.

I do believe that this is just supposed to be some abstract pattern, but when I looked at this one part that I’ve sectioned off for you to see, what do you think my brain saw?

A beautiful fat body, that’s what.

Now what’s so strange about that, you might ask?  Of course I’m going to tell you, that’s the whole point of this post! 

You have to remember that I’m still fairly new to FA.  It hasn’t even been a year yet since I read my first FA post.  The change in me has been fairly slow, in terms of that <year.  However, when you consider the entirety of my life, it’s been fairly quick.  Especially when the changes in me go unnoticed until one day, it jumps up and slaps me in the face.  Like today.

I, like probably most fat people, internalized the fatphobia just as good as the next person.  Oh yeah, I didn’t just hate myself, I hated fat in general.  Of course there were always fat people that I saw and looked at and thought “wow… s/he’s fat AND beautiful” but I have to admit that it was very few and far between.  For the most part, the internalized fatphobia dominated my thinking.

Now I’ll admit that I’ve gone out of my way to try and change that thinking.  Not for anyone else, but for me.  I didn’t want to think that way about anyone, including myself.  But it was only today, when I saw that design on my iGoogle page, that I realized just how far I’ve come.

Never before finding FA would I have been able to actually think the words “beautiful fat body.”  I might not have reacted to a fat body with disdain or contempt, but those three words would have eluded me no matter what I did.  But today, I see that, and I am immediately overcome with an image of a beautiful fat woman, all roundness and curves and sensuality.

The whole thing.

I realize that you might look at it and see nothing.  Or you might look at it and see a beautiful fat man instead of a woman.

But you know what?  I like the fact that I saw a beautiful fat woman.  I’m glad.  When I realized the change in my thinking, I smiled and got the warm fuzzies inside.

* - we have 3 computers here at home.  The desktop is commonly referred to as “Daddy’s” computer, the laptop is mine and mine alone, and the other computer is The Little Helper’s.  Lately, though, Daddy’s been spending a lot of time in the bedroom on my laptop, so I’ve been using “his” computer almost exclusively.

Friday Fun: Hidden Talents

Sing, sing a song....

I went out with my best friend again this week, and “made a fool of myself.”

I’m talking karaoke.

Now the truth is, I don’t make a fool of myself.  But that’s what I call it.  As in “should I make a fool of myself this week or not?” - which is usually what I ask my friends.  To which they reply “yes! Yes! Please!”

See, they never knew I could sing.  It’s not something I brag about or anything, but I’ve always had a pretty good voice.  Good enough that, at age 14, my aunt B literally begged me to sing at her wedding.  I could pick whatever song I wanted, she just wanted me up there singing for her.  (I ended up singing “Longer” by Dan Fogelberg.  It was a beautiful song, seemed appropriate to the wedding, and was something she would remember from her own teen years.)

But then, when they took me out for my birthday this past year, I’d had enough to drink that I felt courageous enough to get up and sing.  And I hate to sound like I’m full of myself or anything, but I totally blew them away.  That time, I sang Celine Dion’s version of “It’s All Coming Back to Me Now”.  (I love that song, mainly because it’s written by Jim Steinman, the guy who wrote most of Meatloaf’s biggest hits… and Meatloaf is SO my boyfriend.)

I’ve done it a few times now, singing “You Oughta Know” and “Hand in my Pocket“, both by Alanis Morrissette.  Most of the time, when I sing, it’s just my friends that cheer for me.  Most of the other people that frequent that particular bar simply seem like they couldn’t give two shits about the people that are up there singing, regardless of who they are or how good (or bad!) they happen to be.

But two days ago, I surprised the hell out of myself, even.  I got up and sang Nickelback’s “How You Remind Me“.  And I had people cheering for me before I even finished the song.  When I was done, I received the biggest and best applause I’ve ever gotten since I started singing Karaoke 6 years ago.

So yeah… singing would be a hidden talent of mine.  It’s not something most people would even think of when they think of me.  But it’s “me” more than anybody would even guess.

Pink & Purple Ripple Afghan - Baby

A totally unrelated hidden talent of mine is my ability to crochet.  When people find out that I make things like this, they seem in total awe of my talent.  And honestly?  I think most people (except for maybe those that are really uncoordinated) would be able to do what I do, if they were taught how.  My late maternal grandmother taught me when I was 7, mostly to shut me up.  ;)  She would crochet in the evenings, when all the housework is done (much as I do now), and I would sit and watch her and ask a million questions.  One day she sat me down with my own ball of yarn and a hook and I was off! She only taught me the most basic stitches, but I was able to make things from then on. A few times I thought I’d “discovered” a new stitch, only to find out it was simply a more advanced stitch than the ones my grandmother had taught me.

I will admit, though, that it’s only been in the past few years that I’ve learned to read a pattern.  Before?  I would look at it and it looked like a different language, even though I was supposed to know what all the abbreviations meant.  Then suddenly a few years ago, something in my brain just “clicked” and patterns started making sense to me.

But when my friends and family see what I’ve made, it always garners “oohs” and “aahs”.  Honestly, it doesn’t feel like something you have to have “talent” for, but since so many people seem in awe of it, I guess I have to lump it in there on my “Hidden Talents” page.

What are your hidden talents?  Do they seem like a big deal to you?  Do others stand in awe of the awesomeness that is you?  (And of course you’re awesome!) ???

WTF ever happened to “ooh, your baby looks so fat & HEALTHY”????

Yeah, apparently now the quacks that brought us the (nonexistent) Obesity Epidemic are now finding “obesity” in infants.

As a mother of 4, this totally pisses me off.  For one thing, for thousands of years it’s been known that a fat baby usually equals a healthy baby.  Obviously not all of the time, but a good majority of the time.  It’s one of those things that we didn’t have proof of, it was just something we knew.  Like we knew the sky was blue before somebody went to the trouble of finding out the scientific reasons why.

But it gets worse.

The findings are based on two studies. The first involved 2139 infants not older than age 2 who were admitted for any reason to the Bnai Zion Medical Center in 2004 and 2005. The second study was community-based and used parental interviews to assess the problems seen in 79 overweight infants and 144 normal-weight infants.

The infants were considered overweight if they had a body mass index (BMI) above the 85th weight-for-height percentile on 2 or more measurements taken at least 3 months part. This means that 85 percent of children their age and gender have a lower BMI, which is a measure of weight in relation to height.

In the first study, the researchers found that infants between the 85th and 94th weight-for-height percentiles actually had fewer hospital admissions and repeat admissions than normal-weight infants. However, higher than expected admission rates were seen in the most overweight infants (95th or higher percentile).

In the second study, overweight infants were more likely than their normal-weight peers to have developmental delays and snoring. There was also evidence that asthma and other breathing problems were more common in overweight infants.

…

When surveyed, only about 32 percent of mothers with an overweight child believed that their child was overweight.

Parents need to be aware that even infants are at risk for problems related to excess body weight and, therefore, should strive to achieve a normal weight in their young children, Shaoul and colleagues conclude.

Emphasis mine.

So because the infants in one particular area had a higher than “normal”rate of developmental delays and breathing problems, the rest of the world faces the same fate??

What, babies should now start looking like those Ethiopian children the media liked to plaster all over our televisions in the 80s and 90s??  And since when did starving our babies putting our babies on a diet sound like a good thing?  There used to be a word for that.  Neglect.  You got your children taken away from you for that.

Where is this “community” used for the second study?  Why do I get the feeling it’s probably either a low-income area or one based near some sort of industrial site?  One where either the residents don’t have access to the kind of medical care that could catch and prevent these sorts of problems (and probably don’t have access to proper nutrition, either), or one where there’s something in the air or water that’s causing these problems.

Obviously I have no way of knowing that, but it just seems odd to me that one study showed that fat babies ARE healthy babies - the one study that probably had a broader range of subjects from all walks of life.  And then they do another study, in an isolated area, and the results are dramatically different.

Something smells fishy to me.

*Credit should go to Sarah at Big Fat Dynamo.  She found the story first.