Isn't it delightful, indeed.

There are lots of other words people use [to describe larger body types]. Curvy, chubby, stout, voluptuous, zaftig, fluffy, big-boned, thick, and so on. But they don’t really describe my body in a meaningful way when I want to talk about my particular body experience.

...

There are plenty of other words that have been thrown my way over the years. But, for my linguistic energy, fat is still the best thing out there. It’s not a fancy word but I don’t need it to be. It’s one of the first words we learn to read; it’s basic. It’s as basic as “This is my body.” My body is many things. My body is fat.

The objection, of course, is that fat is used as an insult, is used to tear people down. It’s a successful insult because of the cultural perception that fat is bad.

I tell you what, my fat is not bad. It isn’t morally wrong, nor is it poorly behaved. It simply is. I’m not afraid of my fat and so I am not afraid of the word. “You’re fat,” (or, more commonly from trolls, “Your fat”) is a statement of fact, not an insult. Why, yes, yes, I am fat. Isn’t it delightful?

- From the always delightful and amazing Marianne Kirby at The Rotund.


In case you were wondering, I enjoy the word 'zaftig' a lot, but I am, at my core, just plain-old fat. It's not a revelation to say that about myself - I've been calling myself fat for years. What is new is the fact that I am saying it without judging myself. Fat as a descriptive word with no moral weight attached to it - THAT is a revelation.


In related news, I think I am addicted to Alight. Mmmmmm clothes!

I want to be Joy when I grow up.

Ha!  I wrote that whole post yesterday, and then remember that Joy Nash says it all better than I could, while looking fabulous:



If you like that, check out Joy's blog.

Big Girls Shouldn't Cry, especially on the subway.

So, I guess I have to face the fact that my life is NOT BORING.  It's busy and expensive and complicated and amazing and hard, but it is never boring.  So this blog will happen when it happens, and when I have something to share.  Which I do.

I'm reading a book right now - Lessons from the Fat-O-Sphere by Kate Harding and Marianne Kirby - and it's one of those potentially life-changing books.  Like, I'm reading it and thinking "if I can do this, if I can be okay in my own skin, my life might become something else, something better." It's a book about Fat Acceptance, and more than that it's a book about learning how to stop hating yourself, how to stop judging people around you, how to let go of guilt and stop making unattainable promises to yourself.  It's about learning to be critical of medical and media reports about health and body size - who is funding them?  Has something pretty benign been sensationalized? Has there been any fact-checking at all?  (For example - what is the percentage growth in obesity rates among women since 1999?  Answer, according to many medical sources: ZERO.  Bet your Marie Claire cover story on how to lose those extra 10 pounds doesn't let you know that, though.)

Here's a story about me and this book:

I live in New York City.  NYC has a lot of skinny girls in it, at least on TV.  I read on the subway, mainly because I spend a good deal of my time there, and it's easy and fun and keeps me entertained.  (I try not to read books that make me cry, but sometimes, like with this one, I do anyway.)  When I started reading this book, I did that thing that book lovers hate, and folded the paperback cover over so no one could see the cover.  Or I held the book in my lap, so no one would guess what I was reading.  I was ASHAMED to be reading a book about Fat Acceptance.  I was GUILTY, thinking that someone, one of these NYC Beautiful People I see on TV, or hanging out at NYU in the latest H&M clothes that would never fit me, would look at me, standing there in my size 18 glory, and look at the cover of this book, and think to themselves "of course you want to stop dieting, you Fatty Fatson. You just don't have the willpower, you're lazy, you can't do it and you want someone to tell you that you don't have to."  And you know what?  No one was thinking that.  No one gives a good god damn what I read on the subway.  I was the one who thought that.  I was the one who was hating on myself for reading this book in public, where other people could see.  Guess what?  Those other people could see me without the book.  They weren't going to magically look at the cover of a book and then realize I was fat.  I'm fat.  Any sighted person would know that.

About three chapters in, I sort of... stopped folding the cover over.  And when I glanced up, no one was looking.  But I was.  I was seeing all sorts of lovely people of all sorts of sizes and genders and ethnicities all over the place.  And none of them cared about my fat book.  No one was judging me but me, and man.  That was a startling thought.

This book is not crazy.  But sometimes the things it says are radical in their simplicity, like:

• If you want to eat a cookie right now, eat a cookie. If you want a salad for dinner, have a salad.  Listen to your body, eat when you're hungry, stop when you're full.
• There is no such thing as "bad food".  Food is food is food and has no morality attached to it.
• Don't give money to stores that don't deign to carry your size.
• If clothes don't fit right, it's the clothes fault, not yours.
• Don't be friends with people who criticize your weight, or make you feel belittled because of it.

My biggest worry as I tackle the things Kate and Marianne are teaching me is that I am a) going to be accused of using this as an excuse for not being healthy and b) that those people will be right.  I'm not a dieter.  I don't own a scale.  I tend to take a "it's not going to work anyway" attitude about weightloss because I knew it would be hard and probably wouldn't work and I don't like to do things I'm not good at.  That doesn't mean I don't judge myself, and my weight, every day.  That just means that I put up a facade of "Take me as I am", when really I believe that this is all I will ever be, and not in the good way.  I am fat, and that is that, but without the empowerment of "SO WHAT?" that this book is screaming at me.  I'm a woman who believes my body is my own, end of story, and what I do with it is my business.  Somehow, these women have (RADICALLY!) expanded this idea to include what I eat, where I do, what I wear.  I'm fat, SO WHAT?  What does that say about me as a person? 

Answer: Not very much.  It doesn't come close to describing me, or describing ANYONE.  My weight has no morality attached to it.  It doesn't make me lazy or stupid or unmotivated or sexless.  In fact, I am most certainly NONE of those things.  And I would be who I am at whatever weight I was.  Being fat doesn't define me, but it is part of who I am in this society, and if I can find a way to balance that... who boy, look out!

I need to take a long, hard look at myself (not in the mirror, just metaphorically) and know that in order to stop the cycle of "why even bother" that has always existed in my (non-)weight-loss thoughts, I need to know that I SHOULD bother to eat right for me, whatever that means.  I SHOULD bother to find some physical activity that makes me happy.  I SHOULD go dancing and lift weights and eat potato chips when I get the urge or take the night off and watch White Collar because it makes me clap with glee.  I should listen to my body because it's MY BODY and we should be best friends forever.  I should bother because I should love myself enough - not to lose weight, but to be healthy and happy at whatever pants size I may be. 

It's a great book, and an easy read, and a hard thing to really internalize.  I might read it twice.

Then, it's on to Health At Every Size, the foundation of the HAES movement. 

And maybe I'll buy some free weights.  They won't make me thin, but man, they might make me happy.

It's Friday! Have some Hanson/Blues Brothers action!

Thinking 'Bout Somethin'

HANSON | MySpace Music Videos



You're welcome.

I forget that boring and busy aren't mutually exclusive

Somehow, when I started this blog, I had the idea that since I was not going to have the time to do a ton of interesting stuff (read: travel, concerts, creative projects), that my life would be boring.  Hence the name of this blog, and my attempt to find joy in the everyday, the ordinary.  What I miscalculated was how unbelievably busy I would be, even though I was also boring.

I forget that when I am really, really busy my brain tends to shut down all parts that are not needed right then and I tend do just do everything in the order in which they are kicking my ass. This isn't necessarily a bad thing, because it means I get everything done on time even if I am running flat out for a week or two, but it means I am never prepared, mentally, for the next thing.

This week, that means I got through the school work I had due on Tuesday, then took a deep breath and got through the work-work I had due through today, and now I'm looking up and realizing there will be people in my house on Friday and I have not cleaned AT ALL. So I have to do that. And then I will spend the weekend on my class project, and the coming week freaking out about a big event at work and then the following weekend on my choir stuff and more class project stuff.

(Also, I have a root canal in two weeks.  So that is a joy.)

But back to the people part!  This month (actually, this very DAY) marks the four year anniversary of Sarah and I moving in to our apartment.  Which means is five and a half year since I've moved into this building on my quiet street in Washington Heights and became a Real New Yorker.

That is boggling. Four years is the longest Sarah or I have lived in one place since we were both in middle school.  It means this place, with its occasional bug problem and its high ceilings and its utter lack of decent closet space and relative huge square footage is MY HOME.  There are framed things on the wall (thanks to a dear friend) and everything in the kitchen has a place (mostly) and the bathroom quirks barely register anymore.  Somehow it still feels temporary in some way, maybe because in the long run it is - we don't own it, and we never will, and eventually we will move on.

But eventually isn't today or even this year, so I need to deal with the fact that my home is quirky and imperfect and mine, and buy some paint this spring and put my mark on it some more. 

It's almost here!

Sometimes, you just need to be reminded that Spring is just around the corner.

Then, everything else seems doable.

but like a child at home

I've fallen down on the blogging - again! - but I have so much to talk about now!  (The upside to be too busy to blog, I suppose.)

This weekend was my second concert with my choir, and it went off so, so well.  We all felt it, I think, about halfway through the concert, that we were all in this moment together and all feeling the weight and joy and pathos and humor of these songs, and that we had worked so hard to get here, and were so proud!

It was interesting for me to sing for the people who were there to see me.  My mom has obviously been coming to concerts of mine since I was in grade school, but she reminded me that she hadn't seen me sing since I was in a church choir in Arizona, back in 2002.  My best friend from high school was there too, and she has to have sat through a dozen or more of my concerts in the past, but she hadn't heard me sing since college.

I can't believe it had been that long.

I can't believe I didn't have this in my life for so long.

Singing on my own is one thing - it's fun and easy and I can stop for a while when my life gets busy.  But it doesn't have the same overwhelming feeling of belonging that singing in a group brings.  Being part of this group is a real commitment - a hard one, now that I am working full time and also back in school.  But the three hours a week I spend with these people is spiritually transformative, and gives me something I've been missing for a long, long time.  We're not anything other than forty people who happen to enjoy music, but when you put us all together, we are so much more than the sum of our parts.

There will be more concerts in my future, and I hope you'll be able to join me for one of them.  I'm not tooting my own horn here when I say you won't be disappointed.  It's a wonderful group led by a truly gifted and giving music conductor.  (If you want to hear some sample songs by the choir, or join the mailing list in case I get lame and don't email people about a show, visit the Manhattan Choral Ensemble website.)

*

In other, much more mundane realizations, I have somehow stopped going to movies.  I love movies, a lot, and some of them have transformed me almost as much as music does.  I don't really have anyone in NYC to go to movies with, and I've fallen out of the habit.  Now that I get student tickets again, I should make that another of my resolutions - a movie a month! - but seeing as the Netflix film I got in December is still on my coffee table?  I'm not holding out much hope.  *sigh*

I do want to see The Hurt Locker, though.  It looks stunning.