BARBARA'S TCHATZKAHS

by Renee Martin The personal narrative is something I have avoided, because the naked honesty also leaves one extremely vulnerable to attack. Living in a marginalized body is difficult enough without showing one’s war wounds, but when it becomes clear that hiding is only enabling the complete erasure of people who look and function like me, then it is time to speak out . You see, I am fat, Black, female and differently-abled. I can never completely be at home with any one of the labels that best describe me. In the media, I can see Black women, or even fat black women, but fat and differently abled are definitely categories that are understood to be mutually exclusive. A body like mine contradicts the mainstream social discourse. Fat activist groups like NAAFA (The National Association to Advance Fat Acceptance) have worked hard to promote HAES (Health at any size). NAAFA’s goal is to build “a society in which people of every size are accepted with dignity and equality in all a...

There is a pervasive way of thinking in our culture today that seeks to undermine women's fight for empowerment. Women are being attacked at every opportunity by messages designed to make them feel bad about themselves, in hopes that these women will then buy what the messenger is selling. At the Media Awareness Network , this problem is defined quite clearly: Why are standards of beauty being imposed on women, the majority of whom are naturally larger and more mature than any of the models? The roots, some analysts say, are economic. By presenting an ideal difficult to achieve and maintain, the cosmetic and diet product industries are assured of growth and profits. And it’s no accident that youth is increasingly promoted, along with thinness, as an essential criterion of beauty. If not all women need to lose weight, for sure they’re all aging, says the Quebec Action Network for Women’s Health in its 2001 report Changements sociaux en faveur de la diversité des images corpor...

By LOREN BERLIN Sometimes drugs that heal your body can cause side effects that dampen your spirit. Loren Berlin, who has ulcerative colitis, writes about gaining weight as a result of a drug treatment. Two years ago, when I was 29 years old, I experienced my first flare from ulcerative colitis, an autoimmune disorder of the colon with intermittent cycles of disease activity and remission. I lost five pounds in less than a week, was unable to eat or drink, and was bleeding internally from the ulcers and inflammation decimating my large intestine. My gastroenterologist prescribed prednisone, a corticosteroid that vanquished my symptoms in seventy-two hours. Literally. One day I was on the verge of hospitalization. Three days later I was no longer bleeding. It was amazing. But it wasn’t free. Prednisone is infamous in the medical community for its side effects. It can cause osteoporosis and diabetes. It suppresses the immune system and can lead to insomnia and depression. Sure, that ...

PLEASE SIGN THE PETITION TO HELP THOUSANDS OF WOMEN LIKE ME: PCOS AWARENESS & TREATMENT - Please Sign!! I was diagnosed in 1966 and didn't receive proper treatment until 1999!!! That's right -- 33 years of hearing that it must be me !! Despite PCOS being a KNOWN DISEASE since the 1930s! Let's include being bullied at school by students AND teachers who were clueless about this illness. PCOS robbed me of some of my womanhood, destroyed relationships I cared about, given me heart disease and added to my clinical depression and PTSD issues. And I am not the only one. More Awareness is needed now!! Please help. Thank you. PCOS and Weight Loss by Louise Parker One of the major obstacles facing women with PCOS is the weight gain that has become synonymous with it. Approximately 50 to 60% of all women with PCOS are classified as obese. One of the major reasons why obesity is common in PCOS sufferers is the body’s inability to process insulin. Insulin is a hormone that regul...

Repost by permission from the Author by Connie Did you ever catch yourself looking at an overweight person riding on a scooter and think to yourself, “Gesh, if she’d get off that scooter and walk she wouldn’t be so fat!” Of if you see a man who’s overweight using the elevator think to yourself, “ Goodness, someone should be using the stairs!” Most people do. The thing is, you’re assuming that overweight person is that way because he/she is LAZY, when in fact he/she may have a chronic but invisible illness. How do I know? Because I’m one of those people who’s been labeled many times as fat and lazy and I’m far from it. My family is overweight, so I know that genetically I’m predisposed to it. Put my family and my husband’s family in a room, all with their backs facing you, and you can sort them by family. The only exception is our youngest son. He fits my husband’s family’s body type – short and thin. My oldest looks like my family – overweight. I’ve always fought my weight because of ...

From this great blog! Bookmark this one! by Paul Campos Even by the remarkably mendacious standards of the "obesity" racket some of the claims in this story are beyond belief. The most laughable is the idea that by 2048 everybody in the US will be "overweight" or "obese." This result was derived via statistical extrapolation, the crack cocaine of social science analysis (by similar methods one could prove that within a few generations Olympic sprinters will be running at speeds that will hurl them into low Earth orbit and everyone in America will have a plasma TV seventeen miles wide). In fact there has been no weight gain at all over the past 30 years in the thinnest quartile of the population -- whatever (poorly understood) factors have caused Americans to weigh more on average now than they did in the 1970s have had very different impacts across the weight spectrum: thin people have gained no weight, people in the middle weigh 10-15 pounds than they d...

by Lisa Earle McLeod Should job interviews include a weigh-in? There's been some debate in the media about whether or not Surgeon General nominee Regina Benjamin is too overweight for the position. On behalf of chubby, middle-aged, smart women, I feel obligated to take up this cause. I'd like to know, exactly which jobs do you need to be skinny for? And when is it okay to bring a little extra girth into the office? Personally, I think Dr. Benjamin looks fine. Sure, she's no Kate Moss, but C. Everett Koop was no Slim Jim either. In fact, I kind of prefer a Surgeon General who's a little lumpy. Who better to relate to the challenge of trying to stay healthy in our fast food, couch potato, cubicle culture? Yet some have suggested that as the face of medicine, Dr. Benjamin's Rubenesque figure doesn't project the right image. Uh, have you looked around the mall lately? TV anchor desks may be staffed by skinny minnies who live on Dentyne and Starbucks, but the rest of...

I hate, really really HATE reality shows. They show a complete and utter lack of imagination and encourage total Destructive Narcissism. The only one I enjoy is BIGGEST LOSER. I recently lost some weight and I have more to go, but it's being done with medical supervision because MY EATING HAS NOTHING TO DO WITH MY WEIGHT. Let's just say 41 years of PCOS , numerous surgeries, disability and medication helped that. I am still taking care of myself, well dressed, my doctors have commented on how clean I keep myself and being a good role model for my kids. The only other 'reality-type' shows I enjoy are CLEAN HOUSE and my friend, RUBY . That's it. Most of the time it's CSI, Law & Order or Medium. Shows that ENGAGE YOUR BRAIN! Then reality TV has to screw it all up again! From Intellectual Babe It's weird - for whatever reason this particular week I became acutely aware of just how much out-and-out hatred is leveled at fat people. Or, at the very lea...

I am back. Slowly. Gently. My surgery went very well. Things removed that didn't belong. Things removed that were damaged beyond repair. My doctors are all very impressed with my excellent pathology results and how well I am doing. My (female) surgeon was shocked that I was not in a lot more pain. Prior to surgery I was told many of the findings of my tests showed my health had improved quite a bit... but not my disability. PCOS has once again felled me for a while. I am slowly getting better, walking and functioning but the large incision is painful. The doctors and especially the nurses at NYU/Tisch ICU, Post-Op and Women's Division were fantastic. I was complemented on how personally clean, well put together and intelligent I was during my recovery time. I got to educate a few people on PCOS and this time, I actually did sleep some! (and if this is what you have to do to get a room with view in Manhattan, no thanks!) Your prayers, I am positive, helped a lot as we...

From the fabulous Kate Harding.Net: What’s interesting is that at first, it was really hard for me to know what to say. My first, reflexive thought was that I could just tell my own story! I mean, I’m thin and all. But I quickly shot that down. Talking about my experiences as a thin person, on a FA blog, would be an excellent demonstration of thin privilege, but it wouldn’t accomplish much else. Fat acceptance is fundamentally not ABOUT the thin experience. It’s really not about me, at all. In fact, that’s really what I should be talking about. But I’m going to take a minute to ward off as much of the anticipated defensiveness as I can right off the bat, even though I hate feeling like I’m placating the WATM-style whining (this time with Thin!). After all, it’s not like the FA community needs a lecture on thin privilege (HEY GUESS WHAT FATTIES I GET IT NOW CAN I HAVE A DOUGHNUT): this is really for thin people out there who haven’t really considered their own privilege. So, do some thi...

First let me say I don't like being fat. Yes, I diet and yes, to the degree my disability (unrelated to my weight) allows me - I do exercise. A while back someone posted really malicious things about my weight, my character and even my disability online. Even throwing in a very twisted, backward and upside-down version of what really occurred between us. To wit (edited for foul language): You used the internet to track him down after 30 years, which wasn’t too hard because he’s a published writer. You got him to agree to meet up with you. When he did meet up with you, to his horror, he saw that his ex-girlfriend from college had ballooned into a 275 lb fat pig with poor hygiene and he didn’t want to bang you. He politely excused himself by saying he couldn’t do this to his wife. You then began stalking him and his family, driving by his house, sending letters to anyone with whom you thought you could slander his good name. His poor wife was left with no choice but to report you...

First - I believe Global Warming is real. WHY? Because I love to garden. And that puts me in direct contact with plants, growth cycles, the soil - and I can see FOR MYSELF what is happening because of changes in the weather. Second, I have talked a lot on this blog that I am obese. I recently learned that I have to have major surgery at the end of May for the removal of PCOS related growths that I have had for a number of years which have caused my belly to distend and make me appear fatter than I am. So there ARE reasons other than being a food addict for being fat. Third, all this fat-hatred , the 'better dead than fat' attitude of society and the centerfold syndrome that most males suffer from disgusts me. What ever happened to seeing a person as a PERSON? Not a body, or parts, or pictures, or words on a screen - a HUMAN BEING. To me, seeing someone as an object makes the beholder THE PROBLEM - not the person being judged and criticized. OBESITY, CAUSE OF GLOBAL W...