Tag Archives: body

Feminism

Lies, damn lies, and statistics

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I’ve been following the MTR debate with some interest.  I had planned to write a blog post about how she’s not my kind of feminist, and I may yet do, but a statistic she quoted today in an article with Mamamia caught my eye.

6. How do you resolve the apparent divide between being pro-life and a feminist?

…

A growing number of feminists are questioning abortion as safe, simple and risk free. Research is also indicating that women have significant negative mental health outcomes after abortions. The UK Royal College of Psychiatrists has published a meta-analysis in the British Journal of Psychiatry finding that women who undergo abortions are 81% more likely to experience subsequent mental health problems. (Substance abuse increased 340%, suicidal behaviour by 155%).

I looked at those statistics and boggled, because when I last looked at Wikipedia regarding mental health and abortion the information suggested that there was no correlation between negative health outcomes and abortion.  I went and tracked down what I could find of the British Journal of Psychiatry article.  Sadly I found it was behind a paywall, so I went and looked at what other people had said regarding the article, the methods used, and the author of the piece.  It was an interesting read.  To start off, I’ll quote the Results section of the abstract:

Women who had undergone an abortion experienced an 81% increased risk of mental health problems, and nearly 10% of the incidence of mental health problems* (my own asterisk) was shown to be attributable to abortion. The strongest subgroup estimates of increased risk occurred when abortion was compared with term pregnancy and when the outcomes pertained to substance use and suicidal behaviour.

Continue reading Lies, damn lies, and statistics →

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Linkspam

Linkspam of the gods December 2011

Stuff I’ve been reading about the place:

Stephanie Bolt’s (Andrew Bolt’s sister)’s piece: I want marriage equality for all

Some gays and lesbians view their relationships as equal to those of straight people. But I know of others who would admit to feeling “lesser” or, even if they don’t, are fed up with receiving negative physical, verbal or other signals from the world around them.

Burt Humburg’s journey to outing himself as gay: ‘There’s only one Burt’

“(Suppressing the desires) worked for a while. … but I started to become quietly insane,” Humburg said. “My craziness was getting worse and worse and worse. I was a jerk.”

He said he briefly considered suicide.

“Within 10 seconds I concluded that was not the answer,” Humburg said. “I just thought, ‘You’re a straight-A student headed (into) medicine at some point. What are you gonna do – throw that all away just because of some Bronze Age understandings of the Bible and human sexuality?’ Let’s just take this slow and see how it goes.

“So I stopped fighting it. And as soon as I allowed (homosexuality) to be a consideration – bam. I knew.”

A fascinating article on the Christian basis of the understanding of marriage in Australia: Should Marriage Be A Life Sentence?

In order to preclude the legal recognition of same-sex marriages, the 2004 Bill proposed to incorporate the common law definition of marriage set out by Lord Penzance in the case of Hyde noted above, which involved the status of Mormon polygamous unions made in America. Lord Penzance noted: “marriage, as understood in Christendom, may for this purpose be defined as the voluntary union for life of one man and one woman to the exclusion of all others”. The words, “as understood in Christendom”, do not appear in section 46 of the Marriage Act nor in section 43 of the Family Law Act. The Hyde definition is otherwise intact in those sections.

Sady Doyle’s article: The Girl’s Guide to Staying Safe Online

For years, it’s been an open secret that having a visibly female online identity – especially if one writes about sexism – is a personal security risk. Highly visible bloggers such as Jessica Valenti report receiving hate mail every day. Some have been subject to campaigns aimed at getting them fired. This doesn’t only happen to high-profile feminists, or women; some people, including men, have been harassed at work simply for commenting on the wrong blog. But it is a gendered phenomenon: W.H.O.A. reports that, in 2010, 73% of cyberstalking victims were female.

A great article on body image and how large women with breasts can been seen as problematic in the office: It Happened to Me: I Got in Trouble for Bringing My Boobs to the Office

At one point in the “conversation,” I’d tried to point out that my dress wasn’t any different from what the other women in the department wore. In fact, it was pretty common knowledge one of the other women had a certain outfit she wore when she wanted something from her boss. I, uh, did not mention that to the department head. That was when my department head told me, in uncomfortable and tentative wording, that the issue was really my large boobs.

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Religion

No, you’re wrong

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James at Slutwalk
James (my husband) at Slutwalk. Photo taken by me

*Trigger warning for discussion of rape*

I was at slutwalk yesterday, and as I’d volunteered to be a marshall at the Melbourne event, apparently I was a “slut wrangler” – thanks The Age.  It was a fantastic event and the organisers did a great job liaising with the police and the city council regarding the march, getting great speakers and keeping everything together.  This post isn’t about the great signs, fantastic people, great speakers and the courage that everyone showed by marching or attending yesterday, no, this post is about the protesters to the march who just don’t get it.

As reported in The Age today:

Two lone Christian protesters holding signs saying ”Rape is horrifying but so is immodesty” and ”God resists the proud but gives grace to the humble” were the only visible opponents.

There was perhaps a third protester on the steps of Treasury House at the top of Collins Street.  I heard that there was someone there with a sign that was very close to illegible due to the amount of text on it, who ended up being surrounded by people who were marching before the police took them away (the sign holder, not the marchers).  I have no idea what was on that sign, so I’ll leave my commenting to the ones reported in The Age.

 

Rape is horrifying but so is immodesty

So, apparently being immodest, is as bad as being raped.  I take it that the author of this sign hadn’t:

a) thought for more than 5 seconds;
b) been raped;
c) know anyone who has been raped (though if they do, they probably think that it was the victim’s fault); and/or
d) listened to the experience of someone who has been raped/sexually assaulted and asked why/how the rapist could do that.

The author of that sign also clearly missed the entire point of the march.  The fact is, that regardless of what women wear, rapists will rape.  I was (sadly) briefly friends with a woman at university who was raped at knifepoint when walking home from school one day.  She had her throat slit during and was incredibly lucky to survive.  She was wearing her school uniform and carrying her school bag – she was not dressed immodestly.  I was raped by my then boyfriend.  I was partially naked at the time, which I suppose is considered immodest, but given I was in a relationship with him, then again no – any more than I’d be immodest if I was raped today by a partner (which wouldn’t happen).

Before I started reading this post I thought I’d do a little bit of reading about modesty (on wikipedia of course), to make sure I understood what the protesters were talking about.  There are some very interesting quotes in the wikipedia article on modesty which I thought I’d share.

Modesty may be expressed in social interaction by communicating in a way exhibiting humility, shyness, or simplicity. The general elements of modesty include:

  • Downplaying one’s accomplishments;
  • Behavior, manner, or appearance intended to avoid impropriety or indecency

…

Standards of modesty vary by culture, or generation and vary depending on who is exposed, which parts of the body are exposed, the duration of the exposure, the context, and other variables.

…

Proponents of modesty often see it as a demonstration of respect for their bodies, for social norms, and for the feelings of themselves and others. Some people believe modesty may reduce sexual crimes. Some critics assert that modesty reflects a negative body image, and there may be a correlation between repressive body attitudes and undesirable outcomes such as sexual crimes, violence, and stress.

…

Most discussion of modesty involves clothing. Issues of modesty and decency have arisen especially during the 20th century as a result of the increased popularity in many countries of shorter dresses and swimsuits and the consequential exposure of more of the body. This has been more pronounced in the case of female fashions. Most people consider the clothes that they are wearing to be modest. Otherwise, they would not wear the clothes. What is considered “modest” in this context will depend on the context when the clothes will be worn and can vary between religions, cultures, generations, occasions, and the persons who are present. [emphasis added]

Modesty is such a fluid concept, it changes year to year, and what is considered modest now, would be considered highly immodest 100 years or more ago.  The fact that modesty has different rules depending on which gender you present is also incredibly suckful and unfair, and good reasons for it to be ignored.  Immodesty is not as horrifying rape, I’d happily walk naked across the CBD of Melbourne, but I’d not happily be raped.

God resists the proud but gives grace to the humble

I’d just like to laugh at the irony of this statement.  Humility is nicely defined as:

Humility (adjectival form: humble) is the quality of being modest, reverential, even obsequiously submissive, and never being arrogant, contemptuous, rude or even self-aggrandizing.

I’d like more Christians to be humble, and to not attempt to dictate to others what they should and should not do.

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Feminism

Things of which we do not speak

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Over the past two weeks it’s been brought back to me the things that we just don’t talk about, and this is mostly women stuff, I’m not sure about the man stuff, because I’m not a man.  But anyway, a couple of weeks ago, my new coworker confided in me that she had just started her period, via our work IM system, and that she was feeling rather cruddy.  She then asked me if that was too much information – to which I replied, “If women can’t talk about periods, what else can we talk about?”

She then told me that she sent that message through IM rather than just telling me (we sit next to each other) because she didn’t want to freak the men out (we’re surrounded by male colleagues) and although I understand this, I also find it puzzling.  Surely these men have sisters, wives, girlfriends, female friends, and/or mothers who have at some point in their lives had a period.  Surely the fact that women have periods is not shocking news.

But then again it is because of the whole lady-business taboo of which we cannot speak – for no real good reason.  The taboo of sharing personal information – which generally has anything to do with stuff under your skin – is exacerbated for women when existing as female brings along a whole range of health issues (hello period pain to say the least), and these health issues (be they minor or major) cannot be spoken freely about in public for fear of… something (which I never quite get).

Which means that support that might otherwise be given, may not be as some people may be ashamed to talk about some health issues because of social taboos, and these social taboos are taught young.  I remember when I first was told about getting periods as a 10 year old or so.  It was something that my mother was clearly uncomfortable in telling me, so I understood that it was a shameful thing.  I also understood that it was not something that you spoke about with people, so when I got my period one Christmas day (I was 10!), I told my mother… who then told my father.  I was outraged – how could she tell him after basically telling me that you didn’t talk about it with people?  One of my many introductions to double standards – and an indication that some social taboos weren’t real.

So I get to go back to work tomorrow, after having a cyst removed and I have to figure out how much information is going to be TMI for some people.  My manager knows I had an operation to remove an infected cyst, but he doesn’t know where it was – and do I feel comfortable and safe enough to tell him?  One of the other flip sides of these taboos is that even though I don’t necessarily think that they’re worthwhile, not keeping them may not be safe.

I’m generally an honest person and will answer pretty much any question asked of me honestly, provided it isn’t an effort to shame me – and then I’ll deflect the question.  The need to abide by social taboos about what I can and cannot talk about in relation to myself is frustrating to me.

And because I’ve now run out of brain I’ll close this with part of a piece attributed to Gloria Steinem:

Since history was recorded, male human beings have built whole cultures around the idea that penis-envy is “natural” to women – though having such an unprotected organ might be said to make men more vulnerable, and the power to give birth makes womb-envy at least logical. In short, logic has nothing to do with it. What would happen, for instance, if suddenly, magically, men could menstruate and women could not? The answer is clear – menstruation would become an enviable, boast-worthy, masculine event:

…

  • Military men, right-wing politicians, and religious fundamentalists would cite menstruation (“MENstruation”) as proof that only men could serve in the army (“You have to give blood to take blood”), occupy political office (“Can women be aggresive without that steadfast cycle governed by the planet Mars?”), be priests and ministers (“how could a woman give her blood for our sins”), or rabbis (“Without the monthly loss of impurities, women remain unclean”).
  • Male radicals, left-wing politicians, and mystics, however, would insist that women are equal, just different; and that any woman could enter their ranks if only she were willing to self-inflict a major wound every month (“You must give blood for the revolution”), recognize the preeminence of menstrual issues, or subordinate her selfness to all men in their Cycle of Enlightenment.

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body

A surprising experience

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Before reading this post you may want to consider that it details some personal medical information about myself and my recent hospital experience.  If you are someone who doesn’t deal well with TMI, you might want to stop reading here and go and play somewhere else – you can come back when the next post is written.

On Tuesday I noticed a painful discomfort in my vagina.  I had previously had what I thought were called Barton Cysts – which had all been painful, but I knew that they could get infected and possibly need surgery to be repaired.  So I looked it up, it was indeed a Bartholin’s Cyst and I would probably need to have it looked at.  I poked at it, and it was tender and large, and so I went to bed thinking about what I was going to do about the whole thing.  On Wednesday night it was sufficiently painful and uncomfortable to stop me going to the gym, and I decided to take Thursday off to go and see my GP and see what could be done.  This was also on the recommendation of my sister who has previously had infected Bartholin’s cysts and had had surgery to resolve them.

Continue reading A surprising experience →

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body

Fat people and fetishism

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As I was travelling home tonight on the train, I looked at my reflection in the window of the train.  I saw a fat woman… and wondered, briefly, what other people thought of me.  I wondered what they’d think if they knew that I am polyamorous and have multiple partners (and a queue of people interested in also playing).  I wondered if they would think that there was something wrong with these people who find me quite sexy and sexual and who want me.

Because I’ve been on the receiving end of “they’re interested in YOU?” as well as sometimes thinking myself “why are they interested in them?”*  And it’s not fun.  Not just not fun because it clearly states that I am not a sexually attractive and overall attractive individual, but also because it suggests that the person who is attracted to me has defective taste or is broken in some way.

Or… as I have heard suggested about some other fat friends, acquaintances, or strangers, perhaps the person attracted to their fat partner has a fat fetish.  Which again is quite horrible because fetishisation (outside the fetish community) is seen as a mental illness by some or an undesirable trait by others, so to fetishise something is unappealing and gross.  It also dehumanises the fat individual – because fetishes are typically objects and/or parts of a person – not an entire person.

Clearly the idea that anyone who is fat is also a full human being who is interesting, attractive, sexy, sexual, lovable, and desirable, is incredibly radical.  How about we stop looking at the outside of people and judging what we see, and get to know people and learn who they are.  You don’t have to like them or love them, but you do have to acknowledge their humanity.

 

* Though that’s a whole other post because it’s not just how someone appears that makes me question someone else’s relationship choice – it’s a huge package of stuff – personality, political affiliations, choices, religion, etc

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body

It’s not very funny

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There was this joke I read on a website (which isn’t known for being friendly to women), and it wasn’t at all funny.  Here it is (emphasis all mine):

A woman, wearing a sleeveless sun dress, walked into a Bar in Dublin.
She raised her right arm, revealing a huge, hairy armpit as she pointed to all the people sitting at the bar and asked, ‘What man here will buy a lady a drink?’

Down at the end of the bar, an old drunk slammed his hand down on the counter and bellowed ‘Give the ballerina a drink!’

The bartender poured the drink and the woman drunk it. She turned again pointed around at all of them, revealing the same hairy armpit, and asked, ‘What man here will buy a lady a drink?’

Once again, the same little drunk shouted ‘Give the ballerina another drink!’

The bartender approached the drunk and said ‘Tell me, Paddy, it’s your business if you want to buy the lady a drink, but why do you keep calling her a ballerina?’

The drunk replied, ‘Any woman who can lift her leg that high has got to be a ballerina!’

This joke relies to two things to make it funny – the confusion suffered by a drunk man about what he was looking at – armpits and pubic mounds totally the same, and the fact that women with hairy armpits (or “huge, hairy armpit[s]”) are gross and revolting and no one but a drunk man would buy such a woman a drink.

The joke isn’t funny as far as I am concerned.  Hairy armpits are fine, there is nothing wrong with them, and how they’d be huge… can you have huge armpits?… I’m not sure.  This joke is one in a million others which reinforces crap beauty and gender myths about what it is to be a beautiful woman.  This joke is one in a million of others which reinforces gender conformity and beauty conformity.

I call bullshit.

Be beautiful.  Love your body for it is beautiful.  It gets you from here to there (most of the time), helps you feel good (much of the time) and is gorgeous.  Be beautiful in your own way.  Don’t ascribe to society’s fucked up view of what makes a woman beautiful.  You are gorgeous.

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body

The conversation we had to have (apparently)

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So tonight my physio told me that I needed to lose weight.  There is a whole lot more context that I’ll share in a moment, but to say I was disappointed is putting it simply.

My physio has returned from an 8 day conference at the AIS where he spoke to a specialist in Gluteus Medius Tendonitis about his (my physio’s) patients (me included).  No doubt there were other discussions with other specialists, but one message seems to have been given to my physio by this specialist… and that is that overweight people with this condition will struggle to resolve/heal it while they remain overweight, as the extra weight will aggravate the condition.

So tonight, the first time I’ve seen my physio in 3 weeks (as I started a clinical pilates thing that I’d been doing on my own), he suggests to me that I should lose weight.  In his favour, he was genuinely uncomfortable about saying everything he did, the fact that I didn’t look impressed to be told this most likely added to his discomfort (which I’m so not sorry for).  He did say that being overweight leads to death (well cancers and heart attacks apparently – and why yes my blood pressure and cholesterol are fine and I don’t have a family history of cancer), very, very quickly, before moving onto the fact that extra weight puts extra stress on my tendons and so we can perform maintenance on my tendonitis, and it may heal but it will take significantly longer.  He then recommended (in his favour again) that I see a dietician and discuss with them what I do and don’t eat (tonight’s dinner – stir fried vegetables and chilli marinated tofu, with satay sauce, served with rice), and perhaps have a meal plan developed – utilising my GP to get a referral so that it will be partly covered by Medicare.  And that he’d be happy to talk to me more about it if I wanted him to.

He finished the whole thing off with, “There I’ve said it”.

I spent the next 5 minutes (while he was poking at my back – where a lot of the conversation had also occurred), wondering if I was going to quit this physio and given I have a basic understanding of what I need to do to deal with my back and my tendinitis and whether I should take that elsewhere and maintain myself.  Then I thought about Greta Christina’s weightloss (problematic framing aside) and how she decided to lose weight to stop her knee(s?) from hurting so that she could continue the activities that she wanted to do.  I then thought of another friend of mine whose medication induced weight gain has resulted in a nerve being pinched (I think) in her thigh so it waivers between almost numb tingling and painful tingling, and her medical professionals who have told her that the only solution is for her to lose weight (which is resulting in fun medication adjustments).

So I can sleep without waking up in pain (several times a night), so I can sit cross-legged on the floor/bed/couch, so I can do yoga and Body Balance properly (I can’t do any hip flexion exercises), so I don’t stand up stiff and limping until I’ve walked it out, so I can have sex without paying for it for a few days afterwards, and so I don’t sit in a chair feeling my hip/s ache, do I attempt to lose weight to possibly speed up the process of healing my hips and taking the pressure off them so I am not aggravating the condition or do I just keep doing the exercises hoping that it will get better on it’s own? (nice complex sentence, sorry).

My partners will support me in any decision I make – which is lovely of them, and they tell me that I’m gorgeous, sexy, wonderful, beautiful and lovely now (not in some potential future state).  I could attempt to lose the 10kgs that being on steroids last year (briefly but oh how the weight stuck around) put on, and see where I go from there – whether the pain is less and my ability to move improves.  It won’t be easy (in fact it will suck immensely), but is it the best thing for my body right now?

I currently feel a bit let down by my body, which isn’t fair on it I know.  It does a lot for me, and puts up with all the things I want it to do.  I spent the weekend being depressed about clothes shopping being too goddamn hard because fat people are hard to make clothes for, including spending bits of Sunday in tears because it all sucked so much.  Hearing today that being fat is also aggravating a painful condition that I want treated and healed was not the news I was after.

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body

Dear clothing retailers

You suck.

You suck in so many ways it’s difficult to quantify how much you suck and the amount of despair you put me through whenever I go shopping for clothes.  In an ideal world you’d all have the clothing sizes you carry listed on the outside of your store, that way I wouldn’t bother setting foot inside your store looking for something to wear because I know you don’t cater to me.  This would also require clothing sizes to be standard, something that would also make me happy. Do you have any idea how frustrating it is to not quite fit into the size 18 for “thin” people, but for the size 18 for “fat” people to be too big?  Does this even make sense?  And why is the clothing for “fat” people so limited in variety and fashion?  I walk in, look at what you have on offer and turn around and walk out again – it’s boring, uninteresting, and certainly not flattering.  It’d be nice if you offer clothing for “thin” people and “fat” people that the sizes just continue up the scale – and that you sell the same type of stuff.

And those stores which do sell clothes that fit me – why is everything made from such heavy synthetic material?  I prefer to wear cotton or cotton blends, I like my clothes to breathe so I don’t overheat.  Also, don’t suggest that I “enjoy my curves” by completing covering them all up – that doesn’t make sense.

And if we “fat” people are to exercise to lose weight – why on earth do you not sell exercise clothing for people above a “thin” size 18 – yes I am specifically looking at you Target…. and in fact most sports stores.  It’s a catch 22 situation if we’re told to exercise because we’re too fat, but can’t buy clothes to exercise in.

So thank you for making me almost cry in a shopping centre from frustration and shame.  I really appreciated the public humiliation you kindly dished out to me.  Please remember – the harder you make it for me to shop in your store – the less I’m likely to return if I do ever lose weight and fall into your sizing range.

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body

I’m fat and am going to die (eventually)

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I’ve been doing a lot of reading on being fat and living in Australia recently (given I’m fat and living in Australia) and a recent article in Yahoo! made me squee with delight.  It was a, “Should you tell people that they are fat? Yes/No” article with opposing views put by two different authors (both so full of fail), but I learnt something… because I’m fat, I’m going to die.  It’s a huge relief, because I was worried, that like my thin brothers and sisters, I’d live forever, and that wasn’t ideal.

Michelle Bridges (our very favourite person) was on the “yes, tell them that they’re fat” team because:

If you are obese you can look forward to diabetes, hypertension, atherosclerosis, stroke, cancer or even death.

Wow, I’m going to die… eventually… of something… whether I’m fat or not.  Does every fat person get diabetes, hypertension, atherosclerosis, stroke, and/or cancer?  Looking at my family history (given I don’t have asthma which my paternal grandmother died from), I’ll live to around 70 and die from a heart attack or the effects of a stroke.  My regular exercising, non-smoking, and fit paternal grandfather died of a heart attack when he was a little over 70.  My maternal grandfather died at about 60 of a heart attack.  My not overly fit, non-smoking, disabled (short-term before she had her stroke) maternal grandmother died at about 80 from a kidney infection some years after having a stroke.  70 years… that’s a good life, and I’m half way through it.  Should I go “woe is mean, I is going to die” and be depressed because of that, or should I continue loving my life and my body and the awesome things it can do?

Michelle continued with:

More than this, though, is the emotional damage, the unhappiness, the depression and poor self-esteem that comes with carrying too much weight.

Now let’s look at that some more.  Why is it that fat people suffer emotional damage, unhappiness, depression and poor self-esteem?  Oh yeah, that’s right because they’re literally shamed, made to second guess themselves and their body, not believed, insulted, belittled and hated by large sections of society.  Fat shaming and fat abuse are all far too common, on the internets, the streets, hospitals, doctor surgeries, the workplace, you name it and fat shaming probably happens there (with the exception of Fat Acceptance and Heath At Every Size blogs where it’s moderated out.  Thank you so much for doing that).

Only once in my life have I had “Fat Slut” yelled at me, which made me laugh more than anything else at the time, though it upset my husband quite a lot when I told him about it later.  I am generally quite… insulated might be the right word when I am out in public.  I do not listen to words but to tones, so I may have had other comments made about me that my brain has not translated for me.  When I am grocery shopping I wonder what people think of the things I am buying, whether I’m buying fresh fruit and vegetables or supplies for a party.  I wonder when I’m shopping for clothes what people are thinking of me and what I’m buying.  Most of my preferred medical practitioners do not comment on my weight, for which I’m grateful, but again I have this lovely insulation in my head which tends to sometimes refuse to hear certain things (and I honestly don’t know why that is), so things might be said and I just don’t hear them.  I do also spend a lot of time thinking to myself that it is not about me (people talking to each other is not about me for example – unless it specifically is).

Spilt Milk put it beautifully recently, when she wrote, “I am not your cautionary tale“:

Obviously, his piece was about The Biggest Loser, a particular kind of “freakshow”. Me going to the shops to buy my bread and milk? Not so freakshowish, admittedly. But I am still there, I am still visible, I still jiggle, I still have a double chin, I still look fat enough to be a folk devil.

…

A friend on Twitter, Jennifer Gearing, mentioned this afternoon that Birmingham’s article “reminds me of time stranger told his 5-6yo she didn’t want Maccas or she’d look like me.” That’s right, children, fear and pity that fatty over there, and thank your lucky stars it’s not you.

One thing that can be missed in the debate about how horrible fat people are, and how much emotional damage they’re inviting by being fat (etc), is how much emotional wear and tear is suffered by people who love those who are busy being belittled by society.  How children can be hurt by being told (or having their parent feel) that their parents are worthless because they are fat.  How partners can be hurt by being told that they’re wrong or fetishistic for loving a fat person. The damage spreads beyond individual fat people when society pours hate and scorn on all fat people.

So I’m fat, I’m generally happy with my body, I live, vote, shop, work, exercise, cook, eat, love, fuck, and do all the fun things that I have time and energy for.  The rest of you out there that have a problem with that, including you Michelle Bridges, can fuck off and get educated somewhere else.

Other recommended reading (both by Doctor Samantha Thomas):

Fat Acceptance: What it means to me.

Weight. An emotional issue.

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