Venus with Biceps by David L. Chapman

Want to see some other strong women? Read Venus with Biceps: https://www.amazon.ca/Venus-Biceps-Pictorial-History-Muscular/dp/1551523701/ref=sr_1_1?dchild=1&keywords=venus+with+biceps&qid=1595167397&sr=8-1

Where are the muscular, larger women’s bodies? — FIT IS A FEMINIST ISSUE

There are four blog topics I’ve been thinking about that are all tangled together. Common threads weave through them and they are all part of the same story. Really, it’s a story about strength, gender normativity, and women’s muscular bodies. First, Catherine wrote about the names we use to describe our bodies. Catherine’s focus is […]

via Where are the muscular, larger women’s bodies? — FIT IS A FEMINIST ISSUE

 

Our lives aren’t tough enough already without adding even more fatphobia? “Covid 19” weight gain jokes need to go away and never return.

This blog sums up how I feel about “covid 19”:

The “covid 19” isn’t funny, it’s fat shaming and fat phobic

How to Deal When Your Friends Go On Diets — Dances With Fat

It’s New Years, which means that people close to you – family, friends, co-workers etc. – will very likely be going on diets. For those of us who have managed to get ourselves off the diet roller coaster, this can be an especially tough time. Not only are we being bombarded with ads to try…

via How to Deal When Your Friends Go On Diets — Dances With Fat

Health at Every Size and the Burden of Proof — Dances With Fat

Debating around Health at Every Size (HAES) is something that has been coming up a lot in e-mails that I’m answering so I decided to just address it here. Before I get too far into this, a quick reminder that Health at Every Size is a paradigm for health and healthcare (including mental health, personal…

via Health at Every Size and the Burden of Proof — Dances With Fat

Trigger Warning: Pseudoscience — FIT IS A FEMINIST ISSUE

CW: Discusses diets, food, BMI and commonly held misconceptions. If you like to believe everything you think is 100% correct, are prone to all-or-nothing thinking, or want your beliefs reinforced on all things health and fitness, you may not want to read this post. I think I’ve reached the point that I need a pseudoscience […]

via Trigger Warning: Pseudoscience — FIT IS A FEMINIST ISSUE

 

Yes. Yes. Yes. And more YES!

 

Dear Diet Talk, PLEASE GO AWAY AND NEVER RETURN.

There is has been a lot of diet talk happening among my co-workers. I just needed to remind myself of the importance of continuing to resist the pull of diet culture no matter how many people around me are proclaiming their devotion to it.

It starts like this “I don’t diet. I am flowing the “X” eating plan/lifestyle.” As though saying you don’t diet or just not calling it a diet somehow makes the diet you are following not a diet.

The idea that diet culture and diet talk is built on a foundation of shame seems to be an alien idea to so many of the people I interact with daily.  Actually, it may be to nearly all of them.

My co-workers and friends excuse or accept the food and body shaming hidden within diet culture by saying “I am just trying to be healthy”. When I use the phrases like “fat phobia”, “thin privilege”, and “diet culture is a culture of body hate & shame” they look at me like I have three heads and am speaking in tongues. I find this both sad and terrifying.

I went in search of articles that define what diet culture is and how to fight it to make myself feel better. I found some good ones:

What is Diet Culture: https://christyharrison.com/blog/what-is-diet-culture

Breaking up with Diet Culture: Lets talk about Fat Phobia  https://www.nourishmovethrive.ca/blog/2019/04/16/breaking-up-with-diet-culture-lets-talk-about-fatp/

Resources for Health at Every Size (HAES): https://lindabacon.org/_resources/resources-health-every-size-advocates/

 

Gym class memories . . . so damn triggering.

One of my favorite blogs has had a lot of guest posts about the lasting effects of gym class. The last one was very appropriately named “How gym class ruined my life”. I didn’t even have to read the article or any of the previous posts to know the crap the writers likely had to deal with. For me it would be a lot easier and less time consuming to write the post “How gym class didn’t ruin my life” . . .. the post would be a blank page. Gym was torture from start to finish, in all five schools, and in all three countries I had to suffer through it. (Canada does not have a monopoly on shitty gym classes/teachers). I finally found joy in movement not because of gym class, but in spite of it.

I couldn’t do a hand stand, cart wheel, pull ups, run very far before I needed to walk some or run very fast. I was always picked last for teams. I was not good at sports and I knew nothing about the rules for anything because I also had not interest in watching sports. No one bothered to explain the rules. When I asked one gym teacher to explain the rules she snorted derisively at me. Teachers would shout “stop being afraid of the ball” when I hesitated. . . yup that totally made a difference.

Even when I manage to be moderately successful at something in gym class a gym teacher would destroy the moment. I remember being made the goalie for floor hockey once. I stopped two of three shots. I was thrilled. I thought I did a good job. It was comparable to what some of the other kids had done that day. The last shot that I missed . . .  the teacher screamed “that is what happens when you put her in the goal!”. And bam, just like that I was back to feeling like garbage again. She didn’t feel the need to say that to other kids who missed, just the fat one.

One day when team leaders were picking their teams the teacher ended the process by telling the last of us to divide ourselves equally between the teams ourselves. Only the fat kids were left and none of the team leaders were picking us. (Good job making your students behave like human beings Ms. Gym Teacher). As I walked to the back of team lines, I remember one team leader muttered under his breath for me to get in his line. So I was good enough for his team, but not good enough for him to admit it out load. The joys of being the fat kid.

I had another teacher who decided it was a good idea to give us all step blocks and have us do complicated step aerobic combos cold turkey. I had never even touched a step block before. I tried to do the smart thing and only take one set of risers for my block so I could learn the moves hopefully without tripping. The teacher accused me of being lazy and copping out. She made me take another set of risers. I couldn’t follow the choreography and I slowed down to try to figure it out. She yelled at me “Too Slow!”. I sped up and ended up over stepping and rolling my ankle off the right side of the high step . . . I sprained it really badly. She scoffed at me from the front of the room. Didn’t bother to check on me. Told me to get back up and keep going. Well that was 18 years ago. Guess which ankle has been sprained many more times after being compromised that first time and has been permanently swollen ever since? What really terrifies me is that this women was given prestigious teaching awards for her work. My international school was thrilled to have recruited such a great teacher for their school. They were proud of her. If that women was the gold standard of gym teachers, than I don’t want to know what teachers other kids who hate gym had. And people wonder why I look at them funny when they suggest I become a teacher.

I now love lifting. And I have found I am pretty good at it. I love researching kinesiology, anatomy, and physiology to help me improve my training. This love took awhile to find because I had to change how I thought about exercise in general. Exercise is not punishment. It is not a way to just burn calories. It’s only purpose is not to try force my body to be thinner. I thought the wrong way about exercise in general because of the horrible way I was treated in my gym classes (and in other situations that involved movement and body image). I was taught that I was not good enough, that my body was bad, that I was fat therefore I must be lazy, and I was lazy therefore I am fat. I was taught to hate exercise because of the judgey, body-negative, body-shaming, fat-bigoted students and teachers it forced me be in contact with regularly. I lost so many years of joyful movement because of them. When I train now I sometimes think to myself . . . imagine if someone had taken the time to build me up in the school gym instead of tearing me down for not having the right body type (or at the very least told the bullies to shut their traps). Imagine how much farther a long I could be with my strength training if all of school hadn’t been wasted being stuck in the “I am fat because I can’t do this- I can’t do this because I am fat” never ending loop of hate . . . all because of some shitty gym teachers and classroom bullies.

I don’t think there was a single gym class that didn’t end in this:

I now spend my time trying to appreciate my body for what I can do instead of what it can’t. That is what the gym class should be about. Moving your body in a way that works for you not against you.

On a side note . . . I don’t understand how in the media everyone is so shocked about the fact that bullying happens in schools. How can they be shocked or surprised? In my experience the only kids that weren’t being bullied were the bullies. The bullies are also often the teachers. And even when the teachers aren’t directly doing the bullying they are still indirectly responsible because they enable or actively protect the bullies. That was my reality in school in general, not just gym class. The popular girl who was the teacher’s pet who shoved me off the play ground equipment from behind smashing my head into a post . .  not a single word was said to her even though the teacher was looking right at us when the girl shoved me. When the naive me thought ‘maybe she didn’t see’ and told the teacher and showed her giant egg forming on my head . .  the women told me to stop whining. That was only one example. I could write a book on all the horrible things that happened in school and teachers did nothing about. School equals bullying.

Me while I am forced to listen to co-workers beat themselves up for failing to adhere to self-imposed restrictive eating behaviours over the weekend . . .

If said tried to say something about how damaging their thinly disguised self-hate and disordered/restrictive eating is or about how triggering it is for me to listen to them as I battle towards true body positivity, understanding what my body needs, and having a healthy relationship with food. . . it would probably come out like this . . .

So I say nothing and try to do this . . . . .

 

 

Best advice ever . . .

Wish I had found this ten years ago. . . been following these rules for about 5 years and they are prefect.

Christmas time rules All the time rules:

1. do not go into debt trying to show people how much you love them
2. do not go home to see family if it damages your mental health
3. if someone comments on your weight, eat them.

Also:

Happy New Years from Canada!