Fat Body Politics

redefiningbodyimage:

[tw: food-related anxiety]

That I have no choice but to listen to my surrounding coworkers discuss diets and “oh I can’t have this or that” every single day is probably one of the most infuriating and triggering things in the entire fucking world. 

What others choose to eat or not eat is none of my concern. I literally could not give a shit less about your fruitless, sugarless diet or your sudden drop in weight loss as a reward for abstaining from indulgence. But you make it my concern when you proclaim these aspects of your eating habits out loud with pride while I sit gobbling down some processed food I was forced to grab in haste on my way into the office. 

I wonder if people are capable of trying to comprehend a reality wherein personal control and choice regarding food consumption is a privilege - that for some, this privilege is especially hard to come by.

My reality involves mostly-empty cupboards and no one to lean on but myself. It involves sitting for hours on end, trying to will myself to get in the car and drive to the grocery store to buy nutritious foods for the week. In the event that I actually make it out the door, half the time my anxiety and fear of the kind of judgement that comes with fat visibility while food shopping won’t allow me to leave the driveway and I’ll returning to my kitchen to comb through my cupboards, making do with what I have at hand - pasta, ramen, soup, frozen food - the things that keep. Or nothing.

In the event that I do leave the driveway, my fear will guide me into a drive-thru in order to avoid human interaction. My anxiety takes advantage of impulse. I think “here is an easy way to sustain myself that doesn’t involve being subjected to the gaze of others” and cease it automatically. It isn’t until after I’m home, hating the food I’m eating with ever fiber of my being, that the guilt sets in.

During the times I finally make it to the grocery store, I make a beeline to the essentials. A lifetime of food-shopping experience as a fat person tells me that making eye contact with anyone could warrant unwanted and judgmental comments from other shoppers, so I keep my head down and my eyes on the prices. I struggle to keep from looking at labels and numbers, calories and sugar content, in an attempt to restrain the damaging diet mentality I’ve tried so hard to overcome.

I aim to shop for the week but end up shopping for only a handful of days, rushing myself through self-checkout before I can consider anything too carefully. Any more than a small basket full of food means going through the check out line with an actual person scanning my food choices who may feel entitled enough to make comments on my purchases as they fly past. “Oh these are so good, I wish I could eat them but I’ve been watching my figure.” “Look at all this food! Having a party?” “Ice cream and wine? Gee, you must be having a hard week.” 

My shopping experiences are never fulfilling. I rarely leave with what I wanted to get.

I record my eating habits, but not like a used to - not as a method of punishment to be sure I’m keeping to arbitrary restrictions, but as a reminder to myself that on the whole, the food I eat is varied. That while I sometimes default to quick food fixes to appease my anxieties, the times I don’t are enough to create a nutritional balance that pleases me. Because I am doing the best I can with what I have.

By all means, enjoy the pride you feel in your personal food choices and physical changes. I wish you happiness in your diet - a happiness that I never had the privilege of experiencing, that instead mixed with my mental illness in a way that would have surely destroyed me had I not found the strength to fight against it. But my experience is not yours and I respect your right to restrict your eating habits and keep track of your weight. Honestly, I do.

Just please, please - Shut the FUCK up about it.

bumsquash:

We can acknowledge.

The food angle is dead.

Give it a rest now, people.

Food is for eating, not for regulating your size.

fattyfatdancepants:

feedingmyboychick:

“Let me make this clear… if you see someone in the grocery store buying things with food stamps, it is NOT YOUR BUSINESS or place to look into their cart, to judge what they are buying. SO WHAT if they are buying soda? They may have a sick kid at home who can’t keep anything else down right now. SO WHAT if they are buying ready-prepared foods? You don’t know if they have access to a stove or not. SO WHAT if they spend all their food stamp money on chips? When it’s gone, it’s gone. The place to fix those problems is in voluntary education. Which I do all the time, teaching people how to cook. There were times on food stamps where I bought treats with food stamps. Do you really begrudge a mom the ability to buy her kid an ice cream once in a while? Pizza? If I managed my food stamp money so that we had a little extra to buy a take and bake pizza…. GOOD FOR ME. Sometimes we ate really cheap food or mooched off my parents for a while so there would be a little extra so I could buy the makings of a cake for my kid for her birthday. The point is that people think of it as “abuse” to buy foods they would not buy themselves or which are not healthy with food stamps. What it is? Is none of their business.”

APPLAUSE

(via farcical-aquatic-ceremony)

fattypolitic:

fattypolitic:

How many people by now have no idea that eating more fruits and vegetables, lean protein, and drinking plenty of (unpolluted) water is better for you than processed food?

I know it. Everyone knows it.

What these arrogant shits who keep aiming to “teach low income people” is not something we don’t know. 

If you want to “teach” me something about food then teach me how to make $30 a week for three people stretch without processed meals.  

Or how about you stop assuming we are ignorant of the fact that fresh foods are better for us than hamburger helper and look at the root of WHY we have to buy the shit.

Once again, it’s just easier to assume ignorance and laziness than it is to apply any critical thinking or empathy.

Reblogging myself because…hey! Neat!

(via creativeconflagration)

redefiningbodyimage:

This way of thinking never sits well with me and is honestly part of the reason why I have such a fucked up relationship with exercise.

I would rather take pleasure in what I eat and enjoy the way I move my body without associating it with guilt or punishment for not “behaving” and eating one too many of these beautiful pastries. 

(It is a Mexican Concha and it was nearly the size of my head before I consumed every bit of it for breakfast this morning.)

Please, just eat what makes you happy. Move when it pleases you. Don’t do it to live up to some ideal that is grounded in making you feel guilty about treating yourself. Please. It’s not worth punishing yourself over and perpetuating this way of thinking, that “unhealthy behavior” deserves punishment. It doesn’t.

thisisthinprivilege:

Thin privilege is being able to go to a buffet and not have people snicker or laugh or make animal noises when you go to get your food.

Thin privilege is not hearing husbands/boyfriends/dates say to their female counterpart “If you ever get that fat, I’ll leave you”

Thin privilege is not hearing parents tell their children “THAT is what happens if you eat too much ice cream, do you want to look ugly like that?”

Thin privilege is being able to go on a job interview for more than five minutes without being told that “although your qualifications are OUTSTANDING… your image doesn’t fit *snicker* the image of this company”

(submitted by PhiaCakes)