*Trigger Warning for mention of eating disorders and typical medical shaming things*

Ahhhh.. doctor’s offices…. Aren’t they just the nightmare for the Fat Girl? Like many of you, I avoid them whenever possible. As long as being of an overweight category means I will be shamed, ignored, trivialized and disrespected while seeing a health “professional” about physical matters it will always be an appointment of absolute necessity. As sad as it is to say it.

So I get called in and have a health aide walk me directly over to the scales. Now, I do not weigh myself. I have not in years. I do not want to ever again. Why? The number will never ever ever be the number I want. It will always be higher and trigger very old recurring panic attacks that then begin the very terrifying slide down into a very scary and horrible place, a place that lacks all logic and is pure panic… I do everything I can to avoid Body Dimorphic episodes… weighing myself is the Queen of all triggers.

So as I am being walked to the scales I say to the young lady, “No… no, I do not do that. We can skip this portion of today’s visit.” I’ve got this down to a science, this whole, “refusing parts of treatment” thing. Most people do not realize they can refuse any part of their treatment… most people have been raised to view their health as something they just have to “open and say AHHH” to… and that we are not allowed or should not voice things that make us uncomfortable or awkward….

So, I have gotten pretty good at voicing my own needs but every time I do it I always get such interesting reactions from people. The last time when I said,  “We can skip this.” There was a middle aged woman, perhaps of the same size, maybe a little less, walking towards us in the hall… (of COURSE the scales are in the most public, most well trafficked part of the offices just to add a little more shame to your otherwise stellar day) and she actually backed up a step with a shocked, “what?!?!” that was half laugh, half incredulity…half wonder… so I responded, “I know I’m fat… so what’s the point here?” and she kept staring at me as I rocked it down the hall. Her reaction was a mixture of WTF/yes you need to get weighed, fatty/could I do that too?/she is going to get into trouble/and, I wish I had done that, too. This is very typical in terms of reactions.

A couple of years ago I would tell people, “I am a recovering Bulimic” and even though I had no basis of understanding why, I just knew that if I said that people would back off and become compassionate or they would ask me, “is your Bulimia under control? Do you get triggered often?” It seemed funny to me that being the same person in the same size that I am would get a compassionate, understanding response if I claimed that my issue was in regards to my attempts to become thin… but I get a whole range of responses (none compassionate) I do not play homage to societal norms.

How would people react if my authentic response was, “I do not weigh myself because I am struggling with overcoming body dysmorphic disorder due to years of horrific social abuse because I was and am fat and weighing myself only triggers intense feelings of shame and guilt that I know are reactions to not attempting modify my body to the cultural ideal.”

What say you darlings, should I try this line and see what the outcome will be?

So instead of telling others I’m bulimic I just let it ride as it is. I do NOT have to explain myself or my choices to you. I do not have to place myself in a medically induced state of anxiety nor do I have to deal with practices or a conversation which are not only completely useless in terms of my weight but actually is harmful to my mental health, well-being and physical wellness.

So after my little scale avoidance episode I am left in the office to await da’ Man. While in the office I took note of my surroundings. On the walls of the office were:

A calendar

A “Quit Smoking” flyer by the American Heart Association

3 flyers calling for participants in various studies at the local research hospital

1 poster detailing the symptoms of depression (brought to you by Zoloft… no I’m not kidding)

1 poster giving me a number to see if I qualify for Gastric Bypass Surgery

1 flyer to see an in-house “Nutritionist”

…. Uh…. Well, I….don even…..

The only flyer that actually is concerned with health and wellness is the quit smoking one.  So in case you aren’t ALREADY coming to see the Doc for depression, anxiety, etc etc etc… ZOLOFT wants to make fucking sure that just in case you didn’t actually “know” you were depressed well ZOLOFT has is right there in a 2 by 3 foot poster… and the remedy…hmmm… lemme guess…Zoloft?

And the other one… the OTHER ONE…. Same thing…. Say, let’s not talk about health, REALLY… let’s not talk about lifestyle, holistic health practices or just taking a fucking walk every day no we want you to know that we are there for you… if you want to cut your stomach in half… we are here to “help”.  And if you don’t want that then we have a Nutritionist because you, fatty, you we are sure do not know how to eat… as if eating well is a science… have any of you seen a Nutritionist? You get weighed, you are given a menu then you have to cough up your weekly write-in diet and get shamed for bad choices…. Hmmm what does that remind me of? Oh yes! Every other weight loss plan out there!!!!

Before I am even seen by my doctor I am bombarded by messages… no, not messages… billboard advertising… telling me what my problem is and what thing I can buy to fix it.

First a patient is weighed. Then she is left to sit in a room with a Zoloft and gastric bypass ad. It doesn’t get any more genius than that, does it? The doctor need not say a word… the system is doing all the work.

Any posters about health? Wellness? Meditation? Yoga? Walking? swimming? The benefits of a vegetarian diet? Managing stress? Nope.

I wonder how much Zoloft pays doctor’s offices to allow them to place their posters up in each and every examination room.

So anyway, that is why I avoid seeing my health practitioners as much as possible. A for profit system can never be honest in that it has your health and wellness as a primary concern, nor are the health prescriptives based on health as much as it is the bottom line.  As long as society is pulling its collective hair out running around in circles, “OMGOBESITY!!!! Run!!! RUN FOR YOUR LIVES” and the government supports it and Hollywood supports it then there is good money to be made in making fat a medical issue worthy of reduction at all costs… and even better, at a high cost.

When will it stop hurting?

I’m doing the work, taking fatty back, owning the name and feeling confident in my body, in the space I take up, my largess, my rippling waves of undulating life… owning that, flaunting it, embracing the power that emanates.  So in these empowered spaces I read a book, watch a TV show, open a magazine and sometimes fat hatred comes out of nowhere,  a violence dealt with a careless blow and it leaves you with a chestful of air that won’t expel… If I have some inkling of what it’s going to be, or said or done my defense system is moderating on all channels and purging the malcontented viruses as they appear in my midst. But sometimes that system is shut down for repairs, or for regeneration, sometimes I am my naked face and its then that the insidious fat hate, the hatred of all that I am can come in again and leave me so breathless with eyes prickling, shoulders hunching and once again I can be that girl on the field, in class, on the bus, who was that object of ridicule.

The other day I was watching the new premiere of “How I Met Your Mother”,  I am not a big fan, in fact I don’t even have cable, it’s just something on and sometimes it’s funny. This happened to be the premiere and within the space of 5 minutes “Barney” laid the track down for not one but two fat bombs. The first one was, “ What if this tie gets fat and old and I don’t want this tie anymore?” meaning the woman he was about to marry.  Then within a few minutes he loudly proclaims in the bar, “except for fatties!”… The first joke I was just shocked but snorted like whatever , the second time I it was just like someone dumped water on me. Overwhelmed with new feelings of sadness, shame and  shame for all the FAT girls sitting in their own living rooms hearing these fucking stupid jokes, while their thin families, friends, boyfriends, wives, all roar in the standard appreciative laughter…” ha ha ha ha… yeah Barney, you tell EM! NO FATTIES!!” The shame of that; of having to laugh along with your company to the jokes that demean who you are, that makes you the last stop, the utter desperate resort… beyond redemption, humanity or hope. Then you might feel more shame about feeling shame at all, like it’s just a joke, right? What’s the big deal? But you and I know a little more of your beautiful darling glistening soul shrunk more into her conch shell, fell back deeper into the coral, being told that you. Are. Not. Worthy of love.  And if you are thin you better not fuck up and get fat because if you do that will be your husbands’ worst nightmare and he will leave you. The message? Fat people are not worthy of love. How could this possibly be just a harmless little joke?!?!?!

Maybe I am putting too much leverage on a stupid comedy sitcom, I mean I invited it into my house, but that’s a microcosm of the whole thing. We, as fatties try to surround ourselves with messages that are not the dominant paradigm (if we have survived enough to get to the point where we find them…. So many others are still stuck in the old culture, killing themselves on an impossible dream), we surround ourselves with blogs and friends and websites which tell us a very different story. But sometimes, one sneaks in like this show for a shitty uppercut.  When will I no longer be affected by things like this? It’s like having a glass jaw, a constant inherent weakness in the OK of me… but then again, if it got to the point where I no longer cared… is that really the goal? To be totally inured to the taunts and jingles of others? Shouldn’t I be doing something more? To stay fragile and awake and alive and to fight the very things that are inherent prejudice in our world?

So I guess I am working on that, to remain effective but without the anxiety. To be clear without the internalization and to stand up when we see these things and consistently denounce them.

A lovely reader of this blog, “JaneDoe” wanted to make me a “Fat Bitch” necklace and well, how could I say no?! Emails were exchanged, facts and figures were shared and then I received a lovely little something in my mailbox:

FattiBoomBallatti here:

So there must be a special place in hell for the plus sized bridal dress industry, or perhaps the wedding dress industry in its entire. I mean it is such a freaking racket. To back up here for a little bit and explain my strong sentiment I decided to get married this September, back in May. The reason why I did this was that I wanted to “get er done” rather than obsess and get all OCD on it should I wait for next spring. So I started off on my adventure wanting: champagne colored tea length, A-lined dress. Did I eventually find it? Not….quite.

So my H2B goes online for about an hour, orders a full linen suit online made to his order, it comes about 3 week later and looks fabulous on him… no alterations needed. Oh, and it cost him under $150. Contrast that with the epic journey into wedding dresses that I have had. First I learned that many of the couture gowns need to be ordered 6 months in advance, and THAT is only for them to make it in a STANDARD SIZE.  Why does it take 4-6 months if you are making them in standard sizes??? Oh, that’s right so you can charge holy hell for them….

From there you would then have to alter it to your specific measurements. Now… why the HELL can’t I get a wedding dress as easily as my beaux got his suit? I’ll tell you why my little darlings, snuggle in close…. Because the bridal industry exists on continuous shots of body insecurity that it feeds on like a zombie feeds on brains.

So I quickly realized that I would have to buy “off rack”. As I do not have time for a couture piece nor do I have time to have something made to order in time. So what did that mean for a girl like me? It meant David’s Bridal. And that was after another consignment wedding shop that had exactly 2 dresses in my heifer size… exactly two and most places stop making them after 14 which if you know anything about wedding dresses they are sized two down, so women bigger than a 10 or smallish 12 can go stuff themselves I guess….. I wear a street 16 and I am apple shaped and that translated into a size 20 at that store….

So I made my appointment at David’s Bridal and arrived on a Friday morning the same time 3 other women came con entourage to try on dresses. They were all about 5-8 years younger than me, thinner than me and unlike me, who came alone, had a gaggle of ladies to pass judgment/praise. Even though I walked in at the same time and had my appointment I was seen last and while the rest of them got the nice full mirrored dressing rooms in the middle of the store on the lovely dais for longish trains I was relegated to the “large and roomy” dressing room in the back and next to the bathrooms with only one mirror partially obstructed to try things on. Talk about feeling like the ugly redheaded stepchild here like they didn’t want shoppers to walk by and see me in the store.

Now of course it would seem every dress I wanted they did not have in my size and in the end I bought a dress I kinda liked in a size too big but I was not thinking straight. I was panicked about finding a dress and confused by the treatment I receieved so I found one and got out. It was a longish tea length, missing the sash which they never gave me and is not in champagne.

So it took me a while to mull over my treatment. Was it because I am in my 30s? Was it because I am fat? For so many reasons or maybe the culmination of them all I felt marginalized, unimportant, and as a first time bride I did not feel at all like the special feeling they say all Brides do when getting their gown. I did the one thing I told myself I would never do again… settle on something because it fit and not because I really liked it.

So I kept looking for dresses and found some I liked online. One was a vintage swing dress with champagne lace overlay and champagne flowers I was like, yeah that’ll do just fine! so I ordered it which came in almost at my exact measurements. Now here’s the thing… I wear a size 16, depending on how the waist is since I am a total Apple… I am most likely considered inbetweenie status…. And the dress that I got was a bit tight in the waist but it was the largest size they carried…. Was sized as a “XXXL” on the tag….. really? Wtf? An XXXL? SRSLY?!?!?

I have something to say to clothiers who go S,M,L, XL, XXL, XXXL and so on…. There is something incredibly WRONG with utilizing this standard of measurement as if to say, “If you are beyond a large… well really we don’t have any words in English to suit your fat ass…. You’re just fucking…extra”.

How the hell is a woman not to feel marginalized, unseen, invisible if   (and this is key)   there is no language in use to describe her? We are all just extras… with no appellation of our own. Too much, overdone, above, beyond the ability to script new words for.

If I had it my way I would pass a law requiring women’s clothing to go by inches just like men’s clothes do, or hey why not have fun with it? Make the sizes colors or flowers or adverbs… come on, anything but shitty, hateful, fat shaming “XXXL”.

So anyways I kept the dress and may end up wearing it for the wedding but this whole wedding dress fiasco has really been just that. A fiasco. At a time when a woman should feel beautiful, special, loved, pampered the whole bridal wedding dress industry instills the opposite so they can fill their greedy little coffers.

So, on my wedding day I will feel beautiful, special, loved and pampered… but it won’t be because of the dress.

Trigger Alert: a WHOLE lot of bad language used therein: unless you dig that kind of thing, then step right in!

Fattiboombalatti here, how yous all doin’?

So today I get into an altercation with some douchebag who was parked in the alleyway (even though he had his whole, empty drive way) unloading some bullshit from his van. He isn’t moving even though I am clearly behind him, he expected me to back out onto a busy street and go around. So when I got out of my car and tell him not so nicely to move his car we start having an argument. First he tells me that I am “ignant” (his word, not mine) then he calls me a “Fat Bitch” then a little later, “White Bitch’. Before all is said and done and then he finally moved his van out of the alley so that I could move forward. My responses to those epithets above were: “lol I am “ignant, huh” “ooo big man calling me fat bitch I am so scared” and finally “ahh pulling the race card, are you?” and that was after he threatened to hurt me… in our quick back and forth not once did I disparage him by how he looked or about his qualities or capabilities, I did tell him to go fuck himself, but that’s really an invitation rather than a judgment.

So anyway… I want to deconstruct those words. Fat Bitch Fat Bitch Fat Bitch. I have probably heard those two words from pissed off people more than any other epithet that can be reasonably applied to me. I don’t really understand what is it about calling me a fat bitch that is supposed to be so insulting.  Like what do they expect me to do? Grab my fat all of a sudden and say, “Oh my god! I never noticed I am fat!!! After you have so succinctly pointed out my fatness I will right away jump on a treadmill and drink slim fast, thank you for your acute observation, sir.” Like really, what’s the point about pointing out the obvious here? I am fat and yes I am a bitch upon occasion and usually in direct correlation to the douchebaggery which is you at the moment.

The label Fat Bitch seems to apply whenever I have stopped being a “good girl” and sifting through the other moments where I have been called such was usually when I was attempting to assert my rights or my needs. Fat Bitch seems to be the label of nonconforming women, angry women, women who just really don’t give a fuck. I mean, I really don’t and am not ashamed to take up the cause whatever that cause may be. It’s not too dissimilar to slut, whore, cunt…. Those are also words usually applied to women “behaving badly’. As if those words, like Fat Bitch, are meant to silence us, to shame us, to assign us to a moral code of bad better best.

I had another nasty thought though, an insidious one that now when I looked at thin people, naturally slim people after the incident tonight I thought…. Do ALL of you, when you see me, do you think “Fat Bitch” about me? Is your disgust with me so intense and so close to the surface that all I have to do is make you angry for it to come bursting forth? Do I walk down the street and as I pass you does something within speak in the silence of your mind… look at that fat bitch? Have I been blind all these years thinking good will when in fact its just social niceties? In the face of ALLLLLLLLL that….. How can we not but reclaim fat bitch for our very own? While you attempt by making me “small” by using those words, as if those words should mean that instantly I am less than you, worth less than you, mean less than…. You. Cause I won’t do it. I am not going to shut the fuck up. I will not be a good girl. I will not go away and I certainly am not going to allow you to make me feel lacking. Though we fatties have been conditioned to believe that that most feared word once brought out into the light is like kryptonite to our souls; Supposedly rendering us powerless and in doubt. Like sunlight to a vampire calling me a Fat Bitch is supposed to render me weak and ineffectual; the horrible nightmare of every woman on this planet, “do I look fat in this?” the word to luff my sails, to becalm me and to win.

Does anyone know how to screen print T Shirts? I really really want one that says “Fat Bitch” on it. I’m claiming this.

NotBlueAtAll: Yes! You can certainly do your own DIY style screen printing, but there are some fab sites that do this cheaply, without the mess, as well! My fave is CustomizedGirl.com (link will put you directly into their plus sizes) and I have bought a tee from them that fits fabulously (don’t remember if I got a men’s 3x or a plus size one)! They have fun fonts (even rhinestone & glittery ones), you can even “distress” your design and I found it to be the most user friendly of custom t-shirt sites. Coupon Code: 4Got (15% off) or CG$U ($5 off) I have not tried these codes, but if you get their emails they send you discounts often, gotta love that!

I’ve also ordered from VistaPrint.com but their biggest size was a big snug, I still wore it for a charity walk, but haven’t worn it since.  I have done my own screen printing but it is pricey for the paints and quite labor intensive. You could buy a Yudu machine ($99-$399) and have an at-the-ready screen printing station for yourself, too.

My two cents: I love this! Taking back that which is constantly being thrown at us?! Yeah!!! When I have been called a Fat Bitch (forever capitalized, thank you) I have almost always smiled at the notion, that this simple turn of phrase could take power or diminish me?! NO WAY! Not on my watch! I’d love a Fat Bitch tee, here’s my first draft design, Woo!: