I have been shopping regularly for the past few weeks — something I HATE to do, specifically because my options are so limited — and I’ve only come up with TWO items wearable enough to buy. And neither of them were all that great; they just worked.

I try to avoid shopping online because, being in Canada, the shipping charges and duty and sales tax are too much, and to have to send half of it back is even more expensive. I’m very curvy, petite, and difficult to fit. I wear between a size 20-28, depending on the brand, the style, and which part of my body is in question. I also have high standards and won’t put up with shit that wrinkles funny or gaps or doesn’t fit my boobs, because I hate the idea that fat women should just accept that stuff isn’t going to fit right and get used to walking around in ill-fitting, sloppy-looking clothes (I mean, unless that’s your thing or you truly don’t care. It’s just not mine, and I do care.) As it is, I own several unwearable skirts that I kept in the optimistic hopes that I would find time to alter them to fit my waist. Hasn’t happened. Isn’t likely to happen.

I am in desperate need of summer clothes, because the hellish heat and humidity of Toronto summer is looming, and there is jack-shit for me in stores — in this huge city full to the brim with clothing stores and even a fashion district. There is something wrong with this picture. There are a handful of stores in the entire city that carry my size. Those would include Reitman’s, Addition-Elle, Jones New York, Maximum Woman, Cotton Ginny, Voluptuous, and The Answer. It sounds like a lot when I type it out in a list, but considering that there are hundreds of women’s clothing stores and boutiques in the city, the plus-sized selection is shamefully miniscule. When I go home to the States and my mom takes me to Lane Bryant, I’m excited to a truly pathetic degree — it’s that much better than my current options.

I am angry about this because I need clothes I can wear to work. I’m angry that it even matters how you look, how well you’re dressed, and that people will judge you on that, with financial and professional consequences. Even though I love clothes in an aesthetic sense, I realize they’re not really all that important, nor should they be that important — they should be fun, an outlet for personal expression, and if someone isn’t into that particular type of fun, they should be able to opt out without any social ramifications.

Unfortunately, in an image-obsessed society, they can’t. And because it matters so much, and because fat women don’t have the options that other women do, we’re doubly screwed-over. Not only can I not find clothing that pleases my personal sense of style, or that makes me look professional to the degree I need for work, I can’t even find clothing that covers my body in an acceptable manner. And I am suffering the social and professional effects of this now.

I have money to spend, but I have to wear the same skirt to work again and again, and I know my boss must notice. I have money to spend, but I have to wear the one pair of shoes (literally, orthopedic grandma loafers) I’ve found that don’t injure my feet, leaving me with blisters for days while I limp around on a strained ankle (that’s actually what happened when I wore a pair of “comfort-designed” shoes with a one-inch heel for a five minute walk to the library a few days ago. NOT ACCEPTABLE.)

I’m 28; I dress like I’m 78. I’m pissed.

nataliedee.com

No comment really necessary on this one.

Hellooooo everyone, one and all, everyone who is reading, or no one at all.

It’s been a while!

After the insane push through final exams, I’ve just been enjoying some time to myself lately. It’s very strange to have a weekend with no deadline hanging over my head, but extremely, very, most definitely, nice. The weather is cheering up with a yellow happy-face sun and warmth, and I’m getting that seasonal urge to clean stuff up. Don’t worry; I won’t disappoint anyone by actually doing anything with that urge. But it’s still a nice urge.

I’ve been keeping abreast of all things fat, but find myself with very little to say, which I think is a common phenomenon all along the fatosphere. It’s hard to keep saying and saying when there are so many others saying so many similar things and saying them so very well! And there is the persistent high-wire effect that Lawrence Ferlinghetti once described, in a poem I was forced to read in community college, as “constantly risking absurdity.” Larry Spaghetti, even though your name sounds like a tasty pasta dish and I don’t much like your poetry, I think you hit the old nail on the head.

It is difficult to risk absurdity, even if you’re as silly as I am and actually sometimes seek out absurdity for the sake of it. But unintentional absurdity, especially if it’s perceived as offensive, is scary territory. And to push that “save” button knowing that everything you write is going to be scanned and picked apart by intelligent, critical minds — well, it’s thrilling, it’s everything one could ask for, and it’s also scary as shit.

I found out a funny thing; apparently my parents read, or at least have read, this blog! So, to risk a moment of intentional absurdity, I’d like to say “hello, Mom and Dad, I’m sorry for posting an icky poem about sexual harassment, and for the swear-words. You can skip those.”

Am I babbling? Right. This is a blog. The advent of the fatosphere feed has left me with this feeling that I must remain strictly on-topic at all times, railing against the inequities and injustices of our world, culture, and media. But it’s a blog. And you’re reading it. You’re reading a blog — how does that make you feel?

In my down-time, I read two books I’ve read multiple times before, On the Road (except this time, I read the “original scroll” version, which I liked a lot more than the usual published version, which I’d read twice but always had that “edited-for-TV” sensation about) and The House of Mirth (an old, old favourite in paperback with torn cover and yellowing leaves), and that was pretty nice.

I wrote a poem or two, not terribly good, but existing, and possibly paving the road that will eventually lead to good poetry, which is something I mess with in my idle time between quitting perfectly good jobs and failing classes in which we discuss the technical aspects of poop.

So, in that vein, here is a poem about someone who would have been 82 next month.

“Grandma”

You called me slower than molasses in January, and
I was mad at you for not understanding centrifugal force
when I innocently swung your purse by the strap like
a perilous carnival wheel on the gangway of the marina,
where tiny electric jellyfish and freckled seals lived,
and ham-fisted starfish clung to the sides of stones like
old people to their walkers and outmoded swearwords.

You taught me to kill things, polished me of my sensitivities
with the force of your 200-grit personality. One incident
of getting caught setting black snapper free from the stern
of the Laura B. cured me, and it wasn’t long before I could
wield the net and the club without a tear, once coming down
on the head of a ling cod with such force, we had to turn the boat
around and retrieve the club, happily designed for just such instances
to float on the oily swells.

We slept with the window open, in the same huge bed, under
a dusty painting of a wrangler roping a calf in some yellow
prairiescape. Bedtime was Rod Serling and rootbeer floats
and then NyQuil for my restless legs and night terrors. I woke
you on more than one occasion with my screaming. I was eleven
and for some reason you loved me. I didn’t do anything to deserve it,
certainly not more than your own children.

Each morning of summer vacation was 5am and five layers of clothes,
shoving off from Citizens Dock, and cutting up squid in the stern
until dinner was caught. I practiced imitating the tone of the foghorn,
a single melancholy boop that turned your careful navigation on its head
until you told me to knock it the hell off. Sometimes I sang sad little
mermaid songs to myself very quietly, since I’d been told my voice was ugly,
and I didn’t know until later that you heard me and listened.

I didn’t know that people might think it strange, an old woman and
her bookish granddaughter heading out to sea each day in a mere cork
of a vessel, and the neighbors treated me rough, making fun of my city clothes
and my city ways, me not knowing that compared to where I was, where I came
from was big, and I had the nerve to show up on the back of a motorcycle, missing
my hair ribbon to boot. The kids on the street wanted to play too often, while I was
falling in love with my first computer and wanting to avoid their swearwords and
precocious sex talk and sketchy stepfathers.

I was glad for the salmon trolling and our illicit barbed hooks, evading the game
warden and checking the dredge for chowder-clams, and the tiny bookshop near the
dock that sold my favorite paperback pap. You gave me a dollar for washing dishes,
but forbade my intimacies with stray cats, whose food I bought with the dollar.
I think you were confused by my devotion to old people, my reluctance to play
Hungry Hippos with the girl down the street, but eventually accepted me as a friend
among other gray-haired friends.

I was afraid to start seventh grade and thought I must learn how to wear make-up
and big hair or I would be eaten alive by my robot-monster contemporaries, who
didn’t know from ling cods or redwoods or motorcycles or computers or poems but
could make my life a misery all the same. You left a note, unsigned, on my C: drive
to let me know it would be ok. I wish I had it with me now.

You were cranky and sour, Head of the Joint Committee to Make Me Clean My Plate,
and one day in July you wrote me that you would kill yourself and then you did.
I’m not sure anyone will ever forgive you for that, but I can’t see you being
any less contentious in death than you were in the seventy-six years before.
It suited you, and I can say to you now, without anger, you were absolutely
what you had to be, and I’m happy to claim you if no one else is.

Just to let you know, in case you didn’t know, that I’ve been writing a few posts elsewhere lately. I’m still confused by the idea that anyone might check this blog instead of waiting for stuff to show up on the Fatosphere feed, but people keep clicking on this shit, so I have to assume someone is checking here for updates. So here they are, if you want ‘em:

Fat people: please stop existing.

DebraSY’s article for the Kansas City Star!

But I read it in a textbook.

So, the term is over for me, I survived my final exams (barely, as usual), and now am at loose ends for what to do with myself. I’ve, so far, filled in the gap with ceaseless anxiety and worrying over trivialities — standard operating procedure. If I don’t have exams to be giving myself an ulcer over (H. pylori be damned!), I will just give myself an ulcer over…whatever is available. Uneven shoelaces. The way my hair flips funny on one side. My inability to find and wear clothing that is not black. Blogging.

I think my school needs to offer some electives in “chilling the eff out.”

I am never sure, when approached by a man on the street, if I should be nice or mean. Either way, it seems, I pay for it.

In the past I have, in some cases, flat-out ignored men who attempted to speak to me. Sometimes this was intentional, sometimes not. This is my version of “being mean” because, I should admit it to you all now, I am a very soft-hearted person. So to intentionally ignore someone pretty much exhausts my capacity for meanness to strangers. When I’ve ignored men on the street I’ve been called a bitch. Or yelled at. One man actually threw something like an adult temper tantrum when I failed to realize that the person saying “HI! HI!” somewhere back by the pharmacy entrance was talking to me, because I have a name, and I tend only to respond to my name.

In other cases, I have been polite, even friendly. I do this for two reasons: for one, I believe that being nice to people is the right thing to do. For another, I am scared of what will happen if I am not nice. For examples, see above. I can only imagine that the consequences become more severe with increasing degrees of impoliteness.

Today, I was approached, asked for the time, talked to, asked about my marital status, asked about my age, told I looked young, and subjected to a lecture on the virtues of larger women, but a specifically, larger women like me, not the gross ones. I was asked my name and my sign of the zodiac. And because he approached me nearly in front of my building, he now knows where I live.

He may have been a perfectly nice man. I have no evidence to believe he is not. I believe he meant everything he said as a compliment, intended it all to be charming and nice, and to maybe make my day better. And I enjoy talking to people, I enjoy encounters with friendly strangers. I really do.

But that doesn’t change the fact that as I walked away from this man, and up the stairs to my apartment, I had to ask myself the following questions: is he going to now appear at my school, as has happened in the past? If I had been mean, what would have happened? Why do people feel it is within their rights to ask me, a stranger, personal questions? Why do people feel it is within their rights to tell me they approve or disapprove of my body? And, lastly, did I make the right choice between politeness and impoliteness? Did I do everything I could to minimize my chances of being raped and dismembered?

This is the bind I’m in. As a woman, there is no question that I will, at some point, be subjected to this kind of treatment — or much worse. And then I will ask myself if I handled it the right way. If it was somehow my fault to begin with. If I should further moderate my already severely restricted public behaviour in order to avoid subsequent incidents.

I would rather know why this has to happen at all. Shit happens, I realize, to everyone. But I feel like I have had more than my share of ‘random’ incidents like these. And they are not complimentary. They are not charming. I smile and laugh and talk with the person in front of me because I feel I have to. That the consequences of not doing so are far worse. And then, when I am done, I feel complicit, and I feel guilty. Just as guilty as I would feel if I’d told him to fuck off and leave me alone, and he’d yelled at me that I was a rotten cunt or slunk away, defeated.

And as your reward or punishment for reading, here is a poem.

“Lucky”

It is often
a surprise
to find myself
housed in this
particular body,
staring down from
this set of eyes.
Can this really be
the life I am
tethered to?

When I was ten
and ugly, I would
grow up to be a
great artist, or
at least have
the pleasure
of scribbling,
and two years later
I can’t keep their
hands off me
in art class,
begging the teacher
with my eyes to
put an end to it
only to have her
eyes reply
“They scare me
too.”

I knew then,
if three seventh
grade boys could
effectively terrorize
an adult woman,
the sort of life I had
to look forward to.
I grew up aware
of my surroundings,
with the second sight
of every female

the unspoken rules
about elevators and
car parks and when to
cross the street,
safety in numbers –
God forbid we should
have a moment of
solitude somewhere
outside ourselves, where
we might begin to get
ideas and formulate
plans of escape –

oh, I grew up lucky,
managed to evade
demands of my name
and unwanted dicks
in my mouth, a fist
or rifle-butt
between my legs,
but aware
of these constant
threats through the
tasteful machinations
of Hollywood,
the risks I ran
by simply being
a hole
in need of filling.

I should be happy
I was intact enough
to sprint sobbing
to any strange house,
pleading with the monster
under my breath,
addressing him Sir and
fully prepared to beg
for my life,
a gift he suddenly
somehow had
the pleasure to grant
or withhold.

But I was spared
and now should
be grateful, glad
when a stranger
on the street
instructs me not
to lick my lips
if I know what’s
good for me, even
if I never licked them,
even if so what
if I did?

I am beside myself
with the good fortune
of my light sentence;
I was never actually
sold into slavery,
only servitude
living on the whim of
countless seventh graders
whose eyes condescend to
grant my existence for
the sole purpose of
their pleasure.

The foam is not very impressive in this picture, probably because the bottle had been transported in my backpack all day and opened a couple of times. It was still fizzy though!

The bottle conditioning worked, and my chicha was fizzy as all get-out. For the longest time, I could NOT get over the fact that I essentially made a carbonated, alcoholic beverage AT HOME. It is like shockingly easy.

Our presentation was okay. My partner started freaking out an hour beforehand, and I had to calm him down a lot. When it was all over he thanked me profusely. It wasn’t the greatest presentation, and we flubbed a couple of details, but we didn’t humiliate ourselves either.

I was a little…annoyed? Hurt? Offended? Whatever? When one of my classmates, a very beautiful, upper-class, Ralph Lauren type, told me that the idea of my chicha “scared” her. Presumably because it had fermented on my counter for three days. As I stood there in my worn-out lab coat that has done duty not only in three chemistry labs, but countless early mornings in a hospital kitchen; my laundry-day, last-resort sweater, extremely aware of being one of maybe three fat nutrition students; and also aware that this particular girl happened to walk by my lovely but run-down apartment building as I entered it a few days ago, aware that she saw where I lived, and what kind of neighbourhood it is…well, I felt a little sad and defeated, standing there like that.

Something about it triggered all kinds of weird sensitivity in me because I am poor and live in a very poor neighbourhood. I don’t pretend to be poor on the same scale as most of my neighbours, because my situation is largely by choice, and I have family to help if ever things should get desperate, but still. Something about the disparity between our economic classes and social standings and the fact that she would use that word to critique something I was extremely proud of doing — it hurt my feelings. As I said earlier, whatever. I will get over it. I’ve certainly said enough snotty, unintentionally mean-spirited things in my time.

I drank the bottle of chicha when I got home, and it was like a very fruity, no-hops version of Blanche de Chambly. And it had enough alcohol in it to make my shoulders tingly. My professor said it was the first time a student had made beer for this class, but I couldn’t help it. I was categorically uninterested in the actual food.

So, as I said in my previous post, I’m fermenting quinoa (and barley) into an alcoholic beverage known as chicha. Here’s what it looks like so far:

Slightly blurry photo (impressionist.) That stuff on top is foam (and plastic wrap.)

I’ll probably have to put up some money to get people to drink it, myself included.

In other quinoa news, my parter and I went to the food lab to cook curried quinoa today. It wasn’t half bad, but could have used more garlic, in my opinion (which is pretty much my stand on everything — MORE GARLIC.) My partner looked slightly askance at the whole NASA/CELSS/biodome/rioting scenario, but agreed to go along with it. Anyhow, for my first legitimate quinoa experience, it really wasn’t bad — slightly sweet and nutty.

A quick rundown on why I have no friends at school:

1. My partner for the food demo project suggested we do quinoa.

2. I wanted to do lard, as you may recall. He said, “What could you even make with lard?” and I was like, “PIE.” It is the word to end all words.

3. He suggested our target audience should be vegetarians in need of a good source of protein with a complete set of essential amino acids…

4. …I suggested our target audience should be biodome experiment subjects on the verge of rioting because they have nothing to eat but quinoa.

5. And that we should ferment the quinoa into an alcoholic beverage in an effort to pacify them.

So…I’ll be in the kitchen tonight, making chicha. I’ll let you know what happens.

I guess I should explain that the biodome thing was not a completely random idea of mine. Quinoa has been identified by NASA as a good candidate crop for Controlled Ecological Life Support Systems because of its high protein content, among other things. I found that out by reading Wikipedia, believe it or not. Sometimes the slacker’s way out yields results.

I was asked, indirectly, to respond to the question “Why do you think you’re healthy?” Definitions of health are important to me, as I’ve spent a lot of time in school and at my job considering what it means to be “healthy,” and watching how those definitions play out in real life. This is what I came up with.

I am professionally involved in nutrition, so I have a good understanding of food and exercise. I walk at least two miles a day, in all kinds of weather. I don’t drive or take public transit. I eat a varied diet that balances immediate pleasure with longer-term well-being. And all of that is really no one’s business but my own. It represents a mere drop in the bucket — you’d be surprised how many more determinants of health there are than just lifestyle.

What really makes me healthy is that I refuse to allow my health status to be dictated by my weight. I don’t regularly weigh myself. I don’t diet. I don’t engage in punitive or boring exercise. I don’t read women’s magazines. I try to avoid influences, like advertising, that tell me I am not good enough as is, and need to buy X product to be a complete person. I believe in my own beauty aesthetic, and dressing in the way I like.

I’m a feminist and a believer in social equality, so I stand up for myself, and for other people. I don’t believe in blaming people for their own health problems, because even in the rare cases where someone may be at fault, it is not a useful or compassionate response. I believe in kindness not because I am wimpy, but because it is right. And I don’t believe people have a responsibility to anyone but themselves to manage their lifestyle and physical health as they see fit.

I’m healthy because I say so. In school, we studied the various definitions of health, developed over years by the World Health Organization, and then came up with our own definitions. Having worked in health care, I can tell you that a diagnosis of disease and good health are not mutually exclusive. I believe someone’s health is determined by how well they are able to cope with whatever life throws at them, with whatever circumstances they happen to be in. By my definition, people who are physically well, but continually worried about death and disease, are not healthy. Someone who lives with a disease, managing it and maintaining a meaningful and enjoyable existence, is far more healthy.

For a midterm I once had to write on the definition of health, I explained it this way:

I would wager a bet that no one — no one now, and no one at any point in history — has ever enjoyed perfect health. Yet we persist in dividing the population into sick people and healthy people. At any given point in history, and in any given culture, what constitutes illness is at the mercy of subjective interpretation. In reality, we are all ‘sick’ to some degree. The difference exists only in that we decide whom to call ‘sick’ and whom to call ‘well.’ Because of this rather arbitrarily placed point on the seamless continuum of health, I propose that our definition of health should have less to do with how sick or well we are, and more to do with how we live inside and with our unique physical condition.”

I believe this because physical health itself is often just a crapshoot. And I believe it’s a crapshoot not because I’m fat and it’s convenient to think so, but because I learned it the hard way, by working at a cancer hospital filled to the brim with young, formerly healthy people. People, who by most definitions, did everything “right” — and were rewarded for that with an agonizing, deadly disease.

That said, I have no diseases that I’m aware of. I’m young, able-bodied, and I live in a fabulously wealthy country with medical care and a food supply that is the envy of much of the world. I’m part of a privileged social class. I have a strong social support network that includes family, friends, and my husband. Aside from being fat, I have no physical traits that mark me for social censure. Being aware of how undeservedly fortunate I am, and working to make human society more equitable, keeps me healthy.

I don’t think BMI is flawed only because it fails to measure muscle mass, or only because it is a population-based epidemiological tool that has been inappropriately co-opted as an individual diagnostic, or because it insults attractive people by calling them ‘overweight’ — but because it reinforces a very destructive belief: that you can make assumptions about a person based on their body size. That you can assume they are unhealthy, or that there is a ‘correct’ size/weight to be, and the subtextual conclusion that weight and health status define a person’s worth. That people on the fringes of the chart are freaks, not even entirely human. That it is okay to diagnose people as ‘diseased’ for not meeting an arbitrary beauty standard. And that traits associated with disease, whether causally or not, can be legitimately treated as diseases in their own right.

Whether or not someone is healthy, and however much they weigh, however fat or thin they appear, they are human. They have rights, and they deserve compassion, or at least basic dignity. Humans are naturally physically diverse — it is a strength of the species that helps protect us from total extinction should some natural catastrophe come calling. We should not dedicate our time and resources to eradicating a certain group of people, or trying to eliminate the natural variation of our population. Simply put, to do so is not healthy.

I’m writing this because nearly every day someone finds my blog by typing the question ‘how can I eat normally?’ into a search engine. This is, to me, equal parts sad and inspiring.

We’ll start with a definition: Medical Nutrition Therapy (MNT), which is what a clinical dietitian practices to address a specific disease or condition, using a therapeutic diet. The diet is designed to positively change the biomarkers of the disease at hand, like blood sugar in diabetic patients. Therapeutic diets come in all varieties — from simple, heart-healthy diets based on the Food Guide for people with high cholesterol, to lengthy, bizarre lists of foods that must be avoided for kidney disease.

Most popular diet advice for people looking to lose weight or ‘eat healthy’ offers some version of a therapeutic diet — which was originally intended to help manage a specific disease. The problem with this is: if you don’t have a disease, there’s no evidence that a therapeutic diet is good for you. You’re better off focusing on normal eating.

Unfortunately, the concept of normal eating itself has become perverted, as many concepts from MNT have managed to infiltrate those ho-hum nutrition guidelines intended for “normal, healthy” people. The Food Guide has become more rule-bound as it focuses on preventing chronic disease in people who aren’t even sick. We are exhorted to limit energy, fat, sugar, and salt, and even to count calories as part of a normal eating. Worse still, the US Food Guide emphasizes the importance of achieving and maintaining a “healthy weight” based on BMI guidelines that do not match the actual mortality stats. At least one dietitian, Ellyn Satter, has criticized the Food Guide for being unrealistic in its complexity of restrictions, and for promoting restrained eating.

And for all that — it doesn’t even work.

According to Satter, “only a third of today’s consumers score an average of 70 or above on the 100-point Healthy Eating Index, and only 20%…are able to consume their five-a-day of fruits and vegetables. Weight loss…continues to be key to nutrition policy, even though long-term efficacy of weight maintenance is poor.”

Not only doesn’t it work — it’s insulting.

Satter reports that, in response to an ADA-commissioned survey, “Forty percent of survey participants said they were tired of being told what to eat.”

What is the answer then? Instead of restrictive guidelines and negative-sounding messages about food, Satter recommends “eating competence,” which is what we’ll look at next. But I’ll give you a hint: normal, healthy eating may have more to do with meeting people where they are than worshiping at the altar of perfect nutrition.