Tuesday, November 19, 2013

Using F-words to describe myself

Hello, I'm fat.  I'm also fun.  And relatively fit.  And lots of other F-words.  Some people will scream at me something like, "YOU CAN'T BE FAT AND FIT AT THE SAME TIME!!!"  I will just respond: please kindly remove your caps lock, you're scaring the normals.  Also, you're wrong.  There are many different levels of fitness, and "fat" or "skinny" are not a prerequisite, requirement, or even sure evidence that one is in fact "fit".  I'll address that issue another time.

That aside, I find it interesting that I'm allowing myself to be identified by this adjective.  The 3-letter adjective that I hate.  The 3-letter adjective that was altered and used by a certain boy to taunt me in 4th grade and destroy my life. A word which I will always scold my children for using if I catch them judging someone with it.

I think the real reason I've decided to use it, is that I've been deciding to embrace my fatness.  I don't care if I'm "fat" according to you, or him, or those chicks.  Everyone has a different opinion of what is fat, and I've realized that even at my ideal healthy weight, some would still consider me to be fat (even if I were no longer obese).  What matters is what I think, and how I feel.

Fat is supposed to be a description word, not a judgment word anyway.  Like saying someone is slender, tall, short, fair-skinned, black-haired, blue-eyed, etc.  Words to describe a person's general appearance, like the introduction of a new character in a book.  But our society has turned these words into things that are permanently sealed to judgments of "bad" or "good".  Fat is bad, skinny is good.  Actually, neither of them are bad or good, they just are.

Fat is the first adjective, but notice there are a bunch of others.  I'm a complex person with a lot of passions.  I am a total science geek.  (I maintain another blog for that passion of mine.)  I'm a feminist.  I'm a mom.  I'm a daughter.  I'm a mormon.  I love food.  I love fun.  I love the earth.  I love exploring said earth.  I love learning.  I'm a little bit crazy, but usually in a good way.

I've decided to open this new blog as an outlet to share research, information, and my own thoughts and ideas about various topics that I care about.  Quite often these will include "fat" issues, and women issues (since women are the ones most subjected to fat-shaming, among other things), as well as issues in the media, politics, and the environment.  Just basically anything I am passionate about that may not be on-topic for an educational science blog.

I did do one very interesting blog post on my science blog that melds many of my passions, that anyone interested in this blog would enjoy.  It's quite an interesting read, do check it out.


http://biogeonerd.blogspot.com/2012/03/women-girls-society-and-science.html

Until next time.

Be curious, be strong, be kind, and above all: be yourself.

2 comments:

  1. Go Julie! Want some suggestions for where to connect to the BoPo(Body Positivity) movement?

    ReplyDelete
  2. Most certainly! I love those kinds of things.

    ReplyDelete