Sunday links, 3/29/15

Saw this great poem on the T on my way to work. It reads:
This Is Just To Say, after William Carlos Williams, by Rachel Wiley
This is Just to Say/I have eaten/the beauty standards/that were in/the icebox/and which you were probably/clinging to/for profit/Forgive me/They were ridiculous/so binding/and so cold.

Fa(t)shion
–Meet the internet’s goth body-positive princess!
–Top 10 weirdo-babe plus size shops.
-These 50 Lindy Bop dresses are gorgeous. I especially love #s 1, 5, and 7.
–#DropThePlus campaign by Stefania Ferrario and Ajay Rochester ignites social media–but is it invalidating to actual plus size women?
–11 Lakme Fashion Week looks that will inspire your spring wardrobe.
–6 bloggers wearing gorgeous floral dresses from Igigi.
-My new favorite shop: Asunder, which makes gothy, witchy, Victorian-inspired jewelry.
–Which ’90s jewelry trends are primed for a comeback?

Fat Acceptance
–How “obesity” became a disease.
–The trouble with before-and-after pictures.
–Are there fat Asians? Yes, I’m one of them.
-I’m looking forward to Susan Greenhalgh’s upcoming book Fat Talk Nation: The Human Costs of America’s War on Fat.
-Marilyn Wann has started Hank’s Gab Café, a “fat-positive place for people of all sizes and descriptions.”
-If you can, help out Rob, a man who is suffering a health crisis because his doctors spend years blaming his symptoms on his size rather than treating them.

Saw this pinkish-purple SUV on my trip to the Cape last week. If I ever get a car, it will be this color.

Sunday links, 1/25/15

Fa(t)shion
–Are fashion bloggers the new socialites?
-Check out my friend Maggie’s fatshion blog–she’s been posting some great outfits, and fatshion inspirations as well!
-Candystrike just released a bunch of new items, including an amazing silver and black striped skirt.
–Big & Tall Style for Butches and Others is a new Facebook group for fat people who have a masculine style and don’t identify as cisgender men.
-Speaking of masculine style, my friend Milo is selling handmade bowties at his new Etsy shop, Dappy Dandy Duds.
-I have mixed feelings about Target’s new plus size line, Ava & Viv. On one hand, inclusion by corporate retailers isn’t all that awesome in the grand scheme of things. On the other hand, it’s nice to finally see a collection that’s available in-store, since there are so few options for fat women who either can’t or don’t want to shop online. Most of the clothing doesn’t excite me, but there are a few pieces I like, and there’s nothing wrong with good solid basics. The size range (up to 26/4x) could be better, could be worse. Overall, I feel pretty meh, but can understand why other people have strong feelings one way or the other.
–The scientific reasons behind fashion don’ts: “Don’t wear white after Labor Day. White appears in stark contrast to fall foliage, making the wearer a prime target for bear attacks.”
–11 fashion mistakes all women should avoid: “5. Mixing floral prints with lighter fluid and an open flame.”
–Cambodia’s garment workers aren’t backing down.
–Fashion and “normalizing obesity.”

Fat Acceptance
–I stood up to a fat-shaming bully on the train because I’m tired of fighting for the right to exist.
-Chicago’s new plus size burlesque group, the Fat Follies, now has a Kickstarter campaign to help get their group off the ground.
–Capitalism and the weight loss industry.
–There’s a new paper advocating terrible medical guidelines for treating fat people–and surprise, the author is on the advisory boards of multiple companies that make weight loss drugs.
–On the latest in fat eliminationism.
-A letter to doctors: why there’s no point telling me to lose weight.
-“Hang on a minute…shouldn’t all mermaids be fat?”
–Dear white fatties (and other socially visible fat activists).

Sunday links, 11/2/14

Fa(t)shion
-Sally has a trick for switching handbags quickly and easily.
–How to shop straight sizes if you’re plus.This is good advice from a blogger who usually wears a 22/24, which is about my size. A few caveats: it won’t work as well for women on the higher end of plus sizes, and sometimes the depressing-ness of being in a straight size store isn’t worth the off-chance of finding an oversized or stretchy item that will fit.
–Settler and pioneer “heritage hipster” styles in the age of Idle No More, Chinatown gentrification, etc.
-New Yorkers, check out the Stylish Curves plus size pop-up shop.
-San Franciscans, if you’ve been cleaning out your closets and want to get rid of clothing, check out the clothing drive for GLIDE’s Women Center.
–Wanted & Found is a new online resource for plus size clothing.
-“I have a feeling that without Rei Kawakubo’s clothes, it would have taken a much longer time to realize I was queer.” This is a wonderful piece–I just wish this kind of life-changing sartorial experience were available to fat women too.
-Two fashion exhibits that look amazing: Jean Paul Gaultier at the NGV, and “Dance and Fashion” at the the Fashion Institute of Technology in New York.
–Death Becomes Her: the dark arts of crepe and mourning.

Fat Acceptance
-A new study about sizeist workplace discrimination finds that fat women earn less than thin women because they shunted into lower-paying blue-collar jobs.
–Solving the “obesity epidemic” in one simple step.
-Andy Richter demonstrates the best way to respond to a fat joke made publicly about you.
–Social barriers to intuitive eating.
–Fat people’s worth shouldn’t be the price paid for other people’s healthfulness.
-Also in New York: the One Size Fits All with Sins Invalid film showing.
–Doctors’ view on weight and weight loss.
–Lies they told me about health.

A picture is worth a thousand words: My response to the AMA

(edited for a bit more, uh, family-friendly picture…)

Quote of the day

“I just got back from WisCon (feminist sci-fi convention which is AWESOME). One of the panels I attended was “When ‘Love Your Body’ Isn’t Enough,” and it was a discussion of the body-acceptance movement and what it means. One of the panelists was The Rotund (some may be familiar with her blog), and she said something that really struck a chord in me. She said, “I don’t need to love my body. I need Levi Strauss to love my body.” So that she could buy jeans that fit.

And that struck me as so true. 90% of the issues I have with existing as a fat person in the world isn’t internal: it’s the disgusted looks I get on the subway, it’s the snickering teenagers on the escalator behind me, it’s the verbal abuse hurled at me when I walk down the street, it’s the trouble I have finding clothes and shoes that fit, it’s the ridicule I get when I ride my bike in public, it’s the dismissal and derision I get from medical professionals.”

– Commenter Clawfoot on the Shakesville post Fatstronauts 101: Permission to Live (which is a great post, by the way, and you should read it).

Must-read of the day

Tiffany of the More Cabaret blog has a beautiful, heart-wrenching essay about the death of her father–who ruined his health by literally starving himself in his quest to be thin.

Fatphobia kills. Full stop.

How many more people have to die (or almost die) before society realizes that there’s no wrong way to have a body?