Holiday Confessions of a Fat Girl

Hey all! I hope you all had a marvelous Thanksgiving filled with good food and good company. I, myself, ate my way into a dressing induced coma that last for about an hour or so. Mmm, Thanksgiving. All the laughs and good times that I shared and experienced on Thanksgiving made me start to self reflect.

I've been neglecting the blog; let's just call it what it is and be done with it.

I have been neglecting the blog. Between keeping up with school, trying to fix things with my partner after a particularly bad rough patch, and my Depression and Anxiety rearing its ugly head at the most inconvenient times I have been -in short- completely, utterly, and ridiculously unmotivated and uninspired to write anything for you guys. It sucks, but it happens. Life happens. Life is full of as many trials and tribulations, fails and fallings, and other such nasties as it is the joyous, wonderful, breathtaking moments that make us love the Land of the Living.

Life knocks you down a lot. It happens to everyone and when it does, the best course of action is to just brush yourself off, pull yourself up by your bootstraps, and get back up. Though, you may have to get back up several times before you actually stay up, and staying up sometimes can be really hard; it is even harder, I think, when you suffer from Mental Illness. However, at some point, no matter how difficult; you do have to get up.

So here I am, world. I am dusting myself off, pulling myself up by my stylish bootstraps, and thrusting myself back out into the public eye knowing full well that I may, and more than likely will get knocked down all over again.

So, in the spirit of the holidays -a time where we are often flooded with just as much joy as we are sorrow- I've decided to share with you all something that has been bugging me while mixing it together with something that I am thankful for.

I have saggy tits. Tianna (yeah, yeah, I know, you hate when I call them that, but it's my truth, you know?). My partner particularly hates when I say this, if you couldn't tell, But, whatever I call it, I look down at my breasts a lot of the time and I'm unhappy with what I see. Sometimes, more often than not -especially as of late- I feel like they look like sad, squished pancakes. I have cried over my own boobs before: literally, and I mean that in every sense of the word.

I have cried over my boobs. On my journey of self love and body acceptance, my boobs seem to be this gigantic, fleshy, wiggly hurdle that I just can't bear to jump through. I used to not feel like this all the time, but you know how the mind works. I started comparing myself to other women a lot. I know it is foolish, I know that it is pretty much everything that the Body Posi movement stands against but that doesn't mean that some days it isn't the hardest thing in the world.

That is why, this Thanksgiving, I'm thankful for my partner. Despite all the love and self confidence that I have gained over the years, I am still very much so, at the beginning of my body acceptance path, I have such a long way to go and the thing about my partner is that she keeps me grounded in that regard. She recently went through her own stint of booby hate and is slowly coming out of it, making leaps and bounds compared to my run-of-the-mill, day at a time progress with loving my own fun bags.

We just talked about this topic last night while I sat on her bed, staring down at my chest in dismay, describing the space between my breasts as a "gaping, cavernous gap." She told me that I needed to stop looking down on them, for one thing, literally and figuratively. Most of the time that I look at my chest, and most of the time that I hate it, I'm looking straight down at them and all I can notice is all the things I wish I could change. She recommended looking at them in the mirror, facing my breasts from a frontal view to really see them for all that they are worth. I tried that this morning and even though I'm still generally unhappy about the whole thing, I'm a little happier than when I went to bed last night.

Along with her list of suggestions, she also recommended that I start to lotion or oil them more to increase physical contact and gain a familiarity of my own body. I haven't done that yet, in all honesty, I think I'm too afraid. I've spent so much time lately hating this one specific piece of myself that touching them that much seems daunting and terrifying. What if I do all that and I'm still unhappy? What if I do all of that and still can't bear to look at this one piece of me?

I don't want to be like that. I honestly don't, I wish that I had never started to feel the way that I do to begin with, but you know, comparing will screw you over every time. You see, the thing that I love and am thankful for about my girlfriend is that she knows how insecure I can get. Despite the confidence that I have, despite the fact that my Pete is in my possession -though not firmly in my pocket where it belongs- my Depression and Anxiety can make me neurotic as hell. Yes, despite my loving, caring disposition, despite my determination and ambition toward my body positive goals; in a secret dungeon of my soul is a table which holds enough vials of neuroticism, anger, and insecurities to morph me into the stereotypical "crazy girlfriend" and every so often, an asshole cat jumps up on that table and decides to knock one of those vials over until the contents spew forth from my mouth.

My girlfriend puts up with it. Doesn't mean she always likes it, doesn't mean she always handles it as best as she could but she handles it. It means the world to me. Even though she won't say it, I know that it is probably something that she doesn't particularly like about me. But still, day after day, year after year, she somehow find a way to put up with it. She's a pretty girl, she has options, she could leave me with no problem. But she doesn't. Despite all that we have been though, and for the sheer unwanting of putting my business out there lets just say we have been through a lot, but, she is still here with me. She's still here at 5am when I'm crying over my boobs and looking down on them with hate, she's still here telling me to love them and by extension love myself more. She's still here to love me, or love parts of me when I don't particularly love them myself. and well....

who wouldn't be thankful for that.

Make Me Divine

Hey y'all, first of all, I'd like to apologize for being so M.I.A lately. Truth is, I lost two really great people in my life, very close together at the end of August. That combined with school work, preparing for a huge event my partner was involved in, along with some bumps and road-blocks down Lover's Lane, have lead to me being pretty preoccupied. I'd like to say that I have been managing my time to the best of my abilities, but ha! I haven't. But, I'm trying to do better. 

With that being said, Halloween is just days away, which gives me the opportunity to share a story with you guys about my body journey as I have traveled into adulthood. 

When I was about twelve years old, I wanted to be Ursula so bad. I don't particularly mean I wanted to be her for Halloween, no, I wanted to be her. I wanted to embody everything that she represented for me. It was a deep, secret wish. Most young girls don't go around blasting their aspirations to be a villain, let alone a fat, purple sea witch. So, it was something that I decided to be tight-lipped about.

Ursula as a character was everything that I was fishing for within myself. Fishing for...ya get it? *crickets* oh, never mind.

Anyway, what drew me to Ursula and kept me so enamoured with her was her personality and her appearance, believe it or not. Her skin may have been lilac, her hair may have been white, grey, silver, or whatever the hell it was supposed to be. But, if there was one thing you could say about Ursula; the chick had moxie. Her six tentacles just gave her more appendages to shimmy and shake with enough quick-witted sassiness to make the drag queen Divine -whom she was inspired by- swell with pride. Those wide hips went ba-da boom, boom all over the place during one of the greatest Disney songs of all time -in my not so humble opinion anyway. Those red lips, so full, looked as if they'd uttered a million spells that has recited a thousand secrets. Not to mention that very Marylin Monroe-esque mole, am I right? Her sarcastic cackle and inappropriate truths were humorous and well, true. Ursula was the original bada** who refused to mince her words when telling Ariel about the dangers of the world above. Ursula was everything that I wasn't.

Well, we did have one thing in common; we were both fat. Ursula was the first character in a Disney film, or animated thing that I watched as a kid, actually, who I could identify with. I would watch "Poor Unfortunate Souls" over and over again, twirling and sloshing my hips around as I mimic every line Ursula had. She was my very first spirit animal. It was the first time as a child that I felt like my fat existence was being personified on screen. It felt great. You think Ursula would have cared if some boys at school bullied her about her weight? Huh, no, she'd turn them into helpless little creatures to stick on her cavern wall before the words couldn't even form on her lips.

Ursula was powerful. Not just with her magic but just her sheer being. She was the fat, proud, take me or leave me role model that I wish I could have had more of growing up. I didn't care that she was a villain. I loved her, I wanted to be her. I wanted to be that confident, I wanted to be able to sport a strapless top and not feel the need to cover my body. When I first wanted to be Ursula, I was at the height of my childhood weight gain. I was beginning Junior High and my discomfort, disgust, and disdain for my body had been kicked into full throttle. My sole mission, aside from passing my classes was to hide my body in every way that I could. Every last school memory, for two years straight, involve my body being shrouded by my grey hoodie.

My grey hoodie....I have come so far in my body journey that I can honestly say that I don't miss that damn thing. But back in Junior High, that thing was my security blanket. My mom bought it for me at a store called AJ Wright in the early 2000s and from the day she bought it, I hardly ever took it off. Every outfit I ever wore would get covered up by it, zipped up beneath a heavy force field of shame. See, I wanted to be Ursula, but I wasn't. I wasn't confident in my body, I wasn't powerful, I wasn't any of the things that I needed to be, or wanted to be. So, I did what any young kid does; I hid.

I hid beneath a hoodie so that no one could see me. So badly did I want to be invisible that I did everything within what little power I had to make it possible. It was my greatest fear that if people saw my body, they would do what so many had done before. I would become defined by it. I would stop being Rachel and instantly become the fat girl.

The fat girl. We all know what that means. The fat girl means the one who gets teased, taunted, bullied, belittled. The one they throw food at in the cafeteria, or make noises as she walks down the hall. The fat girl whose walk they imitate, and immediately turn into a waddle. I spent so much of my life afraid to be the fat girl because I thought that being the fat girl meant forever dealing with a life of pain.

But it doesn't have to be. 

Over the years, I've learned to reclaim the word fat. It isn't the worst thing to be in the world. I like the way my fat feels, it's soft. I like the way my fat jiggles and shakes when I'm having sex. I like the way my fat looks under all my pretty dresses. Do people still snicker, or point, or laugh, or shout obscenities when I walk down the street. Sure, of course they do. People hate people who are different, they try to squash that quality, they try to make different people feel less than. But you aren't. You are as less than as you allow yourself to feel, and after years of feeling like less than less, I made the conscious decision to not want that any more. 

Loving my body is hard. It is a decision that I have to roll out of bed and make every single day, 365 days out of the year. Some days I do, and it's easy, it's wonderful. Some days, it is the hardest thing that I have to do. But you know what? That is my decision to make, day in and day out, no one can make it for me. I may not have ever gotten a chance to be Ursula, but hey, I'm me and it took be twenty-four years to be as okay with that as I am now. 

Stories like mine and so many others I have heard is what makes me realize how important representation is for children growing up. We as humans, even adults, are so impressionable. It means so much to us to see idols that represent us in the media, portrayed in a positive life. Ursula may have been a villain, but she was the only big girl I'd ever seen doing what she does best. She was the firs raw, representation of what I looked like and embodied everything that I wanted to be. She gave me a push in the right direction. My journey is far from over, I have no clue if it will ever be over. What I do know, is that without having Ursula in my life as a child, my secret little wish, I'm not sure how I would have ended up. 

Me and My Fat

News flash world: I actually like being fat.

Do I like every single aspect of my fat body? No. But hey, guess what, did you know that nobody does? You didn't? Well, guess what again? Now you do.  However, by and large, me and my big, squishy, fat body are pretty cool amigos.

I love being fat.

Living in a diet and beauty culture that isn't always the easiest thing to do either. We live in a society where it is anticipated, no, demanded of us that if we are fat; our greatest priority should be to lose weight. Well, I can't speak for every fat woman in the world but I can speak for myself. And, let me tell you, losing weight takes a really low place in my priorities right now.

Don't get me wrong, I do want to lose weight. However, when I do lose weight, I still want to be fat. I know, shocking right? As far as priorities go my biggest ones right now are: taking care of myself spiritually and mentally, building better relationships with my family which included my mother, Mary, my father, Michael, and my sister (who is an annoyingly five years older than me) Tiffany, repairing the bonds of love between me and my significant other, Tianna, and finally getting some of my fiction published. Being able to fit in smaller clothes doesn't even hit the top ten of crap I'd rather be doing with my life right now.

But Rachel, you're fat! Aren't you worried about how this will negatively impact every avenue of your life??? Some may ask that. But gee, last time I checked; my family loves me unconditionally, my partner thinks my body is a proverbial wonderland, my professors don't give two craps about my weight, I'm healthy aside from having asthma which I was diagnosed with as a child back when I was a little wisp of a thing. So, that being said, aside from having days when I look in the mirror and see a gelatinous blob instead of a sexy fat girl; my fat actually has a pretty positive impact on my life.

My fat makes me soft, which makes me feel more feminine, more womanly, which automatically makes me feel sexier and more comfortable within my own skin. My fat makes me jiggly which, when it comes to rolling around in the hay, is freaking awesome. My fat has put me on the receiving end of a lot of hate which has not only made me a stronger person, but also more compassionate and empathetic toward my fellow humans.  My body has carried me throughout my entire life and I spent a large portion of my life hating it and mistreating it. However, when I finally came around, after years of neglect and abuse my body was still here and it loved me for all that I was and wasn't.

My fat makes me feel like I can conquer the world because I know, that simply because I am fat, I will have so many people working to fight against me. It will probably be a long time before people stop looking down on me for my weight. As the years simultaneously inch and leap forward, I'm sure that there will still be days where I am told that I should lose weight because I'm fat. Not for my health, not for the longevity of my life, but because for some crazy reason; fat is just the worst thing any human being can be. But that's alright, I've never been one to back down in the face of adversity. I have days when I hate my body, but like any couple, we metaphorically kiss and make up, we move on, get over it, and continue to love one another.

I'm not "glorifying obesity" or "promoting an unhealthy lifestyle," all I'm saying is that I have one message" if you have a body, love it. Short, sweet, simple, and to the point. If you want to lose weight, do it because it'll make you happy. If you want to eat a pizza, do it because it'll make you happy. Be mindful of your health, that's all I ask. As for the fat shamers that make people feel like sh#t for their weight, what you fail to realize is that health is far more than just physical, and by damaging someone's emotional, mental, or spiritual health all for the thinly veiled, malicious "concern" for someone's physical health: you are the ones promoting an unhealthy lifestyle.

mic drop

artist: Tyiama Turner

This picture was drawn for me by my partner's cousin, she posted it to Facebook for me and wrote me the sweetest message. I look at this picture about once a day, and I'm determined to live my life by this message: don't let anyone dull your sparkle. Why should I diminish myself so others may shine? Why should you? 

I call bullsh#t

Hello lovelies, it's been a while since I've done a blog post. I've been going through a lot of stuff in my personal life. Recently, I've had two deaths hit me tremendously hard, and to be honest, it's been kind of hard for me to get back on my feet. Plus, school is back in session. So, yeah, you know, there's that.

However, upon my nightly surfing of the interwebs, by that; I mean wasting my free-time stalking Facebook like I don't have other, more productive things that I could be doing. But, I digress, I wound up finding this. This is a video by Youtube personality Nicole Arbour entitled "Dear Fat People," with a caption underneath that reads: What we've all wanted to say to fat people.

I read a lot of comments online before actually watching the video. Tons of body positive activists that I follow shared the video and they all had their own bit to say about it. I read good comments, bad comments, and a lot of stuff in between that sat somewhere in between. Going into this video, I pushed the comments aside and decided to have the most open mind and clear head that I possibly could.

Until.....I was able to call bullsh#t literally under a MINUTE into the video where Nicole Arbour states and I quote:

"Fat shaming is not a thing. Fat people made that up, that's the race card with no race."

-Nicole Arbour, September 4th, 2015

Okay, so fat shaming just "doesn't exist," right? That's what Arbour would have you believe. Though I vastly disagree with this notion, I tried to keep an open mind and say to myself "okay, I don't agree, but she is more than entitled to her opinion: it isn't my job to like it or agree. However, when, only a minute later Arbour completely contradicts herself. Within one minute she completely throws her argument out the window by pretty much saying saying "oh yeah, fat shaming, that's brilliant we're going to SHAME you until you change."

Well, Ms. Arbour, you are perfectly entitled to your opinion, duckie, that's all well and good. However, I am also entitled to mine, and I have no problem expressing it:

After watching your video, I have this to say of you, yanno...since we want to make assumptions about an entire person's dignity and humanity off of only one, singular aspect of their bodies: you are a deplorable person. You say first, that fat shaming is a made up concept and wave it off as if it means nothing to no one, then comment on it's sheer brilliance.

Well, you see, the issue that I take with that as an English Literature major? Is that EVERYTHING, LITERALLY EVERYTHING that we do, say, and comprehend in this world is just a man made concept. The fact that you are called thin, is a man made concept, the fact that I am called fat or obese is a man made concept, the fact that we call the sky blue, grass green, and people with mental handicaps are all man made handicaps. That's why; dictionaries are constantly changing, that is why they have words consistently taken in and out of them quicker than a two bit whore can turn a trick, and that is why our language is so magical, irritating, and complex. 

May I ask you why, a woman who seemingly displays so much "confidence" -because I'm sure that's what you like to call that- would disable comments for your video where you publicly shame an entire group of people. Hm...."Dear SLUTS," and many of your other videos no not have disabled comments yet this video does? Yet, you say that you're just trying to be people's "ride or die" someone who will always keep it honest and tell you the gut wrenching truth that all of us fat f*cks needs to hear, right? Well, what if your new found obese ride or dies need to leave you a Youtube comment? Oh, I'm sorry, I forgot, disabling Youtube comments would force them all to get off their lazy arses and burn some calories by switching from Youtube to Facebook just to get a response from you, my bad babe.

I want to be mad at this video, but I'm not. I would like to say that I'm surprised, but I'm not. You are the type of person that people like me have to deal with all the time. The thin, beautiful, girl who thinks that she can rap being a gigantic bi*ch in a pretty ribbon and present it to the world. Meghan Tonjes said it best in this video that she made in response.

"It's the mindset that I find really upsetting...lazy comedy wrapped in health and concern trolling tied in a fucking privilege bow."

-Meghan Tonjes. September 4th, 2015

Tonjes also points out that changing your body on a diet that is fueled by self-hatred and shame will get you no where. I can personally attest to that. I grew up shamed. As a young girl, growing bigger and bigger due to steroids being pumped through my body to get my asthma control, and the terrible, terrible relationship that I had with food; from binge eating to starving myself, shame did nothing for me. Yes, I lost weight, five pounds here, ten year, but when the weight of that hatred, that self-loathing, that immense, and painful shame that I carried with me in my heart, soul, mind, and body took its toll I showed my body the utmost hatred and harm in response. I did things to my body that I can never take back, yes, scars fade from the body but the mind never forgets that pain, neglect, and sorrow. 

So, fat shamers, you can come at me, I'll leave the comments open, I have no problem with wasting my breath trying to educate as many people as I can. I'm not going to hide behind fake concern. I'm not going to sit here and pretend that being fat hasn't had it's challenges. HOWEVER, the number one challenge that I have with being fat is people like you. People that share your poisonous, harmful, and degrading mindset. People, like you, who decided that SOMEHOW, my fat is magically your problem or issue to deal with. The people who hide behind their fortified walls of concern for people's health the world over when in all actuality, they want to use social media as a means to try and destroy the dignity of other humans. 

Yeah, your body has to carry you to the end, so what does it matter to you what mine looks like so long as it gets me where it has to go. Did you give this little Youtube speech to the "fat family" at the airport, I mean, they were so gargantuan I'm sure you were flooded with immense concern, right? Yeah, thought so. 

I won't be a hypocrite

This post is really hard for me to write.

This post, is an open letter to my Depression.


Dear Depression,

I've never been the type of person to beat around the bush, or at least I try not to. So, let me say this loud and clear: I hate you. You have been with me for so long, since I was young, since I was about seven or eight. I remember the first time you came to visit me. You stole everything from me. You stole my joy and happiness, you stole my smile, you stole my laughter and you stole my ability to see anything good. You are a miserable, disgusting thief who preys on my thoughts. You stole a piece of my heart that I will never get back and leeched yourself in -like the parasite that you are- into its place. I have tried to pry you away, smash you, burn you, cut you loose but you have clamped yourself into my heart and become a part of me that I will carry for the rest of my life.

I hate you for that.

The other day, you came to visit me; you are a selfish bastard for that. You reminded me how hard it is to be the strong one in my relationship, which currently resides in shambles and heartache. You reminded me of the insurmountable pressure that boils within me when I have to wear that strength on my shoulders day in and day out. You reminded me that normal humans feel weak, that normal humans have vices that they get to indulge in when times get heavy. You reminded me what your vice is.

I can't remember the last time I cried the way that I did the other day. I'm sure, however, that the last time I did cry like that; you were to blame. My entire soul felt like it was abandoning me. I felt lost, I felt weak, I felt helpless and instead of helping me you wrapped me in your cocoon of darkness. You blinded me from light and went about your thieving ways. You stole my reasoning, you stole my strength, you stole my sanity. I felt insane sitting there: rocking, sobbing, thrashing. You put those scissors in my hands and made me believe that it was okay to go against everything I stand for.

"Do it," you whispered. I hate how your voice sounds so comforting. I hate how your voice feels like the only love that I will ever feel. I hate the way you hold me in the pitch blackness of my heart and convince me to do the stupidest things. You are a leech.

I sliced a cut on the top of my hand. Five days later, it is still visible. You leave me with these scars, these reminders that no matter how abusive our relationship gets, no matter how much I want to leave: you never will.

I hate you.

I hate how much I wanted to stop but no matter how many times I tried to, I still fought back for those scissors. I wanted those scissors more than I wanted anything in life. I didn't want life at all, you stole that from me too. My will to live. You make me want to die. You leech, you liar, you thief.

You try to tell me that everything will be okay if I just give in. But it isn't. You make it all so much worse. Everything within me that you touch turns to rot and rust. It takes so much love, self-love, romantic love, platonic love, to restore what you destroy. So much effort goes into fixing what you break and you just love that. You love it because you know that after so many times of having to be fixed it will all become too much for me. You know that once I start thinking that it is too much work for me, that I'll start thinking about the people I love and the things that I put them through. You put my emotions on a loop, this endless cycle until you can crawl your way back into my life and reign supreme.

You lie to me and hurt me, Depression. I never asked for you to be here, I never wanted you around but you waltzed into my life and decided that I deserved pain, chaos, hurt, and tears. You made me hate the people around me. I have lost people because of you. You made me hate myself, you made me try to take my life more times than I can count. You try to take everything that is good away from me.  My self-love and acceptance, my friends, my motivation and drive for excellence, my passions like writing and drawing. You have stolen so much from me, you piece of sh#t.

You are nothing more than a bully. You have pushed me around and made me feel less than for so, so long. I can't stand it. I hate the way you make me feel. You cannot have me. Do you understand me? You cannot have me. I may be stuck with you, you may forever be a piece of me but hear my words and know them to be the absolute truth: YOU.CANNOT.HAVE ME.

I will not die because of you. I will not wither away into nothingness because of you. You may cause me to have breakdowns, missteps, setbacks, and relapses but you will NEVER conquer me. I will take back the things you rob from me, day in and day out, I will wear my strength as a badge of honor, no matter how it burdens me. And when you snatch it back from me, I will fight like hell to have it restored to me.

You will not win.

You will never see me hopeless for long.

You are nothing more than a monster under my bed and I am not afraid of you.


Sincerely,
The Fat Girl Who Will ALWAYS Fight Back

On the blog, I talk so much about loving yourself and all that you are. I talk about overcoming a lot of the things that we, as fat women, get bombarded with on a daily basis. I talk about having strength and confidence. After indulging in my terrible, terrible vice, I felt like a hypocrite, I felt like I didn't have the right to tell anyone who reads this blog the things that I have. It made me feel like crap about myself which only made what I was going through worse.

But I am human. I am strong but I am not invincible, nor indestructible. I break, cave, cry, bleed, dream, hurt, wonder, learn, grow, revert, change, morph, and stay the same just like any other person on this planet. My struggle is one that effects so many people. The fact that I DO struggle gives me, not just a right to advocate for the body positive, self love, and self-acceptance movements, but it gives me a duty to do so.

I have to have the strength to admit when I screw up, when I crumble, and add my voice to the darkness so that the next person knows "You are NEVER alone."

If you need me, if you need someone to talk to, if all seems dim and scary, if you are afraid of yourself, get help. Talk to me, talk to a friend, relative, psychiatrist, someone, anyone.

Depression is real. Depression is scary. But you are never alone. I promise.

A Passion for Fashion on Pathetic Funds

Whaaaat? A blog post on a Tuesday? Perish the thought! That means that I actually rolled out of bed and did something productive with my life! Gasp! Shock and awe! 

As shocking as it may seem, yes, I am indeed here on a Tuesday making a blog post. I have some things I would like to complain about and unload onto the willing masses.

I have a passion for passion! On very, very pathetic funds, and when I say pathetic, I use that term very loosely. What I literally mean is next to no funds. I'm a college student and I live in a small town where for the most part you're either in one of the following situations, you:

A) are stuck in a seemingly perpetual loop of being in college FOREVER

B) become a nurse

C) become a nurse

D) become a nurse

E) get stuck in the incredibly soul-sucking worm hole that is food services 

F) actually manage to somehow find a decent job, most of the time through happenstance

G) collect SSI though there may, or may NOT actually be something "wrong" with you or...

H) (my personal case) NO ONE WILL HIRE YOU!!!!

If I were my own country, this would by my flag. Fat Bastard in all his glory would hang high from every flag post my nation over. This is the literal story of my freaking life. From fast food joints, to the Goodwill, to Kroger, you name it; they have declined me. I was recently turned down for a job because, get this; I was too close with two of their employees. Never mind the fact that those two employees are amazing friends and for most jobs would be FANTASTIC references, but they didn't want their co-workers to be too chummy. Sorry, I thought friendship, teamwork, communication, and comradery were supposed to be healthy and beneficial in the workplace; my bad, bruh. The constant slue of rejections has made me one tough cookie, I'll admit. However, that doesn't change the fact that it sucks beyond anything that I could ever describe. It's also highly depressing...

Especially for a person like me who loves clothes..... it's like the universe is legitimately and purposefully toying with me and treating my life as if it were some kind of eternal, cosmic joke. Why?....No, seriously....Why? 

I get a student loan refund check....that's the extent of my meager "income" which isn't even income, it's money that I'm going to be paying back for the rest of my life. And sure, the overall hope is to go to college, get a good job, and pay all of it back in a timely manner. But, in case you didn't notice, life is the biggest a**hole on the planet who just so happens to have a never ending case of "The Mondays." So, as you can imagine, for everyone, that plan doesn't usually go as followed. 

The reason for this rant is all Chastity Garner's fault. Garner Style. Curvy Con co-creator, and one of my all time favorite, bada** fashion bloggers recently did a collaboration with Rebdolls, a plus clothing company that literally has me drooling into my Samsung Galaxy S3 about once a week. 

  

 

 

Again....I pose the question: why? Why must I be so broke? Why must my wallet be so incredible empty, nothing rattling around but bus fare, yet my eye for clothing draws me to some of the most expensive, gorgeous, drool-worthy clothing that I can find. It just isn't fare. I feel like my brain and wallet need to catch up to one another. Preferably, my wallet catching up with my brain. 

End Rant. 

You can shop for this collection here. You can also follow Chastity here, here, and here.

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Thanks for reading XOXO

I know you are but what am I?

We've all heard this cliched adage; whether we have used it ourselves or have seen it in at least one scene of every TV show ever, we have all heard it. It's used as a comeback for an insult. Someone calls you ugly? "I know you are but what am I?" Someone calls you annoying? "I know you are but what am I?" But how about we take a more adult, a more real stance on this age old sentence.

"I know you are but what am I?"

This sentence can speak so heavily on the character of a person. I was scrolling through Facebook the other night and I read a post by the lovely, Aarti Oliva from Curves Become Her. This is the post here. This post broke my heart. She spoke about how a person that is -astonishingly- the same race as her, who went out of their way to demean her due to her weight over social media.

Stuff like that breaks my heart and makes me want to go on a "Hulk Smash" rampage at the same time.

No. He did not bother to find out.
He did not care for who I was. What my life has been like. Where I am with my life right now. Why I do what I do.

All he and so many other fat hating eejits saw was an unacceptable body size. An unattractive shape. That scares them because I have made peace with myself. If they can't accept me, how am I accepting myself?

Even if it was "just over social media" Aarti Oliva, a beautiful woman who has struggled, like many of us, with her body acceptance stood up for herself. My heart broke for her pain but my soul beamed with pride for her bravery and courage to in some way take a stand. It made me think of my own life experiences over the years. It made me think of all the times that I had been demeaned or belittled by people, made to feel small and how I never said a word. One instance in particular still stays with me to this day.

I was a senior in high school. Now, to set the scene; I am overweight, asthmatic, wearing glasses that should have been replaced years ago, and I go to a school where a dress code was enforced. This of course meant that my uniform consisted of baggy, ill-fitting colored shirts and tent-esque stretch pants from K-mart. I was often ridiculed and mocked, I was often told that I looked like a teacher and was openly shamed for it. This one day in particular however, my bullying turned physical, it turned into sexual harassment. 

At my school, fights were a very common thing. So common that campus wide "lock outs" were instated. For those of you that don't know: a lockout is when any student caught outside of their classroom after the tardy bell rings is "locked out" of the class room and are immediately sent to the small school leaders (I'll explain that in a moment) and are reprimanded in some way. This punishment usually included either B.I.C (in school suspension), detention, or suspension. My school, which consisted of three usable floors was divided into three "small schools" meaning that each floor of the school was ran by different people and focused on a different job prospect. One day, due to the issue with fights breaking out during the time where students commuted from the first floor to their respective floors after lunch, all the small school leaders decided that they were going to herd students in one direction.

Yes, you heard me correctly. Gone was the students freedom to roam the halls as they pleased, we were herded like cattle up the stairs on the far left of the building, our teachers standing like obedient and observant dogs making sure one of the flock doesn't run off. It was horrible. It always didn't stop bad things from happening in the hallways. If anything the cramped congestion made things worse. On this day, I had stopped on the second floor because -thankfully!- my best friend's locker was near the stairs they herded us toward. I had to grab a text book from her locker because I had forgotten mine that day. It was sitting on the floor of the locker and I bent over to pick it up and....

WHAMM!!!

My head smashes into the back of the locker because some boy smacked me on the butt so hard I tipped over. My butt stung and I immediately felt this insane sense of vulnerability that I didn't even have the day that I lost my virginity. I heard this insane cackle worse than Ed from The Lion King and turned to see the back of this boy who was running like a bat out of hell through the crowd. I'll never forget the crisp color of his blue polo shirt, or the way his dusty braids seemed to stand out among a sea of raven colored hair. A fight broke out seconds after he'd done it and I remember standing their, frozen, as pandemonium broke out around me. I felt vandalized. 

Ordinarily, I wouldn't have said something, I would have hung my head low, kept walking and just tried to forget it. But that was the problem, I couldn't forget it. I couldn't let something like this go this time. I felt so much fear and shame in my heart that I felt as if I would explode. So, with my book clutched to my chest, I marched straight to my small school leaders and told them what happened. I was shaking like a leaf, to the point where they allowed me to stay in the office my entire fifth period. They got all the details from me that they could and then sent me on my way. They assured me that they would find who did this to me and I believed them. My heart was still wrapped tightly in a blanket of fear, but I believed them.

I spent the next three days walking the hallways in a state of constant fear and panic. I didn't know if this boy would hit me again. I didn't know if he would threaten me not to say anything. I didn't know what could happen, so the uncertainty drove me insane. Finally, I got called to the office and I was told that they found the boy who did it on the school's security cameras. I felt so relieved, I felt vindicated. Only to have that small moment of triumph ripped out from underneath me. 

"He's frequently in trouble," I was told. So they slapped him on the wrist. He got three days suspension. My parents weren't called. His mom was called to come get him but she never said anything to me, never saw me, never tried to force him to apologize or apologize for his actions. Their decision was made and final. So, I hung my head, nodded and returned to class. It took my small school leaders three days to find him and by the following Tuesday, he was back roaming the halls again. I could have passed that boy every day for the rest of my year there and never known it. But that wasn't the point. That didn't take away the fear that I felt, wondering if it would happen again, knowing that he would just get away easy. It didn't take away the fact that someone had touched me in a way that made me immensely uncomfortable and afraid, and I felt like no one cared, that no one was on my side. 

That boy saw a fat girl with a fat bottom, bent over, a** up, and what he saw was an easy target. He saw an easy target and he took advantage. He didn't care to know anything about me, just that he could abuse me in any way that he felt like. He did it, he got away with it -in my eyes at least- and he probably did it again to someone else, and got another slap on the wrist. I have held so much anger and hurt around because of this situation. Feelings that I didn't even know I had until Aarti Olivia wrote the words that I wish that I had the courage to say back then:

I will not shrink in oblivion. There is much work to be done. More people to reach out to and empower. More heading to process.

She was absolutely right, and this is why we need the body positive movement, so that young girls and women, and young men and guys the world over don't wind up feeling the way that I felt that day. I will not shrink into the oblivion for you. You have no power over my right to love my body the way that it is, was, and will be. So you can hate me, say that I promote an unhealthy life style by trying to get people to love themselves at any size, you can call me fat...."I know I am but what are you?"