nerd knits

Blue mock turtleneck from Lane Bryant, black Mossimo skirt from Target, black china doll shoes from museumreplicas.com.

I’m going to be honest with you, folks…I’m running out of steam.

It’s not that I’ve run out of things to say about fatness, and fatness in the context of culture. And it’s not that I don’t love you all, and love getting your comments.

But I’m tired.

I’m tired, and it’s going to get harder and harder to get daylight pictures, and I have new job responsibilities that are awesome and interesting and also draining.  And come November I’m going to do NaNoWriMo (again!) and I’ll be writing so frantically that I can’t imagine keeping the blog up, too…even at my pitiful one-post-per-week rate.

And, I swear to you, when I started this post I didn’t really think I was going on hiatus, but I think that’s what I’m doing.

And I love the fall and winter.  I love gathering myself in and sitting in the quiet and taking stock.  I use this time to go inward, to become still, to curl up tight and wait for something new to grow.

So this isn’t goodbye, really.  It’s a pause.  It’s a gestation (not literally).  It’s me taking some time to withdraw and wait for the next thing.

The blog will always be here, and I’m sure it will even have new posts again, one day.  In the meantime, feel free to friend me on Facebook (include a note that you’re a blog reader, so I know who you are!) or follow me on Twitter or circle me (is that the verb we decided on?) on Google+.

Be well, and love yourself as fiercely as you love others.

Black Kiyonia shirt with chains and a bow (I can't decide if this shirt is hideous or awesome) from Buxom, jeans from Lane Bryant, Champion sneakers. Yay casual day!

Well, I’ve joined a gym.

You have to understand, I have never, ever had a gym membership before.  I haven’t been around exercise equipment since PE in high school.  Last week I got on a treadmill for the first time in my life.

So, yeah, I joined a gym.  I thought long and hard about why I’m doing this and what I want out of it, and how hard I’m willing/able to advocate for myself, because advocating for myself in this circumstance is a necessity.

I’ve said before that joining a gym is absolutely unnecessary, and I stand by that statement.  You can engage in healthy, joyful movement without ever setting foot in any sort of organized exercise establishment.  I recognize that being able to have a gym membership is a privileged thing – not everyone can join a gym, for myriad reasons.  I made the personal decision to join a gym because I wanted to reach specific goals for my body (namely, increased upper body strength) that I found difficult to accomplish on my own.  I also kind of wanted to see what it was like: having never had a gym membership, I was curious about how it would work in my life.  Would I go?  Would I enjoy it?  There’s no way to know without trying, so here I am.

It’s been interesting.  When I was shopping around for a gym to join, I made it very clear that I was not interested in weight loss.  Some of the gym employees that I spoke to understood right away, and some really struggled with the idea.  All of them were polite and tried to be accommodating to my goals, but I could tell that most of them had never encountered anyone quite like me before.  I tried to approach the whole thing with firmness and a bit of humor, and it seems to have worked, so yay for that.

I also decided to get a few sessions with a personal trainer, mostly so I could get a feel for how to use the equipment, how to set up a reasonable routine, and how to not hurt myself in the process.  Again, it’s been interesting – weight loss is so often used as a (very poor) measure of success when it comes to exercise that it’s hard for people to understand that I don’t need to know how much I’ve lost or how many calories I’ve burned in order to feel successful.  I’ve also had to be very clear that my diet and nutrition are not acceptable topics of discussion.  Yes, I will assure my personal trainer that I’ve eaten, that I have enough fuel to get through my workout, but that’s as far as that conversation goes.

It’s been about three weeks now, and I’m still at it, so it must be worth something.  Most days I go to the gym and enjoy it – I like the time to myself, I like the way working out makes me feel, I like knowing that I’m doing something nurturing for my body.  Some days it’s a bit of a slog, but some days everything is a bit of a slog.  Such is life.

I’ve also spent a lot of time thinking about how I’m going to feel as my body changes.  Since I am changing my activity level, my body shape and size are almost certain to change to some degree – I won’t lose 100 pounds, but things will change.  How will I feel about that?  Will I be disappointed if I don’t lose a bit of weight?  Will I be disappointed if I do lose a bit of weight?  I’m not sure, but I’m trying to check in with myself regularly to see how I feel about it.  All I can do is be aware of it and deal with whatever emotions come up as compassionately as I can.  It’s enough.

My apologies, kids, but there will be no Fat Tuesday post this week.  (Everything’s fine, it’s just not working in my schedule this week.)  Check in again next week for more adventures in radical fatassery.

Today's costume is that of a mild-mannered admin at a non-profit: teal blouse from Lane Bryant, black Linden Hill pencil skirt from who-knows-where, Aerosoles Roller Rink heels from shoebuy.com

It’s so comforting to know that I still have a strong geek streak in my readership!

Yes, yes indeed, last week’s coat is a replica of Captain Jack Harkness’s.  I purchased it from a seller on Etsy…whose shop seems to suddenly be inexplicably empty.  So much for trying to drum up more business for them.  In any case, I love it – it’s extremely well-fitted, comfortable, and shockingly soft.  My only complaint – and it’s so incredibly minor – is that the belt isn’t long enough to tie behind me, the way Jack wears it.  Oh well.

For those of you who don’t know (Hi!  I love my non-geek readers, too!) Captain Jack Harkness is a very handsome, very compelling character from Doctor Who and Torchwood.  I am, perhaps, mildly obsessed with him.  Beyond being gorgeous, charming, funny, and smart, with a tragic background for depth and a dash of arrogance for spice, he’s also among the very few openly bisexual (actually, omnisexual) characters on television.  And he’s not just omnisexual!  He’s omnisexual and his shit isn’t all broken up about it.  He’s not in crisis over his sexual orientation.  No one is pressing him to be either gay or straight.  He just likes flirting with and having sex with all manner of creatures – male, female, human, alien, pink, blue or otherwise.  It’s so amazing to see bisexuality/omnisexuality portrayed positively on television…I can’t even tell you.

Plus, it means you get to see him make out with all kinds of delicious people.

So thank you, all, for playing along with my silliness.  I’m so grateful to each and every one of you who commented, but I only have one extra copy of the book, and it goes to…Gudrun!  Congratulations!  Gudrun, send me an email (g33kgirlATgmailDOTcom) with your mailing address and I’ll get your copy of the fabulous Big Big Love to you.

For the rest of you, I heartily recommend picking it up.  You can order it from Hanne Blank’s favorite independent bookstore, my favorite independent bookstore, your favorite independent bookstore, or (of course) Amazon.

Here’s wishing you fabulous sex, no mater what your size, gender, or orientation.

Fat people have sex.

Fat people have awesome sex.  Fat people have lousy sex sometimes, too – everyone does – but it has nothing to do with them being fat.

Fat people have sex with other fat people.  Fat people have sex with thin people.  Fat people have sex with all kinds of people with all kinds of body types.

Fat people have vanilla sex and kinky sex.  They have sex with long-term partners and casual sex with strangers.  Fat people have polyamorous sex and monogamous sex, and sometimes they decide not to have sex at all.

If you flip through The Joy of Sex, you’re not going to see a lot of fat people.  If you watch pornography, you’re not going to see a lot of fat people unless you specifically go looking for them, and then you’ll only find them in the kink section.  The “normal” world and the culture in which we live try to deny fat people their sexuality.  Who would want to have sex with a fat person?

Lots of people.

I mean, lots of people.

Fat people get laid all the time.  Their sexual experiences vary just as much as the experiences of thin people.  Some fat people have hundreds of sexual partners, others have only a few, and some have none at all.  Some fat people have sex with wild abandon, some are reserved, and some are desperately insecure.  You know…just like thin people.

That being said, there are some sexual issues, experiences, and ideas that are unique to fat people.  Luckily for all of us, fat and thin alike, the inestimable Hanne Blank has written a book about them.

And what an incredible book it is.

I’m nearly finished with it, and I’m telling you…it’s awesome.  Hanne deals frankly with the realities of being a fat, sexual person.  With tremendous humor and grace, she discusses everything from fat admirers and chubby chasers to how to deal with being seen as a sex object; from how to prevent sex injuries to how to be considerate of a fat person’s needs; from where to get a plus-size strap-on harness to how to become more accepting of your body.

And while this book is openly and wonderfully intended for (as the cover says) fat people and the people who love them, I think everyone, regardless of body shape, has so much to gain from this book.  Lessons of self-respect and self-acceptance, lessons of negotiation and consent, lessons of how to make yourself comfortable both physically and emotionally.

And, lucky for you, I have an extra copy.

So!  There are two ways to win:

• Every single person who leaves a comment will be entered to win (unless you specifically note that you don’t want to be entered in the drawing.)
• You can get an extra entry if you correctly guess what fictional character I’m dressed up as in today’s Outfit of the Day.  I’ll give you this hint: the blouse and slacks are representational, but the coat (a “costume” piece that I plan on wearing every day, as soon as it gets cold enough) is spot-on.

So, if you write a comment that says “I love pie!” you get one entry.  If you comment with a guess as to who’s coat that is, and you’re wrong, you get one entry.  If you guess whose coat that is and you’re right, you get two entries.

Please note that you must leave your comment here, on my blog.  Comments left on Facebook/Google+/Twitter won’t be counted!

Good luck!

Black and blue print blouse from Lane Bryant, black skirt from Target, black China doll shoes from museumreplicas.com.

[First, an apology for my unexplained absence last week.  I took Labor Day off of work, which (as I should have expected) threw off my whole concept of days.  Tuesday felt like Monday, and by the time I realized that Tuesday was actually Tuesday, I needed to go to bed.  Le sigh.]

So, a friend of mine was trying to describe me to someone who had met me once but couldn’t recall me.  The person to whom my friend was talking asked if I was tall and thin, to which my friend replied “no, she’s tall and fat.”

There were gasps all around.  How could someone – especially someone who supposedly likes me – describe me that way, so brazenly?

My friend went on to explain that I am a size acceptance activist, and that if given the opportunity, I would describe myself in similar terms.  And she’s right, of course, but I still think the shock and horror are kind of funny.

We’re so scared of this word.  Fat.

When I go out to a restaurant and Bradon has already been seated, I tell the host(ess) that I’m looking for a very handsome fat man with long, curly blond hair.  The looks I get are…interesting.  I have yet to have someone actually say something, but I can see when I break someone’s brain with the juxtaposition of “handsome” and “fat.”

Fat.  Faaaaat.

Words are so fascinating.  The definitions and connotations and contexts, oh my!

Most descriptive words have connotations.  If I describe someone as short, thin, and blonde, chances are that you make different assumptions about them than if I describe them as tall, muscular and brunette.  It’s little things, tiny twists of ideas and prejudices and cultural expectations, but it’s there.

Of all the descriptive words, “fat” is among the most evocative.  If I tell you that someone is fat, the assumptions come fast and furious.  Fat people are lazy.  Fat people are ugly.  Fat people are jolly (or sassy, or introverted.)  Fat people are gross, or messy, or unmotivated.

All this from a little, three letter word.  Fat makes us uncomfortable.

So we search for euphemisms.  Fat people we like are “zaftig”, or “fluffy”, or “big girls/boys”, or “plus-sized”, or “heavy.”

When, really, they’re all just fat.

Many people within the size acceptance movement have been quite passionate about reclaiming the word fat.  (Marianne Kirby of the Rotund is particularly in love with the word “fat”, as well she should be.)  It’s a word.  It’s a descriptor, and an accurate one at that.  I’m not zaftig or, heaven help me, fluffy.  I’m fat.  It’s awesome.

So, no, I wasn’t bothered by my friend describing me as fat, because I am fat.  To pretend otherwise is both disingenuous and ridiculous.  I’m fat, and tall, and I have brown hair and blue eyes and more than your average number of piercings.  When someone calls me fat in an effort to hurt me, I can only laugh and reply, “Why yes, I am fat.  How very observant of you!”

White blouse and blue print skirt from Lane Bryant, Roller Rink Aerosoles shoes from shoebuy.com. Peacock Feathers shawl from my own fingers.

After months of going to work and burning out around 10 AM, reviving after lunch, and coming home starving and cranky, I came to the conclusion that I should probably stock some snacks at work.  I picked out a variety of munchables, stashed them in a drawer in my desk, and pulled them out when I found myself slumping and distracted by the rumbling of my belly.  Productivity rose, mood found a more even keel, and I was a happy camper.

Last week I went grocery shopping and replenished my snack supply for work.  I put the food in a bag and set it next to the door so I’d remember to take it to work with me the next day.

When I got to work and discovered that I’d forgotten it I agonized long and hard about what to do.  My snack stash was completely gone.  My home is very close to my work.  I debated running home and snagging the bag of goodies.

And I found myself thinking, No, I’ll just get through today.  I’ll be hungry, but that’s a good thing, right?

I tell you this story for two reasons.

First, to point out to you that this kind of thinking is fucked up.  Hunger is not a virtue. Years of dieting and struggling with food and listening to people talk about “good food” and “bad food” has led me (and many others) to conflate hunger and goodness.  I’m good if I’m hungry.  I’m bad if I’m sated, and I’m terrible if I’m actually full.  Many long-term dieters can actually confuse the physical sensation of hunger (especially when it gets to that floaty, shaky point) with feelings of goodness, virtue, willpower and success.

Being hungry is none of those things.  Being hungry is your body’s way of demanding energy to perform the necessary tasks of keeping you alive.  The physical sensation that you feel is your body crying out for food.  The satisfaction you feel is our thin-obsessed society imposing itself on your brain.  Being hungry doesn’t make you good.  It just makes you hungry.

Second, I mention this to remind you that we all backslide sometimes.  I’ve been doing the size acceptance thing for a few years now, and I’m into it as hardcore as anyone.  I am proud to take up space.  I am unashamed of my body.  I speak out for size acceptance every chance I get.

But sometimes the culture wins.  Sometimes I find myself thinking that hunger is virtue, or that I’d be happier if I were thinner, or that I wish my body were different.  That doesn’t make me a bad activist.  That makes me a human – specifically a human that was brought up in a deeply body-negative culture.

I find myself thinking that hunger is virtue, and then I stop.  I think about why I draw that association.  I examine the assumptions that lead to that thought.  And then I decide I was wrong.  I remind myself of what I know: that hunger is hunger, and is completely unrelated to virtue.  And I move on.

Black Worthington blouse from JC Penny; Moa Collection white, black, grey and blue animal print skirt from Buxom, black china doll shoes from museumreplicas.com.

(Inspired by Leslie’s post about this absolutely awesome shirt, as well as the excellent words of wisdom that Mrs. Avoirdupois shares with us on Twitter.)

I want to tell you this absolutely ridiculous story about myself, with the full hope that you will laugh at me.

A few years ago I was getting dressed for a live-action roleplaying game in which I was playing a young girl.  I was trying to dress a little on the childish side, and pulled out of one of my drawers a pair of striped socks.  I pulled them on, put on a pair of red Chuck Taylors, and looked at myself in the mirror.

The horizontal stripes on the socks were doing what horizontal stripes are rumored to do: they drew the eyes horizontally across my legs and my calves, to my eyes, looked enormous.

As I looked into the mirror, the gut-instinct, unedited, honest-to-goodness thought that raced through my mind was: I can’t wear these socks!  Someone might realize that I’m fat!

Seriously.

I stood there, all 5’9″, 244 pounds of me, looking into the mirror, worrying that my socks might tip someone off the the fact that I’m fat.  As if my fat weren’t doing a fine job of it.

There are endless bits of advice plastered in magazines and shared in fitting rooms that suggest that the clothes you wear can disguise your girth.  Don’t wear horizontal stripes.  Black is slimming.  Use seams to draw the eye away from the widest parts of your body. That’s all fine and good, but listen to me when I say this:

There is no article of clothing on earth that can make a fat person thin.

No amount of vertical stripes or dark colors or anything else is going to let a fat person masquerade as a thin person.  Do horizontal stripes accentuate width?  Sure, a little bit.  Is avoiding them going to trick people into not noticing that you’re fat?  Nope.  Not at all.

I don’t care what your size or shape is: you should dress in a way that makes you happy.  Wear clothes that make you feel good.  Wear clothes you like looking at.  If you’re fat and you like big, wide horizontal stripes in a garment knit with bulky yarn – wear it!  Wear it proudly!  Wear it and post pictures of it so I can admire it in all its stripey goodness!  If you’re thin and you like spaghetti stripes and v-necks (apparently these are “things to avoid” for skinny people – I had to look it up on the internet) wear them and show them off everywhere you go.  Wear the clothes that you love.  Wear the clothes that you’re comfortable in.  Wear the clothes that make your heart sing and make you feel like a million bucks.

Fuck flattering.

Blue and Brown print Claudia Richard blouse from Ross, charcoal slacks from Lane Bryant, Roller Rink Aerosoles heels from shoebuy.com.

My fat knitting friends, I have a humble request for you: please put pictures of you wearing your knitted objects on Ravelry.

This is not a demand, my loves.  I really do understand the desire for privacy, the hesitation to open yourself up for criticism, and the discomfort with having photographs taken.  I don’t want to ask you to do something that you feel strongly against doing.

That being said, I lovelovelove seeing pictures of awesome fat people wearing their handknits.  Not just because I love seeing pictures of awesome fat people in general, but because seeing fat people wearing handknits gives me a better idea of what I might look like wearing that same item.

Though there are not as many plus size patterns as I might hope for (for example, there are 9,983 patterns for knitted adult cardigans on Ravelry, but only 1,448 of them are identified as plus size) the options for plus size garments are improving all the time.  A large part of this improvement can, in my opinion, be attributed to Amy Singer’s insistence that any garment pattern submitted to Knitty be sized to at least 3X for women’s items and 2X for men’s items.  Knitty is such a huge influence on the knitting community (or, at least, the online knitting community) that their submission guidelines changed the way that many patterns are designed and written.  Yay for Knitty!

So we have more plus size patterns than ever, which is awesome.  But we all know how pattern sizing usually works – the original piece is usually knit in a smallish size (usually, whatever size the designer is) and then scaled up or down with math.  The bigger sizes are rarely knit by the designer, unless zie is a bigger size hirself.  (There are exceptions!)  This can lead to some…interesting…fitting issues when a real-life fat person finally knits the pattern.

When I go looking for a sweater to knit, the first thing I do as I pore through the search results is go looking for the pictures of fat people wearing the sweater in question.  Even if the fat person in question doesn’t have the exact same body type as me, seeing the sweater on a fat person can give me an idea of where it will fit and where it won’t.  Does it gape over the breasts?  Does it hang funny on the belly?  Does it look great on apple-shaped fats but hang like a sack on hourglass-shaped fats?  Does it show off fantastic fat cleavage but make a fat ass look misshapen?  I can guess at the answers to some of these questions by looking at the sweater on thin people, but sometimes you just need to see it on a fat person to be sure.

So I go looking for the fat people, and I am often disappointed.  Sometimes no fat people have knit the pattern in question – perhaps because they’re waiting for a fat person to knit it so they can see what it looks like on a fat person.  Mmm…irony.  Some intrepid fatty will just have to take the risk and find out.

But sometimes I can see that a fat person has knit the object in question, and has posted pictures…of the item laying on a bed, or hanging on a hanger.  That’s great, but it doesn’t give me the information I’m looking for.  What does it look like on your body and, by extension, what will it look like on my body?

Be brave!  Put your gorgeous sweater on your gorgeous body and snap a picture!  Not only will you be reassuring other fat people that the sweater looks good on fatties (or, conversely, warning fatties away from a sweater that didn’t scale quite the way it was intended,) you’ll be making fat people more visible within the greater culture.  It is so, so important for us to see fat people anywhere and everywhere, living their lives, being out in the world.  It seems like such a small thing, but posting a picture of your fat body wearing a sweater that you knit can help change society’s attitudes.

Your body is perfect as it is.  You have a right to take up space, you have a right to been seen, and you have a right to show off your knitting on your very own fat body.  It looks good on the bed, but it would look great on you.

I was recently pointed to an article in The Telegraph with the headline “Dieting forces brain to eat itself, scientists claim.” Of course I read it.  How could I not?

It started off fairly benign, telling me things that I already knew, but that were apparently surprising to a lot of folks:

Like other parts of the body, brain cells begin to eat themselves as a last-ditch source of energy to ward off starvation, a study found.

Well, yes.  When you starve yourself, your body tries every trick in the book to get extra energy, and your fat cells are usually the last source of energy to be used.  Your fat is there to protect you from serious, long-term starvation.  By the time you’re tapping in to that, you’re doing significant damage to your organs and muscles, including your heart and, apparently, your brain.

So, knowing that dieting leads to your brain cannibalizing itself, what conclusions might you draw from this information?

• Dieting makes you stupid.  This was Bradon’s suggestion.  While it’s a pretty problematic statement for a lot of reasons, I do appreciate the pithiness of it.
• Perhaps dieting isn’t as safe as the general population has been led to believe.  Perhaps dieting carries its own risks, and is just as dangerous (if not more dangerous) than being fat.  If your body is eating its own brain cells to stay alive, perhaps dieting is doing you serious physical harm.  I mean, isn’t that what they warned us that drugs would do?  Perhaps, if scientists have found that dieting causes brain damage, there should be more studies done to determine the amount of damage done, as well as other potential health problems caused by dieting.

And what conclusion did the scientists draw from the data?

Tests on mice found that stopping the brain cells from eating themselves – a process known as autophagy – prevented levels of hunger from rising in response to starvation.

The chemical change in their brains caused the mice to become lighter and slimmer after a period of fasting, the researchers reported in the journal Cell Metabolism.