I Beg Of You: A Body Image Piece

Hello my angels!

I recently performed this spoken word piece, and wanted to share it with you all. Hope you enjoy:)

I beg of you, this small favour I ask,
When you hear me complain about my body
Take me by the shoulders and shake me
And tell me I am beautiful, tell me I am worthy,
So that I too can scream it from the tops of the city.

I beg of you, this is no small task,
When you watch me stare at my reflection in the mirror,
Shatter the glass so that I can see better,
Convince me that beauty is in the eye of the beholder
And If your sight tells you different, look a little harder.
You are not disgusting, not today, not ever.

I beg of you, don't think me crazy,
When you feel me upset about me weight
Erase the numbers on my scale, they don't matter anyway
Let them run with my self-doubt, let them fly away.

I beg of you, never forget this,
When you look into my eyes tonight,
realize that I am you, and you are me.
The only person you need to make you feel alright
To feel your warmth as your light shines bright
To share your beauty as it glows into the night,
Is your own self, your own soul, your own mind.
Best friends come and go, but self-esteem is for life.

When Your Mother Says She's Fat, by Kasey Edwards

Hello my beautiful angels! 

I hope you're having a wonderful holiday season, enjoying your break and taking good care of yourself:)

Here's a piece I found on tumblr, from the wonderful author at kaseyedwards.com

Enjoy<3

Dear Mum,

I was seven when I discovered that you were fat, ugly and horrible. Up until that point I had believed that you were beautiful — in every sense of the word. I remember flicking through old photo albums and staring at pictures of you standing on the deck of a boat. Your white strapless bathing suit looked so glamorous, just like a movie star. Whenever I had the chance I’d pull out that wondrous white bathing suit hidden in your bottom drawer and imagine a time when I’d be big enough to wear it; when I’d be like you.

But all of that changed when, one night, we were dressed up for a party and you said to me, ‘‘Look at you, so thin, beautiful and lovely. And look at me, fat, ugly and horrible.’’

At first I didn’t understand what you meant.

‘‘You’re not fat,’’ I said earnestly and innocently, and you replied, ‘‘Yes I am, darling. I’ve always been fat; even as a child.’’

In the days that followed I had some painful revelations that have shaped my whole life. I learned that:

1. You must be fat because mothers don’t lie.
2. Fat is ugly and horrible.
3. When I grow up I’ll look like you and therefore I will be fat, ugly and horrible too.

Years later, I looked back on this conversation and the hundreds that followed and cursed you for feeling so unattractive, insecure and unworthy. Because, as my first and most influential role model, you taught me to believe the same thing about myself.

With every grimace at your reflection in the mirror, every new wonder diet that was going to change your life, and every guilty spoon of ‘‘Oh-I-really-shouldn’t,’’ I learned that women must be thin to be valid and worthy. Girls must go without because their greatest contribution to the world is their physical beauty.

Just like you, I have spent my whole life feeling fat. When did fat become a feeling anyway? And because I believed I was fat, I knew I was no good.

But now that I am older, and a mother myself, I know that blaming you for my body hatred is unhelpful and unfair. I now understand that you too are a product of a long and rich lineage of women who were taught to loathe themselves.

Look at the example Nanna set for you. Despite being what could only be described as famine-victim chic, she dieted every day of her life until the day she died at seventy-nine years of age. She used to put on make-up to walk to the letterbox for fear that somebody might see her unpainted face.

I remember her ‘‘compassionate’’ response when you announced that Dad had left you for another woman. Her first comment was, ‘‘I don’t understand why he’d leave you. You look after yourself, you wear lipstick. You’re overweight — but not that much.’’

Before Dad left, he provided no balm for your body-image torment either.

‘‘Jesus, Jan,’’ I overheard him say to you. ‘‘It’s not that hard. Energy in versus energy out. If you want to lose weight you just have to eat less.’’

That night at dinner I watched you implement Dad’s ‘‘Energy In, Energy Out: Jesus, Jan, Just Eat Less’’ weight-loss cure. You served up chow mein for dinner. (Remember how in 1980s Australian suburbia, a combination of mince, cabbage, and soy sauce was considered the height of exotic gourmet?) Everyone else’s food was on a dinner plate except yours. You served your chow mein on a tiny bread-and-butter plate.

As you sat in front of that pathetic scoop of mince, silent tears streamed down your face. I said nothing. Not even when your shoulders started heaving from your distress. We all ate our dinner in silence. Nobody comforted you. Nobody told you to stop being ridiculous and get a proper plate. Nobody told you that you were already loved and already good enough. Your achievements and your worth — as a teacher of children with special needs and a devoted mother of three of your own — paled into insignificance when compared with the centimeters you couldn’t lose from your waist.

It broke my heart to witness your despair and I’m sorry that I didn’t rush to your defense. I’d already learned that it was your fault that you were fat. I’d even heard Dad describe losing weight as a ‘‘simple’’ process — yet one that you still couldn’t come to grips with. The lesson: you didn’t deserve any food and you certainly didn’t deserve any sympathy.

But I was wrong, Mum. Now I understand what it’s like to grow up in a society that tells women that their beauty matters most, and at the same time defines a standard of beauty that is perpetually out of our reach. I also know the pain of internalising these messages. We have become our own jailors and we inflict our own punishments for failing to measure up. No one is crueler to us than we are to ourselves.

But this madness has to stop, Mum. It stops with you, it stops with me and it stops now. We deserve better — better than to have our days brought to ruin by bad body thoughts, wishing we were otherwise.

And it’s not just about you and me any more. It’s also about Violet. Your granddaughter is only three and I do not want body hatred to take root inside her and strangle her happiness, her confidence and her potential. I don’t want Violet to believe that her beauty is her most important asset; that it will define her worth in the world. When Violet looks to us to learn how to be a woman, we need to be the best role models we can. We need to show her with our words and our actions that women are good enough just the way they are. And for her to believe us, we need to believe it ourselves.

The older we get, the more loved ones we lose to accidents and illness. Their passing is always tragic and far too soon. I sometimes think about what these friends — and the people who love them — wouldn’t give for more time in a body that was healthy. A body that would allow them to live just a little longer. The size of that body’s thighs or the lines on its face wouldn’t matter. It would be alive and therefore it would be perfect.

Your body is perfect too. It allows you to disarm a room with your smile and infect everyone with your laugh. It gives you arms to wrap around Violet and squeeze her until she giggles. Every moment we spend worrying about our physical ‘‘flaws’’ is a moment wasted, a precious slice of life that we will never get back.

Let us honor and respect our bodies for what they do instead of despising them for how they appear. Focus on living healthy and active lives, let our weight fall where it may, and consign our body hatred in the past where it belongs. When I looked at that photo of you in the white bathing suit all those years ago, my innocent young eyes saw the truth. I saw unconditional love, beauty and wisdom. I saw my Mum.

Love, Kasey xx

Fat Discrimination? Lululemon and A&F controversy explored

Hello my beautiful fudgies:)

When Abercrombie & Fitch's CEO stated, "A lot of people don’t belong [in our clothes], and they can’t belong. Are we exclusionary? Absolutely" ( http://www.nydailynews.com/life-style/fashion/abercrombie-won-sell-xl-article-1.1339454#ixzz2c3ZZNU9f) I wasn't exactly shocked. This is blatant fat shaming and discrimination, but let's look at who we are dealing with here. A&F's women sizes only go up to a size 10, or a large, and they are notorious for plastering very thin, very pretty and very caucasian models on their store's walls, bags and billboards. 

Besides, A&F has been struggling for a few years, now more than ever, with a 13% fall in retails sales after their 1st 2013 quarter. 

But when famous athletics retail company Lululemon released a statement explaining why they don't plan on expanding their market to those who don't fit into sizes 2 to 12, I started to get worried. 

Is this the new trend? Is a fat shaming brand clique being formed as we speak, slowly but surely cutting out their "largest" sizes? And what will be the new plus size in a few years, a size 6??!

The average women in America is a size 14, hence the average american woman is not welcome into any of the aforementioned stores. Now I know that the appearance of exclusivity is crucial to these respective brands, but by cutting out the biggest piece of the demographic pie, aren't they also cutting out the biggest piece of potential buyers? 

I also find it very revealing that Lululemon, an ATHLETICS wear company, refuses to dress those who don't fit into their mold. The media, the doctors, even the random guy at the bar who tells you to eat a salad; they all claim to shame your body for your HEALTH. But isn't it funny that one of the key holders to the kingdom of workout wear, along with so many hidden others, doesn't allow the plus size  population to buy their outlandishly expensive yoga leggings? What does that say about all these pretenders who supposedly worry about your health? 

A young women who wears a size 16 wants to start hiking, but no retailer manufactures the appropriate clothing for her body type. Yet somehow society isn't at least partly responsible for its population's weight and health?

Here's the deal: for many of these retailers, to be fit, you have to be thin. 

To the rest of you; tough luck. 

I applaud retailers such as Forever 21 and ASOS who carry sizes for all shapes and sizes, but will they have to fight body discrimination on their own, or will other body positive retailers join them? Only time will tell. 

Until then,

Have a great Friday my dolls:)

xoxo

Gabby