Ugly

 

Free use image by Artjane on Pixabay

https://pixabay.com/vectors/witch-pumpkin-spirit-halloween-5649809/

Different is not good they say

And they showed me in so many ways

How wrong it is to be like me

A thing nobody wants to see

"You act so weird," the others always said

Why can't you just be normal instead

Be the same as everybody else

Instead of being your abnormal self

Everybody saw me as the other

Parents, schoolmates, and my brother

Said be like other girls, pretty and sweet

From life I started to retreat

Never have I belonged anyplace

With my odd personality and ugly face

With a physique that is much reviled

I retreated and I rarely smiled

I see now that others are unkind

Mean of spirit and small of mind

Although I am strange and ugly too

I deserve the same respect that pretty people do

The way one treats folks commonplace

The fat, the awkward, those not fair of face

No matter how attractive they are without

Their inner ugliness always comes out

Bullying and ridicule

Makes pretty people ugly fools

~cie~

the numerous not so nice notes

Inspired by an unpleasant exchange with a twit on Twitter lamenting that some large folks don't do their due diligence of hiding and hating themselves and dare to call out the appalling treatment they experience simply for being big, including commonplace psychological abuse by medical "professionals."

Said twit used phrases such as "celebrating obesity" and made a crack about "if these women even make it to forty." 

Well, this 55-year-old fat broad had something to say about that bullshit.

I am a big person. I have an extremely dysfunctional endocrine system. I generally refer to it as a trash fire. My thyroid gland was the first to go kerflooey, committing suicide when I was in my early teens. I had PCOS, and, given the state of the rest of my endocrine system, I was unsurprised when diabetes came knocking when I was forty-nine. If you think I want to hear about any cures for diabetes, save us both some precious time and spare me. Type 2 diabetes sometimes (rarely) goes into remission, like cancer. I'd like that, but I certainly don't expect it. 

I once had a person tell me that if I took cinnamon, I could stop taking insulin. I cautioned them against giving such wildly dangerous advice. If I stopped using insulin, I'd likely be dead within the space of a month. All cinnamon will do for me is give me pleasant-tasting burps.

In any case, regardless of the fact that I have an "excuse" for my size, no-one should have to apologize or explain their physique to anybody. And if you want to crow about "health," spare me. At least be honest about it. It's never about "health." 

The fact that I'm surprised when I'm treated respectfully and not abused by people in the medical profession is NOT a good thing. 

When I'm treated respectfully, I'm inspired to do the things I can to take care of my weird body, regardless of its size. I don't mentally abuse myself and tell myself that I only deserve to be treated well if I'm thin. I check my blood glucose faithfully and inject insulin accordingly. I eat relatively balanced meals and don't restrict food or binge. I am inspired to exercise as much as I can. I wish I could get an upright walker, which would help me take longer walks and would be more comfortable and supportive than a regular walker, but these devices are around $700 and that is out of my price range.

Wouldn't it be nice to live in a world where assistive devices weren't treated as a luxury item?

Anyway...

If you think you are "helping" larger people by shaming them "for their health,"

1) It doesn't work like that. If shame worked, there would be no alcoholics or drug addicts, no smokers, and no fat people. No-one would be depressed or anxious. Everyone would be working the "perfect" job, have the perfect marriage with the perfect 2.5 kids, and no-one would be gay. Shame does not work, and a person's body type is more complex than the grossly oversimplified "calories in, calories out" model that is drilled into everyone's head implies.

2) Fuck you.

Read again what I said about respectful treatment.

When I'm treated respectfully by people in the medical profession, I take better care of myself. I don't lose weight, and with my endocrine problems, I'm unlikely to lose weight unless I become terminally ill. Weight loss isn't the measure of health (or worth) that people have been indoctrinated to believe it is in any case.

When I am treated like shit for my size, I tend to starve myself. I berate myself, calling myself awful names. I think that I don't deserve to be happy or even to live.

The words we say to others have an incredible impact.

I remember when I saw the "Let There Be Rock" documentary when I was sixteen. When Angus Young (who is way on the opposite end of the size spectrum from Yours Truly) was asked what he thought of each of the other members of his band, his answers were appropriate. When asked what he thought of himself, his reply was "he's that ugly little man."

I was struck by his response and the matter-of-fact way in which he said it. Even at that age, I realized that other people's cruel words had made him believe this lie about himself. Regardless of his accomplishments, he saw himself as "that ugly little man." I thought this was an incredibly sad revelation.

Angus Young isn't conventionally attractive. He's smaller than the average man. But just because he doesn't have leading man looks doesn't mean there's anything wrong with his appearance. He seems like a decent guy. I'd kind of like to slap the living crap out of the people who filled his mind with the idea that he's ugly. 

In any case, if one doesn't find him appealing, they're not being forced to go on a date with him. 

A hot steaming cup of STFU is a drink that those who think they know best about what other people should be doing or how they should look would be advised to take a good long swig of.

Don't be a goddamn dick. Nobody owes it to you to be what you deem attractive. If you don't like what you see, look somewhere else. You have no idea what anyone else is going through, and your crap opinions and advice are likely to do more harm than good.

Fat, ornery, and done with everyone's shyyyyyt.

(Free use image by Open Clipart Vectors on Pixabay)

http://www.octpowrimo.com/2020/10/octpowrimo-day-26.html

Want more fat, angry poetry? Grab a heapin' helpin'!

https://bit.ly/getmorepoetry

This poem was posted to these places:

http://poetryofthenetherworld.blogspot.com

https://lbry.tv/@poetryofthenetherworld:9

LBRY is a decentralized content marketplace. I price the PDF versions of my work at approximately half of the Kindle price because I receive the entire amount rather than a royalty percentage. 

You can get a free LBRY account through this link. You can earn LBC for viewing content on LBRY as well as from selling your content.

https://lbry.tv/$/invite/@naughtynetherworldpress:d

The Icky, Sticky, Nit-Picky Legalese If You Please (Or Don't Please)

Creative Commons License

This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 4.0 International License.

This work is the intellectual property of Naughty Netherworld Press/Poetry of the Netherworld

Reblogging is acceptable on platforms that allow it. LBRY’s reblog function is called repost, which makes things confusing since reposting is considered a no-no on most platforms. It’s fine to share the post using the repost function on LBRY. It is not okay to copy-paste the material into a new post.

Sharing a link to the post is acceptable.

Quoting portions of the post for educational or review purposes is acceptable if proper credit is given.

Big Fat Obsession

 

Free use image from Pixabay

content warning:

if you're offended by cussing

I don't give a fuck

 my blood reveals the faults in my stars

or at least in my DNA

my bones are strong, what can I say

my breath often spews forth in the ragged hacking

of an asthmatic cough

my heart, broken many times

beats strong and regular beneath my sagging breasts

in fact, medical people have commented favorably

on my hardy heart

but in the end, nobody sees a goddamn thing about me

except for my belly

which they've deemed too full of jelly

and my ample ass

so every day when I wake up

the first thing I have to do after taking a piss

is tell myself that I deserve to live

and that I don't deserve to be treated like shit

just because I'm fat

and if your thought starts with "well, if you'd just lose weight"

then you can fuck right off

along with everyone else who ever pounded this hate into my head

because I just did that a lot of times

until my body decided

I couldn't do that anymore

diets don't work

and you shouldn't treat people like trash

even if you don't think they're pretty

~cie~

http://www.octpowrimo.com/2020/10/octpowrimo-day-17.html

For more pissed-off poetry written by an angry fat bitch, go here

https://bit.ly/getmorepoetry

This poem was posted to these places:

http://poetryofthenetherworld.blogspot.com

https://lbry.tv/@poetryofthenetherworld:9

LBRY is a decentralized content marketplace. I price the PDF versions of my work at approximately half of the Kindle price because I receive the entire amount rather than a royalty percentage. 

You can get a free LBRY account through this link. You can earn LBC for viewing content on LBRY as well as from selling your content.

https://lbry.tv/$/invite/@naughtynetherworldpress:d

Copyright Information

The Icky, Sticky, Nit-Picky Legalese If You Please (Or Don't Please)

Copyright 2020 by Naughty Netherworld Press/Poetry of the Netherworld

Reblogging is acceptable on platforms that allow it. LBRY’s reblog function is called repost, which makes things confusing since reposting is considered a no-no on most platforms. It’s fine to share the post using the repost function on LBRY. It is not okay to copy-paste the material into a new post.

Sharing a link to the post is acceptable.

Quoting portions of the post for educational or review purposes is acceptable if proper credit is given.

NaPoWriMo 2020 Day 14 + April PAD Challenge 2020 Day 14: Your Legacy

Image by Barbara Bonanno from Pixabay

I

am not

what you hoped

but I am, nonetheless

the legacy that you created

I am your Frankenstein monster

built from the things

that made your life

worth living

I am a

twisted

sorry

awful

mockery

a failure

of a person

I am not 

what you hoped

but I am, nonetheless

the gifts you gave me

~cie~

NaPoWriMo: write a poem about the people who inspired you to write poems

April PAD Challenge: write a form poem

notes

I think the shape above is a chess pawn. It started out as a simple diamante but turned into what you see. It is what it is.

This poem addresses my late father. He was a professor of literature and humanities who also taught technical writing. I was a precocious little skidmark who learned to read and write by the time I was four years old. I think my father believed that this prodigious spark meant that I was destined for greatness. He read poetry to me. I started reading Edgar Allan Poe's works when I was six years old.

My father wound up tremendously disappointed in me. I was a fuckup who could never do anything right and I had a slew of psychological problems. I was singled out and abused by my peers. I married too young. I had one abusive relationship after another. I engaged in self-harm. Possibly, worst of all, between a fucked endocrine system and years of yo-yo dieting, I ended up fat. My father believed that being fat was a sign of failure. He always went to great lengths to prevent himself from being fat. He ran six miles a day for many years. However, his vascular system was a disaster. He had a major hemorrhagic stroke at 68 years old. At the time of his death at age 74, he had suffered several more strokes, had congestive heart failure and vascular dementia, and was confined to a wheelchair.

If anyone's first inclination is to tell me "cHeEr Up, U cAn StiLLL LUz3 tEh WaTeZ!!111!!!" my suggestion to you is to check the ever-loving fuck out of yourself. Preferably on ice during a hockey game. I tried to hate myself thin for 33 years. With my endocrine problems, it is highly unlikely that I will ever be thin unless I do what my great-grandmother did. She developed acute myelogenous leukemia, dropped from 300 pounds to 95 in the space of a year, and dropped dead. But hey, she cut a svelte figure in her coffin, and, apparently, that's the only fucking thing that counts. Never mind that she was now, you know, DEAD.

In any case, I'm not going to waste another goddamn minute of my time trying to hate myself into the body that other people think I'm supposed to have. Thirty-three years of that shit is long enough. People who think I, or anyone else should do that, can slam down a hot, steaming cup of STFU, read the following fine books, and fuck off forever. Or if you're not a brainwashed, narrow-minded asswipe and you simply think: "say, those books look like they have some good information," you can read them while drinking what you want and omit the fucking off part. I'd think that was pretty cool.

The Cheese Grates It: Goals for 2020

Image by Annalise Batista from Pixabay

I refuse to do New Years' resolutions. Those always imply crap like "New You in 52," which, of course, means diet culture. I raised the middle finger to diet culture closing in on ten years ago, and I'm damn well not sorry. I suppose it will be a battle every day of my life till the day I die to be treated as a human being without buying into the same shit that never worked for me in 33 years of yo-yo dieting and trying to hate myself thin, but it's a battle that I will fight.

Here are my big fat goals for 2020.

To format and release my first non-erotic published work in 13 years. Ketil and Yitzy's Adventure in the Xura Dream House is finished. I am currently in the process of editing and formatting it. It will be published in January of 2020.

To start publishing my poetry. I am currently formatting a book called The Poetic Rejects of 2019, which will, as the name implies, contain all my rejected poems from the past year. It may also contain some rejected prose, depending on the length of the piece.

To continue to submit works here and there, now and then, all the while giving no fucks whether or not they are accepted or published.

To continue working on and publishing my own stories, regardless of whether or not anyone else likes or reads them.

Basically, to survive another year.

Oh, I do have one resolution.

I resolve that I will never again do anything like the Battle of the Poems.

That was really stupid of me, and I'm dreadfully sorry.

Best wishes to you, whatever your goals are in 2020. 

You are welcome to have resolutions, but if they are diet-y resolutions, I don't want to hear about them any more than I want to hear about your bowel movements.

I guess I have one more resolution.

I resolve to keep bringing the snark in 2020. It is my goal to make the ghost of Ambrose Bierce proud.

~The Cheese Hath Grated It~

I still miss these fuckers. Just sayin'.

November PAD Chapbook Challenge: Day 10: Tyranny of Perfection

Image by PublicDomainPictures from Pixabay

so I got to thinking

what if Death 

isn't a grim dude in a black hood

but is instead

an annoyingly perfect and perfectionistic

aerobics instructor

who chirps at you

that it's time to do your cardi-oh-oh

and when you do those leg lifts

you've gotta squeeze those glutes

because if you don't squeeze 'em

no-one else will

and I kind of got to thinking

what if I don't want my life

to revolve around whether or not

some dudebro wants to

play grab-ass with me

and then that chipper death

chirped at me that I

need to mind my carbs and calories

because fat is the very worst thing

that a person can possibly be

and then I got to thinking

that maybe that's not true

that in fact the worst thing a person

can possibly be

is a sanctimonious twat

who refuses to respect

other people's lives and conditions and preferences

and bodily autonomy

and who really can just fuck off

and then I got to wondering 

if maybe that's the way Death works

is by annoying people to death

by making them fight all day every day

with vicious inner voices

that tell them they're no good

because they have dimpled thighs

or chunky butts

or saggy boobs

or tummy rolls

or they just aren't perky-werky enough

and then I got to thinking 

that maybe what happens

is people get tired 

of hearing Death's annoying voice

bleating at them to get up and at 'em

because nobody who isn't perfect

deserves to have a life

and so they smash the snooze bar

on their internal clock

one too many times

in an attempt to shut the annoying bitch up

once and for all

~Cie~

Notes:

Today's November PAD Chapbook Challenge asked for a (blank) of (blank) poem. I initially went with "hands of time," which is how I found the image of the perky aerobics instructor looking lady with her watch. I started thinking about all the years and time and money I spent trying to hate myself thin, and it really pissed me off that the message people (especially women) are sent from the moment we draw breath isn't "take care of yourself because you are worthwhile regardless of your size or looks," it's "if you girls aren't thin and pretty in a very specific way, you are garbage and don't deserve happiness." 

So, I changed the title of my poem to Tyranny of Perfection and wrote about what it feels like to fight with the hateful internal dialogue that has been crammed down my throat for as long as I can remember. It would be nice to be able to just BE, without having to fight with these horrible messages from the cradle to the grave. Doing so is the biggest fucking waste of time and a waste of a perfectly good life too.

Carpe Diem Summer Challenge 2019: Beach Party for Every Body

Image by David Shaw from Pixabay

What I have been wondering for a long time is this.

Why is it that when you have a bunch of stupid guys on a beach and a person with the “wrong” kind of body walks by, and they yell terrible and mean-spirited things at this person who is minding their own business,

Why is everyone’s response to ignore and even justify their behavior rather than shouting them down?

Why shouldn’t everyone be allowed to relax and have fun at the beach or the pool?

Why is it only fun for those whose bodies have been deemed attractive enough?

Why shouldn’t fat people and skinny people and people with scars and stretch marks and ladies with saggy boobs and men with round pot bellies and hairy folks and scrawny scarecrow guys and gals with arms and legs like Betty Spaghetti have a nice time too?

I think it’s rather boring when the only people who can go for a swim without feeling self-conscious and like they must keep covered up are young people with the “right” kind of body.

Shouldn’t we have gotten past the idea that the only people whose bodies should be seen are sleek, unblemished, photoshopped visions of pornographic “perfection?”

Shouldn’t the beach be a place where everyone can cool off, not yet another spot where only the hottest hotties are allowed?

Beach parties are fun

For those with the right body

Not so much for those

Whose bodies have been deemed wrong

Ignoring not an option

~Cie~

OctPoWriMo 2018: Day 22: A Palindrome for my Pancreas

Copyright Darksouls1

An artistic depiction of my pancreas

Betrayal in honesty

No loyalty offered

Deception not really

Not dishonesty

Without grace

Though there was duplicity

There wasn't mercy

You weren't exactly lying

You have not forgiveness

Forgiveness not have you

Lying exactly weren't you

Mercy wasn't there

Duplicity was there though

Grace without

Dishonesty not

Really not deception

Offered no loyalty

Honesty in betrayal

~Cie~

Note:

Pardon my brutal honesty, but my endocrine system is a fucking trash fire. My thyroid decided to immolate itself when I was sixteen. My ovaries became cystic, shitty little bastards. My periods were from hell. I developed endometriosis. I don't know when I started developing fibroids, but I have a uterus full of the damn things, and it's coming out at the end of the year. 

At least with the thyroid, I just have to take pills, although sometimes the dose has to be adjusted down because they can jack up my blood pressure and pulse rate. My thyroid may still have some of its own function, but it's completely abnormal.

Then there's my pancreas.

My pancreas waited until I was 49 to decide to fuck me over.

At first, I took pills, but then they stopped working sufficiently. Besides, I don't like having to carry around a spare pair of pants, and the less said about that, the better.

Then I had to start injecting long-acting insulin (Levemir).

Now I inject the long-acting insulin at noon and midnight and the rapid-acting insulin before meals.

"It's soooo much fun having a zombie pancreas," declared the queen of sarcasm.

By the way, diabetes cannot be cured, so don't tell me about how if I just drink a gallon of vinegar at every full moon while pouring ice cubes down my pants and sprinkling pepper in my hair I will be cured of diabetes.

In rare cases, type 2 diabetes goes into remission. This is not the same thing as being cured. Like cancer, a person with diabetes in remission is always more vulnerable to a recurrence of the disease than a person who has never had diabetes.

Further, I would like to see the word "diabetes" stricken from the medical lexicon and replaced with "hypopancreatism," which is a much more accurate term.

Diabetes is an ancient Greek term which translates loosely to "evil pissing" because of the increased urination that is part and parcel of the hell that is this stupid disease. Besides, it's a loaded term. People love to say it with a sneer as if those who end up with it "brought it on themselves" by "eating too much sugar.'

The cause of hypopancreatism is having a genetic trigger for the disease. A person who does not have the genetic trigger will never get the disease no matter how much sugar they consume.

People living with food insecurity are more vulnerable to activating the genetic trigger for the disease than people who have a reliable supply of nutritious food. However, the disease can strike anyone with the genetic trigger, regardless of their physique or social standing. Age increases the likelihood of developing type 2 hypopancreatism.

So, I am not calling the disease by its ancient Greek name anymore, although I do think that "evil pissing" is a pretty cool term. I would like to see the stigma attached to the condition eradicated.

And now, I need to go inject my wonderful basal insulin.

People who don't have the condition think that having to poke oneself with needles is the worst part of the disease. It really isn't. Often I don't even feel the needle. If I hit a tender spot, I experience minor pain. No big whoop. 

What I hate the most is the way the disease curtails my independence.

And that is why I leave this with a big FUCK YOU to my zombie pancreas and my crap endocrine system as a whole. I sometimes wonder what my life could have been like if I hadn't been easily fatigued and depressed for most of it and accused of being lazy every step of the way.

OctPoWriMo 2018: Day 14: Not Your Fat Joke

If

I

were

me

sooner

than

I

believed I could be

Then I would have

Followed my dreams

And believed in myself

In spite of people telling me

That people who look like me

Are only allowed to be

The butt of jokes

Fuck that shit

I refuse to

Disappear

~Cie~

Note:

I wasn't quite sure how to do it, but I think I made the basic shape of a certain gesture 

NaHaiWriMo 2018 #8: Monkeying Around + The Fight Against Perfectionism

Notes:

Click the image to enlarge.

"So then I artistically blurred my photo to give a sense of moving back through time."

Nah. I moved my hand while the photo was being taken.

"But why would you want to use a photo like that? Any photographer worth their salt would delete it forthwith!"

I don't really consider myself a photographer. I'm a person who takes pictures because I enjoy it. 

This blurry photo isn't without its merits. It inspired me to create this Haiga of questionable quality.

Nobody is ever going to consider this to be a high-fallutin' work of art to rival the classics. But it is fun, and it illustrates the idea that you can make your mistakes work for you.

I have been battling perfectionism all my life. Embracing my mistakes is helpful for me. Perfectionism is an extremely destructive quality. I would like to share the ways in which it has harmed me from various perspectives.
In this post, I would like to share how physical perfectionism has caused untold harm to me and many others. Some of what I share involves my own perfectionism, and some of it involves the unrealistic standards which society imposes upon people.

On a physical level, we live in a society which demands that Number Twelve Looks Just Like You. We are supposed to aspire to a certain standard of beauty and fitness, and, if we fail to achieve such, we are deemed failures not worthy of even basic decency in the way we are treated by others.
However, rather than inspiring everyone to become super duper supermen and women, this attitude has a tendency to backfire. You end up with people who do not trust doctors because doctors continually shame them for their physical appearance or failure to be compliant with regimens that it may be impossible or intolerable for them.
So, instead of engaging in a program of regular visits to the doctor for preventative care and maintenance of chronic health issues, people avoid going to the doctor until they experience a critical problem. This helps no-one.
When my current doctor addressed my slightly elevated triglycerides (a common issue for diabetics) with "have you been indulging in treats?" I snapped. I said "I make twelve thousand dollars a year and generally eat only one or two meals a day. I eat what I can afford to purchase. I do not 'indulge.'"
In spite of the fact that this doctor is by far the most effective doctor that I have ever seen, I am considering going back to the guy who was burned out and had no fucks to give, because my current doctor has given me ample reason to mistrust her. The 'indulging in treats' bit is mere sprinkles on the body-shaming cake.
This doctor presented herself as offering a 'safe space' for larger people, and, during my first visit, appeared to live up to her promise. Thereafter, she suggested weight loss surgery and blamed my abnormal endometrial thickening on "obesity."
If you want your larger patients to believe for a second that you have any respect for them, you need to ditch the "o" word. "Obesity" is "other." "Obesity" is a pariah. "Obesity" is shit. "Obesity" is always said with a sanctimonious sneer. If you use that word, I do not trust you.
Abnormal endometrial thickening is correlated with a larger body type, but correlation is not causation. It is also correlated with being over fifty (guess I need to step into an age-regression machine), white (guess I'd better start tanning), and diabetic.
A larger body type is also correlated with type 2 diabetes. Again, correlation is not causation. I am inclined to think that abnormal pancreatic function is a strong contributing factor in both the tendency to gain weight and the endometrial hyperplasia. There may be a third factor which causes all of my endocrine issues. A heavy body type is correlated with endocrine issues, but it did not cause these issues. In fact, the reverse is true. None of my endocrine system works properly. It would be highly unlikely for me to have a thin body unless I were to become deathly ill, regardless of how little I eat or how much I exercise.
So, having a bench in your waiting room rather than just chairs with arms does not constitute offering a "safe space" for people of all sizes. I don't trust you, and that makes for an ineffective doctor/patient relationship, regardless of your ability to diagnose and possibly treat health problems.
People are not inclined to take care of things they hate, and that includes their bodies. While cleaning out my storage unit, I found numerous artifacts from the many years I spent trying to hate myself thin. Looking over the awful things I wrote about myself, thinking about all the money I spent playing a game that almost nobody wins, realizing that I caused wear and tear to my body equivalent to the harm done to it by the many years I spent working long hours at physically punishing jobs, thinking back on the times when I was sometimes spending five hours at the gym when I should have been spending that time with my son, I became extremely depressed.
To top it all off, none of this shit brought me to the goal of Magical Thinness, which would have won me the Handsome Prince with the Exactly Correct Body Fat Percentage, a billion dollars for every pound I lost during my incredibly successful "weight loss journey," fame and adoration of the masses, or anything but a far thinner wallet and a soul filled with self-loathing.
Thinspo is crap. Fitspo is crap. Dieting is crap. It's all harmful. None of it will bring you happiness, and it won't even bring you health. It will bring you self-loathing and turn you into an awful person that nobody likes.

Dieting is not about health. It is about perfectionism. The pressure to be perfect is purely for profit. Stop paying into a system that doesn't give a damn about you and thrives on your failure.

"In the long term, dieting is a spectacular waste of time for everyone except statistical unicorns." --Louise Adams

~Cie~

The Cheese Grates It + OctPoWriMo 2017: Day 25: Don't Buy the Bullshit

This image was found in multiple places and I am unable to determine its origin.

If anyone knows the origin of the image, I will be glad to properly credit its creator.

Don't Buy the Bullshit

Nobody

Has the right

To make you feel

Bad about your body

Never apologize

To anybody

For your body

Those busybodies

Who think it's okay

To belittle others' bodies

Need to take a long walk

Off a short pier

Into shark-infested waters

With raw steaks

Tied to their bodies

The Cheese

No Longer Apologizing for My Body

Note:

I am not officially participating in today's OctPoWriMo prompt, although I did create a poem in spite of the fact that I initially wasn't going to because die-t talk is such a turn-off for me. However, I have to keep in mind that many people haven't been lucky enough to find Size Acceptance and Health At Every Size as I did. This is why I share here my response to this prompt.

If I hadn't found size acceptance and health at every size at age 45 (seven years ago now) I would be 52 and still hating myself and calling myself horrific names like "fat pig" and "disgusting land whale." Thanks to my myriad of endocrine problems plus DNA (my mother's side of the family tends to be heavy, and to have endocrine problems) I will never be thin unless I develop a deadly disease such as acute myelogenous leukemia as my great-grandmother did. She went from 300 pounds to 95 in the space of a year, and then the disease killed her.

It isn't being a "foodie" that determines a person's body type. The multi-billion dollar die-t industry has doctors and the FDA in its pocket. Most so-called diseases of obesity are actually diseases which become more likely with aging in people of all sizes. 

I worked with the elderly for close to 25 years. There are elderly people of all sizes. The idea that there are no fat old people is a fallacy. Fat old people are no less healthy than old people of other sizes. In fact, many of the fat older folk that I worked with were reasonably healthy. There was one portly gent in his nineties who was a diabetic and still taking care of himself. I worked night shift and only heard from him on one occasion: when he hurt his hand.

Nobody needs to apologize to anyone for their body type. It's really not something we can help and trying to change it tends to result in temporary weight loss with more weight ensuing. Dieting is horrible for the metabolism. 

I am not the best person to explain the science behind this. I recommend these blogs:

danceswithfat.wordpress.com

bigfatscience.tumblr.com

Ragen Chastain, the blogger behind Dances With Fat, is a competitive dancer who participates in marathons. She is five foot four inches tall and weighs 280 pounds. 

For my own part, I sometimes can't afford more than one meal a day and I work a very physical job. Still fat. However, unlike in the past, I don't give myself added stress by hating myself for my weight.

I hope you'll consider my thoughts. Too many people hurt themselves hating the bodies we were given to live in. There's nothing wrong with your body or your love for good food.

Here are some bodies that people have been shamed for having.

Too short and skinny to be "manly"

In good health for someone in his age range

Too short and skinny to be "manly"

Terminally ill/multiple health issues

Too fat to be "attractive."

In good health for someone in his age range

Too short and skinny to be "manly"

Died from stomach cancer at age 67

Too fat to be "attractive"

Shot to death at age 24

Too short and skinny to be "manly"

In good health for someone in his age range

Too fat to be "attractive"

In good health and putting up with no bullshit from haters

Dare you speak ill of the Queen of Soul?

I wish there had been a Beth Ditto around when I was younger

Maybe I wouldn't have abused my body with years of dieting and myself with years of hate for "failing" at dieting

When I opened this photo of Adele, one of the first suggested searches that came up was "flattering hairstyles for overweight women."

May I just say, fuck that shit.

Fuck "flattering," and over what weight?

The B in BMI stands for Bullshit.

The BMI is an actuarial tool. It was never meant to be used as a measure of health.

We need to stop conflating our worth with a number on a scale.

~The Cheese Hath Grated It~