The West Hollywood/Hollywood branch of the National Organization of Women has announced their annual “Love Your Body” Day for Oct. 21, 2007. A day when everyone should Celebrate their curves.

Hosted by Plus sized model Mia Tyler (Daughter of Steven Tyler–looking at those luscious lips you’d know that), the day features fashion shows, massages, and all types of body positive entertainment.

From their Website:
The NOW Foundation’s Women’s Health Project launched the Love Your Body campaign in Sept. 1998 as a national day of action to speak out against advertisements and images of women that are harmful, offensive, disrespectful and demeaning. Each year, on Love Your Body Day, activists around the country say “no” to twisted beauty standards and hazardous advertisements by holding rallies, pickets, house parties, classroom discussions and more.

so Lets set aside a day and realize that we are more than just a body type. We are strong and proud and realize it’s NOW time to “Take back the Fat”!

Hollywood NOW
presents
LOVE YOUR BODY DAY!
Sunday, October 21, 2007
12:00 - 4:00 p.m.
Vendor Booths
ENTERTAINMENT
Including: Singers, Actors, Dancers, Spoken Word, and Comedy
“REAL WOMEN” FASHION SHOW
ADMISSION: FREE

Plummer Park - Fiesta Hall
1200 N. Vista Street
West Hollywood, CA

One of the ways that I have learned over the years to deal with my extra poundage is to “own” it. I am the 1st to talk about my Phat arse or my floppy arm wings. Some of my thinner friends don’t understand and at times have chastised me for “putting myself down” but what they don’t realize is that if I “own” up to it, then the less hurtful it becomes when people find it necessary to point out the obvious.

I recently ordered a teeshirt from T-shirt Hell that says: “If a Fat girl falls in the woods, do the trees laugh?” I find it widely amusing because I cannot count the # of times I’ve “bitten the pavement.” You’d think being bottom heavy (i’m a real pear) I’d have gravity on my side but alas that is not the case.

I think that one of the problems with being obese or morbidly obese is that everyone, especially us, feel it is a temporary condition. Therefore it is OK to make fat jokes. It is ok to walk up to strangers and say “Are you going to eat all of that?” or have their children shout out “Mommy look its a Giant” or something meaner.

Since the overweight, too, think of fatness as a transient condition, we tell ourselves that this treatment will stop when we lose weight. When we hear our co-workers or friends speak derisively about other heavy people, we say nothing. Or we laugh with them. Which is what has that defense mechanism that I kick in–Give it to them before they give it to me.

But what if we got “Mad as hell and not going to take it anymore?” type of thought process. How many times have we been at social events and our friends or co-attendees find it A-OK to talk about us as if we are invisible. How many times have we been in a room and sized it up to make sure there was someone fatter than us? Just the other day while at my son’s school orientation, I found myself doing just that. A new student and her mother came into the classroom, late. All eyes were on them and there were snickers in the back of the class. My 1st thought was not “STFU” to the snickerers, but “Thank the goddess I’m not the fattest one here.”

What about if we didn’t take that type of behavior anymore? What if we corrected the speaker of how the obese should lose weight with fact based acceptance speeches? Did obesity prevent me from getting an education? From running a business? From doing what I want? No, granted it might have been faster if I was thinner but certainly didn’t prevent it.

It’s time to own up. Not sit back and take it anymore. Just as racial jokes or gay jokes or handicapped jokes aren’t acceptable in mainstream media, nor should fat jokes. Even if they are from me, or Monique or Lavelle Crawford.

I was SHOCKED yesterday to see a show on MSNBC addressing this issue. At first I thought it was diabetics that drank their OJ .. then 5 minutes later threw it up after it worked. But this is far worse.

They interviewed several women and the mother of one woman who’d died.

People with Type I diabetes, those forced to take insulin are skipping their shots to LOSE WEIGHT.

One of the girls they were interviewing said that she was MORE afraid of being fat than she was of DYING. What is wrong with this picture????

Have we become so obsessed with what the MEDIA shows us a “normal” that we are willing to risk our very life to live up to that expectation?

Here is the complete article as published by MSNBC. What is amusing is they have a “kicker” headline that says: “Experts advise docs to be blunt, call kids ‘obese’ ” I find the irony here very amusing.

On one side we have women so obsessed with their weight they are willing to DIE or worse — a coma, loss of limbs, eyesight etc to stay thin. We aren’t talking like a size 10 or 12 which as we all know IS a decent weight. They want to be a size 5, 3 or 0. In a ‘related’ article “experts” from the American Academy of Pediatrics saying doctors should be BLUNT in saying that kids are FAT/OBESE.

How about this for an idea?? Lets try being BODY positive whether someone is a natural size 0 or a natural size 22. If you FEEL good about yourself you are going to BE healthy.

In an exclusive interview with Glamour Magazine, Star Jones finally admitted to what we already knew. She had gastric by-pass surgery. She “claims” that she gained 75lb after being depressed in 2002 after her 40th birthday. She had the surgery in 2005.

“I used to look in the mirror and take pride in my figure, but that was when I was legitimately a full-figured woman,” she says. “I’d gradually gone from full-figured to morbidly obese.”

Sadly, in this blogger’s opinion, Star gave in to the distorted image of what is viewed as “beautiful” but if you have seen pictures of her today, she looks terrible.

Poor Al, her husband, who fell in love with a full-figured woman and what he has now is a Stick.

I know women who have waited years to get WLS. It seems that Star got it as quickly as one gets a new tattoo. But we all know that WLS is just a tool. If she hasn’t changed her habits, she’ll be back shopping with the rest of us from Lane Bryant.

In a recent article by Daniel Costello of the LA Times, Employers are going to start forcing employees to either slim down or pay fines for being overweight.

In one of the boldest moves yet, an Indiana-based hospital chain last month said it decided on the stick rather than the carrot. Starting in 2009, Clarian Health Partners said it will charge employees up to $30 every two weeks unless they meet weight, cholesterol and blood pressure guidelines the company deems healthy.

Here is the full article.

Just another volley on the war against fat people. We need to find ways to have positive outlooks. This is NOT Nazi Germany although it does feel like it. People with disabilities were also rounded up and sent to the camps. Some people are obese because of lack of exercise and over eating but there are medical reasons for obesity.

I am a HEALTHY fat girl. My BP is 115/75 consistently. I eat healthy, I exercise and I drink plenty of water but I have accepted that no matter how much i deprive myself I will never be what society calls “slender”. How boring would it be if we all looked alike?

One good thing that I thought of with this article was, if the statistics are correct and 66% of the US is obese. Then 66% of employers must be obese as well. and 66% of insurance companies.

Isn’t it time we STOPPED buying into this??

A recent report from that always Fat-Phobic JAMA states that the obese breed obesity around them. The study was published in Thursday’s New England Journal of Medicine and funded by the National Institute on Aging.

Researchers think it’s more than just people with similar eating and exercise habits hanging out together. Instead, it may be that having relatives and friends who become obese changes one’s idea of what is an acceptable weight.

Read the full Article over Here.

Editorial Commentary from OMG: It’s not enough that there is such a stigma in school and work zones, but now they are trying to prevent our friends/family from being near us due to the “fact” that they might “catch” our disease? Full Story »