Heavy Hotties
I hate this phrase. HATE IT. I don't hear it very much any more, but I heard it yesterday on my way home, on the radio. Lord love the Stereotypical Dudely Afternoon Radio DJ, shit like this is guaranteed to pop out of his mouth at any given time.

I hate this phrase because it implies a couple of things:

1. That someone heavier than The New American Standard is necessarily unattractive, so we need a special phrase to qualify that said attractive person is also (!) larger than expected.

2. That it's only okay to be heavy if you are also doing everything in your power to conform to the heteronormative, lipstick-drenched, feminine ideal. And even then it's really not okay.

From whence did I get started on this path of fury? It's more than just pent up frustration from days gone by of listening to Howard Stern with my exes, pretending not to be offended by it. No, it came from a realization about my own behavior that shocked me.

I haven't exercised in over two months.

Anyone who knows me gets what this means. I lived for the gym. I always had some advice to spew about health, activity, and dress size, whether you wanted to hear it or not. I scheduled my workouts in a daily planner, and lawd help you if you crossed my path on a day when I missed one. No way you'd get out of that conversation without me mentioning at least once how guilty I felt.

I thought at first that I was just transitioning - new house, lots of classes, no time, no money, etc. But none of that ever stopped me before. I'd be doing sit-ups in my apartment and jogging in the morning, or something that didn't require a membership to anything if it was really what I wanted to be doing. Clearly, it wasn't.

So this week I've been reading a lot of Fat Acceptance blogs, of which Shapely Prose and The F Word are my so-far-favorites. This follows a lot of reading of my favorite feminist blogs, so in case you haven't heard this ubiquitous phrase yet, yes, fat is a feminist issue.

I feel a little stupid about this because, most of the people I have ever known are (or were until recently) heavier than me. But as you may have guessed, that's not the point. The point is that even at my size (34"-29"-39"), I feel fat. This should hopefully drive home the insanity.

All of us, regardless of our size, are entitled to feel good about ourselves. To that end it behooves us to treat ourselves and each other with respect. This means not judging any of our other possible characteristics based on our size. THIS is what I am aiming for.

But back to the not exercising thing. It's not that I am secretly against exercise. What I've discovered, yet again, is that I truly enjoy moving around. More accurately, I really hate sitting still. But all my moving around was segregated in these hypervigilant Calorie Burning Sessions, and had nothing to do with joy or, well, motion.

The thought of just picking up again where I'd left off, without stopping to analyze my motives, was soul-crushing. I knew I'd be right back where I started - on a pseudo-diet and exercising out of guilt. So I stopped dead in my tracks and haven't moved forward since.

Well, I guess you could call this a move forward. I am definitely going to join up with Aikido again after the move is complete. That's a process that really isn't at all competitive or about weight. And it gets me out interacting with people, who on the whole were really lovely and healthy! So there's something to be said for that.

Beyond that I'm reading now about intuitive eating. They should just call it "Eating for Dummies". Seriously, it's a ludicrously simple concept, but since I'm taking my last few steps out of the Eating Disorder and Body Image Abyss, there's nothing intuitive about it.

I have reservations that this whole "self-acceptance" thing will not be easy. That said, I'm up nearly a pant size, and I have never been happier.