Yes, that’s right. There is a game for Playstation 3 called “Fat Princess.” Its an MMORPG, but the story part revolves around rescuing a Princess from an enemy castle. Okay, fine. Problem is that the enemy has been feeding her magical cake, which causes her to gain TONS of weight, and makes her more difficult to rescue (because, of course, she can’t just walk out alongside you – you have to pick her up and carry her).

Official Site

Wiki

I know I shouldn’t be surprised, considering that Playstation is of Japan, the country that brought us the ‘Metabo’ craze. But still, wtf?

On the one hand, its nice to see a princess who isn’t stick-thin represented in any media. On the other, however, this is a princess character who was thin to begin with, then gained a lot of weight by overeating (thanks to the BAD guys), and is relatively useless other than getting kidnapped. I haven’t played the game, but it certainly doesn’t look like she’s a player character option. She might as well be an object for all she can do. A very heavy one, apparently.

Why can’t we have SOMETHING that shows a fat princess being active and awesome? I’d be all for this game if I could use her as a player character and give her class skills and such, like the others seem to have. But noooo fat people are just round heavy things that need to be carried by other, thinner people, and can’t do anything for themselves, right?

*headdesk*

EDIT – in trying to find out more about the game, I found a great post by the Feminist Gamers about it, and another by Shakes of Shakesville (two blogs I need to start following immediately). Check them out, they echo my frustrations about in fewer words than I could.

As originally shared by the amazing Joy Nash, on her site.

America’s Fat Hatred

Fat and Healthy: Why its Possible

Yes, some of the terminology they use is less than sensitive or positive, but in general these articles are a HUGE step in the right direction.

So, yay for Newsweek right now!

As described by Yahoo

I absolutely LOVE that people are actually freaking out about this. Yay for steps in the right direction.

I recently bumped into a former boss of mine, who I’ve always been on good terms with. As such, we chatted for a bit and she shared with me some family troubles she’s going through (don’t worry, I will not be sharing anything too personal since its not my story and I don’t want to violate her privacy. But it brings up some issues I want to talk about).

Her husband’s sister has cancer, and has been in the hospital recently because its getting worse (to the point that my former boss thinks this might be the end – my heart goes out to their family…not that any of them read this, but still). Among other things, her sister-in-law is not eating.  She is also a fat woman. And the doctors see nothing wrong with her lack of appetite.

Now, I don’t want to jump to any conclusions (people seem to think I’m militant enough as it is), but my former boss ALSO seemed concerned about the doctors’ attitude. This is a woman who drinks Slim Fast and complains that she shouldn’t be eating blah-blah-thing because she’s gotten a pant size bigger or whatever. So for her to mention to me that she thinks the doctors are assuming her sister-in-law doesn’t need to eat because she’s so fat, and thus helping her starve herself (that’s a direct quote) should raise some eyebrows.

I’m not a doctor, so there could be a totally sound reason for their attitude. But they haven’t put her on any IV-thing to give her nutrients to make up for the fact that she’s not getting them through food. And my former boss has repeatedly voiced her concerns to them, and they have not explained themselves or done anything about it.

This, of course, has gotten me thinking – would the doctors be acting differently toward a thin patient with the same problem?

Obviously, there are health risks associated with being on either end of the size-spectrum (underweight or “dangerously obese”). As a fat woman, I understand this, but I don’t think that being fat automatically defines my health as “bad.” Health should be about how active you are and how well you eat (not how little you eat) instead of what size or shape your body is. That’s the whole problem with this “obesity epidemic” we supposedly have going on – people use it as an excuse to make immediate judgements about a person based on how they look, instead of considering their actual habits.

For example, my girlfriend’s job is very physically demanding, and she has a boss who is stick-thin. This boss smokes heavily and eats McDonals’s almost every day of the week, while my gorgeously curvaceous girlfriend lives and eats as healthy as she can (she doesn’t even eat fast food anymore, except for Subway, and in that case she just gets tuna subs with lots of veggies). On the job, my girlfriend handles all the physical activity with much more ease than her boss does. But because she’s fat and her boss is thin, people automatically assume that her boss is the healthier person.

For my part, in my bellydance class, the difficulties I have come from my inexperience – not from my weight. I don’t seem to have any more difficulty than the thinner girls at my skill level, and I don’t leave class winded or have to stop dancing because I’m too tired or out of breath or anything. But again, people look at the size of my body and assume I am phenomenally unhealthy and non-active.

As for doctors and such, I can’t say how things are now since I haven’t been to see a doctor in a long time (not having health insurance will do that to you). Maybe nowadays doctors really do look at all of their patients the same, regardless of weight or anything. But based on my past experience, I’m inclined to sympathize with my former boss’ complaints. I’ve never been in a hospital for more than a day, but throughout my childhood, whenever I went in for anything – even just a regular check-up – my doctor would always suggest that I lose weight. Most of the time, there was NO reason to suggest that, because I was perfectly healthy “except for that.” I was put on many diets (as a result of that recommendation and the fat-phobia in my family) and none of them made any difference. I tried excercising like I was expected to (by going to a gym and running on a treadmill or using some other excerise machine, not by doing an activity that I actually liked to do). But fat people aren’t exactly encouraged to exercise in this society, are they? – “Ha ha, look at that whale running around the track! What a blob!” In the end, I only lost weight when I became clinically depressed (due to many, many factors) because I STOPPED EATING all together.

So, for me, the only way to “get healthier” by losing weight was to do something really unhealthy. Kinda defeats the so-called purpose.

All of that, including my former boss’s sister-in-law’s treatment, makes me think that doctors ARE looking at their fat patients differently than their thin ones. As if the cause of all of a person’s health problems is their body size. Have cancer? Lose 100 pounds and you’ll be fine! Broke your ankle? Surely dropping 5 dress sizes will heal your bones and turn them in adamantium so this’ll never happen again! You’ll be like Wolverine, only sexier!

Doctors need to stop judging patients, and prescribing things, based on the size of the patient. They should encourage the same thing in everyone – healthy bodily activity and healthy eating habits. If a person does these things and is still fat, then what’s the big deal?

And we non-doctors need to stop judging too. If less people made fun of the fat guy or girl running around the track, maybe everyone would be more comfortable living actively and doing exercisey things that they enjoy. Not having to worry about what everyone’s thinking of you does wonders, no matter who you are or what you’re doing.

So yeah. Just a thought.

To those select few people who have left me nasty comments in the past couple of weeks -

Just because I am fat doesn’t mean I should keep silent about how it effects me, or how proud I am of my body despite society’s limitations. If you don’t like what I talk about here, then why do you visit this blog? And if you’ve just stumbled across it, you must be SO full of hate in order to take the time to insult a girl you’ve never met just because you seem to disagree with her. Also, when I complain about the anorexic-like styles of certain cartoons, it is always with the understanding that yes, there are stylistic choices made that might not have anything to do with an anti-fat agenda. But even if kids don’t conciously see these stick-thin cartoon characters and think “Ooh, I have to look like that when I get older,” seeing that over and over is going to do something powerful – and damaging – in their subconscious mind.

So please, think before you speak or leave this site.

Thank you.

P.S. Sorry to everyone who leaves me positive, well-informed, kind comments – you guys rock and make my day. I’ve just gotten some negativity lately, and needed to rant about it.

I usually try to keep this blog focused on discussion of size-acceptance-related topics, inspired by what happens to me but applicable to everyone.

However, today I want to share something totally personal, and I promise it relates.

I think I’ve mentioned on here before that I am an aspiring bellydancer. I grew up in a very Catholic family, and because of views encouraged by that religion about one’s body and sexuality (in general, I mean, I’m sure there are some very body-happy Catholics out there), my whole family seems to think that bellydance is a) just a slutty dance and b) just for thin girls. Despite this, bellydance still managed to fascinate me, and for years I watched clips, looked at pictures, and eventually drew my own pictures of bellydancers.

Then, one day, my girlfriend and I attended a bellydance performance put on by a local troupe at our school. The leader of said troupe was even bigger than me, and that got me thinking – WHY did I believe that bellydance was only for thin girls? Thanks to that, and much encouragement from my girlfriend, I looked into what bellydance really is – yes, its sexy, but that’s just an added bonus. It was originally intended to help women in childbirth, very much for-women-by-women. I realized then that I didn’t need to limit myself to just admiring it; if I wanted, I could do it too.

My girlfriend bought me an instructional video, a gorgeous hip scarf with coins, and finger cymbals (see here) soon afterward, and I started buying bellydance-related jewelry. I tried the video, but it wasn’t helping as much as I wanted it to. I thought briefly of contacting the troupe I had seen to see if they gave lessons, but I didn’t think I could afford it, and I wasn’t confident enough to seek help outside of my living room yet.

Now, a couple of years later, it has finally happened. Two weekends ago I ran into a couple of women from a different troupe that is still pretty local, and they told me that through the month of July, their group gives free lessons once a week. It was the PERFECT opportunity, dropped right into my lap. I was still really nervous about going, but I decided to suck it up and give it a try.

My first class was last night, and it went AWESOMELY.

I’ll be posting more on it as I continue learning, and I’ll probably make a page here about bellydance and how it relates to and is good for fat girls and fat pride. After all, the best way to convince the world that being fat doesn’t mean we’re inactive is to prove them wrong.

So, look out for more on this, and wish me luck!

One of my watchers on DeviantArt recently clued me in to the existence of a very, very awesome superheroine called Seductress. Yes, her power is what her name implies. And yes, she is BBW.

You can read about her here, and more about the series here.

And here’s pictures (sorry I can’t upload the files, I’m not on my own computer):

 Total Awesomeness *heart*

More Awesomeness

She’s not exactly as big as I’d like, but she might be drawn bigger in the actual panels (cover art tends to thin fat girls out – just look at how Gert was drawn on some “Runaways” covers). Hopefully I’ll be finding out soon.

Remember a couple of months ago when I wrote about the BBW superhero Frog from Marvel Comics’ “Exiles,” and how I planned to redesign her?

Well, I finally did it – Take a look-see!

Now if only I could pitch the idea to them and convince them to do a series about her a) without getting sued for doing this and b) as if they would let me!

Still, this was tons of fun (pun intended) and I’ll definitely be drawing her again soon.

Though I don’t have enough drawings done for one now, I’m planning to put out a book of BBW-centric Pin-Ups sometime in the future.

I think pin-up art is great, and as big girls need more love, I’m going to make quite a lot. Hopefully by this time next year I’ll be well on my way to making the book a reality. I have no idea who would publish it, but I believe it would sell, and I’m choosing to be optimistic about it now. I’ll post more when I know more, or have more plans in general.

And if you’d like to see a very small handful of what will be in it, take a look here. Yes, the image from my header will be included

So I’m back at my mother’s house, visiting for my brother’s graduation (which was yesterday, actually, and great).

But of course, annoyance happens, in the form of how I’m treated because of my weight. Of course, its little things, and at least this time it doesn’t seem to be coming directly from my mom or other family members.

We’ve gone out to eat a couple of times (which my family often does), and both times someone in our party ordered a salad. When the food came, BOTH times the waiter assumed that I was getting the salad!!! Ugh! This may have not been motivated by fat-negative assumptions, but because it happened TWICE, I’m inclined to think otherwise. When we’re at the house, the TV channels my mom usually keeps on are littered with anti-fat programs and commercials – but to my mom’s credit, she noticed me getting uncomfortable with one and changed the channel (thanks mom, I love you!!!). I can also feel myself getting more self conscious about my weight, especially how my face looks, and I caught myself choosing to eat less than normal so no one would think bad of me. And I’ve been having extremely fat-negative dreams, including one in which I was watching a newscast that declared it was unsafe for fat teenagers to masturbate.

*headdesk*

Sorry, I’m still here, so I needed to vent.

EDIT – There were some typos in the first post, so I went and fixed them, and added some more information.

I’m leaving today, and have decided to put a positive, humourous spin on all of this by making a little comic out of it. I’ll post that here when its done.