I can’t hear the audio since I’m at work, so let me know if there is anything less than cool there. But the visual? I LOVE THIS COMMERCIAL.

What do you think?

I started a new contracting job yesterday. Basically, as a contractor, I go where ever I am needed within a certain company - I travel through different departments for assignments of varying lengths.

This has the practical effect of making me the New Kid at School once every month or so.

Which is okay because I don’t mind meeting new people and I love switching up tasks like that. But, every time it is time to start at a new place, I am reminded that I am fat and I have no idea how my new coworkers are going to respond to that.

And, you know, I don’t think that is all that uncommon, going into a new situation afraid of being judged negatively on sight just because you are fat. It can, in fact, grow to be a crippling fear, something that prevents us from seeking out new experiences - indeed, it can keep us from boldly going where no one has gone before.

We are better than that, though. It’s hard, but we deserve to conquer that fear. I remind myself that I cannot control other people’s responses and their responses have more to do with them than me. This means I can present myself well (blue hair and all) but if they decide I suck based on the size of my butt rather than my pleasant demeanor (honest, I am so pleasant! *laugh*)? That has everything to do with their hangups and nothing to do with my capabilities.

There are, of course, studies that show fat people are less likely to be hired and, once hired, they are less likely to be praised and/or promoted. The professional world can be seriously harsh and unfriendly to the fatties, so it isn’t like our fears are based on insubstantial rumor. This shit happens. But we’ve got to make a living, right? And we have just as much time and energy invested in our careers as any other professional - whether we are professional brain surgeons, writers, or sales clerks.

So, even if you are quaking with fear, fake it. Smile and make appropriate first day small talk and show them what you’ve got. We don’t have to let fear stop us from being the people we want to be. Go for it.

So, I wound up spending 5 hours at the salon on Wednesday. It was a lot of fun, and I continue to highly recommend Fusion on Corrine in Orlando as a salon and Jennifer in particular as a stylist.

I kept trying to do my makeup and actually style my hair before I took photos and stuff kept getting in the way - I knew I’d have to take these outside in daylight because the blue is really dark and not super visible inside given our crappy, yellowish lighting. My hair is always a lot darker than I realize because I spend so many years turning it various shades of lighter than dark brown. And since I got a trim (in 10 weeks my hair grew well over an inch) all of the sun-lightened bits got chopped off, too.

There are a couple of streaks of color on each side as well.

Jennifer used a new product that Redken put out about two months ago. It is similar to the stuff they have had for reds that lightens and deposits color at the same time. That doesn’t mean you don’t have to pre-bleach but it does mean the color is a lot more even than it might otherwise be and it is supposed to last a lot longer. We’ll see how it goes.

It was the first time anyone in the salon had used the blue - it was funny. I was sitting at the sink having the dye rinsed out and one of the other hairdressers walks by, stops, walks backwards for a second look and exclaims, “You have blue hair!” Everyone loved it.

I am totally thrilled with it, which is why I had to share it here.

The discussion re: Candye Kane on Dr. Sheila’s guest post has started back up with an interesting remark that might be from Candye Kane herself.

Check it out here!

ETA: The message was written by Candye Kane and published on her MySpace blog. One of her friends/fans left it as a comment here.

In any event, I have sent a message to Candye Kane via MySpace, where she originally published her comment. Hopefully, she’ll make it back over here and we can all discuss this some more.

ETA the Second! I am going to bed - any new comments on Dr. Sheila’s guest post will not be approved/rejected until I wake up in the morning. Sheila has posted a response; I suggest y’all read it before responding.

And, for the record, I am totally down with discussing the situation but not with flaming. If you haven’t bothered to read the post and/or the comment thread and are just here to flame Sheila, your comment will not be approved.

Good night!

Just in case y’all can’t get enough of my pithy prose *snerk*, you can check out my brand spankin’ new craft blog:

Reclaimed Whimsy

It isn’t that I am bored of writing here by any means. I’m not going to be updating there every single day. I just had the domain and have always meant to use it as promotion for my etsy shop. There are a bunch of entries there that, if you read my livejournal, you have probably already seen, but there’s a new one about fixing up a scratching post, at least.

Yay for artsy stuff!

Also, hooray! Joy has a new video and I really love this more than I can say. Yes, fat people absolutely need to start sticking up for themselves. Like WHOA.

Practice your comebacks, people. They don’t have to be mean. But they damn well better defend your right to basic human dignity and, if that is your thing, basic human foxiness.

So, yesterday I took myself out to lunch. Thai food, which is my favorite food. I had skipped breakfast (a combination of getting up late and then lolling around in the bath, soaking in some fabulous bubbles - oh, my glamorous life!) and so decided a hearty curry lunch was just the thing.

I ordered a bowl of soup - tom kha gai is a marvel, y’all. If you like chicken and mushrooms and coconut milk, I recommend it! And a lunch entree. And I was nomming on both when I started to overhear the women lunching next to me.

“So, I found this PERFECT card and it had a picture of a cupcake and it said that the cupcake was only 2 points as long as you didn’t eat the candle! How awesome! I mean, *I* think in points, too!”

What followed was a discussion of Weight Watchers and how awesome it is. And how they don’t plan to stop eating, because eating is fun!, never mind that dieting requires you to do exactly that and, press kits aside, Weight Watchers is a diet.

And then their voices lowered and they talked about the unfortunate Really Fat People they had seen on tv. Those people must just be surrounded by the most awful people because you know weight gain and loss is mostly mental. And it must just be horrible to be that fat and have your life defined by it.

They whispered a lot of that conversation. But whether it was a general shame over discussing “appalling” weights and what they thought was probably a fate worse than death or because they actually registered me as a fat woman sitting two feet away from them I don’t know. Either way, I don’t need their pity. None of us do.

Being fat is not a fate worse than death. Being fat is not primarily a mental thing that means you aren’t surrounded by enough positive people (I mean, WTF?). Being fat is a state of physical being but the vast majority of the pain - indeed pretty much ALL of the pain - that I have experienced because I am fat has been caused not by my big fat ass but by other fucking people.

I don’t need your pity, none of us do. We aren’t sad sacks who never go anywhere and do anything. If we don’t go anywhere and/or do anything it is more than likely because we’ve been shamed into that sort of lifestyle by fat-haters. Or we’re natural introverts or we can’t afford your active lifestyle, thanks much. The actual fat on our bodies weighs nothing in comparison to the scorn and derision heaped upon us by society.

You, with your Weight Watchers points-themed birthday cards (I can think of very little that would make for a more depressing card), are still going to die. Your dietary restriction does not make you a virtuous person. It conveys no special grace upon you.

Likewise, my refusal to diet conveys no special grace upon me. I do not sit, backlit by a glow originating in the heavens, on fire with virtue. No, I am just sitting there, eating soup. Actually, the soup might convey a glow but it is entirely a glow of “OMG these mushrooms are FUCKING AMAZING” instead of anything to do with virtue. Because food doesn’t have any inherent morality (standard disclaimer about people who make food choices based on personal ethics). Your food does not make you good or bad.

Don’t pity fat people for being fat. Get angry on behalf of fat people because our thin/youth/pursuit-of-eternal-life society continues to treat us as though we shouldn’t even exist.

ETA: To those who are coming her from Candye Kane’s blog:

In any event, I have sent a message to Candye Kane via MySpace, published her comment when the one here got trapped in the spam filter. Hopefully, she’ll make it back over here and we can all discuss this some more.

This guest post from Dr. Sheila Addison addresses what I think is a really important issue: People need to stop lying about their weight. For real and serious, people. Get over the number and stop letting it compromise your integrity.

I am mad at Candye Kane.

I have been asked to perform in a benefit for her, because she has been diagnosed with pancreatic cancer and gone through a Whipple procedure recently. Great cause, for sure.

I haven’t been familiar with her music, but in listening to her back catalogue to try to pick out a song, I notice she has a lot of pieces (”Big Fat Mamas are Back in Style,” “You Need a Great Big Woman”) that reference her big size. (”Everybody Needs Love” is a great
size-acceptance anthem.) Some of them are borderline BBW/chubby-chaser-esque which makes me cringe, but I bet she sells them like hell in her live shows.

But I’m mad at her. Because one of her anthems is “200 Pounds of Fun.” And I’ll be damned if she’s 200 pounds.

What bugs me about this is that I’ve seen the same kind of numbers game go on in big-girl porn - I’ve seen shoots with women who were labeled 150 or 170 pounds who were more like 250, maybe even 300 if they were an ounce. It hacks me off that even in allegedly size-positive territory (setting aside my feelings about the BBW fetishization thing, it is at
least an arena where women of size are supposed to be appreciated), there is this relentless effort to slim women’s weights down. And the kickback is that a) people have no idea what weights look like, and b) the belief that women who weigh 160 or 170 pounds are “pigs”
(warning: super-triggering article about “hogging”). The result is that the popular perception of anything above what, 130? 140 pounds? Is Fatty Fatty Two By Four.

I weigh 200 pounds at 5′1. Candye Kane does not weigh 200 pounds and come just a head shorter than 6′6 Penn Jillette. But because of ongoing public deception about big women’s weights, I’ve not only Shocked and Amazed My Friends, I’ve been accused of being deceiving when I’ve posted personal ads. If I call myself “curvy,” people seem to expect a size 10 with boobs. If I say I’m 200 pounds, they expect me to be a 48H bra with 60-inch hips. If I say I’m a size 16/18, well no one knows what that looks like because even our clothing manufacturers can’t decide. And forget about using the dread word “fat” in a personal because it only brings out the fetishists, and they don’t want me any more than I want them.

I’m tired of the lying about our weight. I’m tired of the assumption that 200 pounds is the OMG Serious Death Fat (I am still smarting from my doctor’s “well you CAN’T get to 200 pounds!!!!” comment a couple of years ago when I weighed in at 195, one of the last times I allowed my weight to be taken at a doctor’s office). We don’t know what weight looks like, we really really
don’t. And as we in the Size Acceptance and Health at Every Size world know, there is no number, be it 200 or 300 or any other number of pounds, that makes a person worthy or not, sexy or not, healthy or not, valuable or not. If you are going to debunk the idea of Size = Gross, why stop with 200 pounds?

Candye: you are an awesome women who has, apparently, made a career out of demanding respect and love for fat bodies. Why does your song say that you are 200 pounds when you’re not? I could sing that song for the benefit but no one would believe me, because I look like a wannabe next to you.

As it turns out my teaching schedule won’t allow me to take part in the benefit, but Bay Area folks may still want to check it out as there will be plenty of fat and fat-positive performers there. And Candye is a terrific singer who deserves all the help she can get.