At last, I bought my copy of Lessons from the Fat-O-sphere yesterday, after being disappointed that they didn’t have it yet on the floor on Tuesday night. The interesting thing is that Chapters put the book in the Self-Help: Dieting section. I can’t figure out whether that’s annoying (and could be triggering for some) or simply subversive (someone looking for a dieting book might pick it up… or would they?).
It is a fat acceptance 101 book, so obviously, its target reader isn’t me, who’ve been involved in the FA movement for 10 years. This being said, it still is a great read, and always good to refer to on blah days that we all have. Besides, for me, it goes beyond the book is useful or not to me. Buying it sends a message out that we are a worthwhile readership, that we want book about fat acceptance. In any case, kudos to Kate and Marianne. Your book definitely has its place on my shelf of reference FA books (incidentally, one OOP book missing from the bibliography is Hanne Blank’s Big Big Love!).
The book came out a week ago, as most people in the fatosphere knows (especially readers of Kate Harding and The Rotund). Well, I’ve been wanting to buy it from Chapters/Indigo, since there’s both a Chapters and an Indigo bookstore close to work. Only problem: the only store in the chain to have received the book so far in the Montreal area is the Pointe-Claire store, which is located deep in the suburbs. Of course, I could take a nice, long bus ride out to Pointe-Claire for the book, but I’d much rather buy it downtown. Why Chapters/Indigo specifically? Well, for starters there aren’t many English-language bookstores in Montreal. And more importantly: I have an iRewards card, which means an automatic discount on my purchase.
In any case, I called the Indigo store last Friday and I was told that 2 copies are being ordered and that they should be in any day. Result: I end up checking the Chapters website several times a day to see if the book is in…
It’s been a while since I last posted. Work has been rather crazy lately, plus I hadn’t had much to write about (I’m not one to update a blog just for the sake of posting).
On Saturday, I went shopping. I was wearing my old skater shoes, which are comfy… provided I don’t walk for too long. It just so happened that we went to an outdoors clothing store since Eric wanted to buy some pants for the summer. While I was waiting for him to try on the pairs he had chosen, I started looking at the shoes. There was a sale and even better: the store also covered both sales taxes that weekend! So I asked the sales clerk for shoes and as she was looking for pairs for me to try, I quipped about how I wasn’t going to bother asking about clothes. Well, she replied about this store called Sportive Plus that sold plus-sized outdoors clothes (of which I have heard of before). Sure, it would have been great if the store I was in actually had clothes my size, but I think I had the second best possible outcome: a sales clerk who, although petite and all, knew about an alternative store to recommend without being snooty about it.
The other sales clerks there were friendly too. So, even though this store isn’t the place for me to go to get actual clothes, at least for shoes and outdoors accessories it’s worth it.
Last week, I started another semester of aquagym, still at the same pool located not too far from my home. Once again, we changed teachers (they seem to change ever semester) — this time, the Tuesday night teacher is a BBW. Not a slightly chubby athletic girl, but a true-blue BBW.
It’s her first semester teaching aquagym, but so far she’s not doing a bad job at all (I do find she goes a bit fast, but that’s about the only criticism I have). What’s great is that no one seemed to bat an eye when it turned out that she was the teacher (you know, the knee-jerk “who are you and where is the teacher?”).
one thing’s for sure: she could be one of the poster girls for HAES. She kicks ass as she is!
Yesterday, I went up north with my friends to go tube sliding on a mountain. It was a great day, not too cold but cold enough for the snow to be well tapped. Unfortunately, the so-called extreme slopes weren’t so extreme (I was hoping for jumps that would have led to tons of bruises on my body) but it was still a ton of fun, alone or together (there were 5 of us and sliding group limit was 4). No matter what, I was always the one who went furthest (and fast too!). I knew there was an advantage to being fat! And there weren’t a ton of people, so usually we had little to no waiting time.
And I forgot how physical sliding can be — not the actual sliding part, but the part where you walk back to the lift. There were two types of lifts open: one where you sit on a tube that’s hooked on a cable lift, which pulls you up the slope, and a treadmill that brought you up. So, from 1pm till 5pm, we were like a bunch of kids without a care in the world. Thank goodness we all wore good boots and snow pants, and even that didn’t prevent us from getting wet like a dog. Afterwards, we went out for dinner at a BBQ chicken restaurant and we ate like kings and queens.
Today, I went to the gyn for my yearly PAP test, which I must undergo in order to renew my prescription for the Pill. I’ve been going through this since 1996, but every year, the appointment fills me with dread. I have no problem with the test itself, it’s something pretty quick and not actually painful. However, I’ve always been weary of doctors being judgmental or talking about my weight.
So, after been greeted by a BBW nurse who I’ve seen before, I waited for the doctor to come. A young medecine student (an in-betweener BBW) came in to ask basic questions about my period and other relevant matters. Then, the doctor came in and did the pelvic exam (as he described the procedure to the student, the only comment he made about my weight, and it was rather neutral, was that my vagina was well-padded, which wasn’t intended to me but to the student doctor, as he told her about how to access the cervix). Nothing else. No sermon about my weight, no pestering about anything that wasn’t related to my genitals.
Basically, it was one of the best visits I’ve had for the Pap test in nearly 15 years. Since I hadn’t had lunch but had to go back to work, I stopped on the way back to this Thai restaurant I like and ordered cashew chicken stirfry on rice to-go with a can of coconut juice.
One BBW that I absolutely adore is Isabel Sanford. I never used to watch The Jeffersons, but I discovered that series when it came out on DVD a few years ago, and just fell in love with that series. I don’t care for George Jefferson and his reversed racism, but the other characters make up for him, in particular the character of Louise or Weezy, played by Isabel Sanford.
She’s simply wonderful. She’s smart and no-nonsense, and she’s just beautiful. I love how she’s self-confident and sassy in her own way. In real life, she was an anonymous philathropist until the end of her life, giving to charity not for the recognition but because she had a heart of gold. Incidentally, as pointed out before, she was 20 years older than Sherman Hemsley, who played George…
Here’s an episode that I watched recently, called Louise’s Daughter (it’s broken down in 3 parts; start with the top file). Toward the end of the episode, the young lady says that Louise is beautiful, and I couldn’t agree more.
I recently went shopping for winter clothes. First, bought some Merrell winter boots, on sale at $100 (reg. price: $150). They look like hiking boots and are grey with a touch of lilac.
I then proceeded with the search for a decent winter coat. I always bought my coats at Addition-Elle, but I have to admit that the quality isn’t great for the price. When I found out that Columbia made some coats in plus-size, I decided that it was time to buy a Columbia jacket once again (I bought my only Columbia coat in 1994 or so).
Since there aren’t any Columbia Sportswear outlets in Montreal, I searched at the next logical place: the Sports Experts chain of stores, which do sometimes carry some plus-size sports clothes. Went to one store — no plus-size clothes there. After making some calls to find which stores do carry bigger sizes, went to another franchise that was supposed to have them. No success, and the salesgirls’ attitude pissed me off (what’s the message here? fat girls can’t like sports?). Finally, went to a third store that did have one jacket in plus size. It was size 1x, which was too small, but the employees there were really nice and ordered the 2x version from another store. When the coat came, it fit perfectly (unfortunately, it’s not loose enough to include a sweater underneath…). The coat did cost me $300 with taxes, but thanks to a promo, I received a $50 gift card usable in that franchise only, which I will use to buy a good winter hat, and something else (maybe a good scarf). I really don’t mind for that store restriction, since I’m inclined to return there after the great service I received.
When you think of it, it’s just frustrating to need to do so much search in order to find a good-quality winter coat when you’re fat. It’s not because I’m fat that I won’t freeze when it gets cold, you know…
I will post pics of my purchases later, but in the meantime, here’s what the jacket looks like (it’s a three-in-one model):
I wish there was a way to control what blogs appear within a blogroll in Google Reader. Here’s why.
I use Google Reader to keep up with the fatosphere. I added two versions of the Fatosphere blogroll (after I realized that the first version I added was slower to update) as well as the Fat Liberation blogroll (since there might be some blogs on that roll that are not in the Fatosphere).
One newcomer to the Fat Liberation blogroll is a right-wing blogger who goes by the nick “Coffee Catholic”. I know that there is space here for varying opinions but when I read a comment from that blogger that goes “That’s because you creepy man-looking Feminist/Liberals cannot even begin to imagine what it means to love beyond your selfish self-serving selves.”, it pisses me off and makes me feel attacked. She turned off comments for some reason (ummm, wonder why?) and to be frank, aside from one or two entries, I don’t even see what her blog has to do with being fat.
I’m kinda sitting on the fence here (I could imagine that if that person subscribed to the blogrolls, she’d skip over nudiemuse’s entries, to name one blogger whose overall opinions and points of view are at the spectrum opposite of Coffee Catholic’s). I admit it: I am a liberal, left-wing, pro-choice agnostic feminist fat straight woman (phew! that’s a lot of adjectives!!!) who believes in the right for gay marriage and gay rights in general. I rarely (if ever) discuss politics and religion in my writings because I feel these topics to be private. So when I read homophobic, right-wing, anti-feminist entries (that have nothing to do with fat acceptance) in the blogroll, it makes me uncomfortable.
I don’t know where the line can be crossed for someone’s blog to become unsuitable for the Fat Liberation roll, but for now, my only option is to quickly scroll down whenever I see the name Coffee Catholic.
*Update* A couple of readers have mentioned adding blogs individually in google reader. It is a good idea per se, but I’m afraid to miss out on some wonderful new addition to the group if I proceeded that way. I also find that, with all the blogs I enjoy reading, this would make Google Reader even more cluttered than it is already (I did add some individual blogs that have nothing to do with FA but that I enjoy reading, like You may also like and Will write for chocolate). Guess there is no perfect solution… Meh.
I know that many of you have expressed lately some doubt about the usefulness of blogging about FA. Sure it does get repetitive at times, and not every subject covered interests me (especially not politics). I myself haven’t blogged much lately, mostly because I couldn’t think of any subject really to write about (I prefer blogging left often than filling my blog with silly little fillers all the time).
Anyways, tonight was my first aquagym class of the semester and I went the usual way to class. Except that I had no music for once. For some reason, I didn’t feel like bringing the shuffle and I didn’t want to bring my new iPod to the pool. The school is located near a park that includes a skate park area. Since it was past 8pm, it was already dark. Well, I got badly harassed/catcalled by some fucking idiot teens, all sexual comments of course, which I won’t reprint here (you can imagine the kind of comments I got).
It’s easy to blame the harassment on weight, but here’s one thing I figured out upon thinking about it: with these assholes, us women always lose. Whether you’re fat, skinny, tall, short, pretty, ugly, sexy, butch/tomboy, girlish, nerdy, cool, they’ll always find a way to harass you one way or another. Anyone who thinks that mysogyny in pop culture doesn’t transcend the entertainment industry, here’s a good example of its effects in real life. Now, it’s very likely that at least one of these kids didn’t think I was so unattractive or simply internally disagreed with it all, but the fact that he participated in a passive or active way to the harassment puts him at the same level as all the others. In fact, he’d be one hell of a spineless, gutless wimp to let peer pressure guide him around like that.
Still, this situation pisses me off greatly. Here I am at almost 33, and yet, I’m struggling to not fall into my teenage thinking patterns. I do know better, and my rational side did come up with the conclusion above (which makes it easier to deal with)…
And there weren’t a ton of people, so usually we had little to no waiting time.
