years, this vitriol has left me puzzled and asking: WHY is this happening? WHY is loving yourself so controversial? WHY U SO MAD, WORLD?
Well, Iâve since learned why, and Iâm gonna tell you all about it, goddamnit! The explanation is as multifaceted as they come, but Iâll share with you three significant reasons for the confounding weight hate we see online and in real life. Not only is this information fascinating in a know-your-enemies kind of way, but it also gives us a starting point for our personal understandingâwhich is critical if weâre going to ignore the hate and continue on our awesome way.
----
THE
FAT
PEOPLE:
do all the things!
CHALLENGE
Â
#3: RIDE A BIKE.
       Iâm not even going to dignify the idea that fat people shouldnât ride bikes by speculating as to why that might be. Instead, Iâm just going to talk about how much I love Tucson, and bike riding. Guys, I fucking love both of these things a lot.
I used to ride a bicycle everywhere, and didnât even have a car for years. So fuck you, haters. I love bicycle riding more than I love a lot of things, and Iâm not quitting anytime soon.
Oh yeah. And I totally ride bicycles in miniskirts. No big deal.
Your challenge: Rent a bike from a bike shop or bike-share program in your city, buy your own, or dust off that old two-wheeler from the past. Strap on a helmet and get riding!
----
1. Body Currency
This is the issue that strikes me the hardest. This, along with learning the historical events behind body hate, completely transformed the way I see body image issues and politics. In short: THE CONCEPT OF BODY CURRENCY BLEW MY MIND, YâALL.
Body currency goes something like this: We as a society are taught that IF we achieve the ideal body that we see in traditional media (and not before), our work will then be rewarded with everything we desire: love, worthiness, success, and ultimately happiness. Which is what we all want, right?
Because the vast majority of our culture buys into this, we have millions upon millions of people investing everything they have into achieving the ultimate goal: thinness, which obviously equals happiness, remember? (Other body âgoalsâ also apply here, like able-bodied/lightskin color/cisgender appearance, and so on.) SO, people spend their lives in a perpetual state of self-loathing (which we sadly call âinspirationâ!) while working their asses off to become that ideal. We Americans sink billions of dollars into beauty products every year, and we gift the weight-loss industry over $60 billion . 1 Fourteen million of us had cosmetic procedures in 2012, and yes, that number keeps growing. 2 Perhaps we starve ourselves or maybe we just fixate on our calorie count like it will determine our salvation. Maybe we make the gym our god. Whatever we choose individually, we as a country have made âfixing our bodiesâ our main obsession, and we let it consume our lives. This is the case for most of us, whether we choose to acknowledge it or not. We live to give our all to the quest toward impossible perfection (marketed as happiness).
So THEN, after all of this, when a fat chick who hasnât done the work, who hasnât âpaid the priceâ by trying to fix her body, who doesnât have any interest in the gospel we so zealously believe in, stands up and says : IâM HAPPY! . . . we freak the fuck out.
Because: That bitch just broke the rules. She just cut in front of us in line. She just unwittingly ripped us off. And she essentially made our lifetime of work totally meaningless.
Itâs kind of like investing everything you have into some sort of stock, and instead of its worth increasing youâre notified that its value is now the same as Monopoly money. Suddenly, your investments (a.k.a. âbody currencyâ) have the devastating value of zero .
Iâve been there, and I was pissed too.
The
Well, Iâve since learned why, and Iâm gonna tell you all about it, goddamnit! The explanation is as multifaceted as they come, but Iâll share with you three significant reasons for the confounding weight hate we see online and in real life. Not only is this information fascinating in a know-your-enemies kind of way, but it also gives us a starting point for our personal understandingâwhich is critical if weâre going to ignore the hate and continue on our awesome way.
----
THE
FAT
PEOPLE:
do all the things!
CHALLENGE
Â
#3: RIDE A BIKE.
       Iâm not even going to dignify the idea that fat people shouldnât ride bikes by speculating as to why that might be. Instead, Iâm just going to talk about how much I love Tucson, and bike riding. Guys, I fucking love both of these things a lot.
I used to ride a bicycle everywhere, and didnât even have a car for years. So fuck you, haters. I love bicycle riding more than I love a lot of things, and Iâm not quitting anytime soon.
Oh yeah. And I totally ride bicycles in miniskirts. No big deal.
Your challenge: Rent a bike from a bike shop or bike-share program in your city, buy your own, or dust off that old two-wheeler from the past. Strap on a helmet and get riding!
----
1. Body Currency
This is the issue that strikes me the hardest. This, along with learning the historical events behind body hate, completely transformed the way I see body image issues and politics. In short: THE CONCEPT OF BODY CURRENCY BLEW MY MIND, YâALL.
Body currency goes something like this: We as a society are taught that IF we achieve the ideal body that we see in traditional media (and not before), our work will then be rewarded with everything we desire: love, worthiness, success, and ultimately happiness. Which is what we all want, right?
Because the vast majority of our culture buys into this, we have millions upon millions of people investing everything they have into achieving the ultimate goal: thinness, which obviously equals happiness, remember? (Other body âgoalsâ also apply here, like able-bodied/lightskin color/cisgender appearance, and so on.) SO, people spend their lives in a perpetual state of self-loathing (which we sadly call âinspirationâ!) while working their asses off to become that ideal. We Americans sink billions of dollars into beauty products every year, and we gift the weight-loss industry over $60 billion . 1 Fourteen million of us had cosmetic procedures in 2012, and yes, that number keeps growing. 2 Perhaps we starve ourselves or maybe we just fixate on our calorie count like it will determine our salvation. Maybe we make the gym our god. Whatever we choose individually, we as a country have made âfixing our bodiesâ our main obsession, and we let it consume our lives. This is the case for most of us, whether we choose to acknowledge it or not. We live to give our all to the quest toward impossible perfection (marketed as happiness).
So THEN, after all of this, when a fat chick who hasnât done the work, who hasnât âpaid the priceâ by trying to fix her body, who doesnât have any interest in the gospel we so zealously believe in, stands up and says : IâM HAPPY! . . . we freak the fuck out.
Because: That bitch just broke the rules. She just cut in front of us in line. She just unwittingly ripped us off. And she essentially made our lifetime of work totally meaningless.
Itâs kind of like investing everything you have into some sort of stock, and instead of its worth increasing youâre notified that its value is now the same as Monopoly money. Suddenly, your investments (a.k.a. âbody currencyâ) have the devastating value of zero .
Iâve been there, and I was pissed too.
The
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