The Dangers of Cider Vinegar

It had been a day.

Specifically, it had been a day where the salmon fillets had not thawed out completely and were thus unsuitable for dinner, and it had been a day where that was just the last straw.

I went to the grocery store to grab a heat and serve something for dinner. My preferred local grocery store is one of the “natural foods” variety — good because it has more of the foods I like to eat, bad because it has significant overlap with people who like to view food in terms of moral superiority and deficiency.

Today has been a day, so my food choices would be characterized as the latter.

I show up in the checkout lane with a bag of coffee beans (light roast), a bottle of apple cider vinegar, and a frozen meat lovers’ pizza — the kind with pepperoni, sausage, and bacon on it.

In the lane, I try to grab a chocolate bar. The chocolate bar: milk chocolate, toffee, and sea salt. A happy rectangle of taste perfection. Only, there’s not enough clearance between the the bottom of the display box and the top of the shelf. I can’t get one of the bars out of the box, off of the shelf.

Today, this does not amuse me. Today, this is a big deal.

After a moment, I lift the entire box off the shelf, remove one chocolate bar, and replace the display. The chocolate is safe. Now I can pretend like everything is okay.

I am turned to face the woman in line behind me. I take in that she is approximately my own size and shape.

“It was almost a catastrophe,” I joke.

She grins widely in return.

The woman in front of me turns around, notices me, notices my items on the belt.

“You know, that’s just going to make you fatter.”

I am stunned. Did I hear right stunned. Did this woman just say that out loud and in public stunned. I’m scrambling to explain all the reasons why what I’m eating is okay — which, now that I think back on it, her comment would have been rude even if I ate bacon pizza and chocolate every fucking day — when the woman behind me speaks up.

“Yeah, I hear apple cider vinegar will do that to you.”

In the instant between that sentence and the start up of the conveyor belt, I laughed.

Dear Trolls

If your troll comment is literally:

FAT FAT FAT FAT FAT FAT FAT FAT FAT FAT FAT

You should be ashamed, if not at your lack of decency, at least at your lack of creativity.

If you’re going to troll me, I demand better.

Fat at You

Note: This post contains sarcastic responses to fat bias.

I have a confession.

Fat is a behavior after all.

You see, it’s not just that I am fat or that I have fat on my body. Nope. When I go out, I am purposefully being fat.

At you.

And it is my personal mission in life to be as egregiously fat as possible.

When I walk down the street, around my workplace, or through my neighborhood instead of remaining shut up at home, I am doing it specifically to annoy you. Many of you will be subjected to the inconvenience of looking at me. Some will have to interact with me as though I were an actual person.

When I purchase groceries or eat at a restaurant, it is with the glee of reminding you that I intend to continue my fatness by having the audacity to provide my body with food on a regular basis. Sometimes I throw beer and chocolate into my cart just to provoke extra frowny faces.

I won’t lie. Every time I hear someone gasp about how my fatness is a drain on the health care system that their tax dollars pay for, it just makes me want to visit the doctor more. This comes with the added bonus of getting to be fat at the doctor, who is then forced to explain the impending doom of being in my body and to caution me to make changes in my food and exercise habits, without first inquiring as to what my current food and exercise habits may be. Obviously, this is fun for me and entirely worth wasting all of your tax dollars — since I couldn’t possibly pay taxes of my own or receive subsidized insurance coverage, the remainder of which I pay for myself, as part of my employment compensation.

Nope. Doing it solely to piss you off.

When I wear anything more revealing than a sleeping bag, it is to provoke your disgust at the sight of my flesh. Moreover, the entire reason I live in a warm climate is so that I have as many opportunities as possible to wear clothing that makes you uncomfortable.

When I work out, it is purely to make a mockery of your own fitness levels and exercise habits. Because if my fat ass can run the same distance or enter the same yoga posture, it automatically diminishes your strength, flexibility, and cardiovascular endurance, as well as detracting from your overall physical achievements. In fact, any achievement I reach as a fat person cheapens your parallel achievement as a thin person.

And if I appear to be enjoying myself somewhere, rest assured, I do it to make you miserable. Because fun and happiness are finite resources, after all: if I have more, you will have less.

It’s been a long time coming, I suppose, this admission. But nothing I do is just because I am going about my business as a regular person. I know you can’t see it, but I am actually being fat at you right now, sending waves of adipose energy through the cosmos as I type. I am nothing if not persistent. So please, rest assured, my persistent fatness is all about you.

In conclusion:

[George Strait singing "Ocean Front Property." Lyrics here.]

All Bodies Are Beautiful?

So I’ve been seeing images similar to these making the rounds:

[Image source.]

First off, “All women are real,” is fabulous on its own and is not the part I’m going to focus on here. Also because it’s not the common denominator I’ve seen in most of the messages.

That denominator has been the, “All bodies are beautiful.” Which I don’t hate, but I don’t exactly love, either. Because a lot of times, it’s irrelevant.

Sometimes I think of my body as beautiful; a lot of times I do not. And I am okay with both of those. Moreover, whether or not people perceive me as beautiful does not matter in terms of how I fundamentally expect they should treat me.

Regardless of whether I am beautiful, I expect that I should be able to find clothing appropriate to my body and daily activities.

Regardless of whether I am beautiful, I expect that I should be able to walk or run down the street or in a store without someone insinuating or flat out stating that my appearance is embarrassing, offensive, or that I need to cover up. I mean, this might be a valid course of action were I to go around wearing nothing but “I kick puppies, and I like it!” spread over my naked torso in body paint — but I assure you, that is not the case.

I expect that employers and prospective employers should evaluate me based on my skills and professional competencies rather than how I look in my interview suit.

I deserve to have doctors regard my body size and metabolic health as distinct factors. Similarly, I deserve to have them treat my symptoms seriously, rather than immediately dismissing them as the product of my body size. (Because — and I have mentioned this before — but that broken foot years ago? Yeah, totally slipped on a vibrator. It did not break due to inability to support my weight — just inability to support my weight while stepping on a cylindrical battery operated toy.)

I deserve to have my body not be the butt of jokes or the target of trolls.

I deserve to have people not use my body as a stand in for my physical habits, my mental or emotional habits, my sexual orientation, my sexual practices, my intelligence, my work ethic, or my integrity.

Regardless of whether all bodies are beautiful, all bodies deserve respect.

This Week

One too many people tried to tell me that while fat can be healthy, obesity cannot.

Can I get a note from someone saying that I do not have to interact with people who cannot be arsed to think about what words mean?

Where “Fat” Is Just Another Word

That rhymes with cat, sat, and hat.

Size Frustrations

Dear Unnamed Clothing Manufacturer,

It was, on the whole, a good trip. I shouldn’t complain.

I’m going to complain.

I needed new yoga pants, on account of I have plumb worn out the seams of two-thirds of my current batch, and my bum does not need a window to the world while doing down dog in class. So I went to the one store in town that carries the one brand of activewear that comes in my size.

At this point, I feel it is relevant to emphasize that these are necessarily all with the same brand —

It was a good trip because there were several styles of active pants available in all the sizes I might claim as “mine.” It was, however, frustrating as fuck because in the various styles, I tried — where available — every size from a 16 through a 24. Each and every style ran differently. I found 16s that were too big and 24s that were too small.

Some were too large or too small all over, and that at least made a certain amount of sense in the context of the individual garment.

Some fit or even ran small in the hip but were too large in the waist, which aggravates me personally but which I’ve come to expect. It’s totally possible that a critical mass of yoga pants purchasers have proportions that more closely resemble those reflected in your pants, and my body is the odd one out. I get that.

I do, however, take issue with a couple of proportion decisions on your part.

The first is to sell some styles of pants with absolutely no measurement increase between the waist and the hip. Yes, bodies are different, but the average person purchasing women’s activewear pants will be wider at the hip than at the waist. I’m guessing that most of them will expect mass produced pants to follow this general pattern — especially when you list waist and hip differences in your very own size chart.

The second is to sell some styles — in, just for example, a size 22, which I think would have fit my hips — with thighs that are cut to the exact same width as the thighs on the size 12 of the same style pants. I know; I checked. Where, exactly, do you think my thighs come out of, if not my hips? Again, according to your own size chart, you suggest something like a 9 inch difference in circumference between size 12 hips and size 22 hips, why would you assume that the exact same thighs are proportional to both?

I understand that a company probably cannot mass produce affordable activewear — in any size range — without sizing items toward average proportions for each size, which means that people whose individual measurements vary from that average will experience fit issues. Even so, a lot of your averages seem way the hell off, and I would appreciate it if you would please learn to math.

If that is not feasible, maybe you could change your size charts to read, “Fuck if we know!” instead.

Thanks,
Me

More Links of Niftiness

Living With Cancer: The Good Patient Syndrome by Susan Gubar at The New York Times’s Well Blog — ” I discussed my oncologist’s research projects, instead of complaining about pain. Generally I answered a nurse’s opening query — “So how are you?”– with a cheery “Good! How are you?” Grumbles about waiting interminably for a scan in a freezing room never rolled off my tongue.”

Endometriosis is not cancer, of course, but I know I’ve spent a lot of years doing the “good patient” thing. Though to a much lesser extent, I’m pretty sure I still do it now.

What to really expect at your first yoga class by Rob Pollak at Rob Complains About Things — “Most likely, these ‘regulars’ claim the same spot at that class every time it is offered. Look for spots on the floor that have been ‘marked’ by regular’s sweat. Steer clear of those locations.”

Permission to Flirt by Autumn Whitefield-Madrano at The Beheld [contains critical analysis of an image with victim blaming statements on it] — “The second time I saw it, though, I made it personal and mused for a moment about how save one ill-advised maxidress and one black sheath that hits just above the knee, literally every single one of my hemlines is within an inch of ‘flirty.’”

And finally, this video from Lindy West, found via Captain Jack and Alice [notes for fat shaming, misogyny, trolling on the video]:

Eating on the Clock

Contains discussion of weight loss.

So I’ve been seeing variants of this story for the past day or so — that people who consume the bulk of their calories earlier in the day lose more weight than do people who consume more of their calories later.

I’m not disputing the study or that the difference between groups was statistically significant. (Now with ~25% less fatness!) I have thoughts, but I’m sure others will tackle that.

I am, however, peeved by the way it’s being reported. The linked article, for example, had a teaser line that read, “When you have lunch could make you fat.” And the article itself quotes “an important 5-pound difference.”

I know a lot of people — fat people, thin people, large people, small people, people who have tried to lose weight repeatedly, people who have seldom or never tried weight loss, people who think weight loss is important and admirable, people who are indifferent, people who are apt to regard weight loss with suspicion.

Now it may be that my sample is biased, but none of them would regard 5 pounds as the difference between “fat” and not.

I mean, if it is — Lack of PMS Bloating an Important Factor in Weight Loss! Or — Is Your Full Bladder Making You Fat?

Donut of Defiance

[Discussion of diets, weight loss, and eating.]

Before the semester break, my employer’s human resources department sent out an email advertising a district-wide New Year’s weight loss initiative. Now, it’s totally voluntary, and not connected to our health care insurance in any way (though I know better than to believe it’s anything close to confidential). And I know from experience over the years that not many people — at my school, at least — actually participate.

Still, I know that reading about what is essentially short-term (8 weeks) competitive weight loss (i.e., the person who loses the highest percentage of their starting body weight gets some kind of cash or gift card prize) is not a good idea for me. So I emailed HR and asked if there was a way employees could opt out of receiving these specific messages.

I received no answer.

Now, this could easily have been that by the time I sent my email, people were heading off toward Christmas and semester break.

So when I found a second advertisement about this in my inbox, I contacted HR again. Still no answer.

I admit, I was probably holding a bit of low level resentment in my back brain about this, less for the initial mass email and more for the two times I said something, and my response seems to have been ignored. Like, even to have been told that my request was unworkable or otherwise just not going to happen would at least have acknowledged that I make the fucking request.

Fast forward to our department meeting during the second week of school. It’s rare that our department — or even, all our site teachers — are left alone — that is, without administrative influence (often interference) — to Get Shit Done. So when we are, we rather relish the opportunity.

A department coworker brought donuts, enough for the group. “Help yourself,” she said at the beginning of the meeting, then let the subject drop. No one took a donut right away.

I didn’t particularly want one myself. I don’t dislike donuts or anything, but I have come to discover that very sweet — and especially, very one-note, simply sweet — foods are not my thing. They still seem appealing from time to time, but once I removed them from my mental “bad and therefore forbidden” category, I discovered that more often than not, I do not actually want them very often.

And so, for a long portion of our meeting, I was content to let the donuts sit and instead to concentrate on getting shit done.

Until that voice came over the PA system.

“Anyone participating in the [Cutesy Name] Weight Loss Challenge, please come to the [School Name] library. And for anyone who hasn’t signed up, this is your last chance to join! I repeat, anyone participating in the [Cutesy Name] Weight Loss Challenge, please come to the [School Name] library. And for anyone who hasn’t signed up, this is your last chance to join!”

We all stared at the PA speaker, which had interrupted some good discussion. And a lot of us glared and rolled our eyes. I think, based on my knowledge of these folks, that the degree of the reaction was not only from it being an interruption but from the specific nature of this interruption.

There was an air of peevedness in the room.

And, I couldn’t help but notice as the announcement was dying out, two unopened boxes of donuts just sitting there.

I stood up, crossed the room, and opened a box. I considered my choices, selected a cinnamon roll, and walked back to my seat with it.

The comments were telling.

Laughter.

Good laughter.

“About time someone opened that box!”

“I wanted one too; I just didn’t want to be first.”

“Hey, that’s right! There are donuts!”

I walked back to my seat and pulled of pieces of cinnamon roll, bit by bit, in its spiral layers.

In that moment, I still don’t even know that I wanted the donut. In fact, I think I didn’t — at least not for the taste of the fried pastry itself. What I did want, however was for that voice on the PA system to shut up. I couldn’t do that, of course, but I could at least send a message to the people around me that that is what the voice on the PA should do.

Within a minute or two of my cinnamon roll defiance, at least three other people in the room had claimed donuts of their own — and from the comments, it seems that at least a couple of folks had been anticipating a donut claiming move for a while.

I won’t say that this is a step in the direction of making food my friend. Because what it feels like to me is the somewhat familiar, somewhat ambivalent territory of wielding food as a public tool, a sign post for specific ends. That is not, in a perfect world, what I want food to be for me.

But we don’t live in a perfect world. And what I do know is this —

In this world — the world where people in or out of authority constantly tell me I need to or should want to drop clothing sizes and/or lose weight — that message on the PA system is more my enemy than any cinnamon roll could ever be.

Stop projecting your misconceptions about fat onto my life.

I’m sure that by now a lot of people have seen Paul Campos’s article “Our Imaginary Fear of Fat” in The New York Times. I read it, but then I made the mistake of reading the comments.

Not the comments on the article itself: I know better than that. But a number of my friends and online acquaintances, all of whom I consider to be reasonably body positive, have posted it on blogs, Tumblrs, and Facebook feeds. What I didn’t realize, but maybe should have, is that comment spaces there are no safer or more fat-friendly than are comment spaces on the Internet at large (pun intended).

They’re also no more accurate. In fact, a lot of them seem to be projecting concerns about “oh, noez! teh fatz!” that aren’t inherently related to fat or BMI (since the article in question actually discusses results related to BMI rather than body fat) at all — and that definitely aren’t true for me. It would not serve my emotional health to wade into all those online spaces to address the projections, but I would like to do that here.

Projection 1: All fat people “do it to themselves” — i.e., “make themselves fat” due to massive calorie intake and far too little exercise.

Yes, there are lots of people (of various sizes) who eat a lot of calories and/or who exercise very little. But this is not an inherent feature of being fat. There are plenty of us who remain in the “overweight” and “obese” BMI categories regardless of caloric intake and exercise habits. (Seriously. When I was exercising compulsively and eating far too few calories — and having fewer calories recommended to me — I was still “overweight.”) But in addition to the fact that genetics plays a significant role in body weight, there is also the fact that it is seriously not cool to make sweeping generalizations about how bigger people eat and/or exercise without actually knowing how the significant majority of fat people eat and/or exercise.

And I’m not suggesting that I know how the vast majority of larger people — or any people — live their lives. However, when other people try to use my body size as evidence of how so many people live their lives, that is grossly uninformed and also anger-making.

Projection #2: Muscular people are “skewing” the BMI statistics, which is what’s creating the idea that fat is not an instant death sentence.

Or, you know, there’s the possibility that muscular people are and have always been a regular part of those heavier BMI categories. Until we use actual indicators of health to measure health and actual indicators of physical fitness to measure physical fitness, we will not know.

Projection #3: That overweight and obese people only have decreased mortality because they get “so frigging much” medical treatment and interventions “for their fatness.”

Which fails to note, as Melissa McEwan and Marilyn Wann recently did, that there’s significant evidence of weight bias leading to fat people getting condescending, dismissive, inadequate, or even harmful health care.

When I say “condescending,” I’m talking about things like former doctors: telling me to lose weight with each office visit, no matter what I was there for, often spending more time on that than my actual complaint of, say, what turned out to be a broken foot (aka. the “I slipped on a vibrator” story).

And when I say “harmful,” I’m talking about things like the delay in my endo diagnosis, which exceeds even even the frighteningly long average diagnostic delay of 12 years. Which in no small part took so fucking long because doctor after doctor after nurse practitioner after doctor after naturopath after doctor gave advice, advice, advice, and more advice that often amounted to, “Sometimes these things will go away on their own once you lose weight.” (When they weren’t giving medical advice of the “suck it up and deal” nature. But that’s another topic for another time.) Certainly I can’t state a definite causal relationship between the diagnostic delay and the endo-related damage that has shown up in places like my sciatic nerve and pelvic floor — can’t state a causal relationship because no one bothered to consider it before — I am relatively certain that this measure of care harmed rather than helped.

So now I’m a clinically obese person with chronic hip and low back pain. To quote the eloquent Taylor Swift, I am “never, ever, ever, ever” leaving my current health care provider because I do not want to risk setting off another chain of “Just lose weight!” initial visits.

Projection #4: Living in an overweight or obese body is a “quality of life issue.”

You know, there are a lot of things related to my body that affect my quality of life. I have mentioned the endo-induced pelvic pain and the encompassing medical douchebaggery; that affects my quality of life.

Not being able to find appropriate clothing to comfortably participate in activities that help provide me with joy, physical health and fitness, and stress reduction: It’s maybe not the most profound thing ever, but that affects my quality of life.

When other people interpret my body size as an opportunity for unwanted comment or unwanted touching, that affects my quality of life.

When people assume that my body size makes me incompetent to witness and interpret my own life experience — as a lot of the Facebook and Tumblr and blog comments have done — that affects my quality of life.

But those are quality of life issues that stem from other people’s projections; none are actually inherent to my body.

In the future, Internet, I would appreciate it if you would kindly keep your douchebaggery to yourself.

The Biggest Loser & Internet Vitriol

A few days ago, I posted #stopbiggestloser, my explanation of why I support Golda Poretsky’s Twitter campaign — which has since been joined by this petition, started by Ragen Chastain and Jeanette DePatie — to request that NBC keep teenage participants off of the next season of The Biggest Loser.

Since then, my notifications icon has been lighting up like an… I don’t know… figure out your own simile for something that lights up many times in rapid succession.

Most of them I have deemed not fit to print on my own online space. In fact, going one step further, I want to make clear that I am not referring to any comments or commenters that I’ve approved, even if I’ve disagreed with them while doing so. Rather, I’m referring to people who began not with disagreements — or even attacks — on my ideas but with attacks on my person.

There have been just over forty unique troll commenters, and they’ve all been supremely unimaginative. I mean, yes, there’s been some variation about the harm they intend to inflict on me or the harm they believe fate will inflict on me. But their reasons for such all fall into three main categories, none of which is particularly relevant to my original explanation.

Reason the First — My argument is invalid because I am ugly.

Which, I have been called ugly since before I started school. It has long ceased to make an impact on my psyche and has, in fact, become evidence to me that the caller has nothing relevant to say.

Because let’s face it — Whether it’s a good idea or not for The Biggest Loser to have teens on their next season, the relative worth of that idea does not change because I am pretty or because I am ugly.

So why make it, I have to ask? I can only assume it is to make me feel more insecure, less worthy. To make me question my right to have such an opinion against a show that promotes a narrow, stereotypical beauty ideal that does not reflect in my person.

Said argument is invalid.

Reason the second — My argument is invalid because I am a bitch.

Again, for the assclowning, cactusfucking love of the Baby Jesus pissing in my morning Cheerios, let us not believe that “bitch” is either the most creative cuss I’ve heard nor the worst name I’ve been called. Moreover, in a lot of society, “bitch” is code for a woman who is straightforward and unapologetic about holding and expressing opinions. Though callers often mean it as such, I don’t particularly consider it an insult.

Even if I did, name calling for my lack of apology regarding me opinion — or even the strident terms in which I expressed my opinion, though in the grand scheme of things, I don’t believe mine were particularly grating — does not begin to tackle the relative merit of the opinion itself.

Therefore, calling me a bitch to invalidate my argument is invalid.

So why ask it? To shame me for daring to possess an opinion?

Finally, my argument is invalid because I do not exercise.

Compared to measures of ugliness or bitchitude, both of which are highly open to interpretation, the fact of whether or not I exercise is considerably more objective. Which means it is considerably more open to being proven right or wrong.

And this argument is objectively wrong.

So why make it?

This one is more interesting to me.

One possibility is that they simply disbelieve — or do not value — any of the exercise I do, on account of I am still arguing that minors should not be placed in situations where they are expected to exercise until they vomit. Perhaps they straightforwardly believe that this is the amount and type of exercise I should be doing, as it produces weight loss at any cost — and fat people should be pursuing weight loss at any cost.

Another possibility is that they know full well that these endeavors are unhealthy but that they expect fat people to engage in them anyway — because they depend on fat hate — internal and external — to help them feel good about their own bodies. And so they gaslight in hopes that I’ll relegate my own estimation of my activity levels to “not enough,” as if I should place more stock in their derision than I do in my own experience. As if by doing so, I will judge my own argument unworthy.

Here’s the thing:

The Biggest Loser is a television show with a bad track record for healthy practices or care for its contestants. They’re now seeking to add adolescents — people whose bodies are still growing and developing and people who are generally not able to give their own legal or medical consent for most purposes — into the mix. Even if I am the ugliest, non-exercising-ist bitch on the face of the planet, that is a bad idea. And that argument is valid.

Yoga Month, Yoga Wisdom — Touching

The third thing yoga taught me was that it’s okay to touch myself.

I don’t mean like masturbation, though that’s all fine and good too. (Though it should probably be reserved for a home practice rather than at a studio class.)

What I mean is, yoga taught me that touching myself — even touching myself in places that are often sexualized — can be part of a functional resettling of my body to my own purposes.

First, it was the instruction to “pull (or roll) the flesh away from the sitting bones” for a lot of seated meditation postures as well as forward bends. Basically, this amounts to a lot of yogis sitting on the floor and grabbing their butt cheeks. As someone who has a rather copious amount of ass flesh, the difference this makes on my pelvic tilt — and therefore the amount of comfort or discomfort I feel in my hips and low back — is nothing short of amazing. I definitely pull the flesh away from my sitting bones while getting ready to drive in the car now, and I try to surreptitiously roll my butt flesh away before sitting down to boring meetings. If people think I am odd for it, well, they are welcome to their conclusions.

Next, it happened that a couple of teachers familiar with pose modifications for fat folk introduced me — via the wonder that is the Internet — to moving my waist-related love handles out of the axis of rotation for twisting poses. For reasons I have already detailed, I am way less comfortable with my belly than I am with my butt and so touching my belly is even more emotionally charged for me than is touching my butt. But when I tried it, it helped free up so much movement — especially in “compressed” twists (twisting in toward a grounding leg). I’d known for a long time that my back was more flexible than my belly was letting me go in twists. But I’d also been thinking of the issue in terms of my belly limiting my range of motion — when one simple solution is to just move parts of me where I want them to be.

Most recently, I’ve begun to apply the twisting advice to my breasts, which impede my range of motion in even more poses than does my belly. (The boobs impede first in a lot of twists; they also factor in to prone poses like cobra, locust, and bow, as well as some inverted poses like bridge and plow.) Practically, again, it increases my comfort and range of motion in the previously problem postures. Emotionally — on the one hand, at least — it is way nicer to think, “hey, the correct way for me to set up for this asana involves moving my boobs,” than to think, “eff, my boobs are getting in the way of my asanas yet again — stupid boobs.”

On the other hand, while I’m quite comfortable moving my boobs in my home practice, I’m a lot more hesitant about doing so in a studio class. At home, it feels like setting up for an asana the same way I’d set up any other body part to be in my body’s best alignment for the pose. But I’m not sure how many other folks at my studio — and I’m at a pretty accepting studio — would see it that way.

In time, I suppose, I will forget as I’m caught up in my own practice. And without thinking, I will grab my boobs in yoga class — and we will see what will happen.

Yoga Pants All the Time

For even before starters — Within the bounds of municipal legalities, people get to wear what they want. In fact, I suppose, even outside the bounds of legalities, people get to wear what they want so long as they are prepared to accept the consequences for their actions. (Because municipal legalities are not always reflective of what is equitable or just.) And while I don’t think that general clothing choices should be unilaterally free from criticism, I do think that reaction to an individual’s clothing choices should recognize that we do too much body policing in this world already.

Anyway.

For starters, it is basically true: When I’m not expected to wear any type of particularly “nice” or professional clothing, I am pretty much always in yoga pants.

Along with a top, I mean. Most places have a “no shoes, no shirt, no service” rule here, and I respect that.

It is not, as one acquaintance recently suggested, “to make people think [I've] always just come from a workout.”

Fun fact: When they mentioned this, I was wearing yoga pants and had just come from a workout.

But let’s lay out a few less fun facts, shall we?

One. I have a chronic pain condition that often manifests with pelvic pain and sometimes manifests with pelvic swelling. There are times when, even if other pants technically fit, comfort asks that I wear pants made of stretchy materials instead. There are also times — though rarer — when I’m sufficiently swollen that my regular pants do not fit.

Two. Because of plus size shopping availability where I live, I own precisely four pairs of pants that i could go to work in. Two of them are jeans, which are sort of frowned upon at my work. (Definitely frowned upon this early in the school year.) No pair cost me less than $30, which on my salary is not small money. (I have to wrangle a lot of freshman for a lot of minutes to make $30.) I really cannot afford to be ripping, staining, or wearing out these pants willy nilly.

Three. Two of the pants pairs were on clearance and two more were from a store that’s closing (and that’s already stopped selling plus sizes in my area). That is, as of right now, they are virtually irreplaceable.

Four. There is a place I can go to purchase yoga pants for about $10 per pair. While I am not actually fond of going to this place, the fact remains that this means I only have to wrangle one-third as many freshmen — or for one-third as long — in order to purchase a pair of yoga pants. Additionally, they are regularly available, meaning that if I stain one, rip two, or wear three out, the pants remain available for repurchase.

In sum — I wear yoga pants so often because I don’t really have other viable “casual wear” — in a clothing-available environment where dark wash jeans must be saved for “career wear” — alternatives.

Belly Shot

This post contains internalized fat bias.

My shoulders and chest have been feeling tight lately, probably due to too much time on the Intarwebs and also due to sleep positioning myself around small dogs. To try to stretch myself out again, I have been taking breaks to do all sorts of shoulder openers, with upward facing table being one that helps me the most.

Well. It helps my chest and shoulders the most. Which is what I want, which is why I do it. But in other areas, the pose is quite uncomfortable for me.

Not physically. I mean, it is stretching my chest and the fronts of my shoulders, which — given their current tightness — can be an intense sensation. But it’s intense in a productive, controlled way. What I’m less in control of is what I see in the pose. When I’m in upward table, my neck prefers that I not drop my head back, so I’m left with a clear, unavoidable, unmistakeable visual shot of my belly.

While I’m learning to be more comfortable with my body, a lot of that comfort is predicated on minimizing — visually and mentally — the parts of my body with which I am uncomfortable and focusing on the parts I actively like. For instance, when I think of my hips and butt — which are really no less broad than my belly — I think of firmness and muscles and strength. The size of my butt may not fall in line with the dominant beauty norm of my culture, but the tone of it certainly does. And it’s easier for me to like my ass because of it. When I think of my belly, though, I think of softness, of terms like pudge and flab. Those are definitely terms that society has categorized as body unfriendly, which means that being comfortable with my belly is harder this way. It has too much negative emotion attached to it, emotion that may not have originally come from me but that I have internalized just the same.

I’ve tried avoiding my mental discomfort with upward table in a number of ways. For a long time, I completely avoided the pose. Bridge, upward plank, and camel are front-of-body stretches with variations that render my view of my belly less… in my face. But none of them get to quite the chest and shoulder area that I’d like stretched. I’ve tried dropping my head back so I wouldn’t have to look at it — again, because maybe my body would behave differently this time? — only to discover that my neck is still having none of that shit.

Finally, I tried closing my eyes. Which, technically, did work with no physical repercussions. However, unlike the other misdirections — and they were misdirections — I could not make up a credible reason why closing my eyes was a necessary portion of the posture. And I could not do it without being acutely aware of the fact that I was closing my eyes for no other reason than to avoid looking at my stomach in this pose. That bothered me more — and in a deeper way — than just looking at my belly in the first place.

At least, I think learning to look at my belly is bothering me less. To be honest, it’s still tough. This isn’t a post that ends with “and then I learned to love my body, so everything is okay.” I do love my body, but that doesn’t mean there aren’t some parts that come with negative baggage. I think, though, that the discomfort of actually looking at my belly feels… if not objectively better, at least more productive. Like someday, I’m going to be able to look at my stomach and see… just familiarity. Just, “That’s what I look like.”

Today is not that day. But right now, that discomfort, I can sit with it.

Fat Cow?

In one of my recent personal communications, someone mentioned in passing that cow pose in yoga is sometimes known as “fat cow” pose. I could not detect any ill intent (or sense of irony, for that matter) as the statement was made. It could be true, of course, that this is one conventional interpretation of the pose’s name. I definitely do not know everything about yoga.

However, I remain skeptical:

1. I definitely do not know everything about yoga, but I have been practicing and studying regularly for about 12 years now. In my part of the world, cow is a pretty common asana. If “fat cow” were a common name for it, I think I’d have heard something to that effect before now.
2. I have seen cows. At least to me — someone who’s used to looking at riding horses, who develop a rounded and muscled topline with work — the concave topline of cow pose reminds me of pretty much all cows, not just fat ones. While some Sanskrit terms do add additional modifiers, the asana names I’m familiar with generally do so to distinguish one pose from another, similarly named pose (down dog v. up dog, revolved anything). Therefore, I find it difficult to believe that “fat cow” is a traditional asana name without “skinny cow” also being the same. And, I mean, Skinny Cow is some tasty ice cream product, but I have never been asked to Skinny Cow during yoga.
3. I am all too aware of the derogatory connotations the phrase “fat cow” has in contemporary US society (and possibly elsewhere, but I live here). So while I can’t see why this pose would have been known as “fat cow” for decades or longer, I can see a reason for using the phrase “fat cow” to describe something now — only that reason is not a nice one. Moreover, the person from whom I heard this has some “must not gain weight” anxieties of their own, so I can envision situations where they might have heard it and picked up on it sans unpacking.

Also, when I Googled “yoga fat cow,” there was nothing relevant on the first page of results. If I have to go to page 2 of a Google search to find something, that just screams “sketchy.”

So, crowdsourcing on this: Anyone know if “fat cow” is a legit, neutrally descriptive yoga thing?

Walk Myself Thin

I’m standing in the exercise and fitness section of my local used book store, browsing the titles on running and anything else that might be of interest. I’m specifically looking for Born to Run, anything else on barefoot running, or anything else on distance running that isn’t marathon or triathlon focused. I’m not discounting training for a marathon one day, but I am not ready to read that book just yet.

Not finding anything between Running and Walking for Women Over 40, Run Your Butt Off (with a subtitle about losing weight), and Marathon: The Ultimate Training Guide, I pick up the marathon book. After all, I’m not over 40, and while I’m sure a lot of the advice isn’t age-specific, some might be. As for Run Your Butt Off, the last thing I want is a running book with a primary focus on making me smaller in the lower body. I use my butt — all of it, at its current size — for running, and I like it just fine, thanks. Of the three, the marathon book looks the most interesting: maybe it will have a chapter on building up via smaller distances.

I’m leafing through it, sort of squatting on the floor by the shelf, when he arrives. I don’t really pay attention at first, except to make sure I’m out of his way. When he starts looking through the running and walking shelf as well, I move a few feet back and continue skimming. A few minutes later, I’m deciding the book is not for me (too much marathon-specific advice for me right now) when another book plops to the floor in front of me. At first I think it must have fallen off the shelf, except that it doesn’t tumble in the way of an accidental fall but travels and lands flat as if someone is gently tossing it to me.

The book is Walk Yourself Thin, and the guy smirks. “You might want to start with this first,” he says and leaves, clearly not waiting to engage me in any kind of meaningful discussion about running, walking, fitness, or weight.

I consider chucking the book at the back of his head, but I have a longstanding moral policy against throwing books. Even if he deserves it, the book doesn’t. Besides, it’s bad karma to be an asshole, and right now, the cosmic balance is in my favor.

I glance at the cover then set the book back on the shelf without opening it. I don’t need to. I don’t want to walk myself thin any more than I want to run my butt off. I would like to safely and sustainably increase my running distance and maybe even figuring out how to shed the Vibrams and go barefoot, but I’m perfectly comfortable doing all that with this body at this size.

If, however, I am overcome with the urge to power walk wearing but stoplight-color-coded shorts, I will totally give this book a second look.

Fat Enough

One of the comments that didn’t get through moderation**:

IDK why you claim fat acceptance; you’re not fat enough. Your no skinny bitch but no fatter than an in betweenie. Leave us real fatties something for our own.

“All is Vanity” by C. Allan Gilbert. Image in public domain; used via Wikimedia Commons.

For starters, I do understand that there are times when I don’t experience fat hate — and the reason I don’t experience fat hate is because the other person involved doesn’t categorize me as “fat.” I understand that because what’s considered “fat” is a patchwork of guesswork and moving goalposts, there are times when I escape fat hate and body policing that other people experience. Essentially, there are probably plenty of fat people who have it worse than I do. I’m not denying that.

Valid points, however, still follow:

One: I don’t think one has to be fat in order to embrace fat acceptance, size acceptance, or Heath at Every Size. In other words, there’s no lower boundary of what counts as “fat enough” to participate in these movements. (There’s also no upper boundary, but I don’t think this “Anonymous” commenter was suggesting one.) That said, if the commenter was questioning why I claimed “fat” as a descriptor rather than “fat acceptance” as they said, there is point two.

Two: As I said, there are probably plenty of places where I do not experience discrimination on account of my body size. However, there remain plenty of places where I do experience size discrimination. Some of them are relatively harmless, like when some dudebro touches me in public because he thinks my body will jiggle or when people assume being my size means I’m not good at working out, or not . Other times, it materializes in bigger ways, like when my employer considers making obese employees pay more for their health care premiums (dear people: it’s not like I’m wiping my ass with all the extra monies I DON’T HAVE), doctors repeatedly blame issues like endometriosis and broken bones (hello, I slipped on a vibrator!) on being too fat, being told there are no clothes for me here, hiding from yoga in public, or restricting my food and caloric intake in ways that cross the line into obsessive.

In short, there are a number of times when I don’t deal with size discrimination where someone else might. I don’t deny that. But neither does that detract from the times when I do experience (often systemic) discrimination on account of my fat. So:

Three: I will claim this term because it applies to me.

Four: It’s not cool to body police and marginalize, even toward people who are “only a little” marginalized.

** I realize that I’m stricter on comment moderation than some (even most?) blogs. I just want to reiterate that I’m cool with respectful disagreement. However, I’m not okay with negating others’ lived experience or for name calling (and yes, referring to someone as a “skinny bitch,” even if that someone is not me, is name calling). While people are certainly entitled to make such comments, I will not provide a forum to do so here.

I think it’s my soleus.

This is one of those stories where someone — lots of someones, actually — told me I couldn’t do something — in this case, a standing split balance pose — and then I went ahead and did it anyway. This is also one of those stories where I discover I have an attachment to being right and to smugness (my own, not other people’s). This is also a story about shoes.

I’ve been working with various expressions of standing split for maybe 7 or 8 years. First it was about getting my hamstrings to loosen up: they’re generally quite obliging about this sort of thing. Then it was about developing the core strength to open my heart center enough to start thinking about balancing (entering the pose with both hands on my standing ankle rather than on the ground). Now — and for the past 4 years or so — it’s been about playing with balancing. And, you know, not falling on my face. Because that would kind of hurt.

While trying the standing split with one hand on the ground, I’ve been offered a few reasons why I’ve had extended trouble moving into the balance:

1. My core muscles aren’t strong enough to stabilize the rest of my body.
2. My core muscles might be strong, but there’s too much weight to be supported over one ankle.
3. My center of gravity is too variable. Since fat jiggles, my torso is not as still in the pose compared to the torso of someone with less fat.

At one point, a teacher at a studio I visited told me to “accept that it’s never going to happen.”**

I believed these for years. Not only that this pose might be more difficult for me than for someone of a smaller frame (which may well be true) and that it was unreasonable for me to try to attain it (something I know is downright false).

But really? I think the physical weakness has been my soleus this whole time.

For the past few weeks, I’ve been going about my day-to-day life in minimalist shoes (I’m not going to claim they’re magic for everyone, but they work well for my body), which try to approximate what life would be like in bare feet — and which consequently strengthen the muscles of the lower legs, feet, and ankles. In particular, I’ve noticed the muscles in the lower halves of my calves becoming noticeably stronger, meaning, I am now aware they actually do things.

Like help me balance on one ankle.

For years, I struggled with this balancing standing split, and I thought the problem was in one of the so-called “problem areas” of my body — my hips, my core, my boobs. I had been told this, with varying degrees of certainty, by people who are more generally knowledgeable about yoga and anatomy than I am.

If the explanations — the pose was unattainable because of my body size or fat — had turned out to be true, I would have worked to accept it. But this is not the truth.

The truth is that the more upper areas of my body — my thighs and my core — may have been strong enough for a while and are certainly strong enough now. I feel the change in my lower calves and ankles, the muscles that are now creating the stable base for the pose. While I’m still getting used to this new-found base, I find that I am repeatedly able to hold the pose for a minimum of six to eight breaths — enough to tell me this is not a fluke.

It is possible the “fat parts” of me have been strong enough the entire time. It is possible that the weaker parts were the parts that were made weak by conforming to gendered fashion expectations. It is possible that everything I’ve been told about what the weight of my body “can’t” do is a lie.

No, I don’t expect that’s true for everything I’ve been told, but I welcome the adventure of being proven wrong.

** I think there are relevant philosophical difference between accepting that it’s never going to happen and essentially being told to give up. And I believe learning to accept limitations is a meaningful spiritual practice. However, given the instructor’s tone and the way she treated her older students (i.e., ones with visible wrinkles) and me (the only fat student) throughout the class leads me to believe her intention was the latter.