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.]

Dear Lululemon

I get that you don’t want to sell clothes that fit me. While it would be fabulous for you not to send a de facto message that I don’t (or shouldn’t) exist, you’re well within your rights to sell whatever items of clothing you like in whichever sizes you please.

However.

It’s a little much to ask me to support your business, even if the new store in town will have snacks at its grand opening.

Furthermore.

While I’m not generally in favor of telling people how to feel, I’m going to make an exception one time because this is sort of the point of the whole letter.

Because.

You should not feel surprised when I tell you (or your new store representative) that I have no wish to support a company who has taken no steps to include me.

You get to make choices, certainly. But decisions have consequences, and that one was foreseeable.

Yoga Bodies

I had the chance to take my favorite yoga class this morning. It’s an awesome class for me: flow-based and fairly vigorous, with a teacher who offers the less strenuous modifications first and who always asks before physically adjusting a student in a pose. In fact, the worst thing I can say about the class is that it’s at a time when I usually have to be at work — and so when I can easily engineer not to be at work at that time, you bet I’m taking off for yoga.

As such, while I’m not a stranger in this class, I’m not a regular, either. That designation belongs to a small group of women for whom the instructor waits to begin class. (Not in the sense that they show up late, just in the sense that she knows they are coming.) The instructor herself is petite and slim, with visible muscle definition in her arms.

The class itself was wonderful. We got to play with some chair pose flows, some partnered warrior work, and some balances against the wall. While it was a practice that involved a lot of strength-building and while I could feel my muscles working, it was not a practice that pushed me to my physical edge. Which, totally fine and good, since that’s not why I go to class.

But.

On the way out, after rolling up our mats, one of the women said to me, “Now I understand why people who really do yoga have the bodies they do.”

I didn’t respond — because another class was starting, because I was headed to meet someone for lunch, because I just did not want to put myself out there for a stranger — but the statement bothered me then, and it bothers me now. I mean, I don’t want to minimize any insecurity that this person may have been feeling, that she doesn’t “really” do yoga or whatever. But I also think it’s not cool to ask me to affirm that insecurity to her. I deal with plenty of my own.

I’ve been practicing for something over 13 years, on a near-daily basis for most of that time. In that time, I’ve experienced insecurity that I am a “yoga fraud” because:

• At the beginning, I couldn’t do a lot of strength-intensive poses. Also, I got out of breath easily during more cardio-intense classes.
• I practice(d) largely at home with a DVD. Cue added insecurity about using the “wrong” DVD. Also account for technology improvements by including online classes.
• I practice(d) largely at home without a video guide, making up my own sequences.
• I’m not vegetarian or vegan. Moreover, while I care about sustainably grown and fairly traded food products, the majority of the food I purchase is neither. Moreover, I like beer.
• I’m skeptical of a lot of the yoga woo. Especially, I outright reject the woo that looks to be at odds with realities like anatomy.
• I teach a yoga class — granted, free and at my school — but am not a certified yoga instructor.

But most of all, I feel insecure because I do not have a “yoga body.” I mean that in the stereotypical — and limited — expectation of a body that is slim yet muscled, toned but never bulky.

That is not my body. My body has broad shoulders, a busty chest, wide hips, a curvy butt, and thick thighs that interfere with the proportions of some traditional poses and require that I get damn creative — and a little bit awkward — while remaining equanimous about it. My body requires modifications that haven’t been invented yet (okay, maybe “have not been taught on a large scale” is more accurate). My body has fat covering its muscles, which apparently causes people to misjudge how “real” my yoga practice is. Moreover, all the daily practice in the world has not given me a “yoga body” that is closer to the slim, sculpted ideal.

And yet.

This body?

Is the one that shows up to practice with me every day. It is my yoga body. It is the only body I have.

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.

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

I Like These Links

My Plate Does Not Have to Be the Same as Your Plate by Kath at Fat Heffalump [note for discussion of food policing] — “I’m really struggling to understand why people can’t see that what other people eat is none of their business, and what they choose to eat doesn’t need to be moralised or proselytised as though it’s the only way to eat.”

Bisexual Women Almost Twice As Likely To Be Abused As Straight Women [notes for sexual assault, domestic abuse] — “The first nationwide study to break down domestic violence rates by self-identified sexual orientation has found that lesbian and bisexual women are at higher risk than straight women, with bisexual women facing especially high rates.” (Found via Feministing.)

I Don’t Care If You’re Healthy by Sarah at Radically Visible [notes for discussion of ableism and fat bias] — “A person’s right to an enjoyable life, to be treated with respect and to have access to all the things I want fat people to have access to, such as quality medical care and clothes that fit, is not predicated on how healthy they are.” (Found via Kath at Fat Heffalump.)

Closed for business at Exile from Hysteria — “The assistant cheerfully noted my surgery plans somewhere in my file, then pulled her rolling chair in close…. ‘Ya know, I’d love to get a hysterectomy,’ she said. ‘I’m so tired of getting my period. I mean, I’ve already had my babies, so what’s the point?’”

Pretty by G at Running While Fat — “Then I got to thinking about the complicated relationship I have with ‘pretty’, and how pissed I get that pretty is the best and most desirable thing to be.”

Guest Author: On Apples and Abdominal Adipositivity

Laura is a twenty-something fatshionista. She enjoys cupcakes, climbing trees, contra dancing, and smashing the kyriarchy.

She currently blogs at Tutus and Tiny Hats, where this post originally appeared. It is cross posted here with permission.
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As an apple-shaped lady,* I was really glad to see this post about the protective properties of belly fat.

There’s so much noise about the evils of abdominal fat–it eats puppies and kittens for breakfast, steals purses from old ladies, and makes the baby Jesus cry. These breathless reports are almost always accompanied by headless fatty pictures, as if to say, “If you look like this, you’re doomed! Also, too ugly to show your face.”

It’s good to finally see evidence that belly fat–just like almost any other physical characteristic–has positive as well as negative associations (none of which, btw, are destiny).

My stomach, for so long my nemesis, has been the hardest part of my body to stop hating. The part of my body I used to try so hard to shrink, doing crunches every day in eighth grade.

All the scare-articles about abominable abdominal adiposity booga booga didn’t help. They just gave me the excuse that I wanted a flat stomach for health reasons–not so I could look like Gwen Stefani or find pants that fit. They gave my body hatred a veneer of scientific rationality.

Even in my dieting years, though, it annoyed me that a waist under 35 inches was considered ideal for all women. First of all, men were given a 40-inch allowance, but as (mostly) non-child-bearers, they have less stomach fat to begin with. Second, even if you accept the evils of a large belly, it doesn’t make much sense to have one waist-size standard for people of all heights.

These days, I’ve managed to reach a fragile detente with my stomach. But with my family history of heart disease, I still find it hard not to see my belly as a betrayal, a symbol of future ill health.

It’s likely that my tendency to gain weight in the stomach rather than hips or thighs does stem from the same metabolic makeup that puts me at risk of heart disease.

You know what else is correlated with heart disease? Stress. Like the stress of constantly being told your body is toxic, unhealthy, wrong.

What can I do but accept that I’m at a higher risk for some problems and a lower risk for others, then do my best to mitigate my risks and let my weight fall where it will? Even the most pro-dieting people will tell you it’s impossible to spot-reduce. And considering that 95% of diets fail, overall-reducing doesn’t seem like a great plan either.

What can I do but see my belly as part of me–part of this amazing body that breathes, laughs, carries me around?

*I know the whole fruit-identification thing is silly, but apples are frickin’ delicious. I can’t wait for apple-picking season. (These pictures are from two years ago, when I went apple-picking with a group of friends. Highlight of the trip: finding a “fallen empire” — i.e, an empire apple sign that was lying on the ground.)

Hip Yoga: One More Abductor Stretch

I was ambivalent about tackling ardha matsyendrasana, not only because it’s a pose I love to hate, but also because I think the main reason it is such a pose is because it’s not so accessible to me on account of my abdominal fat. And boobs. And it’s really, really hard to find modifications that offer the same stretch and opening while allowing room for my midsection.

Which sort of boils down to: There seem to be modifications for people with more or less spinal flexibility, modifications for people with tighter outer hips, modifications for people who are pregnant (and for whom strong spinal rotation is therefore contraindicated) — but no modifications for people who are fat.

For a long time, I was — legitimately, I think — grumbly about that. Now, thanks to a discovery a few months ago, I’ve found a version that works for me — for which I’m very much thankful. My only current complaint — which is maybe less of a big deal in the grand scheme of things — is that none of my current teachers are familiar with this option. So they keep trying to offer suggestions and “correct” my pose, even though this is the one that works best for me. (Did I mention I’ve switched yoga studios recently? The switch was for reasons unrelated to the ones here, but it does mean I’m now trying out new teachers once again.)

So. The sort of “standard option” for half spinal twist first:

[Amy Reed instructing for Expert Village. Video via YouTube.]

Both hips are adducting here, which means both sets of abductor muscles are lengthening. For me, I always feel it more strongly in the top leg, I assume because of the extra leverage of my arm.

My chief issue with this expression of the pose is that when my legs are crossed that much, it pinches something in the area of my pubic mound. (Not hair, not surface skin — something more internal than that.) And there are few things more awkward than telling a questioning teacher you had to come out of a pose due to pinching in the pubic area.

One common modification I’ve seen that would work for my pinching issue is this:

[Nora Forziati of Half Moon Yoga instructing for Expert Village. Video via YouTube.]

Which, there’s less risk of pinching because there’s less flesh getting crowded into that area. On the other hand, this option doesn’t really do it as an adductor stretch for me, presumably because my leg isn’t moving as far across my body (which, ironically, is what’s alleviating the pinching). Additionally, it’s much less of a spinal twist because there’s nowhere for my arm to get a good hold on my leg.

I’m a bigger fan of the open version of this twist, which is sometimes offered as a prenatal option:

[Gina Kennedy instructing for Expert Village. Video via YouTube.]

In terms of adductor stretching, this actually works better for me than does the previous version. I end up pressing my front arm into my inner knee and my knee back into my arm. And when I take this option in class, none of the new-to-me instructors say a thing. I wonder if they think I am pregnant.

Eh. Better things to worry about.

Like while this version is better as an adductor stretch, it is still not so great as a deeper spinal twist — and, you know, there are times when I specifically want that, especially later into a practice. So when I attended one of Meaghan’s classes at Santosha Yoga last summer, I was pretty well overjoyed to find this option offered:

[Me in a modification of ardha matsyendrasana with the bottom leg folded under but the top foot outside the bottom shin rather than outside the bottom thigh.]

(Apologies for the crappy video quality. I couldn’t find an already existing version of what I wanted, so I tried to quickly make one myself.)

I know it’s a really simple change, but for my hips, pelvis, and back, it’s translated into so much room to get into a deep twist.

But even when I take this pose now, I can’t help but think of all the times I’ve taken and been frustrated by those other poses. And those memories still carry — if you’ll forgive the pun — a lot of emotional weight.

Extra Weight

Dear print, radio, and Internet advertisements (thank the Flying Spaghetti Monster I have stopped watching TV) that keep trying to convince me to shed my “extra weight,”

I have tried so many of your programs. They failed miserably, all of them in the long term, a good deal of them in the short term as well.

Therefore, I propose a couple of possible conclusions:

One, your products and/or systems are scams, in the style of medieval alchemists promising to turn lead into gold. Also for convincing me that the proverbial “gold” here — in other words, a thinner body — was something worth chasing.

Or two, none of the current weight on my body is “extra.” It is all a part of me, and therefore, I never needed your product in the first place.

Personally, I am a fan of three — all of the above.

Signed,
I would invest in some AdBlock software if it didn’t provide me so many delightful opportunities to deconstruct y’all. Also, it is hard to find AdBlock for all the rest of my life.

Camouflage

So I teach yoga in an after school program once every other week. Well, I’m there every week; I only teach every other, but whatever. I taught this week.

We did a sequence this week that required rather a lot of core awareness as well as some core strength. Judging from reactions — physical and verbal — it was challenging, but there were always modifications to make poses accessible. I liked it.

As we were rolling up mats, one student said, “I really felt that in my abs. I didn’t expect that from you.”

“Oh?” I was thinking that since I’d made an explicit point about my classes being beginner friendly, she had assumed that only “easy” poses would be offered.

No.

“Yeah,” she continued. “I didn’t think that you needed abs to do yoga. You don’t look like you have abs, but I guess you do.”

I stopped with the mat I was carrying, looked at her, and smiled — even if it was only that learned self-deprecating smile for public. “Just because they’re camouflaged doesn’t mean they’re not there.”

Which, maybe it gave her something to think about, even if it’s not strictly true. I mean, certainly, significant abdominal strength and significant abdominal fat are not mutually exclusive — so it’s a good idea not to make assumptions about the former based on the appearance of the latter.

But my abs are not camouflaged; they are not hiding. They are right where they’re meant to be. And not that anyone needs to look at my abs, but if other people think they don’t see them — perhaps they need to rethink what they’re looking for.

Yoga Month, Yoga Wisdom — Space

The sixth thing yoga has taught me is that my body is entitled to take up space.

You can tell I have a mostly home practice by how I don’t keep my mat in its bag.

Certainly, in the context of a crowded class and/or a small studio — where multiple bodies are equally entitled to take up space — the fine arts of compromise and staggering should be employed. But in itself, there is nothing shameful nor arrogant in allowing your body to take up the space it needs.

Even if some bodies need more space than do others.

For example — At my studio, I’m taller than the average student, wider than the average student, and have hip ranges of motion that are greater than the average student’s. None of these things are good or bad in themselves, but what they amount to is that, in order to set myself comfortably and correctly in various asanas — straddle-anything, I am looking at you — I need more physical space than do most other people in my studio do.

And again, it is important for me to respect their needs and space as well, but practically speaking — most of the time this works out okay. They take the space they need, I take the space I need, and no one has to straddle forward fold into the next person’s ass.

Just Fire Your Doctor

Ah, Internet reading, the posts you inspire. Also, ah, Internet reading, how common threads turn up in different places. In this case, the common thread — from size acceptance advocates, from chronic pain patients, from frequenters of sexual health haunts — is the advice to “just fire your doctor” if they aren’t meeting your health care expectations.

First off, I absolutely agree with the sentiment behind the advice. When I enter into a provider-patient relationship with a physician or nurse practitioner or midwife, I am seeking professional, expert health care advice and services, yes, services I usually cannot provide for myself. However, guess who has the best overall knowledge of me? That would be… me. As such, given that I am seeking advice and services about health care applied to me, I bring some expertise to the table too. I respect my providers’ knowledge. Any providers who refuse to respect my knowledge about my own self — my history, my body, my priorities — are not good providers for me. I should be able to “fire” each and every one of them and to seek services elsewhere.

Except, it isn’t always that easy.

For people without insurance and/or with limited incomes, health care in the US (and in other places, I’m assuming, but this is my frame of reference) is expensive, sometimes prohibitively so. While I’ve been fortunate to have medical insurance for most of my life, there have definitely been times when I could not have afforded a second visit to another provider — at least not inside any kind of short time frame, should appointments even be available.

Even with affordable insurance, there are sometimes limits to how many different providers one can see. For example, I am currently permitted to change my primary care provider one time per plan year. Any time I want to see a specialist, I need a referral from said primary. (Which can be an issue if, say, my primary care provider disagree on what is wrong with me and whether consulting a specialist is necessary. Then it takes one extra doctor — and one extra copay — to get to the doctor I wanted to see in the first place.)

In cases like those, my realistic choice was between settling for sub par treatment and settling for no treatment. In cases like those, I have, at times, been willing to tolerate unprofessional treatment — judgment about my weight, mental health, or sexual history — in order to obtain the services I need in the shorter term. It’s not pretty, but there you have it.

Additionally, some health care issues are urgent. When I am, say, gushing pints of blood out my vagina, “firing” the ER doctor is not the most accessible option.

Then there are mobility and availability issues to consider. Some people live in rural areas, where the “next doctor over” is ten or twenty or fifty or a hundred miles. For people without independent transportation, there’s a limit to how far they can reasonably travel — round trip — in a day. Hell, for people with reliable cars, there’s a limit to how far they can drive — taking off work, if they can, perhaps unpaid — to see a second health care provider. For people with chronic pain or bodily mobility issues, those can be limiting factors as well.

When all’s said and done, some of us just plain run out of health care providers. I mean, I have health insurance, and for regular office visits — urgent care, advanced imaging, and surgical care notwithstanding — I can basically afford my copays as often as I go now (somewhere between two and four times per year for non-acute care). I live in a good-sized city, though it’s not a major metropolitan area, and it is in a Western state — meaning that distance between cities and to the nearest major metro area is rather enormous compared to my experience with states east of the Mississippi.

But I also have endometriosis. Specifically, I have microscopic endo with chronic pelvic floor involvement. In lay terms, I have an odd presentation of endo sufficient that it confuses — explicitly or in practice — all the endo specialists in my good-sized city. (I say “or in practice” because there was one doctor who was sure he had my magic solution — but who couldn’t figure out why I wanted more endo management than, “Congratulations, your fertility should be perfectly intact. You’re one of the lucky ones.”) There was one awesome pelvic floor physical therapist, but getting my insurance to cover enough visits (apparently they do not understand that some folks may require physical therapy for chronic conditions as well as acute ones) was an endless barrage of paperwork red tape and phone call runarounds. And anyway, she moved away.

I’m very loyal to my current nurse practitioner, but objectively, there are a lot of reasons why she’s not the best for me. She’s not an endo expert, and she’ll be the first to admit that she’s old — more to the point, that no matter how hard she tries to keep up with the various new developments of her patients’ health care needs, things often change faster than she can process, let alone memorize. Even more to the point, she prescribes too few pain meds and won’t refer me either of the two pain management clinics here in town. (According to her, one is unlikely to prescribe any opiates without an opiate contract. The other is likely to be freer with the prescription pad but unwilling to pursue other avenues of pain management. My independent research, though limited, suggests that her assessments are — more likely than not — accurate.) Additionally, while she does not berate me for my weight, her office requires that she discuss it with me at my physical every year.

Could I “fire” my nurse practitioner? Certainly — though if I do so, I’m stuck with whichever new provider I choose until August 2013.

Should I “fire” her, though? In the abstract, I really couldn’t say. I mean, if someone came to me, cited my NP’s same shortcomings in their own health care provider, and said they were dissatisfied with the quality of their health care, I could neither disagree nor fault them for their assessment of the situation. Even for myself, whatever else I could or might say in my NP’s defense, I continue to have health issues that are insufficiently managed.

Am I going to do it? No, flat out. It is true, technically, that I could find another health care provider who helps me better than she does — and that I could do it on the very next try. That said, my “on the ground” experience here suggests that I’m actually four to five times more likely to find someone who does a worse job of things. And, given the various real life limitations going on, four to five years is a long time to wait to make “firing” my provider actually pay off.

Can’t Have Everything

I’ve been thinking I’ve been angry at the Internet a lot in the past few days. I mean, there’s the standard “inadvertently glancing at comments on a mainstream media news post” and “dealing with hateful troll comments” types of angry. On their own, I can brush them off pretty easily, but piled on top of others, they’re still part of the baseline. Then there are the hit-or-miss blogs I read occasionally; in the past few days, they’ve been more miss than hit.

But I’ve been most angered by comments in places I’d previously regarded as safe spaces for particular types of conversations and issues.

As it happens, I am wrong — both about those being safe spaces and about me being angry.

Really, I realized during an hour of stepping the fuck away and reminding myself of what yoga feels like, I am hurt.

Previously, I’d considered these spaces to be ones where I could let my guard down regarding things like fat, disability, and body image. For a considerable length of time, especially in Internet terms, that worked well for me. Now, though, it seems that some of those spaces have become more focused on being more educational, discussion-oriented spaces for a wider variety of readers and commenters.

Don’t get me wrong. I’m not saying that these are now bad spaces or that we don’t need spaces that focus on 101-type social justice education. However, I think it’s not always possible to be a space that’s both open to folks who’d like that 101-type explanation to their questions or reservations and that’s supportive of folks who are literally frustrated to screams and tears by the repetitive and potentially insensitive nature of those questions. Can’t always have it both ways.

Which is why I can no longer visit those spaces in the same way — because they are no longer safe spaces for me. In short, when people ask clueless questions or make misinformed comments — even when they do so innocently, respectfully — it hurts unless I put up conscious emotional defenses against it (sometimes even then). Those defenses are stressful, anxiety-inducing. I need places to go where I can be without them sometimes.

Maybe sometimes, I will still visit when I have sufficient psychological reserves. But they can’t be the places I go after a long day at work and in the world, where I’ve been busy being strong for everyone else. They can’t be the notifications the pop up in inboxes and dashboards the ones I might open for sake of the title when I’m really not prepared for what’s inside.

They now join the long list of places I can read when I’m ready to give back even more. The list of spaces I can go to find peace and to restore? That one continues to shorten.

DVD Review: Baron Baptiste Core Power Live!

(No, really. The DVD title does include the exclamation point.)

PS — This DVD will not be up for giveaway.

I realized with the last DVD I reviewed, one of the reasons I didn’t like it was because it felt like too much physical workout packed into too short a time frame. I’d like to contrast that with this DVD, a practice that gives a more-appropriate-for-me level of physical intensity inside a similar time frame.

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Specs for Baron Baptiste Core Power Live!

Yoga Style: Power vinyasa, with a specific focus on developing core strength.

Suited To: People interested in developing abdominal and back strength. Yogis who are essentially familiar with sun salute positions and safe back bending technique — as well as whose bodies are safe with asanas like down dog, (modified) chaturanga, and upward table.

Props: Blanket suggested for padding under knees, if that’s your thing. I don’t believe there are other places where props are suggested, nor do I find myself wanting them when I use this DVD.

Run Time: Amazon tells me 30 minutes start to finish. However, there’s a verbal introduction and opening credits that take up a couple of minutes. (On the DVD menu, it is possible to skip that introduction after the first time through.) For the actual asana practice, I get closer to 25 minutes.

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Woo Disclaimer: There is some woo going on in this here video. Baron Baptiste sort of reminds me of most every summer camp counselor I’ve ever had. He’s very warmly, sincerely enthusiastic, but it’s sometimes a little too enthusiastic for my skeptical self. That said, the woo does remain inside my levels of tolerance.

Part of that is because Baptiste takes some active steps toward making the practice accessible to more people. In the introduction, Baptiste offers instructions like “listen to your body” and — this one is my favorite — that you may need to go at “fifty percent of your maximum” while you’re getting used to the practice. It’s easy for me to read that as blanket permission to modify — not that I feel I need said permission, but it’s nice when instructors articulate it. He goes on to offer a number of modifications for poses — bent knees in down dog and forward folds, knees on the ground in chaturanga, holding the legs in half navasana — that back up this idea.

The basic sequencing, by the way, looks like this:

Sun Salutes — After a quick integration in uttanasana, there are 4 basic sun salutes. The first one moves slowly as it’s where most of the modifications are initially offered. While the other three move comparatively faster, none of them are what I’d call “fast” — which is good for me, as Baptiste mentions them as being “warm ups,” and I am a creaky old woman at the beginning of my practice.

Back Bending — Consisting of bow, camel, and bridge. It does feel a bit weird to me to go into these back bends so early in a practice. The focus, however, is more on stretching the front side of the body than it is on strengthening the back, particularly for the first two. In that spirit, I only go until I feel a stretch along my abdomen and hips, stopping before I’m going into what would be a deep (for me) back bend. Still, I’d have liked to see some explicit modifications here, like teaching bow pose with a strap [links to video] or letting the hands stay at the sacrum during camel.

Abdominal Work — Mostly consisting of a number of navasana variations, with some bicycle crunches and other reclining ab work thrown in for good measure. There are some explicit modifications here, such as supporting the head or the legs with the arms. Additionally, the reclined position of a number of the poses lend themselves toward being supported by the ground; that is, the most likely “trouble” a person is to have with these poses is that they won’t be able to lift as high off the ground, which doesn’t affect safety and — as far as I am concerned — is totally still “doing” the pose.

Floor Work — Some forward folds and some twists. Namely, diamond, paschimottanasana, a revolved paschimottanasana, and a lying spinal twist. Savasana is on the shorter side, though it’s structured here so that if you want, you can remain in it through the closing credits.

I remain perturbed by body representation in yoga videos, though this one does better than most. The “Live!” part of the title is to signify that it’s filmed in front of a live, fairly large studio class. As such, the people demonstrating the poses are students in the class rather than folks who’ve rehearsed this as a routine. While most everybody pictured seems to fit cultural norms for “fit” bodies — women without fat, men without fat and with visibly defined muscle — there is definitely more body shape and size variety in this DVD than in most others I’ve seen. And it helps because differently shaped and sized people… wait for it… do the poses differently, either consciously taking different variations or organically by virtue of bodies being unique. It’s nice to see it here, even in what is still a relatively narrow range of body types. How much more would we be able to see that variation if more different bodies were represented?

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.

Back to School Guest Blogging

I know, I know. It’s not back to school for most of you. Either you’re out of school entirely, or you never left, or you’re in an area where this is not yet “back to school” time. However, in the glorious state of Arizona, we are all about paying for large-building utilities during the hottest month of our year — meaning I start back for pre-service next week.

As such, nothing would make me happier than to dedicate Anytime Yoga space for as many guest bloggers as possible. And as regular readers know, while the title of the blog does revolve around yoga, actual posting content goes quite a bit farther and wider. So whether you’re a yogi or not, odds are good there’s room for a topic that suits you here.

Things You Should Know Before Deciding Whether to Guest Author Here:

1. I cannot afford to compensate guest bloggers financially. Therefore, I hope to tantalize your sensibilities in other ways.
2. Guest posts don’t have to be strictly on topic for Anytime Yoga. (For ideas about what’s on topic, check the tag cloud.) However, they should be in line with the values set forth here. For example, a post about how much you love [physical activity that is not running or yoga] or [issues you have with disability that is not endometriosis or PTSD] should be completely fine. On the other hand, posts about [how X weight loss technique is the coolest thing ever] or [how Y marginalized group is just whining or complaining] are better suited to… well, the majority of the rest of the Internet. But not here.
3. You’re more than welcome to include a link to your personal and/or community blog — and/or to cross post an appropriate (one you own the rights to and that fits in with Anytime Yoga’s values) piece that has appeared at one of those sources. Writing that has appeared in multiple other locations — again, not the best fit for here.
4. I will do my best to promote the shit out of your post [technical term] according to your wishes [if you prefer I not, that's fine too].

So. I think that’s all.

If you have general questions — those you feel comfortable asking in public and/or that you think would be applicable to a wider audience — feel free to ask here.

If you have specific questions — or ones that you’d prefer remained private, for whatever reason — feel free to email me at anytimeyoga@gmail.com.

Finally, thanks to everyone who’s even considering!

Summer DVD 7: Rodney Yee’s Power Yoga for Strength

This DVD is up for giveaway.

Not gonna lie: This DVD is up for giveaway because it’s not my favorite. It’s short and fast, but I wish it was longer and slower. I feel a little bad about going, “Hey, I find this DVD mediocre! Want it?” So I’m hoping there’s someone out there whose yoga taste differs from mine.

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Specs for Rodney Yee’s Power Yoga — Strength:

Apologies for the white spot blocking part of the “ga” in “yoga.” It’s the remnants of a price tag that I can’t quite remove.

Yoga Style: Power yoga.

Suited To: While the subtitle suggests it’s “for beginners,” I’d interpret that to mean people who are new to power yoga, not to people who are new to yoga overall — as the pace is pretty fast and only the more intricate poses are explained in detail. Also, as there are a number of arm balances and arm balance prep poses, it’s probably most comfortable for folks without shoulder or wrist issues.

Props: A strap is suggested as an option for a reclining hamstring stretch.

Run Time: There’s an introduction as well as some music-only/credits time at the end. From the beginning of the asana practice to the end of the final centering is about 24 minutes; the DVD run time is about 30 minutes overall.

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The DVD starts with an introduction by Rodney Yee on power yoga, the sequences in the practice to build strength, and the benefits of yoga in general. While he does mention that yoga has physical benefits, he stresses the chief benefit as increased connection between body, mind, and breath.

The asana practice starts out with some basic sun salutes, which he adds onto as the DVD progresses. After a couple of simple sun salutes, he adds the following asanas (one per sun salute, not cumulative) into the flow:

• side plank with bottom knee and calf on the ground
• side plank with feet stacked
• some cross-body pendulum repetitions, which end up being a nice prep for
• pendant pose with variations, so it’s not necessary to be able to get one’s feet off the ground
• warrior 1
• crow, again with options so lifting the feet isn’t necessary
• seated twist
• shoulder pressing pose

Those may be out of order, and I may have missed one or two poses in between.

The chief complaint I have with the more active part of this practice is that it goes too fast to be terribly useful to me. The asanas flow together very quickly, and if yoga is about linking breath and movement — Well, the way this DVD is structured, I feel like my movements are dictating my breath rather than the other way around. I’m not sure if this is a function of larger body = bigger movement through space = need more time to do it, or if the pacing is too fast for a lot of people.

Additionally, in a couple of the arm balances, I really wanted to set up some blocks, but there was no time to do it. For instance, in pendant, the presence of boobs limits how closely I can tuck my knees into my chest. And while I know not lifting my feet off the ground does not mean I have Failed at Yoga, when the reason for it is because I can’t set up properly for my body, I get grumbly. Similarly, this early in a practice, my body is not as open as it is later on. Blocks reduce the angle and strain on my wrists, and the lack of wrist injury frees me up for many happy poses in the future.

On the plus side, the faster pace does make for some good if short cardio. Moreover, it is really fun and unusual to see a DVD practice that includes suspended arm balances other than crow pose.

Anyway.

After the standing segment, there’s a brief cool down. I honestly don’t remember if there were seated postures, but there was definitely a reclined hamstring stretch with a strap explicitly offered as an option. Savasana felt quite short to me — a minute or two — before Yee instructs to come back up into a seated position to seal the practice.

Perhaps you see why I feel awkward about putting this up for giveaway. I don’t see anything that feels unsafe about the DVD, and in fact, approaching the arm balances in steps is a great way to make them more accessible to people building upper body and core strength. That said, while nothing in this DVD is explicitly body negative or policing, there is a lot in it that doesn’t seem to take my body into account.

All that said, my body =/= all bodies — and the DVD is free. Worst thing that happens is you try it out and end up agreeing with me.

If — after my stellar review of this DVD — you’d like to be in the giveaway drawing anyway, please leave a comment either here, on my Facebook page — or both for two entries — by Wednesday, July 25. I will announce a winner on Thursday the 26th.

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?

Letter to Clothing Retailers

To department stores, women’s clothing retailers, sellers of athletic wear or other specialty clothing, and all other relevant business ventures:

I accept that the majority of you do not sell clothing in my size, despite the fact that I have a body to dress and — sometimes, at least — money to spend.

For those who fit that category, I accept that if I enter one of your establishments and ask, “Do you carry size [mine]?” I will be met with much the same reaction as if I’d asked, “Do you carry plates of steaming poop?” As though your sales associates consider it amusing or horrific or unseemly that they should be expected to inhabit a place of employment that sells clothing in larger than size 12 or 14 or 16.** Occasionally, one will respond with genuine regret, but those are the exception rather than the standard.

Among stores that do sell clothing in my size, I accept that even this is of limited utility to the general plus size population. That is, a number of you will carry only up to sizes one or two larger than size [mine], meaning that people who are significantly larger than I am have even fewer clothing options than I do. In fact, what some of you will call “plus sizes” in your store extend only to what others consider the upper range of straight sizes.

Moreover, if you’re a store that sells both straight and plus sizes, your plus size selection will encompass approximately 5-20% of the floor space dedicated to all women’s clothing, and your selection of clothing in plus sizes will be proportional to those percentages. In addition, any sort of “specialty wear” — such as evening wear, swimwear, athletic wear, business attire, or lingerie (none of which are rare in straight sizes) — will be even scarcer.

I get it. Some plus size people will get to wear some articles of clothing — whether it’s suitable to our needs or not, at least it’s something — and you expect us to be grateful. In fact, you expect us to pay extra for the privilege.

And more or less I keep my mouth shut and abide by these rules.

However.

When I am in the plus-size section of a plus-size-carrying store minding my own plus-size businesses, not even getting too close to the perimeter of that section lest another customer or an employee think I have the audacity to expect anything in the rest of the store to fit me — in short, when I am doing my damnedest to be as unobtrusive and invisible as possible — how dare you stick a rack of straight-size clothing in the middle of the plus-size section? Are you seriously trying to tell me that a five-foot-by-ten-foot, three-rack plus-size section was just too expansive? That there was utterly nowhere else that this rack of (admittedly fabulous) sleeveless blouses could go?

Let me break down the math for you. If you have about 50 racks (a conservative estimate for the store where this actually happened) dedicated to straight size clothing, and you remove one, this leaves you with 49 racks dedicated to straight size clothing:

50 – 1 = 49

This means you have decreased the amount of available straight size racks by 2%, leaving 98% still on the floor:

1 / 50 = 0.02 = 2%

49 / 50 = 0.98 = 98%

If, however, you have 3 racks dedicated to plus size clothing, and you remove one, this leaves me with only 2 racks of clothing that might fit me. This decreases my selection options by approximately 33%:

3 – 1 = 2

1 / 3 ≈ 0.33 = 33%

Listen, if you don’t actually want my business — you know, because refusing money is a sound tenet of any capitalist business plan — then please, just say so. I will instead spend my money on extra Body Glide and Coppertone and just run around in my Vibrams all day. Because I’m sure this is a solution that works for everyone.

But regardless of what I am or am not wearing, me, my body, and my purchasing power are not going away.

** By the way, what’s up with the discrepancy? If you’re mostly not going to make or sell clothing in plus size, can we at least have some sort of industry standard for where straight sizes always stop and plus sizes always start? Because I would not keep asking your employees if I already knew. It’s not like the process is fun for me.

Book Review: The Earth, My Butt, and Other Big Round Things

This post will contain discussion of disordered eating, including binge eating and dieting, as well as body policing.

Additionally, it will contain discussion of rape.

Finally, there will also be spoilers about the book’s plot and ending.

The author is Carolyn Mackler. And yes, that is a Printz Honor Book seal on the front.

Whenever I read a book where a fat character is portrayed as having disordered eating patterns, I get leery. This is the stock way to make a fat character sympathetic. “Well, yes, she’s fat because she eats too much. But she can’t help it, the poor dear!” Because it’s done fairly often (at least, in the context of books that feature fat characters, which I’ll admit is not a large one), some authors assume it can function as shorthand, that it’s not necessary to give the character the nuanced and complex circumstances and emotions that would make this realistic. “But she chipped a nail, and now she won’t look her best for the Justin Bieber concert this weekend!”

So I was gratified to discover than when it comes to The Earth, My Butt, and Other Big Round Things, Virginia Shreves’s issues with food and her body do stem from a whole heap of intertwined issues that she can’t fully process — at least at the beginning of the novel — let alone control.

The simpler stuff first:

There is a boy, yes. There is a boy with whom Virginia is having a “make out, don’t talk, don’t acknowledge one another in public” sort of relationship. Not because that’s a careful, mutual decision on each of their parts but because Virginia assumes — because she is fat — that this boy will not have it any other way.

There is a best friend, yes, a best friend who moves away for a year. Cue Virginia worrying that she has no other friends — because, well, she has no other friends — and growing yet more insecure because geographically removed best friend is making new friends in her new place.

There are designated Popular Girls. You will know them because they are pretty, thin, and rich (though everyone seems to be financially well off in this novel). They are the favorite students of the Mean French Teacher, and they break school rules while being considered model students. So when one of them says, of Virginia and in her hearing, “[I]f I were that fat, I’d kill myself,” there is some social weight behind it.

Then, we get into the family:

Virginia’s mom used to be fat. She is now thin, by virtue of dieting, exercising constantly, and projecting her body image issues onto her younger daughter. Not only does she take Virginia to a doctor to discuss her weight (not her habits, not her health), but she reacts with disappointment when the doctor steers the discussion back to health. She smiles approvingly while, at a restaurant, Ginny eats salsa with a spoon instead of a tortilla chip (because chips are bad for fatties, of course). There is a Public Scene when Virginia wants to try on more revealing clothes from the juniors section of a store rather than the layered, “hide me” clothes in that store’s plus-size section.

And dad, who offers to take her clothes shopping only when he learns that Virginia is dieting. Who checks out her bedroom and decides, on his own, that she needs a full-length mirror to look at herself. Who says to his daughter, “Think how much prettier you could be if you lost twenty or thirty pounds.”

When Ginny goes on a diet, neither parent acknowledges how truly restrictive it is. Both express approval when she attaches thinspiration messages to the frame of her mirror and thinspiration images to the front of the fridge. It really is like trying to lose weight is the one thing she can do that gets her parents to pay positive attention to her.

Until her older brother Byron gets sent home — suspended — from university after being found guilty of rape by the university’s Office of Sexual Misconduct. Virginia’s gut reaction is to believe the victim, even though it means believing that her brother raped another student. Virginia’s parents, on the other hand, lend their primary support and allegiance to Byron — leaving Ginny on her own to cope with this, which involves her reevaluating her entire relationship with Byron, on top of everything else.

At the beginning of the novel, I was prepared for some too simple, “fatties just gotta put down the Twinkies and pick up self-confidence” non-spiration. I was ready for the magical weight loss recovery story to fall flat. It did not, because it’s not a magical weight loss story. There are habit changes — but they’re about Virginia recognizing why she sometimes binge eats and addressing that at its cause. They’re about her finding exercise that she likes that’s also in a supportive environment. More importantly, they’re about her learning what she likes and values in herself and taking steps to make that happen out in the world.

There is some weight loss in there, enough so that her father comments on it. But more telling, I think, is Virgina’s response. “I’d rather you don’t talk about my body. It’s just not yours to discuss.” That kind of ownership is nothing but awesome.