Lyrically Speaking

  When I was 12, my Aunt took me with her the summer she moved from Arizona to Illinois for a job. This is the first clear memory I have of traveling anywhere – I have blurry memories of driving from Lake Tahoe to Arizona – but nothing as clear as sitting with her watching states roll by through the window of her Saturn. It was my first time seeing emerald green as a color that plants and landscapes could have in the humid morning we spent in the Ozarks of Missouri or the Bright red dirt of Oklahoma. It was as if the girl who spent a lot of time buried in books to seek adventures was finally getting to be the star of her own adventure.   I attribute this trip as the spark to my wanderlust for adventure and travel – the trip that taught me what it was like to breathe.

 I have just finished three books within the past week. All of these books has extremely problematic views on fat bodies. All of them talked about getting fat, as it was the worst thing a person could do. All of them made food have morality in that they were good or bad. All of them talked about larger bodies with negative adjectives and assumptions.  If you are wondering why we have ingrained anti-fat bias, it is because it is permeated in everything that we consume from movies, TV, advertisement, books, and social media. In stories where we are asked to suspend our belief of real and imagine made up people and places, writers have continued to use a narrative that is shaming and damning to fat bodies. As if even in a fictitious world, we are “beasts" that should not exist or should be feared. All of it tells us, fat bodies are wrong.  All of it focused on women based characters consumed by the notion that fat is bad. Where male characters are given permission to be obse...

I have been thinking about how all conversations I have had, or any argument people have against the Black Lives Matter movement, gun control or anyone speaking out against police brutality always leads to them talking about some other injustice. More white people are killed by cops is often cited, not considering the population adjustment and the actual percentage of whites killed versus black. But of course, their outrage is not that this is happening, but rather that no one is talking about it the same or its not getting the same amount of coverage. I think that if you are so outraged about the amount of white deaths at the hand of police, then maybe do something. Maybe something needs to be done with the police force, which is what we’re saying when we say defund the police. Of course, it’s complicated, of course there are a lot of variables into defunding the police, but its something that needs to be done.  When we talk about Gun Control and the need to have bans on specifi...

Here is how body image issues get to me: Yesterday my active wear from Lane Bryant arrived after much anticipation. I was so excited that I didn’t waste any time putting on the elastic pants pulling them up over my large hanging stomach and feeling the thick band secure around my waist. Skeptically I walked briskly out of the bathroom and around our downstairs living area. The pants stayed firmly around my waist. I jiggled my body. Nothing. I beamed.   I sat down, then got up again. Beamed again. They were staying firmly around my hips and holding the hanging fat of my stomach closer to my body which helped moving around without issue.  This was monumental for me purely for the fact that I had always struggled with pants staying up around my waist and struggled even more with finding leggings or any type of pant that would allow me to move my body freely without constant disruption of holding my pants up with my hands. It’s not that I don’t like moving my body or exercising,...

When I was just shy of 19, I got my first job in a call center that outside of food service seemed to be the only acceptable job a fat person could have. Perhaps it was the same idea that I have a face for radio? Society decided, lets hide them in cubicles or sweatshop like spaces and handle phone call after phone call. They (fat people) can be productive but out of sight. But, I digress.  When I think back on my slow process from chubby over weight kid to “morbidly obese” teen I can say that it happened slowly. One day I was maintaining a size and 3-5 years later, I was moving up in size. By the time I was 19,  I was already in what is now considered a large fat bordering the line of crossing over from a size 32. I was already too fat for most plus sized clothing available. I was already part of the “here’s a tent” club. I was in a new place, with no friends yet and feeling the own weight of own feelings of being a troublesome burden to my family. I strongly believe and ...

I have been thinking about what I wrote the other day on an instagram post regarding my hesitation of wearing clingy clothing and how I only made mention of not liking clingy clothing for the “exposure of my bumps and stomach.” As if it was a shame I had felt. Not expressing that my hesitation is not only tied to my changing view of my body and exposing parts I have been told to cover up. But also because publicly posting and existing in tight clothing allows more fodder for fetish and objectifiers. The boldness I truly spoke of was pushing past these people in effort to show that we are allowed to “not cover up” and opening myself up to them more. Its a really hard thing for me to move past because it makes me incredibly angry.  My words are easily minced with insecurity and lacking confidence because I am learning to retrain my own fat phobic auto responses in my views of myself and others. They are easily seen as deficient in conviction because fat bodies are not afforded these ...