-Danny Lee, March 2016
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It’s me!
In the fall of 2013, some friends and I started a writing group together. It was seven of us, all fat, queer, and femme but very different from each other outside of those identities. One of us was black, two of us were brown, four of us were white, five of us were from families with money or class access, two of us were poor, one of us didn’t have a college degree (me), none of us had kids (at the time), only one of us was over 30 (also me). We got together a couple times a week to talk, eat, and write about our experiences having those identities. Mainly, though, we wanted to talk about being fat.
FAT.
Photos of the original group
We wrote a play about being fat. We called it “FAT: the play”. We performed it in front of a live audience in a fringe festival competition, though only two of us had any experience on stage outside of a karaoke bar. We won. We won Best of Week, then performed it again and won Best of Fest, and they asked us to perform it two more times. An audience of mostly non-fat strangers and theater buffs voted our play one of the very best out of something like 100 entries.
Program for the first ever FAT: the play; program art by me.
For more info on what even is a Fringe Festival, go here: http://www.fringefestivals.us
In the summer of 2014, after performing the play twice more and participating in a feminist conference, we made a zine about the writing of the play and re-wrote the play itself, extending it from 24 minutes to 45 minutes. We organized and put on a fat showcase in the fall of 2014, the first showcase of that kind ever in Austin, TX, including four fat performers (two burlesque pieces and two spoken word artists/poets) and our play. We rehearsed for months. Putting on that play, putting my body out there, was the single most empowering thing I have experienced. When I close my eyes, I can still hear us chant in the dressing room before the show, “I am fat and I am revolutionary! I am fat and I am revolutionary! I am fat and I am revolutionary! I am fat and I am revolutionary! I am fat and I am REVOLUTIONARY!!!!!!”
Rehearsal photo from the plumpfemmes IG: “FAT: the play 2 rehearsal or ANTM cycle 22?? You decide!”
Show poster! (Sara August did not perform with us that night)
Five days after that show, my oldest baby was born and my life changed dramatically and instantly. And in a very short time, I lost a lot of access to my community. Every one of the people I used to spend my daily time with is childless. And since I stopped going out to bars or being able to hang out at 10 o’clock at night, I lost most of my contact with those folks. I see or talk to some of them occasionally, but it’s not like it used to be. My partner is thin and since I live pretty rurally, I rarely see fat people. Losing that community, losing visible fat people in my day-to-day life, sent me reeling into back into that old pit of body hate, and I have been desperately trying to claw my way out again.
Days after the birth of our Dragon
This little glow worm just staring at me.
How I spend a LOT of my time these days.
Don’t get me wrong, my life is beautiful. I have more than I ever dreamed I’d have. My partner is incredibly supportive and fat positive. He is gentle, considerate, compassionate, kind, sweet and OH SO sexy. He loves my body. He and I are partners in every way, splitting all domestic labor, including care for the kids. My kids are so perfect and weird and fun, and I am over the moon to be their mama. We are working to teach them from the get-go that their bodies are inherently loveable and worthy. I want them to know that their bodies are their own, and are no one’s business but theirs. We are (semi) jokingly teaching them to say “FUCK YOU, MISTER,” as a retort to those who say or imply otherwise. We want them to know they get to tell the patriarchy to fuck off.
These beautiful baby wraps are by Tekhni
On a family walk on our beautiful Texas Hill Country land
Our family is just so full of love.
As a fat and queer femme, I came into my journey of becoming a parent finding so few stories, so few photos and so little information about what it means to be a fat parent, or fat and pregnant. The images, stories, and medical advice that was readily available all stemmed from the experiences of thin people. Stories about fat parents are, at best, erased from cultural discourse about parenting and pregnancy, and, at worst, are a sideshow, a spectacle, or a punchline. It took a LOT of searching and sorting to find little threads of fat parent community and even more so to find queer fat parenting community. Well, I haven’t found any queer specific, fat specific community, yet. I did, however, find an amazing online community of plus size parents (majority straight mom-identified cis women) growing out of babywearing groups on facebook.
About 12 weeks pregnant
About 20 weeks pregnant
About 38 weeks pregnant
At first, I had to be convinced to join by one of the admins of the group. She told me that I would encounter people talking about their weight loss journeys but they were a good group of gals, so I should give it a chance. I felt really skeptical that I could find community in this space that was made up of mostly straight women who identify as “plus size”. There weren’t any obvious queers and, at first, I couldn’t tell that anyone identified as fat. But I was so craving fat community among parents, I joined anyway. And I almost quit. Like a dozen times. Every single damn time someone posted about their weight loss, or needing to lose weight, or what diet are you on or their before-and-afters looking for ass pats, I almost left the group. But as people started, slowly and occasionally, becoming more obvious as fat identified and not 100% straight, I started engaging more. I started seeing the attitude of this group become more and more, “FUCK YOU I’M FAT” rather than, “Fuck, I’m fat :(“ and I love it. It’s becoming this space where a fat mom can see other fat moms calling themselves fat, and feeling so good about it.
I joined this group knowing it wasn’t a fat positive or fat safer space, but seeing how badly this space needed to be that. A lot of folks in this group had never heard of fat positivity. I have been receiving personal messages for months from group members asking me for advice on how to not hate their bodies, and now, not a single day goes by that I don’t get a message from someone either asking for advice or thanking me for helping them see their beauty. I feel really proud of that.
I have been slowly, over the past year, doing my best to push this group in a fat-positive direction, and I am SO happy to say that the admins just instituted a new rule banning diet and weight loss talk in the group. It’s a decision that is definitely getting a lot of push back, but it’s getting even more praise and appreciation. The dissent has gotten really ugly, but the admins of this group are so dedicated to keeping it a safer space, they’ve basically been putting out fires stemming at least partially from this decision around the clock for the past several weeks. I’m so grateful to them and for all the hard work they do. I feel like I owe each of them a giant candy bouquet.
Image sourced from Google images
I’ve been thinking a lot about the anger that comes up for people when space is carved out to be specifically free from weight loss talk, even if it’s only in the tiny microcosm of a facebook group. We are taught to be so invested in weight loss as the one and only solution to the suffering that comes from fat oppression and our own self loathing; it’s easy to get caught up in that fantasy future, and any challenge to that can feel like a threat. This is absolutely not the first time I’ve witnessed or experienced this kind of reaction around myself or a group of people divesting from the fantasy that weight loss will magically fix everything. I’ve lost or experienced strain in a lot of relationships from my personal divestment from weight loss. When I asked my mom not to talk to me about weight loss, she screamed at me, in the parking lot of a grocery store, that she EXPECTED me to praise and congratulate her weight loss. Asking people to consider investing in unconditional body love instead (or even asking people to witness and allow others to invest in body love unchallenged) makes a lot of people angry!
Image sourced from Google images
In a group of people who have mostly given birth, I find it really important to push back against the idea that our bodies have to do something or produce something (i.e. pregnancy, birth, nursing) in order to have value as fat bodies. All our bodies have value exactly as they are right now, and they don’t have to do anything, be anything, be capable of anything, produce anything to be worthy or have value. They don’t have to function in any specific way, they don’t have to be “healthy” (because what does that even mean?). Our bodies are good, beautiful, perfect simply because they exist. Existing is enough to be worth our love and esteem. EXISTING IS ENOUGH.
Source: https://whilstibloom.wordpress.com/tag/art/
Body love is hard work. And when your body changes, like in the way bodies can change from pregnancy, it can be especially hard. Like when clothes don’t fit the way you want or expect. Like because the whole damn world is trying to convince you that there’s something deeply wrong/ugly/gross/unhealthy/unsexy about being fat. The whole world expects women to do certain things, like get pregnant or be able to get pregnant, and then we get punished for the consequences or punished when we can’t do it. Bodies change so drastically from having kids, whether you birth them or not!
My beautiful belly 12 weeks postpartum
Here’s some of the advice I have given fellow big fat mamas of things I do to boost my self love:
1) Get rid of clothes that don’t fit or don’t fit like I want. Work on finding clothes that fit the way I want. I want to recognize that being able to do this is highly related to my size and class privilege—clothes cost money and aren’t always accessible to people of all sizes. I don’t have a lot of solutions for fat mamas who are poorer and fatter than me, because capitalism and fat hating fashion industry. When I was poorer, I did a lot of thrift shopping and made choices to wear things in sizes and cuts that I wouldn’t normally reach for. It did force me to be really creative with how I dressed myself. In fact, I can trace my fatshion creativity primarily to being a poor fat femme most of my life, until I shacked up with my partner.
2) Take loads of selfies. Every day. Every angle. Seeing myself helps me find hotness in my body as it is right now. Consume the selfies of other fat people. Every day. Every angle. Finding hotness in other fat bodies helps me realize my own.
3) Engage in community with FAT people who love their bodies.
I want to recognize that finding a place in community is connected to identity, and that there is privilege in being white, cis, able bodied, neurotypical and smaller fat. In a white supremacist, ableist, fat hating dominant society, it’s often much easier for someone with my identities to find people who reflect my experience and identity and therefore support me. We white, cis, able bodied, neurotypical, smaller fat women need to be aware of the space we take up and do better to stand aside for, make room for, and support black and brown, trans, disabled, neuro atypical, super fat mamas, who experience amplified fat-hate and fat-shaming from society.
4) STOP accepting fat hate/shame from the people around me—tell people to knock it the fuck off if they want to be in my life. This is probably the hardest and most rewarding of all. The most virulent fat hate and shame I’ve experienced came from my own family, my closest friends and lovers. It’s harder to tell people you love to shove it when they shame your body, but it’s the most important time to do it. Being able to tell my mom that I would stop talking to her if she didn’t quit fat shaming me or herself or anyone, and meaning it, made it about 100 times easier to say that to strangers and acquaintances.
5) TOUCHING MYSELF. You know what else? Touching (with consent, obvs) other fat bodies. Reveling in another fat body helps me revel in my own.
Fat is delicious—in every way. Think of the way oil feels—silky and soft. Close your eyes. Touch the fattest, squishiest parts of yourself. I squish my inner thighs, my belly, my back rolls, my arm fats and my double chin. FEEL how good it feels! Soft, springy, squishy, comforting, warm, forgiving, tender, SEXY. Worthy of attention, love, appreciation, admiration.
My beautiful, hot, fat bod
My beautiful, hot, fat bod
Learning to love my fatness is about so much more than my own liberation. It’s also about my children now. It’s about making sure I am giving them an example of a fat woman who loves every single inch of herself—every roll, every wrinkle and dimple, every stretch mark, every bit that hangs and flaps, jiggles and shakes. From my double chin to my thick calves and all the way around. I want them to love their bodies always and right now! Even at their very small baby ages (they are 17 months and 3 ½ months old at the time I’m writing this), they have already been fat shamed by people close to them, including their pediatrician. And they are BABIES!
Whether they are fat or not, I want my children to grow up knowing how to push back against discrimination of any kind, including fat hate and shame. I want the first words to come out of their mouths the very first time someone tries to shame their bodies to be “FUCK YOU, MISTER!”
Big Fat Mama and her babies
Danny Lee is a fat-identified, white, femme, queer, 34-year-old non-indigenous Texan. She is a rural stay-at-home-mom trying to figure out how to handle 2 under 2, our darling little sweethearts, who we refer to on the internet by their in utero nicknames, Dragon and Lenny. Danny is also an artist, a home chef and rabble rouser.
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