I walked into a commonly-loathed fatshion store and tried on the 2 bras offered to me. They came in black and beige with polyester all over. Struggling to squish my tits into one, then the other cup was like playing chicken with the fat kid on top. It just so happened that of the two options available to me, only one option fit somewhat acceptable and so I walked out with a beige monstrosity big enough to fit on a toddler’s head.

I have been fighting with the bra industry for acceptable support since I started developing torpedo tits in the fourth grade. Back then it was ‘fuck it I’ll wear a t-shirt” and the occasional check-in from a classmate. Ever had an older kid try to snap a bra strap you didn’t have? It’s actually more embarrassing than later when I got snapped by an actual bra strap on my back. Granted this is steeped in misogyny and gender expectations that are screwed up and worthless as-is, I still felt the pressure to holster up and get my tits further up my body than gravity allowed.

By high school I was what I thought to be a DDD cup. This lasted through several bouts of anorexia and bulimia causing my front end to topple over my wasting bottom end more than once. I had an aching back, an aching butt, an aching body. Then I gained weight and everything balanced out. I went to college, went to my professional life, bought some femme attire and started hunting for a good bra fitting that told me how to properly hoist the flab in front to make me look like Wonder Woman. That’s when I found out I was a 42 F/G/H depending on the brand.

Cool.

Damn.

I’m fucking huge, no? Then I found out lots of boob-toting folk have some crazy alphabet number on their body. Except the bra industry says SUCK IT and gives us A-DDD. Except Lane Bryant who says here, have 2 options in F-H. Not sufficient I say, not sufficient. So I had a low point. I hit bottom. I wanted pretty.

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There’s a quaint little shop that’s opened up in my ‘hood that I’ve discovered I enjoy. Though it has no knowledge of two whole cakes it does carry whatever my fellow hoodlums sell or trade in. In bright green and annoying font I passed by grudgingly, surely they’d have nothing for me. I had just discovered a decent Goodwill, my thrifting was complete! But lo, after a friend gallantly shoved me through the doors I discovered…..Torrid pre-pink.

While an entire post could be dedicated to Torrid’s pre-pink days and my love for whomever brought in their pre-pink items, I digress. I was pretty pumped to walk into a neighborhood trendier-than-thou shop and find things in my size. Granted I found all of 3 things in my size but that’s a Big Deal in the fat thrifting world. Aside from a few amazing vintage hunters (Cupcake and Cuddlebunny, Re/Dress, a few I’m leaving out on accident) and your local fatswap, thrifting in the fat world can be downright depressing.

So here I am, finding some dresses, trying them on, loving one. One fit amazing from the under-boob down. I mean really amazing. I wanted to pull out the knee-high boots and flogger and hop on over to somewhere dirty, perverted and happy. The rub? Side boob. Lots of it. I mean talk about boobage. My G-cups weren’t running over necessarily, more like storming the gates…and taking the underarm fabric with ‘em.

I walked around that hipster haven and asked several women what they thought of the dress. M’eh was the overall opinion, side boob was the culprit. Yet the cleavage was excellent. Got me to thinking….why the front and not the side? Is this the bastardized cousin of the mullet? What gives?

Then I bought the dress. I had lofty ideals of reformatting it into something more lacy on top, maybe some fantabulous black lace additions, something chic and slutty. Instead, I’m embracing my side boob. I want a side boob revolution.

I was leaning against a sign that read “Bus Stops Here” and jamming to some Dresden Dolls, my trusty guide dog sitting politely at my left leg. He laid down impatiently as the minute hands ticked and still no bus in sight. Then, out of what most docs wouldn’t call peripheral vision I spotted a figure stooping for a pet-by.

What is a pet-by, you ask? It’s when a knowing pedestrian sneaks in a pet or smooch or otherwise grossly boundaries-crossing form of affection at an unsuspecting service animal. Not to be mistaken with human grabbings or other forms of harassment but nonetheless devious and irritating for both animal and human handler.

Without missing a beat and sans usual snark I said loud enough for passerby to hear that “that was a shitty thing to do.” There, I said it. That was a shitty thing for person to do. Ask first, respect my answer, move on. Clearly knowing petting wasn’t allowed, ze sneaked on by, hoping I wouldn’t notice. Too bad my dog alerts me, not liking unknown human touch too much.

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Fatshionism as it stands generally relates to fashion in a fat way. Fashion as it is understood generally relates to clothing and apparel. Hair as it stands on my head is not generally fat or fashionable. It’s organic and grown myself, thank you very much. So why do I feel the need to talk about fat hair?

Recently I had a conversation with a friend who for a while kept her hair butcher-shop short. She liked ¼ inch on top and some dangly earrings to boot. As her face has filled up with some much-earned fat she has let her hair grow longer and shaggier. When I asked why, it was because of the fat. Her face, she decided could no longer do well with the short spiky ‘do of her thinner days. While she wasn’t a fan of her new fat hair, she donned it with fat resignation and a promise to eat healthier tomorrow.

I thought about my own hair journey. I’ve never really felt at home with my kinky Jew hair so I’ve made it a point to fuck with it as much as possible. Long, short, shaved, fuscia, curled, flat-ironed, etc. You get the picture. I’ve never really worried about the flow of my hair and face, never really thought about whether my hair was fat-complimenting enough. Rather I attacked my hair like a separate beast of my body, the same way I tattooed my right arm and pierced my lip.

While dissecting our body parts into parts may not be the healthiest way to go about it (who said I was healthy?) I wonder what we as fatties, fatlettes and fat-allies would look like from the neck up if we stopped worrying about the neck down, the scale and/or the size of our shirts and pants. Would it suddenly be preposterous to claim some hairstyles “too fat” for some faces or would tiny faces suddenly get frizzy mops of joy? Would the hair industry change labels and would stylists stop tisking about cheeks, chins and nose lengths?

Note: a quick Google image hunt showed lots of non-fat hairs, I’d like to see some fat hairs. Please post yours! Fatshionista’s flickr is here or you can link to your own image hosting blog/site. ROCK THE FAT HAIR.

I love cleavage. I love that one of the most recent Fatshionista Twitter questions involving summer accessories involved queenbbb admitting that cleavage was a favorite summer accessory. I agree, summer cleavage makes me and Regina Spektor happy. There’s so much to it; how to get the right pusher-upper bra if you want a particular look, how to get the right droopy shirt so the temptation is perfected, etc.

But with cleavage comes a degree of responsibility. The most important one, I think is to make sure layering clothing doesn’t take away from or *gasp* hide it. Case in point: my favorite purple cardigan and pink v-neck cami. I am wearing these today (hi New England fatties!) and before leaving my house realized that - horror of horrors - the cardigan kept off-setting my rockin’ cleavage. Racking my brain and rack o-stuff I came up with a very convenient and sassy solution: employ more spoons.

Some of you may be aware of spoon theory: how much energy folks with chronic pain have in a given day to perform basic life tasks + socialize, etc. As someone with chronic pain I have been reticent to claim this whole concept as my own as generally I don’t walk around with physical spoons to play with. But not this morning friends, this morning I come prepared with my very own spoon so far out of the theoretical that it happens to be saving my cleavage.

While trying to keep the integrity of my rocker-chick ensemble (mmm office attire) I decided to discipline my cardigan with a simple spoon pin. Representative of the ever-allusive amount of energy I’m supposed to have in a day to dedicate to fashion, self-care, cooking, cleaning, dog-grooming, working, relaxing, writing, reading, being a student, being a lover…..is the spoon on my right breast. Very deep, very meaningful, very psycho-analytical if you will. Also very handy.

By inserting the spoon pin into both my cardigan and the linear part of the cami I got a clean, fatshionable save to the cardigan-screwing-with-my-cleavage problem. Now cardigan sits in place and my metaphorical spoons being used for other, more pressing matters can relax; a nice shiny faux-silver spoon is physically in place holding me together.

Accessories: not just for looking hawt anymore.

I walked into the small cosmetics shop squinting at the fluorescent lighting and hoping for the best. I had the most fabulous fatshionista I could find and was clinging to her arm for dear life. Anything would be better than my current boi look swept up into my roots as shade from the blind femme dying to get a hold of some red lip liner.

Strolling the aisles of that fluorescent dreamscape I touched every stick, tube and pot I could. I wanted to taste the lip gloss, smell the shadows and smudge every bit of color on my cheeks in one giant swoop. Damn the masses that were surely staring down at the kindly woman and her blind friend. Damn the jokes in my own head, “wear what you want, they’ll excuse you as the girl who couldn’t look in a mirror.” Clutching my small arsenal of newly minted femme supplies I headed for the door and out into my brave new world. I would try this femme thing on for size and see if my inner desire for mascara and color was worth it or setting me up for clownesque failure.

Months went by and the only femmes getting any use out of my little bag of color were the dust bunnies. I feared the mirror I could only squint at, feared the throngs of humans that would surely stare and laugh and feared thick, clumping lashes and that “not fresh” look. I feared styling and drawing attention to my crippled self. Remaining butch was safe, plain, inattentive and understood. I excused myself, blamed partners wanting an androgynous look, “lost” the wands and smudges. I hid from myself.

A year and a half later I walked into a small boutique selling cosmetics and cleansers. I agreed to let them scrub my face and sales pitch a moisturizer I already used but cringed when they said “want to try some color?” Why would I, don’t I look butch to you? Instead my lips parted and out came “yes please, please help me!” Out came the tools of the trade; a mascara wand to scare the calmest of Queens and a coral lip gloss. I was wearing mushroom eye liner and coral lip gloss. How I ever let myself get talked into coral I’ll never know…..but I learned how to put it on. I learned how to feel the mascara wand and buy smudge-tips for eyeliner, how to apply shadow so it’ll stay and smudge with my fingers. I learned that I had a choice in foundations and that glitter was not my enemy. My inner femme practically jumped out with joy. Here I was, this androgynous terrified grrrl holding mascara like ze knew what ze was doing and actually enjoying it.

It would seem so easy to be femme in a feminine world, wouldn’t it? The tools and the skills are at your disposal to invert as you see fit. Except I didn’t see fit, I didn’t see what I would look like if I replaced pale face with color. I didn’t believe that I could be viewed as a femme and blind and that I could keep up with the sassiness of femmeland in my altered reality. I choose to cling to butchness because I interpreted that to mean I could hide behind black and a shaved head. I wouldn’t have to learn an accessible way to style my self and wear colors and sassy clothing. Hiding was nice, comfortable and glitter-free.

I still fear walking out of my house in clown-style make-up, too much eyeliner and the wrong combination of shadow. But I stopped letting that fear dress me up every morning, I stopped letting my interpretation of how I was viewed and how I could be viewed dress me up every morning. Who knew a blind femme could wield mascara this fine?

There’s a show that’s long-since expired (I do believe) that had a great theme song, You’re Not The Boss of Me. The jingle is playing in my brain as I type this. As I sipped my afternoon soda and prepared for a weekend of fun and dirt, I read the most recent Shapely Prose post. Now I’m not generally a Prose follower but a friend asked me to check on the most recent post and report back on how I felt. I did just that.

In this post Kate Harding, site administrator and famous Fattie to boot posts an announcement of a new blogger joining the troupe. This blogger was admittedly more of the same white, smaller-fat/inbetweenie-fat, able-bodied cloth that the other Prose bloggers were cut from but Harding listed the reasons why that was eventually okay with her. Because she wasn’t originally looking for a new blogger, because this new person didn’t generally piss her off and the other bloggers liked her it seemed reasonable to include her while continuing to exclude other diverse fats out in the blog-o-sphere and/or wanting to join the fat-o-sphere.

Reading through the piece I found Harding to be relatively well-meaning and the other bloggers to have good intentions. They recognized their’ Wonder Bread so directly that was good enough, right? Right? RIGHT?

Nope. Step 1: admit you have a problem.

Step 2: work on fixing it.

There are so many diverse fat-o-sphere bloggers and so many more not being heard. I happen to be one of the only fat-acceptance bloggers who is and writes about disability. The Rotund and others at Fatshionista include Super-(Death)Fat. Curvy Girl Style! and The Curvy Fashionista [see also Young, Fat, & Fabulous and Nudemuse -L.] bring women of color to this mix and on and on and on. We’re here, and we have always been here. So why aren’t we being heard?

While the only change we can see happen as diverse fats is to get out there and talk, we have to be heard too, no? Privileged fats, those who are white or able-bodied or socio-economically sound or generally Western or smaller-fat, etc. etc. etc. need to listen, hear, welcome, and seek out the thoughts and opinions of their diverse community members. Not as special guests, not as one-hit wonders who make inciteful comments or cute webcomics but rather as movement members, fellow laborers who are working the land in our own way with similar goals. We may not all agree with eachother; this comes from coming from different types of cloth, but we can respect and incldue one another.

I welcome diverse fats to speak up and implore privileged fats to include us, value us and open those fattie mcfatfat arms so we can all sing you’re not the boss of me now and you’re not so big to the entire fat-phobic world, rather than to each other.

What’s it gonna take? When do we step up and include? When do we hear each other? When do we all matter?

I was piled under blankets and sheets and could not move. I couldn’t lift my leg, my arm, couldn’t turn over to turn off the alarm. I was stuck under the weight of my own brain telling my body to disappear for a while. Squinty-eyed and full of snot I over-shot and hit the alarm clock onto the floor.

Oh well, it got re-set and so did I. A few hours later I woke up and while able to move, wasn’t feeling too excited about it. I was in the middle of a full-on body flare; pain, misery, muscle cramps and the foggy-brain memory of a crash test dummy.

Already sensitive to my over-sensitive body, I stayed on the couch and pretended to be productive. I typed, I listened to chefs cut things on wooden boards, I drank tea. I tried to be good to my body as it flailed through another toss-up in the land of disability and crippledom. I even googled gluten-free living, wondering if maybe the food I was eating was killing me.

Then I saw the twitterings on International No Diet Day. Here I was, sitting on my couch trying not to induce further pain and frustration and the world was trying to tell me to eat something tasty and enjoy my body. I was conflicted; enjoy what? Enjoy the pain, the crippledom, the suffering, the snot of a runny nose? Enjoy the twinges and cramping, the muscle spasms and exploding ovaries?

It’s really hard to be body-positive and disabled. On the one hand, there’s an entire world telling me that I am broken and surely I am. My government has designed a system to keep me from succeeding, my family pretends I can get better with the use of carrots and denial and the entertainment industry highlights those of us who look cool enough to stare at but have enough private equity to appear successful. My body is generally on display as fat but also as inhuman; as disabled and therefore open for grabs, jabs, pokes, prods, and full-on attack.

My body has sadly become a casualty to ableism and here I am just trying to be fat!

Given that I am disabled first, fat second I left my house as the cripple that I am and ate in public. I ate in public like I fuck; hard, intentional and present. I ate a giant lemon-custard danish on the train and stared down a nurse. I let the filling touch the tip of my tongue and slowly sucked it down until I was left with glazed pastry crumbling around the corners of my mouth. I took a bite and inhaled, the dough melting on my lips before entering the cavern of my mouth. Before I could suck the sugary glaze off my fingers the nurse had gotten up, stared pointedly at me while standing over my straightened frame and huffed. Best pastry-gasm I’ve ever had. Possibly ze was having trouble reconciling that pastry-erection and had to exit, stage left? Maybe I should have used the protection of a nice waxy paper sleeve, accidently biting a corner and ruining the deliciousness so soon.

Like a good cripple, covering up so as not to bring reality outisde my bedroom - the good fattie hides the food ze eats. As if we don’t eat. As if humans subsist off fumes and really good imagination.

Sometimes you just gotta go public.

NOTE: there was a picture but I ated it. Soon fatsies, soon there will be a photo shoot including ice cream porn. Soon…just wait.

I weigh 242 pounds more or less. I stopped checking whenever hospitals required my presence because the number they’d repeat (happily or not) would send my mind into a spin. Too large? I couldn’t eat for a week. Too small? Sweet, I succeed at life! Same as before? How lazy am I, how many burgers have I consumed and why don’t I start back at the gym on Monday.

No other number has plagued me so. I am 5′5 and I’ve never been bothered by it. Sure I’m slightly shorter than my sister and taller than some of my closest friends but who cares? My shoe size is 9 and that’s never phased me; some of the best shoes in life are a size 9 and if they aren’t, then clearly another pair were destined for me. I wear a size 18/20, sometimes a 22/24, sometimes an XXL or 2X and that’s never ruffled my rolls. But that number on the scale? Forget it, I’m toast.

Even though it’s just a number and we can all say it’s just a number we all know it’s quite the opposite. It’s tender, legal and binding in the world of social acceptance. How we repeat it and discuss it becomes fodder for daytime television and comic routines. How we treat it becomes fodder for a whole industry of money-making schemes in little plastic bottles or the cardboard backs of dehydrated food product.

But it’s 3 digits. Sometimes 2 if you’re particularly short, sick or starving and sometimes 4 if you’re being featured on The Learning Channel (TLC). But really it’s meaningless. I’m 242. Maybe I’m more today, maybe I’m less. It’s been whispered in my ear like a dirty secret, shouted across the room in gym class, scoffed at in theater troupes and hidden behind mounds of paperwork. Don’t make me feel bad, don’t make me cringe, I know I’m fat and wretched and yes I’m starting that diet tomorrow. Please, I know I don’t look that fat. People who have that number on the scale usually grow fat arms out of the sides of their heads and extra fat mouths to consume extra fatty foods to add to the number on the scale. The scale must be off, my shoes are heavy, I’m menstrual.

Anything to avoid having to face that number.

But it’s there. It’s staring us in the eyes. It’s screaming at the top of its little lungs and it’s time we drown it out with our own voice.

242. 242. 242. 242. 242. 242.

I’m not even averting my eyes.

When I was 7 years old I got a Nintendo game system (NES) from my uncle. It was the one that had Duck Hunt and Mario Bros. and you shot and stomped your way through laughing dogs and fire-breathing flowers. Hooked up to an old plastic-wood-paneled television set in my mother’s bedroom, the NES brought me hours of isolating hilarity.

I always found the princess.

Today I found another princess, a fat one wearing a pinafore and eating some cake. I was intrigued by this princess, wondering why she lacked the beautiful gown and crown that my NES-filled days contained. I discovered she was a special princess. She was fat. Her goal was to get fatter. Then help blow things up.

Instead of getting saved, she was an obstacle. The more you fed her,the more challenging it would be for the other team to rescue her. Kind of like real fatties; the more you feed us, the more space we take up the less likely someone is to love us, desire us, hire us, clothe us appropriately.

The game creators say the cartoonist renditions of the scenes in the game are cute, that the blood and gore is great, that the fat princess is the joke. In fact in this interview she’s not mentioned once! And yet I wonder why a game entitled Fat Princess has less to do with princessness and more to do with a cartoonish fattie and some cake?

Making a princess fatter to spoil the other team seems to me to be pretty indicative of fatties in real life as well. Last week you saw your old high school buddy and boy was she fat or what?! The fatter the less attractive, the less likely to get saved, the less likely to be loved or deemed beautiful or successful. Success is the equivalent of…..less cake.

I would rather continue eating cake. Make it really hard for some team of bafoons to come waltzing in and rescue me from the land of fat. Since when is my body something to mock, some sort of fallen princess? I’ve got a tiara and I know how to use it!