OOTD: Climate change, you treat me so well!

I've gone over and over this; do I want to do Outfit Of The Day posts? Won't putting a picture to my name open me up to scary people? I'm not really that into clothes, so why would anyone care what I wear? In the end it comes down to this: There's a reason fat activists keep insisting it's a radical act just to be fat in public. Fat people are constantly pushed to make themselves less visible. We're told we're hard to look at, and if we insist on joining the world outside our front door, we should at least have the decency to wear something that will make it easier to not notice us. I want to fight against this! And, if I want to join the fight for fat visibility, I have to actually be visible (I've got fat down). In addition to this, I just don't think there are enough pictures of Norwegian fatties out there.

I present to you, my first OOTD:

Me, sporting the double, er, triple chin, and goofily/coyly waving hello.

Pretending to be sunbathing, and trying not to laugh at my posing.

Squinting at my photographer, who decided to go pro and take my picture from below.

Bonus picture! Model pose!
All photographs taken by D.

Om meg:
Height: 5'6"
Weight: Ca 255lbs
Size: 16/18 top, 18/20 bottom
Age: 25



What I'm wearing:

Top: Forever21+

Jeggings: Asos Curve

Sunglasses: RayBan

Wedge heels: Økonomisko

Strapless bra (that pinches): Bravissimo

There's a couple of reasons why I love this outfit. Firstly, I love the pattern, colors, and lace yoke on this top! So much, that I bought it despite the fact that I usually avoid trapeze tops like they're trying to sell me the latest fad diet book. And this top, in my mind, was meant to be paired with these amazing Asos Curve jeggings from last season. Which brings me to the main reason why I love this outift; it breaks so many rules! Apart from my own no trapeze tops rule, it breaks the 'fat girls shouldn't wear sleeveless tops' rule; the 'fat girls shouldn't wear j/leggings' rule; and the 'jeggings aren't pants (especially not on fat girls)!' rule. I'm a rebel, people! Seriously though, it's amazing to me to think that, this time last year, combining a sleeveless top and jeggings in an outfit like this wouldn't even have crossed my mind, and despite of this, today this outfit had me walking around just strutting my stuff.

So, that was my first OOTD. What did you think?

Sometimes others say it better

 

Dear friends, readers, and d-bags who end up reading this in the hope that I'll go on to abuse fat people. Obviously I'm having some sort of writer's block, or inspiration block, so in order to dig myself out of this little hole, I am giving you a transcript of my own making, of the speech so beautifully delivered by Paul Vogt in Grey's Anatomy's season 6 episode 12 titled 'I like You So Much Better When You're Naked'. All credit goes to Tony Phelan and Joan Rater.

"Dr. Altman, I'm big. Too big. I don't fit in airplane seats, and, as Jeff is always telling me, my feelings don't always fit the situation. If my food is overcooked in a restaurant, I get enraged. I want to kill the waiter. But I don't; I politely ask him to take my meal back, and bring it to me the way I asked for it. I spend my days making myself smaller, more acceptable, and that's okay. Because at night, when I go on stage, I get to experience the world the way I feel it, with indescribable rage, and unbearable sadness, and huge passion. At night on stage I get to kill the waiter, and dance on his grave. And if I can't do that, if all I have left is a life of making myself smaller, then I don't want to live. I don't. He turns to his significant other. And, believe me honey, you don't want me to live."

My Body and I

I don't know when it happened, this strange thing of me separating myself from my body. When I started looking in the mirror, and, in stead of simply seeing me, I saw myself and my body. I suppose it happened while I was gaining weight, while my body was expanding without me giving my consent. It makes sense in a way; if you don't feel like you can control what your body does, is it really a part of you?
I know I am far from the only person, let alone the anly fatty, who feels this way. And who can blame us really? When you are fat, people are constantly expecting you to fight your body. "Fight the bulge!" "Manage your weight!" "Battle those pounds!" This becomes slightly more abstract, but no less real, in the language of the "obesity epidemic". Fat is something to be afraid of, something to avoid, something that is to blame for current and future problems in our society.



Now, knowing this, it shouldn't come as a big surprise when fat people end up distancing themselves from their bodies. After all, their bodies are fat, and fat = bad. Who would want to identify so closely with something bad? Well, I didn't. But lately I'm starting to remember something I once knew. My body and I are not two separate units of the same entity, we are one. I am my ass; my thighs; my fingers, in the same way that I am my mind; my voice; the way I move. Change may come, sure, but that change won't just affect a part of me, it will affect me.

While I have been reclaiming my body, I have realized that there is something else I must also claim. You see, if my body is me, then the critizism directed at it is mine to own as well. My brain has taken to translating this critizism as of late, so:
"Wouldn't you be happier if you lost some weight?" is transformed on it's journey from my ears to my brain into "Wouldn't you be happier if there was less of you?"
"I read an article about this awesome new diet the other day" becomes "There's too much of you, you really should try to make yourself smaller."
"You didn't use to have to worry about fitting into the seats on planes..." becomes "You take up so much room, I think it would be better if you tried to minimize yourself."
             Please understand that when you tell me to lose weight, you are not just saying it to my ass, or my thighs, or my fingers, you are telling me to become less. And I don't want to be less, I want to be more! I have spent so much time hiding, trying to be invisible, to be less than I am, and now I want to be more! I want so much to be more me!

All I'm asking of you, is that you don't make it any harder than it already is.

On taking up 'too much' space

Picture this: Yours truly is sitting on a tram on my way home. I am seated by the window in a grouping of four seats; 2 x 2 seats facing each other. A thin girl is sitting oposite me, no one is siting next to neither me nor her, my legs are not long enough to be encroaching on 'her' space. And I'm doing that thing that I do. That thing where I press myself up against the wall next to me, and make sure my arms are in front of me in stead of at my sides making me wider; in other words, I am making myself as small as possible. I don't think before I do this, it's an automatic thing. Because I'm already taking up too much space, more than my 50% of the seats, and I don't want to make it worse. Someone will, experience tells me, enter the tram soon, and they'll be needing a seat. If it hadn't been for my incredible fatness, if I were a normal person, no one would have hesitated in sitting down next to me. But now, because of my huge space-encroaching body, they won't even get 50% of the (fairly narrow) seats, and I'm trying to make the situation better by minimizing my presence as much as possible.

As I am sitting there the tram stops and two men enter. They are both big men; one of above average height and muscled, the other of about average height with both muscles and fat adding to his size. They are moving towards my grouping of seats, and I wonder if one of them will sit next to me, or if they will see me taking up too much room with my fat ass (shoulders, arms), and move on. The tall man sits down next to me without a seconds hesitation. This surprises me a little bit, because this guy is so large he takes up more than 50% of the seats (not that I would ever hold that against him, mind you), and I would have expected him to at least consider that he and I won't fit very comfortably. (Is it possible I'm not as large as I imagine?) But not only does he not hesitate, he also does that thing that guys do where they spread their legs, making him take up more space than he needs to. Hm...
Now I look over to the seats oposite me, where the other big man has taken a seat next to the thin girl. Together they use up all the space there is, and even though he clearly takes up more than his half of the space, he is also doing that spreading-the-legs thing. And he looks completely unapologetic doing it. This boggles my mind for a moment. Sure the guy sitting next to me can do this, he is slender and therefore doesn't have to worry about taking up too much space. But the other guy is fat, and he's doing the exact same thing! Then this realization suddenly takes hold of me; if these guys don't feel the need to apologize for the space they're taking up, why on earth should I? If these guys can go through their lives taking up more room than they need to, even though they are large to begin with, and clearly feel absolutely no qualms in doing so, then why can't I go through my life taking up as much room as I need to feel comfortable? There's no reason why! I am a person, and people take up space. Some people take up more space than others, that is how the world works. I shouldn't apologize for taking up space, any more than I should apologize for being a person. People don't expect everyone around them to be their exact size, and being one of the people who need a large amount of space in stead of a small amount of space is a ridiculous thing to feel bad about. It's that simple!

Except it's not that simple, of course. The external and internal messages that had me pressing up against that wall in the first place are still out there. So every now and then, when the need to make myself as small as possible comes over me, I pull out this memory. And I try to remember how clear it was, how obvious, how bright a realization, and hold on to that.

I am a person. People take up space. It is nothing to be ashamed of. Say it with me now: I am a person. People take up space. It is nothing to be ashamed of. I am a person. People take up space. It is nothing to be ashamed of.