Fat Liberation: A Lifelong Investment

PSA: GLAMOUR SHOTS ARE SELF-CARE.

Image description: I'm standing in front of a background with blue hearts (very early 2000s style). My elbows are perched on a fuzzy white thing. My hands are posed on either side of my face and I'm enthusiastically smiling. I'm a fat white person with very short hair that's half black and half orange. I'm wearing a black button up with a small floral pattern and a red bow tie. I have tattoos on my right arm.

Really though. The more I look at myself in pictures and in the mirror, the more I love the shit outta myself—but it didn't start with love. When my ~body journey~ began in 2008/2009, I had to go from hating myself to tolerating myself. THEN to accepting myself and THEN to sometimes being okay with how I look and THEN to sometimes liking what I saw and THEN to mostly liking myself and THENNNNNNNNNN to loving myself. That shit took years, and the time and energy I spent/continue to spend in the world of fat liberation was/is the best investment I've ever made.

And another thing! Don't let anyone fool you into thinking this is a linear journey. I may love my fat body a lot of the time, but I'm not immune to bad days, low capacity, and living in a fatphobic world. I used to think I was a bad fat activist when I went through challenges involving my body. Learning about body neutrality helped with that. Radically accepting that I'm a human being with fluctuating needs and tendencies also helps with that. I'm just saying all this to say that we're on this journey for life, ya'll. And I'd rather be doing the work everyfuckingday to not hate myself, as opposed to the alternative, which is to not do the work and definitely hate myself. I hope ya'll are able to make the same investment, because it's a total fucking game changer.

*hops off of heavy duty soap box*