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Hi friend,

What is self-care looking like for you this month?

For me, it's getting a referral to a hand specialist and occupational therapist for my hand, which isn't healing properly (I injured tendons in my wrist months ago), and enjoying our new mattress, which we traded in under warranty – the old one was definitely not up to the task of supporting two very large bodies in sleep.

A follow-up:

Reader Janie Ganga (she/they) was inspired by reader Brandy Morris' input in last week's letter to update their website to better reflect their commitment to Health at Every Size® and body liberation.

Here are Janie's changes in her own words:

Here's how it WAS:

"Janie Ganga believes in Health at Every Size [link: http://haescommunity.com/pledge/] - the simple premise that the best way to improve health is to honor your body. She collaborates with SHAPE RI to offer size-affirming yoga. Janie Ganga invites her students to find deep love for their bodies (as they are) and the mind (as it is)."

Here's my UPDATE:

"Janie Ganga believes in Health at Every Size [link: http://haescommunity.com/pledge/] – the simple premise that the best way to improve health is to honor your body. She collaborates with

SHAPE RI to offer size-affirming yoga. She respects people in larger bodies and welcomes them to attend her group yoga classes. She also enjoys working individually with people who want to access yoga but are hesitant. She works with people of many sizes, shapes, and abilities. Yoga is a flexible practice that has so many aspects! She would love to work with YOU to find a practice that supports your life right now.

Janie Ganga invites her students to explore the practice of moving and breathing with their bodies as they are and observing the mind as it is."

Thank you for providing this example, Janie!

Now, on to this week's letter:

Something I think we need to be very cautious about as we fight fatphobia and weight stigma is that it's very easy for us to deplore those things primarily when they happen to people in bodies we find worthy.

When I post images of myself in my thin childhood body and talk about experiences of body shame or enforcement of the supremacy of thinness, I am significantly more likely to get sympathetic or outraged-on-my-behalf comments than I am when I post images of fat bodies (my own adult body or others' fat bodies) with those same discussions.

When folks with thin privilege -- whether or not they think of themselves as thin -- talk about their experiences of being stigmatized in their relatively small bodies, they are much, much more likely to gain large audiences than folks at the large end of the body size spectrum.

If we are going to fight fatphobia, we cannot win if we focus our efforts on people with bodies that we think "don't deserve" that treatment. We must fight that urge within ourselves, of seeking the most palatable bodies to sympathize with, and deliberately turn to fighting for and with the *most* oppressed.

That is the only way.

Warmly,
Lindley

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The Conversation

Here's what's being discussed this week in the world of body acceptance and fat liberation:

» Qatar University is hiring for an assistant professor in health promotion - good opportunity for a HAES pro

» Fat Girl Media has some new shop items focusing on mental health

» The Validation and Frustration of Stunkard et al.

» You can take your healthy habits and the covert, underhanded fatphobia and moral superiority that accompanies it and you can…. well…. learn from folks with ACTUAL lives experience when we speak about the limitations, and the harms, of whitewashed HAES approaches to “health and well-being.”

» How Having Dark Armpits, Knees, and Elbows Turned Into a Problem to Be Solved

» When Doctors' Education Is Really Pharmaceutical Industry Marketing - Part 1

» When Doctors' Education Is The Best That Pharma Money Can Buy- Part 2

» The brilliance of fat people is always denied, but more specifically we are systematically excluded from demonstrating what we know

» Is Wegovy/Ozempic the Miracle Weight Loss Drug It’s Made Out to Be?

» The problem with, "I can't believe I thought I was fat when I wasn't" is that it still positions being fat as a bad thing.

» Smartwool is now offering some items up to a size US 30

» I actually can’t begin to describe how damaging it was to repeatedly be told “SOME freak out there will love you!” as a fat child and person, by people who would never ever ever ever ever ever be caught dead dating a fat person

» "Fat people, when comfortable in our bodies, are scary"

» I had a really great healthcare experience today and I want to talk about what happened. I want to talk about it because so many little good things added up to a wonderful experience, but I think that often those little choices are invisible to thin patients and providers.

» You can be a runner, in the body you have right now.

» Body positivity - like Feminism - has become incredibly whitewashed. White, conventionally attractive CHUBBY AT BEST women did not, and have never spearheaded body positivity or any kind of self love movement.

» Questions to ask to find out if a mental health professional is neurodiversity affirming

🦄 Unicorn chaser: Make space

44 Body Liberation Books by Black Authors for Black History Month >>

"Dieting is the result of unresolved fatphobia. We become terrified of what it would mean for us to be fat because we understand fundamentally how poorly fat people are treated.

We transpose that bigotry onto the fat itself, rather than placing the blame where it belongs: on the culture that created and promotes injustice and fat hatred." » Virgie Tovar, You Have the Right to Remain Fat