Resources! Get Your Resources Here!

Well hello! Welcome to all of the new readers, thanks to my being listed on WordPress’ Freshly Pressed feature overnight. It’s an honour to be featured on Freshly Pressed and I hope that by being featured there, some new fellow fatties have found me and perhaps the fatosphere in general.

Because of the influx of new readers, both from Freshly Pressed and those who came along from the UQ Women’s Collective event I did last week, I think it’s time to do a refresher course on Fat Activism 101. Because it will save us ALL a big headache in the long run.

Now, one of the things about being an activist is that people expect you to educate them all the time. But it doesn’t work like that. You have to go educate yourself. If you’re reading this, you have an internet connection, and I think it’s pretty safe to assume that you can use Google. If you don’t understand a term or a word, please take the time to Google it, and do a bit of reading. Not because I’m too lazy to educate you, but because if I have used a term or word or even talked about an issue, it is undoubtedly the gajillionth time I have had to do so. None of the questions that anyone presents me as a fat person about fat rights, fat stigma or even fat health are new ones for me, nor for most fat people you will meet. We get this shit every day of our lives. And we keep talking about it publicly, but again and again and again we’re still asked the same questions.

In fact, you can use the search engine on the top of this page to search just my blog and I’m sure you can plenty of information and instances where I’ve already answered your questions. There are almost 400 posts here just on Fat Heffalump, I’m sure I’ve answered a lot of your questions already.

But! I’m feeling generous today. I’m going to help you with some resources, because as well as being tools for people to educate themselves, they are also fantastic resources for those of you who are fat and are looking for help with everything from clothing to health care to simply just standing up for your rights.

Some of these posts will be older ones, but they’re so good they’re worth keeping in an archive of resources.

Before we get into all subjects fat, it’s best that you understand privilege.

Let’s start with the piece that blew my world open, by Kate Harding for Shapely Prose:

The Fantasy of Being Thin

Then there is this brilliant post by Michelle aka The Fat Nutritionist:

Eat food. Stuff you like. As much as you want.

In fact, while you’re at it, go read the entire back catalogue of The Fat Nutritionist. Michelle’s work is amazing and she has helped SO many people get started on the road to healing a whole host of disordered behaviours around food.

Now, for those of you who have questions about health and fatness and all that malarkey, I cannot tell you how valuable Dr Linda Bacon’s book “Health at Every Size: The Surprising Truth About Your Weight” is. Here, have some free excepts:

Excerpts and Downloads: Health at Every Size

Don’t understand what fat activism is exactly? Well, Dr Charlotte Cooper has you hooked up for that one:

What is a fat activist?

Another great place to get a whole lot of 101 on a whole host of fat topics is Melissa McEwen of Shakesville’s Fatsronauts 101 collection. Pretty much everything Melissa has to say about fat is a valuable read.

The moralisation of health is a big issue for fat people, and Shannon over at Nudemuse has a recent post that sums it up beautifully.