Holy Crap – What a Roller Coaster!

Hey!

I know, it has been awhile since I blogged last.  But this post is going to be all about what has been going on in my life since the whole Hoopla debacle and I want to clear a few things up too.

So, things have been kind of chaotic for me.  The big thing is that I’m moving house in a week’s time.  Which for me is a seriously big deal – I’ve lived in my little place here for fourteen and a half years – the longest I have lived anywhere in my life.  But I’m also moving across the city, not to mention doing almost everything on my own (but I do have a couple of awesome friends who have been really helpful – love youse!) and I’m moving because my current landlord is kicking me out, not for any negative reason, but because I no longer meet their criteria to rent one of their properties, which really sticks in my craw.  So the whole thing is really massive for me.  That said, I have a lovely new place lined up to move into that has lots of fabulous things that I don’t have here.  My own private laundry!  An east facing balcony!  A lock up garage (lots of storage for me because I don’t drive)!  Proper wardrobes, linen cupboard and kitchen pantry!  Just the storage alone is making me excited.  But best of all, I will be living by the sea.  I am moving to a bay side suburb, and my new flat is only metres from the foreshore.  I can’t wait to be able to ride my bike and walk up and down the waterfront at any time I choose.  Not to mention those gorgeous sea breezes.

Yeah, so that’s the biggest upheaval.

But as well as going through a full residential relocation, I’ve had so much else on in the past few months.

There’s the shiny new library we opened at the end of March.  I always think bringing a new library into the world is somewhat like bringing a new baby into the world.  There is a long, uncomfortable gestation, then a difficult labour and intense birth, but then you have this beautiful newborn that you love like no other and are already beginning to think you might like another one!

I also sprained my ankle a couple of weeks ago.  Walking to my bus stop, moved aside to let a cute little old couple that looks like Santa and Mrs Claus by on the footpath, hit an uneven bit of concrete and turned my ankle.  Went down like a sack of spuds, landed on my right knee and sprained  my left ankle.  I’m healing ok, was very limpy for a couple of weeks there and am stuck in a compression bandage for another two weeks yet, but I’m thankful I’m strong and in robust health so that I can heal well.

Y’all know about the Hoopla drama.  And in the thick of all of that, an interview I did back in January was published in the Sun Herald (Sydney).  I had seen the online version, but when a friend left me a message to tell me that there was a “huge” photo of me in the print version, I was kind of “Oh yeah, that’s nice.”  Then she sent me the paper copy:

That’s a library card sitting on top of the paper to give scale (same size as a credit card).  I’m about half the page!!  I sent it to my Grandma, she was tickled pink.  I like how it shows off my gold We Love Colors tights and the leopard print Chucks my friend Kylie found for me in the UK.

And then there has been more media interest… Kelli Brett from ABC Radio Melbourne’s The Main Ingredient interviewed me for her programme.  The podcast hasn’t gone up live yet but I’ll share when it does.  Plus a news editor from the Australian Women’s Weekly interviewed me a couple of weeks ago, for a piece that I think will be in the June or July edition.  More on that in a minute.

I do just want to clarify something.  There has been some suggestion from several people that The Hoopla publishing my piece some weeks ago is the reason that these media gigs have been coming my way.  I would just like to make it very clear that this is not true.  I was interviewed for the Sun Herald back in January (on Australia Day, January 26th, to be exact, and photographed in the first week or so of February) and any subsequent media contact has come from either this blog or that Sun Herald article.  One of the recent interviewers had never even heard of The Hoopla, the other wasn’t interested in it.  As much as there might be people that would like to claim that they are the reason for my “overnight success” (after over 3 years of slogging away at this stuff as a second, unpaid, full time job), it is simply not true.  The Hoopla did not “discover me”, I contacted them and asked if they would publish my writing.

Right, now that we’ve got that out of the way!  I am very lucky to get these opportunities, but that luck is coupled by my own hard work.

As well as being interviewed by the Australian Women’s Weekly, they have set up a photo shoot on Monday, which I am both nervous and excited about.  They’re going the whole kit and caboodle with a studio shoot, with fashion stylist, make-up and hair and Autograph Fashion are kindly loaning us the clothes for the shoot.  I am so excited, because what fun is it to get all dolled up!  But I am very nervous and anxious, as I’m suffering some impostor syndrome about it all.  I’ve been labelled the “ugly fat chick” my whole life, and it’s just bizarre to think that I’m doing a photo shoot with AWW, a magazine that I read my mother’s copies of as a kid.  As I said on Twitter this evening “I’m in your magazines, smashing your beauty standards!”

And the other big, exciting news for me is that I’ve found a way to wangle the finances to attend the Massey University, Palmerston North Fat Studies: Reflective Intersections Conference in New Zealand!  I am SOOOO excited, not only am I taking a holiday (two beautiful weeks) to New Zealand, but I’m going to be able to get all fab fatty at the conference.  I’ll get to see friends I made at the last conference, and hopefully make some new friends.  It’s worth putting myself into hock for!  Of course I promise to blog all about it, take lots of photos and I have also submitted an abstract for a paper I am writing.  Cross fingers it gets accepted so I can present it.

So, there you have the absolute roller coaster of chaos that my life is at the moment.  I’m knackered, a bit sore, sneezy from all my allergies stirred up by packing and cleaning, and in desperate need of a decent night’s sleep and a couple of days relaxation.  But I’m also  excited, challenged and happy.

Hope you are all in positive places in your lives too!

Please… Love Your Library

Indulge me in an off topic post tonight.  Though I’ll draw some threads back to fat acceptance somewhere in there, I promise you.

Some of you may already know that I am a librarian.  I don’t actually work in a library itself, but I work in head office of a large public library service (largest in the Southern Hemisphere to be precise) supporting the technology of our libraries.  But my heart belongs to libraries, both the services they provide and the environments they create.

So it breaks my heart to hear stories of libraries around the world either closing down, or taking furlough time so that they can stay open part time.  I notice this particularly in the US, but I am also hearing it happen in the rest of the world.

When I was a little girl and then later a teenager, and into my adulthood, libraries were my haven from the world.  Some time ago I wrote a post on my old blog – you can read it here if you like – about just how important libraries and librarians are to me.

My plea to you, dear readers, is to visit your local libraries.  Use them, explore them and fight for them.  Make it clear what you need from your libraries.  Don’t let them slide into oblivion in your town, because the politicians, the people with power and money don’t understand their significance to the community.  When looking at what it costs to run public facilities, libraries are inexpensive to run and maintain.  They take a mere fraction of the money that is spent on other public services.  However, their impact on a community is highly significant.  When a community has a healthy, well-used library, it shows that the community itself is healthy.  They’re like the frogs of a community!

Libraries provide more than just books to read and get information from.  Just looking at the services my own library service provides, I can list the following:

• Early literacy resources, like baby, toddler and storytelling sessions.
• Homework help for children and teens – especially useful for kids whose parents work long hours and might not be available or have the skills to help themselves
• Creative outlets for all ages of the community – be it craft groups, writing groups, book clubs, photography classes, space for local artists to showcase their work among many other creativity services.
• Access to books, magazines, DVD’s, CD’s, eBooks and audiobooks, newspapers and other materials for free or for a small fee – much more affordable than having to buy them.
• Access to information databases – everything from genealogy, photographic collections, science and medicine, academic resources, literature and history, business, local laws and building codes, languages, world newspapers and many more.
• Language collections.
• Adult literacy services.
• Meeting spaces for public groups and community groups.
• Job search classes and services.
• Internet/computer literacy classes.
• Scanning facilities for photographs and documents.
• Internet access for those who don’t have it at home.
• Comic books and graphic novels.
• Social help for kids and teens – after school and holiday activities are an excellent safe space for kids/teens to socialise as well as learn/participate.
• Warm in winter and cool in summer – somewhere to escape the cold/heat.
• Film nights, documentary screenings and public performances.
• Many libraries now have news screens or sports screens now.
• Gaming – most of ours have X-boxes.
• And so much more.

Go to your library and join. TAKE YOUR KIDS TO YOUR LOCAL LIBRARY!  Write to your local politicians and tell them the importance of libraries.  If your library doesn’t offer the services you need, write them a friendly letter requesting the service, or pop in and talk to a librarian about how you can help start up that service.  Take your parents, neighbours, friends and other relatives to your local library.  I don’t know about your local library, but all of ours welcome you to bring a cup of coffee (a few even have coffee shops built into them!) and sit and read, either on your own or to your kids.

Not to mention that libraries are usually accessable, free (or very low cost) and very fat friendly – I’ve said before, librarians don’t care what you look like, we care that you’re reading and visiting the library.

Don’t let libraries die because politicians and people in power see them as a quick way to cut some budget.  Fight for your libraries because they are YOURS, and part of your community.

Just the Right Size

As the nerdy librarian I am, one of my favourite online comic strips is Unshelved.  It just rings true for me so often.

Every week they have a book recommendation comic (I have found some of my favourite reads there) and the one that arrived in my inbox gave me such a warm, fuzzy feeling I thought that I would share it with you all here.

Click on the cartoon to be taken to the original.

I think there is a message in this comic strip for all of us.  Left to our own decisions and circumstances, and without the pressure to be something we are not, we’re all just the right size.

Fat Activism In the Library

It has been with some considerable delight that I have been following Cat Pausé posting a lovely long list of fat studies book titles to her Tumblr over the past few weeks.  I knew about a few titles, but at last count Cat was up to 30 titles.  Which, needless to say, has created a very long “to read” list for me.

Cat and I got talking about just how many titles there are and what their availability is like, when it dawned on me – “You’re a librarian Kath!  You know how to access books!”

Let’s face it, books are expensive to buy.  Plus they take up space, have environmental impact and it’s not always necessary to keep them or read them again.  So being able to borrow them from the library is a fantastic exercise in accessibility.  Now I don’t know about your local library, but mine is free to join, you can borrow up to 20 items at any given time, can request books from other branches of our library service for a small fee, can have most items for four weeks AND has over 3 million items in the collection.  Not to mention that there are multiple languages available, resources for people with disabilities and a whole bunch of other services you can take up.  That does vary from library service to library service, but whichever way you go, it’s still a budget way to read all these great titles.

One of the things Cat and I have been talking about is the concept of having fat studies titles in a library collection as an alternative voice to the usual diet books and “you can lose weight too” pop psychology/self help books.

Now I know we have Health at Every Size by Linda Bacon PhD in our collection.  If I take the Dweey number (Dewey is the classification by subject matter) of just that title alone, 613.25, and search our catalogue, I come up with 256 titles.  All of them, except Health at Every Size, are diet books.  So to one fat-friendly title, I get 255 weight loss/diet books, just in our collection alone.

When I search the Dewey of Kate Harding and Marianne Kirby’s book Screw Inner Beauty (US title: Lessons from the Fatosphere), 616.398, I bring up 19 titles, 17 of those are weight loss/diet help guides or titles about the “obesity epidemic”.  The other fat-friendly title is Prof. Paul Campos’ The Obesity Myth.

The next search I ran was a subject search for “eating disorders”.  I got 279 hits, only one of which could be considered fat-friendly, and that is Harriet Brown’s Brave Girl Eating.  A search on “body image” brings up 64 titles, almost all of these focus on “looking good” or “you’re not as fat as you think you are” subjects (which excludes anyone who actually is fat).  There is a very high focus under this subject heading on “flattering” clothing and “what not to wear”.

Next I decided to search the term “fat”.  Over 450 titles came up, and most of these were diet books, low-fat cookbooks and “weight loss journey” stories.  No fat acceptance/fat-friendly titles came up under “fat” at all.  And don’t get me started on what comes up under “obesity” as a subject search.  Aye! Aye! Aye!

So it goes to show that the prevailing message being sent is fat = bad/unhealthy.

But!  Just by having these titles by Linda Bacon, Paul Campos, Harriet Brown, Marianne Kirby and Kate Harding, there is at least some alternative perspective available in the public library.  Of course, read one and they refer you on to other titles.

The real magic though is these titles sitting on the shelves of libraries, quietly lurking in amongst the fat loathing titles.  Along comes the humble borrower, hunting that “Lose the Fat and be Rich for Life”* title, and there it is.  Health at Every Size.  Or The Obesity Myth, or any of the other titles.  So innocent looking but inside those covers… RADICAL AWESOMENESS!

If one person picks one of those titles up instead of the “Purple Food to Skinny Jeans!”** book, imagine the difference that could be made to their lives!

So, if you want to read any of the awesome books Cat has compiled in her list, get thee to your local library!  If they don’t have it, request it.  Many public libraries rely on customer requests to drive their collections.  Plus every one they add, thanks to your suggestion, gets borrowed by other people to discover the fat acceptance message too.  The same goes for fat positive fiction.  It doesn’t just have to be non-fiction.

You can also ask your library about Inter-Library Loans as well.  Many library services share their collections amongst each other, quite often for free, sometimes for a small fee.  Plus if you’re a member of a public library, you can often get access to academic papers and journals as well through the library’s subscription.

Besides, libraries are definitely fat friendly spaces.  Librarians care about your reading, not your body size.  And libraries are accessible, have comfortable, solid furniture and are free!

What are you waiting for?

*Yes, I made this book title up.
**Ok I made this one up too.

Bodies with Needs

Interesting discussion had today at a library conference I attended.  The theme was teen and young adult services for public libraries.  One of the excellent papers was presented by Denise Barker of the Disability Services Commission in Western Australia, about libraries working with young people with disabilities.  I got some fabulous snaps while listening to Denise’s paper.

Firstly, when you make your library (and for that matter any other public space) accessible and useable for people with disabilities, it benefits everybody in the community.  Ramps are also good for people with walkers or prams, or small children who are yet unable to negotiate stairs.  Taps and door handles etc with levers instead of knobs, or automatic sensors are easier on people with arthritis or Parkinson’s, or people who have temporary injuries or repetitive strain injuries.  They’re also more hygienic in bathrooms because there is less contact with the fittings.

Creating an inviting space for people with disabilities encourages socialising with a wider group of people, not just for the folks with disabilities, but also for the able-bodied, which promotes compassion, understanding and empathy, and frankly enriches everybody’s experiences.

You don’t always know if someone has a disability, and they may not tell you, even if they are having difficulties using your library.  Hooray!  It’s so good to hear someone acknowledging “invisible” disabilities.  You cannot tell just by looking at someone what their body is able to do, or not able to do, or requires assistance to do.

People with intellectual disabilities need to be welcome in our libraries too.  They need to feel comfortable and included.

Young people with disabilities don’t want to be special cases, they want to be included.  They want access to the same things as everyone else, not “special” things.  Sometimes they just need tools to be able to do so.  Treat those items as tools for those people, not “special”.

And not to forget mental health issues either.  As for everyone else, libraries need to be safe and welcoming for sufferers of mental health issues.

Mostly I guess the core message was about a) being inclusive and b) the benefits to all of the community.

All in all it was great to hear some thoughtful talk about the needs of young people (12 – 24) with disabilities in libraries.  I know so often it gets overlooked.