friends

I wasn’t going to write on this blog ever again. I left it up so people could see my old posts, which I am very proud of, both for my writing itself and the work I did as a fat activist. But I was done with blogging. But then something awful happened. So awful it has taken me weeks to settle into a place where I can talk about it publicly.

One Saturday morning in March, I received a Facebook message to tell me that my darling friend Dr Cat Pausé had suddenly and unexpectedly passed away. A Facebook message sent to me by her devastated father, all the way from Texas. As I typed a shocked response to him and then started working on one to her dearest friends who found her, my phone rang in my hands and another lovely friend was calling me to tell me she was gone. I was in shock. Her father gave me permission to share the news publicly, and the shocked emails, messages, tweets and posts came in and I went into “helpful” mode, trying to console others, making sure the people who mattered to Cat and whom she mattered to were informed, and looking for other ways I could be supportive and useful.

I was deeply honoured to be asked to represent the fat community at the private service for her, where I was asked to speak on behalf of the community and be one of her pallbearers. I wrote a piece that I hope expressed how much she mattered to me, to us, which I will reproduce below. I also gave a similar version at the public memorial held at Massey University the following week, where I was so fortunate to finally meet in person her lovely parents, I can’t imagine the grief they are going through. I wish there was more I could do for them, I hope that I have expressed to them how much she was loved and respected and will be missed dearly by so many people.

I still hadn’t really cried right up until I literally had my hand on her coffin at the funeral, walking it through the funeral home, to the sound of the karanga, the formal Māori call to ceremony. Even then I know I still wasn’t grieving fully, it really wasn’t until after the service when two lovely wāhine Māori I didn’t even know held me so tight until I finally let myself fall into grief and begin really mourning my beautiful friend.

And it was at that moment I knew I would be blogging again on this page. Bloody Cat, she was always pushing my boundaries, in a way that always turned out to be good for me. I have heard from others in the fat community that they also have a fire lit under them to continue their activism and work in fat liberation. She will always be an inspiration to us, even though she has been taken from us so early.

So far we have already had a clothing swap for size 24+, organised by Joanna of House of Boom (she has a new range out, go support a fatty’s small business eh?) which was an amazing event of community, seeding Cat’s beautiful wardrobe out into the community of super fatties, the group most neglected and disrespected by both fat activism circles AND the entire community. It was a delight to sit back and watch so many fat babes comfortably trying on clothes and delighting over having something, anything available to them for once. To tell these fat babes they looked fabulous (they did!) and encourage them to adopt Cat’s lovely clothes and love them as much as she did. Cat would have loved it, I could feel her presence several times. She would have been in the thick of it, throwing garments and compliments around the room, as she had in life many times.

I’m not sure what I will write, or how often I will do so, but I at least wanted to take the time to pay respect to and remember Cat and share the piece I wrote for her on behalf of the fat community mourning her loss. My world will never be the same without her, and the world in general is diminished without her in it.

Cat and I in 2012 at the first Fat Studies New Zealand conference in Wellington.

Vale Dr Cat Pausé

What do I say? There are not enough words to convey what Cat meant to me personally, let alone the fat community in general. I first met her in 2010 in Sydney at the Macquarie Fat Studies conference, where this short redhead with the biggest smile I’d ever seen appeared beside me and fan-girled all over me. I’d never experienced such adoration in my life. Once I calmed her down we instantly became friends and in that time she has been my greatest champion, fiercest protector and strongest confidant. She is the reason I finally moved to Aotearoa after talking about it for years.

When I started sharing the news with the community that we had lost her, I expected to hear back from mutual friends. But I have received hundreds of messages in the past week. Cat touched so many lives. From her students, to the listeners of her radio show, fellow scholars, activists like myself, and just dozens of people living in fat bodies who had either seen a news article she was quoted in or chanced upon her social media and been deeply moved by the work she did. I have been told of her kind words, her fierce encouragement, he raucous laugh, her astonishing generosity and mighty intellect touching people she never met, or only met by chance. There was always word at every event or fundraiser that Cat had secretly contributed a lump of her own money to enable others less fortunate to be included. She once told me that her biggest goal was that she would no longer be the go to voice for fat community, because she would no longer be needed, that we would be respected, listened to and believed enough not to need her scholarly input.

We still need her. I still need her. But she gets to rest now, and there has been nobody who has earned that rest more than she has. She was an angel here on earth while she was with us, and I have no doubt wherever her spirit is now, she’s still an angel, just the one with the loudest laugh and biggest smile.

Last month I was lucky enough to take a road trip with my great friend Kerri, and we went down to Newcastle to visit the lovely Bek of Colourful Curves. Of course, Bek being a fab fatty like myself, we just had to have a shopping day. Check us out, look how cute we are!

Too much adorbz for one photo.

So Bek took Kerri and I to a lot of her favourite shopping haunts and the most awesome café I have ever been to, Frankie’s Place for lunch. It’s a funky, quirky kind of place that has original food ideas, lovely atmosphere, good quality basic dishes and I ate a salad so amazing that I thought I had been transported to paradise.

The world’s most delicious salad.

They serve their drinks using old children’s books as trays.

After lunch, we wandered up Darby St until we came to a very fab retro-style shop called Ramjet Assortments, run by the wonderful Michelle. Bek had mentioned that they had awesome accessories, which, as a fat chick, is something I’m always looking for to jazz up otherwise boring plus-sized clothes. Michelle asked us if we were looking for anything in particular and when I said “It’s OK, you wouldn’t have anything to fit me anyway.” gasped in horror! “Of course I do!” She then proceeded to enthusiastically fling dresses at all three of us, asking rapid fire questions about our tastes and style. The minute we squee’d over a print or a colour, she found something that she thought we might like in something close to our size. She had all three of us trekking back and forth to the fitting rooms, Bek and I swapping dresses between the stalls to try on. Even had Kerri who is not a shopaholic by any stretch of the imagination, happily trying on all sorts of frocks. I’m a size 26 – 28 AU, and she had up to my size at least.

Michelle was enthusiastic, attentive and fun, without once being pushy or overwhelming. She never made any mention of “flattering” or “hiding flaws” – just listened to what we liked and paid attention to our reactions to things she suggested. Even when Bek and I told her we preferred to identify as “fat” rather than “curvy”, she took it totally in her stride and accepted our preference. She was so positive and her enthusiasm for her stock was really infectious. All three of us walked out of there absolutely beaming with a frock we totally love.

Look at the print on my dress!

Astonishingly, once we’d come down from the high of such a fun and fruitful shopping experience, I actually had a little cry. A couple of little cries over the next 24 hours in fact. Because the realisation had sunk in that as a fat woman, I had never had a shopping experience like that. I had never been in a store and had the staff/owner pay positive attention to me and be genuinely enthusiastic about helping me find something I love, without once suggesting I had to flatter or hide my body in any way. In fact, I’d never had that in a completely dedicated plus-size store, let alone one that had sizes starting at size 6! Michelle’s approach was the same towards Bek and myself as super fats as it was to Kerri who is much smaller, and when we popped back into the shop a few days later, she was giving the same enthusiastic, friendly service to a young woman who looked fresh off the pages of a fashion magazine, as well as an older couple who were looking for a gift for their daughter. We had decided to get Bek a gift for being such a wonderful hostess while we were in Newcastle, and realised that a gift voucher for Ramjet Assortments would be something that she would really love, rather than something generic like a department store or a supermarket. Michelle greeted us with glee when we walked in the door, and was delighted to hear how happy we were with our purchases of the previous visit. As well as buying our gift for Bek, I splurged on a pair of seriously cute earrings to go with my sweet new frock.

Earrings of fabulousness.

Fat women just don’t get service like that. We’re normally treated as though we’re an inconvenience, or as if we are a challenge to “flatter”. We’re either ignored, told there isn’t anything in our sizes, or get the hard sell on something that doesn’t fit or isn’t to our taste. When I mentioned to a straight sized friend of mine that this was the first time I’d ever had that experience, she was absolutely astonished. She said “Don’t they want you to buy their stuff or something?” The answer, it seems to me for most businesses, is no, they don’t. Very few businesses actually want a fat woman’s money. No matter how hard we want to give it to them. Some of them don’t even promote their product, and actively try to suppress it being promoted by others. Yet then they complain that their product doesn’t sell.

So when a business as fabulous as Ramjet Assortments, and a person as passionate about her stock as Michelle comes along, I believe it’s important that we promote them. If you’re in Newcastle, get yourself down to Darby Street and go inside of Ramjet Assortments. Say hello to Michelle. Tell her I sent you. Ask her to show you some fab frocks to fit you.

If you’re not in Newcastle, Michelle will sell via mail order. She has a Facebook page. Drop her a line, ask her what she has in your size. Follow her Instagram where she posts new stock with it’s available sizes listed.

What? You want to see the frock I bought? Well, alright, since I love you all… behold, Spooky Cats!