Pinterest Activism of sorts

I had the joy of dealing with a little bit of fat hate drama regarding a picture that I pinned onto my body love board on Pinterest a long time ago. It has gotten a lot of pins and likes in the past and this past week came under a little bit of negative attention as well. I don’t pay a whole lot of attention to the activity on my pins as I really pin them for me so that I can enjoy them later. My board dedicated to fat acceptance however I do tend to pay more attention to because I feel the message is so important and I want those who see it to have a safe space to enjoy the pins.

So this is the drama that happened when one girl just got her panties all in a wad because of the DANGEROUS message  “promoting obesity” that this picture was forcing on people and apparently just by seeing the picture all people will of course just decide they need to be huge obese people. I hope I handled it right, part of me wanted to just ridicule the stupidity, part of me wanted to attack back because I am just so tired of the same old crap being thrown at fat people. But mostly I feel such pity for the thinking that produces this stuff and how they seem to feel completely vindicated in treating people like crap and saying awful things and I really didn’t want to stoop to that level.

Above is the offending picture from here and this is what it sparked

Stefani Eldon-Kane
"So smoke and be lazy? Sounds like a celebrity...."

That was posted about a week or so ago  then a few more people commented liking it and repining it  which obviously upset Stefani and so this was posted

Stefani Eldon-Kane
"I can't believe that people are actually repinning this... its such a bad example! Get your lazy, junkfood, smoking asses off the couch! This is why I get shit for being skinny... the right way.. exercising and eating good! That should be the example! What is this teaching our kids???? To be fat slobs? Whatever..."

Stefani then got a supporter to chime in and commiserate with her about how awfully hard it is to be them and the terrible treatment they get  “cue violins”

Stephanie Cook
"I agree with Stefani. I'm always getting crap for exercising and eating healthy because apperantly it's vain. Yeah, you shouldn't base your self esteem on it, but you shouldn't disregard it either."

This was met by an awesome response from another commenter

Christy Harwel
"She obviously isn't talking crap about skinny people. She is stating her priority. If you are offended by it, it's your problem. She is a strong confident amazing singer. I'm sure she cries into her pillow giving a crap about what you think lol!!!"

Stefani Eldon-Kane
"What does a strong amazing singer have to do with anything we were talking about? We were stating that she is promoting being a fat ass."

"Also, "talking crap"... you sound like my seven year old. Obesity is a serious issue in this country if you are not aware... not to mention the numerous problems with smoking and second hand smoke. She is a great singer, but to promote obesity and smoking is not a good example. Just saying."

Up until this point I hadn’t been paying any attention to the comments on that pin, those notifications are usually caught in my e-mails spam filter but for some reason this last one showed up in my inbox and so I went to check it out. I was kind of annoyed and a little hurt at the self-righteousness and bigotry in the comments but I thought ok I can take this as an opportunity to maybe open some eyes so I responded.

My response
“@Stefani Eldon-Kane and @Stephanie Cook
I feel the need to reply to your comments on my pin.
The first thing I want to say is that I am sorry that anyone has given you trouble or made you feel bad for the way you have chosen to live your life. They have no right to say rude or hurtful things to you in any way for what you eat and how you spend your time. Your body is yours and no one has the right to make comments about it other than those you specifically invite to do so. I totally understand how that can be a very hurtful and upsetting thing and no one deserves that. You both are humans deserving of respect and kindness and I am sorry that you haven't gotten that from some people.”

“Secondly please let me explain why I pinned this. I like Adele's music, and I have seen so many articles, news posts, blog posts, and interviews that she has done in which the focus is not on her talent and her voice but the size of her body. I can imagine that that gets very tiring for her and  I like how she focused her answer totally on herself and didn't say that anyone else should think or act like she does, nor did she tear anyone else down. It seems to me she was making an annoyed point that her focus is on her singing and making great music, because she is a singer not a model. Now I don't like smoking, I don't do it myself, but her body is her own and so what she does with it is her own choice.”

“Finally, I am a fat person (as are a lot of my friends who follow me on Pinterest) We are also humans.  I work hard as a full-time student earning a bachelor’s degree as well as a full time graphic designer. I love those in my life like crazy, and enjoy spending time with them. I work hard to help out those around me and try to do things to leave this world a better place. I am a human, and I deserve the same respect and kindness that any other human does.

That being said your comments were, and are, terribly hurtful to me. To be called "lazy", "fat slob", "fat ass", and assuming that I eat junkfood all day on the couch is not only untrue it is hurtful and it treats me as less than human. Not once have I said anything against you, your body size, and I really do respect that what you do with your body is completely your right.”

“I also encourage you to do some real research in regards to obesity and the issue of it, this is a great post to start with as it includes a lot of actual medical research studies not just regurgitated "facts" that "everybody knows"

http://danceswithfat.wordpress.com/2012/04/21/for-fat-patients-and-their-doctors/

Then I encourage you to read things by Dr. Linda Bacon.”

Which cause Stefani to respond again

Stefani Eldon-Kane
"I'm sorry that you thought I was talking directly about you.. but I was not... have you even read what she said??? I know not everyone wants to be skinny, but this is setting a bad example. Let's just all go smoke, eat tons of food and not work out! Sounds like a great idea. Unfortunately she picked this career and there is going to be some ridicule about what you do and say as a celebrity... just saying"

"Also, I'm about to graduate as a nutrtitionist! I know all about obesity and what causes it... smoking, not exercising and eating crappy food with not exercise! Am I getting close to making any sense?"

"And I'm sorry but I did not call you anything.."

At this point I realize her mind is completely closed and I really hate that everyone who liked and/or pinned this picture was having to read all the disgusting hatred and I just wanted to put an end to this so I responded with

My Response
You apparently fail to understand what I am saying at all so I am removing your comments from my pin. They are hurtful, hate filled, and honestly quite untruthful and that is not what I want to spread in this world. I would still encourage you to read http://danceswithfat.wordpress.com/2012/05/18/big-fat-faulty-assumptions/
and also check out the site junkfood science, as a nutritionist I think you might find it very interesting.

With that I removed her comments along with the responses to her comments (yes even the positive ones) as they would make no sense without them and I didn’t want that on my page. This seemed to upset poor Stefani and so while I was out with friends she posted the following

Stefani Eldon-Kane
"Lol ok don't post stuff on a social site if you don't like the comments. Maybe you should post on a personal site. You need a reality check."

"And I have plenty of bigger friends thank you very much and not one agree with your message. You can delete this and all the other ones who don't agree with you unhealthy spread of obesity. Have a nice day and I hope your not talking about a blot site...."

"And I said nothing hate filled... I see you deleted everyone who didn't agree with you as well.... hypocrite."    

"And the danceswithfat video is nothing but spinning. Compare this to dances with the stars...please!"
   
"I saw danceswithfat video and all I saw was a bunch of spinning.... ok..but compare this to so you think you can dance.... not even close! I tried but I couldn't get through it...."  

"I saw the danceswithfat video and all I saw a bunch of spinning moves...anyone can do that... bigger or skinny...she wouldn't last a minute on so you think you can dance...."

When I got home I responded with

My Response
@Stefani Eldon-Kane
Being that she is a champion level dancer who has won multiple titles and competitions I would say you are wrong and once again are jumping to conclusions that are wrong but that is your choice. As for me being a hypocrite because I chose to keep my pins hate free so that people can enjoy them without feeling attacked by being called a fat slob, lazy, or a fat ass because when you say that as a blanket statement it effects and hurts a whole lot of people. Being that this is MY pin that is my prerogative and it is not at all hypocritical, if you want to bash people you have all the right in the world to re-pin this and say anything your little heart desires about fat people if it makes you feel better :-) That is your right and I welcome you to do that so that you can have your say against all those "fat asses" without people like me who think all people are deserving of kindness and respect regardless of their body size speaking up and ruining it for you.

Being that this is MY pin on MY board that is my prerogative and it is not at all hypocritical, I know it is a social site and so that is why I do what I need to, to keep my boards safe from hate and bigotry, and that is my prerogative :-) cool how that works isn't it?

This seemed to make her even more mad

Stefani Eldon-Kane
"You erased every comment that didn't agree with you... this is posted so everyone can see... you just don't like the fact that I commented on a lazy mentality. I gave you the benefit of the doubt and looked at the websites you provided... all blogs asking for donations every five sentences! That is like going and doing my thesis off of wikipedia! I tried to understand this mentality...but I guess I'm way to advanced to understand :) have a nice night :)"

"You are so manipulating the comments it is digusting... why not leave up what I said so people can really see what me and others say? Because you know that when you post something that is this disturbing, people are going to have something to say. This is the last time I will ever think of you again... take your own advise and be happy with yourself."

Being that I was heading out the door to go to the drive-in with my friend to see “The Avengers” and “Dark Shadows” and not feeling the need to waste any more time on her my response was “Bye :-)”

Lol! Gotta love the people you come across when you dare post something against the accepted norm, it just made me realize how glad I am not to live in that mindset and how truly happy I am that I am getting the strength to stand up for myself and what I believe in. It is just sad to see people continuing that kind of bigotry and especially sad that if she truly is about to graduate as a nutritionist (I wonder if it is from the same “school” as Meme Roth?) that she will then infect these beliefs on other people in a professional setting as well. Oh the damage her and her “advanced” thinking will do…

Let me put my Ranty Pants on

Alrighty folks, I need to vent and you get the venting.

Dear random guys on Facebook,

I did NOT ask you to love me, I didn't, not once, at all, EVER. Nope I accepted your friends request on Facebook, this does not in anyway invite you to hit on me or declare some kind of ownership over me. Here's the thing, I like playing games on Facebook, they are fun for me, they allow me to get away for a bit from work and homework and just do something completely stupid and meaningless.Some of these games in order to get anywhere with them and not go crazy you need other gamers, and so I have added a lot of people to my FB account that I can game with. Some of these people have actually become friends just because we connect on certain things. I enjoy reading about peoples lives and I like being able to share whats on my heart and mind in a way that is quick easy and works with my schedule and brain.

Yes I posted pictures of myself, mainly because I have a whole lot of family all over the world and I know it is fun for them to see whats new with me and to see pictures from time to time. You posting nice messages on these pictures is sweet, and I thank you for that, but I didn't ask for it. You posting on my posts and links is sweet, it is always nice to find other people who have the same thoughts or like the same things I do, that is cool. You then writing me a private message declaring your love for me when all I have done is be a kind albeit somewhat distant, acquaintance, is somewhat a shock to me but I want to be nice and I am always open to friends so I explain that I am open to a friendship on Facebook but that is all I can offer due to the fact that I am getting over the end of a very serious relationship and also the fact that you live in a whole different country with a completely different culture, etc. You speak of how you love my faith in God, and say you share that faith and ok that is cool always nice to meet a fellow believer, a brother in Christ.  Now you continue to declare your love and intentions, that you just know God means for us to be together, that you would make me the happiest wife ever, blah blah blah.

Ok bottom line, no you don't love me, YOU DON'T EVEN KNOW ME! Declaring love for a chick you only know by their status updates and posts on Facebook not only makes you look incredibly suspicious but honestly it makes said chick (ME) doubt you have even one clue what real love is and doubt even more that you are for real. I did not ask for you to love me, and when you threw that at me I tried to be as kind but honest as I could. Maybe you expect that I would just fall at your feet and swim over there to marry you tomorrow but I am sorry, you are out of luck. I have explained to you that I just got out of a relationship that shattered me, and I have explained that by just I mean JUST, as in I am still dealing with the grief, and you still push your love on me. I have explained that I have major trust issues that are quite valid and the idea of getting into another long distance relationship honestly makes me kind of nauseous and is not something I am interested in at all. Your response, That you will move here...... ummmm NO you won't, and that kind of freaked me out even more.

You write me every day, multiple times a day, ok thats your prerogative, but we are not in a relationship, and I don't write my real life friends everyday and I love them to pieces. So the fact that now I have started avoiding Facebook and definitely started avoiding my inbox because I just don't have the time or inclination to try to make you understand, is not cool.

Lets go over this again, I DID NOT ASK YOU TO LOVE ME, I don't need your love, I don't want your love and I certainly don't want to be in a relationship with a clingy smothering man! Me being nice and kind was obviously misinterpreted by you as me wanting to jump your bones and make vows to you. Putting me into a situation where I have to be a mean witch is not cool and again not anything I asked for. Thing is dudes, and yes I am talking to multiple ones here, don't push your "love" on women who never asked for it. If you do approach a woman and they say all they can offer is friendship then for crying out loud show that woman who you claim to "love" that that love actually means respecting her no, because here is the deal, if you can't even respect a woman when they say they are only interested in friendship how in the world is that woman supposed to think you would ever respect her in any other matter. The same kind of rules that apply to rape apply here, unless you get an enthusiastic yes, back off  and don't go further. If you get a lukewarm not right now or I need time then drop back and show you can be an actual friend and if you get a no then respect that freaking no and stay in friend/acquaintance zone or drop out of her life don't keep pushing and trying to "convince" her. Don't make her defend her answer, that just once again shows you have no respect for her or her thoughts and feelings.

It is not cool to do this, I am sorry but your "love" is not a priceless commodity that all women will thank you for delivering to them. I will not die if I don't get with you, I will not die from lack of sex, I do not need a man in my life to be happy, in fact I think I have shown that I can be completely happy and content on my own. I do not need a knight on a white horse to save me, and regardless of how many times you tell me that God has told you that I should be with you and we should be together unless God also sends that memo to me and gives me peace about it then sorry but I don't believe it so just stop. I am on facebook for fun and to keep in touch with family and friends all over the world, if I wanted matchmaking or dates I would sign up for eHarmony. Got it... I hope so

/rant

Bullying Damages Peoples Lives!

In my previous post I talked through some of my feelings regarding finding that the man I had been dedicated to for the past 5 years had been cheating on me. I shared how I was bullied as a young girl in school by people playing with my heart and feelings by pretending to be interested in me,  and then finding it hilarious when I believed what they were saying. In that post I was beating myself up for once again playing the fool like I had back in then, all those feelings of being the stupid fool had come flooding back and I kept telling myself how dumb I was to believe someone could love me. Those are the same lies that I was taunted with back then, and here a good 25 some years later those messages are still very deeply ingrained in my mind. They were my "truth" as I was growing up and that "truth" effected my whole life and it is what I struggle with now as I work to replace those lies with actual truth.

I have been pondering all this lately after I finally realized where the anger at myself was coming from, and I will admit I have been simmering with a little bit of anger. No longer am I angry at myself I am angry at those kids who found it so hilarious to play with someone elses heart and lives. I am angry that they felt it was ok to treat me and others who didn't "measure up" as third class citizens who deserved to be treated like crap. I am angry at all those people who will sit back and say bullying is harmful and that kids will be kids. I am really angry at the ones who say that "you have to be cruel to be kind" and that talk about tough love and try so desperately to hide the fact that they are just mean concern trolls. A comment on one of the blogs I read in the past few weeks (I can't remember where so if it was you give me a heads up) has really stuck in my head. They were commenting about tough love and said if that is the way you love then go love someone else. That was huge for me, I thought oh that is so right on, they go on and on about tough love and having to be mean in order to "save" someone, but does anyone ask the victim if they asked to be "loved?"  I dare to wager that the majority would gladly pass on that kind of love, and would be better off for doing so. I honestly don't care how good your intentions are, if the person you are pointing them at doesn't invite you to share them, then shut your mouth, cause you aren't an undercover superhero.

Another thing that has me angry is how the adults I tried talking to when I was being bullied would react or respond. Most of the time I was told "You just gotta ignore them, they are just trying to get a reaction out of you and if you don't react they will stop" then the other thing that would happen was I would be encouraged to go on a diet, lose weight, change myself. Here is the deal folks, when a person, especially a young kid is being victimized by a bully or bullies, it is so not cool to put the responsibility for stopping it onto the victims shoulders cause lemme tell ya, they have enough to shoulder. That is the #1 reason that I stopped speaking out about all the stuff I went through, because it always became my problem, I would have to change myself or my reactions, I was the one in the wrong, not the bully. It wasn't until my late twenties  just a few years ago when I was in a group counseling session at a clinic I had gone to in California for eating disorders that I actually shared some of the stuff I went through. To me it was just my childhood, it was my normal, all I knew but my counselor looked at me seriously and said "Teresa that was ABUSE, you talk about it as though it was your fault and that is was ok but that was ABUSE and it is not ok that that happened to you and I am so very sorry you had to go through that."  That was the very first time in my life that I ever heard someone 1)give it the name of abuse because that is what it was and 2) tell me that I didn't deserve it and 3) that they were so sorry that it had happened to me. The first time I had EVER heard any of that. It honestly shocked me and I started to disagree because I was still holding the feeling of responsibility for it, then I just went silent for the rest of the session. I didn't know how to process not just that what was my normal, was actually abuse, but I also struggled to process that it wasn't my fault and that someone said they were sorry... to me...for what I have gone through. That counselor still holds a very dear place in my heart, he opened my eyes in such a profound way and I can still hear his voice and see his face as he spoke those words.

SleepyDumpling wrote a post on Fat Heffalump the other day Bullies – You Don’t Get a Cookie for Feeling Bad that had me nodding my head in agreement the whole way through. I am so sick of bullies getting a pass for their abusive behavior, and the thought of people feeling bad for them because "oh they must have had such a hard life" yeah well life is tough for everyone and that doesn't give us license to abuse others because of it. We need to not only stop bullying, and teach our children that bullying is bad and wrong, we need to give real consequences to the bullies not the victims. We need to stick up for the victims of bullies abusive ways, and we need to teach our children to be NICE  and how to treat people with RESPECT even if you might not like them for some reason. The best way to do this is to model it in our own lives, treat the people we run across in life with respect. Yeah ok it might be nice to tell kids that "it gets better" but in the case of being a fat person that isn't always true and sometimes when you grow up the adults can be even worse than the kids were. It doesn't always get better and that cliche annoys me because it rings so much of the responses that I got from the adults that should have been protecting me in order to brush me aside. It might not get better, it might get worse, but I have found in the fat acceptance community that even if it doesn't get better you can find people who will stand beside you and tell you that what has happened to you is not ok and that they are so very sorry. They also help you replace the lies the bullies and abusers throw at you with the truth and that helps you to get stronger and stand firm when it doesn't get better.

So what do you think of "tough love" and people that think that abuse and shame is a good way to help people?  What do you think of the "It gets better"saying?  What can adults do when a kid comes to them and tells them they are being bullied, how would you react?