I’m obsessed with the Sara Bareilles song Brave (video and full lyrics both below.) I think my favorite lyrics are
Let your words be
Anything but empty
Why don’t you tell them the truth?Say what you wanna say
And let the words fall out
Honestly I wanna see you be brave
In the past week I’ve received a bunch of awesome e-mails from readers who have been brave. One reader finally asked her doctor for a surgery that she wanted to help with pain, and the doctor said yes. Another reader told her doctor that he needed to stop fat shaming her, presented evidence, and he agreed. Another asked her favorite local Chinese place to get some armless chairs, and they did. My inbox has been joyfully filled with incidences of people standing up and asking for what they deserve and it makes me so happy.
When we think of activism we often think of protests and petitions. These are all fine examples of activism but they take a lot of coordination and they aren’t always happening. A lot of the power of activism is in thousands and thousands of people being brave, taking a risk, and taking individual action in the face of stigma, shaming, bullying, and oppression.
It can be setting boundaries at that family holiday dinner, asking your doctor’s office to get some armless chairs, refusing to participate in a body snarking conversation, sending an e-mail to HR questioning the company’s Biggest Loser competition. For me, activism makes my world better just by participating in it, it’s a way that I push back against the tremendous amount of bullshit that I face as a fat person. Every time I some activism, however big or small, I feel better about myself regardless of the action or the outcome.
I set a goal this year of doing at least 200 acts of small personal activism each week (besides my writing, speaking, and other larger projects). Whether it’s e-mailing a company that doesn’t make things in my size, signing a petition, asking out loud for a table with armless chairs at a restaurant, posting an activism opportunity to my Facebook, e-mailing Sara Bareilles to thank her for the fabulous fat dancers in her video etc. I totally get that I am able to do that in large part because I do this work full time and have flexible hours (like I’m blogging right now at 2:30 in the morning!) and I have blog members, to whom I am incredibly grateful, who consider their membership to be activism because it helps give me the financial ability to spend so much time doing activism. Which is all to say that I understand that I am privileged to be able to do this and that my goal is not realistic for everyone, but what do you think about making a goal that is realistic for you – 1 a week, 1 a month? If 1,000 people each did 1 bit of activism a week, that would be 52,000 incidences of activism in a year.
Nobody is obligated to do activism, and I’m not trying to tell anyone how to live. What I am saying is that I’m an activist because I want a different world, a better world, and the only way I know how to do that is to take action and be just a little bit brave.
In the meantime here’s the video and lyrics:
You can be amazing
You can turn a phrase into a weapon or a drug
You can be the outcast
Or be the backlash of somebody’s lack of love
Or you can start speaking up
Nothing’s gonna hurt you the way that words do
When they settle ‘neath your skin
Kept on the inside and no sunlight
Sometimes a shadow wins
But I wonder what would happen if you
Say what you wanna say
And let the words fall out
Honestly I wanna see you be brave
With what you want to say
And let the words fall out
Honestly I wanna see you be brave
I just wanna see you
I just wanna see you
I just wanna see you
I wanna see you be brave
I just wanna see you
I just wanna see you
I just wanna see you
I wanna see you be brave
Everybody’s been there,
Everybody’s been stared down by the enemy
Fallen for the fear
And done some disappearing,
Bow down to the mighty
Don’t run, stop holding your tongue
Maybe there’s a way out of the cage where you live
Maybe one of these days you can let the light in
Show me how big your brave is
Say what you wanna say
And let the words fall out
Honestly I wanna see you be brave
With what you want to say
And let the words fall out
Honestly I wanna see you be brave
And since your history of silence
Won’t do you any good,
Did you think it would?
Let your words be anything but empty
Why don’t you tell them the truth?
Say what you wanna say
And let the words fall out
Honestly I wanna see you be brave
With what you want to say
And let the words fall out
Honestly I wanna see you be brave
I just wanna see you
I just wanna see you
I just wanna see you
I wanna see you be brave
Like my blog? Here’s more of my stuff!
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If my selling things on the blog makes you uncomfortable, you might want to check out this post. Thanks for reading! ~Ragen
