Happy New Year to those celebrating! In a minute I’ll review some of the awesomeness achieved by readers of this blog this year, but first I want to tell you about the first blog project of 2013 because it involves size-diversity activism, paper mâché, and a Guinness World Record so you know I’m excited about it.
After hearing about Angela Meadows’ fantastic idea to destroy our old diet books as part of a Size Acceptance revolution, I got the idea of involving the Size Diversity Task Force. This is an organization based in Los Angeles created this year by people, including me, who wanted to be part of a Size Acceptance Organization that is member funded, member run, and who celebrate the fact that all participants have something vital to offer and something of value to share.
I got the idea of destroying not just any books that the group might have lying around, but also liberating diet books from resale shops (local businesses are supported, diet companies don’t make money.) I talked to another SDTF member, Jeanette DePatie, and, as she is wont to do, she turned it into a genius idea: to use the books to make a paper mâché sculpture. And not just any sculpture, but a size-positive sculpture that breaks the Guinness World Record for paper mâché!
Our goal is to collect 20,000 pages worth of diet books and use them to create a Size Positive paper mâché sculpture that breaks the Guinness Book of World Records for paper mâché sculpture. There are lots of ways for you to get involved, all of which are listed here!
And now a review of this year on the blog and the awesomeness that the readers of this blog were involved in:
I got my blog’s Annual Report from WordPress, I love how their stats people word things: “About 55,000 tourists visit Liechtenstein every year. This blog was viewed about 1,000,000 times in 2012. If it were Liechtenstein, it would take about 18 years for that many people to see it. Your blog had more visits than a small country in Europe!” According to my stats page, I’m just over 1.7 million hits for the lifetime of this blog. I truly appreciate my readers – not just for reading the blog, though that’s exceptionally cool and very humbling, I appreciate the fact that the comments on this blog, especially those by regular readers, are intelligent and respectful. I appreciate immensely how much activism my readers engage in. Here are some of the ways we changed the world this year:
- Facebook and letter writing campaign that resulted in Citizen’s Medical Center has ended their policy of not hiring people with a BMI over 35.
- Petition and letter writing campaign that resulted in NEDA removing the STOP obesity Alliance from its list of partners
- Responding to The Biggest Loser’s marketing that people can’t be loved until they are thin with our own kick ass video,
- The Rolls Not Trolls Facebook group has 713 members and is very active.
- The Fit Fatties Forum now has nearly 1300 members, and amazing photo and video galleries, and is expanding with the Fit Fatties Across America project, and virtual training and support groups for people who want Health at Every Size-based support for their fitness practice.
- Letter writing campaign that got Disney to shut down the Habit Heroes ride.
- Raising $21,000 in 8 days and putting up 6 billboards and 10 bus shelter signs in Atlanta to answer Children’s Healthcare of Atlanta’s child shaming, fat shaming, billboard campaign and show kids of all sizes that they are valued and supported.
- Letter writing campaign that got Planned Parenthood Northwest to remove obesity from a list of “health issues”
- Minnie Mouse Petition, which was cut short due to Hurricane Sandy, but even so got over 145,000 signatures and resulted in Disney and Barney’s making significant changes to the plans that they had announced originally including a larger model version of Minnie Mouse, less screen time for Skinny Minnie, and ending the film with Minnie in her regular form in the dress they had originally said she couldn’t wear because she “didn’t look good” in it. We got press in almost every major National market and many of the regional markets, and even Internationally, and created alliances with reporters all over the world.
- Lane Bryant changed their tune about whether they were offering their high-fashion line to women size 26/28
- Letter writing campaign that resulted in NAAFA apologizing for newsletter language that many found offensive, and considering changes in the future
- Our Biggest Loser petition now has over 1,600 signatures and has gotten enough attention that I was approached by the doctor in charge of the kids for a phone conversation later this week. If you haven’t signed it now would be a dandy time. If you are moved to pass it along through your internet channels, now would be a super-duper dandy time.
In 2012 we changed the world, and we’re going to keep changing and we’re going to succeed. I hope to give my readers as many options as possible to get involved in activism this year. When it comes to 2013, paper mâché is awesome, and it’s just the beginning.
Like the blog? Check this stuff out:
Holiday Sale – Book and DVDs
Last day of the holiday sale! You’ll get 20% off whatever you buy (Book and/or the DVDs) plus an upgrade from media mail to priority shipping in the US. Support my work, get cool stuff, win-win. Click here to check it out.
The e-book is still name your own price
Become a Member (not on sale, but still pretty cool!)
I created a membership program so that people who read the blog and feel they get value out of it and want to support the work I do can become members for ten bucks a month Members are the first to know about new projects, get to see things before they are released, get “Member Deals” which are special deals to my members from size positive merchants. Once you are a member I send out an e-mail once a month with the various deals and how to redeem them – your contact info always stays completely private.
