It’s “Say Something Sunday,” a day dedicated, at least on this blog, to personal Size Diversity activism. I’ve got some suggestions below and/or of course you can do your own thing and feel free to leave a comment about it. If you want to read an awesome Say Something Sunday Success Story scroll down! If you have ideas of things to do for Say Something Sunday I’d also love for you to share those.
I did the math and if everyone who views the blog each week did one piece of Size Diversity Activism a week, it would add up to over 1.5 million body positive messages put out into the world this year. Multiply that times the number of people who might see each of those messages and things start to increase exponentially. To be very clear, nobody is obligated to do activism so if this doesn’t appeal to you that’s totally cool, I’ll be back tomorrow with your regularly scheduled blog post!
The theme this week is The Academy Awards. Now that I live in LA, the Oscars have a special personal meaning – that I should avoid downtown because of the traffic. But of course the Oscars mean more than that – it’s a night where performers get to see if they have won one of their industry’s top honors, which – especially for the women – will be immediately and completely overshadowed by people’s opinions of their dresses, hair, make-up, and bodies. Once again, women will be given the message loud and clear that how we look is far more important than what we have achieved. I’ve discussed this before (including the ridiculousness that fat stars like Melissa McCarthy and Gabourey Sidibe have had to suffer through.) There is a ton of activism that can be done around this. As always these are just suggestions, feel free to modify to work for you or do your own thing!
- When talking about the Academy Awards, don’t discuss clothing or looks at all, make all of your conversations about what the nominees and winners achieved – actually discuss their work.
- Don’t click on “best and worst dressed” lists
- Speak out against body shaming that you see on your friends’ Social Media, in the comments sections of articles about the Oscars, etc.
- Just say no to Fashion Bashing
Here is this week’s Say Something Sunday Success Story (shared with permission, of course)!
Hi, Ragen! It took me a few weeks of building up the courage, but thanks to your tireless inspiration, I finally started to Say Something Sunday, beginning a few weeks ago. First I quoted your “health is not a barometer of worthiness and nobody owes anyone else their health” stance in my column (I write for a weekly paper in San Diego), and then, which was far more frightening, I shared a story about Tess the model right here on FB, in which the writer explained why Tess was not promoting unhealthy behavior. And WOW. Such backlash. I blocked someone who has been my fan for years because of her bullshit generalities. I responded to comments, and though it was nerve-wracking to confront the stigma, once I did, I felt more empowered than ever. I found myself going to other comment threads (one in particular on an article in a San Diego Magazine about taxing soda) and pointing out the fat-hate, stigma, and BS where I saw it in other comments. Rather than feeling terrible reading all those comments above, I felt like I’d done something. Again, empowering. I live my life in the public eye, but up until now, publicly, I’ve been a “good fatty.” Now I’m ready to demonstrate that (and this is because of you, I can’t thank you enough), I love myself at any size, and I don’t care if other people know that.
In another example of saying something, I had a woman in real life try to pass me a discount card for some body wrap thing that would help me look smaller and I handed it back to her and said, I’m not interested in looking smaller. She tried to push by saying it would smooth me out, and I said, what makes you think I’m interested in that? My body is perfect just the way it is. The situation then became super awkward, because she clearly had never encountered such a response, but I was glowing afterward. Because I had said, out loud, to a person, to her face, ENOUGH. Again, thank you. Because I know I could never have gotten there without reading your writing daily.All the best,
Barbarella
If you want to do more of this kind of thing, consider joining the Rolls Not Trolls group on Facebook, it’s a group created for the specific purpose of putting body positive things in body negative spaces on the internet and supporting each other while we do that. It’s a secret group so if you want to join just message me on facebook (I’m Ragen Chastain)
Have a great Say Something Sunday!
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