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 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 Healthism. I chose this in honor of Leonard Nimoy’s amazing Full Body Project and the ridiculous healthism with which it’s been met. The notion that fat people are unhealthy and therefore shouldn’t be role models, or receive media representation or be famous in any way is seriously messed up. Not because we don’t know how healthy someone is based on their body size (although that’s completely true) but because people’s health should be between them and the people they choose to involve and not up for discussion or used as a barometer of worthiness or a gatekeeper used to prevent people from ever being seen in a positive light. So here are some suggestions for activism around this, feel free to modify to work for you or do your own thing!
- When you see someone on social media speculating about the health of a fat person (or really any sized person!) speak up – you don’t have to get into a debate about size and health, you can just say that this person’s health is nobody else’s business.
- When you see articles about fat people with comments about their health, leave a comment saying that people’s health, regardless of their size, are not anybody else’s business.
- When you hear or see healthism, point out what is happening and that it’s wrong.
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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Book Me! I’d love to speak to your organization. You can get more information on topics, previous engagements and reviews here or just e-mail me at ragen at danceswithfat dot org!
Dance Classes: Buy the Dance Class DVDs or download individual classes – Every Body Dance Now! Click here for details
I’m training for an IRONMAN! You can follow my journey at www.IronFat.com
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