Many fat women are taught from a young age their size is shameful. Activist Jes M. Baker said this is not only insulting, but patently untrue, which is why she’s on a mission to spread the #FatGirlsCan challenge. Watch the inspiring full video for ‘Things No One Will Tell Fat Girls.’
#GrowingUpUgly
When guys in middle school would get dared by their friends to ask you out and see if you say yes as a joke
How about growingupugly and then turning out sort of okay looking but you don’t know for sure because your self esteem is shot and you’re convinced you look awful?
#GrowingUpUgly Being so wholly convinced of your hideousness that as an adult you now literally cannot even imagine that someone would pay you a compliment and mean it; the only conceivable thing that could be happening is that they’re either a) taking the piss like the boys in school used to or b) so repulsed by you that they feel sorry for you and are telling you you’re pretty because they think you need to hear it.
Hurts how true this is though
I don’t know if this helps, but I’d like to say it anyway just in case it does.
None of you were ugly.
The other day I found a class picture from fourth grade and I looked everyone in it, and then I saw the “ugly girl” – the one people constantly harassed, whose desk kids would pretend was contaminated, the one kids would invent complex songs about just to voice their disgust toward her.
And she looked like a normal little girl.
She looked no different than the rest of the class.
She was never ugly. And I know that you may be thinking to yourself “but I WAS ugly” – I just want you to consider for a moment that maybe you weren’t.
Maybe you were tormented by your peers for no reason except that they were experimenting with and learning the rules of callous human cruelty that would define the rest of their lives – and recognizing this, the adults who should have protected you, let it happen. Cruelty and social shaming – the foundations of how human beings police their society is learned and it is practiced.
Since I’ve become an adult, I don’t recall ever seeing an “ugly” kid. Kids are all just strange-looking works in progress that the artist seems to have abandoned intending to finish them later.
I want you to think about our racist and unhealthy “standards of beauty”. Are any of the things that society fixates on as “ugly” truly ugly? No. We take things that are beautiful and we associate them with ugliness and badness and coarseness – to control them – to batter the will of the already oppressed down to the point where they think the abuse they receive is justified.
The children who demeaned you were learning to crush the human spirit to the point where the target internalizes all that hate and keeps hating themselves even when the bullies are no longer there. Those children were learning the sadism that defines our social hierarchy – we live in a culture where success is achieved through exploiting others.
No one deserves to be treated that way. LGBT children shouldn’t grow up ashamed of themselves. Black children shouldn’t grow up thinking white children are inherently prettier.
You were not ugly. You were told you were ugly so that people could have an “excuse” to target you, to ostracize you, to other you, and to abuse you.
An “ugly child” wouldn’t know they were ugly until someone TOLD them they were. They don’t grow up ugly, they grow up emotionally abused.
And still if you feel that you were the exception and you were objectively and unquestionably so ugly as a child that everyone noticed – even if you feel you are still that ugly now…
That doesn’t mean you don’t deserve love. It doesn’t mean you won’t find love, and trust and happiness.
You are worthy of respect. You have worth. You have value.
And if the rest of the world doesn’t seem to notice your worth – look at the evil and vile things the world does value and count yourself lucky not to be among that number.
There are people who will see your worth. There are people who will look at you and not see “ugliness” – they will see a friend, a mentor, a hero and even, yes, a lover.
If no one else says it today, and even if you can’t say it yourself, I would like to tell you that you are not ugly. That you were not ugly. That you did nothing wrong. That you did not deserve to be treated the way that you have been and that you deserve happiness and love and respect. And you will find it.
My husband doesn’t believe me that shaving your legs is difficult and time consuming. So long story short he is about to shave his legs for the first time.
Update: he is part way through one leg and regretting his decision. I got him to switch from his men’s razor to my woman razor (his is for face shaving) and it’s going slightly better.
He is hating shaving his legs. HATING it.
Update:
My husband from the shower: how many notes does your post have?
Me: roughly one for every YEAR you have been in that shower!
Update:
BEFORE:
AFTER:
He says it was ridiculous and he can’t imagine having to do it again in a few days time, it’s much harder than shaving his face (he had previously claimed they would be abut the same). He says he feels he has learned a lesson!
Edit: He also pulled a muscle while shaving his legs! He said it was like exercise. “Yoga in the shower with razors” indeed!
Update: he has been rubbing his legs together in bed for ten minutes.
People are really mad that Nike released plus size clothes? How can you say they’re promoting obesity for making athletic clothes in bigger sizes lmao, what do you expect bigger people to wear if they wanted to work out if there aren’t any plus size clothes?
the same people who whine and say “fat people should just work out!!” are now mad Nike is making bigger sizes. i can’t
About a year and a half ago, artist Hélène Gugenheim met Marie. The two women were getting changed near one another, and Hélène caught sight of Marie’s mastectomy scar: where Marie’s left breast should be, scar tissue dashes across her chest. Upon seeing it, Hélène immediately thought, “I have to put gold on it.” And so the Paris-based artist’s project Mes cicatrices, Je suis entièrment tissé (My scars, of them I am fully woven) was born. The project uses photo and video to document the ritual application of gold leaf onto scars, in a custom protocol the artist has developed…
Kintsugi, or kintsukoroi, is a Japanese method of mending broken pottery, and literally means “golden joinery” or “to patch with gold.” A mixture of gold with lacquer or epoxy is poured into an item’s broken crevices, rejoining the fragments. The busted object is transformed, functional once again and with its fractures exalted in gold. Visual tribute is paid to the break as well as the repair, as flaws become virtues. Already familiar with and personally inspired by kintsugi method, Gugenheim knew exactly what to do when she saw Marie’s scar. Via Skype, the artist divulges, “When I saw Marie’s scar, I saw a mix of strength and fragility. It was amazing. I saw not only the injury, but the healing. At one point or another, you’re hurt: in your skin, in your heart, sometimes. You have to go on with that. And you can’t go on exactly the same way you were used to: you have to create a new way to go on.”
[…] Gugenheim plans for the project to culminate in about ten documented performances. She half-whispers to me, “the goal is that people who are looking at the photos and videos see into them like a mirror. You ask yourself, where are my scars? How am I rebuilding myself, inside and out?”
n.b. at the moment (2/8/16) the artist is actually looking for participants in this project! she’s based in paris and encourages anyone who’d like to participate to get in touch
Steel Phoenix Studios 