NaPoWriMo 2020 Day 14 + April PAD Challenge 2020 Day 14: Your Legacy

Image by Barbara Bonanno from Pixabay

I

am not

what you hoped

but I am, nonetheless

the legacy that you created

I am your Frankenstein monster

built from the things

that made your life

worth living

I am a

twisted

sorry

awful

mockery

a failure

of a person

I am not 

what you hoped

but I am, nonetheless

the gifts you gave me

~cie~

NaPoWriMo: write a poem about the people who inspired you to write poems

April PAD Challenge: write a form poem

notes

I think the shape above is a chess pawn. It started out as a simple diamante but turned into what you see. It is what it is.

This poem addresses my late father. He was a professor of literature and humanities who also taught technical writing. I was a precocious little skidmark who learned to read and write by the time I was four years old. I think my father believed that this prodigious spark meant that I was destined for greatness. He read poetry to me. I started reading Edgar Allan Poe's works when I was six years old.

My father wound up tremendously disappointed in me. I was a fuckup who could never do anything right and I had a slew of psychological problems. I was singled out and abused by my peers. I married too young. I had one abusive relationship after another. I engaged in self-harm. Possibly, worst of all, between a fucked endocrine system and years of yo-yo dieting, I ended up fat. My father believed that being fat was a sign of failure. He always went to great lengths to prevent himself from being fat. He ran six miles a day for many years. However, his vascular system was a disaster. He had a major hemorrhagic stroke at 68 years old. At the time of his death at age 74, he had suffered several more strokes, had congestive heart failure and vascular dementia, and was confined to a wheelchair.

If anyone's first inclination is to tell me "cHeEr Up, U cAn StiLLL LUz3 tEh WaTeZ!!111!!!" my suggestion to you is to check the ever-loving fuck out of yourself. Preferably on ice during a hockey game. I tried to hate myself thin for 33 years. With my endocrine problems, it is highly unlikely that I will ever be thin unless I do what my great-grandmother did. She developed acute myelogenous leukemia, dropped from 300 pounds to 95 in the space of a year, and dropped dead. But hey, she cut a svelte figure in her coffin, and, apparently, that's the only fucking thing that counts. Never mind that she was now, you know, DEAD.

In any case, I'm not going to waste another goddamn minute of my time trying to hate myself into the body that other people think I'm supposed to have. Thirty-three years of that shit is long enough. People who think I, or anyone else should do that, can slam down a hot, steaming cup of STFU, read the following fine books, and fuck off forever. Or if you're not a brainwashed, narrow-minded asswipe and you simply think: "say, those books look like they have some good information," you can read them while drinking what you want and omit the fucking off part. I'd think that was pretty cool.

Sly Speaks + Fat Friday + Friday Flashback: Diet Culture Rhetoric Is Not Poetry

This poignant gem was originally published on 17 January 2010 on my now-retired poetry blog.

life It would be far easier to diet if I didn't like food.

This, apparently, was the entire-ass poem.

A year later, I would finally take the long-needed step of ditching diet culture for good.

That is a terrible statement, let alone being a terrible poem. 

It isn't even a poem, it's a blurb. A very stupid and brainwashed blurb. It's a tweet that shouldn't have been tweeted. It is a lot of things, none of them good. A poem it is not. 

The Chili Bean Tanka is a better poem, and it is not a good poem. In fact, it is close to Vogon poetry in its poetic injustice.

It goes a little bit something like this.

I ate the chili

between the beans and the spice

digestive horror

beneath the cover of night

noxious eruptions take place

As I mentioned previously, I struggled over the holidays. My abusive partner ED (Eating Disorder) reared his ugly head and I relapsed into my old restrictive eating and self-loathing patterns. Which, by the way, never made me thin, they just fucked my metabolism over and made me hate myself even more. 

However, reading this micro-poem that should not be, I could see where I'd been myopic in my criticism of a poet whose book I reviewed recently. I gave the book overall high praise, but I stated that her "poem" which read as follows, and I quote:

love ends but calories are forever

was not so much a poem as unfortunate diet culture rhetoric, and I wouldn't want to read it as a tweet, let alone in a book of poetry.

Given the unseemly evidence above, that critique was hypocritical of me.

However, there is a lesson to be learned.

Next time you think publishing a pithy pearl of poignant perspicacity such as this...

Go to the kitchen and grab yourself a snack. Or at least have something to drink. Your blood sugar may be low because if you think that's worth publishing, you obviously haven't been thinking clearly. Step out for a breath of air and clear your head of the Diet Culture nonsense. You've obviously bitten off more of it than you can chew.

That being said, Words Written in the Dark is, overall, a thoughtful and thought-provoking volume of modern poetry, and I recommend it highly.

Fat and Ornery

Image copyright Open Clipart Vectors

Ornery Literary Services

Sly and Snarky

Image copyright juliahenze @123rf.com

About Me Monday: Ornery and Sly: Stop the Bullying and Stigma

Image by Gerd Altmann from Pixabay

Today isn't FOAD Thursday, but "The Biggest Dickweed" and anyone who supports it can FOAD every day. Please read about and sign the petition to stop this horrible, hateful garbage from being resurrected.

If you're one of these people who are so indoctrinated into diet culture (I was one of those people for 33 years, and it never made me thin, it just made me miserable) that you believe that shaming and bullying large people "for their own good" is a great idea, here are some key points refuting that belief.

This show caused so much harm to the health of contestants and viewers alike by perpetuating weight stigma. Since the show went off the air, we have research related to how weight stigma and yo-yo dieting actually harms people in larger bodies. Additionally, there is research from prior Biggest Loser contestants indicating long term negative effects:

Participants not only gained the weight back due to a slowing of the metabolism but that participants had increased leptin levels that cause extreme hunger: 
https://www.nytimes.com/2016/05/02/health/biggest-loser-weight-loss.html

From The National Association of Eating Disorders:
“Weight stigma, also known as weight bias or weight-based discrimination, is discrimination or stereotyping based on a person's weight. Weight stigma can increase body dissatisfaction, a leading risk factor in the development of eating disorders.” 
https://www.nationaleatingdisorders.org/weight-stigma

From Abby's Kitchen:
DANGEROUS SECRETS FROM THE BIGGEST LOSER & MY PETITION TO MAKE IT STOP
“A study published in the Journal of Obesity suggested that watching even one episode of the Biggest Loser increased hateful weight bias among viewers! This is particularly concerning to me when there are children watching, as it’s easy to sense and duplicate the disgust for fatness when they see it in their peers or even themselves."
https://www.abbeyskitchen.com/nutrition-dangerous-secrets-biggest-loser-my-petition-make-i/

From Today’s Dietitian:
January 2018 Issue

The Health Impact of Weight Stigma
By Carrie Dennett, MPH, RDN, CD
Today's Dietitian
Vol. 20, No. 1, P. 24

“The health risks of weight discrimination are consistent with the observed effects of racial discrimination.”

Being the target of weight stigma increases the risk of poor mental health outcomes, including depression, anxiety, poor self-esteem, suicidal thoughts and behaviors, and eating disorders. These associations happen regardless of BMI, so it's unlikely that body weight itself is a cause.”

“Harrison says. "The majority of the clients I've treated for disordered eating cite bullying or shaming for their weight by parents, peers, coaches, or health care professionals as the initial trigger for their issues with food."
https://www.todaysdietitian.com/newarchives/0118p24.shtml

My reason for signing the petition is this.

Promotion of size shaming and eating disorders does not equate with "health."

I have had an eating disorder since I was twelve years old. I was not fat at twelve, but I was so terrified of becoming fat that I became bulimic. 

I never felt direct hatred for fat people, but I saw the way that they were bullied and shamed. I was already the target of bullying. I couldn't bear the idea of the bullying being stepped up if I got fat. 

I am fat at this point. Not the "I feel fat" kind of fat. (By the way, "fat" is not a feeling.) I am really, genuinely, truly fat, and yes, I am "that" fat. My size, like everyone's size, results from a combination of factors. The first and most important factor in determining a person's body type is DNA. 

One of the waitresses I worked with at the job I had eighteen years ago was a tall, sturdy young woman. One time in the break room she ended up telling me about her sister, who was bulimic and anorexic. She told her sister: "we're big people. We come from a line of big people. It isn't natural for us to be skinny." 

So, which sister was the "healthier" of the two? The one who accepted the way she was built and went on with her life, or the one who was so obsessed with the idea of becoming thin that she was going to extremes to manipulate her body to a perceived point of acceptable slenderness?

By the way, health is not a measure of personal worth. I am not asking which of these sisters was more worthy of being treated with common decency. They are both worthy of that.

I had a very difficult time during this past holiday season. My feelings of self-worth plummeted to the depths. I ended up starving myself. I also ceased my daily walks. I didn't feel motivated to walk, and I felt as if everyone was staring at me and judging me. Also, walking can be painful for me. No, not because I'm fat. I was fat back when I was waitressing. I was fat when I was working as a nursing assistant and later as a nurse. These jobs contributed to the spinal problems I now have. So did engaging in behaviors consistent with orthorexia, such as spending five hours a day at the gym on my days off from work. My size did not.

I don't know how people can fathom that it's okay to say whatever they want to a big person. Okay, I actually know how it happens. It happens because larger people have been othered and dehumanized. One of our neighbors saw me having trouble shoveling the snow off the porch. He came over to help. In fairness, he wasn't trying to be cruel, and I think he is in the early stages of dementia. But this is what came to his mind, and what society has led him to think is perfectly okay to say.

"My wife was built like you. She was obese. But at least you're trying. She didn't try, so she died."

If you think that "obese" is a harmless word, think again. Obese is a shaming, othering, dehumanizing word which leads to people being denied proper health care and even basic respect. Obese is a word that kills people.

I'm fat. I'm not stupid. I know when I'm being condescended to. I know when I'm being looked down on. I know when I'm being othered.

Sometimes my bad attitude prevails and I let the middle finger fly and go on about my life.

Sometimes I get broken and relapse into unhealthy behaviors (starving myself) and self-loathing.

I got broken over this holiday season. I starved myself, and I stopped taking my walks because I felt like I was being watched and judged and the walks weren't bringing on the almighty WATE LOOZE!!11!!! Which, of course, is the only thing that matters.

I am getting back in the saddle and charging back into action on my very large horse.

So, if you're one of those people who thinks it's okay to behave badly towards me and others who look like me because we don't fit your criteria of beautiful or fuckable or because we don't fulfill your criteria of perfect "health"...

Let's face it. It's never really about health. 

You may expect that this is where I tell you to FOAD.

Actually, I'm going to ask you to read the words above mine again.

Then I'm going to ask you to go read these blogs.

Big Fat Science
Dances With Fat
Heavyweight Heart

If, after reading those blogs you still think it's fun to ridicule fat people or concern troll fat people or you still think The Biggest Dickweed is good wholesome entertainment for the family...

Then you can fuck off forever.

Fat and Ornery

Image copyright Open Clipart Vectors

Sly and Snarky

Image copyright juliahenze @123rf.com

The last diet you will ever need.
 

November PAD Chapbook Challenge: Day 10: Tyranny of Perfection

Image by PublicDomainPictures from Pixabay

so I got to thinking

what if Death 

isn't a grim dude in a black hood

but is instead

an annoyingly perfect and perfectionistic

aerobics instructor

who chirps at you

that it's time to do your cardi-oh-oh

and when you do those leg lifts

you've gotta squeeze those glutes

because if you don't squeeze 'em

no-one else will

and I kind of got to thinking

what if I don't want my life

to revolve around whether or not

some dudebro wants to

play grab-ass with me

and then that chipper death

chirped at me that I

need to mind my carbs and calories

because fat is the very worst thing

that a person can possibly be

and then I got to thinking

that maybe that's not true

that in fact the worst thing a person

can possibly be

is a sanctimonious twat

who refuses to respect

other people's lives and conditions and preferences

and bodily autonomy

and who really can just fuck off

and then I got to wondering 

if maybe that's the way Death works

is by annoying people to death

by making them fight all day every day

with vicious inner voices

that tell them they're no good

because they have dimpled thighs

or chunky butts

or saggy boobs

or tummy rolls

or they just aren't perky-werky enough

and then I got to thinking 

that maybe what happens

is people get tired 

of hearing Death's annoying voice

bleating at them to get up and at 'em

because nobody who isn't perfect

deserves to have a life

and so they smash the snooze bar

on their internal clock

one too many times

in an attempt to shut the annoying bitch up

once and for all

~Cie~

Notes:

Today's November PAD Chapbook Challenge asked for a (blank) of (blank) poem. I initially went with "hands of time," which is how I found the image of the perky aerobics instructor looking lady with her watch. I started thinking about all the years and time and money I spent trying to hate myself thin, and it really pissed me off that the message people (especially women) are sent from the moment we draw breath isn't "take care of yourself because you are worthwhile regardless of your size or looks," it's "if you girls aren't thin and pretty in a very specific way, you are garbage and don't deserve happiness." 

So, I changed the title of my poem to Tyranny of Perfection and wrote about what it feels like to fight with the hateful internal dialogue that has been crammed down my throat for as long as I can remember. It would be nice to be able to just BE, without having to fight with these horrible messages from the cradle to the grave. Doing so is the biggest fucking waste of time and a waste of a perfectly good life too.

Say "No" to Diet Culture

How to Have a Bikini Body:

Get a bikini

Put it on your body

I received yet another email touting those beastly "get paid to lose weight" apps. I'm not going to say which WAH blog source it came from, as several of them are on the bandwagon, but I will share with you my response.

While I generally appreciate your newsletters and am happy to receive them, I cannot tell you how sick I am of hearing about these AWFUL weight loss apps. Diet culture benefits no-one but the multi-billion dollar diet industry, and long-term weight loss is achieved by no-one but statistical unicorns. Only approximately five percent of people who diet keep the weight off. Most dieters gain back the weight they lost, and it returns with friends. 

Dieting promotes a starvation response. (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Starvation_response)

The body doesn't know whether its owner is trying to starve it to an unrealistically low weight to garner compliments or whether a famine has come on. It will react the same way regardless of the reason its nutrition is being curtailed.

See also Minnesota Starvation Experiment.

(https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Minnesota_Starvation_Experiment)

Yo-yo dieting is not good for the body, and dieting behavior tends to lead to disordered eating behavior in general. Dieting promotes eating disorders.

I do not say this as a person who is naturally thin and therefore doesn't have to "worry about" what they eat. I say it as a person who tried to hate myself thin for 33 years, as a person who still has to deal with the screwed-up relationship I developed with food as a result of our thin-obsessed culture.

Dieting, whether to "earn" money or win compliments is a bad thing.

I much prefer the ideas outlined in Health at Every Size. (https://haescommunity.com/) People do not need to be thin to be healthy, and they certainly do not need to be thin to be treated with basic common decency.

I also recommend reviewing these resources.

http://bigfatscience.tumblr.com

http://danceswithfat.wordpress.com

https://thefuckitdiet.com/home/

I understand that conventional thought holds to the idea that pursuing weight loss is a good thing. I believed it was too for many years, starting at age twelve when I became ashamed of my body because I developed hips and thighs and could no longer fit into a size 9 boys' jeans. I developed a very unhealthy relationship with food at that point, which persisted until I was in my mid-forties. I cringe whenever I see things like these weight loss apps. I will never promote them. 

I would hope to see a shift in consciousness regarding dieting during my lifetime, but I'm not unrealistic. This horrible practice is too deeply ingrained into Western society. Still, I will no longer stand by and allow it to do damage without saying something.

I hope you will review the resources I have provided. I wish you well regardless of your size. You do not need to be thin to be worthy of being treated well.

Sincerely,

Cie

I pledge that I will never promote diet or weight loss oriented products. I believe that diet culture and obsession with thinness are unhealthy and have done untold damage, destroying many lives. I believe that people deserve to be treated with kindness regardless of their size. 

Diets don't work. It's time to stop feeding the multi-billion dollar diet industry.

The Cheese Grates It: Fat Shaming, Thin Praising, ED and Me

The look when a bunch of fat shaming "jokes" show up in your FB feed from people who should know better

The Cheese Grates It:

Fat Shaming, Thin Praising, ED and me

Trigger Warning:

Eating disorders

Diet Talk

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I'm a proponent of the Underpants Rule created by Ragen Chastain:

You are the boss of your own underpants. You are free to do with your body as you see fit.

You are not free to tell other people what to do with their bodies.

If you belittle other people's bodies, you are not some sort of champion of "health." You're a dick.

Also, while I believe in the Underpants Rule, I am under no obligation to be anyone's dieting cheerleader. I'll support people in other ways, but I'm not going to engage in Thin Praising any more than I will engage in fat shaming. I find both to be toxic.

I don't unfollow people for posting about dieting, but I do hide dieting posts. My eating disorder and I don't need to see that.

If anyone's curious about what exact eating disorder I have, the specific diagnosis is "Eating Disorder Not Otherwise Specified." It primarily resembles bulimia in the way it manifests.

I tend to binge and then starve myself rather than bingeing and purging.

However, sometimes I binge without starving afterward (not as often since I was diagnosed with diabetes), and sometimes I starve without bingeing first.

Starvation bouts (I'm going through one right now) can also be triggered when I skip meals because I simply don't have enough money to eat. Then when it comes time that I could eat, I don't eat because now I'm in the old Pro-Ana mode, which has mantras like "hunger hurts but starvation works."

Funnily enough, even though I often end up eating 1000 calories a day or less, I'm still fat. This isn't a lament, it's a simple observation of the fact that "calories in calories out" is an oversimplification of what really happens. There are many components to a person's body type. Energy intake and output is only a small part of the equation, or there wouldn't be any fat people. Seriously, would anyone choose to be fat in a society that treats us like shit on a daily basis simply for existing? If "eat less and exercise more" worked, pretty much everyone would already be thin. Also, you think we haven't already tried that MANY times, Asshole? Duh!

Another factor in my size is doubtless due to the fact that from the time I was twelve until I was 45, I went on numerous weight reduction diets. The end result each time was gaining back the weight I'd lost plus about 20 pounds more. I literally had to stop dieting to keep myself from gaining more weight. Once I stopped dieting, my weight stabilized. Once my diabetes was recognized and I started treating it, I lost approximately 50 pounds within two years without trying. Again, this is not an attempt to praise myself for weight loss, it's a simple statement of fact and also proof for the argument that "calories in calories out" is an oversimplification.

By the way, I'm not obsessive about carb counting or avoiding dessert. I don't have the money to be particularly choosy about what I eat these days. I eat what I can afford. When I do have the money to be more selective, I try to choose food items that have a lower glycemic impact (i.e. high fiber foods) as opposed to a low carb count per se, but I'm not obsessed with it. If I want something that has more than the recommended allotment of carbs, I'll eat it with middle finger on high to the Diet Police. Life is too damn long to choose only what makes you miserable.

Right now I'm trying to fight the old "hunger hurts but starvation works" mantra with "hunger hurts and starvation doesn't work. I'm allowed to feed my needs."

Maybe this will help somebody. I don't know.

All I know is that none of us deserve to be hated on or berated for our bodies, people who fat shame are ignorant and/or assholes, and thin praising is insidious. Thin praising is the flip side of the fat shaming coin. Both are telling us that large bodies are bad. Both are wrong.

Also, I'm trying to divorce ED. He's a shitty life partner.

~The Cheese Hath Grated It~

The Cheese Grates It: Medical Size Shaming Harms, Does Not Help Patients

This post is in response to an article by Dr. Jennifer Gaudiani.

http://theprojectheal.org/binge-eating-disorder-stigma/#comment-254

I wish I could find a doctor in the Denver area who has a weight-neutral philosophy when dealing with patients.

I have multiple endocrine problems. Following menopause, my thyroid, which was a major factor in my weight gain, started doing something new. This, as well as properly treating my diabetes, has led to weight loss for which I wasn't trying. However, I am still a big person.

Thyroid medication tends to cause blood pressure elevation (as you know) and I probably have idiopathic hypertension anyway, as it runs in my family. I have been out of one of my BP meds for three weeks. The pharmacy claims that the doctor won't authorize it, the doctor claims they have never been contacted by the pharmacy.

I went to the doctor to try and get this resolved.

His solution was "if you'd just lose 5 pounds..."

I said I'd lost more than 50 pounds in the past couple of years without trying, and my weight has been all over the place my entire life."

I was distraught and disgusted at not being listened to. I did something which I hadn't done in a long time: I binged on a couple of boxes of crackers and a pint of ice cream. Great for my diabetes, I know. I couldn't make myself care.

This is why I really need a weight neutral practitioner. This kind of shit undoes the good that I've tried to do for the sake of my diabetes. I'm not perfect, but I try not to binge. However, I'm also not trying to lose weight. I can't go back on the self-loathing yo-yo dieting roller coaster.

People deserve to be treated with compassion and dignity regardless of their size.

The Cheese Hath Grated It

The Cheese Grates It: The Fasting Blood Sugar Paradox and Societal Hatred of Big Bodies

Trigger warning for eating disorders/diet talk.

With diabetes, you can have the fasting blood sugar paradox. Blood sugar levels after sleeping may be elevated, thanks to the liver kicking out glycogen and (for a type 2 diabetic) the body not being able to utilize its own insulin properly. For instance, my fasting blood sugar was 133 this morning and would have been much higher if I weren't taking Metformin. In someone who isn't diabetic, the sugars would be below 100 prior to eating.

The problem for someone like me is I long ago formed the attitude that not eating was a good thing, so I have a tendency to wait until I'm ravenously hungry before I eat. Thing is, Metformin has a tendency to kill the appetite. So I end up fighting with myself, having to tell myself that it's okay to eat, that I need to eat in order to regulate my blood sugar, and that starving never made me thin anyway, for fuck's sake.

Because in this stupid, fucked up world, we are trained from an early age that fat is the worst thing we can possibly be. We could be molesting children and puppies, raping goats, sacrificing kittens to the ancient demons of the sewers of the underworld, and just being a generally horrible person whose hero is probably Steve Bannon, but none of this is considered as bad as being fat in this society.

That's dumb, it's ridiculous, and I consciously reject it.

My subconscious is a stupid fucker, and I have to beat it into submission before I can eat. I go through this daily, sometimes multiple times.

Don't teach your kids that fat is bad. It will fuck them up for life.

~The Cheese Hath Grated It~

The Ugly Truth About the Modeling Industry

This creepy picture of Donald Trump and his then fourteen year old daughter Ivanka appears in the linked article. This is an inappropriate way for a father to interact with his teenage daughter.

The article I'm commenting on is long. It's also well worth reading.

http://www.dailykos.com/story/2016/10/6/1578544/-The-Untold-Story-of-Trump-Model-Management-A-Daily-Kos-Exclusive-Part-1

Amazing journalism. The pedophilia, exploitation and sexual abuse of models is something of an open secret. People have been looking the other way for years.

I was one of those girls who was desperate to be a model and came to hate my body early on because it was obvious that it could never happen. I was too short (I ended up being 5 foot 6) and too chunky. I became bulimic at age twelve because I was disgusted with how “fat” I was. I weighed 110 pounds.

It took me until the age of 45 to stop saying hateful things about my body. I actually did end up being fat, and now I say that nobody has the right to criticize another person’s body. We also all need to do a better job of protecting our girls and young women. We have, as a society, failed them.

~Cie~