Oh, do I have a treat for you this week on my WWW guest series! My Wacky Wednesday Writers GUEST is the incredibly funny Kristen Mae of
Abandoning Pretense! Kristen is a fellow Florida gal and I'm hoping that sooner or later we'll be able to meet up and share some gossip and giggles over a cup of coffee. In the meantime, I get to laugh over her hilarious and heartwarming blog posts. While sharing the uncensored truth about marriage, parenthood and life, Kristen is making a name for herself on popular sites such as Scary Mommy, Bluntmoms, Mamapedia and Mamalode. I predict it won't be long before this talented writer comes out with a book. And when she does, it will be a roaring success!
Please welcome Kristen to Meno Mama's site today with lots of comment love!
Skinny-shaming Is NOT The Same As Fat-shaming
It seems like
every other day I stumble across another article purporting that
skinny-shaming is just like fat-shaming. These articles are written
by skinny people who were traumatized by some ignoramus who called
them “bean-pole” or accused them of being anorexic. While I don’t
condone name-calling with regards to body shape, I have to say, I
really don’t think these skinny people “get it.”
I’m probably
going to get called out for skinny-shaming by writing this, but hear
me out, okay? Especially if you’re skinny and you’re mad about
skinny-shaming. First of all, I’m sorry if someone said something
mean to you because that’s totally not cool, but seriously, really?
Please don’t say skinny-shaming is the same as fat-shaming or that
being too skinny is just as sucky as being too fat. Because it’s so
totally not.
First of all,
society looks at “too fat” and “too skinny” completely
differently. People who are too skinny get: Freak of nature.
Genetic lottery. Skinny bitch. Okay, none of those things
actually sound like compliments but here’s what people who are fat
get: Loser. Pig. Disgusting. Lack of will-power.
Society
recognizes one as being out of the person’s control and the other
as being a lack of self-control. Nobody looks at a skinny
person and thinks, “What an idiot for letting herself get like
that,” or “Geez, how could she do that to herself?”
People think that kind of thing all the time about overweight
people. So please let’s not pretend like being too skinny is just
as undesirable as being too fat.
I don’t know
why I’m getting so defensive on behalf of heavy women. I’m not
even overweight. And by the way, I actually do believe it’s every
person’s responsibility to take care of their body. I do think when
a person is overweight that they “did it to themselves.” I’m
merely asserting that fat and skinny aren’t equally sucky
adjectives, and to be blessed with skinniness and be able to eat
whateverthefrickyouwant all the time is something that should never
be taken for granted, and certainly not complained about.
I know, because
although I’m not overweight, I’ve always flirted with the
upper-most boundary of my recommended BMI in spite of living a
healthier-than-average lifestyle. I exercise two or three times per
week, I eat a nutritious, mostly-organic diet, I don’t eat much
sugar and I never drink soda. My guilty pleasures are coffee
(three cups per day, okay I guess that’s kind of a lot),
chocolate-chip cookies maybe once a month (but seriously half a
freakin batch at one time), and a glass of wine (or four) here and
there. My weight has been fairly static at 145. (I’m 5’4”.) Not
fat. Just… almost fat. One batch of chocolate-chip cookies
away from fat.
BUT DAMMIT, I
WANNA EAT MY FRIGGIN CHOCOLATE-CHIP COOKIES AND NOT GET FAT!
And that really
is the crux of this issue: If you’re super-skinny and someone calls
you a skeleton, you can go drown your sorrows in a tub of icecream
without exacerbating your problem. A fat (or even almost-fat) person
doesn’t have that luxury. In fact, once a person is overweight, all
they have to do is look at a cupcake and they gain weight.
(When I eat my half-batch of chocolate-chip cookies I swear I
gain five pounds by the next day. How is that even possible when
half a batch of cookies doesn’t even weigh five pounds???) No,
if an overweight person wants to drown their sorrows in anything,
they’d better find something that doesn’t involve food at all.
And that’s
where another big misconception lies: many people think that when a
fat person goes on a diet it’s like, “Okay, I’m going to stop
eating two whole pizzas per day and I’ll cut down from a
two-liter of Pepsi to just one can – and VOILA - I just lost
fifty pounds!” Okay sometimes that really is how it happens,
especially for the initial chunk of weight that comes off. But after
that, a fat person is eating the same as everyone else and either not
losing or actively gaining weight. WTF is that all
about???
And sometimes
they’re torturing the shit out of themselves eating a f*cking salad
while everyone else noshes on cheeseburgers and tacos, and I’m
sorry but it’s so totally not fair that the quick metabolism
people get to partake in yumminess while the fat people stand on the
sidelines nibbling a goddam stalk of celery. SO NOT FAIR.
Maybe I just like
food too much.
Skinny-people-who-are-angry-about-skinny-shaming,
I understand you don’t want to be called names. Who does? But just
please give all the slow metabolism people a break and let’s stop
staying skinny-shaming and fat-shaming are the same thing, okay?
Because they’re not. I’m not mad at you and I really hope I
didn’t make you feel bad; I just want you to understand.
But in the event
that I did inadvertently stab you in the feelings with my
sharp words, I must ask that while you’re sobbing over your
freshly-baked batch of chocolate-cookies, please eat a few of those
little hunks of heaven for me. I can’t, because I’m still working
on losing the five pounds I gained last month when I glanced at the
cupcakes at my niece’s birthday party.
When
Kristen Mae isn’t running absurdly long distances, washing poop out
of her dog’s butt-hair, or taming her two booger-machines, she’s
tossing her expensive master’s of music performance degree out the
window by feverishly attacking her “writing career.” Kristen
is the voice of Abandoning
Pretense, where she tells the whole, uncensored truth about
marriage, parenthood, and life. In addition to her blog, Mae shares
hilarious and heart-warming tidbits of her life on her Facebook
page, Google+,
Twitter and
Pinterest,
and is also a regular contributor at ScaryMommy.com,
Bluntmoms.com, Mamapedia.com and Mamalode.com.
