jess-le-mess

[jess-le-mess]

this! i'm convinced a big reason why i was able to stay trapped in ED behaviors for so long is that no one cared because people saw my behaviors as being "in the right direction."

like, i even brought this up to my mom recently like "why didn't you care when i was struggling so much?" and she was just like "i thought you were just, like, always on a diet/'being healthy'"

only one person i can think of (my grad advisor) was like "hey, you ever think all that food restricting and weight loss and exercising might be..not so good? i'm here if you want to talk."

(i didn't talk to her. but i do still think about this. if you're losing weight and suffering, no one ever cares about your "health"; if you're fat and happy, suddenly everyone is a fucking doctor who will nag you to hell.)

If y’all really cared about health you would be speaking up about the underweight people too.

[jess-le-mess]

"i want more media with zero drama, no tension, and zero problematic characters and i am not joking"

Great! Here are my recommendations:

[jess-le-mess]

okay not to get all sappy and shit but i love when i get to watch people recover from an ED, including myself.

cause tonight i was like “man i’m craving ___” so i went and got it, then felt happy instead of guilty. but three years ago i would’ve ridiculed myself for even getting a craving.

anyways this is your sign that even though the recovery journey may look long, daunting, or even impossible: it’s always worth it in the end.

i hope to god this ends up on the right side of tumblr.

[jess-le-mess]

get yourself a girl who’s full of pasta but is still gonna eat a pint of ice cream

[jess-le-mess]

Feedism Community Networking Directory

hey everybody! I've created a new resource that will allow feedists to make connections with the intent to help each other out on their projects. It's pretty bare bones at the moment, as it exists only in a google spreadsheet, but I hope that I can eventually translate it to something more searchable, like an actual directory. If you're interested in starting something for the community, whether it's in-person organizing, making zines, newsletters, writing & publishing, or conducting studies, you name it: my goal is to create an accessible directory for feedists to showcase their skills and interests so that others can get in contact and ask for help. the idea struck me when I was considering writing a book on the intersection of feedism and fat liberation, and a fellow feedist messaged me to offer their experience in publishing. It felt so much better to imagine going through that process with someone in my community who would understand the material I'd be writing about and wouldn't judge me for who I am. so, if anyone else out there is wanting to connect with other creatives and innovators within the safety of their own community, I present to you, the feedism community networking directory!

please feel free to add your info! I hope this can be a jumping off point for broader community networking, so please spread this around!

[jess-le-mess]

f2u, no credit needed!

[jess-le-mess]

Hey guys!

I’m Currently working on a spreadsheet of books with fat main characters. I’ve added all of the fat positive books that I have personally read, plus quite a few from my tbr. I plan to keep researching and adding more but my scope is limited so I’ve also made a form for people to submit books to be added.

The goal of this list is to provide people with representation and to promote fat acceptance. That being said the books you submit don’t necessarily have to be positive rep. The only requirement is that the book is fictional and has an explicitly fat MC.

I have a section in the sheet that tells you whether the character loses weight before the end of the book and I might add a section for other content warnings if that ends up feeling necessary.

Hopefully this can turn into to a good resource for people!

[jess-le-mess]

stickers by HappyishBrand

[jess-le-mess]

As long as you breath you can survive. I don't know what the future holds but this isn't the end. You have value, are worth equal rights and the world deserves better than this. I'm mad as hell, and if you feel despair that's okay too. Feel your feelings, cry your tears. But this isn't the end of our fights- whatever they look like.

Do some Self-Care today if you need. Watch a comfort movie. When you're ready there's always the rest of today, always tomorrow. So let's see the next dawn and the next together. I pray that 'hope' and 'anger' become twin flames in your soul that can sustain you through this.

-mod squirrel

[jess-le-mess]

Cass Elliot photographed by Henry Diltz • 1968

(via her official family-run instagram page casselliotofficial)

[jess-le-mess]

Any tips on tags to use for fat acceptance / pride that aren't full of fatphobic jerks?

It's difficult to look at any fat-related tag without finding fatphobes, thinspo blogs, and fat fetish content. Sadly, there's not a perfect solution. I wish there was. I will say that you'll probably find more fatphobes in tags like "fat acceptance" than "fat liberation" because fatphobes really don't like the name change. They seem to like the term "fat acceptance" more because that allows them more ways to manipulate the meaning of fat liberation.

You'll probably have your best luck by looking at fat positive blogs that sift through the trash for you and/or looking at fat-related tags while filtering for a lot of terms. If you block/filter for words like "thinspo," "feedee," "fat consequences," etc., then you'll probably (hopefully) avoid a lot of fatphobic stuff. Something to take note of is that I haven't been sifting through fat positive tags for a while and instead have been queuing based on what I happen to find without searching (I don't have the emotional energy for sifting through fat positive tags much anymore). So this blog won't always be the most recent fat positive posts compared to if you do sift through fat positive tags.

If I could ask the Tumblr community to do one thing other than make more fat representation, it would be to actually tag their posts of fat people. Most of the art and such that includes fat people isn't tagged at all with words that make it easy for fat people to find that representation. People will use generic tags like "artists on tumblr" and nothing else. I WISH people would start tagging fat positive stuff so it would be less of a depressing treasure hunt. So, for anybody reading this, please ask the artists you know to both draw fat body types and actually tag those drawings so we can find them.

-Mod Worthy

[jess-le-mess]

[jess-le-mess]

by benny.cake

[jess-le-mess]

Life is right now. While you’re waiting for your dream job, your future spouse, your goal weight, a new home, a change in appearance. Life is happening while you are working on mastering a skill, being in the unknown, not knowing which way to go, feeling stuck. Most of life happens in the waiting. Not in the achievements or successes which are nothing but milestones. Don’t wish the time you have away waiting for something that lives in the future. Look around. What does today offer that you might not want to miss?

[jess-le-mess]

Hot take: I think “I don’t owe anything to anyone no matter what” is just another toxic cultural iteration of hyperindividualism and hypercapitalism. You owe care to the people who’ve shown you care in life as long as they also show you respect.

[jess-le-mess]

Inktober Day 9: Sun

Whenever summer comes along, Mali gets to see her friends again. It's worth going outside and into water for.

[jess-le-mess]

[Text: According to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, BMI is an "inexpensive and easy screening method" that is "strongly correlated" with weight-related medical conditions. But in recent years, BMI has come increasingly under fire with critics denouncing the method as not just unreliable but sexist and racist.]

I am so goddamn tired of people ignoring fatphobia. Fat people have been talking about the problems with BMI for decades and decades. BMI is fatphobic as fuck and does an incredible amount of harm to fat people, and the BMI scale is fatphobic in ways beyond just being "unreliable."

Yet the world only cares when the BMI is sexist and racist. The problems with the BMI scale don't matter until it's about the oppression of other groups that "actually matter."

I'm glad that people are talking about the ways that BMI perpetuates racism and sexism. Simultaneously, people should have cared decades before that was pointed out. People should have cared when it was fat voices being silenced.

This world is so goddamn desperate to sweep fat people's oppression under the rug while allowing mainstream activism movements for everybody else. If you do not give a shit when your fat siblings are being killed by medical fatphobia, then you do not truly give a shit when the topic switches to the groups you actually care about.

It's time to give a fuck about fat people.

-Mod Worthy