In embarking upon my chosen life changes of accepting me entirely, I have to face who or what wasn't. Considering that I am not only deliciously chunky but also an amazing member of the 50 shades of brown clique (black), my adversary was old but stronger than one could ever imagine. Racism. In all honesty, I truly hate that word. I do not hate it for what it stands for or represents, but because of the fact that it is so negative that people fear having a simple conversation about it without the fear of having a finger pointed at them. This fear makes it hard to actually come to the table with solutions or the ability to move past it's sharp edges as one side needs to talk about it and the other thinks they are safer if they don't. Don't get me wrong, RACISM is terrible. It is a fucking disgrace to the human race. However, I will not let the stupidity of some stop me from promoting love and understanding with others.
I begin my acceptance the best way I knew (I'll totally write about that separately), I over compensated for the negativity I saw in the world for big girls. I became amazingly cocky. For every one person who didn't like me, I loved myself ten times more. Man did my world change then. At that point some people had no choice but to love me, others...well fuck 'em. I loved me and that was all that mattered. Finally, ten years after this change in love I went and found that person I had been hiding without even knowing. I went natural. I stopped processing my hair. Let it grow at it's natural state and learned the different techniques and natural remedies needed to care for my hair. What does this have to do with your journey you might ask...
Initially it didn't have anything to do with the body positive movement I thought. My accepting my blackness, literally my roots (hair pun), had little or nothing to do with my being fat journey. That was until it became abundantly clear that individuals like Kelly Price, Mia X, Queen Latifah, Missy Elliot, Jennifer Hudson and Monique came in to the public eye loving their sizes. None were praised for not conforming. All were beautiful representations of the plus world. The latter of which was hugely body positive and my role model. Absolutely NO LOVE was shown or major acknowledgment given. All of these women have since (research should be done), mostly due to medical reasons, have lost a tremendous amount of weight. Even today one of the most amazing body positive personalities out there is Gabourey Sidibe, a woman of color. She played the grittiest "fat" roles (Precious...did you peep those camera angles) I've seen in entertainment to date. Yet, her mentions are few and far in between. Amber Riley is an amazing singer and fashionista yet when it comes to the body positive movement her mentions are few and far in between. Bella Brown is a GORGEOUS model....you get where I'm going with this?
So as much as I was elated to celebrate body positivity, Tess' modeling contract, Melissa McCartney's success, Ashley Nell's Project Runway run...the elephant in the room was the fact that these ladies did not represent me. They were seeing and praising the big girls, but they still weren't seeing me. So as I write this, know that I have been baffled on trying to figure out a way to convey my hurt and disappointment without others feeling as if I am an "angry black woman" (a term used to describe a woman of color who is passionate and smart enough to know better in my eyes). As soon as I attempted to explain what I would like to write about in regards to body positive movement, red flags and caution tape were everywhere. "Choose your words wisely." "Don't say it like that." "Talk about this too." No.This is the matter at hand. It's not a one trick pony. There are NUMEROUS women and men of color in the body positive movement who are just as amazing and trendsetting as everyone else being covered in the media. If I come across as an angry black woman then fuck it, it is what it is. Some of these things do indeed piss me off. I will not use this as a way to bash anyone but I will promote the hell out of those beautiful people being slept on.
#longlivefatbitches
