Ragen Chastain

Welcome to the resolutions flame out. It’s not so much that your resolutions crashed and burned, it’s more like they just never got off the ground in the first place. But there is hope. We can right this ride.

"My beautiful, kind, big-hearted daughter was denied entry to a popular club in NYC called One Oak last night because, as they put it ,'they don't like girls with love handles.' They only allow a particular type of girl into this place."

In the face of funding shortages, Vale of York Clinical Commissioning Group (CCG) has decided that patients with a body mass index (BMI) of 30 or above, as well as smokers, will be barred from most surgery for up to a year. But don’t fool yourself, this isn’t about health, or healthy behaviors – this is about money, and it’s about the people in charge deciding whose blatant oppression the general citizenry will tolerate. Years of campaigns suggesting that it’s fine for people to stereotype fat people and blame us for their problems have led to a situation where people are comfortable with us being denied the same medical care that they receive. And that should horrify you.

One has to wonder what they would have done if they had been trying to do it with a “mean spirit.”

For fat people, Weight Loss Surgery is often touted as the magic bullet that will solve everything from sickness to single-ness to stigmatization.

Suggesting that there is some weigh at which we are no longer allowed to love our bodies is fat-shaming and oppressive. Suggesting that you should have to achieve some level of “health” to love yourself is healthist and oppressive.

What happens when you suggest diet behavior to a kid who’s about to grow a foot? How do you affect their growth? How to you affect their health? This is fat-shaming kids!

The internet has been ablaze recently with pieces explaining why

People are using #TheySaid to tell their stories of experiencing body shaming. Sally Bergesen kicked things off by talking about her own memory of body shaming, and hundreds of Twitter responses echoed her story.

A revolution in affordable housing! A revolution in fighting homelessness!