Also, I want to add that even trying to watch cooking shows can be a minefield & I frequently turn them off, since they tend to often be so loaded with words such as ‘healthy’, ‘light’, ‘waistband-friendly’, ‘figure-friendly’, with even someone as food-loving & generally Bacchanalian as Paula Deen calling some recipes ’sinful’ or bemoaning the fact (mistaken, btw) that her favorite fruit, the banana, is somehow ‘fattening.’ As I said, truly fat-positive or enlightened tv is scarcer than the dodo bird.

I watch little tv, aside from the Weather Channel, the occasional cooking show, & some animation I love (I like animation much better than live action), I seldom watch movies (except again animation or something like Harry Potter) & I read a lot, mostly fantasy (Terry Pratchett in particular) or good, meaty, character-driven mysteries or fun cozies, usually set in Maine, where I live. Cutting way back on commercial tv has done wonders for my body image, self-esteem, & overall progress in fat acceptance. There is very little in television or movies which is body positive & fat accepting. I think that the last straw for me was when I saw a commercial for the new Oxygen (Oprah Winfrey’s network, what can we expect?) show called, “Dance Your Ass Off”, featuring a beautiful fat actress named, if I recall, Marissa Janet Winokur, all about fat beautiful (& some who only THINK they are) dancing to see who can lose the most weight. As I said, I don’t watch much, but I do know that this young woman has done some positive fat characters & this whole thing saddens me. I won’t that either, for the same reason that I refuse to watch any diet/WLS commercials or blurbs on ‘medical’ shows or cable networks about the ‘obesity epidemic.’ I am trying to concentrate on positive things, trying to collect what little fat-positive literature I can find, & maintain a strong sense of myself. Mostly what the media does is reinforce the idea that we must constantly, as I said originally, EARN the right to live, that we must buy PRODUCT & try to make ourselves over in order to do so. If I am lucky, I may have another 20 or 30 years left, & I will not buy into that dysfunction any more.

My mantra, since a few years, is: No punishing myself. Only love for myself from now on. Which is not easy, because everyone feels miserable from time to time, and yes society does rub it in our face that we’re not perfect. Truth is, perfection is boring. Our flaws make us interesting.

And besides, a lot of “flaws” are not flaws at all, they’re just original aspects, things not everyone has. Which doesn’t mean they’re bad at all.

Loving yourself is not an easy thing to learn, I’m not nearly there by a long shot. But I think it starts by accepting that you’re not like everyone else, and that’s ok.

In turn they forget all the wonderful things that make them special. It seems like the hope to be a Barbie or Ken has diminished the true beauty that, I feel, lives in all of us. Very good post, very inspiring.

I literally have nothing to add. This is absolutely…I’m speechless with the clarity and passion and accuracy of it.

But even those, especially women, who did not grow up with that still have been given the message by the entire culture…&, in many cases, more subtlely than I was, by parents & siblings, even loving ones…that they are never good enough….just NEVER ENOUGH period, except, of course, that we are TOO MUCH physically.

Thanks again for speaking up & trying to help us recognize that we are good enough & do not have to EARN life. And, if I am a bit long-winded in comments, it is partly that I naturally love to talk & write, & partly that I was silenced, humiliated, & ignored for so damn long!