Knit-Nerd-Rant

I recently started taking a belly dance class. I love it intensely. Over a decade ago, I had previously taken a couple classes taught by a friend in high school and feel head-over-heels with the style. It was fun, it looked cool, I liked the music, and it was really self-affirming. Backing up, I was an overweight kid, who surprisingly grew up to be an overweight adult. It wasn't always that way. When I was a very young kid, I was short but skinny. Sometime around 3rd grade something happened and by 4th or 5th grade, I was plump. There was no change in my constant level of activity - there were dance classed, soccer teams, softball teams, even a short lived basketball team. I loved moving and sports and generally being active, and I still do. I loved vegetables and still do. Just something happened with my internal chemistry that changed how my body managed chemical energy conversion. It was something frequently on my mind - that I was bigger than the other girls. I looked di...

This seems to be a topic of the moment. While chatting with my sister, we started talking about body image and how things seem to be so skewed, and our own issues with our body shapes and our body image. The other day, I had a great experience with a woman at a dress shop. Then today, a friend posted a link to this blog post on Facebook, and it got me thinking. It feels like there's a lot of judgement out there, a lot of mean competition between women that only tears people down.  This benefits no one but the folks at Slim Fast and the successors to PhenPhen, the cosmetics industry, and Spanx. There's also a lot of counter-activisim in a few flavors. There are women who strike back with just reverse judgement, turning the prejudice on skinny women while glorifying the other end of the spectrum.  The perspective that I like best is what came out of the conversation with my sister.  It's that of the authors of Fatcast , a podcast that is looking to breakdown the idea t...