Fat acceptance story about the plush girl . . .
The ultimate fat acceptance question the media asks thin women. An outrageous discrimination of fat people.
Size acceptance / fat acceptance short story includes the lies we are told as women about health at every size, beauty, weight control. Since there are readers worldwide, please you tell us after reading, do you get the same cruppie as Americans about your beauty, size, health? At what age and size limit does it seem to begin in your culture? Americans, please tell us where you are in your size acceptance process. To everyone… Did you know you can get involved with the Association of Size Diversity and Health – ASDAH*, National Association for the Advancement of Fat Acceptance – NAAFA** and Health At Every Size – HAES*** organizations to make a difference in the plush world where discrimination is rampant? Links after story.
By the way, plush is a term I have been using for a few decades to describe fat bodies. Fat women are indeed plush. Plush is luxurious and beautiful. Like peaches…
You know the lies and misconceptions about fat acceptance for none, size acceptance for the tall, short and slender. Health at every size acceptance except for the obese. And belief in the beauty of all women except the fat ones…. The myths, really. Where we feel like we are gorgeous peaches then, one day usually when young children, we find out we are considered toadstools, poisonous mushrooms, somehow defective.
The question asked of thin women constantly by the media and advertising is the one “helpful” question that discriminates fat people everywhere.
“Do you think you are fat?” This one question irks me more than any other.
Leading us to the story I wrote and am republishing it in honor of the ACHAS media campaign**** for the inclusion of fat representatives and professionals in the development of programs which have been the base of unprecedented discrimination against fat people across the nation.
So, let me tell you a size acceptance story…..
Did you hear the one about the plush girl who just reached puberty? A budding young woman of fourteen with clouds of curls, clear blue eyes, sun-kissed cameo skin, treasuring a figure she moved gracefully.
She lived in the country with her parents, grandparents, great-grandparents who were all plush, soft people who worked hard on their hobby farm of organic gardens. 
She sold fruit and vegetables to their community for her family. The family treasured their free time, biking, canoeing, backgammon. Instead of a television. Seldom went to the city, then only museums or to visit plush city cousins. An American woodworking journal was their main magazine.
The plush girl’s cousin, one year younger, visited every summer. This visit the cousin brought a one year subscription of an American teen-oriented magazine. Three magazines from her friend’s older sister’s pile. And a magazine from her mother’s collection that discussed women’s issues.
They spent two weeks reading at bedtime – weight, body image, self acceptance, diet, food choices, health….. concisely, the dozens of lack of size acceptance and size diversity messages had everything to do with zero tolerance of above the ‘norm’ weight and fat acceptance….
Stop eating that junk or you will die of high cholesterol and diabetes, you must eat this and be thin to be safe from fat diseases. Fear-factors in health and mental disorders if one did not have self acceptance. Frizzy hair? Tame those curls. Are your legs too knobby or too fat – if so here is how to dress. Do you think your nose is too big, it’s never too big, love yourself. (Yes, really.) Do you worry you are different from other teens – just love yourself and embrace their differences too and if you are fat take the obesity challenge together and you will all be so much happier. Will he like you even when you look like that – if not here is how to convince him. If he does not like you don’t waste the cute just be the best you can and be yourself and be sure to be thin and move on.
The ultimate fat acceptance question. Picture, if you will, a pretty and slender girl’s photograph over this hornet-target, confidence-zinger, self-doubt-builder caption:::
“Do you think you are fat?”
The plush girl, who had never felt like a toadstool until now, wilted.
And the plush girl wilted.
We know the life. Fat acceptance demeriting by the media and health professionals through the media, especially.
She was all right. Until those two weeks, she had fat acceptance. She had size diversity acceptance, meaning she had size acceptance of all around her, even her own body. And she had health at every size, literally. She felt beautiful in her own skin, a bbw through and through, and so young.
Then a blast from the magazines that create self doubt in order to sell the written cure.
But I cannot in fair conscience leave the plush girl wilted.
After all, we have naïve young women in their teens reading this blog about the lies we are told. We must tell them the truth. Help me out with other scenarios. Your comments are safe, I moderate all comments on my blogs so the haters and fearful ones cannot sting you.
Scenario #1 Plush girl turned skinny-plush-skinny-extraplush-almost skinny-extraextraplush as she became a woman. Struggled, fought, kicked, cried, screamed her self-hatred all the way up to three hundred pounds in every effort to chisel a svelte profile from her plush body. Then she got mad. Quit dieting. Embraced her normal food desires, normal exercise of canoeing, biking, gardening and walking. She ended up at an extra-plush two hundred twenty-five pounds. The extra fifty pounds she carried now are because she dieted, so it is pretty much a given that her metabolism is screwed for a few more years at least. Oh, and she gave birth to three lovely children so that usually changes everything, except for some women with those-kind-of-genes who remain svelte after birthing their third child twenty-two years ago.
Scenario #2 Someone told her that she was lovelier to them than any of the slender girls in the magazines. Beauty is in the eye of the beholder. She bought it and lived happily ever after.
Scenario #3 Plush lush girl had the stamina of an ox and verve of a warrior goddess. She woke next morning with resolve that she would not allow these freaking insane publishers and writers change her life. She looked in the mirror and could see her nose was a little big, it matched her plush face just fine. Her knees were a little cushy, but they held up her lush body and made for sturdy walking and ladder climbing.
She could dance the rump off a cow, canoe a wild river, bike up a mountain. Her frizzy hair, when spirited with H2O, regrouped into the halo of curls framing her round shoulders to give her the beauty and balance every portrait artist dreams they will paint.
Her bosom was ripe like the fruit in the orchard… she had read that sentiment in one of her plush great-grandfather’s poetry books.
Plush lush girl exhaled.
Then she smiled at the truth in the mirror.
Essa Adams is the author of Women’s Fiction Blog. She supports that size acceptance causes of ASDAH, NAAFA, HAES and more.
Essa also writes novels with large and lovely characters, men and women.
A Breath Floats By – due out in June 2010 – features three plush women and two BBMen.
Begin reading novel at ESSA Books, the blog for A Breath Floats By. Available in KINDLE, eBook or paperback.
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