I Wear Pigtails Like A Good Girl

I wear my pigtails because I've always had "bad hair."  Every woman on the Dominican side of my family put in their long, labourious hours trying to tame my hair, or explain it at the beauty parlor.   Sometimes straightened without my permission, my hair was out of my own control for so long.  Now that I manage it myself, I want all my difficult and unruly curls intact so every person who ever reinforced that “bad hair” label can be mesmerized.  I wear my pigtails to show off how good my "bad hair" is.

  

I wear my pigtails because my sister used to say I looked so cute in them that I could get away with murder.  If my looks could kill, you would surely need a medic.  Apparently women are all vixens, sirens, and temptresses, and "jail bait" when they're too young to consent.  I was devastated when I turned 14 because I knew I wasn't a "nymphet" anymore.  I had only ever learned about my sexuality in terms of male pleasure and believed that Lolita was the pinnacle of girlhood.  I was on a date with an older man recently and he called me "dangerous" when I teased him.  But logically and realistically, he was the dangerous one.  Bigger than me, stronger than me, more credible than me in a court of law if he decided to take by force, because his tits weren't hanging out.  So to reclaim my role as a baby femme fatale from the legal side of 17, to murder you sweetly and to call attention from the blood on my hands, I wear pigtails like a good girl.

 

  

I wear my pigtails because I'm not quite sure how to be femme and I feel like a little girl who snuck into Mommy's make-up and jewelry.  If I have to revert back to childhood to feel feminine, I may as well be a spoiled princess this time around, like my rough childhood never allowed.  I'm not really a femme; I'm playing dress up like a naughty, pouty, foot-stamping Babygirl who needs discipline and a nice, firm tug on her hair.   I wear pigtails like a good girl so you have something to grab when you’re teaching me how to be good.

I wear my pigtails because I’m already big.  Every part of my body stands out and takes up space: big voice, big lips, big tits, big stomach, big arms, big thighs.  There’s no need to try and make my big hair seem quiet and small.  Women are constantly being told that there is no room for big, loud women here, but the more space I occupy, the better!  I demand to be seen and heard.  I wear pigtails to do myself some good.

 

The Year I Lost Everything (and Gained So Much More)

before you read this, this is long and this is more personal than most of my posts, but that's why I wanted to post it.
tw: suicide, drug abuse, and depression

 
Today was a Friday last year.  I didn't have class but I had a routine, yearly check-up scheduled with the Women's Health Center and then I was gonna see a friend's show in the evening.  My girlfriend wasn't on campus that weekend but we were planning to have some really terrific sex when she came back, 'cause it had been a while.  I had five final papers to start worrying about and working on, since I am a masochist who signs up for five classes a semester whenever I can.  It was all okay, though, because it was nothing I couldn't handle.
 
And then the year of absolute shit was upon me.

At my routine check-up (that never takes more than 20 minutes), the nurse practitioner found something.  "I'm feeling something that isn't supposed to be there" she said as she examined me.  There was a lump, an irregularity, something that required an ultrasound.  So there I am in the lobby, chugging glasses of water to prep for the ultrasound, texting my friend that I don't think I'll make it to his show and I'm really sorry but something just came up.

The ultrasound technician definitely sees something wrong and it's probably an ovarian cyst but we won't know until later tonight.  So, you know, just walk back to campus on this dark, cold December evening, alone and weak from not eating all day in anticipation of the check-up.  

I get the call around 9pm, the one from the nurse practitioner that says I'm definitely going to need surgery to remove what they believe is an ovarian cyst.  And now it's real.  I have no idea how to handle this information.  I remember filling out forms before freshman year and talking about the parent's contribution to my tuition with my father and how, when it came to the health insurance, he told me that he probably couldn't afford that part.  "Just take care of yourself and let's hope you don't get sick for the next four years."  Okay.  Fuck.  Because now I'm halfway through my Junior year and I never could have foreseen needing this surgery.  And I will never be able to afford it.  This is the shit they don't prepare you for when you go away to college, when you live on your own, when you try to make it in the real world.  They never tell you that one Friday you're just gonna go in for a routine check-up while your girlfriend is out of town and have your whole world shatter before your eyes.

So my girlfriend and I spent the next two months in and out of the Women's Health Center on campus and the Cancer Center at [local hospital].  We would spend the next five or six months worrying about my emotional state and the obvious deterioration of my mental health.  The surgery itself, which happened in January, radically altered everything about my life (which I blogged about) from how I ate to how I had sex to how I was as a student, etc.  We were advised not to have penetrative sex before the surgery for fear of coming into contact with and harming the thing that had to be removed, and were not allowed to have any sex for two months after the surgery.  It was difficult to leave my bed most days and I was so drugged up on painkillers that I didn't even have the inclination to, so I missed a lot of classes.  I missed a lot of everything, actually, because I wasn't getting exercise or fresh air, wasn't going to work at my campus job, wasn't eating regularly, wasn't showering more than a couple times a week, wasn't going out and being with people, wasn't doing my schoolwork, and worst of all, I wasn't really telling anybody.  I was slipping into a real depression, especially since my sister was back home and could only make the trip up to see me once, and my girlfriend was taking a semester off and we rarely got a chance to talk.  So, I developed a sort of dependency on my painkillers... and lied to my girlfriend about it whenever she confronted me.  She wasn't physically present which made that part really easy.

I was supposed to take my Percocet whenever I felt pain from my incision but it wasn't just pain from my incision that I was feeling.  I was getting headaches from my poor diet and terrible sleep schedule, and getting dizzy from standing up for too long.  My back started hurting from having to put effort into standing up straight because the incision made it more comfortable to hunch.  I couldn't masturbate, so I couldn't rely on the natural endorphins that are released and make you feel good from having an orgasm.  I couldn't even fucking laugh without it hurting.  I didn't like being awake and missing my girlfriend and knowing I had work I wasn't doing and thinking about how much money I still owed for the surgery (even with the school's standard health insurance covering most of it) and worrying about how I wasn't talking to other people and hating the huge scar on my body now and having anxiety about how I wasn't leaving my bed.  That's when I started taking my Percocet for any random reason I could come up with.  And one night, I thought about taking enough to kill myself. 

I never actually went through with that, and I wish I knew what made me decide not to.  It was a real low point and, honestly, I don't even know how to feel like that again, thank god.  I wish I could explain what prevented me from doing it.  All I know is, my girlfriend saw me mention my suicidal feelings on Tumblr and reached out to me right away because she is actually the best human and gave me as much emotional support during the whole thing as she could.  But I don't know how effective that was in stopping me because I was still lying to her (and everyone who asked) about how I was abusing my Percocet, regularly.  It's no one else's fault, I just wasn't being honest because I didn't want to be told to stop.  I'm just so grateful that I ran out of my prescription when I did.  It forced me to deal with a few things on my own and without any drug dependency in the mix. 

The Spring semester that started a mere week after my surgery proved to be the most difficult semester of my college career.  I actually had to drop one of my five classes for the first time since freshman year and now, my finals week was rapidly approaching.  Time for all of that work I wasn't doing to finally collapse on me.  My finals week was the most isolated, sleep-deprived, mentally draining period in my life, but I managed.  And then, in my first week home after all that, my girlfriend broke up with me.  Now, to a normal person this probably seems like the coldest, most terrible thing to follow the months I just went through- but my ex and I are far from normal people.  In actuality, this was the best thing to happen to me since our getting together in the first place. 

You see, we are adult humans who talk about things.  And the things we talked about that night were how we knew we had to break up because after nearly two-and-a-half years of being together and trying to work things out, we realized that maybe we're just shit at fulfilling each other's needs... WHICH IS OKAY!  You can get along really well with someone and love them and respect them and communicate with them and just not fit well together.  And part of communicating really well with someone is realizing sooner rather than later that the relationship doesn't work, and being okay with that.  And I feel like that's something else that they never tell you, especially not when you're 21 and ESPECIALLY NOT when you're a girl. 

We have really unhealthy ideas about relationships because there's this heterosexualized notion of monogamy and romance and these unrealistic ideals of finding that one person, and smoothing everything out despite all your differences and your incompatibilities because you're supposed to complete each other.  And when you're a woman, it's even more important for you to find that match because your life depends on the man you give yourself to.  It's hard to believe that you can actually be truly happy when you're single when this is all you're hearing.  Maybe you disagree with me because you have had a different experience but these are the things that I've learned about love and relationships from actually being in them.  It's what I've observed from being a girl in this time and place and being told from the media and from cultural traditions and all sorts of things that I need to find the one person who completes me.  Well, what if that one person who completes me is me?

I was in that relationship, happy because we get along so well but unsatisfied because we weren't necessarily compatible.  And when you are insecure, you need more love and attention than another person can really give you, because you're trying to make up for what you don't have yourself.  That's the terribly sad but true paradox of insecurity.  And maybe this moment will never happen for you- and for that I am truly sorry- but when we broke up, I immediately realized that I didn't need to try to salvage and cling to a relationship that wasn't working because I was afraid I couldn't find better.  I have been told that I'm ugly or undesirable, so no one would want me.  Others have wrongfully believed that I'm ugly and undesirable, and have lost out and denied themselves the pleasure.  Oh fucking well.  Right now I can't be bothered.

Getting through the semester that I needed her most without my ex-girlfriend, and coming out of it relatively unharmed, taught me that I could survive without her (which I sorta didn't think was possible sometimes).   And looking back, I know I couldn't see it then but, I had so many people around me who cared about me and who tried to make my life easier.  I had bosses who understood when I couldn't cover my shifts.  I had professors who consistently encouraged me to rest and take extensions rather than force myself to come to class and hand everything in on time.  I had a medical staff that was working on getting me back to normal.  I had friends who literally devoted huge chunks of time in their weeks to just staying with me and bringing me food and helping me put my shoes on and just making sure I wasn't alone.  I had family who checked in with me and asked about me and drove me to the airport and the hospital and back to campus.  I had a girlfriend who gave me all the love and support that she could, that she knew how to give, that I was actually capable of realizing. 

And those things are hard to see and appreciate when you're hurting as much as I was, when you are as scared as I was, when you are in the downward spiral of losing motherfucking everything.  Okay, so I'm still paying medical bills a year later, and I still have this massive scar on my body, and I still get terrified at the thought of ever having to get another surgery sometime, later in my life.  But at least I can recognize that I am not alone.  And at least now I understand my own worth and can appreciate myself, which is something you don't expect to gain in the year you lose everything.

The Problem with Pretty

I got hit on in Spanish yesterday.  This is nothing unusual; I tend to attract older, Spanish-speaking men as I walk through the city, minding my own business.  It was this particular man’s phrasing that stood out to me. 

“Estás muy linda,” he called out to me when I walked past him, which translates to “you are very pretty” but, which implies that this statement is not always true, that my prettiness is temporary, short-term, fleeting. 

My inner drag queen started to amuse herself with the thought “He must’ve meant ‘eres’ (the permanent version of ‘estás’) because I am ALWAYS pretty.”

But here’s the problem with pretty:

I spent so many years of my life truly believing that I am not pretty.  It didn’t matter very much to me because I always knew that at least I am smart and funny and I care about other people, so I stopped putting beauty on a pedestal.  I simply accepted that it was not an adjective that many people would use to describe me.  I didn’t realize that, although I said that I didn’t care about something as superficial as physical appearance, I was, in fact, selling myself short and filling my head with this idea that I deserved less than what I wanted.  And worse: less than what I needed.

I figured that since I wasn’t pretty, I should not turn down offers from the handful of people who were deluded enough to believe that I was and I felt I owed it to myself, and them, to be with them, even if they did make me feel awful about myself in other ways.  Sometimes that didn’t even manifest in other ways at all.  My first boyfriend praised my tits but told me on our first date that I should lose a few pounds.  And I stayed with him for nearly a month after that!

That’s what insecure people do: we stay in abusive or otherwise unhealthy relationships longer than we should because we have trouble realizing that we have options.

Unfortunately, we live in a society that is constructed on beauty worship- which I would be more or less okay with, except that it is one idea of beauty.  One nearly-impossible-to-achieve standard of beauty.

Take my breasts for example and how that boyfriend I mentioned was under the same mistaken impression that most people are under: tits should be big and waists should be small.  For the most part, it does not work like that.  Of course there are always rather thin people with rather large breasts, and vice versa, but usually, the body is naturally proportioned to support that abundant tit-meat you’re carting around.  

But if your breasts are “too small,” you must be anorexic or “under-developed,” and you undoubtedly wish you had a bigger rack.  If you happen to have that large chest that everyone is supposedly dying for, but also happen to be fat, you must be “too fat” and could stand to lose some damn weight- and you are obligated to hear that sentiment expressed by anyone and everyone.  And forget it if you’re a man.  If you’re a man and you have (big) breasts, you are either “not a real man” because gender is entirely dependent on secondary sex characteristics (SARCASM!!) or you have man-boobs brought on by too many cheeseburgers and not enough exercise.  No one is allowed to be content.

And I honestly wish that the presence, absence, and/or relative size of breasts were the only areas in which beauty is scrutinized, but we all know better.

And it isn’t as if those precious few who actually fulfill the criteria can even enjoy their adjective much.  There are all kinds of counter-attacks for the “beautiful people.”  We accuse them of not having substance, of being obsessed with their looks, of being stuck up, of being mean, of being self-absorbed.

We objectify them.

We pick them apart, making fun of their “imperfections” until we are no better than the masses who called us ugly.

We call the beautiful women who don’t want to fuck us “bitches.”

And the worst of all, we say that women who have the audacity to embrace this beauty that we worship, by wearing the revealing outfits the fashion industry convinces them they need, are all “asking for it” when they are raped.

We are conditioned to think that being pretty is the most important thing in life.  More important than being intelligent, or being compassionate, or being independent, or any other thing that a human being is capable of- so we all break our backs trying to look beautiful, forgetting that we already are, and forgetting that external beauty does not measure human worth.

One Does Not Simply Get Surgery

Let me tell you a story about how lazy I am.

When I was in Junior High, I would spend my entire summer on the couch watching TV. I don’t mean I would come back from shopping or playing outside with my friends and then spend 4 hours on the couch; I mean I would wake up at noon, walk to the couch, and live there until 3 in the morning.  But this alone does not a lazy person make; you need to put in effort to achieve that- I had effort covered.  

Since my family couldn’t afford to give me a cell phone yet- and honestly, what 12-year-old really needs a fucking cell phone?-  I had to devise a way to answer the house phone without getting up.  I took a curtain rod that we happened to have around the apartment, brought the phone with me to the couch, and pressed the rod on the phone cradle so I could lift it whenever it rang.  

Now, I recently had surgery, so my life has been going through some radical changes in the past month.  I’m not allowed to lift anything that’s heavier than 5 pounds and bending down just doesn’t happen, so I couldn’t put my own shoes on until the other day.  Getting used to my own recovery period is very hard for me because my body is in constant pain and I spend most of my day being paranoid that if I sneeze, my incision will rip open… again.  

The day I came home from the hospital, I was really hungry and there was a bag of Cheez-Its just out of my reach.  Like any absolute badass would do, I used my headphones to lasso the bag and pull it towards me so I could feed myself.  This is the story of my life right now, but what does it have to do with the theme of my blog?  Well, my current state is intersecting with those parts of my identity that I like to center this blog around.  From the title we all know that I am poor, fat, queer, and Latina, so let’s talk about how this surgery is affecting me.

• Poor

Because I have virtually no money, I was very fortunate that most of my expenses were covered by my school’s health insurance.  However, I’ve still had to pay nearly $100 in copayments and for all kinds of medications and anti-biotics.  Maybe that isn’t a huge amount of money to most people, especially compared to how much the entire surgery might have cost me, but it is a lot to me.  Plus the $100 it cost for me to stay on campus over winter break so I could be closer to the hospital and the doctor who performed the surgery.  Not to mention the fact that I feel like crap most of the day and, therefore, abhor the thought of leaving my bed, so I have to order a lot of take out to prevent myself from starving. 

Also, blood from my incision has gotten on pretty much everything I have worn in the past 3 weeks and isn’t coming out in the laundry so, since I just don’t have the energy to wash this stuff by hand, I have to buy some new clothes soon.  This is all in addition to my regular expenses like this semester’s tuition, my phone bill, and the books I need for class.  And then, on top of all of it, I have been in no condition to work, so I can’t even earn this money back any time soon at my campus job.  I’m in a very frustrating financial position at the moment… and I thought things were bad before the surgery.

• Latina

Another thing I may have taken for granted before is my hair care regime.  Maintaining my Puerto Rican/Dominican hair has always been frustrating.  It’s thick, curly, difficult to manage, and feels not unlike barbed wire.  Since the surgery, it’s gotten even harder to take care of this hair.  Showers drain me of my energy, so I don’t take them everyday like I usually do and I certainly don’t wash or brush my hair as frequently as I used to either.  These friends of mine (white girls) offer to do my hair for me but I cannot permit that. 

Technically, they’re not allowed to touch my hair in the first place, but even if I let them for the sake of helping me out, white girls do not understand this hair- not unless they were raised in Washington Heights or majored in Ethnic Hair Care at Beauty School.  So, while I appreciate the gesture, I have to settle for only tending to my hair every 5 days.  This is highly problematic, especially for someone who is as self-conscious about their appearance as I am.  This brings me to my next issue.

• Fat

The fact that I need to buy new clothes, as I previously mentioned, means that I must once again subject myself to the impossible task of acquiring clothes that fit me AND flatter my curves.  More adventures down a sea of aisles that carry every size except the one I need and the one just below that.  More attempts to squeeze my ass and thighs into something that was not made with my ass and thighs in mind.  But right now, that is the least of my worries.  A more important aspect of the fat issue during my recovery period is this attitude I have towards the rest I need.  

Consider the fact that I started this post by telling you how lazy I am- as if this is comparable to a pre-teen on summer vacation.  One of my biggest problems right now is that I think I’m being lazy when I call security for the ride across campus that I am entitled to or when I ask one of my friends to go fill up my water bottles.  There are so many stigmas attached to being fat and the false idea that people are fat simply because they do not exercise that I have internalized that harsh and unforgiving attitude and am criticizing myself for not being more self-sufficient.  I know that it’s wrong to think those things and that I shouldn’t be so hard on myself for these physical limitations but I can’t help it.  This idea has been so engrained in me that I hesitate to ask my friends for things; things they are prepared to bring me, tasks they are willing to carry out.  

I don’t want to be seen as a lazy fat girl, so I’m struggling with this issue of independence.  I have no money, so making simple accommodations like buying painkillers takes a huge toll on my already-empty wallet.  I can’t bear to leave my bed some days, so I’ve missed a lot of classes.  

I wish being cut open and sewn back together was all I had to deal with right now.  Balancing all this excess baggage is too difficult, and I can’t lift more than 5 pounds.

The Strawberry Girl

You know that part of your body that you wish you could change?  That thing you obsess about; the reason you spend too long in the mirror fussing with things only you notice? You know when that thing is your whole body?

I’d like to show you a picture of how I like to look when I leave my room for the day.

This isn’t a belly shirt, it just happened to be riding up at the moment.  I don’t wear  belly shirts.  As you can see, my goal when I get dressed is to emphasize my breasts and my hips and distract you from everything else.  I try to distract you from the fact that underneath my clothes, I really look like this:

If you don’t see much of a difference between these two images, there’s nothing wrong with you.  You’re not missing anything.  My point is that I see a difference. 

My point is that, if I’m not covered up when I look in the mirror, I tend to think about how I have rolls of fat, my stomach is huge, my thighs are enormous, my legs are short and stubby, my skin is sooo white, and my arms have all this excess fat.  A lot of people think that I look just fine, but many more will consider me “overweight.” Here’s the thing about throwing words like “overweight” and “underweight” around; they imply that there is a standard weight that everyone is supposed to be.  I don’t think there is but somehow I have been conditioned to look at my body and feel the need to dress it up in ways that give off the illusion that my body is smaller than it really is.

When I was ten years old, I cried because the doctor told me I weighed 150 pounds.  I had always been on the chubby side but when I fractured my leg the year before, I was stuck at home in a cast for seven weeks.  Since my self-control is shit, I spent every day pigging out and watching Maury.  Yes, I have favourite paternity test episodes.  More importantly, I was never able to lose the weight I had gained.  I was, however, perfectly capable of adding to it.  I have never had a problem there.

Every once in a while I would get on an exercise kick and set out to jog around the block for 30 minutes.  This would invariably end the same way every time; I would get bored after ten minutes because the block I lived on was dead and, even if I could afford an iPod, they hadn’t been invented yet.  Also, because god has never been on my side in this weight loss thing, a squirrel would pop out of nowhere and I would get scared.  I am a New Yorker and all rodents terrify me.  So, boredom and fear would unite and send me back to my house where I would sit on my ass watching TV and not try this again for several months. 

Now, ten years and somewhere between 60 and 75 pounds later, I still don’t do the jogging thing.  I don’t see how I could; squirrels still freak me out and I still don’t own an iPod.  I also have huge tits, which is a full time job.  Don’t get me wrong, I love my girls and show them off with frightening regularity, but there’s something so uncomfortable about having them bounce around at their own free will when I’m just trying to do innocuous shit like, oh I don’t know, walk down a flight of stairs.  This is why I hated my High School gym class.  It’s not that other students would make fun of me; no one in my school cared enough to pick on me, at least not to my face.  It was all a case of paranoia.  It was sort of an irrational fear that I looked ridiculous running and doing jumping jacks.  If there’s anything I love about college, it’s the fact that Physical Education is now permanently out of my life.

I can see how all this may sound like I have some huge issue with my body, like I hate it or I’m not comfortable in my skin or something like that.  That’s actually not the case.  At least, that isn’t the case anymore.  I wouldn’t say that I am 100% in love with my body, and I clearly have my problems with the way I look, but I would never cry over my weight like I did when I was younger.  I am much more accepting of it and I’ve even reached that point where I am comfortable with the word “fat.”

Yes, I’m fat.  No, it’s not an insult. 

I have friends who weigh a lot less than I do who complain to me about their weight, and I honestly don’t know what to say to that.  Seriously, what do you do in that situation?  Here I am, I haven’t been under 200 since Junior High School- and I’m 5’ fucking 4” too, so it’s not even like I can balance it out by being tall- and I have people coming to me all freaked out at the thought that they might weigh like 30 pounds less than I currently do.  It’s like complaining to someone about your salary when you actually make $20,000 more than they do.

Of course I acknowledge that everyone is different and that people have different comfort levels with their bodies.  Clearly, I don’t expect everyone to be satisfied with their weight because I don’t have a problem with mine, even if they do weigh less than I did in seventh grade.  And I know that this is what I must seem like to people who are bigger than I am.  My point is, this is a vicious cycle, and it needs to stop.  There shouldn’t be any stigma attached to being fat.  There really shouldn’t.  I obviously sympathize with that feeling of looking at the scale or in the mirror and not liking what you see, I’m not going to invalidate that dissatisfaction, but I refuse to offer “you’re not fat” as comfort.  

If someone is not fat, it is merely a fact.  It’s not something to give gold stars for.  And if someone is fat, it’s not a bad thing.  It may be treated like it is, but it’s not.  We need to stop associating “fat” with such negativity.  One step in that direction would be to stop creating euphemisms that tip-toe around the issue.  Everyone is always so quick to find excuses for the people they like.  My personal favourite is when I get told that I’m not fat; I’m “just luscious” or “just juicy.”  So now I feel like a strawberry, which is great because, let’s be honest, I definitely am luscious and juicy, but what does this say about society’s attitudes towards fat people in general? 

Well, one thing I have noticed about society is that it does not want us to exist much, outside of punch lines and cautionary tale segments on crap talk shows.  Isn’t that what I’m supposed to feel in a clothing store that doesn’t carry anything above a size 12 or XL.  I wear pants anywhere from 16 to 20 and I can breathe in a Large top, but usually I need an XL or even a 2XL because, you know, boobs.  The fat girl’s dilemma, of course, is that “plus size” clothes are boring and shapeless and sexy clothes just don’t fit.  It’s a stupid dilemma and we shouldn’t have to deal with it, but we do.  We are forced to deal with this double-edged sword all the time; it’s a stifling and oppressive world in which we are told to put our bodies on display, but when we do, we are told that our bodies are not good enough to flaunt.  Well fuck that because I like to show cleavage and if I have to go to a maternity store to get a cute outfit, I do.  Again, I really shouldn’t have to resort to that, but I sometimes do. 

I mean, seriously.  Plus size stores need to step it up.  I want clothes that are flattering to my awesome curves.  Maybe you wouldn’t call me a feminist- hell, I don’t- but I like when people find me attractive; it’s very comforting.  I try not to define myself by it, but I like it. I like to look sexy but when the image of sexy is a physical impossibility for me to achieve, I think something is wrong.  I shouldn’t have to settle for someone who’s only going to fetishize me because being “a fat chick” puts me so low on the totem pole of fuckability.  This is not to say that the only reasons to be against fat hate are that we can’t get laid or find cool clothes, though those are major issues.  Overall, this movement is about respect and being treated like human beings, rather than consistently being insulted, bullied, or made to feel guilty about our weight.  That’s just a basic human right. 

And honestly, I would really appreciate it if the media didn’t programme everyone to find my cellulite repulsive.