Sunday, January 26, 2014

1-26-14

I love Fat Amy. She unapologetically owns who and what she is in a way that gives her an armor against assholes.  It's one thing to own a label before anyone else has an opportunity to label you, but it's something else entirely for anyone else to label you with out your consent.

My grandmother was very overweight for many many years. My grandfather was very skinny. As a couple they were the very picture of the nursery rhyme about Jack Spratt.  I often heard people refer to the two of them as Fat Toye and Poor Sammie. People had the audacity to say this to their faces with no shame and often with a laugh. While I never heard my grandmother make any complaint over her nickname (she wasn't the type who would make waves complaining about something like that) I can only imagine how I would have felt in her shoes. Anytime my brother and I were being normal siblings and picking on each other and I ran in and would complain about him calling me names she would always tell me to remember "sticks and stones may break my bones, but words will never hurt me". Out of all the things my grandmother taught me and advice she gave me I call bullshit on this one. Words hold extreme power. The power to make you feel love, happiness, fear, worthlessness, self-hatred. Eleanor Roosevelt said that no one can make you feel inferior without your consent, but what if you don't have the confidence or self worth to know that you don't have to consent to someone being hurtful?

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