Oh yes, I had also wanted to say, before I go, that if the news story does mention my blog at all, I wanted to link to the other blog that I had made just about size positivity issues since this blog is more about, well, you know, parties and Buffalo and lamb chops and cats. I had asked the reporter if he could link to that one but when I told him the URL he laughed and said the paper wouldn't print it.
Fat Titties

Because that's arguably my fattest part, I figured it would be a clever name for a blog. Silly me, not thinking about the media!

But anyway. That's where I've been putting my thinky posts about body politics. (Different from the body politic, of course.)

Well, I'm going out of town tonight (headed up to Hamilton to see the Madison, Wisconsin travel team take on the Hamilton league's travel team, in what should be an exciting bout). Then I'm getting home way late, and tomorrow morning I'm getting into the car that I'm loading up today (Yay for getting a ride to Canada so I don't have to load the car tomorrow at the crack of dawn!), and driving down to Cooper's Lake in PA for my first visit to the Pennsic Wars.
I'm very excited and have been working really hard to get ready.
To the point that I'm really tired and stressed-out and now just wish I was spending two weeks lying in bed instead of camping. But that's OK. I am pretty sure that once I get there, I'm going to have a blast, so I'm trying to just not think about how much work I still have to do right now. In a minute I gotta get up and start packing stuff, but right now, I'm totally fine. Yes.
So, I'll see y'all in two weeks or so. I will have my phone so anything urgent, people can text me with. I doubt anything will really be that urgent, though.
To find out what happened with the news and all that stuff, go check with (e:zobar). No, he is not coming with me-- he decided he just couldn't keep a straight face and anyway, he has work to do and a kitty to feed and a lot of beer to drink and the couch to keep warm, and so on.

Anyway-- hasta la vista, and if y'all have a party without me, take pictures, huh? Have a good rest of July / beginning of August.

So yeah. We're going in for a photo shoot with the Buff News. I guess the guy decided that me and (e:Zobar) were a good illustration of the article.
I had suggested I could wear my roller derby uniform, as it's quite form-fitting but athletic. I linked to that photo of me in it, that was taken for last season, and they called today and said it was too much skin for the Buffalo News to print! How funny. I said I'd wear some leggings underneath.
I'm bringing that, and showing up in a normal outfit-- a tastefully boobalicious shirt from Bravissimo because it's the only fitted shirt I own that fits me, plus some jeans that have a little stretch. The idea being to show my body shape without being gross about it-- nobody needs to see anybody's naked thighs in the newspaper, regardless of the fatness or not of said thighs, in my not terribly humble opinion. (e:Zobar) will be wearing one of his more form-fitting t-shirts. We'd joked about having him pose nude, but I bet the News wouldn't print that one either.

I'm worried about the story, of course. I am not exactly eager to be the poster child for the unrepentantly fat Buffalonian. Fat people will say I'm too thin; many people will just call me a fatass. And I fully expect that no one will believe that I eat the same as Z and exercise 10-20x more than him. People don't understand metabolism, and even my doctor just assumed I was lying when I told her how much I exercised.
This could go wrong in many many ways. I look a lot better in my normal clothes than in my uniform, but I just want the roller derby in there just so people understand, I'm not lying when I say I'm active and athletic. You can't even participate in a bout without having skated a certain number of hours that season and especially in the month leading up to it, it's part of our bylaws. Most people don't really know that, but there it is-- the fact that I am entitled to wear that uniform means that I absolutely cannot be lying about the amount of exercise I get.
I don't really have any way of proving that I eat what I say I do, but they want to photograph me holding a bunch of vegetables, so I can at least hope the article will make my case there.

I say from experience that nobody's going to believe me, just because I'm used to it. (Seriously. My doctor. Who I went to with an overexercise-induced injury. Did not believe me because the number on the scale was too high. Nobody who works out that much can weigh that much.)
Because the point I'm trying to make is that in order for me to meet the requirements for a "healthy" BMI, I would have to go on a starvation diet. I would have to get fewer calories than my body requires to maintain itself. And that is what I am protesting against. That is what, to me, "size-positive" means. That is what I mean by Fat Acceptance. I am the size I am, and do not need to diet, because I am already doing what my body needs to thrive, and this is the size it settles at when I treat it properly.

But you know, I'm glad the story is being done. I don't know who else he'll talk to for it, and what they'll say, but I'm glad my point of view is in there.

So anyway. Wish me luck, I guess.

As (e:zobar) already mentioned, we got interviewed by a features writer from the Buff News about "weight acceptance", or size-positivity. Z already explained how he got involved.
The guy just really could not believe that Z and I eat the same diet, but we do. We totally do. I snack more often than him, but he eats more at a sitting than I do. I suppose for the sake of Science we could do a comprehensive chart of every calorie we each take in, but I can tell you, having lived with him for six years, I know pretty well that we basically eat the same diet. I eat marginally more sweets, he eats marginally more salty snacks. I am more likely to eat when I am bored; he is more likely to snack late at night. Really, on average, day to day, we eat the same diet. And I stress about it more.
I also get a whole lot more exercise than he does.
He gets more sleep than I do.
And I am five feet seven and 205-210 pounds, while he is six feet three and 135-140 pounds.
[Edited to add: this is all covered much more articulately here: ]

What's more, both our weights have been almost perfectly stable for six years. We were 22/almost 23 when we moved in together, and are 28/almost 29 now. In that time I have gone down as low as 185 pounds-- I had a physically demanding job and got a throat infection so I couldn't eat-- and he has gone as high as 145 pounds-- when I first moved in I fed him a lot. But these were gradual changes, mostly, and it's made very little difference what we did.
I went through a phase where I was writing a novel (in 2003) and spent 100+ hours a week sitting in bed writing. I rarely exercised, almost never left the house, and... pretty much stuck to my normal diet.
I gained maybe 5 pounds. Lost a little muscle, went up half a dress size.
Then I joined roller derby. That's the only thing that has made a lasting difference in my weight:
I gained about ten to fifteen pounds.
Yep. Muscle.
Z used to have to walk about two miles a day to get to work. He has gone through various changing situations of eating well or not so well (in Jersey, with only a minifridge, he ate a lot of Chinese takeout), and exercising a lot or a little. His weight very, very rarely changes.

It seems to be pretty compelling evidence, to me, that one's natural metabolism has a whole hell of a lot to do with the shape one is.
I'm not saying one should never pay the slightest attention to what one eats, or that one should not make any effort to lead an active lifestyle. Quite the contrary: I believe, and this is more radical than it sounds, that you should only eat when you're hungry, and should only eat things you truly want to eat. (Seriously, seriously look, at a Lil Debbie snack cake. Do you seriously want that? Really? I mean really? Well, OK, I mean, if you really want it, fine. But look at a fresh red bell pepper and a block of cheese and an egg and tell me you don't ever want that instead. Because damn, yo. Red pepper omelets are friggin' awesome.)
But the corollary to that is that you should always eat when you are hungry. And you should eat until you are not hungry. And then you should keep doing that. Don't eat when you're not hungry. Do eat when you are. Try to have tasty food that has actual nutritional value available so that when you are hungry, you can eat it.

Really, seriously, that's all I'm saying.

And as far as exercise-- you shouldn't do it because you hate it. It really feels good. You should find something you like to do, and make time to do it. The making time part is the hard part of it.

Really.

Anyway. That's all I'm saying. And the way he found me was that (e:strip) has such good Google rankings in general that it picked me up for a phrase that's not even in the journal. He found me for "weight acceptance Buffalo" (minus quotes), and that's not even what I call it, so good for (e:strip). Well done (e:Paul)!
I'm going to see if I can convince him to mention this journal in the article. :)

Because I have a separate blog I started just for Fat Acceptance stuff, mostly so I could leave comments on other sites, and I want him to mention that one but it's got a URL that the Buffalo News won't print:



Tee hee. Hey, I thought it was funny when I registered it.

So have I explained on here that I'm going to Pennsic?



Yeah, it's 2 weeks of pseudo-medieval camping and i need garb.
So I've had a crash course in sewing.
And I've been aiming for this approximate look:

or perhaps this:

(The latter has good construction notes so I can copy it better. Her English is better too.)

Anyway. I'm midway through a very complicated kirtle with a waist seam and front lacing, and the bodice is all boned and supportive, and I still have to put the skirt onto it and maybe make some sleeves.

I took a break today to do something simpler. An apron, maybe. I had a biggish square of white cotton fabric I was going to hem on both sides and then sew, I wasn't quite sure into what.

What happened?
I am just going to copy-paste an email I wrote to my mom to explain it. My mother, incidentally, is a veteran re-enactor and costumer, and was married in 18th-century garb to my father-- they met doing Revolutionary War re-enactments at the bicentennial. So she knows about this stuff. I don't think she's as retarded as me though. Ever.


Subject: EXTREME COSTUMING
I managed to put the needle of my sewing machine straight through my left index finger today, so my progress on getting my garb sewn has slowed.
I had a tetanus shot sometime in college, didn't I? Then I should be fine. I remember getting one as an adult but what sort of adult I don't recall. I've now been an adult long enough that this matters, damn it.

I broke the needle, too. Bah. I needed to change it anyway. Fortunately I had the presence of mind to yank it out of my finger before the shock wore off, so it didn't hurt. It hardly hurts now, but I think it's going to take a long time for this hole in my fingernail to close up. It must have missed the bone, or it wouldn't have gone all the way through. Or if it had, I wouldn't have been able to yank it out with my teeth! (I couldn't get a grip with my fingers-- my right hand isn't as strong anyway.)

I was doing really well at the whole "sewing" lark, too. But I think I'll be hand-sewing things for a little while until I get my nerve back (and, er, get a new needle). It BIT me! And I wasn't even doing anything fiddly-- I was hemming a straight double-folded hem in a piece of cotton that I'd ironed the hem into beforehand (seriously, it was a giant square that I was hemming preparatory to making an apron out of it, while on a break from a very complicated kirtle with a boned bodice)-- this is the first time I'd actually bothered pressing something the way you're supposed to when you're trying to sew something folded over!
Bah, that'll teach me to do things the right way.


I think I've learned my lesson about putting needles in my skin, too.

Your repentantly body-pierced daughter,

-- B.




I didn't tell her that I was so fucking hung-over from the 4th of July pool party I went to last night that I couldn't sit up straight, which probably contributed to the incident.

I wonder how many people go to the ER for hangover-related injuries, compared to those that just hurt themselves while drunk?

I think I'll skip the ER. I wish I had health insurance, though. Just in case.
Oh well.