Fat Angie: Rebel Girl Revolution - Our Queer Heroine Returns, Struggling To Find Her Voice, Her Place, and Deal With the Loss of Her Sister

Fat Angie: Rebel Girl Revolution by e.E. Charlton-Trujillo

Sophomore year has just begun, and Angie is miserable. Her girlfriend, KC, has moved away; her good friend, Jake, is keeping his distance; and the resident bully has ramped up an increasingly vicious and targeted campaign to humiliate her. An over-the-top statue dedication planned for her sister, who died in Iraq, is almost too much to bear, and it doesn’t help that her mother has placed a symbolic empty urn on their mantel. At the ceremony, a soldier hands Angie a final letter from her sister, including a list of places she wanted the two of them to visit when she got home from the war. With her mother threatening to send Angie to a “treatment center” and the situation at school becoming violent, Angie enlists the help of her estranged childhood friend, Jamboree. Along with a few other outsiders, they pack into an RV and head across the state on the road trip Angie’s sister did not live to take. It might be just what Angie needs to find a way to let her sister go, and find herself in the process.

Add your review of "Fat Angie: Rebel Girl Revolution" in comments!

Dumplin' - A body-positive, lesbian-inclusive, disabled-inclusive, drag queen-coached romp through a beauty pageant

Dumplin' by Julie Murphy

Dubbed "Dumplin'" by her former beauty queen mom, Willowdean has always been at home in her own skin. Her thoughts on having the ultimate bikini body? Put a bikini on your body. With her all-American beauty best friend, Ellen, by her side, things have always worked...until Will takes a job at Harpy's, the local fast-food joint. There she meets Private School Bo, a hot former jock. Will isn't surprised to find herself attracted to Bo. But she is surprised when he seems to like her back.

Instead of finding new heights of self-assurance in her relationship with Bo, Will starts to doubt herself. So she sets out to take back her confidence by doing the most horrifying thing she can imagine: entering the Miss Clover City beauty pageant--along with several other unlikely candidates--to show the world that she deserves to be up there as much as any girl does. Along the way, she'll shock the hell out of Clover City--and maybe herself most of all.

My thanks to Karol for the recommendation. Add your review of Dumplin' in comments!

Fat Angie - A Teen Lesbian Novel

Fat Angie by e.E. Charlton-Trujillo

Angie is broken — by her can’t-be-bothered mother, by her high-school tormenters, and by being the only one who thinks her varsity-athlete-turned-war-hero sister is still alive. Hiding under a mountain of junk food hasn’t kept the pain (or the shouts of "crazy mad cow!") away. Having failed to kill herself — in front of a gym full of kids — she’s back at high school just trying to make it through each day. That is, until the arrival of KC Romance, the kind of girl who doesn’t exist in Dryfalls, Ohio. A girl who is one hundred and ninety-nine percent wow! A girl who never sees her as Fat Angie, and who knows too well that the package doesn’t always match what’s inside. A girl who might become more than a friend... and who might just help Angie change everything.

"Fat Angie" was one of three books to win the 2014 Stonewall Book Awards – Mike Morgan & Larry Romans Children’s & Young Adult Literature Award. Add your review in comments!

Ursula (The Disney Villain From "The Little Mermaid") Re-Sized... and Re-Cast as a Hero?

I thought this performance by Melissa May, "Dear Ursula," was brilliant. (Note that it includes some profanity.)



Here's Ursula's before and after:

I want to be an ally to the fat community, and helping spread the word about this - and the injustice of it - is one way to do that. Let your voice be heard, too.

Find out more about Melissa May at her website here.

Namaste,
Lee

Joy Nash's FAT RANT, and how we need to stand up for Fat people

This video is brilliant.





Fat people and the Queer Community are natural allies, as we're among the last of the groups it's still seen as "okay" to demonize.

Allies are incredibly important in the movement to create change, understanding and a culture where we get beyond talking of tolerating differences, or even accepting differences, but where we are CELEBRATING Differences.

It's important to consider where we can be allies for others in their struggles.

To ask ourselves and our GSA groups and our queer organizations,

How we can be UPstanders and not Bystanders when we see injustice against black people, or muslim people, or women, or fat people, or any other group that's targeted just for being themselves?

Like John Amaechi said, they're all heads of the same monster: prejudice.

And if we join forces against prejudice, we will be unstoppable.

Namaste,
Lee


ps - My Thanks to Adrienne for telling me about this amazing Fat Rant video!

pps - The prejudice against Fat people is everywhere - Just last month Disney launched their fat-shaming Habit Heroes website and exhibit.  And then they yanked it due to negative public response.

"Headless Fatties"

I came upon this quite brilliant essay on Charlotte Cooper's website, about how the media often portrays fat people by cropping their heads out of the picture and how that practice is dehumanizing.

In the top image, their eyes are blacked out like criminals - at the bottom, they're seen as "Headless Fatties"

As we're on the verge of celebrating Thanksgiving, which here in the USA is very much about FOOD, I thought it was a great opportunity to think, as Charlotte urges us to, about the people in those photos - we've all seen these "Headless Fatties" on the news, and in print, and on billboards.  Here's a bit of what Charlotte writes:

"As Headless Fatties, the body becomes symbolic: we are there but we have no voice, not even a mouth in a head, no brain, no thoughts or opinions. Instead we are reduced and dehumanised as symbols of cultural fear: the body, the belly, the arse, food. There's a symbolism, too, in the way that the people in these photographs have been beheaded. It's as though we have been punished for existing, our right to speak has been removed by a prurient gaze, our headless images accompany articles that assume a world without people like us would be a better world altogether.

Yet these are real people who look as though they've been photographed without their knowledge, consent, or payment of any kind, for commercial photographs that are then marketed and sold by photographers and agencies. I wonder what it must feel like to open the paper one morning, or click onto a news site, and see a headless version of yourself there, against a headline decrying people who look like you."

Go read Charlotte's "Headless Fatties" article. It's thought-provoking, and challenged me. Why hadn't I thought about this before? It's not just Fat people who should stand up against their being mocked and dehumanized. It's all of us who should.

I mean, check out this billboard image I came across:

I'm a vegetarian, but frankly, I'm offended for fat people. For the judgements our culture makes. And I'm embarrassed that I didn't really notice all this before.

Food for thought, huh?

Namaste,
Lee