Dear Amazing Fat Poets

Dear Amazing Fat Poets,

I am sure that you are aware that even by writing fat-friendly, fat-proud, fat liberation poems, you are committing a revolutionary act and changing the world. The world may be changing you at the same time, but rest assured that you are changing it at least as much.

From what you tell me, people respond very positively when you show them/read your poems. Perhaps there are more people around now who are not so easily taken in by Big Diet's ghastly siren songs. I am also hoping that fewer people will consider getting bariatric weight loss surgery, as well, since a) it causes people to die b) it causes people to become much much sicker than they were before they had the surgery c) people who are healthy -as in managing to live their lives without too many problems- of whatever weight should not go anywhere near this surgery d) can't the world manage to make some little adjustment in its stultifying anti-fat stance long enough to let mostly healthy fat people function without threatening to cut them open?

You are so beautiful. I was looking at your pictures, singly, a few days ago, and thinking that one day, if it does not already, it will see the beauty that shines through your faces and your voices. How wonderful it is that such beauty comes through your fingers -channeled first through your minds- and then finds its way at last onto the page.

I know what you have gone through to reach this proud stage. I know some of the hurts, the anger, the names we were called, the food that was grabbed out of our hands, the giggles from ignorant pea-brain haters, the assumption that bodies that were thinner were better, and worse yet, the assumption that people whose bodies were thinner were more intelligent (where they kept getting that one from, I still haven't quite figured out). I know the diets they put us on, the gnawing night hungers, the temporary happiness when the scale told us we were a pound lighter, the despair that occurred as we somehow gained the weight back on 800 calories a day. I know how we felt that we would never ever be esteemed as good enough or equal to those whose body weights happened to be smaller.

But look what happened to us. Look at the journey we have made and are making. Look how far we've come to be able to say with proud conviction that dieting does not work, that fat is not a crime, that our bodies and minds as fat people work perfectly well, thanks, and we don't need the help of arrogant, presumptuous anti-fat professionals to evaluate our experiences and find them wanting or even dangerous. We know now that we need - ourselves. We know now that we have - ourselves, and friends who believe as we do.

We are THEFATZ. We are fat poets. "The fatz are in gear..their bodies are connected.." (Paraphrase of  Jets' Song from West Side Story).

And damn it, we should get some t shirts :)

Hugs, Frannie