Fat Talk Finale

When I first made the commitment to give up fat talk for Lent, I thought, “What did I just do??” Forty days without hating on myself? Impossible! But it actually wasn’t so bad. I transformed into a fat-talk-free warrior. At first I was tempted to let a few comments leak, and it became easy just to hold them in and say something positive instead. But what I really became passionate about was combating fat talk that came from my friends. This spring I volunteered as a Girls on the Run coach (an esteem-boosting program for young girls) and I am the new Body Sense president. So I guess you could say that the ability to fight fat talk is in my “job” description. But it’s much easier said than done. Fighting fat talk is not a battle that can be won overnight. You have to practice. So for my fat talk finale (because I’m done with that crap) I wrote some rules for fighting fat talk.


1. Focus on what you can do, not what you look like. If I’m having a bad hair day for example, I say to myself, “Yeah, my hair might look like I borrowed my dog’s shampoo, but I can still play piano like a beast. So, kiss it hair. I’m over you.” Just silly little stuff like that can go a long way!

2. Remember that you are much more sensitive to your looks than your friends. If you think you look like hell, I can guarantee you’re the only one that’s going to notice. Your friends are more likely to notice a missing smile versus missing mascara.

3. Take a look at the beautiful people in your life. What makes them beautiful? Is it the outfit from the cover of Vogue or a perfectly airbrushed face? Unless your bff is Scarlett Johansson, that’s a big NO. Beauty comes in so many forms. It’s up to you to find it, especially in yourself.

4. Decide what you really like about yourself; whether it is physical or not. This was my favorite exercise from coaching this spring. I told the girls to do just the same. The best part? NONE of them picked something physical. “I like to make my friends laugh.” “I like to hug my mom when she’s having a bad day.” That was one of my favorite moments as an “adult” ever.

5. It not only hurts you, but those around you. One day, just a few weeks ago, my sister (who is 12) and I were shopping for bathing suits; the most appalling shopping mission for women besides jeans. In a fit of fat talk I accidentally said, “My butt got bigger and so did the rest of me.” This was the turning point, my friends. I will never forget the way Alli looked at me. She quietly said, “That’s not true.” She seemed so hurt. She might not admit it, but I know that she really loves me. I could tell that the thought of me hating myself broke her heart, and that observation broke mine. I instantly regretted it, and it had been my first stinging statement about myself for a long time. It hurt me too.

Consider this: If someone told you that your thighs were disgusting, that your abs could use some work, and you need a nose job, would you actually stand there and take it?? I sure as hell wouldn’t. Fat talk is the same no matter where it is coming from. There is no need for it to come from your own, beautiful mouth.

My final word of advice to you is to come up with an affirmation for yourself. Whether it is super deep or something funny, make sure that you’re accepting yourself with it.

Find your beauty and forget fat talk.

A Tribute to my Chucks

I bought my first pair of Chuck Taylors at the end of my freshman year of high school. If you know me well, I'm sure you've seen them at least once. They are a very faded magenta with many tears and flaws but a lot of memories. Even though at the time I didn't realize what I was doing was "retail therapy," I bought the shoes just a few days after my great-grandmother Eulah passed away. In retrospect, that was the first thing the shoes did for me; they comforted me in a time of mourning. Throughout high school the shoes went everywhere with me; Honor Band, show practices, band camp, and eventually college visits. I wore them when I decorated the high school gym for prom, and there is still paint on the top from a busted a tub of paint. I wore the shoes at freshman orientation at Ohio State, and of course I've worn them many times as an official student. They have traveled with me to New York City, Washington, D.C., Chicago, and Toronto, ON, and countless other cities. They have even accompanied me to a Cavs game. The shoes also have been with me to every job I've ever had and have remnants of beer stains (Riverside Golf Club) and new coffee stains from Oxley's.

This summer my pink Chuck Taylors and I will make even more memories together in various countries in Europe. I like to fantasize about what food might be spilled on them or exotic foreign people who might step on them (follow this blog for pictures this summer!). Something else I like to ponder about is how much I have grown in these shoes; not physically, but emotionally. I've won, I've lost, been accepted and rejected. I've traveled and I've learned. I bought them as a 15 year old girl with crazy ambitions and I've grown into a 21 year old (woman?) with even crazier ones. So here's to you, shoes. They might not have caused me to grow emotionally, but they were there, protecting my feet from frivolous, exploding tubs of paint the whole way. 

Trash Hole: Stress vs. Fat Talk

My first Lenten/Fat Talk Free update is much later than I intended it to be because architecture (my major) put me through the ringer last week. Which actually taught me something: when I am exhausted and stressed, my mind automatically goes into Fat Talk mode. I averaged maybe two hours of sleep per night last week, so it’s kind of hard not to, well, call yourself a zombie when you feel like one. I had one or more major projects due each day of the week, and every time I turned one in, I hated it. As the week progressed it just got worse. My hatred of my work grew stronger and began to affect the way I thought about myself, physically and emotionally. I am proud of myself though, because even though I verbalized negative thoughts about my work, I only said one thing about my appearance. On Tuesday night I arrived home at my apartment with my roommate around 3:00am, and I said to her, “I look like a trash hole.” As soon as I said it I started laughing. First of all, what is a trash hole? And how on earth do I resemble one? Toward the end of the week I kept pointing out that I looked evil…according to my standards anyway. I’m going to blame the evil look on under-eye circles. They tend to make me look like a mean Eastern European after a while. I would not consider this Fat Talk because I was more or less making fun of the fact that I was hopelessly exhausted for the purpose of making my fellow, hopelessly exhausted friends laugh.

The way I treated my body physically also affected my thinking. I was running on espresso and energy drinks, an occasional real meal, junk food, and vitamins when I could actually get home to take them. Obviously the synthetic crap I was putting in my body started to make me feel bad. Over the weekend, I slept. A lot. And I had real meals!

Lesson of the week:

Treat yourself as nicely as possible (even in times of stress) and you can start to rule fat talk out of your life! God gave you your able body for a reason… So be nice to it!

"Fat" Tuesday

For the past few years, I’ve given up dietary items for Lent; pop, ice cream, chocolate, French fries, and meat (that was last year, and I thought I was going to die). Instead of giving up food, which when you think about it seems really unnatural and kind of harsh, I decided to give up something that’s actually bad for me: Fat Talk. In case you don’t know, Fat Talk is when we say negative things about our appearance. Body Sense, an OSU club dedicated to promoting healthy body image, held a Fat Talk Free day last week, and due to the positive response, I have decided to give up Fat Talk for all forty days of Lent and document different stages of the season. I know it’s going to be a challenge (for example, I just ate a ton of Wendy’s, so I naturally want to complain about how huge I feel), but I really want to get something from this. I hope you get something out of it too! I also want to come up with creative ways to relate the lack of Fat Talk in my life to my Christianity. After all, the Easter season is about what Christ gave up for you and celebrating what we received in return. So I’m going to give up Fat Talk, and it’s going to be really hard….but SO WORTH IT!

For Nanny

Ninety Years. What a blessing. Most of us can only hope to live that long. That’s why today should be a day of celebration. Celebration of a long, happy life. Saying goodbye is never easy, but this is just the beginning for Nanny

She’s probably been waiting years to meet her Savior and I know she’s been looking forward to being with her husband again. Those are the things we should think about today.

It’s so cliche to say that she’s in a better place, but she really is. The best part about knowing where she is, is knowing that someday I’ll be with her again too. Because God gave me and you that option when He gave up His Son for us. To want her here again would be selfish.

Funerals are hard in general, but Nanny’s has the opportunity to be different. Unfortunately, I have been to a young person’s funeral, and those are the worst because you know it’s not fair they died so soon. But Nanny lived a long, wonderful life. I feel kind of unqualified to even be speaking right now because I’ve only known her for twenty years. Twenty out of her ninety. But in my twenty years I learned a lot from her just by observing the way she lived. She always had a smile on her face. She made it seem effortless too, but I think that is because her smile came from within. She was such a sweet and beautiful person, inside and out. Maybe she just smiled at me a lot because she thought I looked funny... Nah. She was definitely just happy.

That’s probably what I’ll miss most about her: the way her happiness could effect me just by looking at her. I’ll also miss some of the hilarious things she said. I’ll never forget when she told me that Bill Clinton was a great president, even though he “slept with that woman.” Oh and how she used to make fun of Oprah. And the time I ate so much chocolate she told me I was going to get acne.

But what amazes me the most about Nanny is not actually a memory at all, but the love she passed down from generation to generation. It shows in the people sitting here today. Mamaw (or Joyce) and Jan are two incredibly caring individuals. They wouldn’t be who they are without their parents. Nanny’s impact on her family certainly showed last night [the previous night would have been calling hours at the funeral home] and in the past couple of days with the outpouring of support from friends. Nanny’s love and kindness has been reciprocated to us by friends in her absence. And her love will always be with us. Because love never dies.

Ninety years. What a blessing. Saying goodbye is never easy, but this is just the beginning.

Deceiving Looks

My latest architecture project was themed “Mobility Meets Strategy,” so I decided to research how the immobile become mobile. I discovered a fashion designer, Izzy Camilleri, who designed an entire line of clothing for people restricted by wheelchairs. I found a video demonstrating how the clothing was engineered for easy use. In the video, the young, wheelchair-bound woman demonstrating the clothing, praises Camilleri and thanks her for designing something fashionable for disabled people. When I go shopping for clothes, I don’t have to worry about buying something stylish because I know the option will be there for me; however, disabled people aren’t so lucky. So many other people have conditions that affect their clothing options, so why is Camilleri the first person to incorporate fashion with versatility? Disabled people have the same feelings as “normal-bodied” people. People with “abnormal” looks desire to dress fashionably, have expressive hairstyles, love, and be loved. The desire for these emotions surfaces in Lucy Grealy’s “Autobiography of a Face.” Even though Grealy’s body is normal, her facial bone structure has been effected by a major surgery from childhood, and she struggles with finding her identity, especially aesthetically. “I was secretly hoping that in the process some potential lover might accidentally notice I was wearing my private but beautiful heart on my stained and fraying sleeve,” is proof that Grealy knew her personality and wished others would see it; not her face. Another point in the plot where Grealy realizes that she could have potentially romantic relationships she states, “I was never going to have anyone want me in that way, so I mustn’t desire such a thing.” People whose bodies are marked as different go through this every day. They desire the fashion, attention, and feelings that able-bodied people have. Grealy recognizes at a young age that because she looks different, she may not be desired by males or even looked at as a sexual being. It’s one struggle to go through life disapproving of one’s own looks but with an able body. It’s a completely different life when one’s body or appearance is disapproved of by society and restricts daily life.

Graphic Benefits

Prior to reading Persepolis and Fun Home, I have never even thought about reading a graphic novel. The impression I had of graphic novels were that they were for men only; written by men for men (aka sexist and something in which I would be uninterested). After all the hype about the popular, graphic-novel-based movie Watchmen a few years ago, I was completely done with the whole graphic novel craze and I hadn’t even read one. After reading the two graphic memoirs for class, I realized the graphic genre isn’t so bad after all. Firstly, the text is easy to understand. Several theories, including feminist theory, can be explained in the simplest terms. Graphic novels contradict the concept of academese, which is an institution that feminist writer bell hooks is strongly against. Academese is incredibly complex, academic writing that is difficult for the average person, or even average intelligent person, to understand. Graphic novels challenge this concept by putting theories in an easily understandable form. Secondly, the text is accompanied by pictures. According to Scott McCloud in “Understanding Comic,” “The idea that a picture can evoke an emotional or sensual response in the viewer is vital to the art of comics.” Not only can feminist theories be explained, but they can also be demonstrated. The reader can literally see what feminist theory does and how it affects women. For example, in Persepolis when Marjane’s mother is harassed by a police officer, the reader can see the emotional effect it had on both Marjane and her mother. Finally, graphic novels can attract a lot of readers and reach an audience that normal novels may not reach. Young girls and boys can learn about serious theories at a young age. People who might not otherwise be exposed to feminist theories can be via graphic memoirs. McCloud thinks that “Together, of course, words and pictures can work miracles,” and I agree.