My Own Fat-Talk Narrative

Hey! It's Fat Talk Free Week! Yay!
And to celebrate I thought I would participate in a little third-wave feminist contridictions.

For Health Comm today, PGM asked us to write a little story about something we have done lately that we weren't proud of.

Story time:

I tap it with my foot and impatiently wait for the blinking "--" to stop, focus, and ask me to step on with a welcoming "00.0". I look ahead, then down. It's still thinking. I look up, trying not to shift my weight so I can get an accurate reading. (Read: Not add addition non-existant pounds)Heaven forbid I have to do it all over again. I look down and there it is.

Like an over timer, my weight "bings" in my head. And from it I quickly mentally count my calories for the day, remember the foods I ate, the lack of exercise I participated in, calulate the time of month it is, and step off. Disappointed. Again.

I did this about an hour after sending an email to my students and peers, posting on social network sites, and reaching an "empowerment" from my everyday activism of addressing and "rallying" behind Fat Talk Free Week. My brain says "Research maintains that third-wave feminist not only embody politics (Fixmer & Wood, 2007), but are also comfortable with their contridictions (Sowards & Renegar)."

But I feel like a big, old hypocrit...

Pencils down!
We then went over concepts from Frank's "The Wounded Storyteller"-- What do you wish to become from the experience, how does a story represent movement, who does the listener become, telling a story is a form of resistance.

And then we were asked to write the same story over...

Draft Two:

The early orange glow of sunrise peeks into my office window as I sit down at my desk, type in my password, take a sip of green tea, and open my inbox. In bold, unopenned email font, there it is. RE:Fat Free Talk Week. Click, Click.

"Thank you!" it says," I've been harrassed most of my life, mainly from family. Just little comments but you know. I really liked the blog!"

I feel as if I have just left the ocean's waves, I am awake at 6am. Rather than wondering and debating breakfast options, a cup of cereal with non-fat milk or egg whites with spinach, I have a slice of Harvest Loaf. Pumpkin bread with chocolate chips and walnuts. Unlike last night, I bypass the mirror and scale and take a shower. Today, shorts and t-shirt seem comfortable and unrestricting.

My mind is not reeling over a missed morning run or a calorie count or the large and ever growing "Thesis Article" stack of feminist ideologies and rhetorical strategies. I just feel free.



After reading Shapely Prose today, I wonder if this is my survivial technique. Just to take it one day at a time and slowly let the guilt and shame go while transcending my identity.

-----
almost 6 pages of thesis proposal done!

Maybe Google isn't that fantastic...

I love Google.
I have used GMail since 2004ish. Google Chat is one of the only chats most businesses have yet to figure out how to keep employees from using. (Although, college libraries figured it out.) Joe and I use Google docs to keep track of our bills per month and I save papers and my students grades on it. Plus, Google has a state of the art "Drunk Email disabler", which asks you a bunch of Math questions before you can send an email in the wee hours of a drunken morning. Hell, this blog is supported by Google.

So what's not to love?

How about when technology goes "too far"?

Google ads are a great way of generating revue for blogs and small websites. Know what google Ads aren't good at doing? Figuring out how not to be offensive.

Remember Highlights? That kid mag that your dentist had with the game where you would find the out of place items? Lets play that shall we. This is a website offering a brief history of the Fat Acceptance Movement, Can you spot what is out of place in this webpage?


















Did you find it? Need some help? Ok!

See it? Yeah, thought that could help.

Now, I know that those of us with Gmail accounts have made jokes and quips about the Ads we get based off our our emails. Right now I have an Ad for Diapers because my boyfriend send me an email that called me "baby" in it, but come on...

What is this?!

When I started thinking about my pending thesis over this past summer, I had no idea where to start. As a M.A. Grad Student in Communication Studies, you would think the options would be wide open. Most of my work had been within obesity, food, and disordered eating anyways: A Rhetorical Critique of The Biggest Loser, A Proposal for studying the Communication Competence within Obese children ( I feel that obese children are at risk for not being perceived as competent due to being teased and etc by peers), An Ethnography on Dinner Studio--a Meal Prep Kitchen, and a Rhetorical Critique of Women Who Eat ( Which just got accepted to Western Communication Ass. Convention!). My Thesis chair suggested looking at the Fat Acceptance Movement. Ok! Sounds good.

This blog will be capturing my thesis process, my woes and highs with the ordeal, issues within academia seen by a grad student, teaching adventures, and my own personal critics of issues I see.

My Thesis is looking at the Fat Acceptance Movement through Blogs-- SO why not have one of my own-- and how contemporary activism has changed by analyzing the blogs through their Consciousness-Raising functions.