Tiara linked me to a post on Agent Lover wherein the heroine of the piece thought she'd slap the wrist of a fellow blogger who included her pictures in a "Fat Love Friday" post without permission. Mars from Chicken Dinner Candybar apologised and offered to remove the photos, but this offer was not taken up. I'll blog about this since Marie from Agent Lover thought it was fair enough to bring into the public sphere, and because I have a few important issues to raise. Like my fist, as I shake it into the sky.

Sort your shit out privately.

It's not "brave" to have a whinge about this when you've already dealt with the author of the "offending" post. What's your intention? Publically shaming Chicken Dinner Candybar by directing your readership over there isn't very mature. Your large readership could now very well have a negative bias towards the "offending" blogger and a strengthened bias against the notion of fatness. That shit is for Livejournal, dear Maude!

That isn't the way to spread body acceptance.

I'm not sure body acceptance even registers as an issue for Agent Lover, because she admits that "fat" is a negative word. The fat-o-sphere has been around the internet for a few years, plus yannow, we're fat so we're super visible! As a blogger, Marie must have some powerful blinders on. The fat-o-sphere doesn't just encompass fat people either - there's a range of body types blogging about the topic and these authors self identify as "fat allies", "inbetweenies", "deathfatties" and other titles using fat with and without the ph.

Fat isn't a pejorative to a lot of people.

"No matter how many times anyone tries to empower the word, the word fat ain’t going to be thought of as positive unless it’s spelled with a PH, ok?"

I guess I missed that memo. A lot of us did. The tricky thing about saying "never" is that one day you're going to have to eat your hat. Chicken Dinner Candybar obviously considers fat to be a positive word, she blogs about it at least every Friday! The thing Marie forgot to take into consideration was context. If my pictures were posted all over a site that obviously talked disparagingly about fat, I would not only email them but spread my wrath throughout the bloggerverse. That's not what happened here. While Marie has every right to be upset, she does not have the right to decree that other people can't ever empower fatness.

Personally, I hate it when people use euphemisms for fat. Fluffy, BBW, curvaceous - they all make me cringe. I'm fat, I'm empowered and I'm doing pretty well, thanks very much!

You put your picture on the internet.

You have very little control over where it goes from there, or what people associate with your body. In this case it well-intentioned but poorly received. It could have been way worse. I post my photos on FUCKYEAHDEATHFATTIES and I've seen some very nasty comments as people reblog my photos. But you know what? I suck it up, because I know I'm fucking fancy!

You don't just see a fat person's style, you see their body too.

Don't negate it, and don't pretend it doesn't exist. If style was the most visible thing about people, many of us would be walking down catwalks. The truth is that body shape is a HUGE FACTOR and denying that it's a political battlefield is tantamount to plugging your head in the sand and showing everyone your pantaloons.

Whether one self identifies as fat or not, one does not have the right to declare unilaterally that fat is a negative word for absolutely every body. We've been conditioned to accept certain words (and indeed body types!) as positive or negative, and it's really important to understand that human thoughts and prejudices aren't set in stone. We can gradually accept a notion that challenges our conditioning by being open and asking questions and participating - not by digging into the ground, crying offense and refusing to grow.