Now In Color?

Ah. I’m back, but I have to say I enjoyed my writing hiatus. Work is going lovely (and I start job number two on Thursday!), and bills are being paid.

Ok, y’all are all caught up. So let me explain some of the changes around here. In a previous post I mentioned the number one reason I get so much traffic. Since then, I received a comment (pop up to the Contact Me page to see it) about a reader who understood where I was coming from, but had a friend who suffers from that hypersensitivity to light. So, with that, I decided that it was time to change some things around here. I can take folks disagreeing with my usage of photophobic, but I can’t take thinking that I’m insulting someone by my usage of the term. So, while pictures still make me nervous (and I still can’t stand them), I decided to name my blog something a bit more befitting of a literature buff such as myself. While my Hyde and Seek? tab fully explains my reason for the name, it doesn’t explain the tagline. Y’all can’t see it with this motif, but it says “One woman’s journey to self-acceptance—Now In Color!”

The word “color” here is in reference to the fact that I am a person of color, and I am in FA. Folks of other races are highly underrepresented in FA circles I frequent. I can’t offer a reason as to why that is, but I can tell you why I choose to blog, and why I choose to refer to my race so often in my blog posts (I’m Black, by the way.)

As far as I’m concerned, not only is fat a feminist thing, but it is a cultural thing. What I experience as a fat Black woman in the South isn’t gonna be the same experience as a fat White woman in the North, or an Asian woman in the Southwest, or so on and so forth. I constantly throw out my color and my experiences because I want folks in other countries and states to take a look at what fat discrimination does to folks that may not nessecarily be in their social circles or in their demographic. I don’t expect non People of Color (PoC) to fully understand my struggle, nor do I want to get on the tired argument of whose struggle is worse. What I can do, however, is make it a point to put the issue out there, and let other FA activists see the other angles that we must fight from in our struggle for equality and justice. If y’all don’t know, you can’t help fix. And that’s where I come in.

At first, I was uncomfortable throwing out my race, gender, and general location, because I noticed that no other bloggers did so. But then I noticed that quite a few folks are concentrated in certain areas of the country (and world), and few are PoC (or they haven’t said one way or another). They can’t write from my point of view, as I can’t write from theirs. Some may argue that these bloggers need to be more inclusive. I say that they are as inclusive as they can be without implying they fully understand what we as PoC go through. While the responsibility falls to the bloggers and readers to make the effort to understand the views of PoC (and they have: I have kept up with the discussions following the post at Fatshionista), there is also a bit of a burden on the bloggers of color to help folks of other races understand our experiences as fat PoC. Plain and simple. Teachers don’t expect students to report without research. And as far as I’m concerned, some of the research on fat PoC needs to come from first hand sources. And I’m willing to make that effort, as tedious and frustrating it may indeed become.

I recognize some fat PoC may not feel included. But see, I’ve been the oddball on more than one occasion. And if I felt like I didn’t fit, I made it a point to carve a niche for myself wherever I happened to be. I refuse to sit on the sidelines…I’ve done enough of that in my life, and I refuse to do it anymore.

So, I’m willing to dig in and be that presence of a fat PoC blogger. As Tara has explained, we’re here. And while quite a few of us may not be with y’all, I am. Be prepared to see issues explored from a Black woman’s perspective. Feel free to weigh in on the stereotypes I plan to address and debunk (or even confirm, if that’s possible.) Don’t, however, be afraid of asking the sometimes awkward questions pertaining to culture and color as it pertains to fat. You can’t learn if you don’t ask. And I promise you, I’m willing to answer anything you throw out there at me (provided no slurs or blatant vulgarity is contained therein), no matter how ignorant you may think it.

In short, I don’t want the non PoC bloggers to accommodate. I want them to understand and acknowledge.

And I want to help y’all get there.

This is not to say that other PoC bloggers don’t want to help, but I can understand the frustration that can come about with the undertaking. So y’all don’t worry about it. I got y’all covered. But as always, feel free to jump in with your glorious insight! It’s always welcome, and it’s always gonna be needed.