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Entries in fat (12)

Wednesday
Jul072010

Have you heard of FatBooth?

FatBooth is an iPhone/iTouch/iPad app that lets you take a picture of your face or someone else’s and make it fat.

Ohhh, hahahaha, oh boy!  How funny!  What a brilliant use of anyone’s free time!  Let me go run out and get an iPad right now so I can make people fat.

This app has been out for a month but I don’t have any of the above products so I was unaware of it until it was recently reported that Whitney Port (of The Hills and The City) posted a FatBooth photo of herself.

Ms. Port wrote on her website, “Seriously every time I look at this photo I giggle uncontrollably! [. . .]  What do you guys think of my extra chins?  Is it a good look for me?!”

Somehow I don’t think she’d be giggling uncontrollably if she woke up that size one day.  But if you do a quick Google search about the app, you’ll find a large number of reviews or informal postings talking about how funny this app is.  One blog post wrote, “Whether it’s your own picture, a friend’s, a family member or anyone it’s hilarious to see them obese.  Though I must add it’s much more humorous when the person is thin.”  This is then followed by a picture of a hamburger saying, “Yum Yummy.”

Oh, yes.  Boy am I laughing now.  Hilarious, indeed.

Continue reading here...

Tuesday
Mar302010

7 Quick Tuesday Takes - really trying edition

The point of "7 Quick Tuesday Takes" is that they be just that - quick.  Being naturally verbose, I never seem to quite hit that mark.  But we try again.

1 - Is it weird that I like to look at my baby registry on Babies R Us and imagine using all the things?  I honestly don't think I looked at my bridal registry this much, but I could look at the baby stuff every day.  (Um, okay, I do look at it every day.)

2 - Current dislike: People who tell me "Oh, you just wait!" when I say I'm tired/busy/always out of time/whatever.  Yes, people, I know life gets harder when you have a kid.  I'm not a friggin' moron - but that does not devalue how tired or swamped I might be right now.  (I'll add that I hear this most from stay-at-home-moms who don't work or go to school.  I know they work VERY hard and it's incredibly exhausting work, but there's also got to be understanding for the fact that going to work every day and taking grad classes plus managing a new puppy and being tired is a lot.)

3 - Still on my lime kick.  Bought lime ice pops this weekend.  Mmm.  I sit and smell one for a solid minute before I even taste it.

4 - Junk food might be addictive.  Duh.  I learned this AGES ago.  Our bodies were built to stock up when we "find" fatty foods because they'd have been rare when we were hunter/gatherers.  Now they're everywhere and we're not equipped to have them all the time.  Doesn't seem like rocket science to me.

5 - After spending a zillion thousands of dollars on my car last week, I got in it yesterday morning and the check engine light came on and the car shuddered all the way to work. *sigh*  A coil had shorted out.  It was replaced and I didn't pay for it.  At this point, I'm debating biking to work.  Too bad my commute is entirely on the highway (and NJ is so not bike friendly).  I told the guy at the dealership I was getting tired of seeing him.  He responded, "Yeah, I have that effect on women."  Cute. :)

6 - We got no work done on clearing out the office-to-be-nursery this weekend.  Oops.  It's close to cleared out, but we really need to get cracking.  Just have to sort through things and move/store them otherwise our son will have a desk chair for a changing table and guitar parts as rattles.

7 - This weekend was my nephew's "kids" birthday party at the local Little Gym.  I learned: I could never work there; I admire the people who do; watching kids play is exhausting; and two year olds aren't great at waiting their turns.  I said it's like outsourcing your kid's birthday party - I think it's fantastic.  Everyone (kids and adults) had a great time.  Here's my nephew, TJ, catching some air on the bouncy thing:

I love that you can actually see space between his feet and the bouncy thing.  And speaking of feet, look at those chubby little feet of his.  I love them!

More photos to follow tomorrow... (I said I was keeping this "quick," right?)

Sunday
Jan102010

Moose: A Memoir

16. Read 30 books I haven’t read before and blog about them. (19/30)

Moose: A Memoir
by Stephanie Klein

I have a bit of a love/hate relationship with Stephanie Klein.  I really adore some of the things she writes/says (sometimes she video blogs) and I get really annoyed or turned off by other things she writes/says.  Not surprisingly, my reaction to her fat camp memoir is the same.  In Moose, "Klein shares the cutting details of what it truly feels like to be an overweight child, from the stinging taunts of classmates, to the off-color remarks of her own father, to her thin mother's compulsive dissatisfaction with her own body" (Amazon).

So many of the details and events in the book resonated with me.  I went to summer camp; it wasn't a "fat camp" yet many of the details were achingly familiar (except I never made out with anyone at summer camp).  The Amazon review is right in that Klein shares a lot of remarkably familiar details of what it's like to grow up as a fat kid.

That said, most of Klein's story is different from my own and was truly fascinating to read.  She mentions several times how she was interested in sex much younger than many of her classmates and friends and I couldn't help but link that to later issues with body image and eating.  Klein, though, never explicitly makes the link which makes me wonder if we, the readers, were meant to make it or if it just really hadn't occurred to her.

My main issue with the book, the one that left me feeling unsatisfied with it, is the writing - in particular, the choices made at the end of the text.  The book is called Moose because that was a name the kids at school called Klein, but it feels like a stretch when Klein extends this into her college years at the end of the book.  The book is primarily about her summer "fat" camp experiences and the end feels like it betrays this purpose by meandering into other topics.  The story deserves a much better wrap-up than it has.  Even framing those final scenes/anecdotes/reflections as a prologue would have been an improvement.  It makes me wonder about her editor(s).

I did mostly enjoy the book, though, and will continue to read her blog.  She has a unique take on life that I haven't seen anywhere else and I am interested to see what else she has to say.

Thursday
Nov122009

In the guest spotlight

I am featured as a guest contributor today on We Are The Real Deal (WATRD), a site for body image activists to discuss various issues facing (mainly) women today (although general body issues, including male, are welcome to be discussed).

Check out my post "When Being Fat Doesn't Count As Fat."

I like the site because it provides a variety of viewpoints and doesn't claim to be perfect.  There are people who are pro-fitness, pro-healthy eating (although generally anti-traditional dieting) and there are people who do not wish to alter themselves through diet and exercise.  Some really interesting conversations come up sometimes.

And now I love them more because MamaV (the founder) said I'm "hip and trendy" (ha!) and "one creative kid" who's a "20-something."  When I get a chance, I'll break it to her that I'm 34.  :)

I'm a little nervous to see how my piece is taken and responded to, but I'm happy to have put my thoughts out there on something that I've been thinking about for a long time.

(Oh, and I have to send my eternal thanks out to Katie at  Lemon Cherry Blogs - again - for the Bookish Penguin blog design.) :)

Monday
Oct052009

Does this post make me look fat?

Both the hubby and I hate the "Does this make me look fat?" question.  His response when he hears the question: "No, your fat makes you look fat."  Basically, you are who you are.  Sure, certain clothing items are more flattering than others, but why is it always fatness that is a concern?  How about shortness? (Not that being short is bad, but it seems to bother some people.)  Or sallow?  Some stuff makes my skin tone look terribly unflattering.  But you don't often hear those questions.

The number one item on my 101 in 1001 list is was "Lose 60 pounds."  I have decided that I am going to revise this, but haven't yet come up with the exact new wording.  The spirit of the goal will remain the same - to be healthy and happy about my body - but less prescriptive and stringent.

Lately I've heard too many friends and acquaintances, male and female, say negative things about items they ate or lazy days they allowed themselves.  This is hard for me to hear because I believe in everything in moderation and that you can't push and drive yourself all the time.  I believe there's more harm done in denying yourself a cupcake or pasta at all times than allowing yourself one/some once in a while.  Should you have a cupcake every day?  Well, that's up to you.  You're certainly free to.  I wouldn't because there are other things I'd rather eat and if I eat a cupcake in place of or in addition to those items, I won't feel well and will probably gain weight that I don't want to gain.  But those are my reasons and preferences and they don't need to be anyone else's.

Did you know that there was a survey not long ago where researchers showed a group of Americans and a group of French a picture of chocolate cake and asked them to come up with one word to describe it?


What would you call me?

The number one American answer?  Guilt.  The number one French answer?  Celebration.  Do I even need to lay out the point there?

It's so easy to criticize the choices we make and so hard to accept them unapologetically.  I ate a cupcake yesterday.  So there.  And I had some pasta on Saturday.  Double so there.  But they were part of my scope of eating for those days.  And now?  I have half a tray of cupcakes at home and I don't even want one.  If I hadn't eaten that one yesterday, I'd probably be sitting here thinking about them nonstop.

But, again, that's me.  That's my relationship with food - something I am slowly working at learning and understanding more about.  All the energy and time we spend hating ourselves can be used so much more productively if we love ourselves and speak more positively about ourselves.  (I'm not usually so hippie-ish with the "we should love ourselves" stuff - writing that just made me gag a little - but in this case it's the only phrasing that feels true.)

I don't profess to have all the answers - far from it, really.  But I'm actively seeking and learning.

PS - As a point of humor, the spellcheck system on here does not recognize "cupcake" but suggests "cupcakes" as a substitute.  Even the blog editing system has issues. ;)