Fat Activists make a revolution on the Internet – Helsingborgs Dagblad

Karin: You get very odd compliments when it is thick. They say “you are so fancy clothes, but you are fat.”

You get very odd compliments when it is thick. They say “you are so fancy clothes, but you are fat.”

Annika: People take for granted that you will say to us, I has been told so many times that I have such a beautiful face, but I need to lose some.

Zahra: They try to add it as a compliment. A colleague was trying to say that I was not fat, I just “yeah I’m fat and I have no problem with it.”

Karin: I “right” kind of fat, has big breasts and big ass. Even in the thick phalanx, they evaluate us. I do not go along with it.

Zahra: They presuppose I walk around and feel bad. But I do not want to be convicted.

Karin: It is what body activism and body positivism is all about. We are talking about bodies in the wrong way in the community and it is an ideal body all trying to squeeze into. It affects us all, but especially women of all sizes.

Fat activist Annika Salvador is a sense of freedom to start living like she is. “I have always been ashamed so much for my body,” she says.

Image Emma Larsson

We are the home of Annika Salvador, where the floors are covered by colorful plastic carpets and picture walls are worthy of a prospective art teachers. The three women got to know each other through picture blog Instagram, where they post pictures of themselves as part of their activism.

Now it’s Friday, closer to noon than lunch and we eat homemade rawchokladbollar with dates in.

– For we eat healthy here, kidding Annika Salvador.

The word healthy is one of those emotionally charged words as they can laugh about these days .

Talking or write about obese people’s right to be obese pops the question inevitably up: But the health aspect then?

– It is so problematic that we should evaluate each of wholesomeness. Health witch hunt is huge in our society, says Zahra Olsson.

It is so problematic that we should evaluate each of wholesomeness. Health witch hunt is huge in our society.

– Health is no size. I had a fucking skinny friend whose cholesterol was completely to hell. I should not have to defend my body. You do not have a human value in the same way as the thick, says Karin Lennebo.

Previously it was thought that all obese were at increased risk of cardiovascular disease and diabetes, but it is not true. In 2012 published a study in the European Heart Journal, made of over 40 000 people, showed that 46 percent of the obese had no increased risk of these diseases. There simply was not much difference between this group of healthy obese and healthy normal weight.

Karin Lennebo, Zahra Olsson and Annika Salvador are experts in the this area. They spun around on obesity units, Weight Watchers, considered excessive pressure which gastric bypass surgery and together tried virtually all diets available.

Until they reached a point. All in their own way, but still. An end to the self-hatred.

Now, they are just thick. And proud of it.

“A colleague was trying to say that I was not fat, I’m just ‘yeah, I’m fat and I have no problem with it,’” says Zahra Olsson, here with her daughter Sally.

Photo: Emma Larsson

Fat Acceptance Movement grew out in the United States in the 1960s as a part of the civil rights movement. Fat Acceptance is about making sure that the fat cells are treated differently than normal weight, and overweight are prone to hatred and discrimination.

In 1969 was established a national association in the US, NAAFA, with the goal to promote fat acceptance. One of their long-standing campaigns is to get the airlines to stop charging extra when thick people need two seats.

Several note books written on the subject. 1978 gave Susie Orbach out the now cult acclaimed “Fat is a feminist issue”, and 1991, Naomi Wolf with “Beauty Myth”.

To be fat all know that it’s ugly, disgusting and immoral, and it is no major issue in the academic rooms. But it starts to get so small, we are three in Sweden who has been writing about what I know.

Within the scientific community in the United States is since many years an established field called “fat studies”.

Why is there in Sweden?

Malmö author Josephine Reijs wrote his master’s thesis Lund University about the experience of being fat. Right now she is waiting for answers about her research application – if just fat studies.

– I had read gender studies, but where we talked not so much about fat, more about the slenderness standards. To be fat all know that it’s ugly, disgusting and immoral, and it is no big issue in the academic rooms. But it starts to get so small, we are three in Sweden who has been writing about what I know.

Fat researcher Josephine Reijs: To be thick today is as odious as it was to have HIV in the 80′s.

Image: Private

We reviewed coffee and cheese roll a leisurely shopping mall tomorrow at Mobilia in Malmö. To have a coffee on the town is not without problems for obese people. Participants in Josephine Reijs study told us how they could think, “Can I have a cookie if I’m fat?” and that the time at home when no one was looking.

– To be fat is to always be prepared to defend themselves. The main insight from my research is that you must never forget that you are fat – when you are dancing, eating, exercising, or walking around town. One informant said that when she would go to dinner she ate always a bit before because fat must not be taken twice.

The activist in her is upset of this. For yes, Josephine Reijs counts herself as fat activist. While the researcher in her instead wish to highlight and try to explain.

– All research shows that particularly obese women encounter stigma as worse jobs, less money, and not equivalent care as normal weight, she says.

Obese men face also to discrimination, but not to the same extent. And of course there are men in fat activist movement, but they are still rather few. Maybe because obese men have a little more firmly in the public, believed Josephine Reijs.

All research shows that particularly obese women encounter stigma as worse jobs, less money, and not equivalent care as normal weight .

The obese suffer discrimination is well documented. Yet no body that deals with fat discrimination, or someone who seems upset about that fat people, for example, is more difficult to take out insurance policies because of their weight.

Maybe it was the outrage that boiled over when Instagram hashtag #curvy banned in July this year. Instagram thought it had posted too much porn in the tag and blocked it. But fat mobilizing movement. Tags #curvee and #bringcurvyback appeared instead.

Within two weeks, the pressure became too great and #curvy was back.

“The Unable to choke body acceptance movement. We are many, we are too loud. And we intend to continue to be, “wrote the Swedish online magazine Fat Magazine on its website after the event.

Karin Lennebo felt relieved when she decided to accept her body as it is. “It was like making out with a dumb boyfriend,” she says.

Photo: Emma Larsson

The fact that Instagram has become a haven for thick, excited bodies and residence for a whole body movement activists are not so strange. They choose their followers and can simultaneously reach people all over the world. Karin Lennebo have chosen to keep their account completely open precisely because she knows that she posts provokes. No one should hinder her to be who she is, she reasons.

– I have had horrible comments about me are disgusting. “No one will want to marry you,” they write, but my goal was never to marry. It is most men, I block.

Especially when she takes pictures in sexy lingerie gets Karin Lennebo slajmiga and hateful comments. That a thick body can be sexual taboo. Josephine Reijs mean that as fat goes against the feminine ideals that do not take much space, and then you are not available to the male gaze. It can be extremely provocative when a fat person violating it and says “Look at me, I’m good looking, sexy and thick!”

I have had horrible comments about me is disgusting. “No one will want to marry you,” they write, but my goal was never to marry. It is most men, I block.

Zahra Olsson account is closed because she wants it to be a secure platform without bullying and fetthat. At the same time account for the pep other thick people.

On a selfie she is holding her one year old daughter on the arm during a bathhouse visit, and get comments like “Love how you look so strong. You keep the child with a such a facility. As if you can and want to wear her now and forever. “

– It is absolutely huge, this world. In some feminist circles there is talk about exercise and health, and then runs it as well , but here my whole being with. This is my feminist revolution, she says.

Zahra Olsson usually go swimming with daughter Sally Kockums swimming pool. When she put out a selfie from the bathhouse on his Instagramkonto she received positive comments like “Love how you look so strong out”.

Photo: Emma Larsson

All three have found a context that previously lacked and a platform for their message.

– You have both helped me in my journey through your pictures. I think you are so beautiful and smart, says Annika Salvador directed to the other two where they sit leaning against some large pillows on her couch.

And even though it’s the first time they are seen:

– For me it is a sisterhood, it is our fight together.

Beauty Industry is slick and treacherous, and says two things simultaneously: the key is how you look, but you will never be good enough. Just why is this type of activism to protest against the industry.

On a coffee table in a public office on Möllevången in Malmö packs Michaela Larsson up cloth bags. “Riots not Diets’, it is printed in black on them. “Riots – not diets” are not as catchy, but it is what it is about, she says.

– For me it is a way of saying “the most important thing is who you are, not how you look out “. Beauty industry is slick and treacherous, and says two things simultaneously: the key is how you look, but you will never be good enough. Just why is this type of activism to protest against the industry.

“Riots not Diets’ has been a catchword in the body of an activist movement for years. Even before Michaela Larsson started pushing it in cloth bags she had a great följarskara through his blog Hello Blekk. Thirty thousand people read her posts about feminism, politics and popular culture every week. Michaela Larsson is not fat activist, frameless activist. For years, she suffered from an eating disorder, which has led her to completely rework their relationship with food.

– Now I am careful to eat what I want, when I want. You have to get off the moral aspect in the perception of food.

“For me it’s a way to say ‘the main thing is who you are, not what you look like,’” says Michaela Larsson on their cloth bags with the slogan ‘Riots not Diets’.

Photo: Emma Larsson

She was sipping black coffee, sitting cross-legged on the gray couch and says:

– For me, feminism and activism body together. Losing weight is a whole group – women – on the mat. Partly because they physically deny themselves food and shrinks itself, but also by the shrinking mentally when they lose weight.

To all the time keep track of their calorie intake makes a lot of energy is wasted. Energy that could have been used to thinking of the clever stuff, she says.

– For me it is simple: Stop making yourself less and start to expand yourself intellectually.

It was just it as fat activists in Malmö did when they released the slenderness norm and decided to accept their bodies as they are.

For me, feminism and body activism together. Losing weight is a whole group – women – on the mat. Partly because they physically deny themselves food and shrinks itself, but also by the shrinking mentally when they lose weight.

– five years ago, I felt: why am I doing something that just gives me anxiety? Then I gave up and it was a relief, it was like making out with a dumb boyfriend, says Karin Lennebo.

See and Eat lunch together a windy autumn day. Vegan burgers, fries, soft drinks. Eating fast food is another thing that thick can not do without getting strange looks. Besides having a love life, lying, working out, going to the beach or have a short skirt, then.

For Annika Salvador is also a sense of freedom to begin to live just like she is.

– I have always been ashamed so much for my body, could never have bikini, felt that I did not want to bother people with how disgusting I looked. Such ill thoughts. But now I’ll show them! I must do it for my daughter’s sake.

“People take for granted that you will say to us, I have been told so many times that I have such a beautiful face, but I need to go down a bit,” says Annika Salvador.

Photo: Emma Larsson

Struggling costs , even if it a conviction.

But it is not only online that resistance against what the activists call fat hatred bubbling right now. Plus-size model Tess Holliday participated in an H & amp; M campaign in September. She is one of the really few major models that have contracts with the conventional model agency, and is a role model in the body of activist circles.

And it happens very even Sweden. It is written articles, talked on the radio and concepts that fat and body positive beginning to spread.

This summer, sent the P1 radio program series “Obesity Country” with actor Lottie Törnroos. In the series were mixed reports about how it is to be with the “Biggest Loser” or grease to sew costumes, with her own experience of living as thick. Earlier, she toured with the shows “My Life as thick” and “A bold idea”.

But how this nascent movement bite left ? To take back the words fat and fat is one way, says Josephine Reijs. Another is what is happening right now – that people organize themselves, whether it be as an opposition deleted hashtags, in burleskgrupper or by walking on beach in bikini.

Karin Lennebo, Zahra Olsson and Annika Salvador feels like a part of the movement.

– I have hated the word thick so long. I was called strong and plump, but what is it even be possible? Now, I say thick and it’s nice. Now I can finally describe my own body, says Zahra Olsson.

Karin Lennebo dancing at Club Tequila Twist on Moriskan in Malmo.

Photo: Emma Larsson

             Published November 1, 2015 04:00 · Updated November 1, 2015 04:00