It’s “Say Something Sunday,” a day dedicated, at least on this blog, to personal Size Diversity activism. I’ve got some suggestions below and/or of course you can do your own thing and feel free to leave a comment about it. If you have ideas of things to do for Say Something Sunday I’d also love for you to share those.
I did the math and if everyone who views the blog each week did one piece of Size Diversity Activism a week, it would add up to over 1.5 million body positive messages put out into the world this year. Multiply that times the number of people who might see each of those messages and things start to increase exponentially. To be very clear, nobody is obligated to do activism so if this doesn’t appeal to you that’s totally cool, I’ll be back tomorrow with your regularly scheduled blog post!
The theme this week is Say Something Nice. Earlier this week my Facebook page got trolled. I was away from the computer and there were over 100 comments by the time I saw the thread. My FB readers handled it brilliantly and at one point reader Caroline suggested “Shall we take this opportunity to, instead of engaging with them, write messages about the awesome things that Ragen has inspired us to do, whether it be physical, psychological, or emotional?” The things that people wrote brought me to tears.and reminded me why I do this work. So today I want to focus on giving support to people who are doing cool Size Acceptance/Size Diversity/Body Positive work. You can start here for some ideas, if you have ideas you can leave them in the comments, and you can also keep your eyes on social media for Size Acceptance stories that come your way – share them, re-tweet them, leave positive comments, e-mail the authors and tell them that you like their work and how it’s affected you.
If you want to do more of this kind of thing, consider joining the Rolls Not Trolls group on Facebook, it’s a group created for the specific purpose of putting body positive things in body negative spaces on the internet and supporting each other while we do that. It’s a secret group so if you want to join just message me on facebook (I’m Ragen Chastain)
Have a great Say Something Sunday!
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Dances With Fat 
I’m not sorry I missed the trolling but sorry I did miss all the awesomeness that was so awesome it made you cry happy tears. Keep doing your important work. It really does make a difference.
Yes! You help so many people!
I recently started watching Criminal Minds on Netflix, and I was so happy to see the character Penelope Garcia – a fat, beautiful woman who is not only accepted by her team, but valued, and complimented, and nobody has (yet) twitted her about her weight, or put her down as being “less than,” at all.
She’s a MAIN character! In Hollywood! And they don’t use the fat as a punchline!
So, Go Criminal Minds! I hope you continue in the same vein (I’m still early in the series, so I can’t say for sure).
I think it has to do with the “fat ppl don’t get sex, so they do nerds”. The guy who was on Lost and now on Hawaii Five-O is a nerd, and on the new CSI: Cyber there is another fat guy with beards down his neck who is equally a nerd.
Even though they are main characters, their backstory is set up so that we can understand they are failures. I am having trouble with the CSI angle on it, and my mom continually disparages the Lost guy, by saying “there’s no way he was stuck on an island and still fat.”
Did she not see the part of the show where they got food and other supplies?
Also, genetics and famine-mode will make him hang onto the fat like it’s a life preserver, because it literally is.
I’m a nerd, but I never thought of myself as a failure. Why would main characters in a crime-fighting show be considered failures? And if they’re failures, why are they part of a successful team? There’s just something so wrong with that logic.
Thanks for the warning. I won’t be watching CSI, now.
My mom never watched Lost. My dad did though.
I will continue watching CSI, as I like the “family dynamic” they do, but I have to keep in mind about that particular character (I don’t know any of their names).
I also didn’t mean to imply you were a failure, but that seems to me how they portray us nerds on shows: we couldn’t get laid, so we turn to computers, and others may take pity on us. I stopped watching Big Bang Theory due to the excessive fat jokes.
I think I came across too harshly in my comment just now, and I didn’t mean too. I hope you can accept my apology.
Oh, don’t worry, Mich. I never even considered that you might have been calling me a failure. I thought you meant that the writers were portraying the nerds on the show as failures, because that is a basic stereotype, and writing stereotypes makes their job easier.
Also, the writers of Hollywood shows seem to believe that anyone who is not having sex at least once a week is somehow a failure, which completely erases those people who are more particular about their sexual relationships, or even asexual, or maybe have personal reasons for abstaining, and it becomes hurtful for a lot of people. They really push the “normal people have lots of sex, and if you don’t, you’re not normal, and thus not good enough” meme, and it’s a bunch of bunk.
But that’s them, not you.
So, thanks for the apology – not necessary, but accepted if it had been.