Happy Belated Birthday to Me

I started this little experiment a year ago yesterday, and even though in the time of pandemic it has been hard to find the extra brain power to write something, I still wanted to take a moment to recognize the anniversary. I have learned so much about myself through writing this blog, and I am so grateful and flattered that others are getting something out of it, too.

At first, I really wanted to tackle the issues of fat people in fandom, our lack of representation, our difficulties in finding characters to identify with, and even how hard it is to cosplay our favorite character both in finding or making costumes that will work and in the inevitable backlash and commentary that fat people can’t cosplay as {insert name of thin character here}. And it is about that, but it’s also become about discovering my place as a fat liberationist and finding my voice in the larger fat acceptance and advocacy world. I’m looking forward to that transformation continuing.

I hope to find ways of making myself write more as this pandemic stretches on and on (and on…). Because I think things will be very bad for people living in a fat body when this quarantine is over. The continued perpetration of quarantine fat memes and those worried about putting on the “COVID 15” tells me that once we can all get together again, it will be next to impossible to dodge the internalized fat phobia, body shaming, and diet talk. It was always there, but now it will be amplified and pervasive, as if it will be perpetual New Year’s and everyone will be making resolutions. More people will be harmed by this than helped, and it’s important for those of us who have been fighting this fight to gear up now and protect ourselves.

So, I’m here for you and to do exactly that. I’m not going anywhere and this blog is going to keep going. One day, I might even get that podcast started.

In the meantime, here’s a cute picture of my big cat because big cats are awesome. (Also, not body shaming my cat is totally going to be a blog post one day.)

Yes, Plato does know how handsome he is, but he is happy to be told again.