I was fortunate enough to be asked to do a sermon at my church, Unitarian Society of Germantown, yesterday. I knew that I had to use the opportunity to speak out my experiences of fat phobia and discrimination. It came out amazingly well, and I am lucky that my church records all our sermons. The the video is below. My wife did an amazing introduction for me and then there’s the sermon. The whole thing is about 16 minutes long.
The first time I ever tried to have a spa experience that was more than a mani/pedi, I was at a fancy hotel in Atlantic City. I’d had a massage before but it was more therapeutic than relaxing, so this time I wanted something really special. I treated myself to a soak and an hour-long massage, but when I got to the spa the largest robe they had didn’t fit. I had to wrap myself in what I could of the robe and use a towel to cover the rest of my bits. It was embarrassing and distressing to be in a place where I was literally naked and vulnerable that was not for me.
So, when I read about Ann Grauer being denied service at a Chicago spa, I remembered in visceral detail every moment of that experience. She went to a spa that she’d been to before for a service she’d received before, only to be told this time that there was a weight limit for women (but not for men). Grauer’s story came to my attention through an article in The Lily, a magazine of The Washington Post.
After reading about Grauer’s experience, Maggie Spear wrote and drew about how her own shame and fear kept her from going to a spa to the point where she struggled to even pamper herself in her own home. Here are some panels about Grauer’s experience and her own perspective:
Spear’s point, and it’s a good one, is that when you’re told over and over that something isn’t for you, you believe it. So it’s easy to see how thinking that spas and pampering isn’t for you when you’re in a fat body can become thinking that travel isn’t for you. Or nice clothes. Or comfortable shoes. Or any of the other “luxuries” that thin people seem to have ready access to.
But of course we do deserve all of these things. There need to be more fat-positive places like spas because we are just as stressed out and in need of pampering as everyone else is, maybe even more so since we seem to be bullied and harassed at every turn. One of the best experiences of my life was getting a therapeutic massage from a fat-positive practitioner to help deal with my grief. She had a specially designed table where I felt comfortable and supported the whole time, including cut outs in the table where I could comfortable rest my breasts while I was on my front. Everyone should get to have an experience like that, no matter their size.