Hanne Blank is a historian, writer, editor and public speaker. She has also edited and written erotica but is retired from that genre. Blank believes in civil rights in general and fat rights in particular. She says: “For me, as a progressive feminist, opposing the whole range of physical-body-based prejudices and stigmas is all of a piece. Fatness and fat rights happen to be two of my personal issues, so it’s a topic I can speak to from the inside. But fat politics are not separate from my overall politics of inclusion and human value.”
Below is a segment from her book, “The Unapologetic Fat Girl’s Guide To Exercise And Other Incendiary Acts”
You do not have to be attractive all the time – not by your own standards and not by anyone else’s (…)
You can put what you’re doing ahead of what you look like anytime, sometimes, or all of the time.
You have the right to get sweaty and dirty. You have the right to sport visible hair on your legs, your armpits, and wherever else your body happens to grow it. You have the right to walk or run or bike or skate down the street in sweat-soaked workout gear with your head held high. You have the right to grimace and make faces when you’re exerting yourself. You have the right to be unprimped and unperfumed and un-made-up
You have the right to wear a ratty old T-shirt to exercise class. You have the right to wear Spandex. You have the right to have your hair plastered to your head with sweat or water or rain. You have the right to move in ways that mean that people are going to see your butt and your belly and your thighs and your upper arms and all the rest of it. You have the right to be flushed and red-faced and breathing hard.
You have the right to have cellulite where other people can see it. You have the right to have a belly where other people can see that too, and the same goes for sagging breasts or missing breasts or scars or an insulin pump or whatever else you’ve got going on. You have the right to tie a bandanna around your head and not think about how it looks because it keeps the hair out of your eyes when you’re concentrating. You have the right to not smile unless you feel like it, even if someone tells you to. You have the right to cause others to witness the sight of your completely unpedicured feet.
You have the right to not have to constantly manage how you look for other people’s sake. You aren’t here to decorate the world for other people. You’re here to live in it for yourself, no matter what that looks like. You can buy her book using the link below:
