I think a lot about gaining weight as a form of healing
Character: gets a lil bit fat after a life of hardships
Me: groundbreaking incredible life changing
Character: *gets fatter as a visual indicator that they have let their life collapse / they have let their skills erode and are less powerful than they were before / they have become lazy and complacent*
Me: no! bad!
Character: *gets fatter as a visual indicator that they are allowing themself to enjoy things / they are no longer experiencing previous hardships and dangers / they are generally happier*
Me: YEAH!!!!!
And it’s a real thing in real life! This is a real trend that happens to real people and happened to me!!! I was sick for eight months straight and felt the aftereffects for two years after that, lost a shit ton of weight, was told how great I looked and that it was incredible how I wasn’t fatter considering what I ate. (I had no ability to stomach food at the time and was eating almost purely starches and sugars just to get the calories I needed. It still wasn’t enough.)
Then, after months of this, I was finally getting better and I was eating more and I was putting on the weight I’d lost and I felt great, I felt like I had my body back.
And the same people who told me I looked great - the doctors who’d been unable to help (it was a real-hard-to-detect bitch of a disease) and the adults who’d taken care of me as best they could and some of the friends I had - all told me I should work to lose it. Go back to the weight I was while sick and work to stay there.
And, like, are you kidding?! I hated being that weight! I heard about how skinny I was so much I literally associated (and still do) being skinny with being sick because it was all anyone would goddamn talk about!I lost weight so fast I didn’t feel connected to my fucking body anymore and I talked about it, no less. How could anyone look at what I’d just been through, listen to me talk about what I’d just been through, and still say to my fucking face that I should eat less so I’d lose weight?
After a disease that literally made it almost impossible to eat enough to get through the day.
I love my chub. I have thick thighs and arm fat and a sizeable stomach and a double chin and I love it. I weigh so much more than I did when my entire life was nothing but being sick. Literally, the day I realized I was putting on weight again I cried from happiness, and I will never understand the people who told me I was worse off for it, and I will always celebrate when people are able to thrive enough to be fatter than they were when things were bad.
TL;DR, let people not only be fat and happy, not only fat because they are happy - also let people be happy because they are fat.
MULTIPLE STUDIES have concluded that those who are fat, who weigh more than average, are more likely to survive major illnesses, injuries, diseases, infections, traumas both physical and emotional/mental, and major surgeries. These studies have concluded that FATTER PEOPLE SURVIVE SIGNIFICANTLY BETTER THAN SKINNY PEOPLE.
Literally, your fat reserves are helping you to shrug off diseases and injuries and stressful periods in your life. They are reserves so that they can be used in stressful situations when you’re just not getting enough energy from food, or have lost your appetite, or just plain lost your ability to remember to eat on a regular basis.
Let yourselves be fat.
Now at the same time, I encourage people to move. Exercise at whatever level you can manage, in whatever ways you can manage. It doesn’t have to be intense, but you just need to move your body on a regular basis. It doesn’t have to be yoga. It doesn’t have to be running.
It can be these things, but you can also just take your pet for a walk, or do a little gardening (even if it’s indoor window or balcony patio gardening), try to do one of those (now rare) tiktok dance things, or if you’re watching a streaming show, just go move around the room during the commercial breaks or wiggle your body or whatever.
Let your mind accept that you can be both active and fat. That you can be both fat and active. That activity and fatness are not enemies, nor are they magnetic-pole opposites, forever unable to meet unless forced to do so. Active fat, Fat active, they are both capable of existing within your body. It doesn’t have to be “run a 10k and then go rock climbing” active, but just make sure you can move comfortably and freely on any given day, for your particular health conditions.
The only level of activity you need to consider is, “am I capable of doing all or most of the tasks I need to do in a reasonable timeframe, plus maybe a little more in case there’s an emergency?” If the answer is yes, great! If the answer is no, move a little more, build up a little bit more strength, a little bit more stamina.
You can do it, and have plenty of fat to help you get through the stress, illness, and or injury that an emergency might bring.
Be fat, be active (at whatever capacity you can), and understand that these two are good things.
the next time you start to hate yourself for the Quarantine 15, remember that your body is doing its job of keeping you alive during times of crisis.
Psychology textbook diagrams never cease to amaze me
ok y'all this isn’t a psych textbook gaslighting you into thinking it’s normal and ok for your boss to yell at you, it’s specifically about understanding that other people’s treatment of you is usually more about them than you.
If your boss is pissy with you, it’s absolutely more healthy to understand that behavior as a reflection of his mental state rather than of your worth as an employee.
It’s not a psych textbook’s job to advise you how to improve your workplace or say what is/isn’t acceptable treatment by a boss. It’s an example of detaching your own self-worth from how other people treat you.
^^THIS!
In fact, if you let yourself think of other people’s treatment as a reflection on YOU more than it is on THEM, it can prevent you from getting things done.
Or, in other words,
ok, im rb'ing this again because this actually helped me finally be able to take advantage of cognitive restructuring in a way i’ve struggled to do for a long time. Ive been able to get to the my boss was having a bad day part, but i’ve always struggled to use that mental change to do something that would improve the situation. but because of this diagram, i THINK ive got it figured out. Here’s a rough explanation of how I interperet this.
Real life example:
Boss yelling: My mom is snapping at me, calling me “disrespectful” no matter how I speak to her, and getting mad at me for having missing assignments He was having a bad day: She’s stressed due to my grandma being in the hospital He shouldn’t take it out on me: just because she’s stressed doesn’t mean she gets to be mean to me. Unionize: I advocate for myself, saying that I’m not being disrespectful and that it’s okay to have missing assignments because I’m doing my best Fuck his wife: I am unapologetically proud of myself for what i manage to do in a day, especially if my mom disapproves of it or doesn’t view it as productive, as my own little “fuck you” to her.
End result: no depression.
This actually works and its amazing. Thanks to the meme side of tumblr for accidentally developing a highly effective method for coping with people who treat you like shit
you know how some parents do that toxic thing where they don’t notice or reward kids for improving their behavior, but every screw-up gets remarked upon and used to inflict shame? so you’re stuck in that awful cycle where there are no rewards, only the inevitability of eventual punishment?
and how that makes it extremely hard to judge your own actions or grow into a better person, because there’s no one to confirm that you actually are doing better, and are capable of improving, and are not doomed to forever be a terrible person incapable of growth?
ok so: I don’t know how to explain to you that we’ve built a social media culture that treats people the same way. with the same abusive cycle.
That sounds like cancel culture
I don’t know what to call it anymore. people get heated about terms like “purity” or “cancel” or “call out” culture, or can’t seem to agree on a meaning. I’m not talking about like. no longer supporting rich and powerful celebrities when their abusive actions come to light. I’m not talking about holding people accountable, or warning people about active abusers. but I am seriously concerned about how we treat social media users once they get even a small amount of attention, even in small niche spaces.
I am concerned about this culture of combing through years of people’s social media accounts, looking for “problematic” shit they’ve done. I am concerned with the whole culture of using “call outs” as a tool to harass and ostracize users large and small. I am concerned about the malice we spread behind people’s backs, in screenshots and posts they aren’t able to see. I am concerned with this culture of demanding apologies for things said years ago, things already outgrown and regretted, and of ignoring those apologies even while pilling on more censure. I’m concerned about this whole culture of accusation and misinformation, where the most outrageous claims and holier-than-thou performances are rewarded with notes and views, even as facts are ignored and context removed. I am concerned about the lack of accountability, the way the accused is given no opportunity to defend themselves from the onslaught, the way their responses and explanations go ignored, the way any charge can be made at any time on any evidence, with no ability to appeal or exonerate. I’m concerned about the way this culture targets minority users andturns their own communities against them. I’m concerned about the actually harmful and predatory behavior that gets lost in the bog, and how we have lost the ability to distinguish between shades of gray with any level of sanity. And I am concerned by the sheer number of people who fail to realize they are perpetuating bullying and harassment.
I am enormouslyconcerned with the way people who are “called out” are never forgiven, never allowed to make amends, never allowed to grow, how their efforts to learn and do better are ignored even while strangers callously repeat and reblog and retweet the same criticisms ad nauseam.
And I see this everywhere, happening to anyone. And yes, this applies to larger accounts and youtubers and “influencers,” and a bunch of content creators who may or may not be making a decent living off of their work, but who are certainly not “rich and powerful celebrities.” (Because apparently we spend so much time in online microcosms that ya’ll can’t tell the difference???) Christ, my blog isn’t nearly as large as some people seem to think, it’s obscure by most measures, and still I’ve been the target of mass harassment for years. I’ve seen bad and watched others go through worse, seen users with far larger and far smaller followings driven off of this and other platforms—driven off with a violence and bloodthirst that had nothing to do with making a community safer and everything to do with a toxic culture gone wrong. Fucking fix this already.
Abuse is still abuse when it happens online,when done by strangers, when done en masse, when sanctioned by a community, and when done with “good” intentions. Do BETTER.
oh, and to anyone who has reblogged this and similar posts I’ve written with the “Heartbreaking: The Worst Person You Know Just Made A Great Point” meme? that is literally an example of the behavior this post is criticizing. you are literally just punishing good behavior instead of allowing people to grow and do better. I’ve been the subject of smear campaigns for years, and I’ve lost track of the number of times someone has added that meme to one of my most carefully worded, thought-out, sincere and earnest posts, posts on serious social and mental health issues. It’s exhausting, it’s not helpful, and guess what? It’s just plain bullying. Do better, and allow others to do better too.
“I am not ‘half Japanese’ and ‘half Lithuanian Jewish.“ When I’m singing a Japanese folk song, I don’t sing with half my voice, but with my whole voice. When I’m taping together my grandparents’ Jewish marriage contract, worn by time but still resilient, it’s not half of my heart that is moved, but my whole heart. I am complete, and I embody layers of identities that belong together. I am made of layers, not fractions.”
- Has a strong yet subtle message on the effects tourism has on native Hawaiians
- Villain redemption
- A character coded to be lgbtq without being a stereotype
- a social worker who actually cares about the well-being of the child
- Found Family before it was cool
- A platonic love story which is rare for Disney where two misfits find solace in one another
- autistic coded child treated with respect//allowed to feel heavy emotions and act like a normal child without it being offensive or irritating
I’d argue TWO characters who are autistic-coded.
Lilo is what happens when you support your autistic child. Stitch is what happens when you don’t. Notice how he calms the fuck down and becomes able to weigh actions and consequences once there’s someone in his corner? He stops trying to destroy everything and focuses his energies on protecting the people who are protecting him (and Lilo, not everyone is onboard with Stitch yet). Up to that point he struggles to connect, and so he lashes out, instead.
Also, if memory serves me, the “this is my family” speech is the only time in the movie he speaks in complete sentences. When the movie came out, that was a major goal in autism work (and while today we know that communication may not mean verbal, it’s still hugely important). Finally, with people who love and support him, he’s able to learn to communicate, build a support network, and develop effective coping mechanisms.
anyone have that post that was like “NT writers are great at creating autistic characters but only when they aren’t trying to”
Not hard to figure out. The autistic archetype has been around much, much longer than any concept of autism. Like, the original Absent Minded Professor (1961) wasn’t about an autistic man. It was about a man who had certain qualities.
When NTs are writing a character who has autistic qualities, they’re fine. But once they think “I’m writing a character with autism™” they get all pathological.
