Stacy Bias, founder of the Portland, OR "FatGirl Speaks" conference and its sister event Cupcake, has announced a new book project that will consist of "monologues suitable for stage performance, all around the topic of fat."
Bias intends to interview 150+ women of size across the United States, Europe, Africa, Samoa, Asia, India, and South America. She begins the first leg of her proposed 6-month international journey on in New York Aug. 32, 2006. She will film her journey in road-diary style, and audio-record all interviews.
"The stories of those who are most afraid to speak are the stories that need to be told the loudest," Bias says. "My goal is to map the experience of fat in a way that is human, has a face, a heart, a mind, a body and a voice. My goal is to listen and repeat--the good and the bad, the hard and the joyful and everything in between--in a way that may ultimately bring compassion to folks who don't understand. More importantly, however, I hope it will allow the folks who are hearing their own words echoed back to them across the pages or from the stage, fall in love with themselves and each other just a little more."
She wants to make her book inclusive and diversive in terms of age, race, class, ability, and orientation. "I'm not seeking to define what a woman of size is," she says in a press release announcing the project. "I don't care what size your pants are. What I care about is the 'Fat Experience' -- and if you feel like you're having it, you probably are."
She adds,
Negative body image is something that affects everyone--women, men, children, fat, thin, young, old, black, white and everything in between--in this country and beyond. I see the 'War on Obesity,' I see consistently disrespectful portrayals of fat folks, I see skewed medical studies published in the media next to advertisements for the diet products produced by the same companies that sponsored the medical study in the first place, and I see a rapid spiral of self-loathing that is pushing folks to take increasingly drastic and terrifying measures to conform to an arbitrary ideal of physical beauty.
Diets don't work. Plain and simple: any system based on deprivation is unsustainable. And if there was a diet product out there that actually worked, it would NEVER have to advertise.
The fact of the matter is is, fat people exist. They have always existed and they will always exist. Fat people aren't going anywhere--and there are as many reasons for being fat as there are fat genetics. We have to get past the villainization of fat folks, of food and of ourselves.
The only platform for lasting personal growth is a healthy self-esteem, and the more we de-humanize each other and/or allow ourselves to be de-humanized for the sake of an arbitrary aesthetic, the less likely we all are to be joyful, healthy and empowered."
Bias is seeking interview subjects for in-person, phone and/or email interviews. Contact her through her website, www.stacybias.net, or thebook (at) stacybias (dawt) net.
Thanks so much for the link, Peggy!!
Posted by: Stacy Bias | July 13, 2006 at 12:54 PM