Searchin' and Researchin'

Poking around the search engines, I found a couple of useful websites with data on size acceptance:

ASDAH is the Association for Size Diversity And Health, promoting the Health at Every Size meme:
http://www.sizediversityandhealth.org/content.asp?id=40

The Council on Size and Weight Discrimination website seems to provide some research study results as well as encouragement for activism and...uh...Size Pride:
http://www.cswd.org/index.html

NAAFA's website is here, and seems to have embraced Health at Every Size also:
http://www.naafaonline.com/dev2/      or www.naafa.org        (Apparently, there's another NAAFA that helps insurance agents   8/  )


http://www.haesbook.com/    is the website for the book titled  "Health At Every Size",  by Dr. Linda Bacon  (I know, unfortunate name maybe  8)

All the stories and concepts I've been reading the last few hours prompted some ruminating of my own.    Years ago I remember someone not as large as I trying to come to some kind of functional peace with her experiences of isolation and rejection.     Unfortunately, her conclusion seemed to be to rationalize others'  rejection of her by identifying her own prejudice with the words "I realized that I couldn't love a fat man."     Today, my imagined response was something like:

"Really?      You couldn't love a fat man who's obviously just showered because you can still smell the nice aftershave and his clothes are clean, sharp and attractive?       A fat man who's holding his head up and smiling with his arms open as he looks at you like you're a Beautiful Princess (tm)?     That's sad--I'd hate to miss out on a guy like that;  he looks pretty good to me."       (Full Disclosure -- the image I'm describing is a memory of a man I Fell Really Hard For seven or eight years ago.     He thought he was fatter than he was...)

The most encouraging finding I read came from a study of school children, and indicated that given time and opportunity to see what a sizable kid could do,  children tended to come to regard such a child as "Jimmy the baseball player" or "Jimmy the Math Whiz" instead of "Jimmy the Fat Kid".

I would like to thank all of you reading this, for thinking of me as "minstrlmummr  the entertainer"  or
"minstrlmummr  the funny lady" or whatever.     It makes a big difference in my life  8)