Call to Action —

UPDATE: I have posted a sample letter which may be leveraged to create your own letter to the organizations listed below. And if you have a letter that you have written and want to share with the community, feel free to send to atchka at hotmail. Thank you!

In the past, we spent a significant portion of time flooding Children’s Healthcare of Atlanta with phone calls, emails, tweets and Facebook posts attempting to shame them into submission.

The result? CHOA is digging in its heels with CHOA’s Chairman of the Board, Doug Hertz, writing a defiant Op-Ed in the Atlanta Journal Constitution on Friday.

Stand4Kids Tumblr

Following are the awesome Stand4Kids posters, brainchild of Marilyn Wann, which feature the fattest, baddest, best fatties in the business. We’ll be pumping them out as quickly as we can, so keep your browsers pointed to our Stand4Kids Tumblr to keep up with them.

Enough —

Originally posted on Fierce, Freethinking Fatties by Atchka!

Do you think it’s fun for me to write about the same subject day after day after day after day, trying to think of new angles, or digging up new dirt, on an organization that I otherwise couldn’t give two shits about?

I only have so much creative energy on hand each day and this project has been the Hummer of psychic fuel consumption. I’m happy to spend it fighting against bigotry, ignorance and hatred, but I, for one, can’t wait until the billboards come down and we can all go back to whatever it was we were doing before all of this began.That includes Children’s Healthcare of Atlanta. I don’t think they want to be deal with a bunch of pissed off fatties, or continuously develop new and interesting justifications for their sinister ad campaign which may or may not be profiting their weight loss and weight surgery center.* They’re just as sick of our shit as we are of theirs.

Isn’t it time we all said, “Enough” and wrapped up our respective campaigns?

FEB. 2, NOT JUST FOR GROUNDHOGS ANYMORE!!!

Originally posted on Leftovers to Go by Dr. Deah Schwartz.

Today is Groundhog Day.  Before 1993,  Groundhog Day was all about whether the infamous groundhog, Punxsutawney Phil, was going to pop out of his burrow and see his shadow or not.  If he saw his shadow, he would retreat underground and winter would last for another six weeks.  Personally, if I was Punxsutawney Phil, and I popped up out of my burrow and saw throngs of strange people standing around staring at me I’d pop back underground in a flash! Thinking back, I can’t remember a single time that Phil did NOT pop back into his hole and winter was predicted to end early, and living in New York, it sure never felt like it did!

But then, in 1993, the movie Groundhog Day came out and similar to the old Hitchcock flick, Gaslight, the phrase Groundhog Day took on a new meaning.  If you are not familiar with the Bill Murray film, he is thrust into a reality where he keeps re-living Groundhog Day over and over and over.  Each morning he wakes up and it is the same day.  Each day he knows what is going to happen and eventually begins using the predictability in ways that are helpful to others.  He transforms into a more aware and less self-centered person as he plays with the hand that fate has dealt him.

MONEYBOMB!

Donate to our Big Fat Moneybomb and send Strong4Life a message.

I figured there was no harm in asking Strong4Life and Children’s Healthcare of Atlanta to pitch in some as well.

Ten Commandments —

Originally posted on Fierce, Freethinking Fatties by Atchka!

By now you’ve heard about our Big, Fat Moneybomb. We’d love to see $10k in one day, and all we need to really raise is $5,000 since we now have the $5,000 More of Me to Love Match on the table.

We’ve already confirmed from 165 supporters who are participating the BFM, and we want to persuade those who are on the fence to throw their financial support behind the Stand4Every Body Coalition to produce a positive public response to Children’s Healthcare of Atlanta and Strong4Life’s.

With that in mind, I give you “10 Lies for 10 Thousand Dollars.”

The rest of the (fat) story…..

Originally posted on PonderousBoundaries.

My last post described my own experience with a public health initiative geared towards ‘childhood obesity,’ and of my impressions that it was not successful in instilling lifelong thinness in at least two of the teens involved, myself and one other teen:  one female, one male, both at the higher end of the percentages used to measure ‘childhood obesity.’

I tried for the most part to let the events tell the story, so one could take away an impression from that blog post that the experience, in the long run, was not particularly damaging to my health.  I lost a little bit of weight, I gained it back, but maybe I learned some things along the way about ‘good health, nutrition, and exercise’ that I didn’t know before, one could infer.  Plus, there was no mention of explicitly shaming tactics used to get us to lose weight; we weren’t publically humiliated in front of our thin peers at weigh-ins or in forced exercise routines, or otherwise exposed to negative images of fatness and fat people.  However, these sorts of programs don’t happen in a fat-hate-free vacuum, they are bound up with a lifetime of campaigns, both covert and overt, that seek to belittle the fat person with very little push back from fat people themselves.

A healthy response to Georgia’s harmful “Strong4Life” campaign

Originally posted on the blog of Mycroft Masada Holmes.

As you may know, there’s an incredibly negative and harmful campaign in Georgia called “Strong4Life” (http://strong4life.com/default.aspx) that’s against childhood “obesity” and is shaming fat children. 

With the leadership of Marilyn Wann, Ragen Chastain, and Shannon “Atchka” Russell, a group has formed to create a response campaign.  It has been called “Stand4Kids” – but that’s taken by another organization, so we’re now called “Stand4EveryBody” and have a website provided by our friends at More Of Me To Love:  http://stand4everybody.virb.com/.

Tick Tick Boom —

This week we forge an incredible alliance of Fat Acceptance activists, health care professionals, nutritionists, educators, friends, family and fatties, to push back against campaigns that seek to shame and stigmatize fat people in general, and fat children in particular.

Every day since January 5, I have added to the exhaustive list of reasons why Strong4Life’s shame campaign is both morally and medically wrong, and we have begun to join our voices in Marilyn Wann’s chorus of STANDards.

The result? An energized community that is getting harder and harder to ignore.

But how do we get past “hard to ignore” and onto the national stage where we can directly challenge Children’s Healthcare of Atlanta and demand that they stop bullying fat children?

With a bomb.

No, not this kind of bomb.

This kind.

Thin Cover —

Originally published on Fierce, Freethinking Fatties by Atchka!

Friday I explained why I am willing to accept the assistance of anyone who wants to help us tear down the billboards in Georgia, whether in the form of comments from fat-shaming Alton Brown or the theoretical support of MeMe Roth.

And the fact is that people from all sides of the obesity issue are galvanized in opposition to a public “health” campaign that shames and stigmatizes fat children. The question remains who, aside from Children’s Healthcare of Atlanta, is still defending these ads as acceptable?

This past weekend I received the disturbing answer to that question.On Friday, I received a request from Leah Segedie of Mamavation to help respond to Strong4Life supporters on Twitter. Since I firmly believe that refuting bigots and maxim-chucking fat haters is a great educational tool, I decided to take a look and was taken aback by the person who seemed to be giving Leah the greatest pushback.

I am erasing the name of this Manic Tweeter to minimize the flaming she truly deserves, primarily since after the onslaught of tweets I received this weekend (you can see the entire stream here), I’m starting to think there may be something seriously wrong with this woman.

My Secret Strength

Jennifer Jonassen, actress, dancer, writer, activist and clown, has responded to my call for videos for the Fat Kids United video project. Her video shares the hidden strength that bullies don’t count on fatties possessing, as well as how her struggle for self-acceptance led her down some very dark and dangerous roads.

Thankfully, Jennifer survived a tormented childhood to develop into an intelligent, talented performer whose words and work are inspiring thousands of others to learn to love and accept their bodies as they are, rather than continue the endless cycle of self-dissatisfaction that hurts so many children today.

Many thanks to Jennifer for having the strength to share her story, and I invite you to share your story as well. Since nobody on the staff at Strong4Life has been a fat child, we need to educate them on just what a special kind of hell being a fat child is, and why adding to that pain with a shame-based campaign will only make matters worse.

Our Big, Fat Money Bomb

Originally published on Dances With Fat by Ragen Chastain.

We are standing up for kids and saying enough is enough!  By now you’ve heard of Strong4Life, a campaign by the Children’s Hospital of Atlanta that shames and humiliates fat kids under the guise of promoting health. They have billboards up all over Atlanta, reinforcing a message of shame and stigma every day for those driving by.  It’s time to take a stand and support developing healthy habits in kids of all sizes without stigmatizing fat ones.

We are raising funds to put up billboards in high traffic areas around Atlanta with positive messages to counteract the negative Strong4Life campaign.  This campaign kicks off with our Big Fat Money Bomb on Thursday, February 2nd. The goal is to raise as much money as possible on the first day of the campaign for momentum and publicity.  If you want a reminder on February 2nd just e-mail me at ragen@danceswithfat.org and I’ll put you on the list!