I realized then that if I wanted to be a fat dancer, I was going to have to be a fat activist to get it done.
The credit for that realization goes to a judge in a ballroom dance competition who told me that, due to the fact that my waltz gown had spaghetti straps, she “couldn’t stand to look at me.” She just kept telling me over and over again that she “couldn’t stand to look at me,” and she actually made a deduction in my score for “appearance” (a deduction usually reserved for those who break costuming rules or forget to wear their dance panties). While I was fat at the time, I didn’t realize that being fat meant being part of an oppressed group until I was quite a bit older. When I got to college I got seriously involved and did a lot of queer and trans activism. My first organized activism was in kindergarten, and I continued to do activism through high school. I’ve been an activist for as long as I can remember. I reached out to her for an interview about her activism and her conference. On September 23-25, 2016, Ragen and the Conference Organizing Team will host the third Fat Activism Conference, a virtual conference designed to be accessible to all. (Okay, maybe not all the time, but she does do competitive partner dancing, so it’s true some of the time.) And she does this all backwards in heels.
With a gauntlet of logic, she destroys claims of health that are really about shaming and demands respectful treatment of people of all sizes. I started reading her blog, Dances with Fat, several years ago as it not only affirmed some struggles and suspicions I had regarding the talk around bodies and health, but it also opened my eyes to the sheer pervasiveness and subtlety of this talk. One of my biggest, long-time internet crushes on a person I have never, ever met goes to Ragen Chastain.
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