Celebrating all women’s bodies at the FAT PANIC! conference.
I just got off the phone with Devra Polack with NoLose 2010 and let me tell you, she is as excited about the upcoming FAT PANIC! conference as a baby drag queen discovering high-heeled shoes and the Priscilla: Queen of the Desert soundtrack.
NoLose started out as the National Organizations for Lesbians of Size and as the organization grew, its mission grew to include a broader community of queer women and transgender people. They are working toward creating a different kind of world in which all bodies are celebrated, cherished and seen as beautiful. (I’ve been doing the same thing, only I’m doing it one queer at a time—who knew the group thing would catch on?)
FAT PANIC!, which will be held in Oakland, California June 4-6, will address the trend of fear aimed at and about fat bodies from the media, the medical field, academia, and other areas of social change. Workshops will include a number of different viewpoints from the Health At Every Size (HAES) philosophy, to media justice and international/global perspectives on size.
“The conference is a powerful experience, complex, with people of different backgrounds coming together,” says Polack. “One of the biggest parts of that is seeing people have a different and more positive relationship to their body.”
Doesn’t that make you to want join the next Rubenesque gal you meet in creating a little, um, social justice?