Enter Winnie - proud, sexy fat girl

On the back of Cath’s two kick-ass, introductory posts, I thought I might introduce myself. I don’t know how often I’ll have anything particularly insightful to say (I tend to just get mad over random incidents every so often). I do know that I’m a self-confident and sexy fat woman and that I want to share that with the world, because I think it’s more important than ever, with the “obesity crisis”, for girls to have positive role models of all shapes and sizes.

First, a little about me. My name is Winnie. I’m in my twenties, I never really fit in with the crowd growing up. I’ve wavered between size 16-20 for the last 5 years, and for most if not all of that time didn’t hate the way my body looked (even if I didn’t always love it). I think that growing up as an outsider really helped me with throwing away the criticisms of other people and loving myself the way I was. Another big step was when I stopped reading women’s magazines about 7 years ago.

Last year I started burlesque dancing, which really cemented my confidence in my body. I’ve become unapologetic about my size. I’m a knockout.

It was a few months back that I picked up “Screw Inner Beauty” by Kate Harding and Marianne Kirby. I agreed with so much in that book, it really gave a name to the attitudes I already held. It inspired me. It was a fat girl revolution and I wanted to be part of it.

That said, I didn’t really see much for me to do except inflict the book on as many of my friends as possible. I never really considered blogging because I thought I’d just end up regurgitating the things I’d read and so it seemed a bit pointless. But when Cath invited me to contribute, I was excited by the idea.

I think my philosophy differs slightly from Cath’s and that’s fine. For example, I am really anti-diet, and though I don’t believe it’s my job to police what other people do with their bodies, I find commercial weight-loss programs sickening. Bonding over how much weight you’ve lost? Talk about disturbing!

I also think that whatever size you are, as long as you are happy being that size, that’s what’s important. No one else should judge you on that, because they haven’t lived inside your skin.

In my posts I want to talk about more everyday things - little gripes I have with the world which inspire me to write, clothing, food, really anything that takes my fancy.

I have this warm fuzzy desire for every woman, hell every person, to love themselves just as they are, and realize that there is no such thing as “normal”. It is my sincere hope that by sharing my thoughts and beliefs I can help to bring that about for someone.