Big Fit Girl. Louise Green

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      3.Don’t wait for someday—live your life on your terms today. Maybe going to the beach is something you’ve been waiting to do when you are thinner? Everyone deserves to swim and enjoy the beach. I love the saying, “If you have a body and you go to the beach, you have a beach body!” You can rock a bathing suit. Buy one that makes you feel good and then strut your stuff. There is more than one type of bathing suit body. (See the gear section of this book for great retailers in swimwear.)

      4.Wear what you want. Try something that is out of your comfort zone but that you’ve always wanted to wear: bold prints, fitted clothing, and horizontal stripes come to mind. Bodies of size do not need to be all covered up, draped in black, or restricted to plain clothing. Wear what makes you feel good.

      5.Accept yourself. Abandoning diet culture and rocking the body you have shatters the stereotype that all big women are on a mission to become thin. And, in case you haven’t heard, you don’t have to be on that mission anymore.

      THERE IS A misconception that people like us are crying into our pillows every night wishing we could lose weight and find happiness. But your weight should not determine your happiness. Live your happiest life now, not when you are thinner. Show yourself and the world that big girls rule their lives.

       Sarah Robles, Olympic weightlifter, Team USA 2012 and 2016:

      “I think limits are only put on us by ourselves. People can say or feel any way about us and place caps on our abilities, but we are the ones who choose how we react and if we put those limits on ourselves. To be limitless is the ultimate freedom to choose our destiny. Had I put caps on what I could do or who I could be, I wouldn’t be living the amazing life I am. I get to do what I love with people I love and help others because I chose a limitless path, one very few have traversed.”

      Stacey Williams exemplifies this idea. A plus-size athlete from Dallas, Texas, she started her athletic journey as an unhealthy and unhappy woman.

      “I didn’t know where to start,” she says. “I felt so intimidated to change my life but I desperately wanted to change. Going to the gym just felt too scary because I thought people would laugh at me. No one at the gym looked like me; everyone looked like they were already fit.”

      Stacey started exercising at home using fitness DVDs. “It was the only way I could exercise and feel comfortable doing it. I just didn’t have the confidence to do it in public.”

      Because of her size, Stacey didn’t feel that she belonged in a conventional gym. So she started walking on her own in her neighborhood. At first she walked ten minutes a day. She gradually worked up to twenty minutes a day and then thirty. Six months later she was walking one to two hours each day and had never felt stronger.

      Stacey built her strength and her confidence up enough to join a walking group at a local club in her neighborhood; now she is training for a half-marathon walk.

      I wish all gyms were welcoming places for everyone, regardless of size, but by getting out there and getting involved in fitness, wherever you feel comfortable, your participation shatters all the stereotypes that big women face.

       How the Media Play a Role in Creating Stereotypes

      ALTHOUGH STATISTICALLY, APPROXIMATELY 67 percent of North American women are a size 14 or larger,¹ we don’t see ourselves represented in the media. Plus-size women are an invisible majority. When we don’t see ourselves, many of us conclude that we don’t belong.

      By the time she is twelve, the average American girl has seen over 77,000 commercials. American teenagers consume ten hours and forty-five minutes of media every day through the Internet, television, music, movies, and magazines. What does this mean for young women? During this vital stage of life they are highly impressionable, and the impression they get isn’t good. Young girls are bombarded with images of tall, very thin girls with tanned skin and blonde hair, and if they don’t recognize themselves in these images it opens the door to feelings of failure. Our communities and families do not always provide girls their first role models; in many cases mass media have taken over. By the time they’re teenagers, if girls cannot see their likeness in this onslaught of messaging, they may begin to feel isolated and abnormal. These feelings are built on a foundation of never measuring up, failing to achieve an ideal, and not being good enough.

      Until recently, mass media have rarely presented larger women in a positive way. Negative stories about larger bodies are fodder for headlines.

      •“Lawyer Sues Airline for Having to Sit Next to Obese Passenger” (The Independent, September 23, 2016)

      •“Obesity Rates Reach Historic Highs in Most U.S. States” (NBC News, September 4, 2014)

      •“Teen Tennis Player Brings Weight to French Open” (Daily Mail, September 7, 2012)

      Many publications celebrate one image of fitness rather than championing diversity in size among athletes. Not surprisingly, the population at large doesn’t associate health and athletics with larger bodies. We’ve become so used to seeing very thin bodies as the norm that it’s distorted our ideas of what is average. It’s why people like comedian Amy Schumer are labeled “plus-size” by the media when Schumer at most is a size 10.

      The average size of most models featured on the cover of fitness magazines is size 2 to 4. This means that major fitness magazines do not represent nearly 70 percent of North American women; the exclusion is a social injustice.

      Things are changing. I see it every day; the mere fact that this book has been published is another push back against the oppression of larger women. The fitness industry is becoming more inclusive and body positive. It has no choice: people are demanding it.

      In August 2015, for the first time in its history, Women’s Running magazine made the bold move of featuring plus-size athlete Erica Schenk on its cover. In the photo, young and vibrant Schenk runs confidently down a park path looking like an experienced runner in her running tights and rose-colored athletic tank top. Her big body looks powerful as she gazes into the distance. She runs with a smile, exuding freedom. She looks like a natural-born athlete.

      On the Today show, Women’s Running editor-in-chief Jessica Sebor spoke about her motive behind the cover. “There’s a stereotype that all runners are skinny,” Sebor said. “And that’s just not the case. Runners come in all shapes and sizes. You can go to any race finish line, from a 5K to a marathon, and see that. It was important for us to celebrate that.”

      Sport England completed a survey of women between the ages of fourteen and forty and found that two million fewer British women play sports than British men. But 75 percent of those women want to be active but aren’t out of fear of judgment.

      Based on their findings, in January 2015, Sport England launched the highly successful “This Girl Can” campaign, which beautifully showcased size diversity in fitness and sport to inspire women to “wiggle, jiggle, move, and prove that judgment is a barrier that can be overcome.” Using regular women in the campaign, they posted large ads throughout Britain showing women working out in all their “un-Photoshopped” glory. Like Women’s Running, Sport England’s campaign became an international news sensation.

      When we show diversity, we get diversity. Sport England reported that since celebrating the first birthday of the “This Girl Can” campaign, women of all shapes, sizes, ages, and ethnicities are getting active in greater numbers. A study showed that 2.8 million British women have increased their physical activity СКАЧАТЬ