How dare I put a fat girl on the cover? And no, it’s not Fat Amy from Pitch Perfect although Stacy Ann Gross surely knows how to make a lasting impression, too. Yes, our cover girl is no renowned celebrity to the world, but she is to her home and those who surround her. And yes, again, at Chispa Magazine we love bubble butts and want to encourage women of all shapes and sizes to “Not conform to the pattern of this world, but be transformed by the renewing of your mind.”
By placing our heavy-set cover girl with lippy legs, front and center, are we endorsing unhealthy eating habits and no exercise? No. Actually, as Cure Lipedema and Dr. Maulik Shah state, “Lipedemic fat cannot be exercised or even starved away.” To maintain the “current large” size that many lipedema patients are living in, they exercise a minimum of 30 mins in an aquatic setting, per day. That means, aqua running, aqua aerobics, or even swimming. In fact, another lipedema warrior we have become close to, swims two hours per day, just to stay at her normal-large size. Have you tried that recently? Did you know resistance in the pool can range from four to 42 times greater than air, ensuring the body’s muscles get a rigid workout?
So, lippy ladies actually workout as beasts, and instead of reaping the benefits of comradery, our culture praises the thin, the controversial, and those with the most social likes. This summer, rather than just having mercy for the bald woman who perhaps is undergoing chemo, our hope is that you can empathize with fat disorders, too. Let’s all look beyond outward appearances. For my fellow Lippy Ladies and heavy-set super heroes, we need to learn from our cover girl Stacy Ann Gross and Allison Kimmey, the 30-year-old self-help author and speaker who roars about this issue.
“My daughter called me fat today,” she wrote in an Instagram caption of a photograph of herself and her four-year-old daughter in bathing suits. “She was upset I made them get out of the pool and she told her brother that mama is fat.” Instead of getting upset, this Florida mom asked her daughter to meet her upstairs for a little talk. She then explained that “fat” is something everyone has, in order to protect their muscles and bones, plus “fat” gives bodies their energy. And yes, some people have more fat than others, but no one is better or worse because of it, she explained. Kimmey also wrote, “Fat is not a bad word in our house. If I shame my children for saying it then I am proving that it is an insulting word and I continue the stigma that being fat is unworthy, gross, comical and undesirable.”
Some like myself, don’t have fat-binding properties in their metabolism, so we can’t turn fat into energy, hence, leading fat to float within the body. Overtime they become painful fat tumors on the thighs, which gives birth to lipedema. And, once again, these fat tumors can’t be starved or exercised away.
So, did we place a fat girl on the cover? No, we graced our summer issue with Stacy Ann Gross, a hero to many, including myself.
Mavian Arocha-Rowe
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