Each month, we will be featuring educational resources on the NAAFA Community Voices Blog. Some resources will be historic information about systemic racism. Others will be resources on doing the internal work of understanding ourselves and how we play a part in that system. There will also be actions that can be taken to directly oppose racism. You can find more resources on the NAAFA website at https://naafa.org/antiracism-resources.

For the latest information and research on fatness, check out the Media and Research Roundup. This issue features: studies around weight loss surgery complications, discussion on the body positivity vs fat liberation, Lizzo’s statement that body positivity is leaving out black and brown folx, new regulations from the FAA and more.

The NAAFA Chronicles reflect a piece of fat acceptance/fat activist history. This month is the January 1986 issue of the NAAFA Chronicles and discusses the "weighty debate" of if fat is so bad.

The protests of 2020 have made an impact, focusing the world's attention on police violence throughout the U.S., and possibly even reducing police violence in areas with the most active movements. But unfortunately, police are still using violent tactics that result in harm and death throughout the country.

This problem hit home for NAAFA Board Member Amanda Cooper this spring, when local police in her Alameda, CA community responded to a call about a mile from her. A young man, Mario Gonzalez, was sitting in a park on a warm Monday afternoon. Some neighbors called the police non-emergency line and said they were afraid of him, even though they admitted he was not threatening them or doing anything remotely violent. The police came to the scene, attempted to arrest him even though he posed no harm, and he died with his face in the dirt as they held him down.

For the latest information and research on fatness, check out the Media and Research Roundup. This issue features: studies around weight loss surgery complications, discussion on the body positive movement, NAAFA's FLARE (Fat Legal Advocacy, Rights & Education) Project provides a COVID-19 Vaccine Access , Fat Fact Sheet and more.

Welcome to FATT Chat! The acronym stands for Fat Acceptance Tales & Techniques and underlines the very intention for this series. My hope is to create fat visibility with first-person fat liberation stories, as well as foster fat acceptance in others by sharing fat positive resources and strategies. In FATT Chat, you’ll find interviews with NAAFA members and non-members alike who will share their personal stories of fat acceptance and the real life techniques that have and continue to help them in their own lives. You’ll also find all resources discussed in an easy-access list at the end of each interview.

With that, please enjoy this FATT Chat featuring Trevor Kezon!

Though it comes with difficulties, being fat and trans is not a life sentence of misery. In a lot of ways, being trans has helped me to accept my fatness, and being fat has helped me to accept my transness. I feel lucky to have the perspective I do have, and to have access to the community that I do. I love to talk to other fat, queer people; there is a shared understanding and connection that I have found to be almost instantaneous and universal. I am learning to love and accept my body for its fat, queer, trans self, and to allow my fatness to be something I use to enhance my preferred gender performance.

June is Pride Month! While the LGBTQIA+ community and allies celebrate the month with parades and activism events, gay, trans and queer folx deal with biases and discrimination on a daily basis. Compound that with being a person of color and you add a layer of racism to that. This month's anti-racism resources look specifically at that intersection.

The NAAFA Chronicles reflect a piece of fat acceptance/fat activist history. This month is the December 1985 issue of the NAAFA Chronicles.

Thank you to everyone who made our first Fat Liberation Month such a success!

We're already thinking about next year! What did we do well? What needs improvement? We would love your input! To share your thoughts about Fat Liberation Month 2021, please fill out our FLM Evaluation Form.

The first time I heard the term “cisgender” was at a diversity training for educators in the early 2000s. A well-known speaker used the word in a way that assumed everyone in the room knew what it meant. We should have, but the obvious discomfort in the room showed that many of us didn't. I raised my hand. “You used a word I don't know there,” I said. “What does it mean?”

I don’t remember the exact words the speaker used, but he basically explained that someone cisgender is a person whose gender “matches” their sex. I knew the concept, just not the word. A lot of people are raised with the idea that the words ”gender” and “sex” mean the same thing. I learned it that way, and I have no doubt many of you did, too, whether you are cisgender, transgender and/or nonbinary. But, those words don’t actually mean the same thing. Sex relates to bodies and physiology; gender relates to identity and expression.

Pride is an important part of June, and pronouns are an important part of pride. And -- spoiler alert -- using the correct pronouns for people is important all year. Many transgender people and allies in the NAAFA community have experience with this, and we’d love it if you could like, comment on and share this post. For those of you who are newer, here are some pointers.

Each month, we will be featuring educational resources on the NAAFA Community Voices Blog. Some resources will be historic information about systemic racism. Others will be resources on doing the internal work of understanding ourselves and how we play a part in that system. There will also be actions that can be taken to directly oppose racism. You can find more resources on the NAAFA website at https://naafa.org/antiracism-resources.

As fat activists and our accomplices continue to imagine a world free from fat antagonism and shaming, discrimination, and inaccessibility through NAAFA’s first ever Fat Liberation Month and beyond, let us also be reminded of the things that can hold us back. We can keep each other accountable, build more effectively, and perhaps move more expeditiously toward liberation. This is what freedom ain’t.

As a digital nomad, fat activist, solo female traveler, and the founder of Fat Girls Traveling I’ve learned a few things about traveling in a bigger body. We face so many barriers in our everyday lives that traveling outside of our comfort zone can seem inaccessible to us. The travel industry doesn’t consider fat bodies so we’ve had to become detectives when creating size-inclusive itineraries. I’ve created a cheat sheet of sorts to get you through the initial stress of traveling while fat, with specific tips for traveling during a global pandemic.

Of the many plus-size identities out there, Asian Americans and Pacific Islanders are some of the least represented larger bodies in plus size media. Writer Laurel Dickman has put together a list of 6 AAPI influencers and activists that you will love to follow!

What I love about fatphobia...wait, that didn't come out quite right. Let me try again: what I find so deeply compelling about the work of Fat Torah is that the insidious pervasiveness of weight stigma --harming so many different people in so many different ways-- also means that the healing and liberation can start from anywhere.

The NAAFA Chronicles reflect a piece of fat acceptance/fat activist history. This month the Spring 1985-Supplement issue of the NAAFA Chronicles Convention Photo Special.

In this reflection on Fat Liberation, Lindley Ashline talks about how she defines it, how fat liberation differs from body liberation, fat liberation vs body positivity, how she arrived at this point in fat liberation and how it affects her business as a photographer, activist and writer.

Weight bias in the healthcare industry has many repercussions, from inaccurate diagnoses to body discrimination. But how can medical professionals prevent weight bias in the industry? Here are some tips!