life coaching and women issues - Articles - Zimbio

The Naked Truth

Fri, 30 Aug 2008 18:42:16 GMT

posted by bfabsociety

We are two authors who don’t like what we look like naked – that’s why we chose book writing vs. pole dancing as an occupation.” So say Laura Banks and Janette Barber, authors of Embracing Your Big Fat Ass, an Owner’s Manual. (Atria Books, 2008). Certainly our successful careers as writers and performers wouldn’t suggest low self esteem issues but in fact, we do hate standing in front of a mirror naked. Our poor body image issues led us to write our latest book and we feel better and better about our back forty every day! We say why hate the size your ass? It’s a part of you. It’s not going anywhere anytime in the near future. Feed it. Love it like your pet.

What do we want out of this book? We want lots of new friends, great outfits and enough money to pay for groceries. Okay, really, we want to start a woman’s movement like The Red Hat Society or Sweet Potato Queens. We’re calling ours The B-FAB Society, which stands for Beautiful Fat Ass Babe Society. We’ll do for body image what Nora Ephron did for aging in her book I Feel Bad About My Neck or what the Vagina Monologues did for the….well you know. We want to bring women together to once and for all beat society’s obsession with thin. The whole book is chock full of jokes with the obvious point being that if you don’t laugh, you’ll cry. In Laura’s case, she tended to cry over her mother who was petite and stood only 5’2” tall, while Laura towered over her and by the eighth grade stood 5’11” tall. Her size was always an issue and when she moved from
Kansas to California to pursue a career as an actress, she quickly learned that she wasn’t thin enough to land the movie and TV roles she so desperately pursued. Laura says, “Actresses who get work in Hollywood were and still are greyhound thin. I was an out of work actress in La-La-Land because I refused to part with my tater tots in the morning.” Janette Barber, a 6 time Emmy award winning producer and writer who started her career
as a stand up comic, is no stranger to a fat ass either. Janette weighed 275 at her heaviest and 127 at her lightest and as of this minute….172.8. She knows exactly because, as a gift, her sister gave her a digital scale, so she slashed her tires. Less than one percent of people who lose over 100 pounds keep it off but Janette has maintained a 100 pound weight loss for over twenty years. How did she do it? BY ACCEPTING HER BIG FAT ASS!

We cut to the scary edge of women’s obsession with their respective big fat backsides with our own true confessionals about ourselves, our butts and all our insecurities, laced with other B-FAB’s (Beautiful Fat Ass Babe) personal stories and testimonials. (Don’t miss the co-authors’ real life confessionals on dating and dieting disasters. There are also testimonials by complete strangers about how they’ve been tortured by excess baggage in the back.) We show you how to hide your fat ass behind electrical appliances, or light the curtains on fire so a man will be too scared to notice you from behind, or how playing the music of other fat people in the bedroom - like Barry White – will make you look thinner to him and he won’t even know why.

Some people ask us, “What’s with your title, Embracing Your Big Fat Ass?” Some will find this use of the A-word offensive. We say bullpucky. The book needed the word “ass” in it - to give it a bite, a snarl. Women are angry at themselves for putting up with themselves for so long, for forcing themselves to go on yet another crash diet or squeeze into another pair of pants that still don’t fit.

This first step in the movement of fat ass babes everywhere is to feel all our feelings toward ourselves, then laugh about it, then get over it and go have a sandwich. We don’t advocate letting yourself go and get fatter than you already are. We don’t have to. Women are doing that very well on their own. We just don’t want you to be obsessed and overly serious with that part of your body that tucked neatly behind you either. You may shake “it” on the dance floor, but not out of your pants.

If you want to laugh out loud with us, and cry a little later, don’t miss our kick in the pants humor book. Now, in a final act of liberation and desperation, help us kick off our B-FAB movement . Go out and burn a big ol’ pair of underpants and then visit us on our website to learn how to start your own B-FAB group!

Laura Banks and Janette Barber are the bestselling authors of Embracing Your Big Fat Ass (Atria). They write about positive body-image, weight-acceptance, self-esteem with humor. It’s time to love your BFA (Big Fat Ass). Janette is a 6 time Emmy-Award winning producer/writer and Laura is a columnist at Tarot.com
www.embracingyourbigfatass.com.

The Misfits

Fri, 30 Aug 2008 22:13:49 GMT

posted by bfabsociety

No matter where we go, we stand out like Mutt n’ Jeff. At 5’11” Laura is too tall, a bit too imperfectly wide, and altogether large as a person. At 5’3” Janette is large yet small at the same time. (You should have seen us on the Tyra Banks Show. Janette was in the middle with Laura on one side and Tyra on the other…Janette almost sprained her neck.) It’s our height difference and our different body types and attitudes about it that make us such a perfect match. Laura forever obsesses about those last five to ten pounds while Janette rarely thinks about her back forty - which sports about an additional forty pounds at this printing. That’s why we we’re the perfect team to write Embracing Your Big Fat Ass. We represent the gamut of women in America - women who may want to join our B-FAB (Beautiful Fat Ass Babe) Society. Some are a little over their ideal weight, some are a lot over. Some think about it all the time, some don’t. But we have all been affected
by it.

When Laura goes to the movies she hides behind a mountain of popcorn watching what could have been her on the silver screen. Laura was an actress in Hollywood who actually ate. She couldn’t compete with Darryl Hannah, Heather Locklear, Heather Thomas - remember her from The Fall Guy? Laura was the fall girl - always falling down on her luck, unemployed, waitressing in Hollywood for two reasons: her ass was too big and her boobs were too small. Her agent at the time, the sleazy David Wilder, wanted Laura to get breast implants but the doctor refused. He said, “You’re too perfect as you are.” Isn’t that nice? He was probably the only honest plastic surgeon in all of Hollywood. Unfortunately not everything was so perfect on Laura; she had chipmunk cheeks and a protruding stomach. And then there was that darned annoying lazy eye. Sounds attractive, right?

Waitressing worked for Laura, “Who ordered the fries?” (She ate a few before she brought them out.) “Would you like more coffee with your donut, sir?” (She sucked back a donut in the kitchen.) “We have a full dessert menu.” (Licked crumbs off the pie plate after taking the order.) Once she took a job at a place called Skinny Haven Restaurant where they served nothing but low-fat salads and smoothies. She thought for sure she’d lose weight working there in Van Nuys, California. Nope, she kept up her 165 pound bulk. At 5’11” you might think that would be okay, but no. Other actresses her height weighed closer to 130 pounds or even less. Clearly insane. Case in point: check out Sigourney Weaver from the side – she looks like a knife blade. Laura knows. She met her. Okay, sat behind her at a function, but she was able to confirm her dimensions.

Janette never fit in for a minute in her life. She weighed 115 at seven, 200 at twelve and 250 at fourteen. She weighed 275 at her top and a mere 168-ish today. Janette strongly feels that her weight and size are her business and if anyone doesn’t like it they can go ram it. Janette used her years of yo-yo dieting and cooking skills to build her career! She co-hosted and produced her own show on the TVFN called Lighten Up that showed how to turn fattening favorites into healthier, yet delicious, alternatives. She had a magazine column in the cookbook section of First for Women. She’s written recipes for Molly
McButter and Alberto Culver. None of it would have happened had she not thought
ahead to be fat so she could capitalize on everything she had learned. Janette’s excess bulk in a fat-phobic world actually helped her to get to know herself better and gives her compassion for others. Janette, looking back, wouldn’t change a thing.

In the end, both Laura and Janette enjoy a profession that allows them to use a fork and a spoon to their heart’s delight. They became writers. That requires a lot of sitting and the lifting of a pen from time to time, but mostly it’s thinking and typing. We write about accepting not only our big fat asses, but also our big fat pasts. Ironic isn’t it? Janette in her extra-large is free and Laura, wearing a mere size 14, still obsesses about her weight from time to time (Thursdays at noon), but now, at least her livelihood is not based on having a skinny ass - only on the ability to write about it.

Laura Banks and Janette Barber are the bestselling authors of Embracing Your Big Fat Ass (Atria). They write about positive body-image, weight-acceptance, self-esteem with humor. It’s time to love your BFA (Big Fat Ass). Janette is a 6 time Emmy-Award winning producer/writer and Laura is a columnist at Tarot.com www.embracingyourbigfatass.com.

See Things As They Are…Not Worse Than They Are

Thu, 31 Oct 2008 03:49:43 GMT

posted by tuttyt

So it’s official, the UK economy has shrunk for the first time in 16 years. And yet we’ve been talking about and acting as if we are in a recession for the last 18 months. Were we receeding or correcting?

All this talk reminds me of that old story about the Dad who sells lemonade on his lemonade stand. His business does really well and he decides that he wants to give his son the education he never had. So he sends his son off to business school.

One day his son comes home and says, “Dad, haven’t you heard? A recession is coming. We need to sell everything and batton down the hatches because nobody will be buying lemonade.” So Dad takes his son’s advise and cuts back on marketing and selling his lemonade. Sure enough, sales fall through the floor. Dad says to his son, “Son, I sure am glad you told me about that recession. Just think where we might have been if we hadn’t known.”

Maybe, just maybe, if we hadn’t spent so much time talking ourselves into a recession, we would have experienced a correction. Maybe, just maybe, if we see things as they are, not worse than they are; we can talk ourselves back from a recession.

All About You

Mon, 21 Oct 2008 15:16:00 GMT

posted by hip_m0m
You're so vain, you probably think this post is about you! And you're absolutely right! In order to discover your true desire, your life's purpose, your strengths - and weaknesses - take the time to answer some questions that will have you looking at yourself in a whole new way.

The following questions are just a sample of those that can be found on the site of Life Success Coach (and my dear friend) Cathy Northcutt.

Who Are You?

What Are Your Visions?

What's Your Passion?

What's Draining You?

You - as a Mother or Father

You - as a Professional

You - as a Leader

You - as a Salesperson

Cathy has helped me gain insight on my career, my relationships and my value as a parent educator / coach, friend and mother. She supports those who are open to her suggestions, advice and warm, honest opinions that not only encourage you to be the best you can be, but inspire you reach out and support those around you.

I owe much of my success to many wonderful women in my life. Cathy is just one of them. You'll hear more from her and about her in the months to come.

Join Cathy tonight for her monthly Nurturning Mother Telegathering, at 9pm (PST). Email Cathy directly to RSVP for tonight's call.
Happy Healthy Hip Parenting Peace Begins in the Home

The Wasting Away Continues

Fri, 29 Mar 2008 07:51:30 GMT

posted by trickster

I was one of those on the vanguard of the ‘60s, and had the audacity to think that the women’s movement might actually accomplish something when it came to females accepting their diversity of size and shape and myriad abilities in breaking from the stifling roles girdling them in the press, women’s magazines, movies, ads, the male gaze, social pressure, and so on. Myself already impregnated since birth in the 1950s with the delicate, small, glamorous image embodied in Greta Garbo, Audrey Hepburn, and all the other interchangeable beauties wallpapering my mind, became only further lost when I entered the world of dance.

Granted, it was modern dance, not the obsessive world of ballet where in universities around the country women were required to weigh in every week, and no matter how talented, if they didn’t meet a certain weight—despite height or bone structure—they’d politely be let go at the end of the year. A world where the Balanchine Beauty (director of the New York Ballet), tall and underweight became the one and only model for dancers to follow. In actual companies, the female dancers, most certainly not the male, had to live in dormitories so that their food intake could be controlled. Too many, in denial and supported by the perceptual conformity around them, died of hear failure—and everyone remained silent.

Simply because I was in modern, I did not escape the prevailing view, and when criticism continually cropped up about my weight, I blindly followed those before me, forgetting everything I had learned in the women’s movement. At 5’6”, I once weighed 99 pounds, no longer menstruated, and shopped in the children’s department—all my dance friends exclaimed how fantastic I looked and wanted to know how I did it. Nor did I look thin to myself.

But that was long ago, and I, amazingly, found my way out of blindness. What concerns me now is that rather than feminism making inroads in this area, it has gotten alarmingly worse: the latest statistics, which underestimate these secretive eating disorders, estimate that four out of one hundred, college-aged women have bulimia. A low guess puts about 50% of people who have been anorexic developing bulimia or bulimic patterns.

Around one out of every one hundred young women between ten and twenty are starving themselves, sometimes to death. More than half of teenaged girls are, or think they should be, on diets. They want to lose all or some of the forty pounds that females naturally gain between 8 and 14. Growing bodies, natural processes, but minds seduced by all those corporations that need to make money preying on our insecurities. And as if feminism never happened (oh, yes, it’s a dirty word according to the media wanting to sell all those beautification products and maintain the status quo), both men and women must remake their bodies to fit some unobtainable ideal and risk death in the process.

I’ve looked at insecurity from both sides now, to paraphrase Joni Mitchell, and it’s insecurities’ illusions I recall…

The Hunger Artist Revisited

Chimes hanging in the night

wait

for the gleaning sun,

the banisher of shadows.

Bone chimes—

permanent ribbons

stripped to the river bed of sun-dried bone.

Violin bones—

crystals—

Set to the cadence of resonating moans.

The essential exercise

in the essential aesthetics

of the hunger artist:

Starvation,

the banisher of shadows,

obligingly accommodates.

Satiation achieved

through the abundance of nothing.

I murdered hunger,

strangled the sustenance of bread,

ground it to the calcium-flour-paste

of shapely bones—

the borderlines between sufficiency and desire:

Stark white bones

The banishers of shadows.

The Bulimic

She threw up words and spoke food,

conceiving a world of texture:

angel pasta hair,

bread-dough skin,

crisp fried air,

crackling oil thunder.

Food

the stuff of life

the primal drive

more fundamental than sex

the first lover of the first human

(the way to the heart is through the

stomach.)

Marriage over wedding cake.

God--the wine and wafer.

She lived in a metaphoric world,

meaning that spoke in incontrovertible

flesh and fat.

A world to sustain life,

unlike the ephemeral and abstract

matrix of words

that everyone tried to feed her--

wisps, not even as filling as cotton candy.

Indigestible.

She threw them up on an empty stomach.

Dry heaves, chunks of

"I love you, I depend on you...

you must, you should, you better..."

Lacking in nutrients

Lies, empty promises,

symbols,

magic potions without magic--

straw dogs.

She vomited her way to silence

and ate her way to understanding.