On Fat and Faith: Ending Weight Stigma Yourself Your Sanctuary and Society

By Rev. Dr. E-K Daufin

On Fat And Faith is bell hooks' Ain't I a Woman? meets The F*ck It Diet, with more than a little Jambalaya in the jam. Learn what you can do to end weight stigma and about Black women dealing with race, gender, class and weight stigmatizing assaults of family, whitemalegod, workplace and the media. If you are a liberal-faithed or Goddess guided, open-minded Fat person who has stopped dieting, or are simply an ally to one, this book will empower. It will strengthen your Fat positive resolve to beat back the big body bashing that is so common and cruel, even in your church or temple and even by otherwise well-meaning people and practices. "Dr. Daufin is a national treasure and so is her book, On Fat and Faith! She is a brilliant Fat studies scholar who communicates her academic ideas in witty ways.

• Language: English
• Publisher: BookBaby
• Release date: Jan 26, 2023
• ISBN: 9781772775365

Book preview

Foreword

When I first met Rev. Dr. E-K, I recognized that she was exquisitely educated, an engaging writer, and an enthusiastic, entertaining teacher who has a palpable, powerful, spiritual presence. This social justice worker, who is also an ordained, multi-religion, feminist minister; ceremonial high priestess; and tenured, university full professor, weaves her web of wonder around you with riveting personal narrative and a brilliant synthesis of her manifold magical and mundane expertise. I experienced what an absolute sweetheart she is.

From Dr. E-K. I learned more about the field in which she is an authority — that of equity, focusing on the intersections of race, gender, color, class and higher weight or Fatness. Her modus operando is to resource both the planetary rising Divine Feminine energy, combined with practical personal and political action. I’ve never seen anything like it or like her. Wow!

She boldly uses the word Fat as a neutral descriptor of a physical characteristic, not as the judgmental, derogatory insult it has often been. She introduces you to HAES®, or Health At Every Size, a life path which shuns intentional weight loss efforts and advocates for compassionate, competent, weight neutral care regardless of weight.

HAES and Dr. E-K, center intersectional liberation that recognizes that those who have the most oppressed identities are unfairly and arithmetically challenged. She says these challenges must be addressed on a social and political level, in addition to the good trouble individuals can stir up to clean up the planet. Rev. Dr. E-K holds that science is just Divine Spirit that we don’t understand yet and vice versa. She invites you to use ancient traditions and political action to right wrongs and soothe your body and soul.

No matter your religion or lack thereof, as long as your mind and heart are both open, in this book you will find a way to balance yourself, your circles of influence and the broader society. If you have recognized that diets don’t work, and body positivity needs to go deeper, and you are seeking to dismantle the subconscious, institutional legacy, white supremacist sins of patriarchy, race and class inequity, you will find a blessing in this book.

If you are politically woke and tired of hating yourself for what your body looks like, you will find a blessing in this book. If you have faced weight stigma or sadly seen Fat shaming done to others and want a way to heal from that or help others do so, you will find a blessing in this book.

If the notions of a Mother God and a Partnership (vs. patriarchal) society resonate with you, you will find a blessing in this book. I will be forever grateful to Rev. Dr. E-K Daufin for sensitizing me more to these issues. You will be too.

Raymond Aaron

New York Times Bestselling Author

This is for all the Fat girls!

– Camryn Manheim, while pumping her fist,

upon accepting her Emmy for Best Supporting Actor in a Drama

Series, 1998; SAG-AFTRA Secretary Treasurer, 2019-

"I’m not everyone’s cup of tea

but I’m (some people’s) double vodka."

– Marilyn Monroe

Chapter 1

Cover Girl is Our Cup of Tea

A Cool Cover Girl is Fat

So-called Blonde Bombshell, actress Marilyn Monroe, said: I’m not everyone’s cup of tea, but I’m (some people’s) double vodka. Am I, and the On Fat And Faith work, your cup of tea? Or even your double vodka? If you are my people, WELCOME! I’ve been looking for you for so long.

To help you decide, if you don’t already know, look at the woman on the cover of this book. In modeling, women are often called girls. The girl on any cover, or cover girl, is in the most coveted position. She is supposed to be the best of the best. Our cover girl (grown a—ed woman, really) is the non-conventional beauty, best of the best. That makes her even better in my book. My people are non-conventional, no matter what they look like.

The woman on the cover of this book is a gorgeous, higher weight, medium brown-skinned, Black woman. She has somewhat Africanized features and unprocessed, naturally kinky hair. She wears white, form-fitting, stretchable cotton separates. Peeking out between the top and bottom are her wonderful rolls of flesh.

She is also holding a small dumbbell in her hand, in a bicep flexing curl. Hold a dumbbell if you want, but don’t BE a dumbbell, as an old boyfriend of mine used to say about an explicative that is also the name of a vital, beloved body part (HINT: rectum). Have one; don’t BE one.

This is an intersectionally (all at the same time co-existing and exacerbating) Fat, Black, fem positive book. Recognize your biases and seek to divest yourself of them. Open your mind and your heart first, if you want to open this book.

I’m the cup of tea for those who already recognize that weight loss dieting and exercise don’t work significantly, sustainably or at all. On Fat And Faith is a double vodka to those who know intentional weight loss efforts make you crazy and make most people fatter in the long run. Not that that’s a bad thing, but Ahm jes’ sayin.’

I’m the cup of tea for those who recognize that #BlackLives-Matter. I’m the double vodka for those who recognize that Black women and girls face sexism and racism/colorism in Black and mainstream/white communities. On Fat And Faith is the cup of tea for folks who recognize that the systematic, institutional inequity for those with identifiable, traditionally devalued identities/demographics, is damaging. It’s wrong and that includes the oppression of white LGBTQA+ folks and all People of Color of all genders/orientations, even though I center Fat Black fems in this book. If you know these injustices need to stop and you want to be part of that shift, I’m your double vodka.

On Fat and Faith is exactly your cup of tea if you know, regardless of your religion, or lack thereof, that we individually and collectively must help make these injustices stop using our bodies, minds and spirits. I’m your double vodka if you are tired of living in a Dominator society and are seeking a better way, a Partnership Path.

If you are not down for that, continue at your own risk, ‘cause I ain’t your cup of tea, or any other type of beverage you’d eagerly savor and swallow. Might make you spit up. Might burn on the tongue and worse on the way down. I’m the cup of tea minister, self-help seer or priestess to those who are already convinced and want to know how to make it so. If this doesn’t sound like you, there are plenty of other books for you to read and folks for you to argue and debate with. Go take that mess elsewhere. This is not the drone you are looking for.

By the way, our cover girl is NOT exercising for any kind of weight loss. This is a Fat positive book for you, regardless of your weight. I use the term Fat the way Fat Liberationists use it, capitalized and as a positive affirmation. I use it the way I use the word Black when referring to people.

A Perfect Cover Girl is P.H.A.T.

When I’m leading a workshop or ceremony, many people are surprised when I tell them all the inaccurate, negative associations most humans unconsciously make with the word Black. Think of the scene in Spike Lee’s movie, Malcolm X, when Brother Malcolm reads the full dictionary definition of the word Black. He realizes society’s deep stigmatization of the word and our people. It changes his life forever.

My doctorate is in multimedia communication. As a university full professor, before I became an independent scholar, consultant and artist, I specialized in how the media influence society. So be prepared for pop culture references too. As I teach, my students’ eyes often light up when I give them a pop culture example or analogy.

They get it. And you will too; or go to OnFatAndFaith.com for the bonus material that defines many of those references for you.

In my grandparents’ day, calling a person of African ancestry Black was using fightin’ words. Better take off your earrings, roll up those sleeves and get ready to throw down or run…fast. Sometimes the word Black is still an insult. It depends on the tone, timing, purpose AND identity, of the mouth it comes out of and what words follow it.

The same is true of the word Fat. Yet, a Fat, white person still has race privilege and does not experience the double whammy of race and size discrimination. Race discrimination against those of African descent also entails other dimensions, upon which we will only touch the tip of in On Fat And Faith.

Still, it is time to undo the bitter aftertaste the word Fat leaves in our mouths. It is time to turn the taste of the word Fat into the succulent juices of your favorite food. As a recent keynote speaker, I told my audience of predominantly Southern, African American girls that if they had been brutalized by family, classmates and/or others with the word Fat, to instead consider it the pronunciation of the culturally relevant word P-h-a-t.

Phat (really P.H.A.T.) stands for pretty hot and tempting. During my adulthood, the term has been popularized more in the Black community. For example, it is part of the title of comedian Monique’s movie, Phat Girlz, a film which unfortunately is still rife with weight stigma. In fact, as a youngster, the first time I cursed at an adult, the word Phat was to blame.

My mother forced me into college even earlier than I would have otherwise gone, having skipped a couple of grades already. My father, owner of a correspondence doctorate from a school of dubious repute, didn’t think girls should be educated beyond high school because, (We) would just waste it as a mother. And he certainly didn’t want to pay for it.

My mother tricked me into going to the historically Black (HBCU) Morgan State University, rather than the traditionally white (TWI) Ivy League schools others on my high school honor roll typically went to. Perhaps Mommy was using me, as usual, but this time to fulfill a destiny she was lying about having already obtained herself – that of a college graduate.

My early college admission bid caused me huge harassment from resentful classmates at one of the five highly competitive, non-districted, New York City public high schools. Only two white boys before me had ever successfully gone to college straight out of their junior year of high school. I would be the first girl and the first Black student to do so. (I did and I was.) Girls made up about .04 percent of the student body at that time.

Though I was typically the highest ranking girl on the honor roll, usually in the top-five overall, graduating early was just too much for many of my competitors to take. Even high school administrators were angry at me for foregoing possible scholarships to academically higher ranking white universities if I completed my senior year. However, those administrators and classmates had no idea about the grand dysfunction taking place in my home.

They had no idea that there would be absolutely no support for me to even take advantage of any possible, future scholarship. My mother forced me to keep secret the hell that was going on at home. She threatened me that such a disclosure may get my father, who worked in the New York City public schoolsBureau of Attendance, fired. It would be my fault if we were made penniless and homeless, she warned. (No one was saying unsheltered back then.)

My brave, best friend Sonia told me how to access the one therapist available at school before his position was axed in one of the constant waves of budget cuts. Even though I saw him briefly, and he only knew half the story, he offered to put me into foster care. But I didn’t like what I had seen of the New York City foster care system. At least my family was the devil I knew, and I thought I might be able to survive, get educated and have a better chance of getting away from them and of getting to and through adulthood.

When the counselor said if I wouldn’t leave the home, I needed a parent’s permission to continue therapy, I had to ask my mother to sign a form. She was a better bet than my even more narcissistic father for such things. But it wouldn’t be good. When I asked her to sign the form, she looked at me with such loathing. I shall never forget it. She snatched the paper from my hand and marched off. She didn’t speak to me or set a place for me at the dinner table for weeks after.

This was her typical punishment for me anytime I displeased her. There was diet version food available to me in the kitchen. Just no place setting, and everyone pretending as if I didn’t exist at all. Everyone else followed her lead, though it usually only lasted a day or two. Then she would suddenly decide I had done enough penance.

No notification; no words about it at all, except that she would actually call me for my dinner diet plate when she was feeding the others. Only then would there also be a plate and cutlery at my assigned seat. But my mother did sign the therapy permission form and slipped it under the bedroom door a few days later. I never knew if she told my father or not.

I thank Goddess for that little bit of early therapy. It provided a temporary support to tide me over in the angry, lethal ocean of my home life. There was more maternal hostility to face for applying for early college admission financial aid, even though my mother was making me leave high school early. I hated leaving that special high school, all the opportunities it afforded me, and my hard-won place in it—early.

However, my mother probably knew that I had better get to college quickly before my propped up, psychotic, older brother’s tuition and care bankrupted what my father had, or was willing to borrow from the bank, to pay for a state college education for either of us. She knew my braggadocious father did not have the money saved so that either my brother or I, …could go to college wherever we wanted, as he had firmly and repeatedly asserted to us, especially when he had an audience.

My abusive brother would go to college, closer to first class, living on campus with his room and board paid, at a TWI with good student accommodations. The next year, I would go on the cheap to the HBCU my mother claimed to have graduated from, living in an unheated, dark, very low ceilinged, two-room, uninsulated enclosure without a lock.

It was located in a Baltimore basement, far from campus. I had no car and only $20 a month that my father begrudgingly doled out for food, tampons and…everything. That wasn’t even enough for one, one-way bus fare to campus every day. I would have had to take three busses, each way , every day, at all times of night, walking about a mile on both ends. I would also have to walk several miles in between bus lines if I missed the middle one that stopped running at 6 p.m.

My step grandfather agreed, begrudgingly, to take me to and from the campus. That was two round trips a day for him, for way too little of a tip that my father gave him. In the long gaps between classes and other campus commitments, I would nap in a secluded corner of the university library. I would also secretly eat whatever I had scrounged from home and tucked into my bag, one mouthful at a time…if I needed to stay