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Monday, July 30

Secret Camera Roll + Things To Look Forward To

Life has been relaxing and calm. Here are some pictures for you.
My hair was reaching new heights today.
Saw this at Goodwill.  
Driving.
Organized my closet!

Mom and I visited my sister's plot today.
Had a cookout and bonfire with friends this past weekend. So fun.
Woke up and liked my legs.  
Pink is my favorite highlighter. ;)
That's mom's 50 book, by the way.
So there ya go.

I've been planning out a new blogging schedule with topics such as:
  • Tumblr Titillates- where I'd post funny things + important things from Tumblr
  • A Day in the Life- ... a day in my life. :)
  • Dear ____ - where I'd write a letter to someone who needs a talkin' to.
  • Natural Needs- Adventures in nature.
  • Cookie Rookie/Cook Rook(ie)- where I FINALLY start cooking.
  • Body <3- body positivity + adventures in my new lifestyle change.
  • Wishful Words- goals, successes, things like that.
  • Thirst for Thrift- thrift store adventures with clothing
  • Marv Mode/Fatshion- I want to do more fattie clothes posts. 
Just wanted ya'll to know what I've been thinking about. :)

cort xo

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Thursday, July 26

I'm Tired of Waiting.



I'm so damn tired of waiting for something better to happen. I'm tired of sitting on my ass, typing away at my blog, hoping for a change in myself. I'm making this change. It's exhausting and pointless to continue to hope for something better, but do nothing to change it. I love myself. But I need control and I need change. We all are always waiting for something. Whether it's to get into a bathing suit (when you could easily just put one on), waiting for a better job to come along, waiting for a better partner to come along, or in my case, waiting to love myself fully. Well, it isn't just going to happen. 


I love myself, I do a lot, but I need to take better care of myself. And here I am, doing that. No waiting. I'm in love with who I am. I'm in love with myself. That is why I am eating healthier foods, and being more active in hopes of being healthier. But, I need to lose weight. Not because of what anyone is telling me, and not because of things that I see, but because my body hurts. I'm jaded in this thought that I'm completely happy with myself. I believe that all bodies are beautiful, and that if someone is happy with themselves and other people say that they are fat or ugly, that's bullshit. But, I'm not completely satisfied with myself. I can do better for myself. So, I'm working towards that goal of being healthier, and losing some weight so that I can be more comfortable, because it's what my body needs. I don't want to be out of breath when I walk to class. I don't want to be that person. My body is exhausted. I'm tired of saying I'm okay with myself when I'm not completely okay with myself. Fuck that. I need to be honest with myself. I'm too young to feel so old.

None of my prior posts are lies. I swear that.
We are all beautiful creatures. I just want to be a happier Cortnie.

cort x

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Monday, July 23

Sexual Assault Survivors Have Voices, Ya Know!


Before I start the post for today, I wanted to let everyone know about my new Jux page! I'm posting pictures on there that I'm not posting anywhere else, so if you wanna creep a bit on me, I give you my full consent!

Aaanyway.

I hope that everyone has heard about Savannah Dietrich, and if you haven't, I'll blab a bit about her. In very simple terms here's what happened.

  • Savannah was sexually assaulted. 
  • She and the apparently two boys who assaulted her went to juvenile court. 
  • She was not satisfied with what sentence they received. (Understandably) 
  • She went to Twitter & Facebook and said what had happened, including their names. 
  • Apparently the judge didn't want anyone discussing the case. 
  • They were going to hold her in contempt. 
  • A petition helped to make that not happen. 
  • PS, the boys took pictures of the assault and shared them with friends. 

Okay, there you go. This made me think about lots of things. 

First of all, what's with the silencing of the case? I realize that they were all juveniles, but that doesn't change the fact that this girl's life will be forever scarred from what these boys did to her, while they were just having fun taking pictures and hurting her. And, as the petition helped point out, she had every right to say who hurt her, and I'm assuming she felt very empowered from it. So many survivors have come out saying that Savannah is a heroine for them. Get it, girl!

It also made me think about what I'd do if this happened to me. I've never been attacked. I've never had to deal with that. The most that has happened to me is an ass grab, where I turned around and slapped the asshole. I could not even begin to imagine how my life would feel if someone took what was most precious to me. I have friends who have been raped or molested, and I look up to them so so much. I could not imagine. It makes me so sad. Anyway, to spare you from my awkward I-don't-know-what-to-say-right-now section of this post, lets move on. 

Would I post the names of people online? FUCK YES. If I found out the names of my offender(s), fuck yes I would post them. This needs to happen more often, anyway. It's so hush hush; we are socialized to not talk about these things. I say fuck that. I would. Just how on my personal Facebook page I warned women on my campus about going to the Subway because of a creep in there. We have to watch out for each other, whatever the gender. If I could save someone else from getting assaulted, and if that meant that I needed to type out someone's name online, you better believe that I would do just that. 

So what would you do? Have you ever thought about it? 
xo, cortnie
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Monday, July 16

Mind Over Matter & #fatgirlworkout

Hello lovelies!

I've been venturing in on the cleaner/healthier eating train, as I'd mentioned a few posts back. And today I woke up crazy early and felt the need to write out some goals for myself. I'm a planner at heart,  can't help it. Even though I'm a very body positive person, my mind still drives me crazy. Every so often, I happen to see myself in the mirror, and I don't like what I see. Lately, it's been harder to get my leggings on, and since moving in with my mother in January, my body has definitely taken a turn. 
While living on my own, I worked two jobs and went to school full time, so there wasn't much time to do anything but work, homework, and sleep with the occasional drunken night. Regardless of any of that crap, I had little to no money, so food was sometimes hard to come by. If I did have food, it was almost always fast food, driving through McDonald's or Burger King on my way home from a long night at the salon. Back then, I didn't necessarily feel healthy, but I was smaller than I am now. I've found comfort here with mom, and I always have a huge stock of food available. I'm also working a lot less. A LOT. I was probably working 60 hours or so a week plus taking 18 credit hours while I lived completely on my own, so like I hinted earlier, there was barely time to breathe, much less eat.

So with my clothes getting a bit tighter, and having little money to buy new ones (so little that my car payment is late this month), I want to change my life. I know I've said it over and over again on here, but I'm doing the healthy thing and I'm doing it right this time. It's my life, no one else's. I want to prove Health at Every Size correct. I want to feel better in my body. I want to not be uncomfortable trying to get dressed. I want to not struggle to get my seatbelt on sometimes in my car. I want to feel better when I walk to work or to class. I don't want to get anxious thinking about walking around while I'm out with friends. I don't want to have an insanely swollen right foot because of all of the sodium in the processed foods I've eaten.

I want to stop smoking. I want to know when I'm hungry and know when I'm full. I want to learn to not eat out of sadness or happiness or any other emotion. I want to use my body to its full potential as the amazing machine that it is. I want to have a healthy relationship with food and exercise. And how do I do that? I punch it right in the damn face. That's why I'm doing this. I'm not doing this healthy stuff to necessarily lose weight, although my body is hurting and is feeling uncomfortable, so I'm assuming that that is going to be some sort of an outcome of all of this. I don't doubt that it will be. But I'm not doing it for that sole purpose.

I don't want anyone to accuse me of being a hypocrite. I don't want that at all because that's not who I am. I want everyone to understand that body acceptance, body love, and loving yourself entirely mean that you want to do good things for your body. To me, that means feeding it good, healthy foods, and being active a few times a week. The food helps me feel more in tune with Earth, and the sweaty exercise helps with my anxiety.  I don't want to spout body love without loving myself fully. I do love myself, but not as much as I can without depending on other things for my happiness.
Many of you expressed some interest in recipes and things, so those are going to be coming sometime in the near future, I swear! Once I learn some! Expect some SnapGuides, like my How to Dress Up Your Fat Body & How to Make Eggs in a Basket guides. I've also been updating my Tumblr with posts about working out, and liking different recipes that I think I might like. Here's a link to all of the posts about my #fatgirlworkout posts

Oh, speaking of that hashtag. I started it awhile ago on Tumblr. So far, it looks like I'm the only one using it. Are you a fat girl? Are you working out? Lets talk about it! There needs to be a bigger community of fat girls working out. The stigma is terrible behind fat people working out, even though we're supposed to work out in order to lose all of the weight society wants us to lose! Double edged sword? I want to show that health can exist no matter what you look like. So, start using the hashtag! I'd love to communicate with you outside this blog! I'd love to hear your stories! Lets normalize things!



Okie dokie. Here are some pictures for your viewing pleasure:








xo cortnie
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Monday, July 9

Skinny Gurl, We Need To Talk

One of my fabulous readers sent me a link to a sickening website, skinnygossip.com. It's a sad website, because it really goes to show that bias and ignorance on body acceptance and health is far higher than I could probably ever imagine. I want to take a moment and comment on a few snippets of this post, titled Fat Pride Burns My Hide. Cute, right?
A magazine for “plus size” women (aka. fat girls) Plus Model Magazine, featured an editorial in this month’s issue that made me both angry and sick to my stomach.  While you fat lovers out there (we know you come here too!) are going to have lots to say defending this, most of you skinny gurls need to be prepared for what you’re about to see.
I can't say that I wasn't expecting to see rhetoric like this on the website. Okay, "plus size women" are "aka. fat girls." Yup. No doubts about that. Wrong. Different people have different ideas about what fat, thin, plus size, chubby, bulky, skinny, fit, etc are. These are just words. They float around our minds, and around our worlds, and we just stick them to whatever we please. For instance, to one person I may be considered chubby, but to another person fat. I also don't technically label myself plus size, although it's where some of my clothes come from, because I don't fit the ideal plus size mold. I don't look like them, and frankly, I hate how a lot of plus sized clothes fit me. Anyway. Words. Ideas. It's what we make of ourselves. It's our own personal image of ourselves. Do you ever go weeks or months without seeing a picture of yourself, then you see a picture and you're all like WHOA?! You've been through this I'm sure. I have as well. (That's why I chose the image that I did for the post today! I never realEach and every one of us have a self-image, it's what we imagine ourselves to look like, and it can be accurate to how we actually look or, like in my case or the case of many of the people reading skinnygossip.com, it can sometimes be very distorted. This is the whole baseline of people with any sort of eating disorder.

It's also very sad to me that these people, or well this person writing, says that I make her sick to her stomach. That's not my goal. My goal has nothing to do with you, and I'm sorry if my body makes you want to vomit, but simply don't look at me, or people like me, if that's the case. Unless you want to puke, which seems to be highly likely considering your site is promoting starving and eating disorders in order to be skinny. Lets move on.
I’m really glad I can’t read the number on that measuring tape.. eww…can we say fat rolls!? Do you have any idea how much someone has to eat to look like this? Look, I am not saying she is a whale or obese, but she’s definitely fat and if I looked like that I sure wouldn’t be a> naked and b> in front of a camera. But to the caption: I wonder if these writers ever considered the, um, larger part of the equation: that the average woman in the western world has gotten much, much fatter over the past twenty years. Today the average fashion model weighs so much less than the average woman because the average woman is significantly overweight. In the US, for example, the average woman is 40 lbs overweight; 2/3 of women are overweight and 1/3 of women are obese. This is for one reason and one reason only: because they eat too much.
I know that was a long one, but I think it's important. First of all, the first sentence. The model has one roll. Moving on. How much someone has to eat to look like this? Being fat is not solely about how much food someone eats, it's about many other things. It can be about genetics. It can be about health issues, like thyroid problems for example. It can be about eating the foods that maybe aren't as healthy. What if someone ate 10 pounds of carrots a day and another person ate one big, fat, greasy cheeseburger a day? Which one is eating more? The carrot person is clearly eating more. Therefore the carrot person in this story would be fat according to this writer, because you're only fat if you are constantly eating, or eating a lot of food. What about the marathon hot dog eaters who are super thin? No?

Next, I'd like to talk about this writers claim that the "average woman in the western world has gotten much, much fatter over the past twenty years." Okay? This person is claiming that the models aren't too thin, it's just that the women in America have gotten soooo big that they're in a whole new dimension of fat as compared to the models. The models didn't change, the people in the world just got fatter. This is incredibly jaded and cloudy. It's no surprise that models HAVE gotten tremendously smaller throughout the years, and I hate to throw her in because her name dropping is completely obnoxious but look at Marilyn Monroe. She was bigger than many of the models that you see today. It's noted in many news articles that the clothing sizes of models have decreased in the past 100 or so years, and this INCLUDES plus size models. Google it, if you'd like.

The last thing I'd like to say is about the statistic at the end of the quoted area above. "In the US, for example, the average woman is 40 lbs overweight; 2/3 of women are overweight and 1/3 of women are obese." UM WHAT? It's math time, my friends! 2/3 + 1/3 = what? 3/3 or 1. 1. So every single woman in our country is either overweight or obese? There are women in our country who are not overweight or obese! This false, made up fact is claiming that there are NOOOO thin women in America. How bogus is this shit? If this statistic was true, the writer of this post would be either overweight or obese and so would ALL of the people involved with skinnygossip.com. Check your facts, people, for the love of GOD, check your facts!

There are tons of other things that I could point out about this stupid post, but I'm exhausted by it already and I frankly don't feel like it. The biggest thing I want to point out to people is that you need to love yourself. Love who and what you are. If you don't like it, change it, but change it because of the love that you have for yourself. Not because of rude ass people like the people on that website. All bodies are different. They obviously are supposed to be, it's what makes our world amazing. My thighs are fat. My ass is fat. My belly is fat. I'm fat. One of you reading this could be thin. One of you could be slender. One of you could be average--whatever the fuck that means. But we are all amazing in what we are.

Our people are wasting too much time on how thin they can be, how they look, and what everyone else thinks about their looks. Our people are wasting this time while they could be learning new things, like how to knit, or reading amazing books, or petting cats. They are wasting time worrying about something that big corporations making billions of dollars each year are TELLING you to worry about. That idea of beauty is manufactured by advertising and weight loss drugs, and it isn't real. This is why diets, and weight loss drugs still exist. They don't work. They don't. Stop hating yourself. You are amazing. You are loved. You look great. You matter.
xo, cortnie

Monday, July 2

Fat People with Eating Disorders: My Story

Early start to my cat lady life.
The only eating disorders that fat people can have, according to our culture, is binge eating or emotional eating. I want to talk about eating disorders in fat people because I have a lot of experience with it.  I'm a fat woman, and I've suffered/am currently suffering from eating disorders. When I was in middle school, while battling a terrible case of OCD, I was afraid to eat. I only ate prepackaged Poptarts, one pack a day, because I was afraid of any other food having food poisoning. Although I was a fat pre-teen (or so I thought at the time), I was not doing this for weight loss initially, I was doing it because I didn't want to throw up from contaminated food. After some long months of doing this, my peers started realizing that I was losing weight. They were complimenting me, telling me how great I looked. 

After a year or so of this, I picked myself up a boyfriend. I began to obsess about everything, thanks to my OCD, involving food. People started talking to me more, boys liked me, teachers even treated me differently. My obsessiveness got so intense that I found pro-ed blogs, LiveJournals mostly, and looked at what these girls were doing. While scrolling through the pages, looking at the emaciated pictures of these girls who were still calling themselves fat, and seeing everything they were eating (in these blogs, you'd post every single thing you were eating, down to the ounce), I thought.. well, if these girls are fat, then I'm way too fat. I began to love that grumbling stomach, begging for food, because it meant that I was doing something right. I never realized that what I was doing was wrong.
I didn't pee my pants, this was a practical joke.
Funny, funny. (I'm short on pictures so this is what you get)
Another girl in my 6th or 7th grade class was super athletic, and super thin. I remember one day she wasn't in class, and the next day and the next. She was out of school for about two weeks and when she came back, she looked absolutely terrible. It had been found that she was suffering from anorexia, a term that I wasn't familiar with even after I'd been internet friends with many people suffering from the same thing while I was suffering as well, and I wondered many things. I'm doing the same things that this girl is doing, but no one is recognizing my problem. Does that mean I don't have a problem? I'm equally suffering from exhaustion, upset stomach, not being able to focus on school work, constantly obsessing about my food, not eating school lunch, and nausea whenever I ate anything. No one cared about my problems because I was losing weight for the right reasons, I was fat. I dealt with the nausea so much that my mother had to carry around anti-nausea medicine with her, and though I'm sure it worried her, I don't think she knew what was going on with her daughter.
At a school dance in 7th grade.
No one knew what was going on with me. It was my own little secret, and I liked it that way. I went to school and I came home to get onto the computer and look at pictures of super-thin people, bond with the friends that I'd made online, and I was always so excited to just not eat. That grumbling stomach always told me what I was doing right. I was also working at the YMCA at this point, volunteering mostly, in swim lessons and stuff. Around this time, I picked up on swimming laps. I absolutely loved it. I loved being in the water, pushing my legs and moving my arms, gasping for that infamous swimmers side breath every few laps, and feeling my stomach growl while I was in the water. I'm telling you, this stomach growling was my favorite part of any day. My next favorite thing? The compliments I'd gotten on my weight loss. People asked what I was doing, how they were so proud of me for finally getting healthy. Little did they know, I was at one of the most unhealthy points in my life. I mean, at this point I was barely eating my daily Poptart.

Then, something changed. I was so hungry. So, so hungry. I remember the first bit of food I ate after my long stretch of not eating anything.  I remember being at the mall, with my mother I think. She had gotten a pretzel from Auntie Anne's, and I wanted one. Surprisingly. I ordered some big cinnamon one, and I ate the whole thing. I binged and I felt terrible about it. I wanted to puke, but as I mentioned above, I was terrified of throwing up (as I still am to this day). I didn't want to throw it up. I remember going on my LiveJournal and spewing out my regrets into the internet. How ridiculous is it that I felt so much guilt for eating this pretzel?
Freshman year of high school.
A few years later and I'm a cheerleader in high school trying the Atkins diet. I pass out at cheerleading practice, which is embarrassing enough. But no one assumes it's because of my new diet of eating, well, nothing healthy. According to nearly everyone, it's because I'm too fat to keep up with the other girls training for the yearly competition. What a shame. I could have gotten help.

Fast forward to today and what happens? I binge eat when I'm sad. I binge eat if I'm lonely. It's a way of comfort, and that's never okay. Whenever a 'diet' or 'lifestyle change' is introduced to me, I get really excited. I get an insane high that I can't even attempt to explain; remembering my past and counting calories and figuring out how in the negative I am with calories and working out and burning those calories. In my past, whenever I attempt to go on a diet and work out, it always goes to the extreme that it was when I was 11 or 12. There is no middle ground for me. There is no healthy diet for me, at least not yet. I think once I recognize these things fully, that I can have a more reasonable relationship with food. I feel like today I'm better. A lot better. I love who I am. But sometimes, it's bad again. If I want to start a new workout program, I get anxious and scared that I'll get obsessive again, and that makes me not even start it, which is so sad.

If I step on a scale and see a number that I don't like, my mind immediately goes into overdrive thinking of how many calories I can burn in one week and how many pounds that translates to. I daydream about my old days of wearing Abercrombie & Fitch jeans, and not worrying about whether or not I would be able to find clothes in any random clothing store. Somedays I dream of that, and as sad as this is to admit, I think that that's a natural part of being human in the culture that we live in. We aren't supposed to like what we look like. I mean, that's why the diet industry is making billions upon billions of dollars each year, right? We all see this thin propaganda, usually without even thinking about it. It goes in one ear and out the other, but that is not to discredit what it does to our brains. If I'm out with friends for dinner, I try to be as normal as possible while ordering food. Fat people are scrutinized for what they eat, thin people aren't. I can be at dinner with a few friends and we could all order huge cheeseburgers, but who is the waitress going to give the stink eye to? Do I really have to even ask? 
Cincinnati Pride: Courtesy of Citybeat
Don't get me wrong, everyone, I do love who I am. I love wearing my bikini (who wants to go swimming?), and I love breaking boundaries that fat ladies have. I love every minute of it. I am fat, and I will never be thin, and that is necessary to recognize. And I'm okay with that. This isn't even the whole of my eating disorder history, but it is the most devastating to me. I wanted to share this story with all of you because I want people to stop thinking that fat people can't have eating disorders. Through this whole not-eating journey and battle with anorexia in middle school, I still only lost enough weight to get down to about a size 10 or 12. Not thin by today's standards, and definitely not thin by my middle school peer's standards or by my pro-ed LiveJournal friend's standards. Currently, I'm around a size 24 probably, I'm always wearing leggings so I don't really keep track.


The moral of the story? You have to love yourself. And even that isn't enough sometimes. A fat person not eating is not a noble lifestyle change. It's a disorder, an illness, a disease. Congratulating them is hurting them. We all have to love ourselves, and I cannot stress that enough. I love myself so so much, and that isn't even enough sometimes. Maybe somedays I watch more tv than other days, and see more weight loss propaganda, or maybe one day I am thinking about stupid shit too much. Whatever the reason, the guilty, regretful feelings still come back. But when do I love myself the most? When I'm not obsessing about my stomach, when I find a cute outfit, when I'm around people who love me, when readers like you email me or message me on Facebook and tell me how much I've changed your lives. Those things drive me. They make me so so happy. I'm so glad I can make you all love yourselves so much. In that sense, I didn't want everyone to think that I'm free of these same thoughts that you have. I just try to approach them differently. 


I know that I'm not the only one who has dealt with these issues, but how would I know if people don't talk about them? That is why I wanted to write this post. That is also why it was so hard for me to write this post. I'm on the verge of tears, and I'm shaking, but I had to do this for myself and for you. You are okay. You are beautiful. You deserve to love yourself. There is nothing wrong with you. You are perfect. 


You are amazing, and I love you. 
xo, Cortnie