Beautiful (FAT) Girls, Part 5: Camryn Manheim

I know that she has since lost weight (and good for her, from a health standpoint!), but Camryn Manheim jumped out at me when I was thinking of fat girls to post about, because I'll never forget the title of her book, "Wake Up! I'm Fat!"

But in researching this post, I found a whole host of awesome quotes attributed to her:

• Handsome, thin, sophisticated men often fall madly in love with larger women, we just never see it on TV.

• I hate overweight, because it implies that there's a weight standard I should be adhering to.

• I've always thought of fat as just a descriptive word.

• Instead of hating, I have chosen to forgive and spend all of my positive energy on changing the world.

• It's okay to be a fat man. It's prestige and power and all of that. But fat women are seen as just lazy and stupid and having no self-control.

• On The Practice, I get to do what I love to do, and I am making a contribution that will, in the end, help raise social consciousness, dispel some of the myths about being large, and change the way that people view and interact with large people.

• So instead of beating myself up for being fat, I think it's a miracle that I laugh every day and walk through my life with pride, because our culture is unrelenting when it comes to large people.

• When I meet large women who walk with confidence and are articulate and really have an understanding of how they walk in this world, I love them so deeply for being able to overcome such unbelievable odds.

• Years ago women of my size were considered royalty.