this year we (and our holiday baggage) came together with the shared desire to make this time of year hurt less. we didn’t buy presents but we shared intentional space with each other, we cried, we ate bbq, made latkes, hugged it out, laughed until it felt like it was taking over our bodies and made partly serious “jokes” about having a holigay orgy. (hey, the day isn’t over, amiright?)

in all seriousness we hope everyone is taking care of themselves and each other the best they can today. hang in there, sometimes all you can do is power through. 

so much love, and so many hugs

ash and majestic

Dear Ashley,

HAPPY BIRTHDAY. I’m glad I got to see you this weekend and bake you a cake with a dick AND a unicorn on it.

Love,

Majestic

Self Care: The Queer Fat Hungry Edition

* Have you checked out Smith’s tumblr Queer Fat Hungry? Go follow them up!

Lately I have been having horrible stomach aches and feeling really sick, and something has started to become very clear to me:

This Hungry V needs to go Gluten Free.

I feel scared about it for so many reasons, namely because I really DO love a baked good section and bread is my favorite food group but I’ve been giving it a try and I feel really good and am eating really delicious food.

Here are some things I have made recently:

Yams w/ spinach, chives, goat cheese, eggz & gluten free biscuits (made with Mim!)

Fried mushrooms and kale with soup

Quinoa porridge with chopped bananas and cinnamon (I actually just rotate the ingredients every morning so I don’t get tired. On Friday morning Julia and I put chocolate chips in our porridge!). I usually go with fresh or dried fruit and sliced almonds or sunflower seeds but really you can do ANYTHING with this)

Rice crisps + black bean dip

Veggie yam chipotle chili with corn bread

Gluten free apple crisp

It’s really not very different from how I normally eat, and my body is thanking me by not feeling really bad which I want to acknowledge and honor.

XOXO

Mister/Mz Majestic Legay

(and then Julia and I baked a pie for my neighbor because we thought it would be cute and vintage of us since nobody ever does shit like that anymore, isn’t it purdy? if I could just bake purdy pies forever, I probably would).

mommy and daddy had a skype date tonight

[TRIGGER WARNING: EATING DISORDERS]

There is a person, right now, who is realizing their body is not wrong, disgusting, or broken for the first time in all of their 37 years on this planet. There is a teenager, who has reclaimed the word ‘fat’ - now using it as an adjective, embedded with 15 years of self-love and survival. Right now, there is a 78 year old, a 46 year old, and a 12 year old, staring at their bodies in the mirror and seeing nothing but sexy, hot, ferocious, UNSTOPPABLE. There is a person, right now, reading the story of another and realizing they have not spent 24 years struggling with disordered eating alone. There is a person, right now, who is wearing booty shorts 2 sizes too small ON PURPOSE. There is a person, right now, who has started to make a point of telling themselves daily that they are strong and beautiful, as a way to heal 19 years of ‘incapable’ and ‘ugly’.

Sharing our stories of struggle is incredibly vital and important, but it is also important to share our stories of resistance. When we illuminate the change that we are creating (as well as our struggles), it is easier to see that we are not alone, that we are moving through this self-hatred that sometimes feels like concrete, that we are destroying the systems that tell us which bodies are attractive and valuable, and which bodies are wrong.  When we make our struggles and resistances available to others, we create space for self-love to creep in to the hearts and minds of those around us. After a while, self-love starts to spread like wild-fire, rapidly transforming the body hating landscape of dominant culture and creating more space for all bodies to experience love and value. What is more badass than that?

Sometimes even the smallest, or simplest acts of resistance can seem like the hardest. Just remember that all of our struggles are different and that we are doing what we can. There is no ‘right way’ to begin to love ourselves, and there is room for all of us to exist where we are at. If you can’t take action today, there is always tomorrow, next week, next month, etc. Just keep trying, and above all treat yourself with gentle compassion and kindness because the fact that we are even contemplating these things is a powerful act.

- Majestic Legay

* I wrote this after I read this [tw eating disorder] because realizing I wasn’t alone in struggling with (and resisting) disordered eating was so fucking relieving and transformational for me. When I read this, I thought “yeah, this is their very important reality, but the author is erasing the ways that these people resist. what about the ways that we resist? we should share that also”

OBESITY: AN EPIDEMIC A.K.A. HUNGRY VIRGINZ PART 2 

SUBTITLES HERE (If anyone knows how to get them to embed, let us know)

Tonight with the hot and sexy Many Bothans we made yet ANOTHER video about fat stereotypes and what it takes to live an obese lifestyle. IT WAS DELICIOUS.

XOXO

- Ashley and Majestic

* obese lifestyle copyright, trademarked, etc. by fat mer-slut productions. patent pending.

Glitter Politic. It’s kind of like a super power. From the minute we are born, the world injects us with poison. This poison takes the form of self-hatred, fear, disempowerment, loneliness, and worthlessness. The poison has become part of us, and has corroded us from the inside. Embodying a Glitter Politic is the act of taking those parts of ourselves that feel toxic – those deeply terrifying, seemingly ugly parts – and seeing ourselves as whole. It is about having compassion for the impossibilities within and around us. It is about throwing those parts of ourselves that feel infected back out into the world in the form of beauty, like a weapon.  In doing so, we suddenly have the power to unlearn, challenge, and redefine what is beautiful.

When we re-imagine, re-define, re-create beauty and share that with the world, people internalize it and it incites a chain reaction. It becomes its own virus – a glitter pandemic. When we become aware of the ways in which our world privileges certain bodies over others, and actively reject those destructive value systems, we have within us the power to annihilate beauty as we know it.

Self-love is volcanic. When we externalize our love for ourselves, we erupt love from its cold, ashy hollow and it surges forth, hot with promise, into the hearts and minds of others. Self-love collapses the imagined borders and walls we have built with the hope of protecting ourselves. It unravels the ropes that bind and isolate us from each other. Suddenly, our interconnectedness becomes profoundly obvious. Through self-love we can shatter the dominant narratives that tell us we are autonomous, non-connected individuals. Self-love in the face of fear and hate cracks open a space teeming with possibilities for connection and transformation.

It’s time for us to turn our feelings back on. Embodying a Glitter Politic is about returning to the body. It is about willingly entering a space of vulnerability, that place of uncertainty and ambiguity. This place is terrifying because it is mysterious, shifting, inexplicable. What does it even feel like to be in love with our bodies? What does it feel like to see our bodies as liminal, as shaky, as undefinable? What does it feel like, inside our bodies, to exist in this marginal place? Are we raw here? Are we scared here? It is in these indiscernible places that compassion – a recognition that in our loneliest moments, we are not alone – becomes possible. Embodying a Glitter Politic is a challenge, a call to action. It is a mission to begin the journey of engaging with ourselves fully. Only from this place can we connect, and only then can we see change.

-Ashley and Majestic

HUNGRY VIRGINZ

just a video we made about how it’s really hilarious and fab to recreate/perpetuate/reclaim fat stereotypes. subtitles ASAP!

-ASH AND MAJEST

I love to learn new words. I find it immensely satisfying to dig up the etymology of a word so that I can begin to understand where it has come from, or where it might take me. I love testing out new words on my timid tongue, letting them flop out clumsily, or fumble around in my mouth. I love to think about all of the things these new words mean in relation to what I already know, or the ways they might stretch out and unravel in my lexicon. Growing up poor and having mostly horrible experiences with education always made me feel like I had so much to say but that the words just never came out how I wanted them to. Entering post secondary was a very intense decision for me, and kind of a big deal. I have quite complicated feelings about it now. On one hand I feel like I have been given the powerful ability to use language as a weapon. On the other, I can see how education is a powerful and pervasive form of assimilation. I often feel as though academia rips me away screaming from my working class roots and disconnects me from the very communities that have sustained and nurtured me. I’m not sure how to tend to this unpleasant clash of identities other than getting the fuck over my unhealthy love for nuance, or reading lots of Anzaldúa. The truth is, connecting to my poverty allows me to play with language in really interesting ways. I am totally over pretending I can’t hear that poor kid inside of me because they are sure as shit not done screaming yet. Learning about language and the places it can take me feels really dangerous in those atrocious and disgraceful ways that I live for.

- Majestic Legay