The days are growing shorter and the air smells like freshly-sharpened pencils. After Labor Day, bare legs are verboten if you adhere to Miss Manners, so what’s a girl to do? Tights, baby. Tights. Finding a decent pair of plus size tights is a bit of a challenge. Sometimes tight purveyors make gigantically long tights [...]

Filed under: Fashion, Fat Positive, Weetabix | 24 Comments »

Firstly, I hope you’ve had a chance to notice all the small improvements around here. We now have buttons on each entry to let you Twitter and Facebook them, you can reply to individual comments, you can have follow-up comments emailed to you (which is really handy if someone joins a conversation late), and you [...]

Filed under: Feel Good Friday, Humor, Meta, Video | 8 Comments »

The Rotund writes about reclaiming the word fat. That’s why I object to “overweight” as a descriptor. Over what weight? The weight other people think I should be even though they have no experience with my body composition beyond looking at me? The weight a BMI chart says I should be? The weight a fashion [...]

Filed under: BFD Classic, Fat Positive, Fatism, Feminism, Question | 27 Comments »

This ad was posted on Wedinator with the caption, “Hey Look, It’s The Worst Ad Ever.” Of course, in their writeup, they kind of undermine that headline a little by missing the point: Seriously, it’s one thing to encourage your overweight friend or relative to lose a little weight for general health reasons. But to [...]

Filed under: Advertising, Diet Talk, Feminism, Humor | 21 Comments »

A review of Hanes Just My Size is behind the jump. If clothing reviews are your thing, than click on through!

Filed under: BlogHerOff, Fashion, Review | 20 Comments »

If you’ve never heard of Happy News, it’s a website devoted to news and lifestyle stories that are meant to be “always positive.” But an anonymous tipster wrote in and pointed out that often on the site, weight loss is equated to “happy,” and fatness is equated to “unhappy.” Curious, I did a couple of [...]

Filed under: Diet Talk Warning, Fatism, Media, WLS, Weight Loss | 6 Comments »

In case you’re not familiar with eShakti, they have an amazing concept. They will customize their garments to your exact specifications. You break out the measuring tape, you tell them exactly what to do so their clothes will fit your body, and they will do it. It’s like magic, especially if you are hard to [...]

Filed under: Advertising, Fashion, Personal, Review | 15 Comments »

In the annals of Stupid Diets, I don’t think we’ve talked about the Cookie Diet yet. But now the silence must be broken! Because Snooki is involved. Threat level orange, if you will. Threat level fake-tan, oompa-loompa orange. On the diet, she eats only one meal a day (usually chicken) — and six cookies, each [...]

Filed under: Celebrities, Diet Talk, Diet Talk Warning | 20 Comments »

If you follow me on Twitter, you probably noticed this, but I’ve been out of the country for a few weeks. Thanks to Jenfu (yay for links roundups!) and Weetabix for contributing while I was gone! I’ve just caught up on 100+ blog comments (especially on the Fat Hygiene and Huge posts especially) and am [...]

Filed under: Meta | No Comments »

What are people searching for that brings them to Big Fat Deal? And how can we help them? Let’s dig into the Sitemeter and find out! what is the most ridiculous diet of all time My nominees are the Tapeworm Diet, the ever-popular Baby Food Diet, and the Intravenous Diet. But I’m sure someone will [...]

Filed under: Celebrities, Fashion, Humor, Jennifer Aniston, Meta | 14 Comments »

One of our most commented posts ever is the “how do strangers treat you?” post linked in the sidebar. It’s been two years, and we keep getting responses that are so thoughtful and represent such a range of experience. I wanted to post some of the recent ones. First, Becky is mocked in front of [...]

Filed under: Fatism, Feminism, Meta, Question, Sex & Romance | 16 Comments »

I’ve read a couple of articles in the past few days about Tracy Morgan “unofficially” becoming a spokesman for NutriSystem, because he’s lost 10 pounds on their program, reportedly. His diet entails “whatever I can eat” on NutriSystem, which is also favored by Tori Spelling, Marie Osmond and Boy Meet’s World Danielle Fishel. “Corn Flakes, [...]

Filed under: Celebrities, Diet Talk, TV, Weight Loss | 18 Comments »

1. April catches grief because she doesn’t want to follow someone’s weight-loss diary on Facebook. I’ve already “hidden” posts on my news feed from folks who seem to think that a running litany of everything they ate/didn’t eat wanted to eat/didn’t want to eat or weight they lost/gained inexplicably was the utmost in fascinating conversation… [...]

Filed under: Feminism, Links, Old Timey, Politics, Weight Loss | 5 Comments »

1. We all know I get ridiculous PR spam, but a real doozy landed in my mailbox yesterday, featuring the top five “Flabulous Celebrity Love Handle Offenders” who can fix their “offensive” love handles with a Spanx-type product that we should all run out and buy too! (Don’t worry, I wouldn’t dream of mentioning the [...]

Filed under: Advocacy, Art, Beth Ditto, Beyonce, Books, Britney Spears, Celebrities, Crystal Renn, Fat Positive, Fatism, Feminism, Health, International, Jessica Simpson, Kirstie Alley, Links, Music, Nikki Blonsky, Science, TV | 8 Comments »

Last week’s performance of “Dream a Little Dream” on Glee reminded me that it’s been 40 years since Cass Elliott sang that song. She had one of the most beautiful voices of the mid-1900′s, right up there with Streisand and Karen Carpenter, but she almost never makes the lists of amazing influential female singers. I’m [...]

Filed under: Celebrities, Fatism, Old Timey, Video, Weetabix | 13 Comments »

1.    I thought this was really fascinating: A professional model talks very personally about her body image issues and the modeling industry, in a guest post on the always awesome Already Pretty. I started modeling in 1998, at the age of 19, at 5’11″ (180 cm) and 120 pounds (55 kg). I grew up hating [...]

Filed under: Celebrities, Eating Disorders, Gossip, Kevin Smith, Kirstie Alley, Links, Media, Movies, TV | 14 Comments »

So this is like, a blog/Twitter crossover event! On Twitter, they have “Follow Fridays,” where you tell people who to follow on Twitter. So here’s my Follow Friday for you–The Illusionists, No Country for Young Women, and Revolution of Real Women. Because these three Twitter streams (in addition to being consistently awesome) are where I [...]

Filed under: Beth Ditto, Celebrities, Diet Talk, Feel Good Friday, Feminism, Magazines, Music, Photoshop, Video, Weight Loss | 4 Comments »

I’ve been feeling the need to find some new blogs to squeeze into my already overfull Google reader! So I figured, it’s Friday, let’s chat about our favorite stops on the Internet these days! For Fatosphere stuff, I read the Notes from the Fatosphere feed, as well as the Alltop Fatosphere listing, and of course [...]

Filed under: Fashion, Fat Positive, Feel Good Friday, Feminism, Gossip, Meta, Question | 11 Comments »

You have to admire the creativity of PR people sometimes, desperately trying to shoehorn their products into stories about whatever might be making headlines, and then blindly sending those stories to bloggers whose blogs may or may not be at all related to the products they’re trying to sell. Here are some ridiculous pitches I’ve [...]

Filed under: Advertising, American Idol, Celebrities, Feel Good Friday, Hairspray, Humor, Kids, Magazines, Meta, Music, TV | 7 Comments »

Bing.com is sending people here because Jennifer Aniston is reportedly on the Baby Food Diet. But she was on the Baby Food Diet all the way back in 2007! I guess this is news because now her trainer is referring to it as the “Baby Food Cleanse.” The diet involves eating 14 servings of baby [...]

Filed under: Celebrities, Diet Talk, Food, Gossip, Jennifer Aniston, Meta, Personal, Tidbit, Weight Loss | 19 Comments »

1. Thanks to La Wade for this link: Chelsea Clinton asks her dad to lose 15 pounds before walking her down the aisle. “She doesn’t think I’m in shape to handle it. You know, she told me the other day, she said, ‘Dad the only thing you gotta do is walk me down the aisle [...]

Filed under: Celebrities, Feminism, Humor, Jenfu, Links, Meta, Movies | 3 Comments »

Our own Jenfu is featured in this article at MSNBC, along with Pasta Queen and a tiny little piece of my hair in Jen’s “before” photo. (Here’s the original photo.) Although it shares a theme with Kate Harding’s The Fantasy of Weight Loss, be aware that the article discusses diets and WLS and has some [...]

Filed under: Celebrities, Diet Talk Warning, Jenfu, Meta, Personal, WLS, Weight Loss | 7 Comments »

1. The new Oprah biography contains a shocking allegation about pecan pie (and, perhaps, an opportunity to become educated about food addiction). From Michelle Coppola: Oprah once ordered two pecan pies from room service and *shudder* ATE THEM BOTH!! And what, Kitty Kelley? The earth tilted on its axis from Oprah’s subsequent weight gain? As [...]

Filed under: Advocacy, Celebrities, Eating Disorders, Feminism, Food, Kids, Links, Magazines, Meta, Oprah, Race & Ethnicity | 17 Comments »

You can click the “Links” category for our previous links roundups, which so far have a different name each time. Maybe one of these days I’ll do a poll! Okay, let’s not go crazy. But anyway, here are some links! 1. Celebrity gossip and internet drama, two of my favorite things! But seriously, an interesting [...]

Filed under: Celebrities, Christina Hendricks, Fashion, Health, Jennifer Hudson, Links, Mad Men, Meta, Race & Ethnicity, TV | 6 Comments »

So I wrote an entry in February about growing older gracefully, in which I said: I’ve decided my theme for Year 35 is going to be carpe diem, and to that end, I’m going to try and cross 35 items off my lifelong to-do list. Carpe diem, man, it’s a classic. I mean come on, [...]

Filed under: Meta, Personal, Question | 14 Comments »