Don’t Hate the Haters – Make Them Pay

I’m a subscriber to the Dances With Fat newsletter. I absolutely adore Ragen Chastain, she’s a brilliant and really funny writer, speaker and advocate for the Health At Any Size movement. I’m not a health care professional so I can’t adequately debate the any-size issue, (which is a surprisingly hot-button) but I am very pro-self-esteem, which is the primary message I’ve always take away from Ragen’s blog.

Health has both physical and mental components.  Hating yourself isn’t good for either.  Most of what gets sold to us by the diet industry is the exact opposite of healthy. Weight loss isn’t the same as healthy habits, thin isn’t the same as healthy, and loving your body will never steer you wrong.

Whatever your subject, anyone who speaks their mind is bound to encounter some disagreement. Unfortunately, the internet has a special gift for prompting negative people to share their unkind (and frequently ignorant) opinions. (Penny Arcade summed it up perfectly with the Greater Internet F#@!wad Theory.) But, Ragen found a way to make lemon-aid out of this bitterness and opted to collect up all of the hate-mail and nasty comments that she didn’t want sitting on her main page then put them on their own “monetize the hate” page, loaded with advertising. So now, the haters are funding her Dances With Fat World Tour AND she gets to add in her own two cents.

I laughed and laughed and laughed!