Fat Acceptance Movement

Great Debates
81

[QUOTE=Antinor01]
Part of the problem is we ALL eat more now then we used to, especially in the US.

An interesting study from here
[/QUOTE]

Well, certainly not ALL of us, as in every single living American. But you’re right about restaurant portions generally.

At home, we’ve been cutting back a bit in terms of portions. As an example, I usually buy two huge NY steaks from Whole Foods, and grill them both. I used to serve one to each of us, a whole steak, and in my case I used to eat all of mine. Now however, I slice it up before serving, so between the two of us my wife and I end up eating slightly over one steak. The leftover part of the second steak gets used up in steak salad.

We’re not really overweight–especially myself at 136# and 5’8", but we just came to a realization, almost suddenly, that we didn’t need to eat as much. Eating less meat is good for us and it’s good for the planet.

I said less meat. I don’t think I could ever give up ALL meat. :smiley:

82

[QUOTE=Una Persson]
It’s disheartening on this message board to see people post that in general obese people eat as much and exercise as much as thin people. This has not only been discussed before, it’s been proven in studies that self-reporting of calories intaken and exercise performed is rife with error.
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Eat and exercise the same? No, that’s not true. And it is not what I meant to argue. But the media image that we’re often given of someone who is gorging themselves all the time with cake and syrup is also not true either.

Right now, I’m ~35 pounds overweight and have been at least 20 pounds overweight for my entire adult life. My sister is (and has always been) underweight for her height*. When I spend time with her and I’m not attempting to cut calories, she will actually say that from her perspective I don’t seem to be eating that much and will comment on the lack of food I’m taking in. I’m the one who notices the extra calories I ate during the course of the day when we were right next to each other. The amount more that I eat isn’t noticeable to casual observer. If I hadn’t been going on and off diets for years and therefore know the calorie count of everything, it might not be noticeable to me. I’m not saying that there aren’t more calories going in, I am saying that once you are over weight, it doesn’t take constantly stuffing one’s face to stay overweight.

*(btw, all of you who say that thin people have to think about their food - no they don’t. Not at all. She never thinks about food. She just doesn’t want as much food or the same types of food that I do. She’s not in danger of becoming fat for the same reasons that I’m not in danger of becoming bankrupt because I’ve bought too many Manolo Blahniks. It isn’t that I worry and budget carefully and intentionally stay away from Neiman’s, it’s that I don’t have much of an interest in shoes.)

83

[QUOTE=Una Persson]
That’s how you start - assess the situation, get the facts, and stop pretending like you and everyone else you know somehow all have a “glandular problem.”
[/QUOTE]

I’ve gotta say, it’s hard for me not to feel offended at the quoted line. I’m apparently one of the ones you’re “disappointed by”. I don’t make excuses for the extra weight, and have never met an overweight individual that ever claimed to have a “glandular problem”.
What I did say was more or less exactly what the rest of your post details: that if I want to stay at a healthy and physically fit weight, I have to be extremely conscious of calories and routinely exercise. I eat very careful portions on the order of approximately 400 calories each for breakfast, lunch, and dinner, with two 150 calorie snacks during the day. I am a falconer and go hiking/hunting five to seven days a week during the hunting season, and exercise routinely five days a week in the off seasons.

I am not, personally, other people, so I can’t say this for certain, but it seems as though there are other people don’t have to be so careful. My husband, for example, takes a big sandwich, a half a gallon-sized baggie of shelled peanuts and about two cups of pretzels for lunch. My lunch might be half a turkey sandwich with a smidge of cream cheese or avocado in place of mayo and a bunch of veggies, or a salad. My fit and healthy co-workers who are respectively ten and twenty years older than me daily eat breakfast burritos in white tortillas stuffed with lard-cooked beans, bacon, eggs, and cheese. They average meals at McDonalds five times a week. One was having family problems for a while and for a month ate almost every meal at McDonalds. She didn’t put on any noticeable weight but was frustrated that she started getting zits.

At dinner, I’ll have one serving in a shallow bowl that’s about eight inches in diameter, while my husband eats two or more heaping dinner-plates full, sometimes accompanied by a couple bottles of beer. I don’t feel like I’m going hungry, not eating enough, or that I’m deprived, I just feel as though I’m working against a metabolism that’s more efficient than some, and that staying in good shape is harder work for me, than for, say, my co-worker, who has never purposely exercised a day in her life, who does absolutely nothing physically active in terms of sports or hobbies, and eats ten drive-through meals for every one she cooks for herself at home. Or like the guy mentioned above, that has four beers every night. If I had four beers or four cans of Coke every night, my ass would be the size of Jupiter.

Am I totally delusional about this?

84

[QUOTE=Spectre of Pithecanthropus]
Being big entails more healthwise than just cardiovascular risks, or being uncomfortable in airplane seats. Being overweight can damage the very bone joints that hold you up.

In our eagerness to solve the obesity epidemic, which is a worthwhile goal, I think the Fat Acceptance Movement does serve an important purpose, by reminding us to look beyond how fat someone is and get to know the person. Like everyone else, fat people have lives, histories, family, friends, interests, and so on. Too often, they are overlooked in a way similar to the covert, inadvertent racism, sexism, and homophobia that still pervade the culture today.
[/QUOTE]

This is nonsense. By this criteria everyone is oppressed, and the categories lose all meaning. There are lots of fat people in America, and they have jobs and hang out with people, have friends, etc… The idea that they are some oppressed minority is friggin ridiculous.

Sometimes, my nose start to itch and I want to pick it. Sometimes I do, and sometimes I get caught doing it and disgust someone. I think I have some sensitive nerves or something in my nose. I don’t know what causes it, or why I feel I need to do it. However, it has caused me embarassment in life. Its a gross habit, and it has caused me problems. Should I view myself as some sort of oppressed minority because I have a problem such as this?

Absolutely, I would love to see the world more compassionate and accepting in general, but the reality is that no one cares about compassion in general, they only care about compassion for themselves. That is what the fat acceptance thing is about. Most fat people ARE in control of their destiny. I know plenty of fat people who are successful in life. There is no ‘Fat Oppression’. If anything society caters to the fat. Promises of mouth orgasms at every commercial break. A huge proportion of our population is fat.

85

This might come across bad, but I really feel strongly about this. I travel extensively, and it always saddens me to come back to the US and see that every time, in my absence we’ve managed to become a nation of even more fat slobs, with obscenely sized portions of food, the vast majority of which doesn’t even taste all that good. (And yet you can’t even get regular yogurt anymore - instead you have no-fat, non-fat, light, lite, lite-fat, etc etc).

If people spent only half the time in the gym that they spend talking about their ‘diets’, they wouldn’t need to worry about losing weight. Every conversation seems to center on food and diet and losing weight. Lots of talking about it. I don’t see many people actually doing anything.

Sure, ‘glandular problems’ exist in some cases. But not very often. Otherwise, they’d have studies underway to find this mysterious glandular problem that only affected the US, while leaving vast sections of the rest of the world untouched.

No, the majority of the time people are fat because they lack the willpower to make the right food choices and are too lazy to stay active. End of story. I swear, I wish I had a dime for every time I’ve heard someone complain about how unfair it was that they were overweight, even though ‘I eat less than my thin friends, and I’m so active, and you’d never keep up with me if you followed me all day’ blah blah blah. I have yet to see this actually be true for someone who has said it. Not once. The amount of food they eat, and the amount of food they think they eat, are two completely different amounts. The amount of exercise they think they do, must be in some parallel universe, because it bears no resemblance to actual reality. Self-delusional.

I wish the US had a more cultivated sense for cuisine - it’s weird that the US was built on the back of immigrants from countries all over the world, almost all of which have fantastic cuisine. Why that all got tossed out to be replaced by monotonous flavoring, generic ingredients, and obscene portions is a mystery, and a shame. In the US, food is about being cheap, and getting stuffed - actually having something that tastes good is almost an afterthought.

I honestly don’t think we will fix the obesity crisis - and that is what it is - without completely rethinking what food means to us. Focusing more on quality instead of quantity. People are so used to thinking in terms of ‘value’ (i.e., the ‘supersize’ factor) that it’s easier for companies to promote ‘more food for less!’ than it is to improve quality.

86

[QUOTE=mswas]
This is nonsense. By this criteria everyone is oppressed, and the categories lose all meaning. There are lots of fat people in America, and they have jobs and hang out with people, have friends, etc… The idea that they are some oppressed minority is friggin ridiculous.

[/QUOTE]

This sounds right to me. I would hate for **Suse **to stop posting, and I’d hate to think that now she’s all upset about our conversation here. But I get frustrated when fat people (or thin people, or dumb people, or whoever) think that they are somehow special. Life sucks for everyone, and many things are hard and unpleasant.

Gaining or losing weight is no mystery. For 99% of overweight people, it is directly the fault of bad habits. As NajaNivea points out, metabolism works differently for everybody. I have a skinny sister who can and has eaten an entire chicken. What do I gain by whining about it?

I think that the “work” the Fat Acceptance groups are doing is monsterous. Of course, any thinking person realizes “fat people are people too”, but an organization that decrees that they are doing good work by taking advantage of people whose issues have made them clearly very unhappy and feeding them bad science that will endanger their life is just as morally wrong as treating fat people as if they are all lazy and stupid.

I am a smoker. Society sees nothing wrong with restricting my ability to smoke. Strangers have told me I was stupid. People I love assume I’m a moron. I don’t demand understanding and acceptance because - you know what - I am stupid about smoking, and I would have for it to become “acceptable” to smoke again.

87

I think the main problem I’m having with the blogs is the sort of resentment towards people who go from being fat to being slender. The links I posted (the Aunt Fatty column of the woman whose friend lost weight, the man losing 30 pounds and climbing Kilimanjaro), for example. In the Kilimanjaro example, a lot of comments had people going on about how even though the man had health problems probably due to his being overweight (he felt lethargic, had sleep apnea), that there was no evidence it was due to his being fat…the lethargy could have been because his wife had just had triplets, sleep apnea occurs in lots of people…I don’t know, it just seemed so obvious that the man’s habits were unhealthy to me, but they didn’t want to face it. I think denial can be a powerful thing.

I think there’s a big difference between people blogging about how the media puts forth unrealistic images, to the point where a girl who’s a six or an eight might feel not slender enough (i.e., the Anne Hathaway character in “Devil Wears Prada”), and getting to the point where we think the very fat are genuinely healthy and perfectly fine.

88

[QUOTE=amarinth]

*(btw, all of you who say that thin people have to think about their food - no they don’t. Not at all. She never thinks about food. She just doesn’t want as much food or the same types of food that I do. She’s not in danger of becoming fat for the same reasons that I’m not in danger of becoming bankrupt because I’ve bought too many Manolo Blahniks. It isn’t that I worry and budget carefully and intentionally stay away from Neiman’s, it’s that I don’t have much of an interest in shoes.)
[/QUOTE]

I think this is a great analogy. You also don’t need to worry about smoking. I quit smoking a month ago, but I really miss it when I go out. It’s a battle every time, and I’m surprised that i’ve been winning it so far.

Anyway this is what I’m saying with regards to it being a cultural thing. People like you have always existed, but what has changed recently has been the amount of readily-availble indulgence foods. There’s so many of them now. If you go to other countries with a decidedly healthier attitude towards food, the stuff in their supermarket seems boring by comparison. It’s just your typical fresh produce, meats, dairy, canned goods. You’ll find much less pre-packaged stuff. Some of us have it in our heads a different idea of what eating means to us.

It’s just like your sister. If she were alive in a different era (luxury clothing has been around a lot longer though). But think about the history of food. What form has it taken in our lives throughout history?

89

[QUOTE=Sateryn76]
This sounds right to me. I would hate for **Suse **to stop posting, and I’d hate to think that now she’s all upset about our conversation here. But I get frustrated when fat people (or thin people, or dumb people, or whoever) think that they are somehow special. Life sucks for everyone, and many things are hard and unpleasant.
[/QUOTE]

I never claimed to be special, or any sort of exception. I didn’t set out to whine. My only mistake was in thinking that my particular viewpoint might be valuable to anyone in this thread.

I am not upset by this discussion; why should I be? I am mildly disheartened by the idea that my body size makes me unacceptable as a person, that unless I do the work to make myself conform with societal standards that I should be neither seen nor heard, but hey, it’s nothing new. I’ve heard it since I was about 13 years old, and I was much thinner then.

This is a good time for me to bow out of this thread before I once again make the mistake that anything I think or feel might be relevant.

90

[QUOTE=Suse]
I never claimed to be special, or any sort of exception. I didn’t set out to whine. My only mistake was in thinking that my particular viewpoint might be valuable to anyone in this thread.

I am not upset by this discussion; why should I be? I am mildly disheartened by the idea that my body size makes me unacceptable as a person, that unless I do the work to make myself conform with societal standards that I should be neither seen nor heard, but hey, it’s nothing new. I’ve heard it since I was about 13 years old, and I was much thinner then.

This is a good time for me to bow out of this thread before I once again make the mistake that anything I think or feel might be relevant.
[/QUOTE]

Why do you feel this way? Who said anything about being “unacceptable”? Of course your view is relevant - this is a message board for everyone.

Let me ask you a question - do you feel that being overweight is unhealthy? Not good or bad, but unhealthy? This is my main gripe about FA crusaders, that they seem to ignore the problems of being overweight.

A further question as a way to fight ignorance - is your main concern your looks or your health? For me, as much as I’d like to say I’m a Healthy Heather, I’m really just sick of my flabby stomach, and burn with envy when I see some cutesy blond with big tits and a flat stomach.

And one more - again, I’m not trying to single you out, but you are the only one on the other side of this - do you feel that your attitude about your weight/looks effects how people treat you? Could there be a component in your own perception that automatically views how you are treated as a response to your weight? I know I have been guilty many times of reading something into behavior that wasn’t there. Your attitude of “okay, fine, I’m taking my ball and going home” seems like you’re reacting to our statements, instead of defining how you see fat people.

91

[QUOTE=Freudian Slit]
I think the main problem I’m having with the blogs is the sort of resentment towards people who go from being fat to being slender…
…I don’t know, it just seemed so obvious that the man’s habits were unhealthy to me, but they didn’t want to face it. I think denial can be a powerful thing.
[/QUOTE]

What’s it called when an addict has friends still using, who sabotage his attempts to get sober? I get the feeling that this is like that.

92

[QUOTE=mswas]
This is nonsense. By this criteria everyone is oppressed, and the categories lose all meaning. There are lots of fat people in America, and they have jobs and hang out with people, have friends, etc… The idea that they are some oppressed minority is friggin ridiculous.

[/QUOTE]

I didn’t say they were oppressed. It’s not as if there are signs in stores and hotels saying “No dogs or fat people allowed”. I just meant how many people still have a tendency to overlook the character behind the physical appearance, whether it be race, size, age, or sexual orientation (not that sexual preference is exactly a physical appearance thing, but still). I don’t even believe that most people who do this are necessarily ill willed towards the groups involved; it’s completely inadvertent and, to an extent, engrained in the culture.

I’ll give a couple of parallel examples involving race and sexual orientation to illustrate. I was disappointed in reading the memoirs of two members of my absolute fave band, the drummer, and the keyboardist.

(Name of band deleted because I don’t want to drag their name through this. If you recognize these musicians, please don’t give them away).

The drummer said at one point that, even though he was a small man, his wrist technique enabled him to play as strong as 200# black drummer Buddy Miles. I didn’t even catch how horrible that was…why does Buddy Miles’ race matter? But apparently this drummer had this idea floating around in his subconscious that black human beings are obviously stronger than whites, on average…why? Because they are different? In spite of this I’m sure he’s a good and cool person and probably never meant to offend anyone.

The keyboard player, in his memoir, mentioned moving to West Hollywood at one point early in the band’s career, “an area later to become totally gay, but totally cool at the time.” Hello what?? West Hollywood, now, of course a city in its own right, has lots to recommend it. I’m sure thousands of straight people live there and are very happy with it. Again, it’s not like a case of malicious homophobia on the keyboardist’s part, it’s just an expression of something that still runs in the mainstream culture.

I think we tend too often to regard fat people as “just fat people”. It’s like thinking of other people as “the black woman” or “the gay guy”, and not being able to get past that. This aspect of what NAAFA and similar groups are trying to do, I have not problem with.

Sometimes, OTOH, the fact of somebody’s size can be a legitimate cause for resentment. If a very large person who needs an airplane-seat-and-a-half, but only pays for one, and you’re in the seat next to him, then naturally you’d be ticked off. And rightly so.

93

[QUOTE=Sateryn76]

Let me ask you a question - do you feel that being overweight is unhealthy? Not good or bad, but unhealthy? This is my main gripe about FA crusaders, that they seem to ignore the problems of being overweight.

A further question as a way to fight ignorance - is your main concern your looks or your health? For me, as much as I’d like to say I’m a Healthy Heather, I’m really just sick of my flabby stomach, and burn with envy when I see some cutesy blond with big tits and a flat stomach.
[/QUOTE]

My main concern at this point is my health, due to issues that I see my older siblings having further down the road. To be honest, I gave up on appearance long ago. I’m clean and neat, but that’s as far as it goes. I do not wear makeup or jewelry other than my wedding ring, I do not fix my hair, and my clothes are chosen for comfort rather than style. I am the despair of my fashion-conscious sisters.

I was too much of a ‘good’ girl way back when and internalized all the messages sent to me by my peers in school, by the guys who ignored me, catcalled at me, or when they would deign to date me, spent their time criticizing my appearance. I sat in the audience at the Rocky Horror picture show and got called ‘slut’ (those guys were good, they named my row and seat number just in case I might mistake myself for someone who had a right to be there) for daring to be present in the theater. I went to see a counselor once and instead of discussion of the issues I was there to work on, I got a list of what she ate every day and how much she exercised. I got it. I realized that in anyone else’s eyes I would never be beautiful or even pretty, and I certainly wasn’t feminine. I don’t claim the term BBW for myself because I don’t feel it. I don’t envy the cutesy blond because I think to envy someone you have to be able to picture yourself in that body or situation, and I just can’t even imagine it.

I don’t even think I’ve had it particularly awful, as I am more of a homebody who isn’t comfortable around large groups of people. I’m not feeling sorry for myself when I mention the incidents above; I’m just telling you how it happened. And these are the sorts of things that affect my viewpoint on this issue. I just figure the FA people have been through everything I have and more, far more. I get where they would feel angry, and want to claim the right to respect. And a little part of me is happy when I see a picture of a fat woman in a gorgeous, low-cut purple dress swirling on the dance floor as if she owns it. I’m glad when an FA activist responds to harrassment at WisCon by saying, “Go ahead, take my picture…call me names…humiliate me any way you want. I am still fat, and I am still not sorry. And nothing you can do will change that.” I’d like to have that sort of pride in myself and the least I can do is celebrate it when I see it in others.

Other than this thread, I actually don’t spend a lot of time thinking about weight. It’s sort of been depressing for me today to revisit this whole thing, as I usually put it in the back of my head and get on with my life and the things I care about. If someone doesn’t like me and makes a point of showing it, I’m not normally inclined to even think about my weight as a cause; I’m more likely to assume that I’ve inadvertently done something to offend them and try to make amends, even if I have no idea what I could have done.

I don’t know how I can respond other than to react to your statements and those of the other posters in the thread. I look at fat people and see people. I look at people fatter than me and think “man, and I thought I had it rough.” Unless someone puts it in my face and my space, I don’t bother to think about how they got whatever size they may be or what they should do about it. It’s a non-issue with me; I am too busy dealing with the personality.

94

[QUOTE=Jolly Roger]
Hmmm…You know I’ve never gone into an eating establishment and had them ask “Would you like Fat bastard section or the no Fat bastards section?”.

I’m only kidding, so all of the fat people can calm down.
[/QUOTE]

I’m not sure whether you mean your whole post is a joke or just the “fat bastard” part, so i’ll reply anyway

It’s not quite the same because if someone smokes in a non-smoking area it means all the other people there have to breath in the smoke too. Eating with a fat person doesn’t force you to eat more too. Also smokers can go in a non-smoking area when they are not actually smoking.

I think most people can agree the being overweight is unhealthy, however I think some people overestimate how unhealthy it is. I’ve been told by quite a few people that i’ll have a heart attack by the time i’m 30. I know the chance of heart problems increases when you’re overweight, but it’s nowhere near certain. Whilst I haven’t looked at scientific studies, I imagine the majority of overweight people survive perfectly well with no major health problems except for being generally unfit.

I’d also like to point out, as others have, that it’s possible to want to be thinner/fitter without neccessarily being unhappy about your current size. Just to be clear, I don’t agree with these blogs that have been mentioned (going by your comments, i haven’t actually read them), they’re a bit extreme IMHO, but that may be the only way for them to be heard. I just don’t see the need for anyone being pro- or anti-fat.

95

Suse, thank you for everything you have shared here. You have been braver and better than I in thinking about these issues and reflecting on them, and saying what I feel in a much more articulate way that I could.

Good for you. I try to go about as if my weight doesn’t matter, that I am as worthy as anyone else, because I know the reality of my existence better than someone looking at me from outside, but it’s tough.

[QUOTE=Spectre of Pithecanthropus]
I don’t think cultural standards of physical beauty will ever extend to include weights of 200# for women, or 300# from men. There are probably a few people in the movement who would like to make that happen, if they could, but it won’t.
[/QUOTE]

May I ask you to please reconsider those numbers? As I mentioned, Emme is 190 and I don’t think she’s grotesque at all. A woman can be curvy and well-proportioned and pleasing to the eye and still be over 200#. If the indicator if attractiveness is a certain range chest/waist/hip ratio, not absolute measurements, this is attainable even at >gasp< over 200#.

96

[QUOTE=gigi]

May I ask you to please reconsider those numbers? As I mentioned, Emme is 190 and I don’t think she’s grotesque at all. A woman can be curvy and well-proportioned and pleasing to the eye and still be over 200#. If the indicator if attractiveness is a certain range chest/waist/hip ratio, not absolute measurements, this is attainable even at >gasp< over 200#.
[/QUOTE]

Sure, I’m willing to reconsider. Who is Emme?

97

She’s one of the more famous plus-sized models.

http://www.emmestyle.com/media_items/54
http://embraceyourgenes.org/blog/Emme.jpg

98

[QUOTE=gigi]
She’s one of the more famous plus-sized models.

http://query.nytimes.com/gst/fullpage.html?res=9C01E1DA1239F931A25750C0A961958260
http://www.emmestyle.com/media_items/54
http://embraceyourgenes.org/blog/Emme.jpg
[/QUOTE]

I was trying to figure out how she could weigh 190 and be a size 14. Then I saw that she is just shy of 6 foot tall. Going by BMI (I know the limitations of that chart) she’s only 10 pounds above normal weight.

99

[QUOTE=Antinor01]
I was trying to figure out how she could weigh 190 and be a size 14. Then I saw that she is just shy of 6 foot tall. Going by BMI (I know the limitations of that chart) she’s only 10 pounds above normal weight.
[/QUOTE]

I guess that’s my point. 200 pounds is used as this HUGE number and it’s just not an absolute cutoff like that.

100

[QUOTE=gigi]
I guess that’s my point. 200 pounds is used as this HUGE number and it’s just not an absolute cutoff like that.
[/QUOTE]

I agree with you. Her BMI is lower than mine and few would refer to me as fat. Then again, I’m male and people are a lot more forgiving of a few extra pounds on a guy.