Fat/Size Acceptance

All right, so the trolls didn't win. I must post!

Doesn't a lot of this boil down to policing women's bodies yet again? I keep thinking that women get so much more stick for being too large or too small or too thin or too curvy, that is for daring to have their own bodies.

This concern feeds into the notion that a woman's body isn't her own, doesn't it? That others must keep control of it because, heavens, she might just do something dreadful like dare to enjoy food.

Isn't the obesity epidemic the biggest health threat facing the UK?

I feel quite sad that anyone would feel they deserve to be abused and derided because of their appearance. :(

I have been thin and I have been fat. When I have been fat it is because I eat too much, and am lazy - I deserve derision. I'm rather sick of fat people blaming their genes, metabolism and everything under the sun for their condition. Self discipline and willpower ( which I aspire to but don't always have) are required. TBH if anyone was abusive to me when I was fat I'd think I deserved it.

*weight

Silly iPhone

Skinny people have issues too

I wish I could PUT wait on.....looks like I'll be a twig for the rest of my life. I eat loads bit nothing..it's not a blessing but a curse. I hate my boy like figure. I die to be able to fill a bra and jeans....

There's been some excellent feminist work on the problematic image of women as consumers, which is really relevant here. On the one hand, women are supposed to consume, rather than producing, but on the other this leaves them exposed to being portrayed as greedy and parasitic. A woman is also apt to be designated 'fat' more easily than a man because women's proportion of bodyfat to muscle is generally higher than men's, and also increases with age; so fat bodies are gendered bodies; it's literally true that fat cells produce oestrogen.

Also size implies entitlement - Naomi Wolf says somewhere that the greater the apparent progress by women in breaking into male bastions, the lower the fashionable female body size becomes. You can also get this from watching men and women on public transport -the men sprawl, and the women sit small and neat.

And Sardine, however much we spend, nobody actually knows how to 'cure' obesity, since more than 95% of people, male and female, will gain back any weight lost within 12 months, plus 10%.

You can't cure it. You can only temporarily arrest it.

TheBride I think they know none of that stuff works, but the DoH and charities etc need to be seen to be doing something.

To address the real causes of these problems would be too epxensive and require significant social change!

Agree that demonisation of fat people= stupid and that there is a HUGE gender bias.

Also think that obesity gets too much attention as a public health issue and they should just drop it because the causes of overeating are not going to be fixed by a 5 a day campaign or Jamie Oliver nagging people.

However, I also think they should quit nagging re smoking, drinking and taking drugs for all the same reasons.

I don't think they should be seen as lesser value just that we don't view obesity as 'okay' when it's not and so where possible they should be helped, if you go to a doctor and they see something that is threatening your health then you would be informed based on health risk rather than appearance.

And I think that the demonisation is wrapped up in religious/ right wing ideas about morality. Sloth and greed are sins. So fat people are sinners and bad people.

That is the root of these feelings I'm sure. Vanity for some reason is acceptable and even encouraged.

It is a shame that we can't talk about the wider issues though as I find them very interesting.

My thoughts earlier were this

"One is the pressure on women to conform to a very narrow idea of what is acceptable, the "ideal" figure is unattainable for most without surgery, women with heads too big for their bodies are admired and an enormous diet industry and food industry gets rich off the resulting headfuck that the average woman lives with regarding food, weight, clothes and all teh rest of it." and obviously this is a bad thing.

Demonisation of overweight people is also bad - and women get it much worse than men. Overweight women earn less and are less likely to be able to get a job than their slimmer counterparts. This effect is much less stark in men.

By judge, I suppose I'm thinking to assign negative personality traits and regard someone as being of lesser value because of their appearance. With regard to fatness, imho, this is targeted more at women who appear overweight than it does with men.

Okay, yeah or nay?

Depends what you mean by 'judge', illness related to obesity is one of the leading causes of death and is generally not a good state to be in. I think people need to be informed especially since obesity levels are rising in both adults and children. It seems we have followed after the American model rather than the rest of Europe.

Alcohol, eating disorders, medical conditions, etc. aside . . .

Isn't this thread about people feeling they have the right to judge, to condemn, to demonise women they perceive to be "too fat," (what that means is subjective,) regardless of the reason why the woman is the size and shape she is? And, doesn't it refer to a campaign in America, ostensibly about healthy eating, which is being "marketed" in such a way that it effectively colludes with those who feel entitled to diss those they see as fat, particularly women?

We all okay with this the?

I agree with TheBride.

People continuing with self-destructive behaviours even though they know they are self-destructive and they should not be doing them are similar.

So eating crap even when you know you shouldn't, is similar to drinking too much even though you know you shouldn't, over-doing the drugs even though you know you shouldn't and so on. Eating more than you should has a "blocking" effect in the same way as drinking and other behaviours.

I think that the not exercising thing is valid as unless you have depression or physical disabilities there is nothing really stopping you. But over-eating or eating the wrong things is a different kettle of fish.

I think that anyone who is obese or close to obese by definition has a problem with their relationship with food (barring if they are on medications etc).

Most people who are obese or close to obese are not so because they have disorders regarding food or another medical problem, they are obese because they either eat too much food, eat really bad food or because they have a sedentary lifestyle. I don't see obesity like alcoholism but similar to binge drinking.

But Goth, I think a lot of people who are fat do suffer from disordered eating, in that you get fat by eating more than you need, often by eating when you are not hungry. I'm not saying that that is necessarily an "eating disorder" in the same league as anorexia or bulimia, but when people eat due to emotional stimuli rather than physical need, it's an important part of the reason why the bog standard government responses don't work. They assume that the issue is that people are fat because they lack the education to eat properly, when in fact people do know what they should be eating, but when they're feeling lonely, angry etc, they still go to the drive-thru, the same way that an alcoholic knows the booze isnt doing them any good, but when they have a tough day, they want a vodka.

Sorry am typing so quickly some not coherent as am supposed to be working!

TheBride I am sure that is true about bulimia and drink/drugs.

I wonder if anorexia is more like OCD - a different type of problem. It's all about control isn't it.

Also, I'm convinced that food in the Uk has got nicer since I was a child, and it's certainly got more varied, so it's more tempting.

I mean, no offense to my mum, but if I think back to dinners I had in the late 1970's there was only so much braising steak with turnip and carrot casserole that you want. If it's lasagna with garlic bread, that's another matter.

That's a very interesting post SaF. The link to seratonin and appetite could explain a lot.

The other thing I was going to say (sorry) is that there are two issues getting a bit mixed up here and to me they are very separate.

One is the pressure on women to conform to a very narrow idea of what is acceptable, the "ideal" figure is unattainable for most without surgery, women with heads too big for their bodies are admired and an enormous diet industry and food industry gets rich off the resulting headfuck that the average woman lives with regarding food, weight, clothes and all teh rest of it.

Separate to that is the fact that society as a whole men women and children are developing unhealthy attitudes to food, having sedentary lifestyles, cheap crap available everywhere and all teh rest of it, and the fact that being too fat is definitely bad for you as is being too thin. These things do need addressing and I think that Jamie gettign the turkey twizzlers out and taking on these big corporate schools in the US is a good thing, some of the things he has exposed have been shocking and I believe that he is sincere in wanting to help rather than just wanting publicity.

And that's the otehr thing - our lifestyles have become so much more sedentary in the last 30 years. It is not that people have got lazier than they were or eating more shit. Apparently average calories intake in 70s was higher than now. But the little bits of exercise that we have to do have gone. Most people now have access to a car, everything at work is computers so no getting up and walking to records, carrying heavy files around. Obviously manual work has decreased a lot. Escalators and lifts all over the place, no need to carry the shopping home from the shops any more. All these little bits of exercise that people just had to do as part of their life have gone and that I am convinced is at the heart of this.