Fat/Size Acceptance

oh and i will hunt down the information on weight and income and gender. it was on a Radio 4 news program recently but it must be online somewhere.

i dont want to be given a 'small portion for the lady'.... there probably arent many people seeking that in the feminist section....but still stands: the normal portion size is, IMO, a male portion.

Ha garlic when I started out in the dynamic high powered world of waitressing 15 years ago that is exactly what I was instructed to do. If the order was for a couple it was dished up in man size and woman sized, in fairness both were generous.
Nobody ever objected.

Last time I looked, the world didn't explode if you left some on your plate ... Would you rather they served smaller portions to women? Because I'd be making a right old show of myself if any restaurant tried that with me!!

another fat issues for feminism: food portions. Arnt they all man sized? by which i mean, if i go to a restaurant with DP, he has what he considers a full plate of food, so isn't it too large for a women's lower daily calorie requirements?

.....read it TM before you send....

garlicnutter but isnt there a massive difference between discriminating against someone who is fat (e.g thinking they are stupid or lazy) and the FAM (denying that being seriously overweight is bad for your health)?

garlicnutter but isnt there a massive difference between discriminating against someone who is fat (e.g thinking they are stupid or lazy) and the FAM (being seriously overweight is bad for your health)?

The average British woman is my height 5 foot 5. She used to be about 8 and a half stone to 9 stone at that height. Now she is sometimes even double that weight. of course there are some very tall women and very short ones but the average is 5 foot 5.

The main issue is that a lot of women seem to have nothing better to think about than how they look. I would say that's morally wrong. If you have so much spare time gio out and help an elderly neighbour do her shopping or scrub your floors more often and you might even lose some weight in the process. We have lost the view that pretty is as pretty does and that vanity is a sin. That's a shame.

Just want to get this in before I hide the thread for a bit (reasons mentioned.)
The only area of life where I see fat discrimination as logical is on aircraft. The weight of the cargo directly affects the cost of the fuel. That's all - the rest is pure surmise and scaremongering afaict.

It's hard to keep this thread away from judgements on other people's bodies, isn't it? Too fat, too thin, healthy weight, attractive size, etc, etc. To me, that says we're looking at a real and pressing problem.

coldtruth I wasn't pretending anything

I was simply pointing out that Xenia's "rules" about too fat/too thin are inappropriate for large tracts of the worlds population.

Which is why using dress size alone is not a good enough indication or if your going to use it then you should say your height as well.

But even so we can clearly see when someone is an unhealthy weight (both thin and fat) so we should not pretend that just because there is no 100% accurate method for determing a healthy weight that there is no such thing as an unhealthy weight.

The sizing thing is a red herring as well.

A woman a little under 5 feet tall with say Japanese origins will not necessarily be too thin if she is below a size 8.

A strapping 6'3 woman in the nordic style might well not be too large when over a size 16.

Sizes vary between shops and between decades.

They are a bum steer, I'm afraid.

Are men not attracted to women in cloaks? Or dungarees? I believe that sex happened in the 70s?

In most cultures (bar a few African tribes where they fatten women up in huts with cow's milk) so fat you're unhealthy is not attractive. Also if fat means healthy and thin means dying of a diseases then in those societies you'd go for the fatter one because she's stay alive long enough to bear your children. I often think the head of North Korea operates on that principle. The book I read last summer about life there bore that out. However that is rare.

I think men and women tend to prefer a partner of a healthy weight. I certainly don't find fat men attractive.

I accept that there is much more emphasis on female looks than men. I was at a work thing this week where one man was commenting on appearance of a woman. I didn't intervene and I knew I was the most successful highest paid person at that event so there to the men.... laughing as I type... but certainly those attitudes exist. Mind you the first thing I thought about him when I saw him, not having done so for about 8 years was gosh what a lot of weight you've put on so perhaps women are at it as well as men.

I think it's not too hard to opt out of the norms if you want to in the UK. I like it that we aren't as fussy over looks as American women in NY and that we're fairly relaxed about it compared say to French women. I could do what I do and double my weight and wear less sexy clothes and leave my hair to go grey. A lot of what I do is behind a PC. However sometimes it's fun to play the game and if you have erotic capital you might as well use it.

Looking at Xenia's post above, maybe we need to agree what we're talking about when we say fat? I'm a size 18-ish, Xenia, I don't need special seats or lifting gear! I'm on the very edge between overweight/obese, BMI wise. (I think BMI's a rotten tool but, as I'm unfit, it's probably right in my case.)

I think your assumption that slim = sexually-attractive betrays unconscious patriarchal (Western version) values.

This topic keeps bothering me, so am trying a bit of a thought dump. It may be garbled.

The thing that's bothering me is the issue of societal control over women. Some societies control women by saying they're too damn sexy, they must cover themselves and stay away from men so as not to inflame the poor things. In our society, we're veering towards the opposite. We say women are so damn sexy, they brighten up chaps' lives and make them feel like kings. So every woman is burdened with meeting the men's idea of what is sexy. In both cases, the women are required to control themselves, their bodies and their actions in order to make the men feel powerful.

That hasn't come out quite right. I'd appreciate further input.

May be for some fat is like putting on a cloak or dungarees so men aren't attracted to them. I suppose it might then be seen as a kind of feminist act or I don't care how I look sort of thing but it's a bit short sighted because it's not very good for your health and things become harder in life like squeezing into small seat and getting up and down playing with children.

I would thank you, Xenia, but I still haven't received as much from the national coffers as I paid in. I'll get back to you when I have.

The benefits argument goes on all the time in AIBU, no need to do it here too, surely?

Not having read any fat-positive stuff, I assume it's going for the pendulum effect necessary for all big social changes. Actually, forget 'big social changes', it's necessary for most changes on every scale. I'm being fat, unkempt and slatternly in order to recalibrate my self-judgement meter. Campaigners for racial equality have to start off thinking "Black Power". Women in abusive relationships have to see their partner as their enemy before being able to negotiate ... etc.

Some of the fat acceptance goes a bit too far. All these very obese women suggest ing they look beautiful when hardly anyone except very strange people think they do. I also think women under 8 stone rarely look very good either by the way. I'm not sexist over it either. Fat men look disgusting (and very skinny ones).

I think the aim with our daughters is to ensure they have very full lives where they can see a great fun career ahead of them and heaps of hobbies and what they might wear or how they l ook being a very minor part of that life. That is the road to happiness.

(I was just very surprised when I read that statistic this week. I would have guessed about 25% of people were net beneficiaries of tax, the leeches and those fallen on hard times and 75% contributors. In fact it is totally reversed. It amazed me that 25% of us work very very hard to keep the other 75%, what a burden and what little thanks we get)

Weight acceptance is fine if its about people (particularly teenager girls) realising that a size 12 is fine, and a size 6 is unrealistic and unhealthy.

However, fat acceptance, when it leads to a failure of reposnsibility for one's own weight, is a problem.

I am a size 16. I used to be a size 10/12 prior to having children. I do very little exercise because I am quite lazy and uninspired by the thought of it. And I eat too much crap and have little willpower.

If I were just to accept my weight, and decide it wasn't really my fault, then the chances are my weight would balloon further, I would become obese with all the health implications that brings. I am GLAD that being fat is my fault, because it means I can do something about it, and the thought of getting bigger stops me from reaching for another chocolate bar.