Fat/Size Acceptance

As a non-driver, I don't understand why my taxes should go towards patching up people who've damaged themselves as a result of driving or riding in cars.

As one of the 25% who pay more into the tax system - I'm a smoker, Xenia, so does that give me the right to decide whether fat people should be denied medical treatment?? (£10bn tax, £2bn smoking-related costs.)

As well as what you've said above, MrsF, each generation is growing bigger than the last. Hence children - if adequately fed - are larger, because they're evolving that way.

SAF, some of my many nieces and nephews are midgets. I don't mean in a medical sense: they are perfectly formed, but small, young adults. They're about 5ft tall (don't know exactly), delicate and size 6 at a guess - they can wear children's clothes. This in a family where everybody else, on both sides of the family for at least 3 generations, is taller than average and sturdy of build.

Their mother, who was borderline anorexic and secretly bulimic, kept them on a fat-and-carbs restricted diet from infancy. These young people all have eating disorders of varying severity. At least one of them is going to have health problems in later life because of it. I feel it's quite likely that their physical development and mental health issues are consequences of the 'healthy' but inadequate diet they grew up on.

I see a lot of very skinny teenagers around now. Their stick-thin legs break my heart. Better for a child to be over-supplied with nutrients in development, surely, than to be marginally malnourished? A fat child can grow through the fat, and lose any extra later if they want. An underdeveloped one can't fix that in later life.

Many of the reasons our children (and many adults) are becoming obese are the result of recent cultural changes, not because of an epidemic of greed and laziness amongst kids, or crap parenting by adults.

"Good" parents don't allow their kids to be "free rangers", playing out of the house all day from the age of 6 or 7 as we were in the 60s and 70s, because of "stranger danger" and "peados". They drive them to school and back instead of expecting them to walk because of the dangers of heavy traffic to young pedestrians. Adults drive because public transport (outside big cities) is crap and cars are seen as a necessity, not a luxury. Alternative forms of exercise are expensive. Leisure centres, gyms, fitness classes, athletics and sports clubs - nearly all of these cost money and many require paying for transport to access them. This is why more poor people are fat than rich people. The better-off can afford the leisure time to cook properly and exercise regularly, and can pay for personal trainers.

If you are a mother who works shifts in a low-paid long-hours job, then cooking from scratch is not always going to be possible. When I was a kid, nearly ALL mothers, rich and poor, stayed at home. (Mine worked full time, but my gran lived with us and did most of the cooking).

But even so I would leave it to the parent (within reason) as too much interference in people's freedom is a bad thing. Obvio usy there might be a child who will die because it is very very fat but in most cases I would not intervene.

There is also amoral issue as regards your own weight if you use NHS services but that's not really a topic for this thread. As one of the 25% who pay m ore into the tax system than take out from it I would have to decide if being fat will kill them off sooner so I save in terms of their pensions or whether the cost in terms of their diabetes, joints, heart attack care is higher. I think it is apparently the latter so they are a net cost to the 25% of us who support the rest in the UK.

Better looking men earn more than worse ones though and height too and probably you are less likgly to hire an obese man. I am pretty sure from what I have seen.

However I certainly agree that the looks of women are in a sexist fashion given too much importance and too many girls as they grow up don't have as their role model leading bankers and surgeons who are female but instead thick as a plank reality stars or women who live off male earnings.

However feminists shouldn't con themselves that fat looks good or is healthy. It doesn't. Plenty of women my height which is average are now 18 stone not 9 stone. 18 stone is bad for you and looks awful. That's the end of the story.

Tilly - do you know if that is household income or independent income? As in, is it also linked to good education, or working f/t? Or just the amount of money available to spend on food?

another feminist issue relating to weight is the affect of income on weight: women with higher incomes are thiner. men's weight is unaffected by income.

it depends what size fat we are talking about: it is a feminist issue for women's health to become more important societically than her size/looks. and also that underweight is unhealthly, just as overweight.

but some parts of the fat acceptance movement just seem to be dangerous anti science and I dont think this enpowers women (or men either).

quote from wiki on the fat acceptance movement: they "believe health to be independent of, not dependent on, body weight."

for me better popular understanding of science relating to weight and health is the best way to empower women and societly. also the FAM seems to be people locked up on their own denial trying to get other people to agree with them to reenforce their beliefs.

Lost not list!

I agree GothAnn. I remember vividly a time when I was quite unwell and list a stone, my good friends said "what's wrong, I'm worried about you". Everyone else said "You look fantastic!". Which I did not.

Sadly, I've told this story on MN before and was told that meant I must be fat and needed to lose the weight. I didn't.

Ok, well in response to your OP, and the link you posted, my view is that writer is falling into the same trap as most FA lobbyists and that the FA lobby needs to change tack if it's going to be successful.

My personal view is that obesity is largely preventable and that most people who are fat are fat because they eat too much/move too little. However, whilst most people could stop being obese by eating less/moving more, that won't happen because we have a surplus of tasty food and most of us like eating it more than we like to rock the Size 12 look. Staying thin in modern society takes constant willpower and a measure of denial, and so fat is here to stay.

Where the FA lobby gets confused is that instead of just saying "Being fat is not a crime against humanity. I like eating. Get over it." they become fat apologists and start banging the "genetics/ ED/poverty drum". They're taking the line "It's not people's fault they're fat" whereas they should take the "it doesn't matter why I'm fat. Fat is okay. It's just a body size."

When we get to fat just being fat, instead of code for lazy, undisciplined, etc, then we'll be better off, but the FA lobby arent helping themselves by turning it into a "fault vs not fault" debate.

FIFA's the football league thing, isn't it?! Fat Is A Feminist Issue, I meant

That's what I started off trying to say - umm, but you said it better and I got sidetracked by the horrors of Victorian women's lives

In my personal experience - so a sample of one - shifting the preconceptions is a lifetime's work. But worth it (not that I'm quite there yet!) for many reasons, including that I'm now more capable of relating to other people for who they are.

I've had eating disorders, exercise addictions and a depilatory obsession that bordered on trichotillomania. And the weird thing is that, for all these quite severe psychological disorders, I was praised.

Didn't the book club read FIFA a few months ago? What did y'all make of it?

She may have been a normal weight but she was not a normal shape.

Still away on my tangent - did you know Victorian women wore a stone of underwear? The Rational Dress Society, in 1881, campaigned for women to wear no more than 7lb of the stuff. What with whalebone stays and fourteen pounds of gathered & pleated underpinnings, topped with a crinolined, padded skirt and two or three tops, women literally couldn't move.

Her proportions are what made her beautiful. If she'd overeaten or limited her food, she wouldn't look as good. She looks healthy.