To not understand how this different from putting an anorexic model on the cover

[Spinderelle]

Cosmopolitan have a morbidly obese model on their cover this month. I am absolutely behind the idea of body positivity - after children my body is far from perfect and it’s nice to see companies like ASOS use larger women and not airbrush stretch marks etc.

But this model is dangerously obese and risking her health. How is that any different from having a dangerously thin model on the cover?

YY LyingWitch

I am sorry it upset some of you, but...
She is not "fat". I and lots of others are size 20. That's fat, not going to sugar coat it.
She is morbidly obese.
Massive difference in my eyes. It's just no OK to showcase morbid obesity as something ok.
Agree with pp about her weight. I am not really confident in the weight she says she is.

@LadyDeadpool check with your gp if they do gym prescription. It helped me so much emotionally when I put on a weight. Mine had a program when you can go 3 times a week for £1 each and there are trainers to asses what is safe for you to do. It really helped me and they tought me how to not to injure myself. And it also took away that massive fear of going to gym and looking ridiculous because there was more of us at that time and it just felt much more comfortable. Exercise releases endorphins so it's recommended even with depression x

There is two sides the side that defines how you look but also the side that defines your health. The first is judgemental and people shouldn’t give a shit and offensive trolls pulled up. The second is more complex as it does impact your health it does effect those around you and when the obesity is severe it eventually will define your life. My niece is morbidly obese was ok in her thirties and lived a pretty normal life but now her knees have gone. Too heavy and unwell for surgery. Maybe in her thirties when she went from size 16 to 28 if instead of role models telling her it’s ok to be big, she had been given a more realistic view of her life her children would not be her carers now. The health side should always be discussed but on more of a society basis than an individual basis because even if you are a healthy weight there is a high percentage someone you care for is not.

Absolutely, LyingWitch. 💐

@Bluebolt this is what many of us said here. Hope they are all doing ok under the circumstances.

However, yes. We probably discussed it wrong.

All the plus size models have slim faces, I am the opposite

I don't mean I want to be plus size but I have to be really skinny to have a slim face which I don't have at the moment.

Clearly tip toeing gently around the fact people are hugely overweight isn't having a positive effect because obesity is just on the rise and rise.

I am a good 14lbs overweight at the moment and my BMI is 26. But if I am super strict with my diet I know I can shed 4lbs in the first week, and a further 2-3lbs the next week. After that it is hard to shift the extra 7lbs, God it is so hard. But it can be done through sheer will power.

I am 100% responsible for me. I am in control of my own willpower. If you aren't exerting your own willpower then acknowledge it, and stop trying to blame everyone and everything else.

obvious Us former "fatties" dont like fat shaming either Just so you know.

Bluebolt, the best 'thing' that I heard was on a youtube video about Frank Payne, a comedian, who made 'fat jokes' about himself to cover up the fact that he was down about it and to pre-empt other people making comments about his size.

He went to a science institute where they did a full body 'stock take' of him and he was joshing and joking around with the nurse. She said to him, "Look, this is serious. Just because nothing's happened YET, doesn't mean that it WON'T. Let's get this sorted".

My brother is morbidly obese and I worry for him. I think his weight is going to kill him. It's not so much the dying, because everybody dies - but it's what we live with and how we have to live with it (and suffer with it) - that ultimately matters, well it does to me anyway.

I've posted the link to the video here:

I asked my mum to watch this instead of constantly getting on at my brother. She doesn't/didn't understand, but this helped.

It's well worth watching and I wish I'd known Frank Payne. He did an incredible job turning his life around and the fact that he later died diminishes that not one bit.

Obesity may be increasing but it's not because of Tess Holliday. Does anyone really think she, or any other plus size model in the tidal wave of skinny ones, has got that kind of power? Because if she has, for God's sake vote her for president of the world. She could solve everything.

Obesity is associated with poverty, mental health problems and other complex and difficult issues. As a society, we've always liked slinging shit at people we consider to be beneath us (poorer, less stylish, less gleaming), and this is no different. As we've become a bit more self aware about it, we've needed to disguise it so we don't feel like actual pieces of shit for doing it, but it's the same old bollocks.

It's easier to rag on Tess Holliday (and get the associated hit of feeling superior) than it is to be sympathetic to disadvantaged people or even, God forbid, do something about it.

I wish there was a 'like' button for your post, AynRand, but this will do.

So very true, AynRand. 👏🏻

I'm not overweight so not a "fattie of mumsnet"

This thread is horrible, some of the comments are beyond the pale. I hope anyone reading who has found it hurtful knows that not everyone thinks that.

Thin doesn't equal happy or healthy and doesn't define anyone as a person.

There's a few posters on this thread should feel ashamed and not about how much they weigh.

Thank you, LyingWitch.

I've been different weights and sizes in my life. At my biggest, a 16, so not very very big, but certainly heavier than I should have been. At my slimmest, a 10-12. I'm currently a 12 and I think it's right for me. I feel good and can easily do an hour of hard cardio followed by 30 minutes of weights.

I can go through the list of reasons why I ate too much back then, and I can honestly say that it was not because I very occasionally saw a plus size model (with perfect skin, hair, makeup and style) in a magazine. It was because, for various reasons that I will not bore you with, I felt like shit about myself. If someone had come up to me to explain that my excess weight was not healthy, as if I somehow hadn't got that message in our society, I would probably have sat on them. (Jesus, fat people know they're fat. They're fat, not blind and stupid.) But after I finally got off them, I would probably have gone home and eaten because, surprise surprise, that's what feeling shit did to me. By an amazing non coincidence, I was also pretty seriously strapped for cash at that point in my life too. I may have been eating too much sugar and fat but it wasn't in the form of dinners at the Ivy.

I MIGHT feel differently about this ludicrous discussion if we lived in a world where every single standard model was clinically obese, and the size 12 ones were so vanishingly rare that you knew who it would be without looking because there's only really one famous one to speak of. And if we had a multi-jillion pound/dollar industry telling us how to pack it on, how to gain an emergency 7lb for your holiday bikini, how mush sexier and more lovable and more worthwhile you'll be if only you weigh at least 13 stone. I MIGHT.

But we don't. For those of you who don't appear to have noticed, obesity has not been glamourised or made to look desirable, as evidenced by the fact that Ms Holliday quite plainly only ever gets onto magazine covers for the shock value and the fact that we wouldn't be having this discussion at all if, say, Kate Moss had been the cover girl (or whoever it is these days, I dunno, I'm old).

If you are really, truly concerned about a fat person's health, the only thing you can do is be nice to them. Seriously, that's fucking it. Make them know that their size is only one thing about them, it's not the most important thing, and that they are still worthwhile, lovable and a human being. And don't treat them as if being fat makes them too stupid to have missed the memo about the health risks. Because it's only when they feel that they're worth anything at all that they've got a chance of treating their bodies with the respect they deserve. It really is that simple, friends. So all of you with your 'hur hur benchpress a cheeseburger' hilarity, or your 'oh I'm just so CONCERNED, what if she doesn't actually know that it's not healthy to weigh 25 stone?' bollocks, please just save it, or at least keep it to an audience that won't be damaged further by it.

👏👏👏👏

Yessssssssss

please just save it, or at least keep it to an audience that won't be damaged further by it.

It was so clear from the very first post that it will be about morbid obesity, obesity in general and opinions on it. It's AIBU. It can go very wrong.

When children come because something on internet upset them, we tell them to not read it and distance themselves from it. Same should go for adults.

Is it upsetting for me to read that people don't think morbidly obese woman shouldn't be on cover of Cosmo? Well then I don't read the whole thread. I move onto something else.

People should be able to express their opinion even if they are negative.

^way to entirely miss the point of AynRand's post.

People should be able to express their opinion even if they are negative.

No they shouldn't. You should be strung up by the thumbs and force fed cheeseburgers until you look like a Cosmo model for suggesting it.

(I assume that's what you wanted to hear in response? Are you happy now?)

Christ on a bike. If that's what you took from my rant, I clearly didn't do my job.

I'll try a TL;DR:

If you actually give a shit about weight-related health, be nice to fat people. Being shitty to them, especially under the guide of 'concern' just makes it worse. If you just want to throw shit because that makes you feel good, kindly do it among an audience of your peers because it'll limit the damage a bit. There's loads of you guys, you're not hard to find.

What @Lumpylump said. We need to see more of the 'inbetweens' embracing who they are and owning it.

But also...We all come in different shapes and sizes and we all like and loathe different bits. We need to have positive role models of all shapes and sizes, so that we all have someone to identify with and see their positivity and embrace it ourselves.

@AynRandTheObjectivist no. It is not all i took from your really great post...

I am not going to argue any further about this. I will always say that people have a right to discuss things even if it's a sensitive subject.
Obviously coming onto a thread where a discussion is about morbidly obese model not being probably OK and saying it's not was quite a mistake. 🙄

You are entitled to think it's not ok. You're entitled to talk about it. You're not entitled to be a nasty bastard and make the people that you're talking about feel like shit about themselves. But I'm sure that you already know that's what was meant.