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Feminism: Sex and gender discussions

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Original poster

slimming clubs and feminisim

38 replies

upsydaisysexstylist · 09/02/2011 08:46

Posting on here because I have done some self analyis on why I am becoming demotivated and uneasy at slimming world and it seems to be the corporate branding and competitive element. I've lost 3 stone about half of what I thought I would like to lose, but my list of reasons for losing weight can mainly be ticked off. Get clothes in standard shops, have enough confidence to go swimming with kids, have more energy, run round after kids, be healthy role model. Now eating plan is sensible and fits in with making meals for decidedly on skinny side toddler and I can mainly stick to it long term, but and it's an increasingly bigger but getting a certificate for loosing more weight last mnth than the other members of the group makes me feel uncomfortable. I'm not in competition with a pensioner with arthritis and she is going to struggle to lose weight at the same rate as me, who is able to exercise and breast feeding 2.

Basically it's a few years since I read fat is a feminist issue and I saw a great link to a blog on this board by someone who works in fat studies, but I can't remember the topic. Am also wondering if I have never liked high heels, don't buy womens mags or desire to dye my hair, what exactly I aspire to body shape wise. If you got to the end of this mammoth op thanks

OP posts:
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dittany · 10/02/2011 08:23

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sakura · 10/02/2011 06:51

Smile upsy- so glad that you spent less time thinking about food yesterday

kissncuddle · 10/02/2011 06:07

Upsydaisy - I find it strange who people do not understand that weight plateau is natural. Our body needs these natural physiological mechanisms to help maintain energy balance relatively quickly. It is only recently that people in Western societies have had access to an abundance of food. It is difficult losing weight. Generally we are not designed for it.

I find it interesting how the Williams sisters are so often portrayed negatively despite their achievements in tennis and they are said to resemble men by many women.

Slimming clubs do not really want you to lose weight. If you diet you may be subject to yo-you dieting. I always assumed that slimming clubs wanted your long term custom and this was a way of getting it, getting you obsessed with food and diets. I also do not get public weigh ins. I have never done one, but I always found the state where people say rush from work to get weighed in a bit pointless.

Original poster
upsydaisysexstylist · 10/02/2011 05:45

Thanks for all your replies they have really helped me clarify my thoughts about slimming world. I could have written your post NacMacFeegle, you have done amazingly well to get this far. The issues around women not being able to trust themselves to regulate food intake really resonate for me.

I think seeing the fb challenge for my group is the final straw ( missed this week and spent child free time writing out pros and cons) make soup with top 11 superspeed foods, including pickled onions and tomatos. There are no fucking magic foods, only foods with less calories in that are more filling. Also there are a couple of women in the group who get upset about the slow weight loss when they look perfectly fine as they are and do lots of exercise, I really want to tell them chasing that last 10 pounds should not be that all consuming.

This thread has reminded me why I want to lose some more weight and I spent much less time thinking about food yesterday, which has to be good, And also that I have the nutritional knowledge to do so without sticking to a made up set of rules.

OP posts:
sakura · 10/02/2011 03:54

to clarify, the symbol representing man does not literally mean field-strength. It's made up of two components: power and field. Those two characters combined = man

sakura · 09/02/2011 23:13

wrt the CHinese character, the symbol of FIELD means wealth. My surname has two symbols GETTING LARGER/INCREASING and FIELD

This is a fortuitous name because "INCREASING FIELDS" literally means, getting richer.

The symbol power and field could mean nothing more than it was men who held the wealth and power in their hands. It possibly had nothing to do with physically working on the land

AnnieLobeseder · 09/02/2011 23:11

I would agree with all the slimming clubs and pushing you into eating disorders. I went from just being a bit chunky, to being slim but with binge eating disorder through dieting, and now I'm back to being chunky, but with binge eater disorder thrown in. Lovely.

I need to lose some weight, because I'm a runner and the extra weight means I'm an even slower runner than I was (and I was never fast), and that bothers me.

But I like to eat sweet stuff, and can't stop at one - I'll stuff it in until I'm sick.

That's slightly besides the point though.... if you need to lose weight for perfectly valid reasons, how do you do so without screwing yourself up and buying into the diet industry?

sakura · 09/02/2011 23:08

sorry if my reaction there was a bit over the top. IT's just that I know that in order to re-write history like that you must have come across some website telling you that men carried out the crop production. Producing crops, the food that sustained people on a day to day basis (I'm not talking about meat) has always been, and still remains, women's work. Meat was most definitely appropriated by men once farming began, because of course, there was profit in it.

sakura · 09/02/2011 23:00

teiTua Working the land was men's work and still is, but if women got involved (as with that poor woman digging vegetables) you can be sure they wouldn't get much credit for it.

The Chinese symbol for "man" literally means "field-strength". You can look it up.

This is absolute bullshit. Sorry, it really is (apart from the chinese character)
Tilling, hoeing, planting and yielding crops has always been women's work. YOu should see the backs of the old women in the Japan, bend double, practically crippled from planting rice, which is labour intensive.
Now, of course, machines do it, and when tractors came about men took them over, while their wives continued to do the labour intensive drudge. You really have to be in denial (or not read very much about it) to say that men have produced crops and continue to do so today. It's women.

sakura · 09/02/2011 22:55

The cauldron thing is mine Elephants though tbf, my thought processes may have been heavily influenced by : Room on the Broom, Meg and Mog at Sea, Winnnie the Witch... Grin

EngelbertFustianMcSlinkydog · 09/02/2011 21:31

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HerBeX · 09/02/2011 21:10

When you say pushing yourself more on cross trainer, do you mean to raise your heart beat more?

ElephantsAndMiasmas · 09/02/2011 20:31

Sorry yes nothing spectacular, just fewer reps of higher weights, rather than lots of reps of light weights, IYSWIM, plus pushing myself more on cross trainer etc.

Laughing at how fit this makes me sound, I am NOT at all :o

TotalChaos · 09/02/2011 20:14

Tried out ww a few years ago, not keen at all, you end up shelling out a lot of money for a public weigh in and diet advice from people with limited training. Found a session with gp practice nurse far more inspiring.

everythingchangeseverything · 09/02/2011 19:45

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BelleCurve · 09/02/2011 19:12

I think this is a really interesting topic and whilst I have been doing WW for over a year, I am finding it increasingly at odds with my feminist views. Why should I have to limit my food intake to look a certain way? Why is there a general assumption that all women at all times should be on a diet?
Why is weight-loss considered to be such an achievement in our society? More people congratulated me on that than my masters degree!

Katiekitty · 09/02/2011 19:00

MacNacFeegle excellent post you made about slimming clubs and the world of food/self hate

vesuvia · 09/02/2011 16:23

ElephantsAndMiasmas wrote - "doing proper exercise, not girly/"toning" exercises".

What are the proper exercises that you are you doing?

SuchProspects · 09/02/2011 15:49

I was a very active as a kid and young adult, but started to put on weight when I started working (in common with many). But I didn't pay much attention to it because my (feminist) view was that I (and other people) shouldn't be so concerned with how I looked.

It was only in my 30s when I heard a female DR. talking about how being obese was generally much further form the healthy norm than being a catwalk model that I (very suddenly) realised I had been hiding behind feminism to avoid eating sensibly and taking responsibility for my body and health. Like NacMacFeegle I'd also managed to screw up my natural regulators (helped by a childhood being admonished to clear my plate). So a structured approach was good for me too and I think slimming clubs can be good for some people. When I stopped (in order to have kids) I started eating far more than was good for me again. I'm only just getting back to a sensible place now.

I personally found the consumption culture (larger and larger portions, buy what you want when you want in order to feel good, etc.) to be more of a problem than the women must look thin meme (which I had considered to be the root of all eating disorders before).

ElephantsAndMiasmas · 09/02/2011 14:54

But just because men are associated with doing the outside work etc, doesn't mean they were the only ones doing it. FWIW I'm sure most Indian farmers are men if you look on a list of who owns what, but go out into the fields and it's mixed, mainly women, doing the backbreaking work. It has always been the assumption until very recently that if you hired a man, you got his wife thrown in to work for free, and that goes for all kinds of work areas (vicars for instance).

HerBeX · 09/02/2011 14:45

Sorry about the ranting essay...

HerBeX · 09/02/2011 14:45

Food and fat is a massive feminist issue. For so many women it is so bound up with guilt. Guilt about enjoying food - look at the language used, "I was naughty, I had a cake", then guilt about not finishing it (in the words of John Lennon "they're starving back in China, so finish what you've got") - our whole culture unremittingly tries to force us to forego all the sensual pleasure of food and martyr ourselves to the guilt of it. A bit like we were supposed to do with sex a hundred years ago. Anything that's actually enjoyable and fulfilling, we're supposed to feel guilt about.

Dieting clubs buy into that and re-inforce it because they make money from it. Look at the language one of them uses - you can have sins (sins FFS!) as part of the diet - they're using religious guilt language about something as basic as eating, but hey, Catherine of Siena would have recognised the concept. And the idea that you have to live on low fat shit for the rest of your life and carefully measure out your portions, returning to the club every now and then and paying out good money for that, is so profitable for them.

And so disempowering for women. Because if you have to measure it out, it means you can't trust your own body, your own appetite, to tell you when you have had enough.

NacMcfeegle, you can retrain yourself to re-acquaint yourself with your real appetite - you don't have to be reliant on corporate giants telling you how much to eat and when, you do have the power to re-discover your inner regulators. It takes time, practice and determination, but it can be done. But often, just as the success stories with slimming clubs are, success with re-discovering your natural appetite, co-incides with other achievements/ breakthroughs in your life.

TeiTetua · 09/02/2011 13:55

It's nice to talk about a "connection with food" in pre-industrial times, but for most people back then, the issue was whether they'd get enough of it. Malnutrition, or outright starvation, was very familiar. And the notion of women as the farmers may apply in Africa or North America (before Europeans arrived) but we know it's not true in Europe or most of Asia. Working the land was men's work and still is, but if women got involved (as with that poor woman digging vegetables) you can be sure they wouldn't get much credit for it.

The Chinese symbol for "man" literally means "field-strength". You can look it up.

ElephantsAndMiasmas · 09/02/2011 13:51

Hi OP

I have felt tempted to go to those groups at times, to be honest I think nearly all women feel overweight, and that weight is the be all and end all. What I have done instead is start going to the gym (might be easier said than done for you, depending on circumstances) and although I have actually put ON weight, I have certainly become stronger and people have commented that I look fitter/slimmer, which I find weird. Last time I took up the gym, I was put off by the weight gain, but have been lucky enough to find a place where the woman who runs the place thinks that the whole idea of weight as a measure of health is pretty fucked up, and has got my doing proper exercise, not girly/"toning" exercises which basically don't work and ensure you will be struggling for ever. Have had some interesting chats with her about why women should be encouraged to do exercises that don't make us any stronger for god's sake. What's wrong with women being strong? It's not like we're going to turn into Mr Universe overnight.

Sorry got to run but interested in this discussion so will be back later.

love the cauldron thing btw Sakura! Did you think of that, or read it somewhere (in which case, I want that book!)?

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