Fat/Size Acceptance

[GothAnneGeddes]

I'm not sure if we have a thread on this yet, so apologies if we have and I've missed it.

I think of all the toxic, time-wasting shite women have to put up with, Diet Culture aka Be Thin and Win, is one of the most widespread. It is the unholy triumvirate of body policing, self hatred and bad science.

I thought this was a really interesting take on Jamie Oliver's new obesity campaign: shakespearessister.blogspot.com/2011/09/on-fat-hatred-and-eliminationism.html#disqus_thread

Would love to know what you all think

`GB no, same price.

I would love to see half portions, 3/4 portions widely available for all dishes, for children and those who find it hard not to clear their plates irrespective of appetite.

but the intresting bit for me (& i WILL hunt down the background to the radio program but it might take a few days) is that rich men are as fat as poor men. only for women does weight decrease with wealth.

so it is not about affording fruit and veg....

I'm saying that both normal body weight and high earning potential are caused by a third factor, coming from an affluent background in the first place. - OK, Bride, I didn't clock that and can agree with it. To an extent. But I believe prejudice is still at the root - even from the successful woman's early childhood, when she was fed less than her brother.

Just did a very quick search for some figures - didn't find the ones I was looking for, but thought this interesting:-

Skinny women got paid substantially higher salaries than heavier women, yet this relationship was much less pronounced at the higher ends of the scale. Meaning that a female employee weighing 50 kilograms would get paid substantially more than someone weighing 60 kilograms, but the difference between 70 and 80 was much less severe. That?s probably because ? as Dan and Tim put it ? ?the social preferences for a feminine body have already been violated?; you?re either skinny or not, but once you?re over the (rather extreme) threshold, we don?t care much anymore about the number on your scale.

Yet, this relationship looked very different for men. In contrast to the women in the sample, men of moderate weight would get paid substantially more than skinny men. But such a man of average weight would also get paid quite a bit more than an obese person. Hence, being skinny for a woman would mean more dosh, but for men it would mean less money ? all in the order of magnitude of $10,000-15,000 per year.

bsr.london.edu/blog/post-31/index.html

This is not a Daily Mail dipstick poll. The study looked at weight and income data on 11,253 German employees and, in another study, on 12,686 American workers; the latter who were measured no less than 15 times over a period of 25 years, to also see how change in weight was related to changes in income.

An element of trophy wifism, maybe, Tilly?

Meaning that a female employee weighing 50 kilograms would get paid substantially more than someone weighing 60 kilograms

I weighed 50kgs when I was about 12. I weighed 60kgs when I was 26 and got paid considerably more than for my paper round.

To weigh 50kgs you'd have to be pretty short for it to be a healthy weight. I was 5'2" when I was 12 so that gave me a BMI of 20. I thought tall women tended to be richer? Or rich women tended to be taller? What's the relationship with height?

Insomnia!

I was threatened with hospitalisation at 50kg, but am taller and sturdier than Ms Average. A 167cm woman of 50kg is 'seriously underweight' at a BMI of 17.93, according to the NHS. At 60kg, she's 'healthy' at 21.51 BMI.
The sample was so large, the women must have come out at average height. (If the high earners had all turned out to be short, they would have said so!)
That means women between seriously underweight and the low end of healthy earn a lot more than women of middle healthy to overweight size.
I find it quite sinister.

x-post :)

I think it's worth making the thread partly about diet because the weight of both genders can be considered a feminist issue. It is the woman's 'choices' that get the blame if there is a weight problem with any member of the family - "What is she feeding him/the kids?" etc. It is still assumed to be the woman who shops, prepares and cooks food for the family.

I wonder if one of the reasons you see 'healthy-weight' men partnered with 'over-weight' women is because traditionally women have always sacrificed their own dietary needs for the welfare of their men and children. In modern terms could this translate to feeding a healthy diet to DH and DC while eating the less healthy option herself? Also, a woman may eat smaller, healthy portions to save money/keep fit but then be hungry later so she ends up eating less healthy foods as snacks. Eating leftovers because of abhorring waste is another reason women - as primary caregivers - tend to have for putting on weight. A lot of men don't have to see food they've spent money on and time preparing go to waste.

Also, I think a number of studies have shown a pretty strong link between diet products and eventual weight gain (either because fat is substituted for sugar or because the fat/sugar substitutes have addictive qualities).

Yes, sunshine, that's another good point.

As someone mentioned earlier, professional carers tend to be fat because of the stresses of their job, coupled with limited outlets for their emotional strain. Pathological overeating is known to be an attempt at suppressing unmet needs and frustrations. I can certainly imagine that applying to many women in a family setting, where they look after everyone else's needs but sacrifice their own.

^That means women between seriously underweight and the low end of healthy earn a lot more than women of middle healthy to overweight size.
I find it quite sinister.^

Perhaps they work in industries where appearance is an issue? The highest paid women would perhaps be a small minority of actresses, models and tv presenters- yes it certainly is a problem if they have to be underweight, but I would seriously doubt that being skinny, as opposed to somewhere in the middle of the healthy weight range or even up to being in the overweight range, would be any kind of advantage for non-looks based careers.

Not to say that looks have no influence at all, but in my experience of the women I know who or who I know of who are at the top of their professions, I would say only a minority are as petite as you'd need to be to weigh 50kg. Most are tall and at least 70kg I'd say, not saying that this is a good thing, but it's just my observation.

24,000 workers were studied, Insomnia, half of them over a 25-year period. It's unlikely the data were skewed by anything at all, certainly not towards glamorous industries.

Were they actually weighed or did they have to write down their weight?

Just that I don't know many women who weigh only 50kgs full stop. Of the women I know who possibly fall into that zone, most are wealthy SAHP (again another point, but still).

The average weight of UK women is 70.6kgs.

If the women you know who possibly fall into that zone are mostly wealthy SAHP, wouldn't that be part of the same point?

I don't know why you're querying the research. The average UK weight doesn't invalidate the study - it said the women who earn much above average are much thinner than average. If you want to read the original report, which is cited in my link, it will be interesting to hear what you find.

It wouldn't surprise me if women were judged more on weight than men and we can stop doing that when more women penetrate the work force and fewer go off to become housewives.

I dispute that you have to starve yourself to remain a healthy weight however. I never starve myself.

I had a look at a website of a law firm Linklaters and start ed looking at the photos but just about everyone was male bar one woman per page so it was going to take too long to judge weight/looks. Women often set up their own businesses if they do not make it through in the company where they work. I don't think our leading business owners who are female are particularly thin.

However I want us to remain in a place where fat men and women know they are fat and try to eat better rather than lets all pretend like the emperor's new clothes they look so gorgeously beautiful when they don't.

If this has been said before, sorry for the repetition.

I was thinking about how women are supposed to take up as little space as possible and yet be sexually available to men at all times. I wonder if this is where breast enhancement comes in. That is, you make sure you are as thin as possible but, in order to indicate your availability, you make sure that your breasts are large. Thus, the first thing men see is not you as a person taking up space, but you as a sex object. Therefore a woman who is bigger may be seen as threatening because she actually does take up space as a person. That is, she can't be easily sexually objectified.

Garlic - Nancy Upton is awesome, but I'm not sure how many on here would agree.

Xenia - You're like a stuck record. I'm amazed that any subject can turn into how all women should work fulltime no matter what.

Mumwithdice - I talked about it a little upthread, but it bears repeating. People forget that what is deemed as attractive is a social construct and social constructs are created by the groups with most power.

Goth, Nancy Upton is awesome. I agree.

I agree very much with you, GAD and mumwithdice, especially about attractiveness being a social construct and the patriarchy finding women more attractive the closer they get to being tits on a stick.

Let's hope Ms Upton manages to do at least something about that - I heard American Apparel are going to offer her a contract! Wonder if she'd take it?

I was reading something earlier about girls being underfed. In India, sexual dimorphism has increased as people get taller. This means, in summary, that people are becoming healthier - so children grow taller - but adults are feeding girls an increasingly smaller proportion of what they feed the boys. The author focused on India for a variety of reasons. He mapped a regional correlation between sexual dimorphism and the number of "disappearing" girls. Grim.

GB- Here's the actual paper if you're interested

www.timothy-judge.com/Judge%20and%20Cable%20%28JAP%202010%29.pdf

Oh, cheers! Yes, I'm finding myself even more interested in this than I expected. Probably because there seems to be more reliable data around than I thought. I'll have a read of it tomorrow, when I should be working just like I haven't today.