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Hi :) I've been quietly following for a while now, and if I've learned anything- weight does not imply lack of health. I heard the word "overweight" in something today and I'm wondering- is that term even viable? It is based on the idea that there is an ideal healthy weight... The word is pointless if there's not an ideal weight for a person to be measured against, isn't it? (Thanks!)

Asked by
slythgf

Hi!

Yeah, it’s a pretty pointless word. I always ask people, “Over what weight?” “Ideal weight” varies greatly from person to person and is affected by chronic disease, genetics, and lifestyle (by that I mean someone who hikes a lot is going to have a different kind of body than someone who swims a lot, for instance; fitness differs based on activity).

The problem is that ideal healthy weights are based on the BMI, which is a system that was originally developed for populations, not individuals, in the 19th century, and has been changed since then so that it’s… really not an accurate measure of anything. Interestingly, 7 of the 9 people who decided to change the threshold for obesity owned or worked for weight loss companies. Funny how that works.

so I answered this question on my personal blog, but it absolutely belongs here. (tw: discussion of ED, rape, rape culture, depression/mental illness, and hate speech) well anon, I give a shit! and if you care about other -isms, you probably should too. fat people (or really, people of any body type outside the “norm” as determined by the media — intersectionality, yo) are stigmatized to the point where: hate speech and flat-out nastiness toward fat people is normalized, which is dehumanizing. people feel entitled to tell fat people they shouldn’t eat something, or should eat less, or should exercise more, or that what they’re wearing isn’t flattering, and all manner of things that are actually pretty inexcusable! moreover, people feel entitled to say (and do say, all the time) that fat people are disgusting, lazy, gluttonous, stupid, and/or unhygienic, which is simply untrue. and these things are legitimized and standardized by our culture. this is all in the name of Being Concerned About Their Health but that’s actually a load of crap — someone else’s health isn’t your business, you can’t tell if someone is healthy if you’re looking at them, and unhealthy people deserve just as much respect and dignity as healthy people regardless. fat people, especially fat people who are not cis men, who are sexual assault survivors are significantly less likely to report their assault, because they’re told they’re wildly undesirable pretty much every day. in a culture where rape is misrepresented as a crime of passion or misunderstanding, fat people are scoffed at for reporting. who’d want to fuck a fat girl, after all?  fat people are encouraged in eating disorders and eating disordered behavior. generally, most people see any effort fat people make to lose weight as a good thing, even if those behaviors would cause serious alarm if performed by a thin person. I can speak firsthand about this - my EDNOS went undiagnosed for years because most of my doctors thought that any effort for me to lose weight was a good effort, even if it meant I was hurting myself. the other night I was watching TV and a diet advertisement came on for a product that had the tagline “Eating less never looked so beautiful.” seriously, what the hell? speaking of, fat people are routinely misdiagnosed and mistreated by the medical community. I once went in to my university’s gyno to get a yeast infection addressed, and was told that I’d developed it because my thighs touched.* Melissa McEwan of Shakesville says it better than I ever could: No, there is not a documented epidemic of brutal murders of fat people for being fat, but there is a documented epidemic of failure to provide life-saving healthcare: Google will easily help you find stories of fat people who died while emergency crews laughed at their weight and appearance, of fat people who were told they should lose weight to fix problems actually caused by blood clots, cancer, internal injuries, infections, and myriad other problems that later killed them, because their doctors couldn’t see past their fat to properly treat them.  Google will also easily help you find stories of medical equipment that cannot accommodate fat bodies, of anesthetists who accidentally kill fat people in surgery, of doctors who prescribe wrong doses for fat bodies, of drug trials that make no attempt to include fat patients.  Google will also easily help you find stories of fat people who did not seek life-saving healthcare because they had been so viciously fat-shamed by doctors their whole lives that they had given up hope of finding sensitive and caring providers who would treat them. Fat people die because of fat hatred ALL THE TIME. fat people are subject to a myriad of microaggressions that, in aggregate, signal to them that they are not worthy of “normal” society. plus-sized clothing is harder to find and often costs more and is not as well-made. safety equipment doesn’t fit fat people. fat people are expected to constantly apologize for themselves and be actively looking to lose weight, and therefore are not allowed to be happy or to like themselves (and fat people who are happy, who like themselves, or who feel sexy are relentlessly ridiculed and cut down for it). articles about the “obesity epidemic” are accompanied by photos of fat people where their heads are cropped off, which is a standard way of objectifying and dehumanizing. “fat” has become shorthand for “lazy, gluttonous, stupid, unhygienic, disgusting.” I could go on, but the blog This Is Thin Privilege has many other examples. overweight teenage girls are much more likely than their average-weight peers to be depressed, suicidal, or to commit self-harm. this is because they’re only offered images of happy thin people and one-dimensional, unhappy fat people. when all you see in the media are people who look like you that hate themselves, or people who used to look like you to whom the best thing in their lives was no longer looking like you, you don’t expect happiness. and not for nothing, but people are making a LOT of money off of this “obesity epidemic” crap and keeping people from focusing on the actual problems behind said “epidemic.” the people who benefit from keeping everyone scared of being fat? the billion-dollar diet/weight-loss industry, plus the companies who get a LOT of money from government food subsidies for corn, in particular. they want people at large to avoid thinking critically about why people in America are steadily gaining weight, because the answers will lose them a lot of money. classism, wage gaps, and poverty play a huge role — if you’re a single parent working multiple jobs, you don’t have a lot of time or money to prepare fresh meals all the time, and there is a correlation between poverty and weight. ever heard of a food desert? google that sucker, anon. shit’s whack. you should give a shit about fatphobia because fatphobia is mad intersectional (body politics apply to a lot, a lot, a lot of people, not just fat people) and because it’s mostly manufactured to keep you thinking about “actually important things.” not for nothing, but if you’re worried about the quality of life of oppressed people, you should also worry about the fact that 1 out of 10 parents would abort a child if it was genetically likely to be fat** and 1 out of 3 people would rather walk away from their marriage than be fat *** apparently, fat is the most terrifying thing you could possibly be in American culture. and how fucked up is that? * yeast infections do not happen because your thighs touch.** sauce*** even more sauce

so I answered this question on my personal blog, but it absolutely belongs here.

(tw: discussion of ED, rape, rape culture, depression/mental illness, and hate speech)

well anon, I give a shit! and if you care about other -isms, you probably should too. fat people (or really, people of any body type outside the “norm” as determined by the media — intersectionality, yo) are stigmatized to the point where:

hate speech and flat-out nastiness toward fat people is normalized, which is dehumanizing. people feel entitled to tell fat people they shouldn’t eat something, or should eat less, or should exercise more, or that what they’re wearing isn’t flattering, and all manner of things that are actually pretty inexcusable! moreover, people feel entitled to say (and do say, all the time) that fat people are disgusting, lazy, gluttonous, stupid, and/or unhygienic, which is simply untrue. and these things are legitimized and standardized by our culture. this is all in the name of Being Concerned About Their Health but that’s actually a load of crap — someone else’s health isn’t your business, you can’t tell if someone is healthy if you’re looking at them, and unhealthy people deserve just as much respect and dignity as healthy people regardless.

fat people, especially fat people who are not cis men, who are sexual assault survivors are significantly less likely to report their assault, because they’re told they’re wildly undesirable pretty much every day. in a culture where rape is misrepresented as a crime of passion or misunderstanding, fat people are scoffed at for reporting. who’d want to fuck a fat girl, after all? 

fat people are encouraged in eating disorders and eating disordered behavior. generally, most people see any effort fat people make to lose weight as a good thing, even if those behaviors would cause serious alarm if performed by a thin person. I can speak firsthand about this - my EDNOS went undiagnosed for years because most of my doctors thought that any effort for me to lose weight was a good effort, even if it meant I was hurting myself. the other night I was watching TV and a diet advertisement came on for a product that had the tagline “Eating less never looked so beautiful.” seriously, what the hell?

speaking of, fat people are routinely misdiagnosed and mistreated by the medical community. I once went in to my university’s gyno to get a yeast infection addressed, and was told that I’d developed it because my thighs touched.* Melissa McEwan of Shakesville says it better than I ever could:

No, there is not a documented epidemic of brutal murders of fat people for being fat, but there is a documented epidemic of failure to provide life-saving healthcare: Google will easily help you find stories of fat people who died while emergency crews laughed at their weight and appearance, of fat people who were told they should lose weight to fix problems actually caused by blood clots, cancer, internal injuries, infections, and myriad other problems that later killed them, because their doctors couldn’t see past their fat to properly treat them.  Google will also easily help you find stories of medical equipment that cannot accommodate fat bodies, of anesthetists who accidentally kill fat people in surgery, of doctors who prescribe wrong doses for fat bodies, of drug trials that make no attempt to include fat patients.  Google will also easily help you find stories of fat people who did not seek life-saving healthcare because they had been so viciously fat-shamed by doctors their whole lives that they had given up hope of finding sensitive and caring providers who would treat them.

Fat people die because of fat hatred ALL THE TIME.

fat people are subject to a myriad of microaggressions that, in aggregate, signal to them that they are not worthy of “normal” society. plus-sized clothing is harder to find and often costs more and is not as well-made. safety equipment doesn’t fit fat people. fat people are expected to constantly apologize for themselves and be actively looking to lose weight, and therefore are not allowed to be happy or to like themselves (and fat people who are happy, who like themselves, or who feel sexy are relentlessly ridiculed and cut down for it). articles about the “obesity epidemic” are accompanied by photos of fat people where their heads are cropped off, which is a standard way of objectifying and dehumanizing. “fat” has become shorthand for “lazy, gluttonous, stupid, unhygienic, disgusting.” I could go on, but the blog This Is Thin Privilege has many other examples.

overweight teenage girls are much more likely than their average-weight peers to be depressed, suicidal, or to commit self-harm. this is because they’re only offered images of happy thin people and one-dimensional, unhappy fat people. when all you see in the media are people who look like you that hate themselves, or people who used to look like you to whom the best thing in their lives was no longer looking like you, you don’t expect happiness.

and not for nothing, but people are making a LOT of money off of this “obesity epidemic” crap and keeping people from focusing on the actual problems behind said “epidemic.” the people who benefit from keeping everyone scared of being fat? the billion-dollar diet/weight-loss industry, plus the companies who get a LOT of money from government food subsidies for corn, in particular. they want people at large to avoid thinking critically about why people in America are steadily gaining weight, because the answers will lose them a lot of money. classism, wage gaps, and poverty play a huge role — if you’re a single parent working multiple jobs, you don’t have a lot of time or money to prepare fresh meals all the time, and there is a correlation between poverty and weight. ever heard of a food desert? google that sucker, anon. shit’s whack.

you should give a shit about fatphobia because fatphobia is mad intersectional (body politics apply to a lot, a lot, a lot of people, not just fat people) and because it’s mostly manufactured to keep you thinking about “actually important things.”

not for nothing, but if you’re worried about the quality of life of oppressed people, you should also worry about the fact that 1 out of 10 parents would abort a child if it was genetically likely to be fat** and 1 out of 3 people would rather walk away from their marriage than be fat ***

apparently, fat is the most terrifying thing you could possibly be in American culture. and how fucked up is that?

* yeast infections do not happen because your thighs touch.
** sauce
*** even more sauce

Stuffies: Why Fat Fetishists and Fat Activists Never End Up In Bed Together»

redefiningbodyimage:

molly-ren:

Amanda, of Feedee World, got pissed off with Fat Activism recently:

Marilyn Wann, aka the author of Fat? SO! and previously a member of the NAAFA board of directors, as just unfriended me on Facebook. Why? Because I told her I was a Feedee and that “[l]ong story short, life is very…

Really good read.

While I don’t consider myself “sexually conservative” by any means in my personal life, this space hasn’t really been centered much around sex-related topics so it may appear that way. It just never became a priority or something I wanted to address, mostly because I’m a cis woman with a fiance half across the world and I’m basically perpetually sexually frustrated, to an astounding degree.

ANYWAY, fat fetishism has come up. I’ve seen the discussions happening outside of this space as well, ever since I joined Tumblr especially. I have been paying attention and quietly forming my own stance, which can be summarized in the following way: feederism and fat fetishism is totally cool by me (I mean why wouldn’t it be? it’s a fetish, it’s cool, people have them, I have no reason to judge), it’s just not FOR me. I would prefer that no one appropriate images of my body into BBW fetish/feeder communities but I recognize that shit’s kinda out of my control, so whatev.

I am not adverse to thinking and talking about it, because sex and attraction and fetishism and all related topics are intriguing and fun and often controversial and misunderstood. It’s just pretty much never gonna be a main focus unless other people want to share their experiences, as obviously my experiences don’t speak to any of it.

Reblogging for commentary and the OP’s excellent read, and because if I don’t know where I stand on this, I’m sure many others are having trouble working out their own feelings, too.

I’ve tried to make this a pretty sex-positive space. I have no problem answering questions about sex and dating, and I’m of the opinion that as long as what you’re doing isn’t hurting anyone, and that you’re open and honest with your partner, your sex life is your sex life. Ultimately, it’s complicated, it’s personal, and it’s probably one of those things that the FA movement as a whole isn’t ever going to have a uniform opinion on or acceptance of. I’m not sure that they should. I don’t think it’s “sexually conservative” to acknowledge that an issue is nuanced and difficult and ultimately comes down to personal needs and wants. 

Degrees of Fatness

kylamcfaterson:

sugaryumyum:

I absolutely love you all and have no problem with you identifying as fat (as you are fat and it’s hella awesome) but please, for the love of all that is holy, stop acting as if your size 12/14/16 body has the same mental, physical, spatial, and societal issues as my size 32 does.  You don’t understand.  And it’s fine that you don’t understand!  It doesn’t make you a bad person!  As long as you treat me with respect and dignity and get that this world is fucked up in varying ways, I still think you’re awesome! 

You not being able to understand or feel what it’s like to live in a 300/400/500 pound body doesn’t reflect on you as a person.  But you not taking into consideration that someone in a 300/400/500 pound body has different issues and difficulties than you…well that kinda does make you a bad person.  Because you’re not stepping outside of yourself long enough to examine how different degrees of otherness exist and work.

We’re all fighting our own battles.  And while our battles are both on the field of Living as Fat…you have more ammunition than I do.  In this society, in this world, you have advantages that I don’t.  Your degree of fatness is more accepted by society than mine is.  And, again, I stress that it doesn’t make you a bad person or a fatphobic person or a bad fatty.  It just means you have privileges that I don’t.

You’re more likely to receive a job and make more money.  You’re more likely to be treated well by doctors.  You’re more likely to fit into desks and be able to squeeze through tight spaces.  It’s easier for you to find clothes that you can fit into, like, and afford.  You’re more likely to be able to adopt children and less likely to have your food choices watched and judged.  You’re less likely to be insulted, mocked, harassed, or attacked.  Hell, you’re even more likely to be taken seriously when you talk about fat/body acceptance!

I love you.  And the privileges you have are based on nothing that you’ve done or gained intentionally.  It’s just the way the cards were dealt.  Again, your privilege doesn’t make you a bad person.  But if you read these words and your response is to tell me how NONONOIHAVEITBADTOOLETMETELLYOUHOW… Well.  Then you might consider rereading this and thinking about what you need to do differently in order to further the cause of acceptance and the ending of oppression.

Your privilege doesn’t make you a bad person.  Refusing to acknowledge it does.

ETA: I’m sorry but I have to add this. 

A 200 pound person is treated differently than a 500 pound person.  It honestly never occurred to me that that would be argued.  If a 300 pound weight difference didn’t impact how someone was treated?  Fatphobia wouldn’t even exist, now would it? 

The way society treats and judges and shits on 200 pound people is bullshit.  If you’re towards the smaller side of fat, your struggles are real and they suck and they need to stop!  And I will yell and scream for your right to own and control your body and to be treated with dignity and respect with my dying breath.  But our struggles in this world are different.  And acknowledging that doesn’t diminish your pain or your feelings.  It just fucking validates mine.

For Real.
Being an ally doesn’t mean your struggle isn’t valid. It just means that it’s different. Choosing to not recognize that just attributes to their oppression.

THIS IS SO IMPORTANT, Y’ALL. As an inbetweenie myself I try to be very cognizant of the differences between my body and the bodies of others that either appear to carry more weight (remember, bodies can look different even if they are the same weight and roughly the same height) or acutally do carry their own weight. Think about it this way: you think femininity is barred to you because it’s hard to find pretty dresses in a size 16 (I’ve been there. Recently. And cried about it. Recently.) but imagine how much harder it is for women who are size 20, or 26, or 30 to find pretty things in their size? Or not even pretty things, but anything at all? 

The struggles of fat bodies are similar, but remember: the experiences you feel as a size 16 or 18 are as different from the experiences of a size 24 or 26 than yours are from a size 6 or 8. Yes, to a certain extent, everyone deals with body image troubles. That is absolutely true. But PLEASE remember OP’s post, and keep it in mind.

(via therotund)

Three things to remember about weight and health:

  1. Weight and health are not the same thing. You cannot tell a person’s health by looking at them.
  2. Someone else’s health is none of your business, anyway. No really, it’s not. Unless that person is very close to you, you have no right commenting on their body or habits. 
  3. Even if you believe someone to be unhealthy, why would you treat that person with anything other than empathy? Concern trolls need not apply. See #2.

(Clipped) On Being Fat and Romantically Interested in Other People: A Rambling Confessional, of Sorts

waketopolis:

bigfatfeminist:

waketopolis:

I find posts like this irritating. As someone who is overweight and who grew up overweight, I never let it bring me down. I didn’t ask people out as a child or a teenager because /I/ wasn’t attracted to them. I didn’t and don’t care about fat jokes on TV. I was taught that how you see yourself is how other will see you. And I saw myself as a good person, a human being with faults and morals just like everyone else. That was and is how I conduct myself: As acting like the person /I/ see myself as. If people don’t want to appreciate that, I don’t want anything to do with them. And that’s how I’ve always been. 
People are far too obsessed with what others’ opinions are. Who gives two shits? Opinions are like asswholes. Everyone’s got ‘em. Put on your rubber boots and get ready to wade through some nasty shit. Don’t let other people pass judgement on you. 

What a coincidence! I find people like you irritating. 

Please understand that your lived experience speaks for no one else’s and that you are contributing to shame culture by essentially telling people who are the victims of systematic and rewarded bullying to suck it up. That is deplorable, and you should be ashamed of yourself.

So wallowing in self-hate caused by a broken and shallow society is fine then? Because that’s all posts like the one I commented on are doing. They’re crying out for sympathy for something that’s under their control (I’m assuming that the people who commented on the post don’t have some sort of disorder since none of them outright said that they do indeed have something wrong with their bodies that keeps or kept them from loosing weight). Also, I’d like to note that the entire point of the post was decrying societal ideals by drawing on an example of /that person’s/ lived experience. 

Now, I’m taking a fairly calloused stance on the subject but no where did I say “suck it up” I said people shouldn’t let it bother them. They are two different stand points.  One’s telling people to look past the ridiculousness of letting shallow minded people bother you and the other is the one that actually promotes bullying. 

It doesn’t appear you read my original post.

At what point, ever, do I suggest wallowing in self-hate as a course of action? I want everyone to love themselves. I fucking LOVE myself. But loving myself and occasionally feeling pressured, put down, and depressed by the “broken and shallow” social norms regarding fat bodies are not mutually exclusive. They’re not mutually exclusive for anyone, and it’s important to know that “little voice,” as I call it, isn’t a unique experience. 

Of all the 2,000+ reblogs on this, only you and a handful of other people had anything negative to say. You’re one of the only ones whose negativity wasn’t a variation on “lol fat people are gross,” but what you’re saying is, I think, worse in some ways, because you’re invalidating a shared experience that has been important enough to the people who’ve engaged with my original post that floods of them have come to me, thanking me for making them feel less alone. Only through sharing our experiences and building a positive community of support — note that word, please, positive — can we overcome that social bullshit.

(via honeynutcaravaggios)

My sexual identification ("straight") reinforces gender binary, and there are certain body types I am not physically attracted to, sometimes due in some part to weight/fat. How much of this is socially programmed into me? If it's a bad thing, how can I deconstruct it? I know "not being physically attracted to X" isn't the same as "not accepting X" but is any of that possibly based in unintentional discrimination? Some parts of attraction we can't control, I just don't know which ones we can.

Asked by
Anonymous

All of it is socially programmed into you.

Seriously! I don’t mean to be overwhelming from the get-go, but actually, what you find yourself attracted to as a heterosexual person is almost entirely constructed by the media and culture in which you live. This is because in America, the media and culture (up to now, where I think and hope this is changing) expects you to be heterosexual, and therefore, because you didn’t fall outside of this expectation, you never had a reason to question what you were being told you should want. I’m assuming that you are also not a fat person yourself, and this means that you reaaaally didn’t fall outside of your culture’s expectations of you. Especially if you’re white and middle-class, which you may not be! I don’t know! You gave me very little to go with, here!

But basically, if you’re only asking this question now, you’re probably not the kind of person who has felt othered by your culture and you haven’t really started questioning it. This isn’t your fault! It takes FOREVER to start questioning things when they benefit you. And there is nothing inherently bad about being privileged. It just sort of is, you know?

Anyway, in the fifties women weren’t supposed to be skinny, and there were ALL THESE AD CAMPAIGNS for products that would help skinny women put on weight. In the Victorian age the ideal shape for a woman was an hourglass, and so corsets helped women fake an hourglass shape. For a lot of history, fat women were considered more attractive because being fat equated (at least in the minds of many cultures) wealth and health, because you had enough to eat. You see? It’s socially constructed by what your culture values most.

I’m getting a little tangential, here. You asked how much of what you find attractive is socially programmed into you. I can’t answer that question in detail, but what I CAN say is that you have been socially programmed to find fat people unattractive. Basically everyone is, even fat people, which is why we have such trouble with our self-esteem a lot of the time and why fat acceptance is so important.

I’m of course biased, but I think it’s a bad thing. See, lots of people don’t fall in the spectrum of “skinny” and anyone who doesn’t find them beautiful is missing out on a lot of beauty that exists in the world. How you deconstruct it is a much harder question to answer, and it’s not an easy process. (The fact that you’re asking makes me SO HAPPY, though, can I just say). You need to start to ask yourself why you find fat unattractive. “I just do” is not enough of a reason: what about it is unattractive? Why? Where do you think you got those ideas? Are they even necessarily true? (Like, if your reasoning is ‘because fat people can’t be sexy,’ that’s not true. And I have several pictures of curvaceous ladies in corsets that can help me prove it).

Ultimately, wanting to figure out what YOU find attractive versus what YOU THINK YOU SHOULD find attractive is a journey for you, and you alone. It’s a tough one, but it’s one that a LOT of people go through. Even heterosexual people! Instead of making this journey about whether or not you’re being discriminatory, make it about you – make it about self-discovery. That way, it’s not political unless YOU choose to make it political.

I’m not sure what your gender identity is, but start with something like What You Really, Really Want by Jaclyn Friedman (this is aimed specifically at women but I’ve known several queer men who’ve benefitted greatly from it, and I’ve got some heterosexual dude friends who oh-so-casually leaf through it every single time they come into my room, so you know). There are also approximately a BIZILLION sex-positive, feminist porn blogs on tumblr that can help you figure out what you genuinely find attractive. Who knows? You might surprise yourself. Try sexxxisbeautiful and fuckyeahsexeducation to start. The latter has a really fantastic list of feminist porn and an excellent set of resources.