fat and feminism, again.

[keryx]

It's ironic how I never tire of getting into this discussion with people. Fat people who aren't feminists. Feminists who don't recognize fat acceptance as an issue. Both of them not getting the difference between THIN and HEALTHY. I can't shut up about it.

Case in point #1: on the Don't Tell Me What Size I Must Be list yesterday, someone goes all off on how Slim Fast is making her life great and she needs to lose 100 pounds. And I fired back a really nice note that really diplomatically said - if you're going to talk diet on a fat acceptance list, the very least you can do is WARN ME before I read that shit. Because I don't care what you do, but I don't want to read it.

Case in point #2: the fat activist vs. weight watchers post on feminist_rage (any of you who don't already read f-r ought to at least read that post). Man, people start talking about this and I cannot shut up. I don't think any American woman has a true grasp on how healthy or unhealthy she is, because we've been sold this message that thin is now not only in, but a guarantee against early death. And we've bought it so well. So, hell yeah, fat is a feminist issue. It's one hairy ugly component of the beauty myth. Maybe not The Central Feminist Issue, but certainly one we ought to care about.

Comments

[keryx.livejournal.com]

Cheers to you on your recovery. You should definitely add your comment to the f-r thread. People do need to hear about it, and you bring up something that I don't think anyone else did in that thread... we are not, as a people, sized the way things sold in stores would lead us to believe.

I hope that's changing, though - have you seen this article about the SizeUSA project: http://www.iht.com/articles/131984.html? Basically, they went around and measured people and - shock - the biggest size on most racks was smallish for our measurements. You could read that as a sign of the mounting obesity crisis, or you could read it as symbolic of our thin-fixation - even clothing in department stores is wildly unattainable for a huge portion of the population.

[snidegrrl.livejournal.com]

You could read that as a sign of the mounting obesity crisis, or you could read it as symbolic of our thin-fixation - even clothing in department stores is wildly unattainable for a huge portion of the population.

Is it a terrible idea to postulate that the truth lies somewhere in between? :-/

[keryx.livejournal.com]

I don't think it's a terrible idea. There are, undoubtedly, people who got fat by sitting on their asses (as well as thin people who sit on their asses). Some of them might be thinner if they ate and worked better.

And at the same token, it seems obvious that making "average" size much smaller than actual average would push a certain diet-mindedness.

Movies

[(Anonymous)]

Do you feel that movies that try to change the cultural image about people who aren't thin, successful?

[snidegrrl.livejournal.com]

I think what really got me about that thread was the implication that it is never okay to want to change your body. I do want to change my body. I talk to my therapist about whether it's fat phobic... I walked in there this week and straight up said, I am fat-phobic, and I want to make sure it is not making me behave in an unhealthy manner.

At this point I've honestly got a problem with how I view other people, and I need to figure out if it is also a problem with how I view myself. I am solving this by trying to do things that I feel will make me more healthy, and assuming that no matter how my body looks, if I feel more healthy, I will be okay mentally as well as physically.

There are people in my life I look at and say, "that person is unhealthy". They are fat and they are thin. I like to think I have kind of a handle on it. But that doesn't mean that while my rational mind is saying "that woman looks as though she is starving herself" my instincts, wherever they came from, are not also saying "I wish I looked like that."

Anyways I'm not asking for a rah-rah pick me up speech... I am just trying to get across that while fat is a feminist issue and I've always been clear about how our society seems to hate on fat people, I can also understand the people who are saying, I don't want to be castigated for trying to change my body. I hope this makes a vague modicum of sense.

[snidegrrl.livejournal.com]

Let me also say:

As a radical anti-porn person, I can see why people would be completely unable to trust that any woman is making a conscious, un-hindered-by-society decision to get "thin" or lose weight.

I have a hard time with my friends who wear high heels and shave their body hair, who say they want to act like a "porn star". To me that's like an affront to feminism. I can envision my own weight/body issues through this particular prism, which is crucial for examining whether I am making the right decisions for myself.

I can completely grasp doubting a woman's decision to join weight watchers, given my own inability to grasp a woman's decision to watch or in any way participate in the porn industry.

[keryx.livejournal.com]

Nail. On. Head. Any choice that capitulates to a confining view of feminine appropriateness ought to be seriously questioned. Because it is personal for you, but it is political when you and everyone else are all counted together. The sex and weightloss industries very much parallel each other in this respect.

[snidegrrl.livejournal.com]

I'm going to remember this one next time someone pipes up that they watched "Booty Party 4" and it was a liberating experience. :P

[keryx.livejournal.com]

I think there are some legitimate reasons why the sex industry is empowering to women. The acceptance of sexuality is certainly one.

I wonder, are there equivalent feelings of empowerment that some women associate with the diet industry?

[snidegrrl.livejournal.com]

Go read the past year of kelowna's journal. This is an empowered woman, and very focused on her body. I don't agree with her alot of the time but I admire her in many ways.

I found alot of inspiration at this site. This woman seems to have empowered herself to change her body and had nothing but a positive experience.

I think some women who change their habits and see a visible change in their body take away from that experience a feeling of control in their lives. They have effected a visible, tangible change.

I seriously don't want to beat anyone with a diet stick or a healthy stick or any kind of stick. I don't take kindly when anyone proselytizes health. But by beating myself with those sticks, I do send a message to the people around me.

That was probably a rhetorical questions, wasn't it? :-/

[keryx.livejournal.com]

I lurve stumptuous. From a diet to porn comparison, I think she's indie feminist lesbian porn. Like, it's the structure of the "health industry", but without the pain=gainness. :D

Yeah, it was kinda a rhetorical question, but there's nothing better than a serious answer to a rhetorical question.

[keryx.livejournal.com]

This is the complete opposite of a rah rah pick me up speech.

I do not condone castigating anyone for changing their body, or wanting to change it. Those are individual choices. But those individual choices form a whole that tends to come down to women vs. fat. So, when people make their personal choices, I want them to think very hard about some political things.

1. It is very, very hard to differentiate between what's actually healthy for you and what you need from a body size standpoint and what's been sold to you. So any time you make a choice like hey, let's go on Weight Watchers, you ought to seriously think about where it's coming from. Hatred of our bodies for fatness (real or perceived) which has been hammered into our heads as unhealthy is just as problematic as hating other people for the same fatness.

2. Reality is this: many people can't get thinner, no matter how purely and chastely they live. This is particularly true as people get older. So, you also have to accept that there's a good chance of failure, and that failure isn't a commentary on your value as a person. Moreover, any temporary diet measure (as most weight loss diets are) has about a 30-60% chance (depending on who you believe) of making you fatter within 1 year - partly because of your own controllable behavior, but partly because of the inherently problematic nature of weight loss dieting. If your diet is balanced, permanent, and accompanied by exercise, it still might not result in you getting thinner. But it WILL make you healthier, and that's a good thing. You can go into a healthy life hoping for thinness and still get the health benefits.

3. If anorexia is a feminist problem, why isn't weightloss dieting? We're concerned that women starve themselves if they ALREADY meet the definition of thinandhealthy in our view, but we encourage them to diet until they reach that definition. That seems inherently wrong. And it seems to me that, if you as an adult woman add your voice in support of dieting to the millions of other adult women doing this, that you're furthering the diet culture that turns 12 year olds into dieters and gets them hanging out on pro-ana websites.

It's a personal choice, but like many personal choices, it has political repercussions. And they're not just repercussions for you; they touch all the women around you. [Er, and by "you" in all of the above, I actually mean ANY of us.]

[snidegrrl.livejournal.com]

1. Yes, I completely get it. I feel the same way about the body hair thing, as I stated before. The pressure to remove armpit and leg hair is so strong from the time of puberty that it is almost impossible to thread out one's own desires from the idea that not having body hair is the correct way to be. I tend to never come down on people who shave, but I find myself always suspect of their motives, and certainly critical of what effect their actions may have on other women.

2. I've tried to reword my thoughts on this a thousand times but then I realized that you already understand so never mind. :)

3. So... how do I promote my own feeling of having a goal of healthfulness, without making other women insecure. I agree with you about furthering the diet culture. I don't want to do that, but I do want to watch what I eat and how much I exercise, and alot of the lingo is already tied up in that culture. Do I need to use different language to distance myself from that insane version of dieting culture? Would that help? "Diet" does bring to mind horrors and denial and misery, even though really the word just means habitual nourishment, or to eat food according to rules.

I'm sussing this all out on your journal in half-born format, I hope you don't mind.

[keryx.livejournal.com]

You know if I had an answer to #3 I'd be pushing it at everyone, right? Because this obviously applies to me, too.

I think it comes down to this - there is a difference between dieting and changing your life in a way that is healthy and permanent. A healthy lifestyle improves your quality of life as long as you maintain it. A weight loss diet reduces your quality of life with the goal of improving it in the future, namely by creating a thinner/"healthier" future. Dieting is about pain and self-denial in this weird self-absorbed way. I've changed my lifestyle, as you know, but it is absolutely not a diet.

I still worry that my lifestyle shifts are too influenced by the health/diet industry, even though I'm sort of radical and off-grid (i.e. exercising outside of a gym, eating to a plan I devise on my own, having fun with the whole thing, still being fat, blah blah blah). But I think, even if the desire for healthiness is part of the healthy stick phenomenon, that being healthy without buying someone else's idea of what that means could actually be striking a blow for my personal politics.

[libskrat]

Not having read the discussion, but having had issues of my own lately...

It isn't just "thin" and "healthy" that are at issue here. The third word is "good." I saw a screaming front-page newspaper headline recently (you know the ones, 96-point all-caps bold) about obesity that ran "WE'RE NOT LIVING RIGHT."

And I was just kinda like, whoa. Living right? Living right to me means supporting my family, paying what I owe, being a good friend and a useful employee and a contributing member of the various communities I'm in. What I eat -- sorry, that doesn't even rate. Where what I eat comes from, that rates, because it feeds into issues of agribusiness and local production and like that.

But I'm not "living right" because I'm fat? I'm automatically barred from being a good person because I'm fat? What a narrow, damaging, horrible way to think.

[keryx.livejournal.com]

That notion of living right seems really, really self-obsessed. Rightness is about only what I do with my body? Well, gee - that's a bit isolationist. ;)

[firecat]

I'm glad you don't tire of it, because I certainly do, even though I agree with you 100%.

And reading the posts in question, as well as comments here, I see that it's not just "fat" that is used to keep American women down, it's also "unhealthy." In fact I think health-judging is starting to become even more of a problem than appearance-judging (although they're related), because so many otherwise perspicacious feminists have swallowed the notion that it's appropriate to judge other people on their health or lack thereof.

And also - "But I'm not being antifeminist. I'm losing weight for ME." Um, I would believe that if more than 1 percent of women ever said "I'm gaining weight for ME." But since they're almost all "losing weight for ME," I have a hard time believing they aren't being influenced by societal weight hysteria.

[libskrat]

Yes yes YES on the "unhealthy" as stick to beat people with. I meant to go there in my earlier comment and then I forgot.

I think the "unhealthy" thing is code. It's just uncool enough to judge people on their appearance that folks don't want to do it. But health, hey, that's fair game, and it makes a fine appearance proxy.

I'm gaining weight for me, dammit. :)

[snidegrrl.livejournal.com]

What about the unhealthy stick that beats me when I try to go up four flights of stairs and I feel lightheaded and winded? What about the unhealthy stick that beats me when I try to help a friend move and end up hurting myself? What about the unhealthy stick that beats me when I go down some stairs and notice my knees just can't take it anymore... and I'm still in my 20s?

There is nothing in my mind wrong with being health conscious. If I notice the above things happening to me, it seems completely reasonable to use the word "unhealthy" in regards to myself liberally.

The media serves two functions in this body-conscious struggle: to sell and to inform. To figure out where to get real information on health, you have to wade through mounds and mounds of sales pitches and advertising.

I guess you probably were not trying to blame the word "unhealthy" itself but the real key, I think, is to blame the people who use it inappropriately. There is nothing wrong with striving to be healthy. There is something wrong with trying to buy "healthy" as a product, or to sell "healthy" without making damn sure you're doing it in the most informed way possible.

[keryx.livejournal.com]

In my mind the problem is exactly that - we focus on buying and selling healthy as we'd do with any other product. Not only is it not a product, but it's a baldfaced lie - what is sold as healthy isn't even what will really make people healthy, it's a series of short-term "solutions" to a long-term problem. And it's waaaaaaaaaaaaay too focused on the appearance of healthy over the actuality of healthy.

Any I think your personal unhealthy stick is that you don't exercise, at least not in a way that builds stair-climbing muscles. Because, say it with me, your weight is not inherently tied to your health. ;) It may well be a side effect, though.

[snidegrrl.livejournal.com]

Which brings to mind another problem: the amazing abundance of information. You can pretty much find a study that will tell you anything will make you healthier; what's a layperson to do when we can't even trust the doctors anymore? What with revisionist medical practices and prescription drug advertising... I wouldn't touch a magazine with the word "Health" on it with a ten foot pole. It serves us all to educate ourselves while we're listening to our bodies... It's alot of work in a world where most of us work sitting down all day. Or even better, in scary repetitive motion all day.

I do exercise now... and like I told the lady at Curves - if I find that I feel good, my lungs feel good and I can lift things and I am energized, I likely won't give a good god damn what the scales say. :) At least I really hope that's true, right now I have a wayward eye at the scale.

[snidegrrl.livejournal.com]

Is there EVER a time when it's okay to say "I'm losing weight for me"?

[fooltheworld.livejournal.com]

Good question!

[firecat]

Of course it's OK to "say" it. I just happen to think that the decision to focus on weight loss (as opposed to the decision to increase one's exercise or eat more veggies) is usually partially informed by cultural weight hysteria, and that a lot of people who say "I'm losing weight for me" aren't aware of the extent to which they are influenced by cultural messages about weight.

But judging other people for their political awareness is just as bad as judging other people for their health, so I'll shut up now.

[keryx.livejournal.com]

Pfft. Judging other people based on their political awareness ROCKS. Because I do it all the time. :P

[fooltheworld.livejournal.com]

Thanks for posting the link to that thread. I've been mulling this topic myself and now I have more to think about. I hope you don't mind that I added you. I got interested in reading you after reading all of the brouhaha over my friend veggiemama's icon.

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