those who were seen dancing

Ungh... I know that feeling well, although relating to my own pet issue.

OTOH lately whenever someone posts their "here are my new weight loss goals!!!##!#!#" posts, I have been way the hell more grumpy about it and wanting to question them. If I did this however, I would never eat or sleep or go to work, because it would take that much time.

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See, when you become an Internationally Recognized Fat Liberation Army Commando (hee! no, really, I'm not!), a lot of people who do that run in fear from you and you never hear about their XX pounds anyhow. So, it's not as time-consuming for me. ;)

It's nice to know that we've influenced each other enough to pick up the other's pet issues, though. Good conversations CAN be had on these subjects. Sometimes.

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The idea of people running in fear from me is alternately sad and incredibly empowering. Hrmmmm. :)

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libskrat

What

pifflegrrrl said. And also, WORDY McWORD.

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yeah, seriously.

I have on occasion gotten entirely too snarky with friends who say things about being "overweight"... "for what? Piloting a helicopter? Do you sleep in a HAMMOCK perhaps?"... I hate all the language around weight and the underlying assumption that women's goals should not be to feel healthier or be more active but to take up less space and conform to repressive sexist norms.

< / preachingtothechoir >

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"for what" indeed. i generally don't get snarky like that, cause i swear some people bring this stuff up because they KNOW i'm going to have to counter their assumptions and they want to be countered. but the temptation to snark is great, as is the temptation to huff and harrumph.

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I think some of them assume that because I'm slender, I will approve of their desire to starve and/or torture themselves into a weight class that's unhealthy and/or unsuited to their frame and metabolism. No, please, dears! Food = fuel. Space = something women need to stop being afraid or apologetic about taking up. And weight-talk somehow manages to make everyone feel worse about themselves, no matter what our own scales do or don't say. (Hey, were you there when I beta tested the Feminist Bathroom Scale?)

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The feminist bathroom scale? No, I don't believe I was there, or I don't remember... please, explain. :)

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OK, I will get some photos! I am quite pleased with it, but like many crafts projects, it's not quite finished, so this will be my incentive.

D's ex-roommate left this skanky old scale in the bathroom when he moved out. I hate the things, and the bathroom floor's not even level, and the scale's probably off, but I still found myself evilly drawn to the thing. So I took the little clear-plastic cover off the dial part, and I have pasted things over the numbers. Little phrases cut out of magazines -- "be gentle" and "quiet your mental chatter" and so on. So now when you stand on it, it's like getting your fortune cookie instead of a number.

The part that's not done is the exterior; I'm decoupageing it with soothing images of beach and bare feet and flowers... maybe I'll try to finish it tonight and get some pix.

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strph.livejournal.com

that is the BEST idea ever! I hate bathroom scales, too. Brilliant!

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That's a fabulous idea. It would have been a better use of mine ages ago (what I did instead was crush it with a sledgehammer and toss it off a 3rd floor stoop into el trasho cano).

Yes, definitely make pictures!

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no, the sledgehammer tactic is also lovely! (it's just that that is performance art rather than installation art :-)

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examorata.livejournal.com

Heehee! "Do you sleep in a HAMMOCK perhaps?"!!

Can't stop giggling.

-choir, preached to

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vaspider

... and could you, in return, be sensitive to those of us who actually do need to lose weight for health issues, as we have already gone over? I'm more than a little insulted by not only this post but by the attitude that underlies it.

I've filtered my posts, and kindly left you off of them, with understanding. Yes, I do need to lose weight, so I can be in less pain, and the snarkiness that people who have skeletons that can support the weight they carry tend to fling back at me -- look at the comments above; that's pretty standard -- is as hurtful to me as the idea that I ought to conform to societal beauty standards.

It seems to me that the people who are asking others to be sensitive aren't being all that sensitive themselves. No, I don't want to start a fight or even an argument or, hell, even a debate. I've filtered my posts; I'd ask that you respect the decision made in conjunction with my life partner and my health care provider to lose weight and make my broken skeleton function better. The comments in this post are no more sensitive to my issues than having to witness poundage goals is to you or others who feel as you do.

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You know, I knew as I wrote this that it might piss you off as a side effect of pissing off some others whom I felt deserved to be pissed off (I am a raw freaking nerve on this topic these days).

Suffice to say, I'm sorry if it did and this was very much NOT directed at you or the other folks on my f-list who've been thoughtful, both in considering their whole weightloss-goal thing and in allowing those of us who don't want to not to hear it.

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vaspider

Forgiven, certainly; it did send me on a ten-minute frothing fit. Ahem.

Funny thing is, despite having a poundage goal, I don't even own a scale at the moment.

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You don't have a scale? I'll take that as proof that your goal's not really about pounds. Okay, maybe not, but you could get a "feminist bathroom scale" (see

peregrin8's comments). ;)

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vaspider

Well, see, I was thinking about this, and what I've realized is that part of me -- the part of me that's challenged by my monthly sales quota -- really likes having a poundage goal. I like concrete goals, solid numbers, progress I can see and mark. I'm the kind of person who really loves setting concrete goals and following through on them. Setting a concrete goal helps me follow through on it. I like timelines. I like quotas. I like hard and fast rules.

It's just something in my personality, something I've discovered about myself since I took this job. I do much, much better when there are numbers and figures and dates and times to work with on a day to day basis. It makes it work for me.

I don't expect it to work for anyone else. That's okay if it doesn't. It doesn't have to. I'm also a Buffy & Star Trek fan, and you don't have to like that, either, or watch it with me. ;)

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enchochada.livejournal.com

I'm fairly certain I haven't offended so far, although I

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I'm fairly certain I haven't offended so far, although I <i<have</i> mentioned my <i>fitness</i> intentions, which are about me being fitter and healthier and not feeling like I'm going to die of breathlessness every time I walk up the hill where I live.

To be honest, there ARE times when I don't post things that are weight related specifically so I don't offend *you*. I have to question why I do this, becuse really, in a world full of intelligent and well-informed individuals, surely we should be able to all co-exist with our differing interests and values and accept the differences between us as being valuable ones we can learn from.

I understand that issues of weight and acceptance are of crucial importance to you, and I know that *you* know that standards of "beauty" prescribed by a patriarchal and woman-unfriendly society are at the root of many women's self image problems (and doubtless many men, too, I'm guessing), but I wonder if it's realistic for you to request that people don't talk about issues which might be important ones for *them* in your eyesight?

I'm totally against horse-riding, in any form- I see it as animal abuse and exploitation and I find it abhorrent and disgusting. That said, I'm aware that my view is quite an extreme one, and whilst I feel dismayed when I read that someone on my friends list has been riding, I would be most unikely to defriend them- although I might gently consider offering them my point of view to try and broaden their outlook, maybe. I realise that's just me, but like my dear friend, Trudi, always used to say, "Love for ALL people, Emma, love for all people..."

It's not really my place to play devil's advocate here, but do you not think that maybe some people might interpret your request as saying that really, you're not as OK about your body image as your journal suggests, and that reading about other people's plans for weight loss creates some kind of subconscious tension within you?

Just my twopenn'orth...

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libskrat

Oh, for Pete's sake. Of course they'll interpret her request that way. That's PART OF THE POINT.

*stomps off growling*

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enchochada.livejournal.com

I'm sorry, I don't get what you mean by PART OF THE POINT. Or why my post made you stomp and growl, for that matter.

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I think what

cavlec is trying to say is that people will certainly interpret K not wanting to hear about diet/weightloss/poundbypound as some kind of jealousy or reflection on her own self-image. But those people are wrong and what they think shouldn't silence K from explaining and questioning diet culture, and feeling frustrated by its ever-presence. In fact it should make her, me, and every other fat activist just as outspoken as ever.

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Also, it's not that she wants to silence people on the general issue of health and body-image, etc. It's that she wants to not hear about it in the tired rhetoric of the tyranny of the scale.

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Sorry if it sounds like I was putting words in your mouth here. I just got all het up. DOH!

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Dude, you put better words in my mouth than I did. Thanks! But yeah, what I'm complaining about is the tired liturgy of "I'm bad, I need to diet" without even the follow up question "Why do I feel this way?".

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originalenid.livejournal.com

THANK YOU. I would prefer not to hear it as well. It IS rhetoric, you know. To quote Pinky and The Brain:

Brain: "Diets don't work."

Pinky: "Not even if you call them 'A Whole New Way of Eating?'"

Brain: "No."

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That is one of my All Time Top Favorite Pinky & The Brain quotes. Although it kinda begs the question - if the people who write cartoon scripts knew diets don't work 5 years ago, why doesn't everyone know that?

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The cartoon I always quote on this topic is The Simpsons; when the space alien is trying to seduce Marge, he says "You look great. Have you decreased in mass?"

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Your last paragraph had me nearly hysterical. :) I don't know how "okay with my body image" my journal projects me to be, but it's clearly more than I actually am. I guess I flatter myself. It's a constant freaking struggle, and I am (as said elsewhere) a raw never on this subject pretty much for the month of January, when the "New Year/New You" adverts go crazy). My feministy bubble of lj and blog friends is one of the few places I can generally count on to deal with body image issues thoughtfully.

The tension's not subconscious when I read people equating thin to healthy (not inherently true) or blithely ignoring the social issues implicit in "needing to lose X pounds". People who choose to step away from the beauty/healthy/thin stick are assaulted with all the reasons they're wrong and unfit on a daily basis; that sort of post is a reminder that we're all very baaaad people (and yeah, I'm totally still sensitive to that). I'm not saying fitness and body image and even weight loss/gain discussions have no place on my f-list, but rather that I would prefer to shelter myself and others from the unchallenged assumption that thinner is better (the implication of the "I'm going to lose 20 lbs and wear a bathing suit by May" types of posts) in this one place if not anywhere else. It makes me sad and angry when people who ought to have better information available to them don't use it. And it's nigh on impossible for me to not challenge this assumption when it's left there all unchallenged, so I partly don't want to read these posts just so I won't end up getting in arguments with the posters who were just trying to go about their day. ;)

Of course, I would rather everyone not post their "I feel fat, I need to diet" talk because they didn't think that way anymore (or at least because they didn't want to give credence to those ideas when they had them).

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originalenid.livejournal.com

Thank you for saying what I've been wanting to say for a long time. I might have to post this (or something like it) myself. I mean, for ME (note how I'm personalizing this) when I hear diet talk it sounds like: "I'm way too gay. I'll go to that church program where I can free myself from my gayness forever! And, I'm just doing it for my health, you know! I don't want to get one of those gay deseases! It's just a question of will power."

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To quote

cavlec: Wordy McWord. ;)

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lilithcoyote.livejournal.com

I guess I am confused both by the tone here and the request itself. I am pretty sure I am not one of the people pissing you off, since I haven't written anything about weight recently that I can think of, but now I am searching through my memory and thinking, rather paranoidly, of every incident that COULD have been one that pissed you off, and that is unpleasant to an extreme. Wouldn't it make more sense, diplomatically speaking, to just say to the friends who are annoying you "hey, could you filter posts about this topic so I don't have to read it" than to have an outburst like this, thus making people who didn't offend you feel self-conscious and guilty?

Maybe it's just me, I don't know, but MY journal is for ME. I put things that are long or possibly controversial behind a cut and try to have some indication of what it is so people who don't want to read it don't get surprised. THAT, however, is as far as I am willing to go. My journal is for me, and I let you (and others) read it. WHY should I have to censor myself? If you don't like it, you're free to skim, skip it entirely, etc.

I guess I am just confused by this. If you want to take me off your flist for whatever reason, that's obviously your choice. I don't mean to be snarky, here, but if you're going to ever attack me in your journal for what I talk about in mine, though, I might have to take you off my list. I don't want to do that, but I hate feeling overly scrutinized and like I have to censor myself in what is supposed to be my little mental freedom space.

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