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Fat acceptance
A friend of mine wrote a (friends' locked) post in which she talked about fat acceptance (Sizeism on Wikipedia is a good place to start reading) and what it means. I'm quite interested in seeing what the skeptics have to say about it/why they think it's wrong.
My starting point with fat acceptance is a liberal/individualistic view point: each of us has autonomy over our own bodies, our appearance/fatness/thinness/weight/BMI is no one else's business. I have no moral or legal right to tell a thin person she ought to gain weight and no one else has the moral or legal right to tell me I ought to lose weight.
Unlike smoking, which can make other people ill, someone's weight/appearance etc does not affect other people's health (even if it does affect their own - and the evidence as to the relationship between weight and health problems is patchy and conflicting).
Following on from this, it's easy for me to agree with statements like:
I'm not better than someone because I'm thinner than them
Someone's appearance is not a good guide to how they choose to eat and exercise
My experience is not universally applicable - what works for some people in terms of the weight/appearance at which they feel comfortable won't be the same for other people.
I don't consider that there's anything virtuous about maintaining a BMI between 18.5-25.
I'm not sure what supportable arguments there are against fat acceptance - anyone care to enlighten me?
[This is a busy kitchen, if you can't stand the heat then go elsewhere. I don't police or stop flame wars - anything goes, though remember that there are a lot of very articulate people reading this journal and if you say something stupid you will be called on it, probably not too kindly.]
My starting point with fat acceptance is a liberal/individualistic view point: each of us has autonomy over our own bodies, our appearance/fatness/thinness/weight/BMI is no one else's business. I have no moral or legal right to tell a thin person she ought to gain weight and no one else has the moral or legal right to tell me I ought to lose weight.
Unlike smoking, which can make other people ill, someone's weight/appearance etc does not affect other people's health (even if it does affect their own - and the evidence as to the relationship between weight and health problems is patchy and conflicting).
Following on from this, it's easy for me to agree with statements like:
I'm not better than someone because I'm thinner than them
Someone's appearance is not a good guide to how they choose to eat and exercise
My experience is not universally applicable - what works for some people in terms of the weight/appearance at which they feel comfortable won't be the same for other people.
I don't consider that there's anything virtuous about maintaining a BMI between 18.5-25.
I'm not sure what supportable arguments there are against fat acceptance - anyone care to enlighten me?
[This is a busy kitchen, if you can't stand the heat then go elsewhere. I don't police or stop flame wars - anything goes, though remember that there are a lot of very articulate people reading this journal and if you say something stupid you will be called on it, probably not too kindly.]
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Basically the issue with fat people *where there is not genuine cause for concern about an individual's health* seems to be that "they're not pretty", from my reading. So.
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"Fat acceptance" is frequently simply about not discriminating against people who are healthy at weights above the current ideal, or against people who for medical reasons (e.g. PCOS) find it very difficult to lose weight however healthily they eat or frequently they exercise. (I still have traces of the "hah, I weigh less than her, that means I'm a better person" mindset left over from my never-officially-diagnosed anorexic phase. I'm not proud of this.)
I know it's an area where issues are easily conflated, but "be accepting of the fact that not all people weigh the same" is different to pro-anorexia and different to pro-OED and applies equally to people who are naturally underweight and those who are naturally overweight.
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I did ponder mentioning fat fetishism but wasn't sure how I'd fit it in (partly because it tends to involve *other people* doing the fetishising, rather than the fat individual, where that's decidedly not the case with anroexia?). Thanks for telling me the term, at any rate :)
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Good point about other people doing the fetishising — though I'm fairly sure that there is often fetishising/desire on the part of the person being fattened.
The main parallel I had in mind was that both feederism and anorexia seem to be very focused on the process of change. That is, the feeder is only happy as long as their — er, not sure what the word would be, partner? — continues to gain. This is of course unsustainable. (It may also not be entirely true — all I know is what I've seen on the internet and on the telly.) Similarly I had the idea that anorexia involves the desire to continue losing weight rather than to get to a certain point and stay there — or am I completely off base there? (Please tell me if I am — I don't know that much about anorexia either.)
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Yes, AFAIK (and from watching friends, etc), anorexia does tend to involve people deciding that actually, their target weight isn't good enough.
Feederism I've not investigated much. I'm happy to accept the premise that both are focussed on change, but I think I'm still a little leery of the comparison - precisely because one is a fetish and the other seems to have very little [direct] involvement with sex (hmm: except possibly the "not pretty enough" issue). Feederism and pro-anorexia is certainly a comparison I'm happier with than fat acceptance and pro-anorexia, though. :)
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So how come you are entitled to make such decisions but encouraging someone twice your size to make their own decisions based on their own values and limitations (rather than perceived pressure from others) is wrong?
Fat people die more.
No.
Unhealthy people die more. Some of them are fat. Some of them are also underweight or even 'normal' according to BMI and societal standards.
It is possible to be fat and generally have good health. It may not be the case in many people but it is possible, and being judged to have an unhealthy lifestyle based solely upon one's appearance is ridiculous.
In cases where obesity is a genuine health problem it can be a side-effect of metabolic illness than a direct cause, although in some cases (ie adult-onset diabetes) there is a nasty positive feedback effect.
Also I like your concept of dying 'more'. I personally only intend to do it once, but I am curious as to how fat people do it more often than that.
But the attempt to shoehorn science to fit a political objective (and we see plenty of it across all sorts of behaviours people don't want to change) is just like pro-anorexia sites.
I don't see a parallel here, to be honest. I'll grant that some people with serious obesity-related health problems may use the fat-acceptance banner to avoid taking action to reduce their size, but I think that's closer to anorexics using mainstream 'being thin is good' "science" to justify starving themselves. I don't think this means being thin or all dieting/exercise sites are necessarily bad, and I don't think this means being fat or fat acceptance sites are necessarily bad. Fat acceptance sites are not necessarily "stuff yourself until you cannot leave your house" sites, just as slimming sites are not necessarily pro-anorexia sites.
Encourage them to stay fat if they can stop being, and you're helping them die younger.
I don't think fat-acceptance is about encouraging people to stay fat, I think it's about awareness that one cannot always judge someone's health or worth or value to society by their appearance. Body size is only one aspect of this, of course.
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It largely comes back to my philosophical positivism, and belief that liberalism has made us stray into the worldview that just because we should be morally neutral regarding things which are different but both fine, we should start being morally neutral between things which are and are not fine.
Also I like your concept of dying 'more'. I personally only intend to do it once, but I am curious as to how fat people do it more often than that.
OK. Fat people die more as a proportion of their statistical cohort. I do receive feedback from others (as well as my scales) on my varying weight, and some of that is normative as well as descriptive. I accept that, and I'm very glad I don't live in a fat-positive society such as the USA, or I would probably just keep ballooning until I couldn't leave the house. Certainly that's pretty much what's happened to my cousin, who was brought up by my food-positive and quite probably fat-positive grandmother.
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If you'll accept six foot three and 27 stone as a suitable approximation, then I can assure you that getting out of bed, up and down the stairs, and out and about in a normal social life is perfectly possible.
I think part of the problem with fatphobia is that people see the "half a ton" immobile people on the TV, and assume they're the norm rather than extreme outliers.
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Still, I suppose if it's all muscle.
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I don't think anyone's implying that unhealthy people are all fat. I personally believe that fat people are more likely to be unhealthy, die young etc, because my understanding is that simple population statistics support this view. Obviously population statistics don't necessarily apply to the individual.
It is possible to be fat and generally have good health. It may not be the case in many people but it is possible, and being judged to have an unhealthy lifestyle based solely upon one's appearance is ridiculous.
I don't think it's appropriate for individuals to tell one another what weight they should be. I do think it's appropriate for governments and other societal institutions to issue advice to the population on sensible weight ranges, sensible diets, sensible amounts of exercise and so forth, where "sensible" is based on the best contemporary scientific advice with the caveat that scientific understanding and hence advice changes with time.
Having said that, if someone I trusted (friend/SO/doctor/relative) thought that my weight was likely to have negative health consequences, I would want them to tell me.
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Are these population statistics controlled for confounders? High BMI, smoking, and early death are all associated with low socioeconomic status.
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I suspect that psychologically some people associate a slim figure with self-discipline, but even if there's some sort of vague correlation there (and I have no idea how you would measure such a thing), doesn't mean that you should make judgements on it in the same way, that you shouldn't assume a woman isn't good at mathematics just because on average men are better at mathematics than women.
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It's a difficult one. I think there is a position between being fat positive and fat negative that is more helpful than either 'extreme'. Being political about my body made it easy to ignore my weight rocketing, and it has got to the point that it became unhealthy (walking short distances became difficult, cutting my bloomin' toenails is not easy). I had to fight some of my political attitudes in order to try and do something about my health. I'm focusing on getting fit rather than losing weight, it's something that I can do in a sustainable way. I have to have some acceptance, some acceptance of how my body is now, in order to feel comfortable in the gym trying to change it. If I just felt bad about my body I'd likely sit at home stuffing my face.
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Personally, I have recently realized that I am chronically undernourished, which has almost certainly been a major contribution to my poor health, but since I stay "normal weight," no medical professional has ever thought to inquire into my eating habits. So fat acceptance is important to me personally, because maybe if people realize that fat doesn't always mean unhealthy and thin doesn't always mean healthy, it will occur to moron doctors to check up that people like me are getting enough to eat.
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Do you have any evidence for this? I'd have thought the opposite, personally.
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Going at this from the other direction, I have a BMI of 15.somat and as a teen had to go to a stupid dietician as "people" were concerned and when you're officially at risk your parents take you to the dietician. It was a complete total and utter waste of my time. I was physically healthy, active and ate more then anyone else I knew, and didn't throw it up or anything. BMI has only limited use.
Beyond that, parts of societies towards fat people is just stupid. Fat people *can* be very attractive, but not any more then thin people, or average people. Only, I'm sure it's harder to feel attractive if you're getting messages that you're ugly because of your weight and this has to demotivate you for making changes if you do feel you ought to make them for health reasons. Yes this sounds obvious, but... broken world.
I don't think there really are any good arguments against the statements you listed. Doesn't stop (some) people from disagreeing with them anyway (if only at a psychological level in many cases?)
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