Please heed Lindy West:
Everyone. Repeat after me. "The health of strangers is none of my business. I cannot diagnose other people's health just by looking at them. If I have opinions or suspicions about other people's health I should keep them private and afford those people the same level of respect and personal agency that I demand for myself. If I cannot restrain myself from doing these things then I truly have farts for brains."This was in response to a "fan" bringing Fiona Apple to tears, onstage, for being thin.
We've talked about this before--about the
But while this group might technically be size-positive, it isn't body positive. It isn't woman positive. It's still rating women against each other, it's still making bodies a competition, it's still body surveillance culture. (Consequently, there seems to be a whole lot of surveying going on on that website.) Fat acceptance isn't saying that fat bodies are better. Fat acceptance isn't saying that everybody should be fat. It's about accepting bodies because they are bodies and they are attached to people with thoughts and feelings and it's about self esteem and it's about how everybody deserves respect, no matter what they look like. Fat acceptance is not body snarking on thin women, and it is not saying that real women have curves. A hip to waist ratio does not make anyone any more 'real' than anyone else. Curves do not a woman make. Criticizing thin bodies is actually just validating sizeism. Celebrating one thing by tearing down something else isn't really very celebratory at all.And Fiona Apple isn't the only thin women to be accosted by busybodies. It's happened to me, although in my case, those busybodies were friends. I've also had people (coworkers that I was traveling with) assume that I don't need to eat, or that I don't eat (man, did they get an eye-opener). But that's a different issue; more to the point, A couple of friends have told me to stop losing weight (my body does what it does). Another friend asked me whether I had tapeworm. One woman told me that I risked looking anorexic, but I just don't. And even if I did, it wouldn't be anyone else's business. Anorexia is a disease, not a body type. And I don't need anybody else's validation with regard to what my body looks like: don't flatter yourself, men or women. If I were anorexic, do you really think that your telling me that I looked fine as-is would have me say, "alrighty then, I can start eating now. Thanks!"?
At 5'1" and 100 pounds, I hover above the border between 'normal' and 'underweight,' but we all know that BMI is bullshit. If anything, with my body composition, the BMI tables should be adjusted upward for me, but they're still bullshit. It's an attempt to define normal, to which I'll requote Carolyn from earlier in the week when she said, "I don't care about 'normal;' I care about healthy." If someone is not healthy, body snarking isn't going to change that. If someone does feel the need to be thinner than she or he is, that is a legitimate feeling, and it's not anyone else's place to invalidate it. If you prefer curvy women, or thin women, good for you: we all have our preferences; the issue is when you broadcast yours as if you're the arbiter of what other people should look like.
I try to be polite to my friends who express concern over my size. I owe no such courtesy to strangers, which is just as well because I don't stand out as unnaturally thin to random people in the street. I am, nonetheless, sensitized to the busybody phenomenon because I do often have to field questions about being vegan. Would it be rude to answer with other questions: Am I wasting away? Is my hair falling out? Does my skin betray any signs of malnourishment? (No, hell no, and no). My body doesn't want to hold on to fat right now, just like some bodies cling to fat no matter what. My body gets what it needs and keeps what it needs. Which brings me back to what Lindy West said: "The health of strangers is none of my business. I cannot diagnose other people's health just by looking at them." Words to live by.
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6 weeks ago a coworker and i who both have weight to lose started the couch to 5k running program. now 6 weeks later i can actually run 5k without stopping. i haven't lost a lot of weight, it has only been 6 weeks. but telling my fit (and very nice) male neighbor about my runs in the neighborhood that were topping 2 miles, he just looked shocked and without words said "you're fat and can run that far?" yes, i can, and will continue doing so and should be at 10k by the end of the year. 10k was never a goal, never even a thought, but it's possible. and hopefully more weight will come off. but, even if it's slow, i know my heart is healthier for all of this.
you and my oldest sound like you'd get a long well. eat a ton and are very healthy!
Your comment seems to imply that we should just look the other way when we see anyone with a weight problem and make the assumption that they will resolve it on their own. Surely, you've noticed that the nation as a whole is trying to address the problems of obesity and the media have certainly brought to our attention the consequences of anorexia. Weighing too much and weighing too little both have the potential of impairing your health and, as we've seen all too often, killing you. Another point: people who are anorexic have a problem realizing that they actually have a problem. So do you want me and others to go along with their illusion that all is well when it isn't? What kind of caring is that? You put the rest of the world in an untenable position: if we advise you that you're in harm's way, you're offended; if we don't advise you, you call us callous or indifferent. I think you should rethink what you wish for.
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