fancybidet:

If you’re a smaller fat person and you embrace the word fat and use it descriptively and lovingly, that’s awesome. I just hope that you think about your big fat friends who can’t use weight limited gym equipment, are denied visas to countries, denied life saving operations, and can’t physically fit into this every day world leading them to live isolated and distressing existences.

I would hope that you’re totally cool with your privileges and that when it comes to taking up space in fat activism, there are marginalised experiences we need to talk about OTHER than how hard it is to find clothes (although that is important too!) and our fat friends on the super awesome deathfat end of the spectrum need a place to talk about the things that make it hard for them to live and thrive every day (including other intersecting oppressions!)

onegirlrhumba:

i’m sick and fucking tired of pretending that “loving your body” and rejecting fat-shaming on an individual level does anything to change issues relating to beauty and thin privilege, or that it has any effect on the institutions and structures that perpetuate them.  it does nothing to change the fact that larger people or people viewed as less attractive are widely viewed as less intelligent, as incompetent, or as lazy.  it doesn’t change the fact that larger people have worse health care outcomes or that they are less likely to be hired for jobs and, if they are hired, are often paid less than their thinner or more conventionally attractive colleagues.  it does nothing to combat the pathologization of fatness.  by itself, it doesn’t do anything to change the greater culture.  i, along with many other people, attempt to reject that culture and participate in or create alternate possibilities, but it’s important to remember that these spaces aren’t accessible to everyone who could benefit from participation.  it’s not enough.

here’s a corollary to that: while people who identify as women are inundated with messages that devalue female-coded bodies, sexualize them (in ways that are often deeply imbricated with the simultaneous racialization of such bodies), and present them as being in constant need of improvement, i wonder if the focus on body acceptance doesn’t end up being the same ideas, articulated differently.  certainly, our bodies shape our lived realities, are inescapable, and must be taken into consideration in political or sociological or philosophical conversations.  body acceptance may shift the ways in which these realities are enacted on some level, or at least the way realities are materialized.  but, for many people, bodies can be hard to love, and i’m not sure how necessary it is that many of us “love” them in the ways that body-acceptance proponents believe we should.  for my own part, my neuro-atypical, ethnically marked, formerly anorexic body is difficult to love.  i generally accept my body, understand where it fits into my reality, reject family members’ offers of plastic surgery to “correct” it, live in it.  it is, in some ways, a resistant body.  ”loving” it is not necessarily part of that resistance, nor do i think it needs to be.  a body is not an object with a concrete distinction from the mind, an object that can be separately valued and loved.  it should not be devalued, and it should be free from exploitation, violence, and abuse, but it is not always necessary to love it simply because it is a body.  (though i would argue that the more culturally and socially devalued a given body is, the more important it is that it is cared for and valued.)

the fact that “love your body” rhetoric shifts the responsibility for body acceptance over to the individual, and away from communities, institutions, and power, is also problematic.  individuals who do not love their bodies, who find their bodies difficult to love, are seen as being part of the problem.  the underlying assumption is that if we all loved our bodies just as they are, our fat-shaming, beauty-policing culture would be different.  if we don’t love our bodies, we are contributing to and in effect perpetuating normative (read: impossible) beauty standards.  if we don’t love our individual bodies, it is our fault for continuing the oppressive and misogynistic culture.  if you don’t love your body, you’re failing, you’re not trying hard enough to love it.  your body is still the paramount focus, and one way or another, you’re failing it.  it’s too close to the usual body-shaming, self-policing crap, albeit with a few quasi-feminist twists, for comfort.

tl;dr not all bodies are easy to love, or lovable.  challenge normative beauty-standards and fat-shaming on collective and structural levels rather than believing that “loving your body” is enough to change shit.  understand how your body materializes your lived reality and respect it, because your body IS yourself, not something separate.

fuckyeahsexeducation:

re-cover-ed:

“Fat acceptance” blogs urging overweight people to shed negative feelings about their body image can lead to healthier diet and exercise choices, a study has found.

The fat acceptance movement, which seeks to foster a support network among overweight people, has inspired a plethora of blogs and web forums such as Corpulent, Fat Heffalump and The Rotund — an online community that’s become known as the “fatosphere”.

In a study published in the journal Qualitative Health Research, researchers from Monash University, the University of New England and the University of Canberra interviewed 44 fatosphere bloggers from Australia, the US and the UK about how their involvement in the movement had changed them.

“There’s been a lot of criticism of the movement that it promotes obesity and encourages people to give up on weight loss and makes their health worse,” said one of the researchers, Dr Samantha Thomas, a Senior Research Fellow at Monash University’s Department of Marketing.

“We saw there was a lot of opinion about the movement but very few people had actually studied it.”

Interviews with the respondents revealed many had experienced feelings of worthlessness, shame, crash diets, cycles of starvation and binge eating and laxative abuse before discovering the fatosphere.

“Having that support and feeling empowered, people slowly found that their health behaviours began to change dramatically. For example, many people suddenly felt confident to do swimming, something they would not have done before,” she said.

“People shifted their focus away from weight loss and more toward health. A lot of people started to take part in physical activity not as a way to lose weight but because they enjoyed it. Instead of pounding it out on the treadmill they start playing with their kids. It’s actually a massive shift in the way they looked at things.”

Shifting the focus away from restricting food and toward listening to the body’s needs could also lead to better food choices, said Dr Thomas.

“There are actually a lot of lessons for public health here,” she said.

“The term fat acceptance is really confronting for people. That’s why we have seen a lot of blame and criticism. Society tells us it’s not OK to be fat for a whole bunch of moral and medical reasons,” she said.

“This study shows that far from promoting obesity and promoting negative health behaviours, the movement is really positive for some people’s health.”

EAT THAT CONCERN TROLLS.

(Source: theconversation.edu.au)

shakethecobwebs:

So, fever2live@yahoo.com submitted this picture to me. It’s a picture of a bottle of insulin and a caption that I used for one of my pictures which reads “challenging sizeist assholes in my spare time~*~*~” It’s a very sad attempt at shaming me for being fat. 

Here’s some big fat facts!

People who have diabetes: 

• Halle Berry
• Nick Jonas
• Mary Tyler Moore
• Salma Hayek
• Bret Michaels
• Larry King
• Anne Rice

People who don’t have diabetes: 

• Me

Number of fat people on these lists:

• One (Hint, it’s me!)

Guess what! You can’t tell what someone’s health status is by looking at their body. A large waist is not a pre-requisite for disease, including diabetes! So while you’re semi-anonymously submitting your ableist and sizeist MS Paint jobs to me on tumblr, I’m gonna be living my life to the fullest as a big fat bitch. In the meantime, you can fucking eat me. 

Also wanna say if you’re fat and diabetic that’s cool, of course. Fuck body & health shamers.

mistresssam:

Your fat acceptance and Body Positive Moments must be viciously and visibly anti-racist. 

The fat acceptance movement must become intersectional. It must also fight for the humanity of people of color. It must be vocally and visibly and obviously anti-racist or it will be pointless. If it is not it will only lead to fat white women being seen as possibly people to have sex with. It will only allowing maybe sometimes having a fat white person on a magazine not being obviously made fun of. The fat acceptance and body positive movements must put equal effort into fighting racism as it puts into fighting fat phobia and thin normativity. It must put extra effort into displaying beautiful happy and body positive people of color of all genders and identities. You, white fat acceptance blogs must actively seek out fat people of color and display them. Because there are not enough of us seen. And if you do not you are only aiding the white supremacy in Body positivism.  

zoedangerawesome:

He meant well. They always mean well. But I’ll be the first to tell you intent counts for very little.

I’m fat.

Fat.

I can claim the tittle. 

My name is Zoe, I’m 18 years old, I’m biracial, I have curly hair, and I’m fat.

Amazing how a three little word can hold so much power. Three letters wielded as a weapon. But its not your weapon anymore, its mine. My body belongs to me not you. And that body is fat.

So when I tell my mom that my chair broke and my brother says it because I’m fat and I reply by saying the chair couldn’t hold all my fabulous, and my brother says no its because I’m fat, I reply that my fat and fabulous are one in the same, don’t correct me.

Don’t tell me that some people are large and some people are fat and I’m only large. Don’t imply that I am better than people who weigh more than me because I’m not. My 230 pound body is not better than a 330 pound body.

Don’t demonize fat so much you can’t use it around a person whose company you might enjoy.

Because for me fat is healing. I spend a lot of time around people who talk about energy work and spiritual healing. Reclaiming fat is how I take of myself spiritually or other wise. 

I’m fat.

Don’t tell me otherwise.

I am not who I am in spite of being fat, or regardless of being fat.

I’m fat and that is part of me.

lisamonster:

virtutethecat:

That video from Laci Green about fat shaming and stuff is really cool and all.

But I’m pissed off because those are things that fat people have been saying forever, but when a thin-bodied person says them, they are praised for it. And all of a sudden, other thin folks are like OMG SHE’S SO RIGHT~

Agree 100%. Laci Green is fantastic and her videos are fantastic and I am so incredibly glad that she posted this video. I don’t want anyone to misconstrue that I think otherwise, but yes, isn’t it silly that the world will listen to a thin person telling them to stop fat shaming, but when all the fatties tell them to knock it off, we’re just, I don’t know, making excuses for our lazy jiggly asses and deserve to have those jiggly asses shamed off. 

Before I had even seen this video, I actually found myself thinking today, “If I were just a little bit smaller, people would take me seriously as a fat advocate.”

Ladies and gentlemen, this is the state of our society. 

Reblogging for agreement. It happens with all oppressions - oppressors will listen to one of them before deigning to bend an ear towards those who are actually being oppressed. And it sucks.

sugaredvenom:

Obese women are more likely to be discriminated against when applying for jobs and receive lower starting salaries than their non-overweight colleagues, a new study has found.

The study, led by The University of Manchester and Monash University, Melbourne, and published in the International Journal of Obesity, examined whether a recently developed measure of anti-fat prejudice, the universal measure of bias (UMB), predicted actual obesity job discrimination. The researchers also assessed whether people’s insecurity with their own bodies (body image) and conservative personalities such as, authoritarianism, and social dominance orientation were related to obesity discrimination, as they are related to homophobia and racism.

Psychologist and lead researcher Dr Kerry O’Brien said the nature of the study was initially concealed from the participants to avoid biased results, and simply advertised as a study on whether some people are better at personnel selection than others.

“Participants viewed a series of resumes that had a small photo of the job applicant attached, and were asked to make ratings of the applicants suitability, starting salary, and employability,” said Dr O’Brien. “We used pictures of women pre- and post-bariatric surgery, and varied whether participants saw either a resume, amongst many, that had a picture of an obese female (BMI 38-41) attached, or the same female but in a normal weight range (BMI 22-24) following bariatric surgery.

“We found that strong obesity discrimination was displayed across all job selection criteria, such as starting salary, leadership potential, and likelihood of selecting an obese candidate for the job.”

The higher a participant’s score on the measure of anti-fat prejudice, the more likely they were to discriminate against obese candidates, while those with a more authoritarian personality also displayed discrimination.

Dr O’Brien and co-authors Dr Janet Latner, from the University of Hawaii, and Dr Jackie Hunter, from Otago University, noted that one of the particularly interesting and new findings was that the participants’ ratings of their own physical appearance (body image) and importance of physical appearance were also associated with obesity discrimination.

”The higher participants rated their own physical attractiveness and the importance of physical appearance, the greater the prejudice and discrimination,” said Dr O’Brien. “One interpretation of this finding might be that we feel better about our own bodies if we compare ourselves and discriminate against ‘fat’ people, but we need to test this experimentally.”

The study is the first to show a relationship between explicit self-report measures of obesity prejudice and obesity job discrimination. In addition, the results suggest that a belief in the superiority of some individuals over others is related to the perception that obese individuals deserve fewer privileges and opportunities than non-fat individuals.

Dr O’Brien added: “Our findings show that there is a clear need to address obesity discrimination, particularly against females who tend to bear the brunt of anti-fat prejudice. Prejudice reduction interventions and policies need to be developed. It’s also becoming clear that the reasons for this prejudice appear to be related to our personalities, how we feel about ourselves, with attributions, such as, obese people are lazy, gluttonous etc merely acting as justifications for our prejudice.”

I once was rejected mid interview for a job at a craft shop - a craft shop! - because of my weight. It still makes me LOL to this day. The guy thought I’d have to take more breaks, when the job I was coming from involved walking, pushing, lifting heavy loads for 8-10 hours a day. Idiot.