firecat

I distrust most conversations about who gets to be in [whatever] camp and who doesn't, and what's the "real" way of doing something and what isn't. Mostly I think they cause more harm than good. So I feel uncomfortable with the comments I'm going to make, but I'm going to make them anyway.

http://www.ficklefingeroffat.com/ is a new blog by a person who was a famous spokesperson for fat acceptance. The person is now blogging about her attempts to lose weight. This has caused some controversy at

shapelyprose and among some other fat-acceptance bloggers.

There are various takes on the subject, and I'm not going to list them all here. I'm going to discuss just one of them that came up in a friend's locked post. It was said that size-acceptance is about "live and let live," and suggested that it was hypocritical for size-acceptance advocates to criticize "a personal decision."

My comment was:

Thing is, it's not just "a personal decision" when it's undertaken in a public blog by a famous spokesperson for fat-acceptance.

The person has every right to do what they are doing, but writing a blog about their deliberate weight loss attempts discredits them as a spokesperson for fat-acceptance, in my mind.

therotund put it better here (emphasis mine):

A lot of the comments I have seen, both here and at Shapely Prose, seem to want to define Fat Activism as doing whatever the hell you want to do with your body. But that isn’t Fat Activism. That is body autonomy, which is a component of Fat Activism.

and

Does this mean [people who are dieting] cannot work toward changing social perceptions of fat people? No. But if you are a fat person who is publicly dieting, that is going to inform your message and reinforce the idea that fat people can and should lose weight by just trying hard enough. Does this mean you cannot appreciate and love other fat people? No. But it does send a message of “fat is okay for you but not for me” which kind of undermines the message of acceptance.

Flat | Top-Level Comments Only

From:

kalmn.livejournal.com

i have met the person in question, and i really like her, and i'm sad about this whole thing. i think that starting a publically accessible blog with her name on it was not the thing to do if she didn't want to hear about what other people thought of her choices, but on the other hand, it's got to be pretty hard to be her this week.

i think people should be happy in their bodies, and should work to get that way. i think it's even okay to work to get that way by eating the food that makes you feel good (i.e. not high sugar foods which are apparently a problem with pcos), and by exercising more.

i just think that adding on "and trying to lose weight" is a good way to make yourself crazy. i mean, the two sets of behaviors can be *identical*. weight change can happen from both. but in one case you're doing things to do them, and in the other, you're doing them because fat is bad, your body is bad. and that's just poisonous.

From:

janetmiles.livejournal.com

Y'know, that way of putting it makes sense in my head. I have another friend who is a fat woman, and who is going to the gym regularly because she wants to improve her flexibility and stamina. And that doesn't make me twitch in the same way that "because she wants to lose weight" would do.

I also know four women who have had gastric bypass surgery and one who's going to, and I just want to scream every time one of them says something like, "I was so sick and in so much pain, and I almost died from the infection, and I'd do it again in a heartbeat because it was the only way I could lose weight."

And there were several years when I didn't eat sugar at all, even fresh fruit, because any kind of sugar reacted really badly with my antidepressant and made me terribly sick and caused lots of pain. And hearing my doctor say things like, "You've lost weight! Good for you!" was really unhelpful.

And I want to start exercising regularly again, but I'm pretty convinced that it has to be yoga, because in 40 years yoga is the only form of exercise I've found that doesn't fuck with my head and make me crazy in bad and ugly ways. Well, okay, that and mall-walking, but even there I have to be careful (mentally and emotionally, I mean).

I'm rambling here, aren't I. Weight and size and fat and diet and nutrition and exercise and body image are so goddamn fraught.

From:

redbird

It took a while for me to really convince the staff at my gym that I wasn't there to lose weight, it was strength, flexibility, and stamina--and I've since added balance as a goal. Still, they're better at believing it than my dentist is, because they comprehend the idea of wanting to be stronger.

From:

kalmn.livejournal.com

ugh. i did tai chi for a while, until my knee decided that that was enough of that. and i've done warm water pool therapy, and while i like it all right, i do it with my mother and while i adore my mother, there's only a certain amount of time i can spend with her per, uh, ever. ;) so i stop and restart that whenever i am over my mom-limit.

From:

firecat

i mean, the two sets of behaviors can be *identical*.

yes, and whether or not weight loss occurs, the two sets of behaviors can be beneficial to health. and i think it's critical for health to be decoupled from fat. so i'm disappointed that someone i used to consider a savvy fat activist doesn't seem to get this.

i didn't realize until i read the blog that she previously didn't have any fat-correlated health problems. i do know that a lot of fat people have a big crisis of confidence when they first get a fat-correlated health problem, but it's been so long since that happened to me that i've forgotten what it feels like. so i'm being uncompassionate and lacking in imagination. but the message i'm taking home is 'now that i'm like you (fat and with fat-correlated health problems), there's something terribly wrong with me that i must fix.' and i take it personally and it hurts.

From:

imnotandrei.livejournal.com

Maybe, somewhere in here, there's a decoupling that could be made about "fat" vs. "big", in addition to a decoupling between health and fat.

Specifically in reference to:
'now that i'm like you (fat and with fat-correlated health problems), there's something terribly wrong with me that i must fix.'

IIRC, one of the health problems mentioned was joint and soft-tissue pain in the legs. Which is, I'm afraid, just a *big* person's problem, and the issue of stress on joints is a matter of *mass* above them, whether it's fat, muscle, or people who've elected to sew lead to their bodies. ;)

I understand how it can be disturbing, to hear that from a fat activist; I also know that because of the way I'm built I'm always going to have joint issues (I've got the classic "linebacker gone to potbelly" build, and if I lost fat through exercise it would very likely come back as just more muscle mass) The same is true of a lot of bears I know -- we're fat, but we're also just *big*, and the only solution to the problems of being *big* in those areas is losing mass or being very careful with our knees. (I got lucky -- my sport was soccer, and so I have a lot of musculature built up to support the rest of my weight. I've known some people who had the classic "triangle" build, with fairly thin legs, who had *real* problems with their joints from an early age.)

I've chosen to take the route of "watch where I put my feet and hope I don't slip"; but I'm not sure I'll stay on that route when I reach the "have trouble with my knees bending enough to get me out of chairs comfortably" or the "torn ligaments due to slipping on the stairs" stage.

What we do for our health at any given moment is going to be just such a tradeoff with other things we may want -- and I don't think it's a bad thing to decide, at some point, that it's worth a change to avoid a consequence. One can argue whether the change is the best way to do so, or even whether the consequence is a real one, but the principle remains the same.

From:

firecat

Which is, I'm afraid, just a *big* person's problem

I see what you're saying, and I don't entirely agree with that statement for various reasons. It implies if you're big you will have knee pain. But I think knee pain a combination of genetic luck, muscle strength (as you point out), and how the joints are used.

I know lots of heavy people who don't have knee pain and I know lots of light people who do have it. I agree that being heavy will often contribute if a person is prone to it or has already been injured, but I also know people who've gone from being heavy to being light and their knee pain didn't go away, or got worse.

I also know that knee pain or the risk of future knee pain is frequently given as a reason for big people to get smaller. But I don't usually see it given as a reason for people to avoid athletic activities even if their games of choice involve movements likely to cause knee injury. I think there's something to ponder in that.

The health problem I was thinking of when I wrote the previous post was high blood pressure. In fat people high blood pressure is actually far less dangerous than in thin people, according to some studies.

I don't think it's a bad thing to decide, at some point, that it's worth a change to avoid a consequence.

Not in the abstract. But what change, and whether the change really does what it is purported to do, and whether the consequence really is what it's purported to be, and whether one can really know those things in a society that ties the change in question up with a whole lot of morality issues - those are really big questions here.

From:

cassidyrose.livejournal.com

Ditto on the knee stuff. My family has shitty knees. I have had shitty knees (congenital problems) all my life and significant knee pain since high school (when I weighed all of 130lbs). I was a serious athlete in high school (tennis and swimming) but my knees were so bad that getting up and down stairs was a problem. My knees got better after I quite engaging in sports so heavily. Dance, these past ten years, of course, did not help, and I noticed a signifcant improvement in knee pain when I took a dance hiatus at the end of my pregnancy and a few months post-partum. FWIW, our smallest dancer has the worst knees of any of us and we have had several dancers heavier/bigger than me who could do all sorts of whacky knee stuff that hurts me to even think about.

So, yeah. I have never believed that knee pain is all, or even mostly, or even partially, about one's weight/size.

From:

jillzilla.livejournal.com

I'm very wary of saying that knee pain is normal for large people, because in my case that belief contributed to a truly serious problem being overlooked for a decade. My severe and worsening knee pain of ten years turned out to be a symptom of celiac disease, and when I stopped eating gluten it got vastly better. Later when I strengthened the muscles around the knees (which was hard; the muscles were extremely weak and I had to find ways of working them without standing on a bent knee), the pain went away to the point that I have gone from being unable to walk up stairs to trotting up and down the long flights of stairs in the London Underground with no pain most days.

Oh, and I'm fat. Incidentally, when I stopped eating gluten I temporarily gained about twenty pounds and then lost it again (without trying either way), and the knee pain lessened while I was gaining. The weight was not the cause of the pain. My immune system attacking my joints in response to gluten was the cause of the pain.

From:

kalmn.livejournal.com

could i ask you to email me and tell me about your knee exercises? i am trying to build up my knee muscles, and am looking for new things to do. kalmn @ lj works fine.

From:

firecat

I'm not

jillzilla but I took a knee health workshop at NAAFA with Cinder Ernst, and it was great. I'm out of town without access to the sheet of exercises she handed out, but her web site says you can contact her here:

Telephone: 415-699-5797
Email: CinderErn@aol.com

http://www.cinderernst.com/index.html

From:

mjlayman.livejournal.com

I'm fat and I have no cartilege left in my knee. My right knee. Why just that knee? I'm partially paralyzed on the left side so my right side has been doing all the standing up, sitting down, and turning for years. It has nothing to do with my size. (The glucosamine has made a big difference for the pain in my knee -- I can't take NSAIDs.)