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:

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