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:

baratron.livejournal.com

But it does send a message of “fat is okay for you but not for me” which kind of undermines the message of acceptance.

Hmmm. I hear what you're saying, but I think that people can honestly believe that fat is ok for others but not themselves while still being generally accepting. I am perfectly happy for any other human being on the planet to be whatever size or shape is right for them. At the same time, I reject the idea that anyone other than me has the right to say what size or shape I should be. The two things do go together perfectly well in my head:
* Other people should be the size&shape that is right for them - I have no right to say what that is.
* I should be the size&shape that is right for me - no one else has the right to say what that is.

I do understand that it feels like a sort of betrayal for someone who was previously a very active Fat Activist to now be writing about attempting to lose weight, though :/

From:

firecat

I agree completely with what you are saying; I'm not trying to dictate anyone else's size and shape.

My problem is this. 99.98% of the people who publicly state that they are pursuing size change for themselves (whether or not they have different size standards for themselves than for others) are saying "I am trying to get smaller." Every individual person who says/does that has every right to do so. But when there are thousands of people doing weight-loss blogs, and virtually no one doing weight-gain blogs, and very few people doing weight-doesn't-matter blogs, the overall message I get (and I don't think I'm alone here) is: "putting effort into getting smaller is really important in this society."

Now add in all the people who say outright fat-hating things. The overall message I get is "If you are fat, then maybe you have a right to exist if you are trying to get smaller. But otherwise you should not exist."

Feminists talk about how sexual harrassment is multiply problematic if there's a whole lot of it and not enough support for people who are emotionally affected by it. Let's say I go to a bar and one man hits on me, one man calls me a bitch, and a bunch of other people treat me with liking and respect. That's overall a positive experience. But if 1,000 men hit on me and 1,000 men call me a bitch, and two people treat me with liking and respect, I feel overwhelmed and threatened.

Likewise, if one person says "I'm trying to get smaller," I might regard it as an interesting experiment or a curious hobby. If 1,000 people say "I'm trying to get smaller," and 1,000 people say "Big people are disgusting and unhealthy," I feel threatened.

From:

ailbhe

Perhaps I should start a weight-maintenance blog... "Today in order to avoid losing weight again I forced myself to eat two helpings of dinner even though I was too tired to chew. Too tired to chew is a sure sign that I need to gain weight, but I'm not well enough to do that this week, so I have to stick with not losing any more. I wish I knew how to get 'overweight' so I'd have some insurance for when these weightloss spikes come," etc.

But I'm always afraid that it will come across as a sort of smug "Oh it was nothing really, I'm just NATURALLY thin / a good cook / other difficult-and-coveted-skill," if you see what I mean?

From:

firecat

I would know what you meant by it, but I think some people would assume you were being smug, yeah. It's hard to do anything on this subject without stepping on someone's tomatoes.