Why is it accepted that some people who eat a ton of food can stay thin, but not accepted that some people who eat a small amount of food can be fat?

Since thin people get diabetes, heart disease and high blood pressure, why is becoming thin suggested as a cure?

Why bother using BMI as a substitute for metabolic health measures when we can easily test metabolic health measures?

Doctors treat thin people for joint pain with options other than weight loss, why don’t they give fat people those same treatments?

Why do we believe that doing unhealthy things (liquid diet, smoking, urine injections coupled with starvation, stomach amputation) will lead to a healthy body?

If the diet industry’s product actually “cured fatness”, wouldn’t their profits be going down instead of up as more and more people were permanently thin?

Isn’t it medically unethical to prescribe something without telling your patients that it works less than 5% of the time with a much greater chance at leaving you heavier and less healthy than when you started?

Why do people continue to think that shaming people will lead them to health?

Why do we accept wide variations in things like foot and hand size, nose and lip shape etc. but expect every body to fit into a very narrow proportion of height and weight?

If weight gain isn’t proven to cause diabetes, high blood pressure etc., why would weight loss be recommended as a cure?

Since weight loss ads have to carry a “results not typical” warning, shouldn’t doctors have to give patients a similar warning?

Why do people take the time to come to my blog and make death threats?

Does anyone really succeed at hating themselves healthy? If so is it worth it?

If we’ve been prescribing dieting since the 1800s and still can’t prove that it works, shouldn’t we be trying something else?

How is it possible that suggesting that healthy habits are the best chance for a healthy body is controversial?

— Some Things I Don’t Understand « Dances With Fat (via sixtyforty)

(via everythingbutharleyquinn)

Can fat people be healthy? A provocative new study shows that obese people who are otherwise healthy live just as long as their slim counterparts.

And that wasn’t the only surprising finding. The study also showed otherwise healthy obese people are even less likely than lean people to die of cardiovascular disease.

“Our findings challenge the idea that all obese individuals need to lose weight,” study author Dr. Jennifer L. Kuk, assistant professor at York University School of Kinesiology & Health Science, said in a written statement. “Moreover, it’s possible that trying - and failing - to lose weight may be more detrimental than simply staying at an elevated body weight and engaging in a healthy lifestyle that includes physical activity and a balanced diet with plenty of fruits and vegetables.”

—

CBS article on a new weight study

(Research here)

(Source: shallanelprin, via clownyprincess)

Last week’s fury and this week’s fury, all rolled into one.

How Do You Fuck a Fat Woman? By Kate Harding

You should consider yourself lucky that some man finds a hideous troll like yourself rape-able.

That’s an actual comment left on the blog of a friend of mine, in response to a post she wrote about being raped and nearly killed. Every feminist blogger with more than four readers has dealt with comments along these lines. There are certain people who feel it’s their sacred duty to inform us, again and again, that rape is a compliment. (Or, more precisely, “Rape is a compliment, you stupid whore.”) Rape is not a violent crime meant to control and dehumanize the victim, see; it’s evidence that you were just so ding-dang attractive to some perfectly average guy, he couldn’t stop himself from fucking you, against your will, right then and there! He thought you were pretty! What are you so upset?

All in a day’s work for a feminist blogger, sadly – and when you’re a fat feminist blogger, it comes with a special bonus message: No one but a rapist would ever, ever want you. It this iteration of the “rape is a compliment” construct, our hypothetical rapist is no longer a perfectly average guy – because perfectly average guys aren’t driven to sexual incontinence by fat chicks. I mean, duh. No, the guy who would rape a fat chick is not only paying her a compliment, but doing her an enormous favor. He’s a fucking philanthropist, out there busting his ass to save fat girls everywhere from vaginal atrophy.

You fat whores would be luck to even get raped by someone. I hope you whiny cunts find your way on top of a pinball machine in the near future.

Whoever raped you could have just waited at the exit of a bar at 3am and gotten in consensually without the beached whale-like “struggle” you probably gave.

If any man would want to rape your gigantic ass, I’d be shocked.

It’s tempting to dismiss the lowlife assholes who leave comments like that on feminist blogs as… well, lowlife assholes. As is, people beneath not only our contempt but also our notice. Problem is, these comments show up frequently enough that they’re clearly not just the isolated thoughts of a few vicious, delusional wackjobs. They’re part of a larger cultural narrative about female attractiveness in general, and fat woman’s sexuality in particular.

It starts here: Women’s first – if not only – job is to be attractive to men. Never mind straight women who have other priorities or queer women who don’t want men. If you were born with a vagina, your primary obligation from the onset of adolescence and well into adulthood will be to make yourself pretty fro heterosexual men’s pleasure. Not even just the ones you’d actually want to have a conversation with, let alone have sex with – all of them.

So if you were born with a vagina and genes that predispose you to fatness, then you’ve got a real problem. You’ve already failed – fat is repulsive! Sure, there are men out there who particularly dig fat women, and plenty of other men who would be hot for the right fat woman if she came along. But those men, the culture helpfully explains, are outliers. Freaks. Even if you chanced upon one – which you could go a whole lifetime without doing, so exquisitely rare are they! - who would want to be with a man who’s so broken, he finds fat women attractive? Besides which, as we’ve discussed, your job as a woman is to be attractive not only to the men who will love you and treat you well, but to all heterosexual men. And if you’re fat? Well, as the kids on the Internet say, epic fail.

I’m against rape. Unless it’s obsess women. How else are they going to get sweet, sweet cock?

People really say this shit.

Whether they really believe it is almost immaterial. The purpose of comments like these isn’t to argue sincerely that rapists are doing a favor to fat chicks; it’s to wound the fat woman or women at whom they’re directed, as deeply as possible. And it works, to the extent that it does (which depends on the person and the day), because too many of us fully believe the underlying premise on which that twisted leap of logic is based: No one wants to fuck a fatty.

When I was in college – long before I discovered, let alone joined, the fat acceptance movement – I had a months-long non-relationship with this dude whose girlfriend was studying abroad for the year. We started out as Just Friends, then moved on to Friends Who Give Each Other Backrubs, and then to Friends Who Give Each Other Half-Naked Backrubs, Like, Three Times Daily. As you do in college.

One afternoon, I was lying on my stomach on a dorm bed, shirt and bra on the floor next to me, while this dude straddled my ass. He was giving me a backrub that, as usual, involved his sliding his fingers under my waistband and kneading handfuls of side-boob as if he just didn’t notice it wasn’t back fat. Sarah McLachlans’s Fumbling Towards Ecstasy was on the stereo (appropriately enough), a cheap vanilla candle was burning, and I was trying to regulate my breathing so he wouldn’t notice me pretty much panting. Because, after all, we were just friends. He had a girlfriend, even if she was on the other side of the world. This backrub thing was just … I don’t know, a bobby?

And then, out of nowhere, he says, “Hey, I kind of feel like making out.”

Now, I wanted to make out with this dude more than anything in the world just then – I’d wanted it more than anything in the world for months. And he’d totally just opened the door! Finally!

So here’s what I said: “What?”

I’m slick like that.

And here’s what he said: “Oh – oh, nothing. I didn’t say anything. Forget it.”

And with that, I immediately convinced myself he hadn’t just expressed interest in making out with me, for the very same reason I’d asked him to repeat himself instead of throwing him on his back and kissing him in the first place: I didn’t believe it was possible.
Let’s review. This guy was coming to my room, every day, more than once, to doff substantial amounts of clothing and touch me a whole lot. On top of that, we were both nineteen. And I didn’t believe he was attracted to me.

It sounds absurd to me now, but back then, it somehow made all the sense in the world. I was a fat girl! Nobody wants to have sex with a fat girl!

Compounding the absurdity of it all, I was just barely chubby back then, but of course body image doesn’t necessarily have jack shit to do with reality. My closest female friends were positively waifish, both naturally thin and not yet settled into their adult bodies. The guys I was attracted to – including this one – dated only skinny girls, at least on the record. And the guy in question had, in fact, mentioned on more than one occasion that it would be cool if I worked out more, while straddling my ass and groping side-boob. He’d made it perfectly clear that he did not find me especially attractive – certainly nowhere near as attractive as his girlfriend – while rubbing his hands all over my bare skin.

I didn’t know what “cognitive dissonance” meant back then. I knew only this: I was fat. And that meant he couldn’t want me. Sex was a nonissue because I was a nonsexual being 0 never mind what I felt, thought, or did in my own time. The important thing wasn’t my actual sexuality, or even how this particular dude perceived me; the important thing was how all heterosexual men perceived me. Remember?

And the culture never failed to remind me how I was perceived, via women’s magazines offering a new way to lost weight and “look good naked” every goddamned month; cheery radio jungles for fitness centers about destroying your “flubbery, rubbery guy”; Courtney Cox Arquette dancing in a fat suit on Friends, between ads for weight-loss programs; low-cal, low-fat menus with cutesy names like the Guiltless Grill in restaurants; sidelong glances in the dining hall; size 4 friends who were dieting; and – just in case all that was too subtle – the NO FAT CHICKS bumper stickers, the “How do you fuck a fat woman?” jokes, the fatcalls on the street. Women with bodies like mind were unwantable, unlovable, and definitely unfuckable. I was utterly, unwaveringly convinced of this.

So I really believed that dude and I were just, you know, backrub buddies. It was strictly platonic – even if I have never in thirty-three years had another platonic relationship in which a friend and I would greet each other by ripping our shirts off and getting into bed.

I have a dozen more stories like that. Add in my friends’ stories, and I’ve got a book. The Ones That Got Away: Fat Women on Their Own Goddamned Romantic Cluelessness, something like that. In our thirties, with most of us partnered off, we can laugh about it – but in our teens and twenties, the pain of rejection was fierce, and we truly had no idea that probably half the time, that rejection wasn’t even coming from outside us. We rejected ourselves as potential dates or partners or fuck buddies before anyone else got the chance.

Worse yet, some of us assumed our manifest unfuckability meant that virtually any male attention was a thing to be treasured. While I don’t know any women who have brought into the “rape is a compliment” theory, I certainly know some who believed abusive boyfriends when they said, “You can’t leave, because no one but me would want your fat ass.” I know several who have had multiple semi-anonymous one-night stands, not because that’s what floats their boats but because they were so happy to find men – any men, just about 0 who expresses sexual interest in their bodies. There’s a reason why so many TV shows, movies, and rude jokes represent fat women as pathetically grateful to get laid; some (though nowhere near all) of us are grateful, because after years of being told you’re too physically repulsive to earn positive male attention, yeah, it’s actually kind of nice to be noticed. And from there, it’s a frighteningly short leap to “You’d be lucky to be raped.” Even if you never officially make that leap – and I really, really hope there aren’t women out there who would – you’re still essentially believing that you have no agency in your own sexual experiences. Your desires aren’t important, because they can never be fulfilled anyway – you aren’t pretty enough to call the shots. The best you can hope for is that some man’s desire for sex will lead him to you, somewhere, some night.

Of all the maddening side effects of our narrow cultural beauty standard, I think the worst might be the way it warps our understanding of attraction. The reality is, attraction is unpredictable and subjective – even people who are widely believed to meet the standard do not actually, magically become Objectively Attractive. I fall right in line with millions of heterosexual women when it comes to daydreaming about George Clooney, but Brad Pitt does absolutely nothing for me. I think Kate Winslet is breathtaking, but my boyfriend thinks she’s meh. Ain’t no such thing as a person who’s categorically hot in the opinion of every single person who sees them.

But that’s exactly what we’re trained to believe: “Hot” is an objective assessment, based on a collection of easily identifiable characteristics. Thin is hot. White is hot. Able-bodied and quasi-athletic is hot. Blond is hot. Clear skin is hot. Big boobs (so long as there’s no corresponding bog ass) are hot. Little waists are hot. Miniskirts and high heels and smoky eyes are hot. There’s a proven formula, and if you follow it, you will be hot.

Of course, very few people can follow that formula to the letter, and some of us – fat women, nonwhite women – physically disabled women, flat-chested women, apple-shaped women, acne-prone women – basically have no fucking prayer. That doesn’t stop purveyors of the beauty standard from encouraging us to keep trying, though – with enough hard work and money spent, we can all at least move closer to the ideal. Sure, women of color can’t be expected to surmount that whole white-skin requirement (sorry, gals – better luck next millennium!), but they can torture their hair with chemicals and get surgery on those pesky non-European features if they’re really committed. There’s something for everyone in this game!

And for fat women, the solution is actually quite simple, they tell us: You can diet. You can work out as much and eat as little as it takes until you look like your naturally thin friend who loves fast food and despises the gym. Never mind that studies have shown that over 90 percent of dieters gain all the weight back within five years. Never mind that twin studies show weight and body shape are nearly as inheritable as height. And definitely never mind that your one friend can maintain this shape without ever consuming a leafy green vegetable or darkening the door of a gym, and another friend can maintain it while eating satisfying meals and working out for half an hour, three times a week, but for you to maintain it requires restricting your calories to below the World Health Organization’s threshold for starvation and spending way more time exercising than you do hanging out with friends and family. The unfairness of that is irrelevant. You just have to want it badly enough.

And you must want it that badly, because fat is Not Hot. To anyone, ever.

How else are you going to get sweet, sweet cock?

It’s really tempting to simply declare that fat women oppress ourselves, demean ourselves, cut off our own romantic opportunities - and the obvious solution is to knock it the fuck off. It’s tempting to say that because, you know, it’s kind of true. But it’s ultimately a counterproductive and nasty bit of victim blaming. When you’re a fat woman in this culture, everyone – from journalists you’ll never meet to your own mother, sister and best friend – works together to constantly reinforce the message that you are not good enough to be fucked, let alone loved. You’d be so pretty if you just lost weight. You’d feel so much better about yourself if you just lost weight. You’d have boys beating down your door if you just lost weight.

You’d be lucky to be raped, you fat cunt.

That’s just the way it is, baby. Fat chicks are gross. Accept it.

Refusing to accept it is hard fucking work. And being tasked with doing that is, frankly, every bit as unfair as being tasked with keeping “excess” weight off a naturally fat body. We shouldn’t have to devote so much mental energy to the exhausting work of not hating ourselves. Believing that we can be desirable, that we deserve to be loved, that the guy over there really is flirting should not be a goddamned daily struggle. It should not feel like rolling a boulder up a hill.

But it does. So the question is, which boulder are you going to choose to roll? The “must lose weight” boulder or the “fuck you, I will boldly, defiantly accept the body I’ve got and live in it” boulder? It’s a backbreaking and frequently demoralizing work either way. But only one way can lead to real sexual power, to real ownership of your body, to real strength and confidence.

Imagine for a minute a world in which fat women don’t automatically disqualify themselves from the dating game. A world in which fat women don’t believe there’s anything intrinsically unattractive about their bodies. A world in which fat women hear that men want only thin women and laugh their asses off, because that is not remotely our experience – our experience is one of loving and fucking and navigating a big damn world in our big damn bodies with grace and optimism and power.

Now try and imagine some halfwit dickhead telling you a rapist would be doing you a favor, in that world. Imagine a man poking you in the stomach and telling you you need to work out more, moments after he comes inside you. Imagine a man going on daytime TV to announce to the world that he’s thinking of getting a divorce because his wife is thirty pounds heavier than she was the day they were married. Imagine a man telling you that you can’t leave him, because no one else will ever want your disgusting fat ass.

None of it makes a lick of sense in that world, does it?

It doesn’t in this one either.

Imagine if more of us could believe that.

(Source: bajo-el-mar)

They called me ignorant.

Too far, guys! Too far.

It had to be done

The original post by some dude named Daniel:

Regarding the “Is it okay to call fat people fat?” post. Obesity costs Australia approximately $830,000,000 a year. In some studies obesity is a better predictor for lower life expectancy than smoking or alcoholism. Australia is now the fattest nation in the world & obesity is clearly a social problem NOT a genetic problem. To the moral crusaders who say obesity is “luck of the draw & genetics”, science would suggest you are wrong about 97% of the time. I’m not saying it’s ‘okay’ to call a fat person fat, but more awareness & education needs to be provided regarding obesity. Interestingly males in westernised countries are far less active, have less knowledge of nutrition & less concern for body image. This along with higher rates of smoking & alcoholism in men is what constitutes the gender discrepancy in life expectancy. Alcoholics are sent to AA & smokers are segregated from society. Obese people… don’t dare call an obese person overweight? As far as the ethical debate goes I’m staying out. Just thought I’d share a few pieces of information.

And a follow up by Mitchell, who is a dick:

“watch out that aggressive, ignorant chick from before. she’ll say you’re only afraid of fat people and then keep posting irreverent websites”

—

My response:

This is really odd Mitchell. You keep calling me aggressive but you’re the one calling me “you clown”, “mad”, “ignorant”, “clueless”, “retarded” and, my personal favourite, “chick” (subtly belittling me for my gender – nice one).

I completely understand why Daniel posted the above information but none of it was referenced. So this ignorant chick is going to have a go at responding with actual empirically researched fact.

“Obesity costs Australia approximately $830,000,000 a year.”

How so? Are you sure that statistic’s not just grouping most chronic diseases together and blaming them on obesity? Plus statistics like that are notoriously unreliable.
http://www.ipa.org.au/sectors/health/news/1765/ignor e-meaningless-public-healt h-studies-i%27ll-drink-to- that/pg/3

“In some studies obesity is a better predictor for lower life expectancy than smoking or alcoholism.”

There are MANY studies disproving this. A sample:
McGee, D.L., Body mass index and mortality: a meta-analysis based on person-level data from twenty-six observational studies. Annals of Epidemiology, 2005. 15(2): p. 87-97
http://www.seminarsinnephrology.org/article/S0270-92 95%2805%2900186-5/abstract Key point: “Observational studies in both dialysis and heart failure patients have indicated the lack of a significant association between the traditional cardiovascular risk factors and mortality, or the existence of a paradoxic or reverse association, in that obesity, hypercholesterolemia, and hypertension appear to confer survival advantages.”
The Seven Country Study, which has followed 13,000 men over the last 40 years, has found that the risks of dying from cancer and infections decrease with increasing weight. In long-term prospective studies, complications (like retinopathy) and mortality rates from type 2 diabetes are three times lower among heavier people. And people are much more likely to survive a hospitalisation if they’re “overweight” than if they’re thin.

In fairness, you say “some studies”. Sadly it’s only “some” because they’ve been debunked:
http://www.consumerfreedom.com/news_detail.cfm/h/2768-life-expectancy-another-obesity-myth-debunked

“Australia is now the fattest nation in the world”

I thought so too! But the World Health Organisation tells me we come in at no. 14 for males, and number 46 for females. Nauru tops the list in both categories – who knew THAT? Perhaps we shouldn’t take everything we’re told on face value.

“& obesity is clearly a social problem NOT a genetic problem. To the moral crusaders who say obesity is “luck of the draw & genetics”, science would suggest you are wrong about 97% of the time.”

Not sure where you got that 97% statistic from…, but the studies I’ve seen suggest you might be wrong here. Obesity is very much a genetic issue in many cases:
http://www.nytimes.com/2007/05/08/health/08iht-snfat.5614611.html?_r=2

If it’s a social problem and not a genetic problem, why haven’t we found any way to make LASTING changes to peoples’ weight (that is, lasting longer than 5 years)? (Don’t come back at me with diet and exercise until you’ve read the study and the many others that say the same thing):
http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/027273589190128H
Clinical trials dating back to 1970 have continued to show that the larger and faster the weight loss, the faster the regain, and the higher the follow-up weight. Garner and Wooley concluded: “It is only the rate of weight regain, not the fact of weight regain, that appears open to debate.” ‎

Mitchell Stroicz, you seemed pretty hurt that I suggested that you think this way because you’re repulsed by fat people. It wasn’t personal, there are studies in support of my arguments re: the fact that you guys are dressing up your culturally-reinforced disgust of obesity with statistics to make yourselves feel better about it:

Vartanian, L. R. (2010). Disgust and perceived control in attitudes towards obese people. International Journal of Obesity, 34, 1302-1307.

Funnily enough, this disgust and fat-shaming actually makes people fatter!

Novak, S. A. & Vartanian, L. R., (in press). Internalized societal attitudes moderate the impact of weight stigma on avoidance of exercise. Obesity.
Shaprow, J. G. & Vartanian, L. R., (2008). Effects of weight stigma on exercise motivation and behavior: A preliminary investigation among college-aged females. Journal of Health Psychology, 13, 131-138.

So there you go kids. Sorry I’m so ignorant! But I’d like the concluding words to come from this lady who featured on Triple J’s Hack not so long ago:

“Even if all fat people are the way they are due to their bad choices, even if every single fat person is unhealthy, that does not justify sub-standard treatment. How can the health of strangers possibly inspire such vitriol? If you remain convinced that others’ bodies are your business and that people must justify their existence to you, perhaps you should consider the possibility that you are an arsehole.”
- http://corpulent.wordpress.com/2011/02/11/fat-on-the-air/

—
The lesson? Don’t call me ignorant. I will probably go postal.

Every person should read the article linked in the above heading.

It is eye opening and it’s really important.

http://kateharding.net/faq/but-dont-you-realize-fat-is-unhealthy/

As it is, I can only acknowedge that she is absolutely right.

I’m working on it.

I’ve been reading a number of “fat blogs” (such as this one) over the past few days, and have been struggling to find a position on the argument about society’s attitudes to fat and how the female figure should be portrayed in the media.

At first I was just trying to see the point of the writers of the “fat acceptance blogs”. Their point is valid, that fat should not necessarily be seen as repulsively unhealthy when we are surrounded by images of women so underweight that they are just as unhealthy as those who are overweight or obese.

I’ll admit that I’m uncomfortable with the idea of too much fat acceptance. Some people were born big boned or curvaceous or whatever word we’re allowed to use. A healthy, natural weight for them is not going to be the same as someone like Jennifer Hawkins, and they have every right to feel beautiful the size they are. But their healthy, natural weight is also not going to be the same as these so-called “real” people everybody’s apparently dying to see. I, for one, could never feel healthy at the weight that some of these blogs are advocating, and I think most people wouldn’t. This image, for instance, terrifies me. Is the idea to make the other fat blog readers feel good about themselves by comparison?

Or a statement on this blog: “Now, at 20 years old and 230 pounds, I’m a million times happier with my body than I was at 140 pounds.” It’s great that she feels great about herself, but how can that be a healthy weight? Be secure and happy by all means, but should a girl who weighs over a hundred kilos be proud of it?

How ironic that blogs like these make me feel worse about myself. Instead of comparing myself to people who are a slimmer than me but not so far off, and are hailed as perfect, I’m surrounded by pictures of large people, and that’s ok - until you see pictures like this.* By displaying their bodies in protest, they’re implying that they have always been conventionally ugly. And I look in the mirror and I see someone like them.

I was happier when the media was just thin and unrealistic.

“It’s imperative that women stop defining ourselves by our body shape. There are simply more important things to worry about - pay issues, maternity leave and sexual violence spring to mind - and better things to celebrate, such as our minds, hearts and work.

“Bianca Dye is as real as Jennifer Hawkins, who is in turn as real as Magda Szubanski, Fiona Wood, Jenna Jameson, Michelle Obama, your mother, my sister, and the woman who runs the local milk bar. By now, everyone should realise that the only people out there who aren’t ”real women” are men.”

- Dye v Hawkins: a fatuous argument over slim women

*The hyperlink is now broken, but it was of a girl who wasn’t particularly large but may have been classified as “overweight” by some - because she’s not stick thin. She was normal.