I’m a regular reader of Shapely Prose, a fat acceptance blog created by Kate Harding who has an article in Salon today.
I link to this today just because her piece in Salon is so exactly my experience. Granted I gained weight because of psychotropics but otherwise every word she is saying I could be saying.
An excerpt to get you over there:
I may not be as big as some of my friends and family members, and I may not be the size most people mentally associate with the word obese, but I am bloody well fat, and I have been most of the time since college. The homeless man might have been crazy, but he wasn’t wrong. The friends who kept insisting “You’re not fat!” were the ones out of touch with the truth.
But then the truth was never really the point. Thin women don’t tell their fat friends “You’re not fat” because they’re confused about the dictionary definition of the word, or their eyes are broken, or they were raised on planets where size 24 is the average for women. They don’t say it because it’s the truth. They say it because fat does not mean just fat in this culture. It can also mean any or all of the following:
Ugly
Unhealthy
Smelly
Lazy
Ignorant
Undisciplined
Unlovable
Burdensome
Embarrassing
Unfashionable
Mean
Angry
Socially inept
Just plain icky (read the complete article here)
And as Kate warns don’t read the comments at Salon unless you want to see just how ugly fat haters really are. It’s pretty disgusting and disturbing. I made the mistake of reading about 3 or 4 of them before I’d had enough fat and woman hating shit.
I don’t know if I will stay fat or not since I’ve been dropping weight like mad since I got off the neuroleptics with no effort whatsoever. I feeling mighty skinny at just a tad over 200 lbs right now. Truly!! But I’m still fat and may always be. Politically I’m all about what Kate is here. Fat hatred is ugly. And most of us are party to it and we direct it at others and to ourselves. For quite an education spend some time at Kate’s blog.
And furthermore, most of the “science” that fuels fat hatred is just plain wrong. Don’t take my word for it—look into it yourselves.
A good place to start is Rethinking Thin by Gina Kolata which I’ve mentioned here before. She debunks a lot of the bullshit around weight and the obsession of dieting.
You can listen to Gina on NPR here to get a sense of what she is about.
By the way, comments are open for this post. The rest of the blog is shut down though. For a while only new posts will have open comments.
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the color of our skin…
i’m white, what do i know about this?
my wife is hispanic, and my boys are half white/half hispanic…
she has been treated with ugliness by some her entire life….my sons catch a lot of flack in school…
as a husband/dad it pains me
duane
I think the most important thing….with any of this, is to be kind to ourselves – always kind
….until it becomes a habit….until we don’t know any other way to treat ourselves…but with kindness
….unfortunately, it will be a long wait until the world accepts and appreciates those of us who struggle….whether with weight, “mental illness”, the color of our skin, whatever….
….accepting ourselves, and loving ourselves – just the way we are….exactly as we our….this, i think is the greatest gift we can give ourselves, and each of us deserves this gift !
Duane
Thanks for the great link. I’m taking my big ole butt over there!
Prejudice is prejudice pure and simple. Fat, thin, mad, sane, black, white, any colour inbetween, gay, straight, bi, poor, rich, boring, etc, etc, etc, etc, puke.
Take people as one finds them on their own merits and chuck the effing labels in the bin. I’ve spent too much of my life being a one-man force that pulls lazy ignorance up whenever it’s uttered in my presence, and by all the gods I’m tired.
Anyone who can’t see beyond ‘fat’ or any other label needs their heads testing for the humanity gene.
Take care Gianna, hope you’re ok.
David.
amen…
bigotry of all kinds pains me too.
Joy Nash’s original fat rant:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yUTJQIBI1oA
she has a youtube channel…she’s great!
I love it! Thanks for tackling this very “delicate” issue. As you know, I’ve had many fat rants and hate it when men – and yes, women too – harass others about their size. Thanks again!