Do not find fault with yourself because of the failures of others.
- Elder Samuelson
So I have frequently felt over my life more sorry for many thin women than myself.
I have learned that as Popeye says "I am what I am"
And I have learned to love me as I am.
Thin women on the other hand. Women that nature for the most part has dealt a smaller frame, seem caught up in the tremendous fear of becoming ... OH MY GOD!! FAT.
It's the modern woman's boogey man.
fat is sneaking up behind you - WATCH OUT!!
I used to work with this nurse and without exaggeration all she could talk about was calories and exercise. I am positive she had exercise bulimia. It was sad to watch and after a certain point hard to listen to. All she wanted to talk about was the diet of the week. The flavor of the month. No carb, low carb, high protein, this shake, that shake. The marathon, the sprints, the weights, the hours at the gym - 90 minutes on the stairmaster one day (in addition to her 'regular' circuit) NINETY MINUTES!!! Like watching an entire movie while on the stairs.
I tried to tell her she was beautiful and she didn't need to obsess, but the thing is she didn't want to hear that from a fat girl. I was a walking talking version of the boogey man.
And she had her husband to impress. He gave her incentives for losing weight. He called her his trophy wife, which she took as compliments, I took as insults. Like you better keep looking "hot" or I'm out of here.
The day my husband gave me incentives for losing weight (jewelry, cruises, broadway shows) is the day I would have realized I married a chauvinistic, sexist neanderthal. And I would go on a cruise. BY MYSELF.
But she swooned and to this day is probably still damaging her body. And when she has a heart attack or the like - people will scratch their heads and say "I don't get it" "She was so fit."
And when her husband probably leaves anyway - because for better or worse you can't exercise away getting older... when he finds a new trophy wife - He had left another wife for her... she might think If only I had been skinnier... had bigger boobs, etc... Or maybe she'll start to love herself for her and not what others think of her.
What the "war on obesity" does is not help anyone with health. It tries to shame fat people into being different than they naturally are. And in the war path - a lot of people who aren't fat, mostly women start to hate themselves too.
Another excerpt from Ragen because she says it so well:
Being fat is an interesting experience because it is a highly stigmatized group who are thought to be able to move in and out of that group at will. (I don’t think that the research shows that at all, but I find that it’s the commonly held belief.)
Because of this, there is a general idea that the cure for social stigma directed at fat people is for those people to stop being fat. In other words what we’re told is “Stop making people want to stigmatize you so much!”
Among fat people this this creates a couple of categories. If we publicly agree that we deserve to be stigmatized for being fat, and we’re trying to “do something about it” in the form of attempting weight loss (aka being a “good fatty”) we can gain some provisional acceptance from the stigmatizing group. If we refuse to buy into a thin=worthy model and refuse to attempt to conform and make our picture match someone else’s frame (aka being a “bad fatty”) then many people feel that we deserve all the hate and vitriol that they can spit at us.
But there is one group who are affected by these things who don’t often get attention: They are the people who are thin but spend their lives obsessed with not getting fat. They see what happens to us fatties and they don’t want it to happen to them. Some have disordered eating. Some are fixated on exercise. Some weigh themselves every day in constant terror of being fat. Some spend their lives on diets trying to lose those “stubborn final 10 pounds”. Some miss out on experiences that they would have loved to have because they are afraid that it will make them fat or because they can never skip the gym. Some lose their lives on the operating table getting fat sucked out of their butts. I’ve heard that 8 out of 10 women and 6 out of 10 men are unhappy with their bodies. Women start dieting earlier (4 years old!) and stop later (or never).
So ending all the body shaming and body stigma isn’t just about making fat people’s lives better (although that alone is absolutely a worthy goal), it’s about making everyone’s lives better. Imagine a world where we could all approach our relationships with our bodies purely from a place of care and appreciation. A world where nobody hates their thighs, where bodies come in all shapes and sizes and that’s just peachy. A world where people can make choices about their health rather than making choices based on the terror of facing massive social stigma.
We all deserve to live in that world. And we can all do things, right this minute to get us there. Some example to get us started:
1. Stop body snarking. All of it. Right now. There is just no reason in the world for you to comment negatively on someone else’s body. Get your self-esteem elsewhere (how about intrinsically?)
2. Interrupt body snarking and fat stigma whenever you hear and see them – whether it’s in your own mind or in public about your body or someone else’s.
3. Consider approaching your body from a place of care and appreciation.
4. Consider spending the money that you would spend on diet programs on other self-care…get some massages, take classes that you’ve always wanted to take, buy a bike, hire a chef to prepare delicious foods that will nurture your body, take a trip to a spa, buy whole foods, whatever makes your body feel amazing.
5. Understand that almost everyone in our society is hurting because of the unceasing body shame and stigma. Even that person who you might think has “everything” – the perfect body, the perfect face - may be living his or her life in terror of losing that. Look for ways to support other people and lift them up. Today at the bank I saw a woman with beautiful long, curly silver hair (exactly the kind of hair I plan to have someday). I told her that I thought her hair was awesome and she started crying. CRYING. At. The. Bank. She hugged me and told me that her friends said that you can’t have long gray hair and that she should cut it. What the eff people? We can do better.
end of excerpt.
Choose Health at Every Size.
PS - I'm a " bad - fatty" and happy to be so :)
another interesting link - Jezebel bans body snarking.
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