Reblogged from vulgarvulgar
FULL-FAT HUMANITY
Not any kind of fat.
Oh Boundaries! Oh Boundaries!
You help me deal with family.
Don’t talk about my weight or food.
Why can’t you see it’s hella rude
Oh Boundaries! Oh Boundaries!
You help me deal with family.
You know I love my family
But I will leave if you fat-shame me.
Oh Boundaries!…
(Source: danceswithfat.wordpress.com)
Gender is not to culture as sex is to nature; gender is also the discursive/cultural means by which “sexed nature” or “a natural sex” is produced and established as “prediscursive,” prior to culture, a politically neutral surface on which culture acts.
—Judith Butler, “Gender Trouble: Feminism and the Subversion of Identity”
People, this frame also fits “OBESITY”. I’ve used the same reference to explain how ‘obese’ has become more of a role, than a body type or diagnosis.
‘obesity’ seeks to produce or increase-depending on health status-the very characteristics it is supposed to be ‘diagnosing’, manipulating they way people see themselves, so they play/feel sick or sicker.
Defining fatness as a homogeneous condition, requires fakery as it is not a true or even useful way of looking at weight. Rather like gender roles seek to create a false homogeneity of masculine and feminine traits-through claiming the imposition of roles is a display of innate characteristics.
There’s little doubt that some fat people have conditions that are either producing or increasing fatness as a product of that underlying condition or conditions. ‘obesity’ gets in the way of finding out just what’s going on, including many for whom that doesn’t apply, excluding many for whom it does, due to the crude division imposed by diagnosing weight rather than symptomatology.
Equally, not only do slim people have the same conditions, they can also have more acute health issues, due to not their (usually) lesser ability to gain weight.
Depressed slim people who then go on anti depressants and gain weight and stabilize are a case in point.
Nobody thinks this means slimness=mental ill health or that they should associate it with personal misery. Or that because slim people commit suicide more than fat people, seek to frame slimness as a ‘cause’ of suicide.
Slimness is too broad a categorization for that to make real sense, but it certainly could look that way if slimz were indoctrinated to see themselves in a debased, hateful and insulting manner. It’s interesting that the inverse relationship between weight and suicide is stronger in men than in women.
There’s no evidence that deliberately induced gain would garner the same benefits as the more usual spontaneous adjustment that happens in fat people anyway. No doubt because the method would be the same as for weight loss, energy manipulation, in this case increasing food intake.
Because deliberately increasing your intake against your desires or needs is not good for you though perhaps not as bad as the reverse. And because the weight acquired may behave differently than the usual spontaneous kind.
It is also metabolic and in the context of the individual person. For other slim people, weight is hardly part of the equation either way.
Like gender, the construct of ‘obesity’ is in the place of the real experience of being a fat person. The study of it reinforces this loop by referencing ‘obesity’ as more real than actual fat people’s experience. Theory takes precedence over reality, as we see by the refusal to absorb the failure of calorie restriction dieting as weight loss/management.
(via trickster-princess)
The unbroken circle of shame. It’s internalized via authorities definitions and instructions and external, it was believed to be shameful by everyone else too. Often when people feel badly about things, other people can provide a sense of perspective.
How many times have you felt lost and vulnerable and family, friends and/or professionals reassured you about your inner torment? What if instead they ALL told you this in the first place and everywhere you went the message was the same?
That you fear about yourself is exactly how it is. And you know, it’s your duty to feel even worse actually.
What effect do you think that would have had on you?
Fat shaming is the shame of our shared collective consciousness.
There was no separation, which meant no rest, no ability to escape and therefore recover from these intense feelings of dread and shame.
Where we could know it was us against the world. We were part of that same world, against ourselves. We could not and did not know to defend ourselves at all.
This highly unnatural state, often building on the defenselessness of children-hence the disgusting targeting of children with so called ‘child obesity’.
So when thin/slim people talk about randomn people “thin shaming” them and hurting their fee fees, it simply is not the same thing at all.
It spoils the effect if you use allusion to such to insult fat people.
Just sayin’.
Even when I felt acutely embarrassed about being fat and wanted desperately to prove my moral worth-by becoming slim.
I still had absolutely no desire to participate in certain thought processes much aired by certain slimmer people. i.e. behaving as if other people’s bodies are attacking your own, without your say so. i.e. behaving as if it’s impossible to tell models are thin for their job and if it isn’t yours, you don’t have to try to thin like them, unless you don’t want to.
Or oh, “I hate my body so much-even though it looks exactly like the height of acceptability.” Oh really? Why don’t you just try stopping that if-only if- you don’t like it, as this is going on in your own brain?
Of course, like many other fatz, who had similar thoughts-not by any means all of us- it wouldn’t have occurred to do more than vaguely conceptualize these thoughts before.
It was just obvious on sight.
It still haven’t quite worked out why the above is/was so impossible, well, not from what I’m told anyhow.
Either way, that extent of passivity, felt very much like a privilege of being thin. Fat people were not allowed to blame anything, so we didn’t.
This is at least in part because, like everyone else, I thought it was entirely reasonable to take on my survival instinct and win. You acclimatize to this thinking. And though problematic, that doesn’t mean I’d ever want to throw the whole lot out by any means.
Please understand I need to remain anonymous. The retalliation when a fat acceptance person doesn’t hate thin people can be harsh. I have let it go for too long. I don’t understand why we have to hate to be equal. Yes thin privilege exists and a lot of things are easier for thin people. But why do…
The OP’s sentiment is pretty prevalent amongst fat and slim alike. I used to call it “too right for fatties syndrome”. Fatz definition as the worst, means whenever it fails to look like we are, panic ensues.
The natural order is under threat of being outraged.
So, some ludicrous contrivance of fat badness must be fashioned.
This is why I say, ‘obese’ is a role so often like a sex/gender role.
There’s no doubt that many slim people feel acutely embarrassed that those defined in their heads as always worse than them may not be behaving as badly as their high falutin’ selves. They do what many of them do when they feel bad, put it on us to resolve it for them. Rather than change their own ways.
I think we should all be aware of these feelings inside of many of us too. After being so wrong for so long. After adapting so completely to this, the feeling that we don’t have the right to be anything but wrong can be very strong.
“A while back, at the entrance of a gym, there was a picture of a very thin and beautiful woman. The caption was “This summer, do you want to be a mermaid or a whale?”
The story goes, a woman (of clothing size unknown) answered the following way:
“Dear people, whales are always surrounded by…
Fat people of varying sizes and the like doing things and living life and falling in love.
I’d love to see fat people outside of the box…
Ugh, I just need to get a youtube show going already.
Like with…
My mind is exploding……..
It’s certainly useful. People know you are human, they just define you and treat you as if you don’t actually count as one.
The experience of being fat in fat phobic societies, give us a different perspective which is inherently valuable. We’ve all learnt from taking for granted slim people’s humanity, now its time to learn from doing the same from fat people.
Even if it’s just for the sake of my sanity.
The “argument” against fat people is that they “choose” to be fat and therefore deserve to be treated like shit.
I don’t give a fuck if someone chooses to be fat or not, that doesn’t give anyone entitlement to treat them like shit.
There is no justification for subjecting fat people to what we have to deal with, full stop and we all know that. Now we’ve finally breaking out of the hold that has kept us down for so long. We aren’t going to forget it. So keep trying to find reasons to justify your hating soul, you won’t succeed.
* Plus what FA said.
