News Big Fat Bullies
posted by on October 31 at 10:00 AM
Lily-Rygh Glen wrote a piece for Bitch about eating disorders and fat acceptance movement. More precisely, she wrote a piece about the fat acceptance movement’s inability to acknowledge the existence of eating disorders, and the damage this is doing to activists within the fat acceptance movement.
Becky has been active in the fat acceptance movement for a good half-dozen years. She attends and organizes awareness-raising events, takes part in her local fat social scene, and fights to end discrimination against fat people with a powerful combination of weary sadness and righteous anger. She wears her weight like well-adorned armor, betraying no sense of regret or shame in her 480-pound body.Becky also has an eating disorder. When I asked her how she reconciles these two parts of her life, she replied simply, “I don’t.” Becky hasn’t “come out” about her eating disorder to her peers in the fat acceptance movement and has no plans to do so anytime soon. A binge eater who uses food as a control mechanism, Becky literally shakes when discussing what would happen if she were “found out” within the movement.
For her troubles, Glen has been drummed out of the fat acceptance movement.
When I solicited input from members of my local fat acceptance community, I was shocked at the vehemence with which I was told, in one way or another, to simply shut up…. I was accused of being fatphobic and “healthist;” I was told I was going to make the entire movement look like “a bunch of sickos”; and I was literally threatened, as one woman suggested that I change my phone number and move, since the backlash “won’t be pretty.”
Read the whole thing here.
I fucking hate-hate-hate fat people! People get mad about smokers, I get mad about fat people.
How about fat smokers? You got a soft spot for them, right?
"What's wrong with being healthy?"
"Ist! Health-ist!"
Well written article. Some of us are obese due to psychological conditions and some due to our genetic code. The problem is very serious now as our overfed/somewhat depressed/pressured obese people start having children and the young ones (like the overweight little girls who get on my #7 every morning look exactly the same as their mother whilst they are all eating their McDonald's bfast. The so-called fat acceptance movement is refusing to acknowledge that some of their problems are due to their own behaviors..and as health insurance becomes more and more pricey, we all wind up paying for our fat coworkers--who incidentally cost a 100 person company more than your average smoker. Unfortunately I know what I am talking about as the former HR officer dealing with two obese smokers that charged the company health plan thousands of dollars over a five year period.
"Healthist" as an insult? Do they have any idea how silly that sounds?
Fat acceptance people bother me. I think it's good to have a general body image awareness campaign, but everyone should work to be healthy even if healthy means "husky" for some.
I wouldn't fuck with these people. They might sit on you and crush you to death. If they can catch you, of course. Best bet: run uphill, you'll induce a heart attach, and the pursuer might even roll back downhill, taking out the other members of the fat mob like rotund bowling pins, scattering their torches and pitchforks.
"Healthist"?? What's next? "Condomistas"?
There are few people I despise more than fat activists.
I like fat people- I've always found the stocky husky look incredibly attractive on a guy. But at some point it's no longer attractive and just plain unhealthy.
As far as this "fat issue" goes, on one side we've got manorexic gym queens who screech about the very existence of fat people, and on the other we've got fat people who preach denial and unaccountability... I believe somewhere in the middle is a healthy medium we should all strive to find.
A little compassion wouldn't hurt. I mean, we all have our own difficulties in life, things that defy either our own will or are looked down on by others. Maybe a free society needs to have a broader view of what it means to be human and vulnerable. An evolution in thinking.
Extremism in most things is wrong; this is no different. @9 is right. There needs to be a balance.
Bill, you made my day.
I'm a sickaphobe.
The fuck up with eating is that it becomes entangled with so many other things. Food is love, food is nurturing, food is your mother, food is comfort blah blah blah. What is wrong with an organization that can't support people where they are? Yeah, great, so now you have to stay fat in order to be in the club. What a bunch of fucking codependent victims. Oh no, if you lose weight then maybe I could lose weight and then if I lose weight then I may need to deal with what is really behind the weight. Yeah, scary. Here's a stretch, take care of your body, however that works for you. Love and accept it and love and accept other people's bodies.
I know plenty of hard working larger folks who eat well, exercise, have fun and look beautiful. They are what fat acceptance should be about. Beyond that dude people need to take care of themselves and love whatever comes out of those efforts. Our lady with the eating disorder would certainly benefit from some help on that, not for body size but for health. I guess I'm saying that stigmatizing people who are perceived to not be well doesn't hep them get any better, but it is fair to ask folks to take care of themselves.
@14 food is your new bike.
speaking as an obese person on the road to not being obese (bellevue avenue? when are you gonna teach me to dance the pounds away?), i wanna slap the stupid out of them. they are professional victims and right-minded (i'm right and everybody's wrong).
but until i'm at my optimal weight, don't lump me in with these girls. unlike them, i am actively doing something about it. maybe i should wear a t-shirt that says 'on the road to good health!'
480 lbs.? that's THREE mrs. solomons.
I used to be fatist until i gained a bunch of weight, and then lamented about how hard it was to lose weight. It seriously seemed like an unsolvable problem.
I finally understood and empathized with them.
The End.
BUT THEN. I realized that if i got off my fat ass for an hour or two a day and did something as simple as walking, AND didn't stuff my face with stupid bullshit, the weight melted right off. All i had to do was ACTUALLY DO SOMETHING about it. I understand that the times spent being active, and the calorie limits for people will be different based on your genetics. But genetics can't break the laws of physics. Its not like you can burn more than you take in and still gain weight. And its not like you'll starve to death by finding your balance.
and i'm talking about losing a quarter of my body weight too. not 5 or ten pounds.
People just need to do what they can to take care of themselves. If, at the end of the day, that means some folks are still somewhat overweight, that's fine. The important thing is doing what we need to do to improve our health and quality of life.
Gee, a post designed to celebrate hate against fat people in the comments on Slog. And from Dan Savage. Who would have thought?
I've been fat and I've been thin and I've been blessed to look great either way. The only difference is that being thin means I'm bothered by more jerks and assholes who think that the fact they're not fat makes them attractive. Sorry, but being attractive makes you attractive and you either are or you ain't.
Hate fat people all you want. You think they -- or any worthwhile person -- likes you? Fat chance.
Bellevue Avenue
in regard to my bike-dark purple, hybrid Schwinn complete with black pannier bags. I own my shit and I call people on theirs when they won't own it.
@22
This isn't a post to celebrate hate. It seems to be a post shedding a little light on the glaring reality that some(many?) obese people cannot blame their thyroid, but need help with an EATING DISORDER in which they cannot stop eating even though they feel full, disgusted, and regretful...only to do it again the next meal.
Listen, in this way, the fat acceptance movement is a -to use your own words- a celebration of self-hate...imagine an anorexia acceptance movement? an alcoholics acceptance movement? a kleptomaniacs acceptance movement?
Think about it.....without your knee-jerk-GUT reaction.
If everyone ate more pussy and cock and less food then this problem would be solved.
@25
more fish and more meat, AMIRITE?!
This article you found was written back in February of 2008. Are you so short on things to bitch about that you have to go dig up articles written 8 months ago? Or are you really out of touch? Or wait, maybe we're supposed to believe that you're so popular and busy that you've saved this one for a rainy day?
Given how little you've written about it (compared to how much you've quoted), I figure you just phoned this one in. After all, if you really felt it was important, you would have posted about it, oh, I don't know, 7-8 months ago, maybe? You know from previous experience that the topic of fat will get your readers all frothed into a rabid frenzy of superiority-complex snark, thus effectively writing your article for you.
There are idiots and assholes in every scene, community, movement, neighborhood, church, political party - you name any kind of group, and there's at least one particularly loud gibbering fucksnort who'll be ready to give the rest of their group a bad name.
Congratulations on giving your readers a chance to prove that fat hatred does, in fact, exist - and that as flawed as the fat acceptance movement may be, there's a valid reason for it to stick around.
@24: they already have anorexia-acceptance (even celebration) movements all over the Internet. It's pretty terrifying and unfortunately, rather prevalent.
> Exactly, that's my prob w/"fat acceptance." Why accept behavior that's not healthy? True, there are many reasons for being fat, sometimes it's not as easy as changing yr diet and exercising. Then it's a disability and the focus should be on helping people overcome the disability, not accepting it. I haven't known a single obese person who, after losing their weight (whether thru diet/exercise/therapy/surgery) didn't feel a whole lot better about themselves.
The whole concept is not about fat but about being closeted with a disease that causes great shame to the sufferer. It is the secrets that keep people sick. People with eating disorders need help and support to open-up about their disease in order to get help. it seems like the fat acceptance movement would be a more than appropriate place to address disordered eating and it's associated problems.
@27: I didn't run across this piece until... today. Can't read every thing, every where, every day.
I am a fat girl. Not obese, but a good 40 pounds over my ideal weight. My whole life I was relatively healthy, I worked out and ate reasonably well. Last year my weight ballooned up by almost 50 pounds. I went from working out for half an hour a day to an hour a day, I was even more careful about what I ate... I lost nothing, and continued to gain. So I just accepted that I was a fat person and tried to accept myself as fat and still attractive.
Finally, when I had bloodwork done for an unrelated condition a few months ago, my doctor discovered that I had severe hypo-thyroidism. As I had decided not to bring my weight up with my doctor as a potential problem, because I was denying that it was in fact a problem, my condition had deteriorated to the point that my health was in serious danger.
By refusing to acknowledge that my weight was a symptom of a larger (ha!) problem, I almost put myself at serious risk. I certainly don't advocate hatred of overweight people (Thanks a lot, Little Red Ryan Hood), I think it's important that we recognize that fat is often a symptom for something else going wrong in our bodies.
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