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meagenimage (![[info]](http://www.journalfen.net/img/userinfo.gif){kind=small} meagenimage) wrote in ![[info]](http://www.journalfen.net/img/community.gif){kind=small} otf_wank, |
Re: Sorry for getting all unfunnybusiness...
http://freethoughtblogs.com/greta/2
You can't be fat positive and demand that people be "as healthy as they can be". One, there's the constant assumption that skinny=healthy, and two, there are a fuckton of reasons not to be "healthy" (IE eat vegetables, fruits, and mostly unprocessed food and exercise regularly outside of work), and shaming people for not meeting health standards is just as bad as shaming them for body size.
Note that a lot of this was written in response to the "health at every size" crowd, who were trying to shame *her* for her choice to attempt to lose wight. It will always come off as somewhat defensive.
She does note that the ability to eat well and excercise is not something that is equally avialble to all people, and notes that some change would have to happen at a political level (city planning, farmer's markets, better labelling, etc.).
She also uses false facts, like the idea that being fat is associated with being unhealthy--sure, she doesn't say fatness causes it, but just bringing it up is so misleading when we're talking about being fat positive.
She is opposing the position that "Obesity never causes any health problems, ever". But then she goes on to say:
There are some real problems with the ways medical researchers have studied the health effects of fatness: they tend to conflate moderate overweight-ness with serious obesity, for instance, and they often don’t control for different eating and exercise habits among people of similar sizes. And an important part of the scientific method is questioning and opposition — both from inside the scientific community, and from smart laypeople outside it.
Also, I just wanted to quote this bit...
The stubborn insistence that healthy, sane, long-term weight loss is impossible — in flat denial of evidence to the contrary — seems to concede that if fat people could lose weight, then therefore they should. It’s essentially conceding that the only valid justification for being fat is that fat people have no choice. IMO, it’s a whole lot more fat-positive to say that people have the right to decide for themselves whether the difficult, time- consuming, attention- consuming, “10 to 1 odds against success” process of weight loss is something that’s worth pursuing.
http://freethoughtblogs.com/greta/2
You can't be fat positive and demand that people be "as healthy as they can be". One, there's the constant assumption that skinny=healthy, and two, there are a fuckton of reasons not to be "healthy" (IE eat vegetables, fruits, and mostly unprocessed food and exercise regularly outside of work), and shaming people for not meeting health standards is just as bad as shaming them for body size.
Note that a lot of this was written in response to the "health at every size" crowd, who were trying to shame *her* for her choice to attempt to lose wight. It will always come off as somewhat defensive.
She does note that the ability to eat well and excercise is not something that is equally avialble to all people, and notes that some change would have to happen at a political level (city planning, farmer's markets, better labelling, etc.).
She also uses false facts, like the idea that being fat is associated with being unhealthy--sure, she doesn't say fatness causes it, but just bringing it up is so misleading when we're talking about being fat positive.
She is opposing the position that "Obesity never causes any health problems, ever". But then she goes on to say:
There are some real problems with the ways medical researchers have studied the health effects of fatness: they tend to conflate moderate overweight-ness with serious obesity, for instance, and they often don’t control for different eating and exercise habits among people of similar sizes. And an important part of the scientific method is questioning and opposition — both from inside the scientific community, and from smart laypeople outside it.
Also, I just wanted to quote this bit...
The stubborn insistence that healthy, sane, long-term weight loss is impossible — in flat denial of evidence to the contrary — seems to concede that if fat people could lose weight, then therefore they should. It’s essentially conceding that the only valid justification for being fat is that fat people have no choice. IMO, it’s a whole lot more fat-positive to say that people have the right to decide for themselves whether the difficult, time- consuming, attention- consuming, “10 to 1 odds against success” process of weight loss is something that’s worth pursuing.
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