Writing "Will I Ever Fit In?", and "Constructive Deconstruction - Finding a Phoenix Amongst the Ashes" were both emotionally draining and garnered me wonderful feedback as well as the occasional asshat. It was hard to put everything out there like that. I ended up losing about 1/2 of my subscribed readers and probably 1/3 of my audience after I posted the photograph of myself in which there was a hell of a lot more to see than just a head-shot. After this post, I wouldn't be too surprised if I haven't managed to alienate almost everyone else! "Constructive Deconstruction" also earned me a spot over on BlogHer's Voice of the Week, which Nolan happily pointed out was little more than recognition of the fact that I'd been lying to all of you for quite a while about who I really was.
After both "Constructive Deconstruction" and "Will I Ever Fit In?" were published, I received quite a few emails asking me what the real "voice" of my blog was all about? Was it "Fat Acceptance"? (there we go with that term again). Was it about my struggle with obesity? Was it about my struggle with depression because of my obesity? Was it about the death of my son which contributed to my obesity which led to the depression?" Or, was my blog just a chaotic mess with no real "voice."?
Why can't my blog just be what it is? And who is to claim that everything I write about isn't inherently my "voice." I am after all, the "voice" behind the words. This is a chronicle of the journey that is my life. It's not going to continue on the same straight path. There are a lot of things that go into who I am. Obviously my weight, depression and the loss of my son are a huge part of that, so naturally I'm going to write about them. Occasionally I'm going to post fluffy cat pictures, silly little stories about our various adventures and my melancholy musings about being homesick for Maine. It may be a chaotic mess, but it's genuine to what's going on in my life. I don't see any reason to stick to the strict narrative of a single topic!
After getting all of those emails and Nolan's constant barrage of comments about it, I decided to look into just what the hell "fat acceptance" was and did it apply to me?
After Googling "fat acceptance" the first place it brought up was to NAAFA - National Association to Advance Fat Acceptance. The name alone kinda made me uncomfortable and I don't know why, because afterall, haven't I been sitting here bitching about the heinous discrimination and outright hatred I've been subjected to because of my obesity? My own reaction to the name of that organization confused me.
I dug around for a while and came to some sort of understanding that it's a civil rights organization whose main goal is to improve the quality of life for the obese (they say "fat" and I'm left wondering if "fat" and "obese" are two distinctly different things, especially after reading more of what I'm going to outline below), and to provide tools for advocacy and education, while trying to eliminate discrimination based on body size. That all sounds well and good, but what about the first part of that description, "...improve the quality of life for the obese..."? Where does becoming healthy fit into that? Or does it? Read on.
My next stop on the "Fat Acceptance" journey was a blog called Big Fat Blog which bills itself as "the fat acceptance blog." Oh boy, does it ever! I wanted to leave a comment on one of the posts but discovered that in order to leave a comment on any of the posts on Big Fat Blog (by the way, you're welcome for the traffic my post is likely to net you!), you first have to apply for "membership" in order to post. OK, no biggie I thought. WRONG! WRONG! and once again, WRONG!
I started working my way through the "application" and then came to the following:
"...and now that you've made it through the hard stuff, a little bit of explanation. Big Fat Blog (BFB) is a site devoted to fat acceptance. Please don't register if:
- You are on a diet;
- You are interested in losing weight now (or possibly in the future, maybe - like you're actively planning on it);
- You are having, or are interested in having, weight loss surgery of any kind;
- You believe fat is a disease which must be cured;
- You want to post one comment and vanish forever;
- You like posting about your caloric intake, what you ate today, etc.;
- You run a diet blog;
- You think this is a dating site or want to pick up some "hot fat chicks";
- You think this site has anything to do with Old Navy and/or Mo'Nique.
That said, if you are interested in joining a community of over 2,000 folks looking to advance fat acceptance through insightful discussions and activism... hi! You should take a moment to read our Community Guidelines as these guidelines are enforced!..."
I understand the concept that this is a site owned and maintained by a group of people with a sole goal in mind, advancing fat acceptance. As such, this is their playground, their toys and therefore their rules...if you don't want to abide by them, then you can't play. I get it.
What I didn't like was feeling like I'd just been shunned because I want to be become healthy and strong and may or may not eventually be a contestant on a certain television show that focuses on weight loss. I kinda felt like I'd been kicked in the teeth. So, in a Melatonin induced stupor, I sent an email to the site's admins letting them know that I thought their admission policy was ass backwards and stupid. I am not going to sugar coat it. I was pretty pissed off and came away feeling like, OK, the beautiful people don't want me because I'm fat and the fat acceptance people don't want me because I want to get healthy. Where the hell does that leave me?
Angry. Pretty angry and a little confused.
Being that I'm a glutton for punishment I went back to my good friend, Google, and searched for more information on fat acceptance and was hoping that I would find something a little more tolerant and less militant. Well, if hope were horses then all the streets would be covered in horseshit! My next stop on the fat acceptance railroad brought me to a pretty little blog called "Shapely Prose" which was founded by Kate Harding (co-author of "Lessons from the Fat-O-Sphere: Quit Dieting and Declare a Truce with Your Body") and has other contributing writers who Harding claims are either defined as "Two of us are clinically obese, two of us are clinically overweight, and we’re all quite smart.", although she also concedes in her section completely devoted to BMI (Body Mass Index...the accepted standard of defining whether a person is underweight, normal, overweight, obese, morbidly obese. You should check out her BMI project, which I've linked to. It's fascinating and demonstrates just how bizarrely skewed the whole BMI charting system is!), that those same BMI standards are completely out of line in today's society. While I do agree with her assessment of that, I think she knows that by the way the average American views her and her co-authors, she probably wouldn't be considered "fat" (and again, someone please tell me what the fucking difference is between "fat" and "obese" before my head explodes!), by someone just passing her by. A lot of the women pictured in her BMI project, no one would ever guess are considered overweight or even anywhere near being considered clinically obese. If you're confused about what I'm trying to say, read her FAQ's, which I've linked to above, and you'll get the point I'm trying to make.
Kate's mantra is total body acceptance at any weight. She and her fellow authors are diametrically opposed to diets, any diets. I get it, because, can we all say it together now, "DIETS DON'T WORK!" And they don't! But she also goes on to say that lifestyle changes don't work either unless you are one of those freaks of nature and end of being a scientific outlier who is able to lose weight and keep it off for more than five years. She goes on to make it sound like that's virtually impossible to do and comes very close to actually saying that lifestyle changes don't work. Her blog is incredibly depressing. So much so that I was in tears by the time I was done reading it.
Harding never takes into account that there are so many other factors going into why people are fat. Without her ever saying the actual words, I came away feeling like I was doomed. Don't misunderstand me, I get the gist of her blog. Love your body regardless of size. But there are some really damaging underlying messages that go along with it. Yes, diets are harmful and trying to support a lifestyle change that includes yo-yo dieting can be potentially fatal. However making permanent lifestyle changes that lead to dropping hundreds of pounds can only be a good thing, a good thing which is supported by reams of scientific evidence. I get the feeling though that Kate and company think all that evidence is made null and void because the majority of people who lose weight, gain all the weight, plus more, back. So in essence, she's just repeating what society tells us anyhow..."You're fat and you're a failure!", Except she colors it with, "You're fat and you need to embrace it otherwise you're just going to go on and on being miserable!"
Yes, I did read a lot of what Kate and her fellow authors wrote, and understand the points they're trying to make. However Kate likes to play with semantics. Here's where she does it best. In essence, she's saying that she's in support of people who want to change their eating habits to become healthy but not those who are changing their eating habits to lose weight. What's the difference? She claims in that same post that by deliberately dieting you are "not accepting your own fat." So by her own definition, those who are not dieting but deliberately choosing to lose weight to become healthy are intolerant of fat. HELLO!!! Fat is not healthy! Sure, you can carry around an extra 50lbs and still be healthy. That I get! But like hell if you can lug around an extra 100lbs and not feel the burden that is all that extra weight. It's a miserable way to live! How can it be an unhealthy thing to want to lose weight in order to fit comfortably in an airline seat, a roller coaster ride, or hell, even your own dining table chair? Oh wait, are you trying to tell me that losing weight solely to lose weight is bad? But becoming healthy is good? Yeah, it's like I said, semantics! I am aware that there are those who lose weight to try and fit into the mold that society has deemed is acceptable and beautiful. But there are those of us, a lot of us actually, who want to lose weight to become healthy and feel comfortable in our own skin.
No one in the world will ever be able to convince me the way that some of the ladies at Shapely Prose and Big Fat Blog are trying, that you can be healthy and be morbidly obese. To even infer that being obese is healthy is so far out there, it doesn't even require a dignified rebuttal.
I've read so many comments over on The Big Fat Blog about how happy and healthy people are at 300lbs+, yet I have a really really hard time believing it. In the same breath some of them are outraged that certain vacation activities prohibit people weighing over 250lbs from participating in them. Well gee, did ya ever think it might not be safe to ride that roller coaster when the safety harness fits too tightly, or go for that catamaran ride when you risk tipping the boat over and putting everyone else into harms way? It's not like people who run these things are trying to discriminate against you for being fat. They're trying to provide a safe and enjoyable activity for everyone. Believe me, there have been plenty of times when I've thought about how fun it would be to go para-sailing but I know damned well that a person of my weight can not do that safely! When someone won't let me rent a certain snowboard because I weigh too much, it is not the same as an employer not hiring me because I'm fat. There is safety and then there is stupidity. I'll let you decide which is which.
It's hard not to come away from almost any site which advocates this kind of fat acceptance, including the ones I've mentioned above, without feeling like they're trying to send out this message that says all of us fat people (or is it obese? I'm still confused!), are being conned by not only the diet industry (which should be shut down in my opinion), but the medical and pharmaceutical industries as well, into believing that fat is unhealthy! If that's the case, why are people dying from heart disease which can be linked to being obese? It is a scientifically proven fact that the heart does not function at it's best when trying to support blood flow to an obese person!
My entire rant these past few months has been about being hated on because I am fat. It's wrong. It's wrong on almost every possible level. What I am asking for is common consideration and decency. I'm not asking my fellow humans to pat me on the back, hand me a hot dog and then hug me. I'm not asking anyone to enable my delusion that living this way is healthy. What I am asking you to do is to look beyond the fat and see the real, live woman underneath it. I'm trying desperately to relearn how to love myself while trying to become healthy and strong at the same time, but it's hard when a society basically reinforces that I'm worthless because I'm fat. And now I have the fat acceptance advocates telling me to just "Suck it up buttercup, embrace the fat! You'll feel better in the end." I'm pretty sure I'll feel better when I'm at a healthy weight and not wondering if I'm going to drop dead from a heart attack or succumb to some other co-morbidity of being obese!
I guess, after reading all of this and while it probably doesn't make much sense to you, I have come away with a clearer definition of one thing...by their (NAAFA, Shapely Prose, Big Fat Blog) own terms, this blog is not about "Fat Acceptance"...not by any stretch of the imagination.
This blog is about me, my life and trying to live the remarkable life I was meant to, on my terms and in the most healthy way possible. I accept and love the person I am; I just want her to be healthy and strong and live a long, amazing life! And ya know, at the end of the day, I'm OK with that, and really, isn't that all that matters?
