Lee Davis-Thalbourne ([info]kirby1024) wrote,
@ 2009-03-06 10:54:00
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Entry tags:fat acceptance, linkies!

Probably not news to a few people on my flist...
So, I was doing my normal morning stroll through feminist blogs this morning, and came across this link in one of the comments:

Don't you realise fat is unhealthy?

Don't let the title fool you - the author is using it in an ironic sense. It's a manifesto of their blog (or at least the principles underlying it), which is all about fat acceptance, and is also a really good primer about the various research around that points out that actually, all that stuff that society keeps throwing at us about how being overweight is such a terrible thing is complete bullshit.

I highly recommend it as a very accessible read for everyone.


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[info]sols_light
2009-03-06 12:37 am UTC (link)
Yes... and no.

While she's quick to criticise research done in this area as having an agenda, she's also dismissive of the psychological effects of being perceived of fat, as she would be for someone promoting fat acceptance. There's a stigma there she doesn't address.

She makes a couple of excellent points, though. It's not necessarily about fat, it's about exercise and lifestyle. If the fat people are eating what they should and doing the exercise they should then yes, they deserve to be happy with themselves. I think that's a good proportion of people who consider themselves fat, but actually aren't. Including the people with eating disorders and other body image issues.

"no one has proven that fat people generally eat more or exercise less than thin people." That's nice work, it reminds me of the look I got to take at the Food Pyramid and its basis that required support from a research study in Finland where the supply of fresh vegetables is extremely limited and they needed to measure the fat content of bear fat to get the study done. That is the only study which supports the food pyramid.

I also agree with her ideology about dieting causing a certain amount of harm. There are definitely people who unknowingly consume too much crap and I'm usually proud to say I'm not one of them.

The really excellent part though is "BMI is complete horseshit." Always has been. Even the fitness industry that relies ofn it relatively heavily will admit this. Even weight itself is a misnomer, since allegedly fat people can have big bones, big muscles, not much fat and weigh a lot. Although this doesn't tend to make them obese. Obesity as defined by BMI is a very problematic thing, it just doesn't tell us enough about the individual concerned. Obesity as defined by medically related conditions is another thing entirely and more in line with a physical and quality of life problem.

I could throw in another one about fat being a sought-after quality until the introduction of modern healthcare as it meant the woman was well-provided for and thus could afford to have many children. Thin women were unfashionable as they were undernourished and couldn't provide the baby with proper nutrition. Hence the "child-bearing hips"

So yes, I agree with most of what she's saying, although she really needs to admit that without backing from somewhere, no research gets done, including her own.

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[info]kirby1024
2009-03-06 12:56 am UTC (link)
"I could throw in another one about fat being a sought-after quality until the introduction of modern healthcare as it meant the woman was well-provided for and thus could afford to have many children. Thin women were unfashionable as they were undernourished and couldn't provide the baby with proper nutrition. Hence the "child-bearing hips"

There's also a bunch of health benefits that come with additional weight, like, say, living longer. That's right people, extra weight provides an absurd array of benefits, including better outcomes in medical interventions, and a generally longer lifespan! (Edited to add: This is, of course, assuming you're still generally healthy while being heavier. Duh.)

Edited at 2009-03-06 01:13 am UTC

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[info]sols_light
2009-03-06 02:18 am UTC (link)
I can find medical research done under NH&MRC funding that wouldn't show that. There's also evidence naturally thin people have a better metabolism, allowing them to live longer, for instance.

Really, statistical science can be used to prove your point for just about anything, it's all about isolating the group of people most likely to prove your point and then saying 78% of those people fit your theory, therefore you're right. You're not, necessarily, but you're also not always more wrong than anyone else doing the same thing.

I'm all for exposing and debunking myths like "fat people can't be healthy". They can and that's what you're actually saying. The corollary you're trying to draw of fat being a definite medical benefit is a non sequitur you and the blogs you're pulling the information from don't have the evidence to support. It can be, but they're not saying it is. Low blood pressure is often associated with being thin and living longer for instance. If you're fat and have low blood pressure you may also live longer than a skinny person with high blood pressure.

They're all generalities attempting to be applied to the singular person, which just doesn't work. You have your medical history and if you're healthy but you have some some fat, good for you. If you're unhealthy and don't have much fat, that's bad, as is being unhealthy and having fat.

Also, I feel discriminated against, because as a male, it's actually not okay to be thin. You need to be big in the sense of either muscular or fat to be socially acceptable, especially during the teenage years otherwise you are the weakest and the person most likely to be singled out and bullied. I now know the advantages to having a thin body and they're completely different ones to being fat. Those advantages can help me have a higher quality of life and engage in activities I want to do, just as the fat advantages can. It doesn't mean any one is fundamentally better than the other, we simply don't have the understanding to categorically say so.

However, most people filter their understanding through the mainstream media mentality and this is at many levels a subversion of the same tactics. All they've really done is make the counterpoints, rather than constructing a real well-formulated argument and while I'm persuaded they may have a point, I'm aware enough to realise that point isn't necessarily the stated one. The ability to take pride in being who you are contributes to increased quality of life and decreased stress, which will in turn allow you to live longer. In that respect, fat is fine.

The point that fat can be fine needs to and has been made, however thin can also be fine and I don't think you're acknowledging that. Really, you can tear down pretty much any research and as I said before, it's all about healthy lifestyle, not necessarily looking like you have an optimal BMI of 22. The study you linked very carefully doesn't say how the factors involved were adjusted, it doesn't give relevant socioeconomic data, doesn't tell us levels of care at the involved hospitals, doesn't give us histories of prior cardiac events. Also, there's a point in that study about there being a difference between fatty deposits in arteries and body fat, which is quite correct. Body fat may well be irrelevant to that. I'm tempted to take this one to Dr. Ben Goldacre at http://www.badscience.net/ and see what he makes of it. Then again, he's biased against people like naturopaths.

The real point is, you can't get an unbiased opinion, anyone claiming to have a proper one is selling something, but so are the people giving the opinions they're complaining about. Critical examination of an idea is good, believing the converse just because it exists, less so, after all there may not be any more support for it than the original idea.

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[info]not_in_denial
2009-03-06 02:33 am UTC (link)
The reason people don't fall over themselves to reassure everyone that "thin is fine too" is because society not only hammers home the idea that thin is fine, thin is the only acceptable way to be if you're going to be a good, attractive person.

Fat people are disgusting. Fat people have no self control. Fat people are ugly. Fat people are bad people. Fat people are the apocalypse, if you listen enough!

Also, I feel discriminated against, because as a male, it's actually not okay to be thin.

Could you tell me where this discrimination comes from? I ask because I haven't seen this phenomenon myself with my thin friends. I'm not saying it doesn't happen, just that I have no experience with it so I'd like to hear yours.

As a fat person (I say fat person because there's a lot of factors in discrimination against me, as I am transgedered and disabled as well) most of my discrimination comes from the medical industry first, followed by people who don't even know me verbally assaulting me in public.

Doctors have refused to treat me because of my weight (no shit). The ones that do treat me assume that my weight is a symptom of something other than what I tell them it is (put simply, I'm disabled, I can't exercise... what do they think is going to happen when someone can't exercise? The weight is a side effect, not a cause.)

I've been harrassed in public by people I don't know because of my weight. Not occasionally - we're talking more like every second or third time I'm out in public. I'm intimidated and yelled at.

I rarely if ever see any positive depiction of someone my size in the media - and we do, as people, look to the media for a reflection of ourselves.

I doubt the fatosphere is trying to get across an "unbiased" opinion. I think they're more aiming towards stopping the shame that people are made to feel for being fat. They're aimed at helping fat people find some self esteem, something they're robbed of before they even reach adulthood most of the time.

To use a REALLY BAD comparison, it's the difference between a feminist saying women are better BECAUSE OF THIS and trying to say that's an unbiased opinion... and a feminist simply saying there's no shame in being a woman.

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[info]sols_light
2009-03-06 02:53 am UTC (link)
Okay, being repeatedly verbally abused and beaten up throughout High School for being weak, not enough of a man, etc. etc. My father telling me I wasn't good enough at things because I couldn't arm wrestle him or my brother. My big brother who was built like a fridge and people loved him for it because he could play sport well.

It's not so much of an issue once you reach university and the popular culture shifts away from being so sports and physicality dominated, but I have questioned many times whether I am enough of a male because I don't fit the mould well enough. It has given me body issues until i learned there are things this shape can do that others can't and that I'm stronger than other people think, but that's me being able to subvert the paradigm where I grew up thinking this frame was weak and big frames were strong. I know in many schools it's the fat kid that gets picked on and to some degree there were a couple of chubby antisocial kids picked on, but not for the same reasons I was singled out to be less of a male.

These days, I could care less, I'm happy to be as masculine as I want to be and society does afford me the choice to blend in as I don't have people yelling "Hey toothpick" or "Hey Beanpole" any more to put up with. Basically, people will find a way to be prejudiced and fat is simply an easier one than others. It is the sad truth and I applaud anyone who's saying thin isn't cool. I think the Hollywood version of thin, particularly for females is seriously unhealthy, those women don't even have hips.

My criticism mainly lies in the "pot... meet kettle" sort of form, I'm more than happy for people to say being overweight doesn't automatically make you a bad person. I also believe it.

It may also be that since the criticism of people being thin relates to physical weakness in the time of developing masculinity that it ceases to be as important throughout the rest of your life, whereas being fat is a prejudice people can always use against you.

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[info]kirby1024
2009-03-06 02:37 am UTC (link)
"The point that fat can be fine needs to and has been made, however thin can also be fine and I don't think you're acknowledging that."

My apologies on that. I do actually agree with you in that regard, and you're right, I was a little one sided on that when I could have been a little less so.

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[info]sols_light
2009-03-06 03:00 am UTC (link)
With deference to what you've been saying, thin can also be highly unhealthy and due to any number of deficiencies or nasty medical conditions. I'm just grateful for not actually suffering from any of them myself.

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[info]kirby1024
2009-03-06 03:14 am UTC (link)
On a completely unrelated note, I haven't seen you in ages - don't s'pose you're amenable to catching up anytime soon? I remember enjoying your company when I did see you occaisionally. :)

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[info]sols_light
2009-03-06 03:22 am UTC (link)
I think I only managed to run into you at cons and I'm not even working at the moment, so i can't claim to be that busy. I'm mostly sitting around looking for a job and stalking people with interesting LJ entries and playing too many games, classic geek stuff. The only actual interesting thing I'm trying to do at the moment is pull off a 5-way mixture of WoD, with a Vampire, Werewolf, Mage, Changeling and Wraith.

Should be challenging, but I think I have some of the things I need to pull it off.

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[info]damien_wise
2009-03-06 12:55 am UTC (link)
Holy crap, how can people take this selective reading of studies to support a thesis and such pseudo-science seriously?
Yes, accept that fat exists, but don't go looking for excuses to think an excessive amount is good for you. And, instead of wailing: "They're trying to make me feel bad" and throwing-away the message, do something about the situation. Talk to a doctor some time, please.

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[info]kirby1024
2009-03-06 01:05 am UTC (link)
Actually, if you trawl through the databases, most studies discussing health effects and weight tend to report either no effect or a small positive benefit for heavier people. There's actually a few metastudies coming out which confirm what these people are saying. It's not a selective reading of studies at all.

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[info]sols_light
2009-03-06 02:19 am UTC (link)
I hate to tell you, but metastudies are frequently a selective reading of studies. If 95% of studies prove my point, I may be missing that the other 5% are the important ones.

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[info]kirby1024
2009-03-06 02:34 am UTC (link)
A fair point. And admittedly, since I'm not working in academia currently, I don't have access to read anything more than the abstracts to take a better look. So, good point really.

I had assumed, though, from the abstract and the commentary I'd read from where I found the study, that after checking each study individually, they were carefully aggregating the statistics in each study as much as they could to build a larger sample size for their analysis, regardless of the conclusions of the studies themselves, and I had assumed that this would be a reasonably way to metastudying. Is this a bad assumption on my part?

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[info]sols_light
2009-03-06 02:58 am UTC (link)
Seems like a reasonable one to me.

Really, I just like studies and they're exceptionally rare, where they show their statistical analysis like they've got nothing to hide. From the sound of things, those metastudies are reasonable, but there's still potential bias, like seeking out certain articles.

Honestly, as critical as I seem to be of what you're saying, I really like the idea there is a possible paradigm shift where people can say "It's possible to be fat AND healthy at the same time". I really want to see that as much or more than I want to see people stop trying to tell me to eat more because I'm skinny and pale. Encouraging people to live a good life is something to be proud of.

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[info]kirby1024
2009-03-06 01:11 am UTC (link)
And it's not that they're throwing away the message. What they're saying is that all this crap about how being fat automatically connects with being unhealthy is not a supported link. Healthy eating and exercise is the key to better health, not reduced weight, and conversely, just because you're thin, doesn't mean you can stop worrying about eating well and exercising.

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[info]not_in_denial
2009-03-06 02:19 am UTC (link)
This is a matter quite close to my heart so I'm going to stay out of this mostly, but I did want to say this: doctors are human too. Being a doctor in NO WAY means someone is actually up to date on medical studies, nor does it mean they know everything about health. They passed their exams, yes, but what they know is relient not only on medschool but how long ago it was that they graduated and what they do to keep up to date. Also, doctors, being human, have their own prejudices.

The biggest problem with fat hate isn't whether or not fat is healthy or unhealthy. It's that fat people are treated as less than human.

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[info]sols_light
2009-03-06 02:22 am UTC (link)
I agree and as I just said above, so are underweight males. While these arguments are powerful convincers for people wanting to believe them and they have some level of truth to them, stating that fat people can be healthy is good. Stating fat people ARE healthy is a completely different thing. Also, doctors in Med School are only taught theory which has thoroughly been tested, which frequently means it's 5 years or more behind the actual current paradigm in medicine. After all,the text books take time to write and publish.

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[info]not_in_denial
2009-03-06 03:35 am UTC (link)
I really don't want to wank about this, but apparently I can't help myself. I do want to say that I'm not saying any of this in a "grr flamey flamey!" kind of way. It just concerns me. I don't think you're a bad person or anything!

I promise I'll shut up just after I've spoken about this one tiny issue.

I agree and as I just said above, so are underweight males.

I'm assuming here you mean that underweight males are treated as less than human.

I have a problem with this. I had a problem with it before and I still have a problem with it now that I have your answer further up in the thread.

First of all and I must make this VERY clear: I think it's really awful how you've been treated due to your size. I think it's wrong and I don't think that kind of harassment should ever go on. Ever. Full stop!

Now.

When I say "less than human", I'm not just talking about discrimination. I don't just mean personal issues. I mean systemic ones.

When I talk about being treated as less than human, I'm talking about being denied medical treatment, or being treated badly by medical professionals who should be treating everyone equally. This hasn't just happened to me - it happens to fat people everywhere, all the time. First, Do No Harm is a good blog detailing some of the shit fat people get put through by medical professionals.

Surely the right to proper, non-judgemental medical care is a human right?

Fat discrimination isn't just personal discrimination. It's a system of discrimination. Thin people are not systematically oppressed like fat people are. Discriminated against? Sure. You've given some good examples of the shit people will do to thin people. But oppressed? Not so much.

The reason fat acceptance can be so preachy at times is because no one listens to us. It's because despite the fact that health and fat are NOT intrinsically linked, the medical profession insists that it is.

I completely admit that I may be over sensitive about this, and a part of my head is probably trying to play the oppression olympics with you. But when I see a thin man (and from my assumption pool based on Lee's friendship circle, I've been assuming a cisgendered, able-bodied man, probably with a university degree, and yes I know that assumption is the mother of all fuck ups) say that he's been treated as less than a person... I gotta admit, I have a gut reaction that just goes "Oh, cry me a river." And that's my issue, not yours, and I accept that.

But it does still make me wonder - do you see oppression as a real thing? Or does oppression and discrimination have the same meaning to you?

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[info]sols_light
2009-03-06 05:18 am UTC (link)
Oppression and discrimination are most definitely not the same thing and the assumptions you're making are valid. Just because I have been in a position where I have been discriminated against to a mild or possibly more major degree does not justify me saying I am in constant fear of the world judging me now.

Being overly thin and by that I'm 6'3" and weigh less than 65 kgs is not cool by macho male culture, I'm considered something to point and laugh at by those people for that reason. However, that's only by a select group of people and in my personal experience I've been able to get people to understand it doesn't have to be like that.

The problem for fat people is a far more systemic one. The discrimination you're talking about is people seeing a fat person and automatically assuming they're lazy, unhealthy, unable to do something about themselves or some combination thereof, just to list the major stereotypes. The oppression comes when this is deliberately supported by society as a whole and encouraged. One is a judgement by an individual, given a certain situation, the other is a society-wide acceptance encouraged by the media. I've never suffered much of that other than for being a skinny geek.

Fat people face constant oppression and near daily humiliation through discrimination and most of this isn't spoken through something they may not be able to do anything about. If you're a healthy person who eats at least most of the stuff you should and does exercise that raises your pulse a few times a week, then society is unequivocally treating you unfairly.

No, the right to proper, non-judgemental care is sadly not a human right, because it doesn't really exist. The problem the Medical profession has is it's one of the least scientific professions around, while claiming to be one of the most. If this seems like bollocks, sadly it isn't. As a Biomedical Science student, I learned how much doctors don't know about what the drugs they're using will actually do. GPs are particularly bad at this, because they simply can't keep up with the massive body of literature. Honestly, while I realise fat people go through hell with doctors, my point is that's not always directly related to being fat, it's often because the doctor is terrible. I'm not saying that is always the case, because with three nurses including two matrons in my family, I know how much discrimination happens with patients. People will discriminate against anything they can get away with. Don't like the grumpy patient, treat them last, don't like the crazy patient, etc. etc.

I completely agree with you society should be allowed to see overweight people as potentially healthy. Weightlifters are an excellent example of this, often other athletic events based on strength but other more common disciplines are based on speed or endurance and we seem to value those body types more by publicising their things more. I don't know why that is but especially in a country like Australia it contributes to the image of the tall, muscular sportsperson. I remember everyone being astonished Melinda Gainsford-Taylor was such a good sprinter because she was seemingly overweight. In reality, she wasn't, most of her was muscle in the right places and she proved that by winning national Sprint titles.

Oh and just because I've been advantaged and privileged doesn't immunise me from discrimination. For what it's worth, your assumptions are correct.
I agree with you, fat oppression and blatant discrimination has to stop, but that's not simply going to happen because some people tell their fairly liberal and accepting friends to do it. What has to happen is people getting positive role models and a sensible statement. As I said at the beginning, saying fat people can be healthy and indeed many of them are is the statement people need to understand. Generalising and saying fat people are healthier is not, people will misunderstand that and in the end they want to. You can't afford to give them that chance.

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[info]omnot
2009-03-06 02:07 am UTC (link)
I remember with some degree of smug satisfaction the occasion when some family members decided to take me for a walk because I, being quite fat, obviously didn't get much exercise. They were very impressed with their own slenderness, which they believed indicated their inherent superiority over fat people like me, and their intention was for the walk to be a near punitive exercise which would point out how embarrassingly unfit I was. So I suggested we walk on the beach. In the nice, soft sand.

I was very fit from walking and riding the beach twice or more each day. They were accustomed to strolling around shopping centres. Needless to say, within 250 metres, they were red faced and gasping their painful way along the beach as I trotted up and back, in and out of the waves, over to the rocks, up to the dunes, having this one-sided conversation with them because they were too puffed to speak, whilst I was barely breathing hard at all. That experience was humiliating for them and kind of cathartic for me.

I am not nearly as fit now as I was then, but I still mildly baffle doctors by being entirely healthy right down to having blood pressure an athlete would be proud of, aside from whatever sniffle or sprain I'm seeing them for.

Conversely, so many people who are "lucky to be naturally thin" actually have some metabolic disorder or other ailment that, at least in part, causes them to be thin. And yet, they are not viewed as being poorly, sickly or unwell as they would have been in medieval or primitive times, but are by default categorised as being "not fat" with all the kudos that our culture ascribes to the effort required for a healthy person to avoid becoming overweight.

It is a very strange culture we live in.

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[info]sols_light
2009-03-06 02:27 am UTC (link)
Actually, being one of those people with a thin metabolism, I have found myself being on the receving end of prejudice, mainly with people using my build to question my masculinity. I am assumed to not be able to do anything manual because I'm not built for it, I'm underweight. Like you, it gives me great pleasure to then prove to these people I can lift more than my body weight and carry it around. Rock Climbing is especially fun around musclebound people since I weigh so little.

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[info]kirby1024
2009-03-06 02:44 am UTC (link)
"Rock Climbing is especially fun around musclebound people since I weigh so little."

You know, I'd never thought about that, but it makes total sense (like how kids are much better on playground equipment because they have a lot less weight to carry).

I'm curious if you ever did gymnastics now, and if you noticed the same thing...

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[info]sols_light
2009-03-06 03:07 am UTC (link)
I rocked people's world on a trampoline. That was great fun. I dodn't do any gymnastics that I was aware of, we just had a trampoline and I learned how to have fun with it. As I said above, I was pretty terrible at sport and I was pretty sucky at most basic gymnastics as with all the ball games and everything else. Then we got to trampoline and suddenly I was the best in the class, it was hilarious. I also started riding to School and suddenly got healthier and able to keep up with many of the Cross country runners even though my build didn't change much. The following year I finally got glasses and the right prescription, I'd never had both before and used to cheat on the Eye tests so I didn't have to wear glasses. Suddenly I could catch and hit a ball. All very amusing. Didn't exactly get me into state teams or anything else, but it did start proving I was healthy and once I thought I was healthy, I pretty much was.

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[info]sols_light
2009-03-06 03:09 am UTC (link)
The only thing that does defeat me about the body weight thing is being tall, I have a high centre of gravity. That means acrobatics are more difficult than for shorter people, since they require more coordination. I've got the basic agility for them, I lack the skill to coordinate that with my frame.

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[info]goatsfoot
2009-03-06 08:16 am UTC (link)
How to court controversy: blog about something someone said on a feminist site. Brings out all sorts of victim complexes :)

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[info]ozwiccagal
2009-03-06 10:48 am UTC (link)
[i]"Really, statistical science can be used to prove your point for just about anything, it's all about isolating the group of people most likely to prove your point and then saying 78% of those people fit your theory, therefore you're right."[/i]

That is utter crap. If you're deliberately skewing the dataset to fit what you want to see, it's not science.

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[info]goatsfoot
2009-03-06 12:55 pm UTC (link)
Sorry, what?

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[info]kirby1024
2009-03-06 01:36 pm UTC (link)
I think she was replying to something said upthread by [info]sols_light, not anything you said in particular. Just got put under the wrong comment.

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[info]kirby1024
2009-03-06 01:35 pm UTC (link)
Hence why I enjoy reading them these days - helps me get over a lot of them. :)

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[info]goatsfoot
2009-03-06 02:35 pm UTC (link)
Oh yes :) I have been an athlete in the Oppression Olympics before and can smell the sweatiness of competition at a hundred paces now. Nowadays I try not to use my identity as a weapon, epistemological laziness. It's good to read lots of other people's experiences.

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[info]nixwilliams
2009-03-09 10:28 am UTC (link)
<3 fat acceptance . . . i just can't understand how people can look at the overwhelming attitudes, prejudices, discrimination and not see how damaging fat hatred and fat phobia are.

thin people are exceedingly rarely told by medical professionals that they need to gain fat before they will be treated, whereas people who are fat often are told they need to lose it before a doctor will treat them. people who are 'slightly overweight' are often told that losing fat would be healthier, when it's not necessarily true.

thin people are very rarely forced to buy clothes at specialist stores, very rarely have to pay higher prices for their clothes, usually have no problem finding sportswear, outdoorswear, swimwear, sexy shoes, boots and other footwear with high tops (the list goes on).

thin people are rarely verbally abused on the street by strangers. (and the names thin people are called carry very few of the derogatory overtones of most of the shit that fat people get called). and yeah, there are other factors, and gender is a big one. it's (usually) easier to be fat(ter) as a man than as a woman, and it's likely that being read easily as one or the other is more 'acceptable' than being fat and gender ambiguous.

people are told that being fat is one of the the worst things that can possibly happen to a body - look at the obsession with "childhood obesity". if someone is fat people always need to find someone to blame: if it's a child, then the parents for feeding them the 'wrong' food or not forcing them to do 'enough' physical exercise; if it's an adult, then it's their own fault for not doing the 'right' thing.

people are constantly giving approval to others for losing weight (you look good, have you lost weight? oh, that diet is really working! you're looking toned! i lost 5 kilos - that's great!) or talking about others who have gained weight behind their backs (did you see how much weight she put on?! wow, she's really let herself go. he looks like he's 5 months pregnant!) losing fat & being thin is almost universally seen as positive in dominant australian culture, while gaining fat & being fat is almost universally seen as negative.

ok, i'm rambling. and behind the times! i've been away for the weekend!

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