The Weight Police
Body shape is something that cannot be changed. Oh sure you can change your weight, but the basic shape of your body will stay as it is, just smaller or larger.
Ideal body weight is largely predetermined by genetics and medical conditions, and varies from person to person. Generally speaking, if you’re taking a good amount of exercise and eating a reasonably balanced diet, you’re around where you should be. Now that might be a size 8, or it might be a size 20 or whereever, but it’s not really up to YOU what your ideal weight is, your body knows where it should be. Bear in mind that a balanced diet does include cakey things, which are as much for mental health as to offset all those salads. Avoid Rice Cakes, they be pretty blah. You can of course become even thinner than ideal, but it takes a lot of hard work, a lot of self denial and a lot of starvation.
Anyway. There’s plenty of fat acceptance blogs out there, and there’s plenty of thin acceptance. There may even be standard Body Acceptance, I haven’t really looked. I am a fat acceptance failure, in that I am about to restart treatment to control my insulin resistance. The upshot of this is that I may lose weight.
Granted, not all fat acceptance movement members judge or belittle people who do lose weight, but plenty do. I stopped bouncing around the fat blogs a while back, feeling like even thinking about treatment for the PCOS that I have was a shameful horror. I should be happy in my fat skin, and frankly I’m pretty okay with my fat most of the time.
Health and fat are linked in the minds of about everyone, from those who want the world to see that you CAN be fat AND healthy (and you can too, no argument here) to those who want to explain to fat people that fat = unhealthy. Which is not always true.
Sometimes it is. Yes, there are gray areas. Let’s take two fat people I’ve made up. We’ll call them Stella and Lola. Let’s pretend that against all the odds, they’re the exact same body type and weight and are both size 22. So let’s say Stella takes spanish dance lessons once a week, swims regularly and does other interesting body moving things almost every day, as well as watching her food and making sure she takes things like cheesecake in moderation. Medically, she is in fine fettle – blood pressure great, cholesterol great – everything that should be fine is fine.
Lola on the other hand takes no exercise, has a diet that leans more to the fast food end of the spectrum and tends to snack on less than great for her foods. You can’t argue, in this case, that she is a healthy fat person, because she isn’t. She’s overweight because she eats too much crap and never works it off.
I guess what I’m trying to get at is this: What should come first, the consideration of health or the fat acceptance? Should I be okay with my insulin resistance which caused my obesity because there’s a strong and growing movement to accept all body shapes, or should I seek treatment for it, therefore becoming a failure in the fatlove circles?
Bear in mind I will never – ever- be skinny. I’m not built that way, I come from a long line of curvy ladies and there’s no reasonable way I could ever be a size 4 or whatever the ideal is (not that I would want to anyway. Winter would suck without some extra insulation).
I’m at the stage here where my doctor blood tests me quarterly to make sure I haven’t developed diabetes. Now before you get up on your high horse about that, there’s a good chance I WILL develop diabetes since my insulin is all screwed up – she’s just keeping an eye on me so we can catch it early.
Regardless of how I feel about my body, I HATE my PCOS. I seriously hate it, I hate everything it did to me and everything it took away from me and I’m tired of just letting it go. I want to do something, and there’s another treatment available to me which I wish to try.
So why the guilt? Why the shame and the horror and the self loathing? Surely taking control of your health is a GOOD thing? Maybe. Maybe not. When fat acceptance goes too far, and when people are discouraged from taking the best care of themselves they can – at ANY size – then it’s become a Weight Police Issue, and that’s not right.
Let’s talk about chests.
Boobs, tits, jugs, devils dumplings, fun bags, bazoombas, norks, The Girls, yabbos, dirty pillows, ding dongs, breasts, boulders, mozzie bites, milk bars.
Let’s talk, universe, about the female chestal area. Nature has seen fit to provide women with a means of feeding babies – just as all mammals do – with milk. Thankfully, we skipped the 6 nipple variation and went with two. For whatever reason, breasts are also a sexual thing which I don’t deny, even if I can’t explain why. Women spend hundreds of dollars on bras that lift, support, separate, squish, enlarge or flatten their mammaries. Other women just like them held in place. Some women, curse them, don’t even need a bra. Of course, some of THOSE women wish they did need a bra, so really no one is that happy with what nature gave them.
In many cultures (as any teenage boy with a copy of National Geographic can tell you), women are not required to cover their breasts. I suppose it’s just never occurred to them that boobs are evil and must be stopped, so they get about with a bit of a belty thing and a basket and all is good. In western culture, where we don’t have to worry about things like getting enough to eat, we have ample time to be concerned with the ampleness ladies carry about. Apart from the occasional topless beach, or nude beach, or commune or whatever, women are expected to keep their top half covered at least enough to prevent any public nipple exposure. While some places have no laws to say women can’t go topless like men, other places would explode in a blast of horror if a lass got her goods out in the street.
Which brings me, eventually, to the two things I found very super interesting. One of them is quite old, actually. I would have blogged it at the time but I was taking a nap. Anyway, in 2006 (told you), a magazine called Baby Talk featured a cover photograph of a baby being breastfed. The outcry was immediate and intense. Women complained it was “gross” and “disgusting”. Many women said they had destroyed the cover before their husband or sons could see it. It wasn’t the act of breastfeeding which was upsetting them, it was the fact there was a breast on the cover. You can see the cover here, where you will note there is no nipple and not really even a lot of breast.
According to this article, the concern was that men – being the animalistic dorks they are – would see this picture of a baby feeding and instantly be turned on to the point of passing out. Which is a load of old balls, if you’ll pardon the expression. Not wanting your husband to see it? Has he never seen a boob before? Not wanting your 13 year old to see it? Honey, the internet is full of boobs and I assure you, your son has seen a few by now. The fact is, that while they are very sexual, they are basically milk delivery systems, that’s the point of them even existing, so if the idea of someone seeing a picture of a baby feeding at the breast is so disgusting, then clearly something is not right.
Moving along swiftly to the website Cute Overload, who recently posted a photo of a hamster tucked inside his owners bra while she cleaned his cage out. You’d honestly be amazed at how much rage there is on a blog dedicated to adorable animals in the first place, but this really pushed a ton of people over the edge. More “gross!” and “disgusting!” and “Ewww!” with a few “Get over it!” thrown in for good measure, but the overwhelming feel from the comments on this page is “Breasts are nasty, let us never speak of them again”. The owner of said breasts came in and told everyone off, and the owners of the site repaid stupid comments in kind, so kudos to them.
The “Breasts are disgusting” mindset is dangerous for three reasons (mine gott but this post is getting long. Feel free to grab a cuppa).
1. Teaching women that boobs are disgusting and should be hidden away from the world and never talked or thought about means less of a chance these women will be doing breast self exams. The key point of breast exams is not just finding lumps or bumps, but it’s spotting changes in your breasts. Women who consider breasts to be evil or dirty are far less likely to be watching for these changes, and that is a dangerous thing. Every female from the teens onwards should be checking regularly for changes, and yes young women do get breast cancer. There needs to be open acceptance and discussion of methods, times and what to do if you happen to find a lump or a change, not a blanket “Ew, icky, let’s talk about daffodils”. Women need to be familiar with their breasts, and the changes in shape, size and texture that happen throughout the month.
2. If the concept of breastfeeding is seen as nasty or gross, or something to be ashamed of, less women will attempt breastfeeding. Now I’m not saying that every woman SHOULD breast feed, for some women it’s not possible for a variety of reasons and there’s never a reason to shame or blame these women. However, those who are able to should be encouraged to do so. Nature grants human babies with the ideal food, and telling women they should be ashamed of taking advantage of that is a terrible crime.
3. Women have long been taught that their bodies are wrong and disgusting anyway. Natural things like cellulite, body hair, padded hips etc are held up as signs of disgrace and ugliness. Surely we deserve a break, and if that break is boob shaped then so be it. Regarding the Cute Overload drama, my boy said “It’s amazing how many of the offended people are women”, and it’s true. A lot of the people screaming “Gross!” on both the CO post and the magazine cover are women. Women, far more than men, are being taught to be ashamed of their bodies unless they are able to meet an impossible ideal. To add breast hate to that list is just too too much.
I’m not saying that women should wander the world topless, but I am saying it’s time we dragged our arses out of the dark ages and realised that breasts are just skin and fat. They were not sent by the devil to tempt men, they were not designed to cause the downfall of society. They exist, on a purely biological level, to assist in the raising of babies. And, in my case, to get in the way a lot, but that is a blog post for another time.
Who’s for a cup of tea?