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April 07, 2008

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Rita

I love you because you are such a great writer. I started reading Shapely Prose when you linked to it here, and I browsed through the fatosphere. I had very close to the same reaction, though I never could have put it into words as well as you did.

I've been aware of the fat acceptance movement for a while and, as an average-sized girl with plenty of body issues, I am all for it. I've had and still have a lot of issues with my size and shape, and been on lots of diets and various stages of acceptance and rejection of what shape I'm in. Most of what is said in the fatosphere makes a lot of sense to me.

What fascinates me is that, in our culture, it's as if fat is the one thing we can all agree on to hate. When a coworker was talking about someone being just disgustingly fat, I called him out on it. I asked him why he felt like he could judge that person, why he kind of hated that person, seemingly for just being fat. He was not a little surprised, and we had an interesting conversation about body types and how size somehow turns into a moral barometer.

I thought we'd made some progress in our discussion until he followed up with something like: Oh, no. You are misunderstanding me, I don't have a problem with someone being bigger. It's when they stuff their face and sit around and are really grotesquely fat that it bothers me. So, basically, you know kinda fat is ok, but really fat is just gross.

I could never quite articulate it the way you just did. The problem is not a refusal to accept that people have different body types, it is the moral judgement that fat is bad, and the only way you can be an acceptable form of fat is if you have tried to be thin. Because we should all want to be thin.

Hell, if you are a woman, regardless of your size, just try to go a week without saying something disparaging about your body. Try to go a week without feeling guilty, or saying something guilty about what you are eating. When someone brings donuts into our office, not one woman (and very few men) simply say "Hey! Thanks! I love the chocolate ones!" and eats it. It is always "oh, I shouldn't" or "You're bad! I can't resist!" Because you can't just have a donut and enjoy it, you have to let everyone know that you don't normally eat those, and you know that you "shouldn't" because food is bad, and naturally you are bigger than you want to be, or you've been starving yourself to be where you are. No matter what your size, you are supposed to always be afraid of getting fat, or trying to be thinner.

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