Well, as you said, do you mean fat as in aesthetic arguments, or do you mean obese? “Fat” people, according to your aesthetic, do not, necessarily entail “unhealthy” or “abnormal” people, though you seem to conflate fat and obesity as well, so I’m not shocked that people seem to take you at your word. Though you are…strange…

Second question, is living to 100 a valid touchstone for “health”? Does it have genetic factors? My grandmother is 96 and 180 pounds. I’ve rarely thought of her as fat, but I’m sure, by your gauge, you would (she has flab, eww, right?) I really can’t stand people like yourself who continually use the fat moniker and yet, you keep saying you don’t want to conflate “fat” with “obese”. You really don’t get it.

The strawfeminist said that skinny people were ugly. She also said that she is going to have a castration party at the winter solistice

Hey, I went to one of those once. I had a ball.

I’ve never known an anorexic

The sad longing, the wistful look into the horizon. “Oh, what I would give to have someone to fuck who is too hungry to orgasm but that’s okay, because even if she did, the pressure on her heart would kill her.” So erotic, so tempting, and yet so elusive, because the women who you can tell are fat because their teeth are all in their head—sexy women have their teeth nice and loose from scurvy, you know—selfishly deprive RM of the bony, dying body he desires.

Nobody made that statement; Amanda wrote it as a way of snarking at people who think the existence of women with BMI over 20 is a sign of the apocalypse. It’s like when Stephen Colbert says, “I’m not one of the factinistas.”

RM is the concern troll because he has problems with anti-anorexia posts on feminist blogs.

I guess my biggest issue is the common attitude on feminist sites that being skinny is ugly, unhealthy, and unnatural, yet being fat is beautiful, healthy, and normal.

Its your projection to think this is a common attitude on blogs. If it’s really common, show me ten quotes where women really said “fat is beautiful” or “skinny is ugly”.

I guess my biggest issue is the common attitude on feminist sites that being skinny is ugly, unhealthy, and unnatural, yet being fat is beautiful, healthy, and normal.

It’s the inconsistency that bothers me.

I don’t know where anyone said that being skinny is ugly, unhealthy and unnatural. I don’t think it is, anyway. My whole family is skinny except for me, and I’m nowhere near obese — but as context, they’re so little that I’m “the fat one.” They all eat well. They don’t diet or count calories obsessively. When my mom was a teenager she used to try and drink weight-gain shakes because she thought she was a beanpole. I think my mom was gorgeous when she was younger, and continues to be. My stick-skinny little sister is incredibly beautiful. I don’t think their thinness makes them beautiful, but they are thin and they are beautiful, if that makes sense.

Like Zuzu said, I really haven’t seen anyone call skinniess ugly. I’ve seen us critique eating disorders, but everyone with an eating disorder isn’t skinny. And we aren’t criticizing bodies when we’re criticizing eating disorders –we’re more often criticizing systems of oppression that push women into unhealthy behaviors.

When I write posts about anorexia or EDs, no, I don’t make the statement that “skinny people are beautiful.” It’s not because I don’t think they are; it’s because that’s such a dominant cultural message that there doesn’t seem to be any point in saying it.

But I don’t understand the fairly common complaint that a doctor telling a patient that his weight is a health risk is somehow “fat shaming” . As I’ve mentioned before, why is it acceptable to tell smokers how disgusting and unhealthy they are, but it is unacceptable to do so with the obese? Isn’t that “smoker shaming”?

Because if someone is otherwise healthy, hectoring them to lose weight serves no purpose other than to shame them. Also, many doctors — as people here have said over and over again — will attribute any and all physical complaints to weight and not look for underlying causes. Such as when Magis went in to the doctor to have an ear infection treated, only to find out that his insurance company wouldn’t cover the visit because the doctor had put down the reason for the visit as weight-related.

If someone is otherwise healthy, weight is not a risk factor, certainly not like smoking is. Smoking is a direct cause of various illnesses and directly affects breathing, etc.. Fat doesn’t give you cancer.

You keep using fat and obese interchangably. They are not the same thing. Fat is an aesthetic judgement, while obesity is a medical condition. I’m sure that there are people who confuse fat with obese, just like there are people who confuse skinny with anorexic.

Oh, so fat’s just an asthetic thing now, is it? I see you’re trying to have it both ways. I thought you were the one who insisted there were no fat 100-year-olds? Did you really mean obese? Sure didn’t say that. And that’s not the tune you’ve been singing for quite a long time whenever these discussions occur.

I don’t know about women, but being overweight or obese seems to be one of the factors that leads to erectile dysfunction, and losing weight has been shown to lead to significant improvement. Some studies have shown that up to 80% of men who suffer from ED are overweight or obese. I never brought it up before, as I did not wish to give ammunition to those who would claim “it’s always about your dick, isn’t it?”.

Cites, please, to studies that control for other factors than weight, such as prostate issues, blood pressure, etc. Need I remind you that “ED” is a term used by the pharmaceutical industry? So be mindful of the origin of those studies as well, and how they define “ED.”

I guess my biggest issue is the common attitude on feminist sites that being skinny is ugly, unhealthy, and unnatural, yet being fat is beautiful, healthy, and normal.

It’s the inconsistency that bothers me.

Again, cites. “Common attitude on feminist sites” ain’t going to cut it. Which sites? Who says that? What was the context?