When I was looking for articles on that WLS/diabetes study, I noticed a little link on the Yahoo! News page I was looking at with the following teaser:
ABC News: ‘Fat Acceptance’: Bloated and Gloating Online.
If I knew how to do a screen cap, I’d have grabbed it for ya. Here’s the URL, so you can see it (mouse over it, since the full URL is long and will break the page).
If you click the link, you go to an ABC News story that doesn’t actually carry that headline on the article (“Bloggers Preach ‘Fat Acceptance’”), but it does have that as the whaddayacallit at the very top of the screen, the one that tells you where you are (“ABC News: Fat Is Hot: Bloated and Gloating Online”). (UPDATE: Melissa McEwan comes through:)
I realize, from having worked at a couple of newspapers, that the people who write the articles and the people who write the headlines are not the same people. But, seriously, where do you get either “Fat is Hot” or “Bloated and Gloating” (I mean, really, “Bloated and Gloating“, FFS?) from the linked article?
what sucks most about that article is that it portrays fat activist blogs are being personal, feelings-type blogs dedicated to raising “self-esteem” instead of what they are, which is part of a political movement to fight fatphobia and challenge the myth of the “obesity epeidemic”. God forbid us fatties be treated like we have actual political opinions. God forbid fat activist bloggers be given space to challenge the scientific validity of their “obesity expert’s” totally bogus assertion that the ties between body weight and health are undeniable.
For extra awesomeness I see they stuck a little box down there by the last couple paragraphs with the caption “Video: Man loses 400 lbs without surgery.”
Not to mention the Headless Fatty Shot at the top, superimposed over the BFD screencap.
Health shouldn’t even be a consideration in things like this. It’s a strawman — acceptance has nothing to DO with health, whether fat is healthy or not, whether you can be healthy or not and be fat, whether it’s better for society, who cares.
Fat people == people. Period. Full stop. It just doesn’t go any further than that. You do not humiliate and target PEOPLE. There’s no yes-but after that statement. “I’m all for people being treated with dignity … bu-u-u-u-u-ut … ”
Nope. People should be treated with dignity, full stop. NO “but” followed by a supposed “but I say this out of CARE FOR YOU!” is even vaguely appropriate.
but it’s not healthy! But I can be healthy and fat!
But HEALTH IS IRRELEVENT. It’s like people who do the “abortion is bad but we need it” thing. Abortion shouldn’t even be a legal entity. It’s a diversionary tactic to being it into the realm of “yes-but.”
“Yes but it’s not healthy.” Yes but neither is the margarita I felt like having last weekend. So effing WHAT? The whole “health” thing is just smoke and mirrors when it comes to fat acceptance. It’s just human acceptance — health is the person’s concern, and not even vaguely the business of ANYONE else.
Even when people make this “but it costs society” argument, that’s bullshit. You know what? Skinny-ass yahoos who declare illegal wars that cost $200 billion to fight cost society. Maybe we need “dickhead acceptance” blogs instead.
that was the most appalling article i have read in some time.
i mean, *SERIOUSLY?!?!*
“An increasing number of overweight women are turning the blogosphere into the fatosphere”
double you tee eff?!? i can’t even being to fisk that sentence. every non-preposition is flat out offensive.
“an increasing number”
— because back in the day, fat chicks new their role and didn’t speak up
“overweight women”
— who are really just jealous of the skinny chicks who never talk about fat acceptance
“are turning the blogosphere”
— the blogosphere is helpless in the face of their weight
“the fatosphere”
— because the *only* blogs that exist anymore are fat acceptance blogs. the travel blogs, science blogs, knitting blogs, they’ve all given up and closed down shop to make way for the fatties.
jesus fucking christ. and that image? that’s totally me from behind: all size 12, 150 pounds of me. *that’s* the image we’re supposed to associate with “oh my god! the obese fat chicks are taking over!”?
Actually, the URI is:
http://abcnews.go.com/Technology/OnCall/story?id=4173879&page=1
That’s the redirected one. As you can see if you look at the actual post rather than just assuming I’m missing something, I’ve provided both (one is the link from the Yahoo News page I was looking at, the other is the one to the ABC News page). The Yahoo link contains “bloated and gloating” in the url itself, while the ABC News piece has it all over the page, but not the url.
See screencap.
Also, Stop Teasing, Start Accepting? Teasing?! This is not about people making playful jokes about our weight. This is about the very real discrimination fat people face when it comes to health care, the work place, and other spheres. This is about fat people being mocked and humiliated and generally not treated as real human beings. To reduce that to teasing is so fucking insulting.
lol on Rachel’s 150 pounds. Seriously, the woman in that picture is totally just not fat enough!
Ah, yes. Like we really need another ironclad case for the need for a fat acceptance movement, but there it is.
Yep. Getting drawn into the “healthy/unhealthy” argument is pointless when what’s being argued for is respect for all people, even if they make choices you wouldn’t. It’s like the people who argue against children’s health insurance by saying, “Well, they shouldn’t have had kids!” Too late now, pal — deal with what’s in front of you instead of what “should” have happened in the perfect world inside your head.
Mnemosyne, I wonder how many people who do the “yes-but” thing about “but it’s not healthy!” also act all outraged about Those Militant Vegans who insist on hassling them about their Big Macs. O:-)
Dunno any militants myself, but they always seem to be just over the horizon to hear some people talk. That’s also a health issue, but while vegetarians are apparently verboten from mentioning the health benefits of their diet, everyone else can pile on fat women and hassle them about any damned thing that goes into their mouths.
Well, that must be what such posts are suggesting, since the idea that being unattractive is acceptable is just unimaginable.
And it’s really an issue of attractiveness that’s being fought over here. Fat just gets the brunt of the flack because:
1. It’s a particularly common example of a trait our society typically considers “disgusting” or “ugly”.
2. Among such traits, its one of the easier ones to frame as “a choice”, which allows tormentors to hide selfish motivations behind allegedly altruistic ones. (If you ridicule someone who’s short or oddly proportioned or disfigured, for example, it’s more obvious that you’re just being cruel and self-centered, that you really want such people to hide from view so that you don’t have to endure the burden of seeing them.)
Yeah, sure.
Because my husband would like to receive accurate and respectful medical care, he’s ‘bloated and gloating’.
Well, I’m notorious for my irrational hatred of vegans, so I can at least say I want people to shut up from both ends of the spectrum. :-)
But. yeah, it’s that busybody strain of the American character showing up: “I get to tell you how to live your life, but you don’t get to do the same in return.”
The basic message of that article is that we should shut up and get back in our boxes. Which, I guess, could be a measure of the Fatosphere’s recent success in the media – we are getting a reaction.
But what disgusts me most is the idea that blogging is only about “trying to get something off your chest”. It’s so dismissive, so infuriating. Like what we have to say isn’t important simply because we blog it. Damn it, I have a political statement to make, and I make it anywhere I can including on my blog.
“Bloated and gloating”? I would like to vomit all over their Choos.
Funny, but I don’t remember a whole lot of stories from my childhood, when gays were still considered “deviant” by most people, that talked about gay men being “limpwristed and loving it.”
Its really hard for people to come to terms with. Things happen slowly. The news is always silly like this. Keep it up.
Realize it is hard and that the media is full of shit. :)
I just posted this over at Shakesville, too, apologies for cross posting, but it’s just so obvious:
Are there NO fat GUYS online? I’ve seen a few. Why the focus only on women?
“How dare they not spend 24/7 trying to be thin!”
Because fat on men is more accepted than fat on women. While the “health” kick is directed at both, men aren’t subject to the beauty myth and therefore don’t feel that they need to starve themselves thin. Men also have a lot of fat role models in the media — heck, the “fat immature slob with hot, skinny nagging wife” is so prevalent it’s a tv trope — whereas women’s choices are basically limited to some talk show hosts, many of whom talk about dieting and losing weight anyway.
Welcome to the patriarchy at work.
Sorry, that should read “don’t feel as much of a need to starve themselves thin.” It’s early and this blog doesn’t have a comment preview function. ._.
Well, it is true that the fat acceptance blogs are dominated by female voices. That said, it’s not like there are /no/ men involved.
I suspect that a lot of it is to help them better frame fat acceptance as frivolous vanity. If men are involved, patriarchal thinking says that means there’s something to this whole fat acceptance thing. If there are no men, then Patriarchy can dismiss it as just a bunch of bitter fat chicks who are all mad that they didn’t get asked to the prom.
The article as it is describes the fatosphere largely as a “You need to find fat women pretty” movement instead of the politically minded, human rights-centered movement it really is. Admitting there are men who also support fat acceptance would up-end the entire “bitter bitches” framework.
A couple years ago, I started to cry when my parents drove up to my college and offered to buy me a nice dinner. I wanted to eat so bad, but the fear of gaining weight was so overwhelming that I couldn’t bring myself to.
I knew about eating disorders, and starvation mode, and the ineffectiveness of diets, but I still didn’t want to eat. At that time in my life, I made the completely conscious choice that having an eating disorder was better than being fat.
Did I mention that I was a size 6 BEFORE I started?
This article is about making fun of people who are comfortable with themselves and who aren’t as self loathing as everyone is “supposed” to be. It’s very much a statement that asks the reader, “Can you believe these people don’t have themselves? Who do they think they are?”
Completely and utterly agree.
I don’t see why it was neccessary they had a stock headless footage of a naked fat person over the blog. These news companies really must have stock in diet pills or something. It’s like, so you want to be associated with hate. You want your news source to be associated with hate. Who will read news from a news source that is obviously prejudiced.