Fat Acceptance

[eiblyn]

We had a discussion yesterday in my women's studies class about weight. It makes me sick to sit in that room full of women who pretend to think that weight should be a non-issue but they continue to argue for people to restrict their diets in such ways as to force themselves to eat foods they don't like (i.e. vegetables) in order to be healthy. They sit there and quote BMI's (body mass index) at me as if it's some kind of mantra that will magically produce health. No, I am not the healthiest person on the planet. I'm perfectly fine with my level of health because everything I've wanted to do physically I have been able to do. It may take me longer, I may be sore at the end of it, but I can still do it. I may not always be aesthetically pleased by the way I look but that does not make me any different from any other woman in America...or at least not any that I know. There's always that moment when I step out of a dressing room or when I change into my swimsuit where it doesn't matter if I'm a size 20 or a size 2 I'm going to worry about how I look. I've been working on that a lot. Up until this year I did not own a single skirt that went above my knees because I thought that "fat" women were not supposed to wear shorter skirts. To this day I only own three short skirts. I eat vegetables. I eat tons of them...I eat lots of healthy food. I also eat unhealthy food. But I certainly do eat. *smiles* There have been times in my life where I have eaten like a bird. My senior year of high school I only ate one meal a day and that was almost always just a salad. Once a week I would eat a baked potato with light ranch dressing, salt and pepper. That was it. I was skinnier...60 pounds skinnier...but I seriously doubt I was healthier. The sad part of it is that I went a whole year without ice cream...Now I try to eat at least two meals a day. I try to eat at least one vegetable a day. That doesn't sound like much but when you have to deal with food service you're lucky if you can get something besides french fries and hamburgers. I have perfect blood pressure by the way. It's absolutely perfect. And did I mention that I'm beautiful? So I may not meet some standards of ideal...but I don't think I want to. Leave those standards for people who don't want ice cream.

Comments

[joecoustic.livejournal.com]

Very well put!!!!

A few thoughts brought to mind while reading your post:

You can be fat and fit and fat and healthy.

Experts have said that a fat person who exercises is healthier than a thin person who doesn't.

That said, you have just as much right to not do those things as any thin person does. The sad thing is that, these days, few of them realize that this is their right too ....

I sweated for years 'til sometime in my twenties I said f*ck it and started wearing shorts. Now I live in them all summer and except for that weird transitional early spring time feeling, feel fine.

[stormlight811.livejournal.com]

Excellently stated. Go you! ::grin:: Yep, you're sexy and you're beautiful and you DON'T need to be a size six! Hooray for your short skirts and confidence!

Y'know, they keep "finding" that all those "eat only this and NEVER that" diets are not particularly healthy in the long run, anyway. Moderation in all things still comes out on top. This means moderate ice cream, moderate cinnamon rolls, moderate cheesecake, moderate hamburgers, moderate broccoli, moderate Little Debbie oatmeal cream pies... okay, time to stop listing before I drool all over the keyboard and make a run to the quik-e-mart... Life is too short and food is too tasty and readily available to go without just because of someone else's standards of beauty. Priorities!

And yes, I've seen unfit thin people, in the dressing rooms of upscale strip clubs. Many of them were surprisingly unattractive when seen mostly-naked under normal lighting conditions. Some of them just looked bony. Others may have worn a small pants size, but they had floppy bottom and cellulite just like the rest of us. Good genetics and diet are not a substitute for exercise, and smoking, drinking excessively, and tanning too intensively wears out the skin's elasticity early. (Then again, some of them were just freaking gorgeous. That was a good job...and it was really good for my self-esteem, too.)