All The Bases
An excellent article about the guilt associated with being fat, and how society victimizes overweight people.
"'Feminist theory says that the ideal body has gotten smaller and smaller' as women have gotten more power, she said. 'For a woman to have power in this culture, she is supposed to be thin.'"
Nothing we haven't heard before, but still worth a read.
"'Feminist theory says that the ideal body has gotten smaller and smaller' as women have gotten more power, she said. 'For a woman to have power in this culture, she is supposed to be thin.'"
Nothing we haven't heard before, but still worth a read.
posted by mo pie at 10:21 AM
4 Comments:
This is a really good article, it lacks the oversimplified finger-pointing a lot of "stop being mean to the fatties" articles have.
Not bad, except for the bit about "200 pounds of fat under her skin," which is poorly phrased, and led me to believe she WEIGHED 200 pounds.
Which, of course, is "fat". Then I hit the bit about size 30, realised that if so, she was three feet tall, and only in the end do they inform me that she "reached a high of 374".
And she had gastric bypass, which is depressing.
I remember watching a 60 Minutes (I think) about some Canadian clinic that catered to anorexic girls. The treatment was, basically, this woman would baby the patient, spoon feeding them, petting them and whispering empowering comments into her ear. It showed her feeding this emaciated, bird-like creature.
The important thing, the woman said, was that an anorexic needed to feel validated.
The anorexic?
How about everyone.
Only the anorexic girl was presented as very baby-like and tragic. I wondered if the same sympathy could have been mustered for someone at the other end of the spectrum who probably has many of the same food issues. I somehow doubt it.
Did you ever notice in fiction how the sympathetic heroine always "wastes away" in response to her dilemma?
"...And she had gastric bypass, which is depressing..."
Hell, undergoing a GP, surviving it and dropping the extra weight is considered a success story now, complete with a "you go girl!" from admiring friends and family. Talking about defining success down.
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