Self Acceptance – Not “Fat Acceptance”
I’ve been aware of the “Fat Acceptance” (FA) movement for some time now…on occasion, I’ve dropped in to look around on sites like BigFatBlog or Fatshionista. Sometimes it feels like visiting another planet — I have a hard time getting into these people’s heads. But believe it or not — I’m sympathetic to some of the points FA activists make, especially as they pertain to women’s self/body image.
Let’s face it: it’s virtually impossible to be a woman in Western society, without internalizing images of female beauty that are impossible for real women to live up to. It starts early in life, with “Barbie” and all those Disney princesses, who — when scaled to human height — would have wasp-sized waists and ~38 DD chests (that never sag or bounce). Success and beauty are intertwined in our fairy tales: only “the fairest of them all” gets to live “happily ever after” with Prince Charming. It never lets up, either: over the years, women absorb those subliminal messages about thinness = glamour = success at the movies, on TV, and, of course, in those ubiquitous fashion magazines.
That’s fantasy. In reality, hormones and genetics make women more prone to adding fat — and not just in the “pectoral” area, either. The distance most women have to travel to resemble their fashionably emaciated role models is simply too great: many develop eating disorders as a consequence, or constantly beat up on themselves as they ride a roller coaster up and down the scale — convinced that each diet failure represents moral weakness and lack of character.
Is it any wonder that some women just give up? Doesn’t surprise me one bit.
The FA movement takes surrender one step further, however. The Adipositivity Project is a case in point. The site mission is to promote “size acceptance” and “widen definitions of physical beauty.” This is a good thing, in principle. Even thin women struggle to conform to fashion mag standards via liposuction, extreme diets, drugs, breast implants, etc. But it’s like chasing a rainbow: the media sets the bar so high, that even the models/actresses posing for the pics can’t reach it, and the Photoshop artists have to step in. That’s sick to the nth power, and FA activists are right to condemn it.
The problem I have with the fat acceptance philosophy, though, lies in its knee-jerk rejection of physical self-improvement and perverse celebration of obesity. Efforts to lose fat are frequently derided as evidence of self-loathing and caving in to societal pressures. FA activists insist fat people are genetically programmed to be fat, thus, any efforts to be unfat are unhealthy (both physically and psychologically) and doomed to failure.
I don’t buy it. For all the blathering about genetics — human beings weren’t meant to be fat. What many don’t understand, is that “genetic” doesn’t always imply “inevitable.” What we casually call “genetics” is actually a complex interplay of genes AND environment. It’s true that we have “thrifty genes” (with some more thrifty than others). Our tendency to store fat is an adaptation to an uncertain food supply: humans evolved to survive in the face of periodic scarcity. Early humans were also always on the move: they walked, ran, lifted, carried, climbed, danced, fought. And hunted: they had to work for their food. Thus, our remote ancestors may have gained fat at times, but it would have been difficult — if not virtually impossible — to become obese. Now that food isn’t scarce, however, we don’t have to rely on our reserves. We don’t have to move very much either: thanks to technology, we sit comfortably — and passively — throughout the day. In such an environment, our genes work against us to store excess fat in our bodies.
Our modern environment is clearly obesegenic: but that doesn’t mean we must give up and give into it. An abundance of food means that we also have choices about what, how much and when to eat. We don’t need to embrace the food industry in the process of rejecting the diet industry. Nor do we need to kill ourselves in the gym to be fit, strong and physically capable.
In other words, it’s not a choice between two extremes — with obesity on the one hand, and futile starvation, pills, surgery, and exhausting exercise on the other. There’s a middle ground that leaves room for both self acceptance AND self-improvement.
So let’s hear it for a wider definition of physical beauty: I don’t care for the bony look, either. But the Adipositivity Project’s definition is a bit too wide. It’s a fallacy to think that every woman will be able to reach body fat levels in the mid-to-low teens, but we can all be fitter, leaner and healthier. Self acceptance – not Fat Acceptance – is the goal.
June 13, 2008
Fantastic post, Elissa!
June 13, 2008
Adipositivity? Now thats a new concept for me. Too bad for the attorney who in my estimation was 70 to 100 lbs overweight, now a former member of my gym because he just died three days ago.
He had enough money to hire the cute little PT to walk around with him all the time, but not enough desire to change the aspects of his lifestyle that were doing him in. Nope not one.
There is a certain way our bodies were designed to function and “adipositivity” is going the wrong way.
June 13, 2008
Hmmmm…I’m not gonna go there. The health issues would be another post entirely, as the FA community has a number of talking points (books, even) on the topic that would take a lot more time to analyze than I care to devote to the topic.
As noted above, I’m all for moving away from an ultra-thin, unrealistic stereotype that literally harms women attempting to reach it, but – let’s face it – when you define “beauty” down to a point where everyone can reach it simply by existing, the word loses its meaning.
Similarly, the idea falls even flatter when applied to men. Male “beauty” is traditionally defined in terms of muscularity/strength and symmetry – Michelangelo’s “David,” is a perfect example. While our society tends to be more flexible about what’s considered attractive for a man, there are still aesthetic limits. I, for one, would not care to watch a Chippendale’s revue of 350 lb. guys shaking their love handles, beer guts and moobs at me and other members of the audience. Maybe it’s a failure of imagination on my part, but there ya go.
I don’t doubt for a second that people of all sizes are possessed of inner beauty, nor that there are those who truly do see physical beauty in XXL sized bodies (this is what “fat admiration” groups are about). As the above example implies, however, what we – as a larger society – define as “beauty” is a form of physical excellence. Thus, the larger point of the post…to put it another way, it’s about seeing beauty within the range that healthy, strong, active women who take care of their bodies can achieve vs. taking an “every woman’s body is beautiful, no matter what it looks like” approach.
June 14, 2008
Acceptance of the supersized female anatomy is not a new concept.
Just yesterday hearing the song by “Fat Bottomed Girls” booming out my cars CD player …….. Ah the memories.
August 31, 2008
I think that one of the points of the fat acceptance movement is that in order to care for oneself and focus on health, one must first be able to accept and love themselves as they are. I agree with the author that health rarely exists in extremes.
In a society that operates from an anorexic lens our perception of what a happy medium actually is becomes distorted. As a person who has always, since I was a young child growing up in a family of tiny women, struggled with my weight. I work hard everyday to accept my fat. I work out 4-5 days a week, I try to eat healthy and drink plenty of water…and have come to realize that I will probably never be thin. I may never even be medium again and even with all of the diet ads and anti-fat sentiments out there I still have to love and appreciate myself in order to stay committed to my health.
If my only motivation for working out and eating well was to lose weight I would have stopped a long time ago. After many ups and downs where I sacrificed my health to lose weight I learned that I had to stay focused on my health and well-being. Part of the fat-acceptance movement seeks to debunk myths around weight that keep “overweight” men and women in dangerous cycles of self-deprivation and self-hatred.
Myths that encourage people to make inaccurate judgments about people based on their weight and can distract health professionals from making proper diagnosis because they are so focused on weight. If you are a fat person, a part of self-acceptance is fat-acceptance. Self-acceptance and self-improvement requires that one accept and appreciate the totality of themselves. Self-loathing has never produced health.
I would, therefore, urge you to be very careful with the sentiment that fat-acceptance is simply a matter of “giving up”. This is one of the primary attitudes of people with eating disordered behavior.
August 31, 2008
It is “giving up” – but I don’t view it as a simple matter, nor do I see it as an illogical or unhealthy response to the unrealistic and anorexic standard upheld by society and the media.
Human physiology and genetics mean that not everyone can reach a particular physical standard, particularly one that is – let’s face it – not compatible with human evolution, which puts an emphasis on reproduction and survival in the face of an unpredictable food supply.
As I stated above, I’m sympathetic to many of the points made by FA and agree completely that the current societal norms are unrealistic, and encourage disordered eating and self-loathing. But the antidote to this problem doesn’t lie in veering to the opposite extreme and celebrating overt obesity.
One can, and should be able to love and accept themselves as they are. But that does not negate striving to be the best person that you can be – which is where FA loses me completely. FA activists implicitly assume that weight loss equates to self hate; thus people like Hanne Blank, are subjected to criticism and are even disowned, for doing so. A movement that questions whether one can truly be a part of FA if for being merely overweight vs. obese, has its own set of ideological blinders on.
IMHO, striving for physical self-improvement is no different than striving for mental self-improvement. To use an analogy, I didn’t have to despise my high school educated self to aspire to attend college, or motivate myself to get through graduate school. I simply wanted to learn more and have the opportunities that an advanced credential would make available to me. Likewise, in the gym, it’s about lifting the most weight I can, and striving to reach a personal best.
Needless to state, I will never win a Nobel Prize – nor will I ever go to the Olympics – there are people out there who can kick my ass physically and mentally. But I don’t have to hate myself because I’ll never reach their level, nor do I have to uphold myself as just as good, if not better than they are…ultimately, it’s about being my best self, vs. chasing after some impossible standard, or – alternately – rejecting it because I can’t reach it.
May 12, 2010
Self Acceptance – Not “Fat Acceptance” – http://blog.ultimatefatburner.com/2008/0…