Anonymous asked: (EDs anon) Yes totally agreed on all points! For what it's worth, WITHIN the eating disordered community -- that is, therapists and patients, NOT medical doctors very often -- there is lots of acknowledgement of those problems. It seems to me that the problem lies in the medical institution (quelle surprise!) and in the media. Thank you!
Oh, absolutely. That’s a really good point. I’m actually really impressed at the degree so many people in the ED community see and articulate the impact of our cultural messages about fat and eating and those can influence ED. The problem is definitely with an essentially fat shaming culture of institutionalized medicine as well as the oft responsible/complicit media that is eager to do a lot of hang wringing about ED, but often extends its sympathies to only specifically “worthy” patients. This creates a cultural imperitive to be more concerned with “threading the needle” on dealing with ED than actually confronting the problem head-on. We’d rather fixate on figuring out how to promote disordered eating to those deemed to need it while discouraging those deemed to be fine without it, then having real conversations about the social impact of fat stigmatization and diet culture. “Oh no, dear. Not YOU.” remains a woefully inadequate response to ED, and yet it seems to be what dominates our media’s and our society’s reactions.
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Anonymous asked: (The anon who asked about EDs) -- I think that's really true. I have ED-NOS, and although I am not fat, I am also not underweight. In October, I nearly died because the severity of my bulimic behaviors weren't recognized until very late in the game by the doctor I saw at my uni. It also upsets and triggers me to see the kind of support fat people engaging in really unhealthy forms of weightloss get. It's hard to understand why when I do it people flip, but it's a-ok when fat people do. Thanks!
You get at a really crucial point and one I think there needs to be a very real reckoning for in our society. That mixed message you saw seems incredibly important to me, but I see virtually no effort in our cultural discussion of ED to even acknowledge it, much less take responsibility for it. How can we expect to prevent or Promote recovery while we will still explicitly endorse those same behaviors in others. Saying fat people deserve it sends all the wrong messages, most especially for fat people diagnosed ED-NOS. I think our society needs to take responsibility for how it encourages and privileges disordered eating as well as the role aggressive fat stigmatization plays in promoting ED.
I wish the internet that exists now 10 years ago. Which is another way of saying I wish I knew all of you 10 years ago, I guess. I look at the community and resources and support that exists now for fat activism and I often find myself wondering what I could have done with all of that when I was 24. I can’t even begin to describe how much better my life would be.
I found myself thinking about that a lot in the last couple of days. Like, when I was 24, I think I was probably mostly involved in getting myself shouting out of a fat admirer community for about 10th time for telling other fat admirers that they should stop being assholes to women and stop trying to exploit fat shame to their advantage. I know pockets of fat activists existed, but I could never find them online. All the communities that existed were weirdly hostile to anyone interested in the politics of fat acceptance. I’d go there and speak out and I’d get a ton of private messages from people so glad I was there, but no public support because doing so would upset the trolls and concern trolls that ruled the roost. All I ever felt about fat politics with discouragement and hopelessness and I just felt completely lost for so long.
Its not that I never feel discouraged anymore. Its certainly not that I never get shouted at by angry fat admirers more interested in preserving their privilege than treating their partners with respect. But the level of encouragement and inspiration I feel from so many incredible people online is just indescribable. I wish I’d had this all along, but I’m still so amazingly grateful that its here now. I don’t have enough occasion to say it, but thank you to you all. To my followers, to those I follow, to those I reblog or like, to everyone creating spaces to really talk about fat liberation in creative, engaging, and productive ways. Thank you all. I may get a bit wistful thinking about what it would have been like to have found this earlier in my life, but I’m so grateful to have it now.
(Had a request to post this answer in a rebloggable form, so here goes)
Thin shaming is not a thing in the same way that misandry is not a thing. Just as “misandry” isn’t actually concerned with attacks on men, thin shaming isn’t really about body policing of thin bodies, which obviously happens. Rather, the concept is about enforcing thin privilege through establishing a false and destructive false equivillence between what a privileged group experiences and what a disenfranchised group experiences. That’s what people do when they suggest that body policing of a thin body is exactly the same as body policing a fat body. No it isn’t. And by asserting them as exactly the same thing, you aren’t standing up for thin bodies, but advertising a disrespect and disregard for fat bodies and for our real oppression.
Saying misandry isn’t real isn’t saying that some cis-male individuals don’t get targeted by women for abuse. Its saying that equating this with misogyny is hurtful and purposefully counterproductive. Its acknowledging that the purpose of such claims is to negate and disregard the abuse that an oppressed and disenfranchised group is subjected to and to recenter attention onto the needs and problems of those who already enjoy great privilege.
I don’t think body policing is justified, but none of what anyone I’ve seen said even comes close to even being body policing. And even if it did, it would be functionally different than what fat shaming is. That is why thin shaming isn’t a thing. Its not about body policing of thin bodies, but of appropriating the language of oppression to use as a tool of oppression. That’s nothing I’m obligated to acknowledge.
Anonymous asked: Have you ever talked/posted about anorexia, orthorexia, bulimia, or ED-NOS? Just curious. :)
I wouldn’t regard it as an area of expertise or experience, so I haven’t had much occassion to discuss ED. The one issue I know I have touched on, though only tangentially, is the struggle fat people have with the ED-NOS diagnosis. I have had a number of close friends who were basically anorexic while fat, which clinically means they get the catch-all “ED-NOS” label. I have concerns about this catch-all label can put up barriers to people getting treatment or acknowledgement of their ED, which is problematic enough given how much our culture explicitly encourages disordered eating in persons with fat bodies. Its hard enough to get anyone to consider anorexia-style eating patterns a problem when you have a fat body, but the catch-all can make it that much harder to get much needed care. I think this falls into a lot of larger patterns of fat people getting denied care from health care professionals that don’t look past weight and BMI.
Anonymous asked: I'm kind of interested in why you think that "thin shaming is not a thing". In my opinion, calling a thin person ugly for being thin (e.g. "Ew you're so lanky you should put on some weight; you'd look better if you had some meat on your bones" etc.) is thin shaming in exactly the same way as using fat insults is fat shaming. Your thoughts on this?
Thin shaming is not a thing in the same way that misandry is not a thing. Just as “misandry” isn’t actually concerned with attacks on men, thin shaming isn’t really about body policing of thin bodies, which obviously happens. Rather, the concept is about enforcing thin privilege through establishing a false and destructive false equivillence between what a privileged group experiences and what a disenfranchised group experiences. You do it yourself by suggesting that body policing of a thin body is exactly the same as body policing a fat body. No it isn’t. And by asserting them as exactly the same thing, you aren’t standing up for thin bodies, but advertising a disrespect and disregard for fat bodies and for our real oppression.
Saying misandry isn’t real isn’t saying that some cis-male individuals don’t get targeted by women for abuse. Its saying that equating this with misogyny is hurtful and purposefully counterproductive. Its acknowledging that the purpose of such claims is to negate and disregard the abuse that an oppressed and disenfranchised group is subjected to and to recenter attention onto the needs and problems of those who already enjoy great privilege.
I don’t think body policing is justified, but none of what anyone I’ve seen said even comes close to even being body policing. And even if it did, it would be functionally different than what fat shaming is. That is why thin shaming isn’t a thing. Its not about body policing of thin bodies, but of appropriating the language of oppression to use as a tool of oppression. That’s nothing I’m obligated to acknowledge.
I love my body.
I take care of my body.
I am fat. I am happy. And my body is not a failure because it doesn’t literally or figuratively fit into your ridiculous standards.
Relevant!
Fun Fact*: People who want to talk about dieting and weight loss feel a great deal of entitlement to insist that they aren’t actually talking about dieting and weight loss.
(*- Warning: Fact may not actually be fun.)
randomlancila said:
i’m pretty sure laci herself sent this ask, since she just sent a very similar un-anon to a friend of mine. hmm.Interesting if she’s actually sock-puppeting like that as the anon clearly referenced lacigreen as a seperate individual. Given the number of followers I gather she has, modeling for them is just as likely. Whether she wants to own up to it or not, her post traded on a lot of standard fat shaming talking points. She explicitly connected weight loss with self-love and “taking care of herself” and given our cultural dialogue about weight, this is only a barely implied accusation of actual fat people not loving themselves and not taking care of themselves. The language around “food addiction” is troubling to me, too, as I’ve seen little real proof that “food addiction” isn’t just a weight loss culture buzzword to shame transgressive eating.