(diet talk snipped)
This doesn’t sit well with me and I wish I could pinpoint all of the reasons why it doesn’t. I think a major one is how shaming it is for people who are fat and genuinely enjoy both their bodies AND fatty foods. It seems to equate eating certain things with not actually loving yourself. This is problematic.
This is SUPER problematic. Especially RIGHT on the heels of her fat shaming video last week.
So she changed her habits and her body changed. GREAT. Some people don’t want to change their habits. Some people don’t have the means (money time resources etc.) to change their habits. Some people do change their habits, but their body still looks the same. And ALL of that is okay.
With a viewership like Laci has, she really needs to consider that this post is probably going to do a lot more harm than good. The gung-ho ‘I did it and so can you!’ approach is really off-putting. She even used the word ‘addiction’ when it came to sugary and fatty foods—and you know what, addictions aren’t just that easy to break, especially when it comes to food, which is necessary to live, and especially when the bad foods are the cheapest and most accessible to get.
Very disappointed. Love her sex positive stuff, but she’s got a lot to learn about body positivity.
I’m really uncomfortable with fat acceptance being pitched as a weight loss plan. For one, its setting up the same exact false hopes that are emblamatic of all weight loss schemes. But, usually, the real issue is that its not FA being framed as a weight loss plan, its a weight loss plan appropriating the language of fat acceptance and repurposing them to serve the fat shaming needs of the weight loss industry. This stuff may not be done by individuals, but they are following the lead of an industry that has been agressively appropriating fat acceptance talking points for decades. The purpose is two fold. On the one hand, those who profit from fat shame understand shame isn’t always an easy sell. Especially to people who’ve already be sold more than a lifetime’s worth. They recognized that the positive and encouraging message of fat acceptance would find eager listeners, so they sought to exploit this themselves to diversify their acquisition of customers. If you can’t sell them on shame directly, do it indirectly by rebranding that shame as self-love. The second purpose is that by appropriating this language, they make it that much harder for fat acceptance’s message to be heard. We don’t have multi-billion dollar budgets with which to market ourselves. Fat shame does. So they co-opt our message and aggressively brand it in the public’s eye as a slogan of fat stigmatization. One of the best examples of this is “Diets Don’t Work”. Fat activists said this seizing upon the lived experience of virtually all dieters that diets don’t actually work. Recognizing that the “diet” brand was failing as a result of, you know, being a shitty product, the weight loss industry decided to swipe this slogan and use it themselves. Suddenly, the diet industry itself is saying “Diets Don’t Work” on billboards, TV, radio, etc. And what they have to sell you is all of a sudden not a diet but something else. Something you can be hopeful about it. Something you’ll blame yourself for when it inevitably fails.
Weight loss sometimes happens when you give up dieting. But it can’t be an expectation or a goal. Or, frankly, even celebrated if happenstance brings it on. Likewise, “self-love” is often just a means of rebranding self-loathing and self-hate when its in the service of strong cultural forces stigmatizing fat people. We have no obligation to honor the appropriate marketing slogans of the fat shame industry.
