Breaking hiatus – thanks to Stuff.co.nz

The monitor is still borked, and the partner has still not purchased a new computer (thus bequeathing me his old one with functioning screen), but then I figured hey, I can still get post-fodder on a near-daily basis in the form of Stuff.co.nz’s incessant fat-hating.

I may be exaggerating a little – certainly this article, I don’t feel bad about my body, was a pretty decent one, all round.  All about making conscious choices not to invoke your own internalized body-hatred, some really good tips (many of which I follow) about not weighing yourself if you know the number will get you down (whatever it is), not reading magazines entirely designed to make you hate your own body, etc.

But of course, with any good story on Stuff.co.nz, the comments more than make up the awfulness quota.

The high points are:

• Ew, gross, you’re a size 14, that’s like disgustingly fat
• How dare you love your own body, you’re destroying our healthcare system
• We should all live like cavemen did because it’s natural / people today are so lazy (except of course for the commenters themselves, who are perfect)
• Even though in this article you mentioned going to the gym for fitness you must be spending all day on the couch eating baby-flavoured donuts because (see point 1).

Fatphobia, people:  you can tell you’re swimming in it when a woman this size (disclaimer: also won the genetic lottery in terms of “conventional” beauty standards) can be blasted as representing the end of our civilisation.

Kinda-fat-o-sphere classics: You NEEDNT have

So, a new magical lists of The Bad Foods Which Will Make You Fat has come out in NZ, and bad news!  Fruit juice, honey and milk are now no-nos. Google it if you want to, I’m not llinking to that panic-mongering crud.

The foods are called the “NEEDNT” foods, in possibly the silliest, smuggest use of acronym-generation since the PATRIOT Act.

Fortunately, the listmakers also gave us suggested substitutions, which are heavy on the “artificial sweetener” front – funny, I thought artificial sweetener was also going to make us fat/give us cancer etc.

I’m going to let my own personal goddess Sarah Haskins take it from here.

More thoughts on New Year’s resolutions

A few far more kickass bloggers than I have posted their thoughts on New Year’s resolutions, particularly as they relate to pressure to lose weight/go on diets/generally screw your health up in the quest for impossible anatomical change:

sleepydumpling at Fat Heffalump is making 2012 the Year of Living Fatly:

However, after stumbling across some douchecanoe on Twitter whining about being offended by seeing “fat, lazy people”, I’ve decided that I have a goal for 2012.  Are you ready for it?

Here it is…

I am going to be willfully fat this year.  Offensively, obnoxiously fat.  All over the damn place.  In fact, I’m fatting at all of you right now.

s.e. smith at This Ain’t Living is talking about how Fat Hatred Kills:

Every January, people, especially women, hit the gym and cut out sweets and drop pounds. Maybe they keep it up for a few weeks or months. Then those pounds come back on and they return to the starting point. Maybe they repeat the process in the next year, feeling guilty about their failure or pressured into it by someone else, like a ‘friend’ who insists on having a weight loss buddy. This is known as yo-yo dieting, for the constant bouncing up and down between weight points.

And, it turns out, it’s not very good for the body.

Go forth and read!

Fatshion bloggers on the Beeb!

We interrupt the holiday hiatus to link to a fairly awesome article on BBC News about the rise (spread?) of fatshion blogging, a trend of which your correspondent is one of the humbler members.

It’s only fairly awesome due to the following intro sentences:

For fat people, the rules of fashion are short but strict: stick to muted tones; avoid stripes and large patterns; stick to flowing shapes; spandex is a privilege, not a right.

In short, dress to disguise and disappear.

But not everyone has gotten that message.

Sorry, Kate Dailey of BBC Magazine:  we did get the message.  We still get it on about a daily basis.  We’re responding to it when we blog, and our response may be summarised as “Bugger off.”

Tip of the fedora to Fat Heffalump and Fat Lot of Good on Facebook.

Real posting resumes 1 January!

Fat-o-sphere classics: How we’ve come to believe that overeating causes obesity

Junkfood Science is an amazing blog, peeps.  And this post, which goes into the Minnesota starvation study of the 1940s and which you may not have heard about because it’s a little inconvenient for the weight loss industry, is an amazing post.

The 40 young male participants were carefully selected among hundreds of volunteers for being especially psychologically and socially well-adjusted, good-humored, motivated, well-educated, active and healthy. They were put on calorie-restrictive diets of about 1,600 calorie/day, meant to reflect that experienced in war-torn regions, for 3 months. They dieted to lose 2.5 pounds a week to lose 25% of their natural body weight. The calories were more generous than many weight loss diets prescribe today!

I hate to spoil the ending for anyone, but it follows the old tune: diets don’t work, people seem to have a natural genetic setpoint for weight, and that whole overeating => obesity equation is bollocks.

Fat-o-sphere classics: BMI Project

After seeing one too many OBESITY EPIDEMIC OMG articles focused on that most wonderfully pseudoscientific measurements of “health”, the Body Mass Index, the awesome Kate Harding, in her former haunt at Shapely Prose, created the BMI Project to illustrate (a) how ridiculous the whole BMI concept is and (b) how little you can tell, even about a person’s BMI (which is meant to be the holy of holy measures of Disgusting Fatness, right?), from looking at them.

I highly recommend the full Flickr photoset, for both blowing your mind on the topic of BMI and injecting some much-needed images of the diversity and hotness of all different kinds of human forms into my life.

Big props go to those who have submitted their photos and vital statistics, and many, many thanks to Ms Harding for leaving SP as a fantastic repository of fat acceptance work.

(My own BMI is quite solidly in the “obese” category.  Guess how many fucks I do not give?)

Fat-o-sphere classics: Joy Nash

If your lives have not been blessed with Joy Nash’s fat rants … get blessed!

I’ve long practised in my head the perfect, nonchalant “Nope, just fat” response to that classic put-down of sitcom cliche, “Are you pregnant?”  But happily I seem to walk through life just looking too damn confident (scary?) for anyone to try it (though I do get asked for directions a lot, which may stem from the same thing …)

Wednesday Wanty: Fat Ladies in Spaaaaace!

On first seeing Nicole Lorenz’s Fat Ladies in Spaaaaace! colouring book at The Rotund I was straight off to La Facebook demanding my friends ensure that my hypothetical future children get their own copies (see also: plushy microbes.)

Now Definatalie has an advance copy, and …

Oh. My. God.

I don’t want to steal Definatalie’s awesome images, so roll on over and have a look.  And think of my hypothetical future children while you’re at it!

Fat-o-sphere classics: Fat Nutritionist twofer

If ten words ever really changed my life, they were these:

Eat food.  Stuff you like.  As much as you want.

And they were uttered by the fabulous Michelle, aka The Fat Nutritionist.

So for today’s fat-o-sphere classic I’m linking to two of her classic posts:

The rules of nutrition

Now then.

Are there ways to eat which will (potentially) optimize your functioning while minimizing (your immediate and long-term risks of) certain diseases?

Probably.

Are there ways to eat which will (possibly) undermine your functioning while increasing (your risk of) disease?

Probably.

And why do I say probably instead of striking out with a sexy, definitive Yes?

Because, while these are likely results, they are not inevitabilities. They are not laws. This is not a² + b² = c².

It’s more like a² + b² = c ^{probably, maybe, if x, y, and z are also present}.

Because — let’s go back to being obvious again — people are different.

And the aforementioned Eat food.  Stuff you like.  As much as you want.

It should come as no surprise to anyone reading here that our culture views food as a moral issue. A potentially dangerous moral issue. And, setting aside the very-interesting-but-not-to-be-had-right-now discussion of ethical and religious foodways, food just…isn’t.

Food isn’t moral. It’s not immoral, either. It’s morally neutral.

But, sadly, we live in a time and a place where it seems Twinkies = Eternal Damnation. (Notice, here, how the supposed moral value of food pretty snugly overlaps its supposed nutritional value. This is not a coincidence.) And we tend to take the most pessimistic view of human nature.

So, when I say “Adult human beings are allowed to eat whatever, and however much they want,” what people actually hear is: “GO OUT AND CRAM YOUR FACE WITH BAD, BAD TWINKIES!!!!!!”

On the one hand I feel a bit trag just leaving other people’s words sitting there with no comment from myself; on the other, I just don’t see why you should be wasting any more time reading my mere mortal praise when you could be squee-gee-ing your third eye open at Michelle’s.

Wednesday Wanty: Jay Manuel for Sears Canada

Curvy Canadian has the scoop and I have the envy, especially of this dress:

And like Mr Jay needed to be any cooler:

Jay talked about how he was pleased that he could offer the line to a wider size range of women, and explained that if a piece wasn’t going to look good on women at any size, then he simply wouldn’t put it in his collection. He also reiterated one of Coco Chanel’s oft quoted design principles; that fashion is not about size, but about proportion, and that a woman can be stylish at any size.

The line goes up to a Canadian 18, which translates (according to mighty Google) to an AUS/NZ/UK 20 – it’s not true plus-size but it’s a damn good start.