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.

Fat-o-sphere classics: Just the fat facts, ma’am

The weekend ended up kicking my butt, and no playing-with-eyeshadow was achieved.  Still, I baked scones, so it wasn’t a complete write-off, depending on how the scones turned out.

Anyhow, I’m taking the night off.  So have some comfort reading instead (if, like me, you take comfort in reading things that fill you with righteous anger.)

Courtesy of Body Love Wellness, another great debunking of some annoyingly common lies about fatness.

But all of this goes against the conventional wisdom that fat is bad and deadly! Your “conventional wisdom” has been paid for by the diet industry and pharmaceutical companies for decades and decades. It’s time to get over it and start thinking critically.

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!

Fat-o-sphere classics: The Fantasy of Being Thin

I mentioned this on my New Year’s post … and then figured out I hadn’t linked to it yet!  D’oh.

Anyway, today’s blast from the past is from Kate Harding, formerly of Shapely Prose, and pretty much illustrates how difficult it can be to defeat long-entrenched fat-hating bullshit.

We’ve talked a lot here about how being fat shouldn’t stop you from doing the things you’ve always believed you couldn’t do until you were thin. Put on a bathing suit and go waterskiing. Apply for that awesome job you’re just barely qualified for. Ask that hot guy out. Join a gym. Wear a gorgeous dress. All of those concrete things you’ve been putting off? Just fucking do them, now, because this IS your life, happening as we speak.

But exhortations like that don’t take into account magical thinking about thinness, which I suspect — and the quote above suggests — is really quite common. Because, you see, the Fantasy of Being Thin is not just about becoming small enough to be perceived as more acceptable. It is about becoming an entirely different person – one with far more courage, confidence, and luck than the fat you has. It’s not just, “When I’m thin, I’ll look good in a bathing suit”; it’s “When I’m thin, I will be the kind of person who struts down the beach in a bikini, making men weep.”

…
In light of that, it’s a lot easier to understand why some people freak out when you say no, really, your chances of losing weight permanently are virtually nil, so you’d be better off focusing on feeling good and enjoying your life as a fat person. To someone fully wrapped up in The Fantasy of Being Thin, that doesn’t just mean, “All the best evidence suggests you will be fat for the rest of your life, but that’s really not a terrible thing.” It means, “You will NEVER be the person you want to be! All the evidence suggests you will never find a satisfying relationship or get a promotion or make more friends or feel confident trying new things!”

Kate goes on to talk about how basically, we just have to accept at some point that this is our life.  I’m never going to be a quantum physicist or a chess grandmaster, I don’t have the temperament or nocturnal habits to be a sassy tattooed bartender, I seriously could not handle working in retail again even if it were my fantasy combined plus-sized clothing/feminist literature store. And no amount of starving myself and damaging my health to somehow transform myself into a “good” person would make those things happen.

On the “childhood dreams” front I guess I could one day be Prime Minister, but that would take … a pretty bizarre set of circumstances.

Quelle terrible!

Spotted on stuff.co.nz earlier this week:

[Description: a screenshot from a news website; two fat white people sitting in a pool drinking a bubbly alcoholic breakfast with the headline A GROWING NATION / KIWIS OVERWEIGHT CIDER-LOVERS / New Zealand getting heavier: Only 35 per cent of Kiwis fall within a healthy weight range, according to a new report.]

My immediate reaction? MY GODS, STUFF.CO.NZ IS SPYING ON ME because “overweight cider-lover” is totally how I’m going to introduce myself in future.

In answer to the usual questions, yes, “healthy weight range” was based on BMI, and yes, not just BMI but self-reported height and weight figures, and yes, they just randomly picked two of the stats from the study and conflated them into a WE’RE ALL FAT ALKIES headline.

We’re also more likely to eat Indian food, so I can only wonder why they didn’t go for the much-more-believable headline, CIDER TASTES AWESOME WITH CURRY.

Oh, right, because that wouldn’t add to the OBESITY EPIDEMIC BOOGA BOOGA BOOGA meme.  (H/T Marianne Kirby and Kate Harding; buy the book!)

Wednesday Wanty: Christmas indulgence

Lush’s Christmas range is out, and somehow they have tapped into my subconscious and delivered me something I didn’t even know I wanted:

Candy-cane-scented soap.

I’m a bit of a Lush fanatic, as any of my friends can tell you, and they are my go-to shop for a delicious indulgent shopping experience (me being one of the 50% of the population who love the smell of Lush stores, versus the 50% who get headaches and/or sneezing fits).

To get a tad personal, being able to have luxurious pampering sessions every now and then is a reminder to myself that I am, to borrow the L’Oreal logo, totally worth it.

Lush does get slight demerits on its Candy Mountain bubble bar, for which they couldn’t resist a cliche “calorie-free alternative” jibe.  Don’t harsh my seasonal squee with your cheap, unoriginal food policing!

Things what are not news

“Woman loses 73kg” … and has entered a Weight Watchers-funded “healthy lifestyle” contest which I’m sure is totally not just a sophisticated advertising campaign.

It’s always fascinating to see the media firstly basically give companies like Weight Watchers ad space for free, and secondly report on people’s **miracle** weight loss and **healthy** new habits … without actually mentioning the food side of things.  Oh, she’s walking 12k a day and, ha ha, remembers what her ribs feel like!  Oh, eating, you say?  Her “healthy lifestyle” might involve strict caloric restrictions which in other circumstances are essentially used to torture people?

But I guess the fact that Weight Watchers is  a company based on peer-pressure bullying tactics which considers so much as a cough drop to be the top of the slippery slope to sitting on the couch inhaling bonbons through a specially-modified hose isn’t convenient when peddling the same old “fat bad! Fatties gross! Stupid fatties, drinking lard all day!” bullshit.

Also, sadly, no mention of how long the contestents in this “competition” (but I thought “getting healthy” was all the motivation you needed … but if The Biggest Loser and countless, failed, celebrity endorsements have taught us anything it’s that money suppresses hunger pangs) have kept the weight off.  Remember the actual science:  if it’s less than 5 years, they’re both massive statistical outliers.

Which would be lucky for them, given society’s massive fathatred, but hardly an example anyone else should be guilt-tripped into emulating.