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.”

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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.

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: But Don’t You Realise Fat is Unhealthy?

While this blog is basically a forum for me to post hot pix of myself and offer entirely unqualified opinions on fashion and stereotypical feminine frivolities, it should become pretty obvious to any readers that there’s something odd going on here.

The odd thing is fat acceptance.  Symptoms include not apologising for the sweet ass and bangin’ figure bestowed to me by Nature, refusing to accept at face value statements like “but you’re obviously unhealthy!” or “no one should ever eat at KFC.  EVER”, and generally adopting a questioning attitude towards the constant stream of body-judging crap flowing through the media.

It is, you may be able to tell, a subject on which I have a lot to say.

But rather than reinvent the wheel, I’ve decided to take the route simultaneously easier and more acknowledging of my intellectual foresisters in the area.  That is, I’m going to link to good posts you should read instead of nicking their ideas and presenting them as my own.

The Shapely Prose FAQ has long been a favourite of mine, as a nice neat collection of links to smackdowns of the usual fathating bingo-playing trolls.

Q. I’m still confused — you want me to believe hating fat people is a bad thing?
A. Only if you’re a decent human being. If you’re not, no worries.

It also nicely covers the basics, so I don’t have to; and as such is according the high honour of Inaugural Fat-o-sphere Classic here at A Large Pink Woman.