FAT IS A FEMINIST ISSUE

Obesity is also a mental health problem; overeating is an addiction to food. When you live in a convenience focused world I'm sure it is very possible to eat normal amounts of sugary, fatty food and become fat. For me, that was never really the problem. I overeat as a method of self-soothing. This began when I was probably about 12.

This was about the same time as me and my twin sister hit puberty, and she was developing into a narcissist. (Yes, it often manifests at puberty). My parents were worse than useless - they told me that I was oversensitive or that our problems were my fault. Being a kid I believed them... and so I learned to force my feelings down. My relationship with food was doubly troubled: one, it was my friend when I had no one else. Two, it made bad feelings go away, at least as long as I was eating.

I had learned to not feel my own feelings. It was only a few years ago when I was sat in the car trying to figure out why my nostrils were flaring. I knew intellectually what that signal means, but I did not feel angry. Until I sat with it... and bubbling up it came! RAGE.

I am still on this journey of listening to my body and learning to respect what it wants. It's something I have to do consciously because my normal habit is to suppress, so I check in multiple times a day. I am allowed to feel my negative feels without my brain talking in my mother's voice "you're just being oversensitive. Don't be so childish."

This is a journey years in the going. My obesity is not a disease; it is the cry of my inner child who needs love - not admonishment. She needs connection and attention. Shaming her was never going to help - on the contrary, it has always made things worse. I am not on a diet, but I am losing weight. I listen to what my body is telling me, and I do the emotional work. I am enough... and I find I need less food because I am enough, and I have enough. I remind myself of this truth every day. Writing this out for you lovely ladies here has struck me inside... so I have learned a new thing! I can communicate to me through writing. I also booked a personal trainer to help me and my body in our new relationship. I think of her a relationship counsellor :)

One day, I will be at a weight I am happy with. But the goal is not to lose weight. The goal is to love myself enough that I will get there naturally.

Obesity is a moral failing. But it's not mine.

Invariably the sort of person who hates fat people has basically nothing going on in their lives so the only thing they can stake their self esteem on is their appearance. I've never seen an actually successful person care much about this.

Quite a few women who are dear to me have struggled with their weight all their lives, and I myself have gone through cycles of restricting and binging despite my normal weight. So I’ve seen it firsthand how diet culture aimed at women ruins their relationship with their bodies. Women who don’t manage to stay rail thin refuse to comply with patriarchal standards. Not being skinny equals failing at being a woman. So yes, it is absolutely a feminist issue.

Thinness and frailty are absurdly fetishized in women because patriarchy is obsessed with women being weak. Women are not supposed to take up space. They’re not supposed to struggle and need quality healthcare, they’re supposed to be the ones providing all the care that men need. At the same time, society disadvantages the maintenance of a healthy weight — in all people, but women are affected disproportionately. Our PE classes are mostly incredibly blind to female physiology, portion sizes are huge, the sole responsibility to make healthy meals often rests on the woman in a relatonship, female role models are required to be thin in a way most male ones aren’t. Add the fact that women’s emotional health is sorely neglected and almost every woman has been used and abused by men, and all the bullying if she dares to be overweight… Everything is really working against us here. And the “solution” that’s offered is mostly just to eat less, depriving ourselves of the fuel we need to make changes. The social code among women says that we need to refuse a second serving, that we need to stay away from sweets, to sigh deeply and self-flagellate when we are “straying” from our diet, that we need to keep making the impression that we are never hungry or worse, have an appetite. Appetite is only for the skinny (who ironically often worked hardest to get rid of it). I have never felt that I could ever eat a “correct” amount, when I was thinner, it was too little, when I was heavier, it was too much. Once again, the corridor for acceptable behavior remains narrow. Even some feminists don’t realize that the obsession with a woman’s body and its supposed ideal size and proportions is misogynist as hell. We need to focus on women’s health, by giving women what they need, not demanding that they take all the individual responsibility for a systemic issue and subject themselves to insults and ostracization when they fail to do so. I am sick of the “but obesity is unhealthyyy” concern trolling. Yes, everyone knows. But the causality goes the other way too. Trauma, neglect, untreated medical conditions, lack of access to quality food were there first, before the weight gain. Obesity is just the symptom, the body’s way of protecting itself and coping how it has learned to.

(As an aside, if you accept this notion, you also have to realize that mental health conditions and addictions follow the same pattern. I often see women here hate on people who are mentally ill. We are not adequately equipped to stay sane in this world, mostly because we have been denied the resources and healthy support we would have needed. I reject healthism of any kind in a society that’s sick to the core — we can’t fault individuals for turning out sick living in it. Of course, personal boundaries can include staying away from people with any sort of condition as to not jeopardize your own health, but I’d like people to refrain from value judgments here).

Recent data show that while caloric intake has stayed around the same in the past couple of decades, obesity levels have continued to rise. I read a recent review of the studies on this phenomenon. It appears that the more important factor is quality of diet. Considering that factors affecting obesity range from pesticide use to microplastics, as well as stress, lack of sleep and technology use, the science seems to still be evolving. It's so much easier to become obese nowadays. There's so much about food production and the consequences of the methods involved that we just don't know yet.

I really don't think it's as simple as telling people to stop eating but, for sure, people need to assume some command over their behaviour. Body positivity is great. Preaching acceptance of unhealthy behaviour, however, is delusional.

There's a fine line there. In general, I think HVW would try to stay healthy but what do we know of others' struggles just by looking at their weight?

Users who post comments against fat women on a radfem forum that seeks to eliminate internalized misogyny will never get wrinkles. Theirs is a face uncluttered by thought. Theirs is a brain that will set science back by a thousand years if they choose to donate it. Such power. Such queens. 😯

I’m not a fat person, but I’ve had great weight fluctuations throughout my life. Initially I lost a bunch of weight in my teens due to trauma, my internal vision of my body couldn’t keep up and a combination of self hatred (from trauma) and external pressures (my mothers body dysmorphia and disordered eating) caused me to develop body dysmorphia and I always felt fat.

During pregnancies and post pregnancy I became the weight I always felt I was and discovered that as long as I didn’t think about it too much, I can still feel beautiful.

This is all compounded by the fact that I have cfs/me and cannot exercise. So my weight has to be controlled by calorie intake.

I aim for body neutrality and refuse to be friends with LV women who endlessly fat shame or bitch about their weight. It’s not good for me, it triggers my own disordered eating.

100%, great post. I have a feeling much of the nasty commentary about fat people comes from young posters who haven't hit middle age yet. I'm 45, and boy, have things started to change. I'm a gym rat, play tennis once or twice a week, cycle to and from work, walk my dog twice a day, and go bushwalking on the weekends. My diet is pretty good. Despite all of this, my waist has started to expand and I've gone up a size in clothes. Weight gain in middle age is, for most women, a natural part of the ageing process (maybe not as common for certain ethnicities, like East Asian, damn those skinny Japanese and Korean women). As other posters have noted, genes also play a huge role, regardless of age. We need to be kinder to each other on this topic. Internalised misogyny and ageism is nasty.

I am recovering from disordered eating for nearly my whole life.

Obesity is not a disease. It has been classified as a disease solely for the purpose of the FDA being able to approve drugs to 'treat' it.

There is nothing inherently unhealthy about being larger than what the BMI normal weight range says. I'm not saying that being a lot heavier doesn't have negative health effects. Re-read that.

I wish I wasn't larger. But I truly understand now after I finally stopped dieting (read being a fitness gym rat counting macros and calories under the guise of fitness and supervised by actual qualified trainers) that the result of restricting food IS WEIGHT GAIN.

I truly believe it's a myth that we can control our weight. Think about it- I know several men who can't put on any weight at all no matter how much they eat and lift weights. Do we judge them and call them weak willed, undisciplined etc. Etc? Do you know why only 3% of people who purposely lose weight maintain it?? No one can answer these questions who are proponents of dieting. If weight loss diets worked, then everyone would just do it, and the industry of billions of dollars wouldn't exist.

There is nothing inherent wrong with being larger.

Yes, I gained a lot of weight when I finally stopped trying to control every aspect of what I ate every day. Yes, I get treated worse because of it. Yes I wish every day I could go back to that body. But at what cost? I know if I let myself relax for a minute it will return plus more.

Yeah, yall will probably snicker and call me a fatty for this post. Maybe you haven't realized yet the mental toll of an eating disorder or the struggle of having one. Maybe you're in denial like I was for most of my life.

I'm sorry, but obesity DOES have health consequences. I'll agree, there are poor areas where junk food is cheaper and it's not fair. I think junk food should be more expensive than healthy food. A lot of us in the US have an obesity problem because of all the sugar being added to our food, which I'm trying to avoid as much as possible. Notice that up until the 70's, even in the 80's there were hardly any obese people. Also, it's not hatred. It's reality

https://www.cdc.gov/healthyweight/effects/index.html

https://www.who.int/news-room/questions-and-answers/item/obesity-health-consequences-of-being-overweight

https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC4386197/

https://www.niddk.nih.gov/health-information/weight-management/adult-overweight-obesity/health-risks

This was downvoted? Surprise surprise 🙄. I guess some of you don't like facts.

It's not just here, the fat phobia is everywhere. It's rampant on tiktok and a lot of creators I previously liked have gone on weird skinny supremacy rants. Protect your mental health by limiting your media and be extra kind to yourself. In the meantime I would choose not to focus on being angry about this topic - don't focus on the injustice of it. You attract what you focus your attention on. Take a nap or go to the beach lol

https://www.news.com.au/entertainment/celebrity-life/celebrity-photos/ariana-grande-being-body-shamed-has-revealed-a-larger-issue-that-all-women-face/news-story/d858ac7eca5c636f5aba763605cba082

90% of the time it’s the individuals own fault. And 10% of the population have a condition like PCOS. Its not a disease if you sit on your ass all day eat crap and watch the pounds pile up.

The reason why I have little to no sympathy towards fat people because they give themselves a free pass to behave ignorant. I was bullied because I was skinny but when I clap back and say “At least I don’t have to walk side ways to enter a door” Then I’m a monster for saying that to those poor struggling humans.

Nobody should be rude about your weight. Even if you think the word skinny is not an insult. Respect is universal and should go both ways.