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livPolitically speaking, I am firmly committed to a body-positive stance. If I want to sum up a fairly complex set of ideas, I would say that means I don't think people should be judged or face discrimination based on what their body is like, whether that's on aesthetic grounds, or health grounds, or (as so often happens) a convoluted mixture where the two are confused or treated as interchangeable. I also am positive about bodies, in that I don't think it's virtuous to mortify one's body for the sake of attaining some higher spiritual or similar goal, I think people are their bodies, and bodies should be treated with respect and care. But that's not the aspect of body-positivity that I want to talk about here.
As part of being body positive, I include fat bodies. There are lots of different groups trying to improve fat people's experience of the world, using labels such as fat acceptance, fat positivity, health at every size, fat pride and so on. And they all have slightly different ideas of what it means to be an activist in favour of fat people. I broadly agree with all of these movements, but I don't subscribe in detail to every aspect of their philosophy, so I don't consider myself as a member of any of the movements supportive of fat people. For me, it's part of my general belief that people are their bodies and people are worthy of respect; there isn't a certain weight or BMI or whatever above which that principle ceases to apply.
Given this, and given that I generally love Body Impolitic, you might think I'd be all over this recent post on International No Diet Day. In fact, it really bothers me.
It has often been my experience that when I, or other people on the internet, say we are fat positive, people react by assuming that we must hate thin people. Maybe some fat activists do, but I strongly doubt it, and I certainly don't. Thin people, just like fat people, have the bodies they have because of their genetic inheritance, their upbringing, their environment, their lifestyle choices based, I can only hope, on much more important priorities than whether I find them aesthetically pleasing. It would be hypocritical in the extreme if I were to react negatively to thin people just because they happen to be thin. As far as I can tell, the people who hate thin people are those who are desperately trying to lose weight, who believe that thin people have the highest value in the social pecking order, and therefore "hate", or perhaps more accurately are jealous of, people who are more successful at achieving the thin ideal.
The other assumption that people make, though, is that I and my activist allies hate dieters. And it feels to me like Oelbaum's project, as described by Murray at Body Impolitic, is contributing to that false impression. The thing is, I have personally chosen not to diet, because based on the evidence I have seen, I conclude that most weight-loss methods are not effective for most people. Further, while I am aware that there is a correlation between being extremely overweight and poor health, there is almost no compelling evidence that a fat person who loses weight will have health outcomes as good as someone who was always thin to start with. That's partly because very few people do in fact lose substantial amounts of weight in the long term, so what evidence there is is based on small and quite likely exceptional populations. For all that's a personal choice, not a political stance, I can see why people sometimes become defensive if I refuse to participate in their hobby, and furthermore doubt that their weight-loss plan is going to do them as much good as they think it is.
Politically, though, I am strongly against the pressure exerted on many people (especially fat people, but on quite a lot of relatively thin people too) to diet, to the point that it's almost compulsory. If I have decided that the putative benefits of dieting aren't worth the cost, I want other people to have the right to make that judgement call too! And like Oelbaum, Murray, Chastain as quoted in the Body Impolitic article, and many others, I am in fact angry with the weight loss industry, which puts almost unimaginable resource into pressuring people, both individuals and healthcare providers and purchasers, to spend lots of money pursuing a chimeric goal of weight loss.
But that doesn't in the slightest mean I am against individuals who want to lose weight! The medical orthodoxy is still after all that weight loss is good for you, so it is entirely reasonable to follow that view. Some individual health conditions may be improved by weight loss – type II diabetes may be, at least for some people, ditto PCOS, and some joint problems and pain can be alleviated by reducing the weight borne by the affected joints. Some people can't access needed treatment unless they meet weight goals; I might have a problem with doctors restricting healthcare access on that basis, but from the patient's perspective, it only makes sense to do what it takes to get your condition treated.
And some people just plain feel better when they weigh less; it's not for me to judge whether that's because they buy into beauty standards that I consider artificial or for any other reason. People have autonomy over their own bodies, people have the right to decide that it's worth going hungry in order to have the body shape they feel good about. Wanting your body to look a certain way isn't "superficial" or trivial, it's a valid desire, because people are their bodies.
Furthermore, just because most people don't lose substantial weight in the long term through dieting, doesn't change the fact that some people do. Estimates run at around 5%, which isn't that tiny, 1 in 20 people have a metabolic quirk which means that when they consume fewer calories and do more exercise, they get thinner. Not just a little bit thinner, which nearly everyone does, but substantially and sustainably thinner. I don't want to argue those people out of existence because it suits my political cause! Well-known Fat Acceptance blogger Kate Harding at some point said something like
Sometimes this feels a bit like some of the debates within feminism about expressions of conventional femininity. Feminists may passionately argue that women shouldn't have to wear makeup and high heels to succeed in the world or be taken seriously. And some people are always going to hear that they're wrong or inferior or somehow "unfeminist" if they do want to wear makeup, high heels etc. People shouldn't have to diet; that doesn't mean people who do diet are the problem. I try to be as supportive as I can of friends who are aiming to lose weight.
I don't agree with Oelbaum characterizing dieting as always being about
So, much as the Willendorf project – making replicas of the Venus of Willendorf out of papier mâché made from ripped up diet books – is cute, Oelbaum's ad campaign I think misses the mark, and I am really quite uncomfortable with Murray's write-up of the project. I also feel quite uncomfortable with today being designated "International no diet day". I like the idea behind the project, and in some ways I'm marking it by making this post setting out my body positive, partially anti-diet stance. But I am very uncertain about the implementation; apart from anything else, I think the idea of having a "No Diet" day is potentially quite damaging. Because nearly all weight-loss diets have, whether formally or in practice, "days off" when you're excused from your diet for just one day. That's part of the reason why diets are often quite unhealthy in the first place, because people are encouraged to use their days off to stuff their faces with as much of the forbidden foods as they can possibly eat, knowing that they'll have to go back to abstaining when the day is over. It's all tied up with the idea of "naughty" foods which are bad for you but you can indulge in them occasionally as a treat, and that itself is very much the message of weight-loss marketing, and marketing from other industries which piggy-back on keeping people hungry, dissatisfied and insecure so that they can more easily be tempted to part with their money.
Have I alienated everybody yet?
As part of being body positive, I include fat bodies. There are lots of different groups trying to improve fat people's experience of the world, using labels such as fat acceptance, fat positivity, health at every size, fat pride and so on. And they all have slightly different ideas of what it means to be an activist in favour of fat people. I broadly agree with all of these movements, but I don't subscribe in detail to every aspect of their philosophy, so I don't consider myself as a member of any of the movements supportive of fat people. For me, it's part of my general belief that people are their bodies and people are worthy of respect; there isn't a certain weight or BMI or whatever above which that principle ceases to apply.
Given this, and given that I generally love Body Impolitic, you might think I'd be all over this recent post on International No Diet Day. In fact, it really bothers me.
It has often been my experience that when I, or other people on the internet, say we are fat positive, people react by assuming that we must hate thin people. Maybe some fat activists do, but I strongly doubt it, and I certainly don't. Thin people, just like fat people, have the bodies they have because of their genetic inheritance, their upbringing, their environment, their lifestyle choices based, I can only hope, on much more important priorities than whether I find them aesthetically pleasing. It would be hypocritical in the extreme if I were to react negatively to thin people just because they happen to be thin. As far as I can tell, the people who hate thin people are those who are desperately trying to lose weight, who believe that thin people have the highest value in the social pecking order, and therefore "hate", or perhaps more accurately are jealous of, people who are more successful at achieving the thin ideal.
The other assumption that people make, though, is that I and my activist allies hate dieters. And it feels to me like Oelbaum's project, as described by Murray at Body Impolitic, is contributing to that false impression. The thing is, I have personally chosen not to diet, because based on the evidence I have seen, I conclude that most weight-loss methods are not effective for most people. Further, while I am aware that there is a correlation between being extremely overweight and poor health, there is almost no compelling evidence that a fat person who loses weight will have health outcomes as good as someone who was always thin to start with. That's partly because very few people do in fact lose substantial amounts of weight in the long term, so what evidence there is is based on small and quite likely exceptional populations. For all that's a personal choice, not a political stance, I can see why people sometimes become defensive if I refuse to participate in their hobby, and furthermore doubt that their weight-loss plan is going to do them as much good as they think it is.
Politically, though, I am strongly against the pressure exerted on many people (especially fat people, but on quite a lot of relatively thin people too) to diet, to the point that it's almost compulsory. If I have decided that the putative benefits of dieting aren't worth the cost, I want other people to have the right to make that judgement call too! And like Oelbaum, Murray, Chastain as quoted in the Body Impolitic article, and many others, I am in fact angry with the weight loss industry, which puts almost unimaginable resource into pressuring people, both individuals and healthcare providers and purchasers, to spend lots of money pursuing a chimeric goal of weight loss.
But that doesn't in the slightest mean I am against individuals who want to lose weight! The medical orthodoxy is still after all that weight loss is good for you, so it is entirely reasonable to follow that view. Some individual health conditions may be improved by weight loss – type II diabetes may be, at least for some people, ditto PCOS, and some joint problems and pain can be alleviated by reducing the weight borne by the affected joints. Some people can't access needed treatment unless they meet weight goals; I might have a problem with doctors restricting healthcare access on that basis, but from the patient's perspective, it only makes sense to do what it takes to get your condition treated.
And some people just plain feel better when they weigh less; it's not for me to judge whether that's because they buy into beauty standards that I consider artificial or for any other reason. People have autonomy over their own bodies, people have the right to decide that it's worth going hungry in order to have the body shape they feel good about. Wanting your body to look a certain way isn't "superficial" or trivial, it's a valid desire, because people are their bodies.
Furthermore, just because most people don't lose substantial weight in the long term through dieting, doesn't change the fact that some people do. Estimates run at around 5%, which isn't that tiny, 1 in 20 people have a metabolic quirk which means that when they consume fewer calories and do more exercise, they get thinner. Not just a little bit thinner, which nearly everyone does, but substantially and sustainably thinner. I don't want to argue those people out of existence because it suits my political cause! Well-known Fat Acceptance blogger Kate Harding at some point said something like
Congratulations, you're literally a freak of nature, which I considered really unhelpful, calling people freaks is never good politics, and anyway, people who lose weight through changing their calorie balance are in real terms not that rare at all, it's only slightly less common than being left-handed. From a HAES perspective, I'm all in favour of people changing their lifestyle to be more healthy, and for many people that means doing more exercise and eating less or differently, and some (a relatively rare few, but some) are going to lose weight if they do that. It would go against my principles entirely to have a problem with that.
Sometimes this feels a bit like some of the debates within feminism about expressions of conventional femininity. Feminists may passionately argue that women shouldn't have to wear makeup and high heels to succeed in the world or be taken seriously. And some people are always going to hear that they're wrong or inferior or somehow "unfeminist" if they do want to wear makeup, high heels etc. People shouldn't have to diet; that doesn't mean people who do diet are the problem. I try to be as supportive as I can of friends who are aiming to lose weight.
I don't agree with Oelbaum characterizing dieting as always being about
self-loathingor
measuring our worth on a bathroom scale. And I don't like Murray referring to a dieter as
the infinitely exploitable sucker. I have a big problem with her dragging in eating disorders, and with Murray endorsing this by calling diet books
"Create Your Own Eating Disorder" books. People with mental illnesses are the worst possible people to blame for social problems! Someone who has an eating disorder is not a gullible fool taken in by pro-diet social messages, no more than anyone else is. And people who diet and worry about their weight shouldn't be inappropriately diagnosed with eating disorders to make a rhetorical point.
So, much as the Willendorf project – making replicas of the Venus of Willendorf out of papier mâché made from ripped up diet books – is cute, Oelbaum's ad campaign I think misses the mark, and I am really quite uncomfortable with Murray's write-up of the project. I also feel quite uncomfortable with today being designated "International no diet day". I like the idea behind the project, and in some ways I'm marking it by making this post setting out my body positive, partially anti-diet stance. But I am very uncertain about the implementation; apart from anything else, I think the idea of having a "No Diet" day is potentially quite damaging. Because nearly all weight-loss diets have, whether formally or in practice, "days off" when you're excused from your diet for just one day. That's part of the reason why diets are often quite unhealthy in the first place, because people are encouraged to use their days off to stuff their faces with as much of the forbidden foods as they can possibly eat, knowing that they'll have to go back to abstaining when the day is over. It's all tied up with the idea of "naughty" foods which are bad for you but you can indulge in them occasionally as a treat, and that itself is very much the message of weight-loss marketing, and marketing from other industries which piggy-back on keeping people hungry, dissatisfied and insecure so that they can more easily be tempted to part with their money.
Have I alienated everybody yet?
