Livre d'Or

Thanks, Liv, for responding so thoughtfully to my Body Impolitic post. I think that the Comment Moderation feature often shields me from people who violently disagree with me, but rational discourse from different viewpoints is a rare and often useful thing.

My experience differs from yours in some ways. For starters when I say I'm "fat positive" I don't usually have people assume I hate skinny people. More often people suggest that I'm suffering from a delusion of some sort, as one reader put it "I don't agree that it's okay to be fat." Fortunately, she followed that up by saying the liked the mystery story anyway. I also get many readers of my fiction saying that they were put off by my characters who kept bringing up the subject of fatness and they didn't want to hear it. Recently I've been accused of being "pro fat" with the suggestion (sigh) that I want to spread the fatness or encourage people to be or stay fat. Not true. I want people to feel good in their own bodies, listen to them, respect them. I believe our bodies are constantly giving us feedback, and once we learn to listen, it's better for us.

Just for the record neither I nor Brenda Oelbaum called anyone a "freak" or any other disrespectful name (although, as an unrepentant hippie I have no problem with anyone calling ME a freak, a word with a proud fringe-dwelling heritage). My guess, and it's just a guess, is that Kate Harding's "freak of nature" comment boiled over from the frustration of seeing many times daily the claim that "just do thus and such" and dramatic weight loss will be yours.

I do have to address a couple of your comments about my Body Impolitic post. You say:

"I don't agree with Oelbaum characterizing dieting as always being about self-loathing or measuring our worth on a bathroom scale. And I don't like Murray referring to a dieter as the infinitely exploitable sucker."

I think self loathing often comes into play with food restriction to achieve weight loss. There are recent studies showing that dieting resulting in temporary weight loss most often is followed by weight cycling and damage to self-esteem. That certainly was my experience, during the years from my first doctor-prescribed diet at the age of 9 (which came with an unwholesome side order of amphetamines) to the last few attempts to change my weight more than 25 years later. I feel I can talk about being an "infinitely exploitable sucker" because I lived that life. I don't think my experience was uncommon at all, and I firmly believe many others still suffer from being milked as cash cows by an exploitative, cynical diet industry. It pissed me off then and now. When I get angry and feel protective of people getting ripped off, I get snarky, so sue me--not really, please don't sue me!

I struggled to give up the dream of magically changing my body size to avoid the stigma attached to being fat and I don't miss it.

You go on to say:

"I have a big problem with her [Oelbaum] 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."

Okay, I don't mean to clinically diagnose anyone. I think that sub-clinical obsessions around food and eating don't have to qualify as formal disorders in order to mess up our lives. I agree with wild_irises' comment that

"[W]hile dieting-to-lose-weight doesn't have to be about self-loathing and doesn't have to create eating disorders, there is no doubt that the entire structure that supports, encourages, and damn near demands that we diet is constructed around self-loathing."

At no point did I say that the victims of eating disorders "are to blame for social problems."

On the contrary, if you look at the kind of mass marketing, psychological talent involved in the big business of marketing diets and diet products to all of us, we don't have to be "gullible fools" to fall for it. All we have to do is listen to the almost unavoidable drum beat of propaganda about how our bodies are Wrong or Unloveable or Unfit or Ugly & etc. & etc., and once we let those words into our heads we are more vulnerable to sales pitches.

Vulnerable. Not gullible. Big difference.

I DO firmly believe that listening to our bodies can include eating what makes us feel and function better and staying away from what doesn't--aka Intuitive Eating. For example, I'm allergic to Ahi tuna steaks. I ate one. It was very tasty, and nothing could ever convince me to eat one again--spectacular and immediate badness. I'm sparing you the awful details. So that's a food restriction that makes perfect sense....for me. I figured it out on my own, with my body giving me a very clear "hell no" message.

As you can see, I feel quite passionate about these issues, but I always aim to be constructive and encouraging even when I'm gettin' snarky with it. I appreciate your feedback and hope that my response clarifies at least my intentions, even if we still don't agree on every point.