Happy eatings
Being
slightly overweight can be a perfectly rational choice for some people
who enjoy eating more than they would enjoy the benefits of being
slender, especially if they work in a field where ability and results
matter more than looks and interpersonal popularity games. But there is
nothing rational about people like the author of the blog "Fatter Days Ahead", a woman who gains fat on purpose and has now, according to her own reporting, reached almost 400 pounds and intends to keep gaining.
It was also through Daniel Mocsny's writings that I first encountered the concept of "fat acceptance", that is, the doctrine that there is absolutely nothing questionable in someone weighing over 400 pounds and that all problems that such folks encounter in their life are solely due to the bigoted attitudes and behaviour of other people. Now there is an ideology that makes driving your SUV to an anti-war demonstration or complaining about the health dangers of nuclear power with a ciggy hanging from your mouth almost seem like rational activities by comparison. There are limits in everything, and here those limits have been crossed --- and then some. It is one thing to ruin your own body, but when you start advocating the same for others and especially to the impressionable teenagers, you have crossed the line.
This comical-seeming movement is actually real and absolutely serious in its goals, it is not just some internet joke or hoax concocted to parody political correctness. In fact, it is unfortunate that the fat acceptance movement has not received much, uh, wider publicity (perhaps I stop the bad punning here), especially when we remember that fat acceptance has these days become an integral part of the feminist movement. But how many people in the anti-feminist camp know this? Very few, it seems to me, since I have never seen the anti-feminists utilizing this perfect weapon to discredit feminism. Just imagine what would happen to the recruiting efforts of campus feminists if feminism and fat acceptance became permanently entwined in the public's mind the same way that "bra-burning" and "hairy legs" did earlier. Feminists are pretty smart to keep this particular ideological requirement esoteric.
For all the complaints about the restrictive and narrow concepts of beauty, fat acceptance has always struck me as a very narcissistic movement. After all, what is textbook narcissism? It is the idea that other people should accept someone's grossly inflated internal idea of their fabulousness and beauty as external objective truth and behave accordingly. The morbidly obese women (and of course it is women: fat acceptance is always fat woman acceptance for reasons that anyone can deduce with a couple of minutes thinking) with their "BBW" codewords fit the definition of narcissism perfectly. You could even say that fat acceptance is the pinnacle of social constructionism, kind of ur-leftism where the person's emotions about herself determine the objective reality.
The progressive men, of course, like to establish their progressive credentials by claiming that they are attracted to obese women. For the vast majority of these men, it is just an act, as is evidenced by their partner choices. A small minority of the rest, the fat fetishists (euphemistically called "fat admirers"), is apparently serious. The remaining group, the bottom rung of men that women collectively deem so defective that they have to settle for the correspondingly unattractive women if they want a partner at all, keeps telling themselves and the snickering world that having to settle equals preference, I guess the same way that scrubbing toilets in McDonalds would be somebody's dream job.
For the life of me I can't understand why the progressives consider fat fetishists to be some kind of moral role models. When a guy is "attracted" to a morbidly obese woman, he is really attracted to the idea of being a knight who gets to safely control a woman without the usual competition from other men. Why this makes him somehow morally admirable, I will probably never understand, especially when those guys feed their women to balloon up even fatter to keep them better under control. (You might think that the fact that there are virtually no female "fat admirers", that is, slender women who want their men to be morbidly obese, would be a clue to the real motivations of fat admirers.)
Since most fat acceptors are feminists, who are not the most scientifically literate and reality-based people out there, the movement has some rather wacky ideas about the causes of morbid obesity. All these ideas have in common that the individual cannot possibly control their weight, since it is dictated on her by the genes and the environment. Claims such as "97% of diets fail" are spread to fog the fact that 97% of obese gluttons are unable to keep their gluttony in check. I guess the producers of the reality show "The Biggest Loser" ought to publish in some medical journal how they are consistently able to choose participants who obey the laws of physics and thermodynamics and therefore lose weight when they burn more calories than they eat. Imagine that!
It was also through Daniel Mocsny's writings that I first encountered the concept of "fat acceptance", that is, the doctrine that there is absolutely nothing questionable in someone weighing over 400 pounds and that all problems that such folks encounter in their life are solely due to the bigoted attitudes and behaviour of other people. Now there is an ideology that makes driving your SUV to an anti-war demonstration or complaining about the health dangers of nuclear power with a ciggy hanging from your mouth almost seem like rational activities by comparison. There are limits in everything, and here those limits have been crossed --- and then some. It is one thing to ruin your own body, but when you start advocating the same for others and especially to the impressionable teenagers, you have crossed the line.
This comical-seeming movement is actually real and absolutely serious in its goals, it is not just some internet joke or hoax concocted to parody political correctness. In fact, it is unfortunate that the fat acceptance movement has not received much, uh, wider publicity (perhaps I stop the bad punning here), especially when we remember that fat acceptance has these days become an integral part of the feminist movement. But how many people in the anti-feminist camp know this? Very few, it seems to me, since I have never seen the anti-feminists utilizing this perfect weapon to discredit feminism. Just imagine what would happen to the recruiting efforts of campus feminists if feminism and fat acceptance became permanently entwined in the public's mind the same way that "bra-burning" and "hairy legs" did earlier. Feminists are pretty smart to keep this particular ideological requirement esoteric.
For all the complaints about the restrictive and narrow concepts of beauty, fat acceptance has always struck me as a very narcissistic movement. After all, what is textbook narcissism? It is the idea that other people should accept someone's grossly inflated internal idea of their fabulousness and beauty as external objective truth and behave accordingly. The morbidly obese women (and of course it is women: fat acceptance is always fat woman acceptance for reasons that anyone can deduce with a couple of minutes thinking) with their "BBW" codewords fit the definition of narcissism perfectly. You could even say that fat acceptance is the pinnacle of social constructionism, kind of ur-leftism where the person's emotions about herself determine the objective reality.
The progressive men, of course, like to establish their progressive credentials by claiming that they are attracted to obese women. For the vast majority of these men, it is just an act, as is evidenced by their partner choices. A small minority of the rest, the fat fetishists (euphemistically called "fat admirers"), is apparently serious. The remaining group, the bottom rung of men that women collectively deem so defective that they have to settle for the correspondingly unattractive women if they want a partner at all, keeps telling themselves and the snickering world that having to settle equals preference, I guess the same way that scrubbing toilets in McDonalds would be somebody's dream job.
For the life of me I can't understand why the progressives consider fat fetishists to be some kind of moral role models. When a guy is "attracted" to a morbidly obese woman, he is really attracted to the idea of being a knight who gets to safely control a woman without the usual competition from other men. Why this makes him somehow morally admirable, I will probably never understand, especially when those guys feed their women to balloon up even fatter to keep them better under control. (You might think that the fact that there are virtually no female "fat admirers", that is, slender women who want their men to be morbidly obese, would be a clue to the real motivations of fat admirers.)
Since most fat acceptors are feminists, who are not the most scientifically literate and reality-based people out there, the movement has some rather wacky ideas about the causes of morbid obesity. All these ideas have in common that the individual cannot possibly control their weight, since it is dictated on her by the genes and the environment. Claims such as "97% of diets fail" are spread to fog the fact that 97% of obese gluttons are unable to keep their gluttony in check. I guess the producers of the reality show "The Biggest Loser" ought to publish in some medical journal how they are consistently able to choose participants who obey the laws of physics and thermodynamics and therefore lose weight when they burn more calories than they eat. Imagine that!
What the hell are you talking about? Most of the guys that I know who like "overweight" women tend to be more conservative. Most liberals I know are vicious and nasty towards fat people and they hide it under global-political claptrap like "America's obssession with consumerism and greed.
Posted by victoria | 12:54 AM