OK, one thing…

I’m not going to do the ins and outs of the size acceptance movement tonight because I’m tired but I formed a couple of opinions on reading the webpages and blogs, which you’re getting whether you want them or not.

How unfriendly is this movement? Seriously. You have someone show up on a blog timidly identifying as fat and asking “is it not the case that overweight can be bad in X way?”You want to convert them to the ideals of size acceptance. Is your best move going to be a. to explain patiently what’s up and the movement’s views on the matter, or b. to have a go at her and berate her for not reading the part of your website where you prove at great length that she’s an idiot?

Guess how many choose b?

Then there’s all the people who say “Well, how many times have I answered this question? I’m sick of it.” Guess what? Being an activist means you have to keep answering the fucking question. I only realised this recently, but it’s true. Every new person who shows up wants the same question answered. They don’t know that you’ve answered it 100000 times already or that you have a page on your website explaining The Truth. They want an answer. You have to give them it and remember it was once you asking the question.

Then places like BFB require for membership that you aren’t on a diet or intending to lose weight. Well, the not dieting thing could fill a book. I wanted to not have sores from my thighs rubbing together when I walked, kthx. So I lost weight. OMG TEH EVIL DIETING SKINNY BITCH. Except no-one who meets me is ever going to mistake me for Kate Moss.

I should have accepted the sores, right? Because….um, I’m drawing a blank. Because they prove that I was fat and fabulous? Because they’d turn on some FA out there and what the men want trumps all? Or…no, I’m not getting it. Someone help me out with this one.  

Such a requirement – well, even if one’s utterly opposed to dieting, that’s one thing. So am I. You wouldn’t find me within a million miles of weight watchers or such shit. If I ever bore the arse off someone with my points or Syns or how much calories are in whatever I’m eating, shoot me. However, I did do evil weight-loss! On purpose, nonetheless!

I went to my doctor and said “Hi there. These pills have made me put on three stone and I’m not so happy with that. Please can you change the script so I don’t have to keep buying larger sizes and I don’t get ill walking up hills? Thanks.” Lo and behold, she did, I no longer woke up at night and wished to devour a pizza and six different chocolate bars and my weight dropped by two and a half stone (so far).

It’s still dropping, so I am automatically disqualified from BFB. But I’m having a hard time figuring out why what I did is wrong. If I was on a pill which made me lose weight rapidly and I asked it to be changed, would that be wrong?

Contradictions like this confuse the movement and people interested in it.

Slight return

O hay! I haven’t blogged for a long time.  That’s because I was, like, Engaged In The Struggle and doing all this excellent stuff – who am I kidding? I was sitting around in my pyjamas eating bonbons and reading Take a Break. (They have adverts for Unison now, which I think is quite a good move on Unison’s part. Look what I did there! I made a vaguely political excuse for reading Take a Break!)

Anyway! I managed to find some new excellent blogs to liven up my sidebar a little, before I get on to the serious business of writing posts. First up is this guy who is doing some fucked-up shit involving doing every fad diet he can get his mitts on. It amuses. Now, I don’t diet, but anyone who’s tempted to should just let this guy do it for you. It’s easier and it frees up more bonbon eating time.

He also goes on a special diet designed to “upset communists”. No, not eating copies of Das Kapital, though that would be funny. Read his site to find out what it was.

Next up, in a startling change of direction, I’ve been wandering in two different but strangely connected blog-worlds of things I haven’t been thinking about before with any great intent. Those worlds are fat/size acceptance and lesbian separatism.

They both appeared on my mental list of “Things which are kind of interesting but I disagree with” and in some ways they’re still there. More on this in my next proper post but for views to chew on I recommend the following…

Amy at Feminist Reprise. I actually had trouble linking to her site because I realised there was a whole lot of stuff I hadn’t read there and wandered off to read it. Then I remembered – oh shit, I’m supposed to be linking to this! And had to open a new window.

I highly recommend her blog (which I read in like one sitting, stopping only for teh foodstuffs). I strongly disagreed with some of what she says but then some parts of it made the grey cells work and gave me a differing outlook on things. Very cool. Also, this. Written in fine fashion and guaranteed to make you very angry, if you have a working human brain.

Fat ladies writing: The Rotund, Big Fat Deal, Shapely Prose. All recommended for some excellent writing and thoughtprovokingness. I don’t recommend some other shit, but more of that in my next.