Because weight loss support groups are almost always predominantly populated by women, I initially thought "isn't 3FC already essentially a feminist weight loss forum?"

Trying to pinpoint what made 3FC a feminist forum (or what made it not a feminist forum) has been more difficult than I expected. And trying to decide "what is missing" from current "weight loss culture," hasn't been much easier.

I think what we're talking a bout doing is discovering, identifying, and addressing/providing the missing part.

Will we all agree on what's missing or how to fill the hole?


I don't think so, but I do think that there is a "movement" that is missing in the weight loss community, but I don't think we have a name for it yet. Is it feminism?

I don't know - is feminism missing from weight loss - or has weight loss been excised from feminism? What has made women think that weight loss and feminism are mutually exclusive?

What about gaining a stronger, healthier, slimmer, better functioning body is anti-feminist?

Maybe it's because motives rather than actions need to change. But motives, aren't easy to see - so we judge people by their actions.

If losing weight was once seen as being primarily motivated by the need to fit into rigidly-set and gender-biased societal expectations, how does that (or can it) look different than weight loss motivated by more positive forces.

How can we distinguish emotionally healthy, self-empowered weight loss from socially-imprisoning, culturally-enforced weight loss?


Addressing the socio-political aspects of weight loss isn't going to be easy, because so much of the weight loss culture is based on taboos - beliefs we may not even realize we hold because they're not socially acceptable to talk about.

Or actions that have become so ingrained, we don't even know why we do them - except that we've always done it that way - or seen it done that way.

Kaplods- basically yes to everything that you just said. I think that really was esofia's original intention (or at least how I interpreted it). I think the feminism part really comes into place due to the fat acceptance movements origins and also it seems that women get the blunt of the blow when it comes to body image issues. Although, like we've pointed out before men can and do have these same issues. Actually, I'd say it's even less acceptable in our society for men to have these issues.

But I would love to see a movement where the focus of weight loss is not just to fit into a slinky little dress to make your ex jealous and it's not just because your doc told you you had to lose weight. Thinking about my own personal history with weight loss I have a feeling that part of the reason that I'm so successful now vs. other tries is because I have more than just health or just vanity reasons for losing. I have both. I also have a kid motivating me AND a realization that what I was doing before was NOT good for my mental health. It's really the sum of all motivations that keep me going. Some days it's really health that drives me but other days I just want to fit into a nice dress.

I'd love to see a movement that's not about shaming anyone but about working towards improving yourself. One that throws away the fad diets, the competitiveness and celebrates realistic weight loss goals.

Still alive, but I'm still trying to rest my hands! I don't get this often, by the way, so I don't expect it to mess up future blogging. I had RSI the other year, when I was quilting like crazy for a competition deadline, and it only lasted a month.

Stellarosa - Thanks for hunting for alternative words, but I don't think there really are any. Humanism is a movement that already exists, and it's about religion/atheism rather than gender. (They're a lovely bunch, incidentally.) Womanism is black feminism, in case anyone was eyeing up that term, so we can't snag that one either. I think feminism should be fine for our purposes, to be honest. It covers enough that there's plenty of space for diversity, and while it contains fringe groups just as any big movement does, it's pretty much going in the right direction for us.

Kaplods - glad we sorted that out, I had a feeling we were both talking from the same standpoint anyway!

I'd say that 3FC is very much the sort of thing I'm talking about, although obviously it covers a wide variety of atittudes and beliefs. It's one of the main things that got me onto this subject to begin with. But it's not self-defining as having a feminist objective, plus I'd quite like to try a blogging approach as distinct from a forum approach. I think this would give us far more control over the content, which thus means that we can steer it in the direction we want a lot more easily.

I could really see that ending up on the "about this blog" page.

Rana and runningfromfat - yes yes yes, that's exactly what I meant! Or hadn't yet thought of but agree with emphatically, with some bits.

I still haven't looked at my private messages, I've a horrible feeling that I will get so enthusiastic when I read them that I will go mad typing again. And this is probably my typing limit for today, so maybe tomorrow? I'm not trying to neglect anyone here!

I am totally going back and re-reading this post. I come from the HAES/fat acceptance/feminist communities, so wanting to lose weight is REALLY causing me emotional turmoil right now. I hope the OP is still really on board with this new, "in-between" paradigm, because, goodness knows, a lot of us need it!

I'm with you!

Women have the right to be within the healthy BMI.
Women have the right to build muscles.
Women have the right to shed pounds.
Women have the right to be healthy!

I mean of course we all have vanity reasons for losing weight too, which some may link to patriarchy etc. but we just want to feel healthy and in turn, good about ourselves right? It's unfortunate that sometimes particular branches of feminism seem to favour empowering one type of femininity over another. And I think femininity should be celebrated in many ways, including this middle-path the OP is suggesting.

It doesn't cause me turmoil, because I don't want to lose weight to fit into society's demand that I do. And I'm not trying to lose weight regardless of it's impact to my health.

HAES to me does not mean trying to be healthy without losing wieght, it means trying to be healthy whether or not I am losing weight.

When I started trying to get healthy, I decided that I wasn't going to worry about my weight. I was going to make healthy lifestyle changes both to my eating and to my activity level, and commit to them indefinitely (planning on making the changes permanent) whether or not weight loss resulted.

For me, this made this journey about more than the scale. For the first two years, I didn't lose weight, but I did get healthier (and I didn't gain weight). By not gaining weight, I decided to add "not gaining" to my health goals.

Eventually weight loss did start occuring, even though I technically wasn't trying to lose weight. I found that I did feel better not just with the health-changes, but also with the weight changes, so I added in a weight loss compoment (working at "not gaining," while trying to lose "just one more pound.") Every time I lost a pound, I added it to my "not gaining" goal.

I'm still not letting my journey be able pound loss. The pounds don't matter. If I don't lose another pound, I haven't failed. If I do gain, I'm not a terrible person.

I'm making this about the health, not about the pounds. And when I make it about the health, the pounds take care of themselves.

I'm not sure if any of you saw this body image warrior week: http://www.alreadypretty.com/2012/02...rior-week.html but there's a lot of great blogs on there from feminist bloggers and one in particular: http://fitandfeminist.wordpress.com/ talks about being a feminist and a weight lifter. I've read a couple of her posts and they were really great. I just wanted to pass it on because I'm personally enjoying a lot of what was written there.

Running: thanks for that! I've just spent half my morning reading the Fit and Feminist blog. She rock. (But now I must really get some work done...)

Very late response here - as folks may have noticed, I quietly disappeared from this forum a few months ago. It held a valuable place in my weight loss journey, but eventually I got to the point where I was happier getting on with it on my own. I finished losing weight in March and have been maintaining at 100lb and a BMI of 20. Anyway, now that I've gone away and done other things, I've returned to this theme. The blog is finally up at Feminist Weight Loss. It's not terribly exciting yet, but I'm sure it'll develop nicely. I've set it up so that other authors can be added, so if you're interested in writing for it, comment on a blog post or something and I'll sort something out. I should probably have a contact form on the blog for potential authors/contributors, shouldn't I. You don't have to sign up to write regularly, you can just write a one-off blog post if you fancy.

I added you to my blog roll.

I understand what you mean. I'm not quite at goal yet but have been bad about coming here. Just haven't needed it quite as much. However, congrats on hitting maintenance!!!

I was worried about you, good to see you and congrats on getting to maintenance

I'm a bit busy right now but I will check out the blog/ comment when I am on a proper computer. I can't wait to see it!

You know, I've been thinking about this a lot.

I started this journey with a lot of "OMG I have to get SKINNY, or I'm not good enough" kind of self talk, in my head. It wasn't good. Over the last few years I've come to realize that not only is "skinny" incongruous with my lifestyle- for me... it's not healthy. My goals changed completely as I changed my perspective.

I don't want to be skinny! I want to be strong. I want to be fit. I want to do anything I want to do. All the "OMG don't lift that" comments just fuel my fire. Why is it unfeminine to be strong? It doesn't have to be.

It's ok to be strong and pretty .

Val- have you read: http://fitandfeminist.wordpress.com/ I think I'm in love with her blog.

YES! I love her too!!

I totally agree.

Everyone here knows that I love to lift weights. I love how it makes me feel; I love feeling powerful and strong. If it is unfeminine to feel that way, then screw it, I don't want to be feminine.

What bothers me is how women are turned off from lifting weights because we're told we'll bulk up. Ok, on this forum we know it's next to impossible to bulk up, but why is that even a valid excuse to not lift weights? So what if we get bulky? Isn't it better to be healthy than pretty anyway?

I'm going to keep lifting weights, it makes me feel awesome