OK, so I live under a rock. Who knew that there was a whole movement around accepting yourself and others and seeing fat people as more than just a stomach gone awry. It's so different from my world where everyone is thin and every extra pound is seen as The Enemy, which no matter how I well I understand it still deep down makes me feel like everyone's worst nightmare. I can definitely see why people are drawn to the FA movement--I can't imagine spending even one night free of all that negative garbage hovering just outside my conscious thought.

So I wonder what other people think of the size acceptance movement and if any of you have been involved and what that was like? I guess I ask because one of my big interests has been the bias against overweight people and what it means deep down and why it persists and is sometimes so strong. (For example, people will talk in front of me all the time about how disgusted they are with themselves for the ten pounds they put on and how slow and bloated and gross they feel. They really seem to believe that this is perfectly acceptable and in no way reflects on how they see me.) Given my interest it's pretty amazing I'm so ignorant of the FA movement, but I'd love to hear what other people think.

Thanks,

WLB

I agree that size discrimination is wrong, and we should love ourselves no matter what.

BUT it appears that the FA movement seems to center around a "learn to love yourself fat, and make the decision to stay that way". It's very upsetting. They spread the myth that you can be fat and healthy. We used to get a lot of hate mail from the FA suggesting we were doing a disservice by offering this website. They tried to encourage us to stay fat. We also received a lot of email from men (from FA) who tried to encourage us to stay fat, claiming that we were very attractive as fat women. How insulting!!!

So the whole FA movement has left a bad taste in my mouth. Perhaps others have had different experiences and will share

I was never directly involved in the FA movement. I was ambivalent about it for the reasons Suzanne mentioned. I do feel it's very important to untie our self-esteem from our weight. And I think it's possible to be fat and healthy. And fat and beautiful. And I think all the biases against all things fat is a prejudice and discrimination like any other. So, I liked those messages. In fact, when I first learned about FA I found it simply glorious to have messages that I could love myself and have others love me, even if I was fat.

However, I think encouraging people to remain fat is not the message I wanted. Many in the FA movement seem to embrace fat, and personally, it's not something I wanted to do. Although I was obese all of my adult and not "unhealthy" I also was not in good physical shape and at risk for a number of health problems. I didn't like how I felt. How hard it was to move and get up. And all the acceptance in the world isn't going to take away the fact that I could only really just HAUL myself up a flight of stairs.

So, while I admired a lot of the message, the movement as a whole wasn't for me.

I pretty much echo the thoughts above. I think the basic idea of the movement is great we should love ourselves no matter where we are in our journey, but the push to always stay that way when it does effect quality of life and health bothers me a bit. Too many of us at higher weights have negitively impacted our self esteem because of it. It shouldnt have to be that way. I know I'm not the same person I would have been had I never been heavy.

Whats interests me though is the sociological us versus them mentality. You see it a lot in the hearing impared community too. Those who have gotten implants are often shunned by the non-hearing community.

I say we all need to learn to love ourselves more but it doesn't mean we can't strive to improve our lives by being more healthy.

For me, size discrimination works both ways. My problem with the FA movement is that while it is a great thing to help larger people feel confident about themselves, it is skewed (in my opinion) to say fat is better. A lot of this is from my own personal experience of being in a relationship with someone who is an FA and into the FA movement. He would constantly say things like "she'd be really hot if she gained 50 pounds". I found this very disturbing because I try to see the beauty in people as they are. If one person is natural and healthy at 110 pounds, that’s great. If someone else is natural and healthy at 220 pounds, that is great too. However, having been 350 pounds I can say that at least for someone of my height and build there is nothing natural and healthy about that.

Finding the FA movement was an intrinsic part of my journey, because it did help me heal the belief that no one would ever love me because I was fat. I remember seeing a news piece about Dimensions magazine (now defunct, but they maintain a webboard) and how two large people met there. I was dumbstruck at that thought that someone found women like me attractive. Why this was such a revelation, I don’t know, because I probably could have figured this out of I opened my eyes and looked around me once and awhile. I was so wrapped up in myself that I didn’t notice there were lots of larger women in relationships.

The thing that I could never get over was in part what I mentioned above. The fact that some men preferred fat over non-fat was weird to me and I could never quite digest it. I could totally understand someone finding someone large attractive, but I couldn’t understand the absolute preference.

As I have mentioned elsewhere, my relationship ended when I started to lose weight. I wouldn’t promise my bf that I would stop at a certain point and he flat out told me that if I lost too much weight he wouldn’t find me attractive anymore. That to me is the same thing as a guy telling a woman that if she gains too much he won’t find her sexy. I also know for damn sure there is nothing sexy about barely being able to make it up a flight of stairs, through your day or even more so to an event you want to attend. There were a lot of other reasons we weren’t working out, but that absolutely clinched it for me.

There have been a few good threads about this in the past. Colleen specifically stands out in my mind as having written some really poignant posts on the subject.

Nancy, that sounds like a fat fetish. Ew.

Nancy, How Sweet of you to say that.

I've never gone to any fat acceptance events, and while I considered it, I never joined NAAFA, mostly because of it's ties to the fat fetish aspect. Though I do remember one man having written something to the effect that he was attracted to women between size 12 and size 32, while the average american man wanted a size 6 - 8, and asked who really has the fetish. Hmm, did kind of make some sense there.

I liked the "don't let the world tell you that you're worthless" message, and the message that being fat wasn't an excuse not to exercise, explore your world, or do anything you wanted to do.

I think a lot of minority groups do go from "we're just as good as anyone else," thinking to "we're better than anyone else." When I met my husband, I had learned that there's a large portion of the deaf community who feel this way. They object to devices and surgeries that allow deaf children and adults to hear. They reject the hearing world in most forms, and even look down on, and reject members of the group who marry or date outside the deaf community. Before me, my husband was dating a deaf woman with three children. One profoundly deaf, one going deaf, and an infant not yet deaf. He tried to persuade her to see what could be done to preserve the younger two children's hearing, and was just about lynched by his girlfriend and her friends for even suggesting it. Her friends eventually persuaded her to leave him for a deaf man (even though the man was chronically unemployed. Apparently any deaf man is superior to a hearing man, in their eyes).

A gay friend once told me something similar sometimes happens in some gay communities. Once a person "comes out," they're expected to be "flaming," in their behavior, and to reject any family and friends who don't embrace fully the person's sexuality and new effeminate behavior.

I guess I understand a little bit, "Rejecting the world before it rejects us," makes a kind of sense when you're in a minority group of any kind. But to me, it all seems so juvenile, like the grade school playground game of "cooties," or clubhouses with "no girls," or "no boys" allowed.


If I hadn't encountered the fat acceptance movement, I would not have met or married my husband. I would never have realized that a man could be attracted to a fat woman, at least not in an "I love you, but your body disgusts me," kind of way. I would have continued to assume that most men that acted interested in a fat chick only wanted sex, and figured a fat chick had such low self esteem she'd give it up to anyone who asked nicely (and some even obviously believed the "nicely" part was optional).

I have to say that my husband was VERY difficult to find. A man who was attracted to me sexually (from the minute he met me in person, not "eventually once he fell in love with me") and yet didn't find thin girls repulsive. He had his own weight issues, so he knew what the struggle to lose weight was like. Also, I might not have fallen for him, if I hadn't learned to look at fat a little differently. Not only did I learn not to be repulsed by my own weight, I learned not to be repulsed by it in other people. My husband didn't by any stretch of the imagination come close to my idea of gorgeous, but he was sexy nonetheless because I learned to look with different eyes.

My theory is that learning is a good thing. Being curious about other perspectives and taking from them what applies to you, and ditching the rest is about all any of us can do. Never accepting what anyone says "hook line and sinker," but questioning and testing and coming to your own conclusions (and to heck with what other people tell you that you should believe).

I do agree that our perception of what men find attractive, is often skewed by what we (women) find attractive. Television and other media are powerful influences though on both sexes. As early as junior high (being overweight, I also developed breasts earlier than the thin girls, which did bring on some male attention positive and negative) I learned that there were boys who liked me, who didn't want anyone to know they liked me. When no one was looking, they'd be nice to me or talk to me, and then would tease me in front of others. In college and adult life these became the men who wanted to date me, but never in public. At first, these guys would seem like just homebody couch potatoes, but soon they'd have bunches of reasons that I couldn't meet their friends and family, or why we couldn't go out to eat or do anything in public, even on special occasions like birthdays. And if you did persuade the guy to go out, suddenly he acted like you were his sister instead of his girlfriend.

Like everyone else, I very much agree that there should be no size discrimination - either way. Many years ago I decided I was always going to be big. As a professional, the lack of decent clothing for "woman of size" was a horrible problem - still is of course, but as a student, finding suits I could afford in the late 80's was a nightmare and I got a bit militant about clothing manufacturers and the lack of clothes that didn't belong on my grandmother. (That bugs me to this day, along with TV and movies that make fun of fat people, size zero celebraties and pretty much everything about Kristie Alley - don't get me started.) Back then I decided I was a BBW; I could be fat and fit, I didn't need to lose weight. Obviously, the didn't need to lose weight part changed, but I still think you can be big and beautiful, I think you can be relatively fit. I think if you are happy with yourself more power to you. I'd still LOVE to design a line of professional plus-sized clothing at reasonable prices - if I had any artistic talent.

I suppose I understand men (or women) who find fat people attractive and skinny or normal-sized people unattractive. My ex husband wouldn't date red-heads - EVER. (Is that an anti-fetish?) There are people who only find blonds attractive. There are women who won't date men under 6' tall. Same thing. There are much weirder things to find attractive than fat, but I'm not sure any of those people (including my ex) are necessarily well-rounded, mature people who should be in a committed relationship.

Like Colleen, my husband wasn't easy to find. I was 35 and divorced before he came along. He has 5 sisters, four of whom have weight issues, one of which is probably over 400 lbs at about 5'6". They are very close. He thinks normal sized woman are sexy. He also thought my 328 lb butt was sexy. He's a big guy and always liked dating bigger women because with small skinny women he said he felt like he might "break them" because they were too delicate, no matter how pretty they were to look at. (I call it his china doll syndrome. He likes looking at them, but is afraid to play with one.) He has his own weight issues. He's been right there with me thru my loss (and before that my gain), dropping 50 lbs himself. He's probably more committed to getting back on track after our "bad food" summer than I am. He's no one's idea of a movie star - he's a big, furry, cross-eyed without his glasses, balding man with man-boobs. I think he's sexy as all get out and love every hair on his back.

I love my fat husband and he loves his fat wife and we'll love each other skinny too if we ever get there. (At 5'10" and bones like a dinosaur, I won't ever be a china doll. ) But more importantly, we both love ourselves. I totally agree you should love yourself, no matter what. You should feel comfortable in your own skin. I believe that if you feel confident and sexy, you'll appear confident and sexy. I hurt for the women on this board who say they feel like they are disgusting and not worth loving and I'd like to wring the neck of the people who put those ideas in their heads. I believe you are worth loving no matter what you look like - always!

The good part of FA is the message that you are beautiful just as you are. The down sides have been explained by people with personal experience.

BattleAx - Yeah, for my ex it is a fetish. I don't think that all people in the FA movement have a serious fat fetish like my ex does, but probably some number of them do. When I met him I honestly really didn't think about it too much because I was so happy to find someone who thought I was beautiful and who was generally suited to me (educationally, economically, sci-fily ). I guess I thought a real relationship would cancel out the fetish part. I was really naive. It was also not a good match, even though it looked good "on paper".

I also didn't mention before, but I did attend a few local events - dances, etc. and they were really interesting. Primarily, just to be around so many larger women, and secondly to be in an atmosphere where you can feel relatively free about your size. It is actually quite liberating. Now that I am thinking about it, maybe I will try attending a few of these again. The reason is that one of the things that scares me about being thin is attention from men. Like anything else, dealing with things you don't have experience with requires new skills. Where else am I going to be able to start acquiring these new skills? Of course I would go just to flirt since I have no intention of making the same mistake twice, but it is an interesting idea.

I don't know a ton about this stuff and I thank you all so much for this information. I spent awhile last night looking up FA stuff on the internet and my favorite parts were all the blogs by so many smart, articulate, informed women (didn't see any by men). I didn't have a lot of time to read all of them carefully but the basic stance seemed to be rehabilatating fat people's sense of themselves and challenging the profound and dangerous bias toward thinness (not healthiness, but thinness. Which is the fetish indeed.) I see that there are a lot of complicating factors within the FA movement--the whole fat fetish issue, the question of what is truly healthy, the us/them mentality--but what I have also seen is a very strong current of fat hatred within the weightloss community. And I think the hate on the weightloss side to some extent engenders the extremity of the fat acceptance side.

First let me explain that I don't necessarily mean this community, which I don't know well and which seems to be a truly supportive, inclusive environment. I'm referring more to the thousands and thousands of subtle and not so subtle cues out there in the big wide world that fat is unacceptable, cues that are not questioned but instead supported by the weight loss community. For example, my experiences at both OA is that former fat people talk about their former fat selves as disgusting, repulsive, etc, etc and that "recovery" means being thin and staying thin. Now I don't mean to diminish all the changes in thinking and health that can go along with a major weight loss, but why the bile, the hate? I live in a pretty big city and went to a lot of different OA meets trying to find a home base and everywhere it was the same--either thin-normal people who were absolutely terrified of fat or people who had lost weight and talked about how much they hated being fat and were so thankful to be delivered. It was the hate/terror that stunned and struck me. What is it about? Plus there were no other truly fat people there, which didn't really surprise me because it's not a comfortable seat to be in--inhabiting a body that is the feared enemy of the group.

Then I went to Weight Watchers and it was the same thing. Jokes about formerly jiggling thighs and upper arms that "keep waving goodbye even though you stopped 10 minutes ago." Over and over again I see the need to debase the former fat self and along with it the currently fat members of the community, most of whom engage in the same kind of self-depricating, hateladen jokes and jibes about their current selves as the weightloss champions reserve for their former selves. It's really

My main question all through this process of losing weight has been how can I reconcile loving myself the way I am with wanting to change. I think I have done that, but as committed as I am to losing weight for a multitude of reasons, I also want to start speaking up about the ways in which the weightloss community punishes those it proports to help and the ways in which fat people internalize and duplicate the culture's message of inferiority. I'm not sure how to do that and I wonder if rings true to any of you and what you all think.

Best,

WLB

WLB -

Good point about the other side of the coin I've noticed that too. Not so much here at 3FC, but other message boards.

You said: "former fat people talk about their former fat selves as disgusting, repulsive, etc, etc"

This always kinda bothered me a bit too - Like when you watch those "I did it" type shows and they talk about how disgusting they were... and for a show that lots of fat people watch it gets pretty insulting.

But maybe I'm just sensitive. When people start noticing I lost weight and tell me I look good I sorta feel like they were saying I looked horrible before. I know that's not the way they mean it, but it still bothers me A bit... probably just beause of those "horrible, fat, disgusting, gross" comments you mention above.

WLB,

I SO agree. It so often seems that the majority view is that you must hate your "fat-self," in order to become and stay thin. By that theory I've never hated myself enough to make permanent change. Being fat nearly all of my life hasn't been easy. I've thrown myself the occasional pity-party and
"I-suck" picnic (which I think is a normal part of many people's lives no matter what they see or think is their "problem"). Still, if I ever truly hated myself, I would have put a bullet through my brain (or at least with my religious beliefs, prayed day and night for death).

For me, I've only been successful at weight loss/exercise when I look at it as a way to pamper myself. I've always put others first, to the point that I neglect myself in the process. Food was the only reward I allowed myself, because it didn't take a lot of time away from "all the work I had to do." At least I thought so at the time. I realize now that it wasn't really selflessness or compassion that was my strongest motivation. It was a way to "make" people like me.

Reading books and articles from a fat acceptance perspective, I learned that it's ok to put myself at the top of my list, instead of the bottom, and I didn't have to wait until I was thin to "deserve it." And that if people didn't like or consider me a potential friend or romantic partner only because I was fat, it was their loss not mine. That being treated with respect, and choosing to have fun in public wearing clothing appropriate for the weather (instead of long-sleeved, full length bullet-proof navy polyester regardless of the weather) or exercising or swimming in public (yes, wearing a bathing suit, and not necessarily with shorts and a hugely long t-shirt covering it up) was my "right," not a priveledge reserved for thin chicks.

Now, I'm not brave enough to wear a bikini (even though they do come in my size), but I do wear clothing that I'm comfortable in, whether or not it conforms to the accepted fat uniform. I wear bright colors, and I wear capris and skirts (I hate the way I look in shorts, so chambray, light denim, or gauze skirts are my hot weather wear. I may look ridiculous in a skirt and running shoes, but pblfffff to anyone who thinks I shouldn't wear what allows me to move my big, fat butt).

It does tear at my heart when I see anyone putting their life on hold, because of fear of what others think, or because they don't think they deserve it. Yikes, life is too short to be voluntarily miserable.

I know what you mean. Not sure how to answer. For me, I really have always liked myself just fine. Did I ever get the blues about my size and feel like I was unattractive - sure. I remember at my biggest wondering how my husband could still find me attractive when I had gained so much weight. But those feelings really never lasted long and I think that every woman has her "ugly" days when she just feels unattractive.

I think the emphasis should be on health - not on size. I still loved the person I was at 328 lbs. I wanted to be healthier and I knew losing weight was part of that. Honestly, I couldn't be healthy eating like I did back then. There's not good nutrition in fast food, fried food or injesting 5000 calories a day and not working if off. I earlier said I think you can be fat and relatively fit. I'm not really sure I believe that - except for the relative part. That doesn't, however, mean that I think I was disgusting at 328. Do I think I'm more attractive thinner? Yes. But I also think I'm more attractive when I wear makeup and color my hair to hide the gray. Doesn't mean I hate myself for getting older.

I might add though, I'm NOT terribly sensitive - I'm an incredibly thick-skinned person. As a general rule, I wouldn't have thought twice about a remark about formerly - or still - jiggling arms. It isn't people joking about their own bodies that bothers me. It's people making fun of OTHER people that bothers me. Talk show host monologues about the women on Monique's Fat Chance or movies like Norbert tick me off NO END. It's not self-hate when I say I have more body sag than a Shar-Pei or my husband says his boobs aren't only bigger than mine - they're perkier too! I have no problem with people laughing at themselves. I think there's a real distiction between good humor and bad feelings. I'm not sure how to do away with the latter.

WLB -- You raise some great points. And I do think that attitude about fat being unacceptable happens here too. Even on 300+ -- quite a bit.

You're really making me think about it.

I wonder if we make a distinction between not liking the FAT and what it does to us but can still like OURSELVES.

I look at myself now and still see lots of things I don't like physically. But I still love ME (I always did) and I love my body now and am learning all sorts of things about what it can do. But what about those bits I don't like? How do I reconcile those???