I'm interested. I love writing and this is an issue I'm quite passionate about

I'm interested too. This is one of the issues that really gets to me.

I love this. I do not write but I love to read.

This has been on my mind lately because I ran the Nike Womens Marathon last weekend. I've done it several times before and it's always a wonderful celebration of women of all shapes and sizes, moving their bodies and pushing their limits.
This year, they had everyone fill in the blank "I run to be....." when registering. And apparently they picked the most popular answer to be the race slogan this year. The winner? "I run to be SEXY". This is plastered across the expo tent in 20 ft letters, and written in huge letters across the T shirts (not the finishers shirt, fortunately, but on the ones for sale).
And I felt like I was the only person uncomfortable with it. I run to be happy (that was my fill-in answer) and to feel powerful, and to burn off stress. The answer "sexy" would NEVER have been my 1st choice.

Anyway, this thread somehow echoes my feelings. There must be a middle ground where you can love your body for what it does and feel comfortable about losing weight for your own health and happiness, not to fit some unrealistic idea of how you should look to others.

This is about more than weight loss, but one book I really like that addresses this issue and others surrounding women's desire (for food, for sex, for love, etc) is Caroline Knapp's *Why Women Want*



A couple of quotes: One woman's tub of cottage cheese is another woman's maxed-out credit Mastercard; one woman's soul-murdering love affair is another's frenzied eating binge. The methods may differ, but boil any of these behaviors down to their essential ingredients and you are likely to find a particularly female blend of anxiety, guilt, shame, and sorrow, the psychic roux of profound--and often profoundly misunderstood--hungers."

"Are you eating that second helping because you're hungry or because you're sad? If you work out for an extra 30 minutes, are you heeding the call to health and well-being or engaging in a bout of self-punishment? If you spend $600 on a fabulous jacket you don't really need, are you permitting yourself a little well-earned luxury or are you spiraling out of control? Where are the lines between satisfaction and excess, between restraint and indulgence, between pleasure and self-destruction? And why are they so difficult to find, particularly for women?"

Obviously I'm not female but I think this is a great idea.

As a father of two daughters (13 and 11) I believe this is an important issue. Their self esteem staying high (but not too high lol) has always been on my mind.

My opinion is that the healthy at any weight people are just as delusional as the idea that everyone can look like an underwear model people. Being a healthy weight should be first and foremost about respecting one's own self.

Interestingly enough this is becoming more and more a male issue as well. Just take a look at the way the staring male role in movies has evolved over the last 10 years.

If you want to keep this a purely feminist movement - I respect that but you might want to consider encompassing all people.

Of course, better than any blog out there is reading Susan Bordo's work "Unbearable Weight" (not that the blogs aren't also good ).

I have a bit of a problem with the title "Feminist". I do definitely appreciate the women's movements in our history - they have gotten us where we are today - but, being in the academic world, I have run across many extremely biased and wrong interpretations of the world from feminists in particular. I mean, it has become stylish at many uni's to write with a feminist flair. When, in reality, the oppressor language has been proven to be a too simplified version of how reality is.

However, I do think the idea of fitness as opposed to thinness should be promoted, in any case.

Another idea I am also grappling with is the psychological feeling of being trapped in your body if it is carrying around too much fat. Obviously some of this is due to the media and society, but I believe there is also something more basic biologically - where we don't feel comfortable in our own skin if our fat cells are too filled. Maybe it could be some sort of evolutionary mechanism to keep us alive.... of course I am not an evolutionary biologist, but biological reasons as to why we don't feel optimal in bigger bodies also interests me.

I will also subscribe to this thread!

Folks interested in writing for this - PM me and we'll chatter? I agree with the idea that this should be something different from the feeling that you're reading someone's diary.

Unna - the Bordo sounds excellent, I'll add it to my reading list. Looking at it on Amazon, I've read an article in the Feminisms anthology called "Material Girl" many years ago, so maybe I've read her before. I'm sure there are various other classics I should read as well. I've never read Fat is a Feminist Issue, which is probably something I should remedy.

I agree that feminism is a problematic term, but overall I'm happy to use it, and I think that since it's generally a good movement, continuing to steer it in a good direction is useful rather than otherwise. I also think it's something that a lot of people will be looking for, it'll attract readers, and it's got a nice ring to it. I was in English literature myself, and I came across a number of biased and wrong interpretations of the world from anyone and everyone. I suspect it is because academics are desperately trying to find something new to say, plus of course some of them are just nutters. Which field are you in?

John - yes, this had occurred to me. I do want to look at this from a specifically feminist perspective, since I think that's a core issue. That doesn't mean I want to exclude men, nor does it mean that men are unaffected by gender issues. I was close friends for a number of years with a man who had been anorexic since the age of 8, so I saw for myself how this system of oppressing women also has effects on men with regard to bodies, eating and sexuality. While weight gain is not anywhere near restricted to women only - and one interesting subject will be why the focus is so often on women - the weight loss industry targets women for all it's worth, and I'd be interested to hear how it feels to be a man in this particular world.

I'm thinking of something like 3FC, which is women-centred but does have some men happily floating around as well. If we manage to get a group blog set up, right now I'm thinking about a system of a few core bloggers and then some guest bloggers, including feminist-friendly men among the guest bloggers. Your perspective as a man with experience of weight loss, the father of daughters, and I seem to recall that you have a wife, would be most valuable.

As a note to anyone else interested in participating: I've been talking about "women" and "men", but I am not trying to pretend that all gender is binary or to restrict this to cisgendered folks. (I've never noticed anyone mentioning on 3FC that they're trans or polygendered, but I imagine that with a forum of this size, some people are.) I think that for the core bloggers, we'd probably want people who have experience of being a woman (in some way) and experience of weight loss (not necessarily current or successful), plus a general agreement about where we're going with all of this. If I am approaching this all wrong, tell me!

Anyway, off to post in my blog to see if I can recruit any of my friends from that particular social networking site.

One thing I do anticipate, if we manage to get this to the stage where it's well-known, and that is trolling, particularly from men who are misogynists and women in the Fat Acceptance movement. So we'll want to think about that from day one with regard to how we structure and word things.

Love this post, too, but have to go back to bed so can't talk now! Your thoughts seem valid to me, good idea for a thread.

I would welcome a blog for this. I had to abandon some of the feminist websites I used to read, partly because they apparently support almost any choice I can make with/about my body, EXCEPT losing weight.

I think part of the problem is that their demographics tended toward younger women than me (I am 43 and I also got the sense that I was rather a tedious Old person reading them a lot of the time). If I, a first wave-feminist, can attempt to come to grips with your perspective that shaking your booty on a stripper pole is a Feminist Act -- why is my own choice to try to shed some pounds I have unwillingly acquired as I aged always pilloried automatically, and portrayed as being a tool of the patriarchy?

Yes, I'm looking at you, Jezebel, although you are not the only one. Have you ever considered hiring a writer over age 25? Perhaps an article or two on menopause, or the problems of dating after 40?

ETA: Also John P, you do not need to be a female to be a feminist, nor do you have to believe that "men are pigs", at least from my perspective. Neither are all females automatically feminist, it's more a matter of self-identification.

And of course feminists are all about choice, which is why there is no one universally agreed definition of feminism, and why I have a nice fat anthology on my shelves which is called Feminisms. I would loosely define feminism as the belief that all genders should have equal rights, that this is not currently the case (although great progress has been made), and that this is a goal we should be working towards. Though I might change my definition later on this afternoon, it's not something I had a set definition for already sitting in my head. "Men are pigs" isn't feminism, by the way, it's misandry, and the popular notion that feminists all hate men is, in my view, mere misogyny. I've never met a feminist who hated men. I've met a few women who hated men, but I don't ever recall them defining themselves as feminists. They were usually accepting current gender conditions in rather a miserable way.

Bronzeager - I agree, it's probably because the blogosphere tends to be younger folks. I read the odd article on feminist websites, and I am trying to remember why I don't hang out there past that. Possibly because some of them are full of in-fighting (which I don't think is the fault of feminism, it just happens with a lot of politically-oriented websites), possibly because I really don't hang out on many websites. I do know that I rarely visit Lesbilicious because of all the bisexual-bashing, which I think is largely in comment threads but still lends a strong feeling to the site (and I think is the only time bisexuals exist on it anyway). I reckon that once a site, or even just a comment thread, gets taken over by the more vocal radicals, the moderates sit back and shut up and slide out of view.

When I was studying at uni, I had to take so many years out due to illness that I was a fair bit older than the other students by the end. I noticed a definite difference in how they approached feminism. Some of them were taking the current state of women's rights in the UK for granted to the point that they weren't aware of what has happened before, let alone what is really going on now and how much still needs to be done. Childless twenty year olds tend not to be thinking too much about how childrearing interacts with a career, too. They weren't defining themselves as feminists because they couldn't see the point of having feminism. Others were very enthusiastic but still very naive, and it showed up when we came to subjects such as sex work. Incidentally, I've learnt a few things about sex work and feminism as it's the speciality of a friend of mine, plus I've learned quite a lot about alternative sexualities and lifestyles and so forth by now, and the whole pole-dancing-for-fun thing seems like small potatoes in comparison! I'd call that one a "I may not agree with what you say but I will defend to the death your right to say it" issue for many people.

Another issue is probably that as far as I know, weight problems increase with age, generally. A group of women are less likely to have experience of weight gain when they're all 20 than when they're all 40, and hey, a lot of us saw things in black and white at that age. (Erm, not trying to scare off younger commenters here! We love you as well!) I don't think I remember anyone being significantly overweight in any of my university classes. There's less of an obesity problem in the UK than in the US, granted, and I suspect that university students are subject to various social factors which make them less likely to be overweight. I do know that a friend of mine who teaches at a uni in America gets quite a lot of unpleasantness from her students (essays, remarks in class) because she's overweight.

Out of curiosity - first wave feminism? Wasn't that was the suffragettes? OK, I'm not actually trying to be a horrible nit-picker here, it's just that the image of women in full Edwardian dress, complete with bustles, striding along breaking shop windows and holding placards declaring that women have the right to choose what to do with their own bodies including losing weight if they want, was far too fabulous to pass up!

Jezebel - I haven't read that one, so I promptly trotted over and look what I found. The infuriating thing is that I agree with so much of that article, but not its main agenda, which is to tell women to stop trying to lose weight. Apparently weight "shouldn't be your primary concern unless you're a baby, pregnant, recovering from major surgery, or told by a doctor that it needs to be," which is another way of saying "you shouldn't choose to lose weight, it's not feminist enough." (Also, sometimes doctors who harp on a patient's weight aren't actually being helpful.) Though I love the joke about The Biggest Loser: BLOOD PRESSURE EDITION.

And are you recruitable as a writer or guest writer, my dear?

I love this idea! I totally believe it's matching how you feel on the inside, in your physical body. Meaning if you totally love, and respect yourself you will do the same with your body and become or maintain a healthy lifestyle. I honestly don't believe overweight people are happy deep down. There is a reason why the weight is on. I am learning that when you totally 1000% love yourself you will then want to match, you don't want your body to be dumping ground any longer.......this is where I beleive people need to come to, it's an inner journey or self esteem and self worth.

As for the feminism take on it....well I think it has a lot to do with how women see themselves. We have had to fight for our rights. Remember it wasn't long ago a woman couldn't vote! On a global/universal level when women have been believed to be inferior, and less than their male counter parts, yes, we begin to believe it too. It passes from generation to generation and bit by bit we are breaking it however we are still seeing the effects of what repression for the female expression has done to us. The media, the female image of what is "sexy" are all masculine ideals that continue to repress women. The way we birth as well, it is a male dominating field, the power a woman has to naturally birth life has been taken as well. If we as women could realize the power we have inside, the strength and the wisdom, we would realize our own individual self worth. It is a work in progress......

Maybe I'm alone, but I am not interested in what men have to say about feminism. I think we hear enough of what they have to say on everything else. As a white woman, I wouldn't dream of intruding on a discussion of racism between anyone of color.

Ok, I couldn't even read that article. I just can't. It just doesn't make any sense to me. How can we say that what a women does with her body is her choice but then go and turn it right around and say weight loss is evil? I seriously don't get it. I agree that body image issues are a serious problem but you can be at a completely healthy weight and have body image problems and be obese and be happy or visa versa. Weight loss is definitely not always about living up to some ideal and I'd actually go so far as to say that in my own life if I would try to lose weight to live up to society's ideal image of a women I'd never get there and never be happy because that's not the way I'm built. However, after weight loss I AM a lot happier because I've accepted my own body regardless of how that lines up with society's expectations.

This is very interesting to me! I don't even like discussing weight issues IRL with women because most of the time, it is all centred on how they feel terribly about themselves and how they look. I admit, vanity was a part of my decision, but the vast majority of it was due to health. I wanted to be healthy - I wanted to be fit and active. In the past I have been on the Fat Acceptance websites a lot but I just didn't feel right there because I did want to lose weight. And course the fact remains that while you can work on being as healthy as possible at a large size, if you made the same effort at a lighter weight, your health would increase.

Definitely in my mind, feminisim is about choice. I would love to see barriers being torn down in communication between women and between women and men. There is just so much judging of each other in daily life - it boggles my mind. I fully embrace "live and let live" - I make my own personal decisions and respect and support others to do the same.