What world does this fat activist live in?
I discovered her YAY! scale...[see here too]
LOL it's too small for me....oops guess Marilyn Wann forgot about the over 280-300lb crowd who would crush a small drugstore scale like that under their feet. I tried two, one for each foot, to weight myself, and succeeded in breaking both of them.
YAY! I just broke the scale. LOL!
I found out about this here....
I also showed him how passersby of all sizes on Haight Street react with relieved delight to my invention, the Yay! Scale. It's merely a bathroom scale with compliments instead of numbers on the dial. Step on it to find out you're "sexy" or "gorgeous" or "perfect" or "fine." He urged me to find fat people to Yay! themselves. The next fat woman who happened by not only failed to feel downtrodden, she had read my book.
Anyone here remember "Up With People!"? I know I'm dating myself here, ah they were a good group in some ways....kept everyone happy and singing during the oil embargoes. I guess Marilyn Wann seems to be a one woman "up with fat people" [well smaller fat people] show. Reminds me of back in 1989, when I watched Michael Moore running around on "Roger and Me", filming all the "be positive" parades and Auto World as Flint crashed into the economic void. Michael Moore instead of being another sell-out, still seemed to care at least back then. I know Marilyn Wann doesn't do serious except on rare occasion, that may be a bummer on the self obsessive, self esteem fat praise-a-thon...but a YAY scale, LOL, I think the over-fat promotion "jumped the shark" long ago.
"Out of Touch Marilyn Wann: Let's Have a Parade!"
"Thought Crime and Size Acceptance, Ideologues and The Big Brush-Off"
Seriously folks, I liked Marilyn Wann when I first came across her book which was a zine years ago. It's too bad she has gone this route, I wish there could be honesty, instead of the usual show-boat stuff. There is a place for frivolity and fun, but it's like she is committed to emphasizing the fluff. They have proven the "self-esteem" movement has failed on the kids, on adults especially fat adults it just gets insulting, wearisome and speaks of over-compensation. To me this stuff is empty. How else can I put it?
Wow, I'm glad you wrote this. I have always felt uncomfortable with Marilyn's message, or part of it, because it just doesn't seem real. I had to leave her listserve because I felt there was a taboo about not being yippy-skippy about one's size.
ReplyDeleteThat is hard to write, because I also think she has done a lot of good for size acceptance and raising important issues about size. Maybe because she is so out in the forefront, taking so many damn risks that no one else has the courage to, she feels she has to keep that facade up.
The thing is, it has always come across to me as mask hiding pain, and that she doesn't feel safe to share any of that pain, and she may very well be right. It's easier to talk about the pain when one is writing, especially anonymously, than when one is speaking on a talk show or out on the street.
So in a way, I can't fault her for not feeling it would be a good idea to let her guard down. After all, she probably recognizes of the haters that "give them an inch, they'll take a mile" of her sanity points, to mix a few metaphors.
However, I wish there were some point at which she would let her guard down a little and say, this hurts, people. That doesn't mean you have the right to bash or even comment on or judge my size, let alone tell me to lose weight, but it hurts to live in a society where only one narrow range of body size is acceptable.
It would be easier to relate to her message. Maybe dialogues like this will encourage her to open up a bit and to feel safer to start to do so a little.
At the same time, I will always have her back against the ignorant bigots and haters who shout the same useless "solutions."
Thanks.
Yerba, I don't mind her standing up against the fat haters, but I do see her as part of the problem.
ReplyDeleteThis article may explain more here.
http://fivehundredpoundpeeps.blogspot.com/
Oops here is the link
ReplyDeletehttp://fivehundredpoundpeeps.blogspot.com/2012/06/seeing-through-obesity-lies.html
Years and years ago, I was on Marilyns message board and that is when I was near or at my peak weight and on the verge of death. I could not get her to budge. She dismissed me and called me a fat hater. I was incredulous thinking how could any sincere person be like that ignoring the realities of those she said she wanted to help.
ReplyDeleteI was also forced to leave her listserve told I was fat hating and taking about losing weight too much. She was very HARSH to me, and I was already facing a world that was horrible. I look back on the abuses I faced, and it was horrendous. I almost did lose my life during those days and paying now with one of my heart problems having my hypothyroidism ignored for so many years.
She condemned me for not being HAPPY enough about my size either. IT really was sick.
One thing I hold strong interests in researching things, I do know they have "change agents" and "propagandists" in American society that serve corporate and other agendas.
I have to admit,. I do NOT see her as a sincere helper of fat people. Read my obesity conspiracy posts and Hegelian Dialectic ones.
I do agree with you that some good was done standing against fat hatred.
ReplyDeleteBut as you will see on this blog, unless the size acceptance community deals with the TRUTH about FAT and what it does, that it will remain only a FRINGE movement. There are too many profitting off fat hatred I believe for truth to be shown and known.
I have often said the inverse of the FAT PROMOTERS, is the DIET INDUSTRIAL COMPLEX.
They give us two lousy choices which is either LOVE YOUR FAT or HATE YOURSELF FOR BEING FAT as they sell solutions that do not work.
What if I don't want to go down EITHER ROAD>
Something changed in the fat acceptance world when they made FAT the FOCUS and not FAT PEOPLE.
Hopefully you will see what I mean by that.
I often think that the reason she is given so much publicity, is that her message to the diet industry is NOT that threatening. The corporations as they fill our food with HFCS and other trash are not being challenged. There are no centers being built to help obese people--did you see my article asking why there is so little help. She is not demanding solutions that work. She actually is helping bolster up the other side of the coin. How many fat people suffer now, being told we have to be jolly
has to keep that facade up. She unloaded that trash on me, a then near 700lb young woman on the verge of death, I was then only 28 years old. Back then I was taking them all online and being ostracized and pushed to the wall and silenced. That is when I started developing my theory that something more was up. Think about this, size acceptance to most of America remains a joke. While some of the messages, about NOT HATING FAT people have filtered through and are GOOD. Most people know the parts about fat not affecting health and well being are TOTAL LIES.
why dont you lose weight. youll live longer. move better. look better. feel better. and not be a drain on national resoures. you are hurting society by being fat. so many other people succeed at not being fat every day, why cant you? its really basic science, dont eat to much and you wont be fat.
DeleteYeah like that's working for people. Give me a break. You'd probably cry like a baby at my house not being able to eat any pizza and fast food crap.
DeleteI think even to this day about the absurdity of how she kept to her ideological line when it came to someone close to death, I was having serious breathing problems that makes today in the 500s look like a walk in the park and statis uclers in my legs and an infection at least every 6-8 weeks that hospitalized me at that time. [I have to live now in a certain way to prevent infections in my legs] And I was given the whole HAPPY TO BE FAT, nonsense and told I was a downer and to "go away".
ReplyDeleteThat has been there message for years.
I wanted to do a website like this years and glad I got to the place where I could.
As for her pain, I do not think she suffers from obesity except in what midsized people face, in being looked down on for not being thin. Healthwise she does seem very well off, especially for that size. She is of a socioecnomic class from what I can tell where she is not worried about obtaining healthy food or paying her bills and lives in a city that is so expensive, really only wealthy people live there anymore. I am not sure what pain would she have to share? I do think she shares pain about being looked down on, and we can agree with that, how the world, DOES look down on fat people and judges them. But then I felt judged far worse by Marilyn Wann and I even asked, where is the compassion? IN a way, she is another jailer with a key, locking fat people up in the liar's prison, telling them, you need to be happy and fat and don't you dare complain!
I don't fear the haters. I get them on this blog you know. If anything, as I have written elsewhere on this blog, fat people need to stop being on the defensive and letting their responses be for the sake of the haters.
I agree with this:
"That doesn't mean you have the right to bash or even comment on or judge my size, let alone tell me to lose weight, but it hurts to live in a society where only one narrow range of body size is acceptable."
I agree about standing against the haters and their useless solutions but to be frank, I felt even more hatred from Marilyn Wann those days on her listserv.
I know I am speaking for probably the "fringe" of the fringe, the severely overweight but just our lower numbers doesn't excuse the refusal for the midsized healthy fat to ignore we exist or tell us to accept lies instead of real help.
well a fringe that IS growing in number whether she admits it or not....
ReplyDelete