My response to Marily Wann's Latest: "You Can Be Fat and Fit!"

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Big Deal: You Can Be Fat and Fit

I am going to start this with the caveat that there can be people of large sizes and large proportions who certainly can be in great shape, aerobically and otherwise. The large sized weight lifter that made it to the Olympics is probably in better shape then most large people. There are football players, wrestlers and others who play sports at heavier and larger sizes. There are many midsized people who do enjoy sports, dancing and active living. All the best to them. Stay as active as you can and enjoy life as much as you can no matter your size. A lot of people MY size are totally bedbound, the housebound doctors have told me, so I even say by the grace of God go I. So enjoy but now I must address yet another article that just adds to the pile of confusion out there. Are there Healthy smaller fat people? Sure. Are the scientists finding proof, that one doesn't have to be a skinny-minny to be "healthy" and when it comes to some problems like pneumonia that it actually may be a detriment...Sure.

But newsflash....this is up to a certain point. In most cases dependent on height, up to the mid-200s line.

Over 300lbs for most people, the breathing is affected, movement is affected and more. I mean how far does the delusion have to go and the active denials? Sad to say this one even made it to mainstream media on CNN

Marilyn Wann states in the article...

"Another recent study found people who were "metabolically healthy" and overweight or obese had no higher death risk than metabolically healthy "normal" weight people."

How many fat people are "metabolically healthy"? That would be an interesting question to ask especially for the supersized given the very idea of metabolism has been set aside by the diet industry. I obviously am NOT metabolically healthy. Though would they say someone at a supersized weight who suffers from eating disorders which has led them to a high weight is? I am a bit confused by that study and doubt it applies to those in the super-sized weight categories.

Wann continues:

"I take an interest in the topic because I'm fat and because I don't have a death wish. I'm also interested because, like so many fat people, I've encountered weight discrimination when I seek routine medical care. I was 26 years old when I was denied the right to purchase health insurance. I had no significant history of illness or injury. I was just fat. That day, I became a fat rights activist."

What is this talk about a "death wish"? I often have pondered what if Wann did get ill? It is strange to me I am still hearing the same lines written in the mid 1990s. Most women her age, she is two years older then me which makes her 46, are starting to face some health problems, that includes THIN women. Most of my friends who have hit the age of 40 or over have dealt with at least ONE health issue that took some degree of comprehensive health care. She seems to have a very strong Baby Boomer ethos rather then that of a Generation Xer with a whole "we are going to live forever" theme to it.

Does illness as a fat person mean having a "death wish" or that you did something wrong? This is the "healthism" stuff I've mentioned in passing.  One ponders this. And who cares if she had some history of injury or illness? Should anyone who hasn't been there think anything less of anyone who has? Should one give out medals to those blessed with good genetics and good fortune in avoiding car accidents, thyroid issues, some arthritis,  a hole in the snow to trip in, or a cup of too hot of coffee spilling on the leg? She is right about weight discrimination in the medical arena, I certainly have explored that issue myself. She is also correct about the non availability of medical equipment but should the response of the fat be an enforced smiles, "we aren't that sick anyhow" response? Or demanding that some changes be made to the above? Yes too much blaming the fat happens and weight loss techniques like WLS that fail and maim and all the biases!  But what if I said to Marilyn Wann, fat is often the RESULT of illness a symptom in itself, that is where size activists who believe the way she does, refuse to get on board. She continues in the article to praise HAES which I of course disagree with. She talks about those living to 65. Long-lived society?, actually the lifespans in America are dropping.

"Here's a finding from the recent research that didn't make the headlines: For people over 65, being fat wasn't associated with increased risk, not even for the fattest old people. When do most people die, in our increasingly long-lived society? Over age 65, perhaps?"

This part of her article really disturbed me though....

"I also learned this week that a highly accurate way to predict a person's risk of dying is to see how easily they can get up from the floor. I'm trying to imagine how different our health care system would be if, instead of focusing on weight and weight loss, caregivers did the sitting-rising test instead."

How many supersized especially extremely super-sized people can get off the floor? I fail this test massively. Why? I fell down twice and know I cannot get off the floor. I was stuck and it was terrifying both times, and in one case, needed three grown men to help get me up to the place where I could finish the job in getting up all the way. Wann seems to have this edge to her articles where someone being sick, is enough to prove them wrong or "bad". That one would be an interesting sociological study and essay. We live in a society now where sick equals someone is "bad", instead of just with the admittance of the natural flow of things on this earth. Why must caregivers do the sitting-rising test? That one confused me. Okay my thin doctor gets down on the ground and gets up? So what? They probably can go camping and other things I miss. What does that prove? Did she think this one through?

With my failures to get off the floor, at least I was saved the medical bills from calling the paramedics to bring me to a standing position. My first fall I wrote about and the second one I had only weeks later, and at that point switched to a walker due to my balance issues. Since this summer there hasn't been any more falls. For years, due to youth, and after my initial weight loss from the massive weight gain, I did practice getting on the floor and then getting up, to make sure I still "could" but I lost the ability with time anyway, and remember in my case, I am not bedbound and tried to stay as active as I could including physical therapy. So what does that test say to fat people but hey you midsized people who can still get down on the floor and play with your puppy or your kids or scrub a spot on the floor are okay and those of you whose weight has become too heavy for you to lift off the floor are not? Is she living in reality here?

Hey I could take some of these edicts from on high if she did admit, "OK I am talking for smaller sized fat people here, I know you supersized or in my case extreme super-sized folks have other concerns" but she does not, she expects the HAES formula to work, and issues a blanket edict of "You Can be Fat and Fit!" Um no..... I am even facing battling a leg infection over the last month, I am not sure what has brought on the reaffirmed battles with leg infections, this time with huge fevers to go along with them, once I hit near 104. Trust me I am sad because I struggled with this for years, having 6-7 of these a year for so long and many times in the hospital, and recently I went almost an entire year without a leg infection in my lymphedema leg and being thrown back into the infection merry-go-round obviously is very frightening to me. I almost have lost my life to this stuff before. What brought it on? I am not sure, and even have the worrying feeling that my intense commitment to a physical therapy and walking program brought these latest infections on despite improved sugars.
Hey I write this blog knowing I live in a society where the prevailing ethos is unless you are healthy and well, [and wealthy in a lot of cases] you aren't worth listening too, but since it's an ethos I reject, I speak out anyway.


Wann continues:

"How much healthier would we be? How much more would we actually enjoy healthy living, free from weight judgment? How much time and money would we save? How much discrimination and human tragedy could we avoid? I'm guessing it'd be tons."

How about just some reality? How about some understanding? How about some size activists admitting that people like me exist? How about telling the truth about weight while at the same time demanding good treatment for fat people and good medical care without shame and hatred even if we are indeed stuck on the floor when we fall down? How about admitting what is going on? 

See:

Health At Every Size? And Healthism in the Size Acceptance Movement"

"Seeing Through the Obesity Lies"

Weight Loss Surgeon Against Size Acceptance!

The disturbing trend of fat acceptance, one doctor speaks out against it


What would he think of this blog? Since I question aspects of size acceptance and also that barbarity and sanctioned torture known as weight loss surgery? They couldn't have thought of something more painful if they tried to do to fat people to get them to lose weight.

The other day, I went to a book club, it was warm enough to be out, and I saw this one member there, who weighed around 250lbs, and who was actively employed and active, even two years ago the other time I ran into her, and she announced to us, she recently had weight loss surgery. It didn't escape my attention that to even drink a coffee, she had to mix it with a powder to get it down. I forgot the name of the powder but it was one when I did short term assisted nursing care in my 20s, one had to mix with food to thicken it, to get it down the gullets of those with digestive and swallowing problems. Life is hard enough. I found myself worrying about her right then and there.

Anyhow I tire of these weight loss surgeons who have no reality about what makes people obese and who profit off the lies and still play blame the victim and act as if the same amount of control is there for everyone. Yeah, the whole "control" thing as if people chose this. Their ignorance regarding metabolism and such is extreme and continues to worsen.

I know I made the choice never to have weight loss surgery, even having it pushed by various doctors. In my case, I do not think it would work and believe because of the breathing problems, I'd die on the table. I have digestive problems now that range from intermittent anemia, to shortage of various B vitamins and D though I eat a lot of fruits and vegetables. There is a time in life, where you say well "I have suffered enough", and all the digestive stuff, where I can so easily end up in pain that leads one on the floor and puking my guts out if I mistakenly ingest any MSG, dairy or eggs or have stress, brought me enough trouble in life, just the thought of weight loss surgery to me sounds like a PTSD nightmare on the roller coaster to hell.

With this guy, I wish he'd find this blog, and come and read and learn. But so few seem to ever have independent thoughts. I guess that tens of thousands of dollars they make for each surgery speaks for itself. Ah so many who are profiting off the obesity epidemic, the mind boggles.

As I have said multiple times, the lies on both sides enable each other.

Only The Positive Side of Fatness Can Be Discussed?

I knew size acceptance was bad with the censorship even years ago, but didn't know how hard and fast their ideological rules held or had grown over the ten years, I was totally detached from their world. I found this written about my blog. She had commented on that other blog in dispute with my own.

I have realized most likely I will be avoiding all size acceptance blogs, why bother if talking to these people is like talking to brick walls? I will still be on the outlook for fellow independent thinkers.

If anyone who is in my size category reads this blog, please honestly look at what I have faced, they do not want you in their movement, you disprove their false theories. Actually given I stand against discrimination against the overweight, their incredible block-headed positions that refuse to "LISTEN" have been astounding. I am ok with people who are happy to be fat, who never want to go on a diet again but explaining things from my perspective, is a perspective, they want nothing to do with. I often have said sometimes the worse hatred for the super-sized person, can come from the midsized crowd, and while I have friends of all sizes from the extremely thin to even at or near the weights I have been, you meet the types, who fear being you. You represent their deepest fears, thus the automatic loathing, anger and more. I know this is true in the hyper-radical circles of size acceptance. The claims of "you only think of yourself"--the world doesn't revolve around YOU, is just more distraction.

Let's begin addressing her points:

Every now and then, someone will make the rounds of FA blogs and basically criticize fat acceptance for being fat acceptance. They want to talk about how much they hate being fat. They want to discuss a cure for obesity that doesn’t involve dieting or surgery. They don’t BLAME fat people, of course. They just want them to stop being fat because it obviously is an unhealthy, unhappy existence. They want to talk about the “other side” of obesity.

It is interesting she mentions this as a recurring theme. I suppose they have driven off fat people like myself they wish to silence or well refuse to listen to. I guess I live an odd life, in that I can have interesting conversations with people on the liberal to the conservative spectrum, I guess I do not get this new American tendency to shut out those who do not fit your specific demographic but these women, seem even unable to engage. Their immediate reaction is to say, GO AWAY!, hands slapped over both ears. Now why is that? Where have I EVER said I want anyone to stop being fat as if I dream of a dystopian world of thin-only people? That is hyperbole to the max. As I wrote on another blog entry what is wrong with a cure? None of them ever answered that. Strange how they never have an answer to such questions.

No I do not blame fat people but obviously this person BLAMES me, for not being the super-healthy, extremely happy fat icons she only accepts in her inner circle. That is yet another level of extreme hypocrisy. As I have said on this blog, if you are dealing with severe obesity, your very existence threatens their whole fat acceptance house of sticks.

Our culture is full of opportunities of discuss the “other side” of obesity.

Where? Is she telling me I have to slink back to the diet mongers and fat haters, because I will not drink the fat acceptance Kool-Aid, slap a smile on my face and hide the truth? Is that what she desires of anyone who speaks the truth about fat? I have to pick one side of the other? Where on the web matches this blog?

That “other side” of obesity is all that really gets discussed.

Where? There are things I discuss on this blog that have been discussed nowhere else.

It is fat acceptance that is the “other side” of obesity. Because of the near total opposition to our ideas, we have created safe spaces to discuss the positive side of being fat, how to live a satisfying life while fat, and advocating for fat rights as we are.

Ironic how she brings up safe spaces, safe spaces with bars on the windows, maybe... I can address that, pretty bluntly. I am a very large woman, I agree with them about being against the discrimination and functioning at your best while fat, but WHAM, down comes the boom for my other viewpoints regarding obesity or even sharing factual aspects of my life. By the way, she can try to portray me as a woeful victim that should be shoved over the shining fat happy people boat but I am not. This is why I can confront these people in these lies. I am not the type to slink off, and say, "Oh I am sorry." No, I am not sorry for sharing my experiences, or for questioning the status quo.

We discuss what it is like to be fat as well as [insert intersectional identity here]. Yet even this is too much for people opposed to FA. We do not do enough to talk about the “other side” of obesity.

What is "intersectional identity"? Sometimes this liberal new academic speak escapes me. I discuss what it is like to be fat at the higher weights, and she does not like it. She wants it hidden? Why? One thing about this blog, being this weight and stepping out to admit what it is really like is not easy. The world screams at you to go back in your hole and shut up! Well these fat acceptance denizens are the leaders of that.

Well, guess what. That’s not what we do. That’s not what we’re about.

So what are you about? Certainly not being welcoming to people of all sizes of fat.

From what I can tell you are about imposing censorship, control of free speech, thought control, dumbed down thinking, and more disrespect towards those who are in the higher weights.

If you want to do that, go someplace else. FA is not for you, apparently,

Well she is right, FA is not a movement for me, it has become a movement of hyper-liberal elitist radicals from what I can tell who care nothing about the opinions, lives, feelings or realities of those they pretend to represent. If she thinks her arrogant support in the sending me off from that other blog, speaks well for her FA movement, it does not. In fact, it only helps my theory, that FA remains a small exclusive, rejected movement because of these traits.

and there is nothing I can do about that. But I am not oppressing you by not allowing you to hijack my blog for a purpose to which I am opposed.

She can't handle one disagreement? What purpose is that? Does she even know what my purpose is? She seems to miss that by a mile. I want real help and support for fat people, not a bunch of "Up with Fat" nonsense brokers.

For the record, you do not HAVE to like being fat, disabled, or anything else you happen to be.

Who on the planet would like being over 500lbs? Who on the planet would like being disabled? thin or fat? I would like to ask that of her friend too over on Fat Heffalump? Isn't she angry over the fact that I am questioning the whole be happy about being fat paradigm? It just doesn't fit for all of us.

You don’t have to agree with me or any other FA blogger. You don’t have to do anything, and it’s not my job to live your life for you. I provide options and alternative views. It’s not about “oppressing” you.

Hey she can say and do what she wants. I have the right to ban anyone I do not want from this blog too, and yes it is my life. I have the freedom to say she and those like her are WRONG.

But at least I live my life free not letting others tell me what to say, do and be. Their censorship of fat people speaks for itself.

I am glad I left the fat acceptance movement. This is total evidence of what it has become. Where is the acceptance in fat acceptance? Only perky younger midsized women who have good health need apply who can sing the praises of fat to each other and live in delusion land. Now what is interesting is how closed they are to any other opinions.

I have realized engagement with these folks, is a waste of time, so dear reader, you probably will not hear of any more personal battles with them, but I will still write against the two sided set of lies when it comes to obesity. By the way I am not the first one who has encountered this, they do ban anyone [fat or thin] who questions their theories.


Even on the Dead of Winter blog, looks like I am not the first she has pushed off...as for the delusions they remain entrenched:

I have said it before and I will say it again. Fat does not cause health or mobility problems, so curing fat would do no good. We could make all fat people thin, or at least less fat, and the health issues would remain. Even if it did, we cannot make people permanently thin in a safe way.

I have realized some today are just unable to think.

What is wrong with a FAT CURE?

I am not talking about turning everyone anorexic, but the size acceptance and fat acceptance crowd seem to be angry at me for desiring a fat cure that works. In fact it infuriates them.

As they hit their block buttons or erase my posts or tell me to go away, I have seen that complaint time and time again, "Five Hundred Pound Peep, wants a fat cure! How dare she!".

Hey the world of the midsized where fatness means having to buy your cute clothes at a special store and maybe getting a bit huffy on the third set of stairs, really can't relate to my world.

IF they came up with a fat cure, one that worked and didn't kill, maim, include torture, severe hunger, and worked in the long term, I'd be on it like a mouse on the biggest piece of cheddar cheese. Who could blame me?

They are crazy if they think someone at my weight and who has been near 700lbs, is going to sing the praises of fat

So wonder fat people have it so hard now.....caught between these two ends...

This Space is NOT FOR YOU!

Maybe while I do agree with no discriminating against fat people, and standing up for them, I should totally detach myself from anything size acceptance. What is odd is some of them will speak to their rights, their voices, but if someone has a differing opinion all those *liberal* ideals about "tolerance" go flying out the window. I basically wrote in this discussion I did not agree with the concept of 'fat identity". Do thin people walk around identifying as 'thin people" everywhere they go? Hey my name is Joe, happy to meet you, I am a thin person!"

The more you comment, the more I think this space is not for you. You seem determined to try to form other people to your standards, rather than defining your own standards. Fat Acceptance isn’t a service to take charge of your life for you, it’s about finding your own space, your own voice and your own path. That’s what I’m doing here with MY space, MY voice and MY path. It’s not my job to speak for you.

They have the right to identify themselves as anything they please, even Martian, that is what free speech is all about but what is wrong with me sharing my viewpoint about how the fat identity stuff, seems to be just another trap, and making one's physical nature much more important then it should be? That's MY VOICE. What is odd, is why they defend their voice, their space, they do not allow for others which is hypocritical to the max. They never expect ANYONE to disagree with them?

Just do you know, Five-Hundred Pound Peep has been making the rounds of FA blogs basically criticizing fat acceptance for being fat acceptance. She came onto my blog more than once to tell me that FA was wrong for encouraging fat pride, for not wanting a cure for obesity, and a number of other things I won’t get into right now. The point is she is against much of what FA stands for and is demanding that FA allow her their spaces to promote those points of view.

They are right I do not agree with all the mandates of "fat acceptance". What kind of frightens me lately is how so many of them think totally alike, and do not want to hear any other opinions, even those of other fat people, even someone as fat as myself. It's not like I am going to scream at them "Go on a diet!" or something. It is insane. This just gives more credence to my theory that fat acceptance has become a socio-political deception of it's own. Question anything and they consider you "out" and scream at you on their message boards; "This space is not for you!"

Is there any other blog out there of independent-thinking fat people who reject the diet nonsense but haven't drank the fat acceptance Kool-Aid, who just want to censor anyone that makes them feel uncomfortable? I'm over 500lbs for goodness sakes, 522lbs as of last month, 545lbs in April, it's not like I'm a fashion model showing up at their blog to tell them to go on a diet and shut up! But they sure want me to shut up! [What is scary is I had left posts of agreement on there too, and even linked to her blog on my website]

The Size Acceptance Ideologue's List of Rules

I know some here probably think I give size acceptance too hard of a time. I do not regret what I have written. I wish it had truly been a movement and gathering place for obese people for support and help, in my opinion if it had truly been a movement for the fat, instead of just using the fat to advance social programming agendas, all tied to the liberal side of the right/left paradigms [ever wonder why just about every size activist is an extreme liberal?], there would be real research to help obese people, and demands against all the garbage that isn't working. As I have said size acceptance has become the enabler to the abusive fat hating society. The more they tell us fat people are responsible and at fault, for their own conditions and are fat due to failed diets, will power and more, the more size acceptance in their praise and promotion of life altering adipose tissue serves more as the enablers to all the lies. Where does that get anyone? Choose your side....[well I said forget it!] Between the weight loss gurus, who offer nothing that really works, to the sociopath agitators like the Bigger Fatter Blog guy who posts nasty pictures to the extreme hyper fat activists, fat people do not have much to go on anymore. Well I'm sick of all their lies!

Here is a list of the size acceptance rules out there. Yes I know there are some exceptions, and admit speaking in generalities. Having broken many of these, I have found myself banned at many a size acceptance website. Even trying to get traffic up here, is difficult, because with the exception of a few blogs, censorship is heavy in the size acceptance world. This blog gets removed fast!

1.Never admit any pain when it comes to obesity.

Hey we know this is NOT this is not allowed. As I have shared on this blog, I am even having comments ERASED off size acceptance blogs. Sharing nitty gritty "hard" stuff about being fat especially among mid-sized and healthy brethern is not permitted. When it comes to the ultra-fat, nursing homes, loss of mobility and other problems are to be rapidly hidden behind closed doors.

2. You must love your fat no matter what it does to you. You must tell the world celebrate fat.

Obviously I am failing at that one. I won't tell any of you celebrate fat and by the way, I hate the diets and all the nonsense too, but telling people to love their fat is like telling an amputee victim to love their stump or a deaf person to love their non-working ears. To me, its a cop out, running from the diet mongers does not translate to lying to the world and saying being over 500lbs is great! Staying alive to me comes before groveling for anyone's acceptance.

3. You must be an extreme liberal. [hey I have noticed that there doesn't seem to be many Fox news watchers and people against Obama in the size acceptance camp. By the way I can't stand Fox news and am not a Republican either myself. There are also "progressives" who are more independent minded, of course. Why are size acceptance circles overall far more liberal and the kind of liberals who still love Obama even though he has continued all of Bush's wars and policies? I think this probably is because those against size discrimination and want to codify it, still believe the government can end size discrimination via "rule of law". I find that rather dubious, your boss may know if he calls you "fatty" at work, in certain areas you probably can sue him, but if you apply for a job, and aren't hired because you are fat, try proving it! More government power and intervention with fat people means fat camps one day, and having your BMI tracked, so wake up people!

4. You must defend everything fat related, even the woman that wants to be the fattest woman in the world and yes I have seen that done on a variety of size acceptance blogs.

5. Do not question the status quo. No one in size acceptance is questioning the inner reasons why people are growing fatter and why the obesity epidemic is out of control refusing to see the profit that is attached. Things like GMO and adulterated food remain off the radar as well as the pool of toxins we are all swimming in. Very few are questioning the corporate and other interests that are forwarding the obesity epidemic.

6. BODIES come before mind, souls, etc. I have noticed this in size acceptance for years, it is a growing trend in this world, as a whole, a shallowness, a denial of character where the fat activists become just as looks obsessed as their thin sisters. Otherwise why are the academics promoting nonsense such as "fat identity"? My whole life has been trying to get the morally deficient to see beyond the fat.

See: "Thought Crime and Size Acceptance, Ideologues and The Big Brush-Off"

What is Fat Studies?

I took the women studies class in college an eon ago, and realize it was more a brainwashing indoctrination session, to love hyper-feminism, and to "worship" the "goddess". My professor there was hard core. Shout that you were against the patriarchy, and ready to go back in time, to burn a few bras and your "A" was almost guaranteed.

Now we have "fat studies".

Should I write a paper? I doubt academia would give me much of an ear. That is it's own world, if you divert from the "rules" in the size acceptance world, refusing to celebrate fat, and desiring a real cure--not the nonsense they are shoveling--any free thinkers need not reply. Even here, how could I write a paper of "fat ACCEPTANCE", I do not accept my fat, my fat is equal to my almost deaf ears, annoying but to be celebrated? Forget it. Some of the language here gets kind of odd.

Fat Studies reminds us that all bodies are inscribed with the fears and hopes of the particular culture they reside in, and these emotions often are mislabeled as objective “facts” of health and biology. More importantly, perhaps, Fat Studies insists on the recognition that fat identity can be as fundamental and world-shaping as other identity constructs analyzed within the academy and represented in media

.

What about the hope to stay alive? This seems a lot to ask Mr. Adipose cell...I suppose Mr. Adipose does not realize the trouble he has caused.


What's wrong with using the words overweight or obesity? They want those only used in "ironic" fashion.

Marilyn Wann's Yay Scale

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?

"Why We Need Size Acceptance" [Violence on The Fat]

"Why We Need Size Acceptance"

Hey, I do not disagree with EVERYTHING having to do with size acceptance. While I have some giant beefs about the movement, standing up against abuse of fat people is a GOOD thing.

I think if fat people weren't so hated, and we weren't being used as a vehicle to be profited from or to be exploited, there would be SOME REAL HELP and change out there, but she is on to something with this one:

We are all participants, willing or no, in a culture that promotes and glorifies this kind of violence against ourselves, and which revels in that violence’s effects. Even the language we use in discussing our body fat is steeped in violence; our fat parts are to be burned, blasted, destroyed, dissolved, eliminated, eradicated, or otherwise abolished. Let’s think for a moment about the broader effects of regarding our bodies—even an aspect of our bodies—with such language and imagery. This thinking divorces us from ourselves, and from the wonderful mechanism which enables us to experience the world. It creates a divide where none should exist. It turns our bodies into enemies, or antagonists, or discrete objects to be controlled and restrained. It denies us healthful connections between the thoughts in our heads, our interactions with the world around us, and the physical form that enables us to connect and communicate. It does us harm.

Sometimes I think about all the 'answers' they give to the fat, and it always incorporates pain and suffering. Nothing about wellness, joy and happiness. I don't have to go smack myself around for having thyroid disease or have some crazed trainer scream at me like the TV show "Heavy" but supposedly for being fat, I should be groveling on the ground, and prepared to suffer.....

Would some of you be offended if I told you that sometimes I wonder in my mind if weight loss surgery is more about torture?

Let me talk this one out, the other day, I was reading a book about "footbinding" in young Chinese girls, as I sat there getting grossed out as the fictional author Lisa See, described the breaking of foot bones and the rest to give Chinese women of some hundreds of years ago [footbinding lasted 1000 years], teeny feet, I thought what else is weight loss surgery, but more pain and "suffering" to get a "good" look, and most of the time it doesn't even work, even in this book, they admit 1 out of 10 girls died from footbinding and infections, gangrene and the rest plagued the rest. So human beings have done really screwed up things with their bodies for centuries.

So when they tell you to go under the knife and tell you, hey we will shrink your stomach down and make you "thin", they couldn't have thought of a worse way of torture. Trust me as a person with severe digestive problems where I projectile vomit for literally 18 hours with severe bowel pain [dry-heaves are no fun] if I accidentally eat some MSG or some high fat item [it took me 6 months to figure things out], one does not want to go to the land of digestive organs that do not work.

I think about the VIOLENCE of that....

and how fat people are so hated....

and how no one wants us to get any REAL HELP, because we are considered NOTHING to them.

I still am NOT going to LOVE fat [because of what it has done to me], but I know when things are seriously screwed up, and looking at a society that is so messed up in so many ways. All the "wars" on obesity, are about violence, instead of actual HELP and HEALING.

Part II: Me and The Size Acceptance Ideologues

Years ago on a few message boards regarding size acceptance, I used to get in trouble there too.

It was pretty much the same thing. Hey this is my website at least and can speak my mind without being censored though they'll wipe every comment quicker then any 1984 civil servant rewriting history for Big Brother.

You know one thing that isn't easy in this world is holding your ground when the group, tells you how very wrong you are and lacking in every positive attribute they can think of. All I know is to go their way, I am supposed to suspend reality itself and live in some sort of fantasty world. I probably have stepped on a few toes, with the two sides against the middle argument, the whole LOVE YOUR FAT side, actually helping the FAT HATER side OUT. Even one poster posted some stuff where she kind of lost me, she had good thoughts to share too.... I do not buy the premise that I have to prove how self-loving I am or not to have others give me worth, my worth comes from God, which I know even naming God, may give some of the hyper-liberals of size acceptance a few shudders, but there it remains. In other words, how come, when you try to get people to "think" deeper about this stuff, they always want to slap you with the "you have too low self esteem" 2 x 4? I guess because it works on a lot of people.

I *think* this could be about me. Maybe it isn't and hopefully I'm wrong. I like the blogger, she has interesting thoughts on freedom I find enjoyable. I'm a bit confused on this stuff, what is "healthy weight mysticism"? Some of the weird terms throw me off. Am I crazy to deem 700lbs-500lbs as being "unhealthy"? Stop the world from spinning I want to get off!

A fat person, or former fat person, buying into the ‘healthy weight’ mysticism is not ground-breaking.

In fact? It’s downright mainstream.

A fat person, or former fat person, blaming themselves for how our culture (mis)treats fat people and (mis)characterizes the fat experience is not ground-breaking. We are (mis)fits, after all, in that we are outliers, living in a world built for those who are smaller than we are. Self-blame for nonconformity is such a normal social response that it hasn’t seen a ground-breaking since Genesis.

What does she mean by self-blame? Didn't she read the rest of the blog, when I have shared how I got to be where I am at? And what does she mean by "mischaracterize the fat experience"? Does she even understand or even guess at what life at the higher weights could be? I guess if you do not follow the party line, you are automatically self-hating. How strange, well they know how to manipulate arguments don't they. If anything wanting to stay alive and desiring that MORE IS DONE for FAT PEOPLE beyond the FAILED pathways, I think shows more self-love and love for others then anything else.

As for non-conformity, who is the conformist, the one who stands with the crowd or the one who takes the heat, making a solitary stand? Let's not forget the diet mongers, weight loss surgery types and "thin to win" people aren't giving me any high fives either. According to these types, you'd think I had signed a Weight Watchers contract or something.

A fat person, or a former fat person, coveting the higher status granted by a smaller pants-size is such a foundational part of our culture that it supports a $60 billion-dollar (and growing) industry, not to mention providing employment for bored pseudo-science journos, teevee doctors, washed up celebrities, professional snarks, and any dieter in possession of a word processor.

Forget status, I just want to be able to walk a mile one day and to see my nieces and nephews grow up.

Also considering that 60 billion dollar industry, I've taken issue with them MANY TIMES on this blog. I think they profit off failure and repeat customers which is why the wheel keeps turning, but then I do not want to complicate things for some of these angry readers.

In summary: trashing a lifestyle you fear and failed at (body acceptance) while giving lipservice to some kind of bullshit concern for others under the guise of promoting venerable Healthistic ideals and body-driven moral imperatives isn’t ground-breaking.

How does one fail at size acceptance? That is an interesting premise. Where does the "fear" come in? I know some of these ladies are younger then me, being healthy, mid-sized and being able to dance the night away is a much different exsistence then life in a higher weight body. I suppose I *failed* in that I dared to disagree. Hey that's ok with me. Am I morally degraded for wanting to stay alive? LOL How about whoever else this could be meant for if not for me? How does one pass the size acceptance test, being the most jolly? Can someone fill me in on that one?

It’s the same old bull****. And the attempt to Trojan-horse fat-hate and body-shaming into HAES and FA/SA circles?

I'm getting the feeling that anyone who is over a certain body weight who wants to share their truth and reality, are not welcome in size acceptance but I sort of knew this years ago. They get very angry at anyone who threatens the core beliefs, like size acceptance is a cult, and you can't ask any questions. I should perhaps do a paper or some sort on how size acceptance is a manifestation of the human potential movement but skewed to another market. That may be of interest.

Ah, getting a few of them mad out there, is nothing new to me. Here is a secret for your fat delusionists, most fat people especially people hitting my sizes, know that size acceptance delusions aren't working for them either. We are cool with the "do not discriminate" aspects and calls for fat people to be treated like human beings, but the rest of your garbage about being happy at any weight and refusing any REAL cures and help even at the stratosphere weights is total nonsense.

I'm out there in the world, and talking to folks like myself all the time. I hope I am wrong, this was not meant for me, but you got to wonder why the anger? It's like you can't even have a two way talk whatsoever. Notice how the verbal beat down and censorship comes so quickly and so suddenly. Not one word allowed of dissent. I certainly couldn't even get a word in edgewise.


I noticed over on "The Truth is Radical" blog article, where my secondary comments got censored, Marilyn Wann and others made an appearance.

See this blog entry too...

"Thought Crime and Size Acceptance"

for context...

I found this comment very interesting...on "The Truth is Radical" article

I totally agree that fat is not a disease. It’s just … fat, and, like food, it’s neither good nor bad. It irritates me that so many people are looking for a cure. It’s like trying to find a cure for blonde hair. Completely pointless and seriously who wants everyone to be the same size anyway. How boring would that be.

To me the above rings so weird...

Has this person been near 700lbs and almost DIED?

Fat in it's extreme forms or even less extreme forms HURTS. I do not want people to be the same size, I do not think everyone should be a skinny minny but come on people it's called reality lets go look at a little bit of it. Here too the brush-offs continue.

Marilyn Wann then chimes in....[LOL wonder if she saw my link to this blog]

Marilyn Wann said,

August 1, 2011 at 7:29 pm

Brilliantly argued and supported! I also refuse to agree with any sort of weight horizon. I believe that defining anything in life based on weight is harmful, never helpful. Each one of us, living in our bodies, can seek our own best possible health and happiness in a weight-neutral manner. There are also no guarantees for any of us that we’ll be able to avoid pain or illness or injury or unhappiness. What sort of brittle, unhuman standard is it that would devalue people who experience the inevitable downsides of embodiment?

She refuses to agree with any weight horizon?

What about 800lbs and above? Yes there are people reaching those weights. I know about them from my visit at home doctors, and from own life experiences reaching out to other very overweight people. My health and happiness demands MORE answers then just go "move a little" and some vague nebulous "go eat healthy" which I already do to best of my ability, and so it does for other fat people. Of course Marilyn Wann would never consider anything regarding modern culture or what is being done to our food for even such heights of weight to become even more prevelant. I suppose her eyes would glaze over if I discussed endocrine disrupters. If I told her about the super-fat people my deceased friend knew in her nursing home--[she herself was more midized], who could not walk or had their skin break down, what would Marilyn Wann then have to say? Who is talking about anyone being devalued? Haven't I been devalued by these folks? Yes I have, by basically having my thoughts and opinions censored. Notice how they lump me in automatically with the other side. They are like political idealogues, that can't even imagine that another position beyond the other mainstream side can even exist.

If anything what I have written would give super fat people more value, in that their very lives would be honored as real help and answers would be found or demanded beyond the fat haters and the fat delusionists.

By the way, I do not plan on shutting up. I believe the way things are going there are many people getting fatter and sicker out there too. The delusionists can live in their fantasty world while some of us deal with reality. If people want to know what has held size acceptance back, as anything but just a "fringe" enterprise, there you have it.

Thought Crime and Size Acceptance, Ideologues and The Big Brush-Off

I went to read this article, I got it from the Big Liberty blog...and it's from another blog...called Dead of Winter...

But here is:

"The Truth Is Radical"

I will share two of the posts, but there are more in the comments:

Blogger to me:

This was aimed at the general population, not at every single possible instance there is. I beg to differ that some people are too fat for fat acceptance or that you cannot be healthy at every size (depending on your definition of health.) Indeed, that was my point-I used to think this way until I was radicalized.

Even if fat did cause or exacerbated health problems, we still cannot be made permanently thin in a safe way and doctors should stop prescribing weight loss as the cure.

It may not be radical to you to be told to accept what is before you, and it really isn’t, another point I made in my post.It’s radical to ask to be treated with basic respect. However, it’s radical in our culture of fat hate to say, “I’m fat, get used to it” and stop making concessions that grant fat phobics their arguments. We’re under pressure to make the larger fat phobic culture feel good instead of challenging them with the best we have and our message gets watered down in the process.

Society has a toxic potion to sell at both ends of the spectrum? Sorry, but I find the idea of society promoting fat to any degree laughable.

Oh, and have Americans really gotten fatter? Or is that just the BMI talking? Most people that get labeled “fat” are either only slightly fat or not visibly fat at all. We wouldn’t have as many fat people as we do if the BMI charts did not change to include more people in the fat category.

No, we don’t support a cure for obesity because…we’re fat acceptance. Pretty straightforward really.

My post still stands. You are certainly welcome to comment on whatever you like here, but this is not the place to win converts away from fat acceptance and to hash out your issues with it.

What I Wrote in Response: [well unless it gets taken down]

Again I get the brush off, as if there is only one of me in this country. I know in the size acceptance world that super-fat people are the lowest of the totem pole especially if they are of lower financial means which most are being disabled, and because they do not protray the image that size acceptance wants. I know from friends and even my own doctors there are people who are bedbound, wheelchair bound and even in nursing homes. I can still walk, my life is limited more by the breathing problems-COPD, but I can walk far further then I could acouple years ago. I can still get out and live a bit when the weather is good. I know even on the spectrum, there are people suffering far worse then me.

A person my size yes can stand against fat discrimination and more, and have dignity, but this idea that fat should stand alone and untouched, what if they found a cure? You know that one worked? I am not saying everyone has to be a skinny minny, I am talking about those with severe obesity…it’s like telling a kidney patient, “oh, you do not accept the fact your kidney’s have failed no more research and help for you, go be proud of needing dialysis everyday. Give me a break!

So what has your “radicalization” done but give out the usual status quo? If you read my blog, you will see I am anything BUT an apologist for the rotten diet industry, but no instead of listening you tell me, “Oh this doesn’t apply to you”. Well why wouldn’t it, I’m fat too. Hey call it “the midsized and still healthy fat acceptance movement”, then we can call it a day.

Ok the dieting and WLS is failing most, we cannot be made thin “pernamently” in a thin way, but does this mean saying Ok, now we embrace the health problems for those on the higher end of the spectrum? Why not demand some more answers and better ones that work?

Hey I know in this life, there is a 99.95 chance that I will die fat. So don’t try and claim I expect to wake up lithe tommorow. Maybe I’ll be thinner, or maybe I’ll be bigger from the heart failure, putting on even more fluid, whatever but don’t tell me that I am supposed to “accept” what is a serious health problem and tell the world, Ok now because you have abused us, we will turn the other way and say, “We love our fat!” no matter WHAT it does to us. It is operating only in response to them!. Forget them. I want help, and by the way I used to weight near 700lbs and probably would have been dead 15 years ago, it wasn’t like the size acceptance world was any help then too. Your brush off of me and my issues is nothing new.

I have the self respect to say, “Look you are wrong”. An overabundance of adipose tissue can destroy lives, taking the moral imperatives out of it all. Basically you want me to ignore my own reality, and here you basically are telling me to go away. If anything I worry about midsized women because I was smaller one until my late 20s. So think that one out. .

I don’t care what the fat phobic culture thinks or doesn’t think, I want to stay alive, and if I die young from being fat, maybe my nephews do not have to. Maybe they will be able to get help without all the baggage and social engineering garbage. It’s like the two political parties, two wings of the same predatory bird, well size acceptance has become a dance partner with the diet-fat industry, no one wants a real cure or answers. I know people have gotten fatter, no doubt of it, have lived long enough to see the difference, back in the 90s people my size I never saw them, now I see them all over–the ones who can still get out.

The main post was typical boiler-plate size acceptance stuff, we are radical and standing against the fat-phobes, OK I get it, I just wanted to put my viewpoint out there.

But has anyone wondered if gearing all your positions in response to the fat haters, is the most healthy position? If anything it becomes a dance of two parties, where one makes all decisions in RESPONSE to the decisions the other makes. Sorry to say this, and some may find me unusual to state it, it is a position of WEAKNESS. It merely makes you a puppet to their strings. They scream, "We hate you fat people!", the size acceptance idealogues scream back "Forget you, We Love our Fat!"

Again I am brushed off. Supersized and fat people like me don't matter in the size acceptance world, I learned that long ago. Fat hating Sociopaths will post pictures of us to make fun of us as our bodies go crazy, and then we will have the size acceptance crew say "you do not matter". They hate us too because we represent the "hole" in their arguments and their absolute concessions.

Out of Touch Marilyn Wann: Let's Have a Parade!

I know life is different in wealthy San Francisco, surrounded by loving fat adorers, but how out of touch can someone get?

"A Big Fat Parade Could Expand Living Space For Us All"

Is it just me, am I too serious of a person, or are all the party balloons, clowns, parades and belly dancers in the size acceptance world just a bit too CLOYING?

Yeah I am the personality who wishes it was 1890, collects stamps and loves antiques but there is something about Marilyn Wann that grinds my gears and I find so disingenuous. What about a little self respect? Why do us fat people have to "prove" ourselves to the rest of the world, like on a hyper-jolly freak out wearing pink and or pink hair to win the affections of others? It is actually kind of a world of froth to the more intellectual among us. Even outside to the more conservative, what if you do not relate to or agree with the hyper-liberal identity politics? Sex worker parade? You HAVE got to be kidding me, what does this mean, that now we have to support vice and prostitution too? Well I talked about what I saw in size acceptance myself. I know many in San Francisco have lost it, but guess that tells me enough there.

I vote for a big, fat parade for all of us! As a fat activist, I want people of all body types to waddle with me. A big, fat parade is also a sex-worker parade and an antiracism parade and a parade for gender diversity and a parade with people of different abilities and mobilities and a queer march and an all-ages parade, and more. Because that's who we are.

Instead of making long lists of outsider groups who deserve long-overdue welcome and then debating who's deserving and who isn't, what if we were all welcome all the time?

What would Marilyn Wann say to me, if I told her, I can't walk enough to be in a parade? Remember I do not use a scooter, though I do own one, I actually refused a wheelchair years ago, fearing I would lose mobility. What would a parade mean to my personal life? Some of my friends are thin, are they going to have a THIN parade to counteract my FAT parade? LOL

Then there is her weird "I am so healthy" message, OK we get it. She has been repeating it for years. I agree there are many mid-sized people out there, who while they probably aren't going to do an Iron Man marathon, can be pretty healthy, but what does this say to fat people who aren't? At least she has tempered some of that down.

I'll be there to continue learning what I can do. As a fat activist, I often want to say, "But I'm healthy! Look, I eat my veggies and exercise." While it's fun to flout stereotypes, social justice is unacceptably precarious if it depends on good behavior, or on access to other flavors of unearned privilege. For example, gaining respect for fat people who happen to be rich or healthy or white or able-bodied at the expense of other fat people is just more yuck, not yum. Human rights should be based on the fact that we're all here, not on some begrudging notion that some of us should or would change if we could.

Sigh...my world view doesn't even match these folks, not at all nor do I want it too. It's too bad that fat people are being suckered into this stuff....

Perhaps they see the socialist 'Communist? Left? as their fat salvation for real [notice the name of the group she lovingly mentions CASTRO towards the end...that her friend is in]....however once the gulags are in place, and food is meted out via portion control and fiat, perhaps they ought to rethink that, and understand how food and everything else was controlled even in China under Mao, with every village council counting the food, and number of chickens and pigs.

What is sad is how this type of rhetoric does to affect fat people. "Have a parade!"

Years ago, I got in a conversation with Marilyn Wann or someone claiming to be her online but it was her message board so believed it was her, I think at the time I was near my peak weight and probably about to die, wish I could remember the exact year but it was at least 10 years ago if not more. I told her, "Please go to a nursing home that specializes in bariatrics to see what obesity really does to people and how it ravages lives". She was actually quite offended by this. Even one of my friends who had lost weight but had grown more ill from another condition, was in a nursing home where she saw a score of people too overweight to function in their 30s, and 40s and beyond. Marilyn Wann probably would be in shock that I am even still alive to this day. This was around the time right before I lost weight down from near 700lbs and got involved in my last community. I described my life at the time to her. I felt absolutely no empathy whatsoever, and was condemned for not being "fat positive". She seems to be another "community organizer" and "social engineer" type that cares nothing about normal fat people, just there to influence minds and opinions for the powers that be throwing up distraction. For someone like this, I am sure it's a good money-making gig but not much more then that, but she doesn't speak for me.

"Guys Who Like Fat Chicks"

"Guys Who Like Fat Chicks"

Warning the above article has some risque language.

I have written about the fat admirers before..."Chubby Chasers Give Me the Willies!" This article seems to back up what I said. Seeing women like in one giant meat-market as a bunch of body parts...

Entries happily, ravenously, robustly referenced double bellies, back rolls, and “big old ham thighs.” Feminine body shapes were compared to pears, apples, and one calabash squash; their weights spanned from 180 pounds to over 500.

and

In person at the East Village's Cafe Orlin, Dan explains that, yes, he likes round bellies. He likes double chins. He likes breasts the size of his head. He loves flabby biceps. “Fat upper arms are awesome. I would almost say I’m an arms guy,” he says, not by any means whispering. “I didn’t know that they would be that soft. I, like, fell asleep on a girl’s arm once. I was like, ‘Wow.’ ”

Excuse me, if I feel a bit creeped out. Maybe I am old fashioned, no let me say this, I AM old fashioned, some of you probably would think I belong back in 1880, and that's just fine with me! I read that and think- "look's like the "body is everything" stuff got to the fat people", and these skinny guys who are interested in dating them. Hey there is a person in there!

OK, I get that people are attracted to certain things, and to be with someone you want does take some chemistry, but it shouldn't mean everything. Relationships have to go beyond just a body that attracts you in the room, there has to be some personality and mental interest...remember the soul? Oh yeah, it's like they forgot about that!

This weird labeling of fat admiration, like other sexual categories is just odd.

Fat Admirers (FA) have historically adopted queer nomenclature for their self-discovery stages and preferences. Men who openly pursue, prefer, and date fat women are “out.” Men who like fat women but more or less hide them from friends and family are “closeted.” Men who say they like both skinny and supersize women ones are “bisizuals,” a controversial term that’s regarded as disingenuous in various online circles.

I never heard of "bisizuals" guess you learn something new everyday. The ones who hide their heavier girlfriends, are brainwashed by society and lack courage, and that lady should run not walk from such a relationship.

The article goes on to list "misconceptions" about the chubby chasers, LOL I think the writer would see ME as holding a few...but then I wrote from what I saw...perhaps not all the men take it as far as others but I'll stand by what I wrote in the other article.

This sentence is telling...

"Nope. Lawrence, who sometimes fantasizes about a 550-pound wife, thinks the smallest he could go would be 180 pounds, though that veers into bisizualism."

Who wants to just be a fantasy? Not me. I wonder if he realizes that a 550lb wife means he would be having to do a lot of errands, and helping take care of her? Maybe that's why he knows he has to go smaller, in facing reality.

The rest of the article goes on. I am glad that fat women, can get boyfriends. Why should men only date the skinny minnies? But part of me cringes that that just the act of dating someone who is heavy, earns you a special name and subculture and almost a metal! It seems to me fat women got husbands even 50 plus years ago, and they didn't have to go to a NAAFA meeting to find one either.

Fat people deserve love too, but there is a lot of weird baggage and debauchery that goes with the fat admirer world. One thing I want to ask is how come it's always skinny dudes going with the fat women? That is one weird thing, I guess if some guy is over 230lbs, he is fat too and not a fat admirer.

When I was younger and even at my severe high weights, I did get hit on, would just say "I am married, thanks but no thanks", and walk on. So I know these guys are out there, whatever their intentions were towards me. I was spoken for pretty young--by 25, and married by 29, and spent the majority of my 20s midsized before my weight gain, so the whole fat admirer thing didn't really register on my radar til after I was attached. I'm glad I didn't have to go swim in that slimy pond for a mate.

From Big Fat Delicious: Some Thoughts on Fat Identity

I found this blog entry interesting...

"Some Thoughts on Fat Identity"

In it she talks about girls who are thin, who are critiqued over their weight and memories about being younger and really not that big and told how she is fat over and over.

Now, before y'all start flaming me - understand where I'm coming from as a DEATHFATZ woman who, when I look back at pictures of me as a kid/teenager, wasn't really fat back then but sure as hell thought I was because that's all I heard. Sure, I never wore single digit sizes in my life (well, maybe as a baby and a toddler), and I don't remember ever wearing a size that wasn't classified as "Chubby" in girls' sizes or ever getting to wear any of the clothes like my peers wore when I was teen (I had to shop in the womens' sections of the stores to find anything over size 14/16 to fit me). But I wasn't fat like I'm fat now

I think about the times I was younger, and remember being 12-13 years old wearing size 12, and ironically remember being told how fat I was. At that age, I sunk to the level where some of the teasing stopped, but it was short lived, a summer where my parents had bought a pool membership, probably brought me more exercise, and the 100lb weight gain that would come in high school and from the blossoming of PCOS, would still be acouple years in the future and would begin after the trauma of a move on my 13th birthday. [Remember the 12 plus years I speak of where I was in the mid 200s before my massive fast weight gain that drove my weight to nearly 700lbs?]

There is one moment that stands out in my mind, where the brown size 12/13 pants suit with vest I wore on New Years Eve no longer fits 6 months later and my mother is very angry at me, at the time, I felt devestated and like I was being blamed for something beyond my control. Later I would wonder why didn't anyone take me to a doctor since my weight would skyrocket so fast especially between 1983 [the summer I went out West with my family and 1984?]

My life where my average weight was around 240-250, with a few 30lb up and downs for many years is ironic now, as I remember the job discrimination, losing jobs-over my bad lungs where the doctors gave me prednisone would put back on weight I lost and then later more, the health problems and it seemed the unyielding unending abuse just for being bigger [remember I was 5'11] then the average person.

I think how did all of this affect me in the long haul? It seems they just want to bombard fat people further, rather then come up with any real answers of making lives more happy and healthy? Consider I was later diagnosed with at least one endocrine condition related to stress and high levels of cortisol, what did all this do for me but hurt my health worse?

How many people especially women live under a rain cloud of despair for an extra 20,30, 50 plus pounds? What does this do for their health in the long run? Maybe they are ensuring more fatter and sicker people down the road! I think so.

She goes on to talk about the expected perfection and more things they pressure people to fulfil, mostly to make money.

I think more and more our society has lost its mind. The feelings are very poignant when I look back at the pictures of myself at age 12-13, and see a very pretty girl who may have a little plumpness to her but who otherwise was very good looking.

From another blog: "Swept Under the Rug of Size Acceptance"

Here is an article from the FatPinkMonkey blog, "Swept Under The Rug of Size Acceptance". She addresses many of the issues I had previously with HAES, which now I am discussing different issues, per this article. One thing right now I am discussing some of these issues with a leader in HAES who I am having a very good discussion with but it continues my theme, that what applies to more moderately fat and functional people may not apply to the super sized. She does point out something I experienced in size acceptance, the fact that when you get "too big" you are seen as NOT belonging. I heard the but "there is a limit" line too.

Feeding into the isolation I felt in such a large body were the comments of "oh, yeah I like big girls, but there IS a limit", "We don't want to hear about the problems of fat people not being able to wipe their a**" ect. It's actually very common! Fat people hate fatter people. If you have ever seen a fat person and thought to yourself, or actually asked someone else, "I'm not THAT fat, am I?" Then you are guilty of this.

One thing I never have talked about on this blog, is that in the world, the people I fear the most ire and judgement from isn't always the thin but the midsized, who sometimes will run from the super sized and ostracize them, fearing that one day they could be us. She is right there are those fat people who do hate fatter people. This isn't everyone of course, but it is really a problem out there.

I have my own beliefs about weight loss surgery, but totally understand why people make this decision, being super sized is very difficult. You become more immobile, you lose semblance of a normal life, people are going to grab on to any rope that has the possibility to save them.

Health At Every Size? And Healthism in the Size Acceptance Movement

Read this article for context:"Goodbye NAAFA: Why I Left the Size Acceptance Movement Behind", this article is kind of a continuation of the points I make there.

One large size acceptance organization is ironically named Health At Every Size or HAES promoted by the Association For Size Diversity and Health and is growing and popularity, getting the word out to professionals and others. Denial of the health problems related to fat really takes hold in a group that purposely turns a blind eye to the sick and fat. Paul Campos who is a spokesman for HAES in his book "The Obesity Myth, somehow manages to exclude super-sized people in general with a main focus on the moderate and mild fat or "The wish I was skinny" crowd. This sentence sums up the weird rabbit hole and ideals of the HAES movement: " A healthy weight is the weight a person maintains while living a healthy life" [p.79] Consider that sentence and the implicit backhanded judgements within it.

Entire chapters are devoted to proving that fat doesn't affect health, and that those who complain of hurting knees and edema,are a bunch of whiners.

Read this one too."The Reason why the disease of obesity doesn't kill those who suffer from it, and why it remains impossible to cure are one in the same because it doesn't exist'" [pg 41]

What!?? Talk about wiping away endless people's experiences.

Can't they admit fat is even a symptom of illness? I suppose not. While some tenets of HAES are good things to follow for health:

•Accepting and respecting the natural diversity of body sizes and shapes.
•Eating in a flexible manner that values pleasure and honors internal cues of hunger, satiety, and appetite.
•Finding the joy in moving one’s body and becoming more physically vital.

I would like to take all these HAES followers and NAAFA fat activists on a visit to a nursing home that specializes in the rehabilitation of obese people who have lost all mobility and suffer an array of health problems and tell me straight to my face after visiting this facility that obesity is never a disease or even the symptom of one.

While exaggerations do exist to sell diet products oppressing hordes of mildly fat people, doctors aren't being "mean" to suggest a correlation between ill health and obesity. Many become fat from a variety of causes, some even mixed and find themselves in the same boat.

Does Health at Every Size apply to 500lbs? 400lbs? Find me even one 350lb person of average height capable of running a marathon. How many 400lbers do you see in the Olympics? Seen any fat basketball players lately? Even the "Refrigerator" of Chicago Bears fame was forced into early retirement from his bulk. While the HAES folks are right to nod to the fact to the genetic undergirdings of obesity, no one tried to tell Robert Wadlow, the world's tallest man, that he was as healthy as everyone else and that just some "positive thinking" would cure his leg problems and other ailments that came from his height.

Many don't know this but there is a dimension of healthism within size acceptance, that is so focused on proving "Nothing is wrong with being fat"! It denies the reality of the majority of people who cross a certain mark. Even by the 200s, the pain began, I sit here, now knowing my stomach is killing my legs,and my time is limited to get this typed out. Part of me screams--"Are these people on drugs? Being fat hurts!"

When I was in size acceptance, this was during the years I was at my peak weights and the pressure to keep quiet about all physical suffering was the unwritten rule. Ironically I went to a NAAFA conference held at the most sprawled out hotel in the world that would have given a thin healthier person exhaustion just to navigate the place [no one thought of the sick there, or assumed all immobile fat people already had the scooter]. It was interesting to note one 600lb lady, playing "my stamina is better then yours" games with me adding to my distress.

I figured out fast during my time in the size acceptance world, that unless I presented myself as perky and healthy, that I wasn't wanted. This was not a world that embraced "thinker" type personalities but extroverts and adherents of delusional false "positive thinking". For a time, I basically said, lets just tell the truth! You think fat people do not know they are sick, or that their weight doesn't cause problems just on the sheer physical level? Why do we have to live in delusion in some sort of over the top people pleasing escapade? This doesn't mean helping the fat bigots out but just standing up with some integrity!

One fat activist got angry with me on a message board and asked me "Would it be so terrible if you let go of that fat negativity? What would happen if you thought about your health problems the same way a thin person thought about theirs?" She went on to tell me that the valuing any weight change was related to keeping fat prejudice in it's place and finished up telling me. "I cannot see anyway to seek 'the fat cure' without investing fat hatred".

The irony of a fully mobile 200 and something lb woman saying this to a woman who [at the time I was somewhere in the high 600s] is immensely absurd. Fat negativity? What is that? Wanting to stay alive? No one would tell someone dying of kidney disease, that we don't wish to seek the kidney cure anymore! The size acceptance world has lost it!

One thing about me, I'm an independent thinker and know when I am being bamboozled. By the way, having discussed these matters for years, most people see size acceptance as trapped in a morass of delusion and that includes many fat people. More damage is done to fat people demanding they must hide the realities of larger bodies, and surely the merely large still can function well, but to deny the super sized of us, a voice or even admitting our truths is a betrayal beyond belief!

What is wrong with not wanting to see friends sick anymore? What is wrong with wanting people not to lose the ability to have functional lives? What is wrong with asking true professionals and researchers for unbiased help?

Size acceptance if it really cared about fat people instead of just being the inverse side of the diet enterprises would have worked on helping there to be rehab centers for the obese [those are so few in number to be laughable] and demanding real research in obesity that isn't biased. They would have allowed super sized people to tell their truths, instead of foisting "think positive" New Age claptrap on them. By the way "intuitive eating" is badly named, intuition is related to what one feels, eat when you are hungry is good advice, but not eat when you feel like it.

Health at EVERY size? I don't think so. How absolutely ABSURD.

Chubby Chasers Give Me the Willies!

Chubby Chasers and Fat Admirers/Fetishes:, the men that are out there with their overwhelming desire for the full figure and who love fat women over all other kinds. I have absolutely nothing against a man who thinks a 300-lb. and over woman is beautiful, as a summation of all her parts personality, values, and even, yes, looks, but to be frank the ones who have turned fat into a top priority and a fetish creep me out.

I'm glad whoever wrote this Wikipedia entry on fat fetishism gave a nod to fat people in size acceptance who got a bit fed up with the objectification of fat women. This website will help explain some terms I use here, like "fat admirers" [though they hold a more fence-sitting view], feederism and more.

Some people involved in the fat acceptance movement argue that fat fetishism undermines social movements towards fat acceptance, through counter-productive objectification and dehumanization of fat people.

This may be politically incorrect to some liberals and others but when it comes to Chubby Chasers and "Fat Admirers", outside of men who are dating fat women because they are overweight themselves, or looking for you as a whole person....Run like the wind!

I was a pretty enough woman [today I'm much older with years of illness notched on my belt], which garnered their attention, and have had some chubby chasing type strangers, show up at the grocery store, bookstore, and other places, come up to me to say "hello". Perhaps some were truly interested in me as a person, but I know especially at my peak weights, I was fat enough to gain some attention, and in my case, was oh so young, when hitting the top weights. Anyhow, their efforts were for naught, hitting on a woman who was attached by age 25.

Years ago, once at a conference for fat people, I got a secret admirer sniffing my trail and remember telling a lady whom he wanted to serve as a go-between: "Tell him, I'm married!" In certain circles of size acceptance, this was no stumbling block, but of course it was for me.

Luckily this man didn't even know my name or address, but a realization hit me: somebody who never spoke to me was enamored because of how I looked. Now this can happen to all women, thin women talk about their objectification, and when a men and women do meet each other, appearances is all they got to go on in the first seconds and minutes of meeting each other, but it just felt weird overall.

This is because by then, I had seen so much weird stuff around me. As a fully monogamous, then engaged and married woman, I was an outside viewer to the size acceptance date and relate world. I know today I was beyond very horribly naive, in thinking these groups could be about platonic friendship, size activism and not just about sex, but then being in the 500-lb. and rising class, social isolation from my size was already affecting me and I just wanted to make regular friends. My experiences include some fat acceptance conferences and social groups that focused on BBWs and larger women.

When it came to the men, the few good ones loved fat women regardless of their weight -- maybe they were overweight themselves, maybe they had grown up among a loved fat role model -- anyhow, they just saw weight as a physical trait, and did not glorify it. These were the ones who were overweight themselves or in some way, could relate to previously suffering from obesity or growing up with it in some way.

The worst men gravitated towards fat women whose mannerisms left their would be suitors believing that they were passive, compliant and easily controlled. In some cases, this was true, in others the vultures left empty-handed, sorely disappointed.

I believe most fat women who are mid-sized can date normally, the world is full of all sorts of sizes in healthy marriages, but very super-sized women especially need to be careful. People under turmoil and in vulnerable positions can attract those who do not have their best interests at heart. One friend said it this way, "Broken people can attract other broken people". This doesn't mean everyone who is very fat is "broken," but definitely they are facing things the normal healthy folks are not facing. This may include severe health problems or food addiction.

I have heard horrifying stories, even from other people in size acceptance circles and organizations, about the treatment of very large women. They ranged from an 800-lb.-plus woman being kept entrapped in a walk-in closet on the floor, to finding out about feeders. I had the experience of befriending a lady near my size [she was in the high 400s], thinking we would relate to each other, and then being shocked on finding her feederism website. That new friendship was ended quickly.

There are men who like their women more easily controlled and that can happen especially with fat women facing mobility problems. Very fat people who have faced social ostracization or rejection need to be extra careful as to their selection out in the dating world.

But as an outside observer, with my fiance and then husband at my side, it was quite obvious -- for men, it was an absolute buyer's market with women always outnumbering the men. While some men were overweight, super-sized men were basically nonexistent, and most of the chubby chasers were of a thin or average build. Married or otherwise attached couples made up a sizable number, but still remained in the minority. This was no place for Christians or the traditional, which is one reason I left size acceptance too. A wedding ring meant little, judging by the men who ignored the silver circle on my left hand and those of other women.

It seemed when fat women discovered the opportunities in this new "fat-loving" underground, they went absolutely boy crazy like teenagers. But boy crazy at 35 or 44 is different then boy crazy at 15; hotel rooms can be rented, and trips made with no more required parental supervision. It was no holds barred.

Promiscuity ruled that world [and I think it would be worse today], which is why I removed myself from it. This applied not only to the socially focused groups, but the activism one as well. Ideas about platonic friendship and finding a wouldbe fat sisterhood was a joke, in that crowd. My morals didn't fit into this hedonistic mentality, where very fat women offered themselves to any man who'd have them driven by the nudge that whispered, "Take what you can get honey!"

I still remember one conversation I had with one of the ladies in one of these social groups. "Hilda" [name has been changed] reveled in her largeness, claiming that she liked weighing 320 lbs., and when she fell under that oddly chosen benchmark, ate to get back up there, and dieted to not get too much over it, fearing the immobility that comes with larger sizes. She'd married a very timid man, who catered to all her desires who openly admitted he was only with her because she was fat.

One day I made the mistake of asking, "Well what would happen if you lost weight, say, to getting a digestive disorder or something?" "Hilda" didn't hem or haw for a instant: "Well, that probably would be the end of it!", she said.

It didn't take too to figure out that others like "Hilda" populated these scenes; outside of the regular world of dating and marriage, very fat women seemed all too vulnerable to the new flattery they encountered, and became easy marks for the most predatory of men. This doesn't mean there aren't thin women who also become marks, but just seeing human beings treat each other as objects will forever stay with me.

Towards the end, before I cleared out for good, I realize that some fat acceptance organizations seemed far more interested in fulfilling and pleasing chubby chaser and fat fetish/admirer desires, then raising any awareness or help for fat people. I want to keep this article rated G, but I found out about too much: women my size signing up to have soft porn videos made of them [they were told it would "empower" them], realizing swinging wasn't just something left behind in the 70s. You know life has gotten strange when your local plus sized social club, calls you "the prude" because of your refusal to join in on their lifestyle choices. By then I had seen enough.