Hello Fatshadow!

I'm glad to see Fatshadow's back. When I first got into the 'sphere her supple yet gentle and elegant voice was much appreciated. The linked post is interesting, it takes it's starting point from fat representation on tv, then makes some points about being higher up the scale. Right about now, there are some interesting voices of dissent about fat acceptance culture and it's trajectory some of its conceits and direction.

I don't believe anyone gets that fat from too many calories and not enough exercise alone. I think something else is going on. It's difficult to articulate in positive terms.

[my emphasis]

It's tiresome to have to struggle with terms in this way. A legacy of the crude way fatness has been defined. It should be capable of being seen as distinct from metabolic underpinnings and machinations. The conflation of fatness with sickness gets in the way.

What I've felt is that FA is for everyone, no weight must be excluded. However, in the same way as those who are very thin may have issues that those who are merely slim don't have. Ditto the fatter a person is the more likely they are to be dealing with things that aren't faced by smaller fatz. Though that isn't by any means inevitable.

Now I'm aware that this may sounds excluding or a weakening of FA by weight. I am truly mindful of this. Not saying though seems equally excluding, in a different way. In the ways that people are talking about the sidelining or even erasure of certain people's experience. That feels worse to me.

The demands of those setting out to trash fat people are being prioritized. I envisioned fat acceptance as a place where fat people no longer had to give a shit about playing to them. And could just be defiantly themselves in the face of that. Even if that might sometimes appear to confirm certain negative assumptions. Alas, I severely underestimated the sheer level of mistrust we have for each other.

Nor I don't wish to label the very fat differently than I do those less so. It feels indulgent to me as a lesser fatty to say "just accept yourself" to those who are saying that they feel on the edge of things and want to feel less on the upper end of weight. I feel I cannot continue to ignore their concerns.

How to get that across whilst at the same time remembering not in any way to prescribe this experience by weight?

Any idea that fat may be unhealthy causes tension in the fat community. It's understandable since the health industry continues to use fat as a one size fits all basket into which everything wrong is dumped. Fat people will never get good health care while this is true. I believe fat to be a natural expression of physical diversity.

Weight does affect the way we move and hold ourselves, but how, really? The crude homogeneity of decline and inferiority is worthless though. I'd like to see real study of fat physicalities free from all that, to enable and liberate, to make the best of. We would have had that if obesity was bona fide.

I want doctors who talk to me about a health issue the same way they talk to any size person. I don't really mind when my weight is mentioned in a laundry list of things because my weight is part of my health history. I will have issues that other people don't have. When it's part of the whole picture it's normal. When it's singled out as THE issue, it's just not useful.

Indeed, so much for those who bray, "denial". What I've never quite got is why we've somehow got into the position where we feel we've slipped into this stance. I don't see why it's necessary. I don't see why it has to be either/or.

Should people who are so fat they become immobile diet and exercise to lose weight? I don't know. I think everyone benefits from a healthy diet and moderate exercise. My wish is that people of that size would be in a dialogue with the health care community, which might reveal a deeper understanding of how it happens. What I want for them is enough space and care to be as healthy as they can be with or without weight loss.

It should be the job of science to find ways to get weight down (or up) for those who need or want it. That's what they're not doing instead of flogging the dead horse that is dieting. I think it's outrageous that this should be demanded of anyone. No comparable situation would it be. People get drugs for regulating their mood and anxiety for goodness sake.

My general view is that fatness has been treated in a wholly biased and unbalanced way, to fit vested interests, rather than a honest, holistic and humane view of weight or metabolism in general. (I don't get the point of singling out fatness for study wholly in isolation, I feel the whole spectrum of weight studied and compared together makes more sense, objectively speaking).

I am an amateur, it's not up to me to give a definitive prognoses on what fat may or may not be. I can only focus on what I can do and eschew what I cannot. The professionals need to listen when we say, what we have now doesn't work.

They don't have to take our word for it, they can check whether that is reflected by the facts. They'll find it is. Welcome back FS, I've sincerely missed your lovely voice.