What happened to our view?

Back when I was learning to break the habit of a lifetime and voice thoughts I kept unformed in the back of my mind, I remembered thinking-there is only one point of view and that is unfair.

It doesn't come across much, but there's only one view of fatness and it does not come from fat people, nor has any real honest input from us.

Zero, zilch, nada, nichts.

Barely.

Yet we adopted it the same as everyone else.

Everyone agreed the same view of fatness, decided by those who were not fat. And we fat people agreed with a view of ourselves that came not from us.

So, what happened to our view?

It was repressed from within and without.

By representing the disorder that is dietary restriction as perfectly right and feasible, the normal responses we are designed to have became the sign of sin. The conscious desire to be greedy rising up from deep within us.

We felt we had to suppress those responses, our feelings and emotions in order to get on with the process of righting ourselves. To live right and become right-or slim. To merely feel and acknowledge those feelings was seen, in itself as identifying with them, strengthening them, going along with them. It was guilt and would go against and defeat our righteous purpose.

So we had to just not acknowledge them, somehow we became detached from part of our inner selves. It wasn't a case of feeling and thinking about what that was and deciding not to tell anyone. It was, you cannot acknowledge, what's going on within. That's collusion with badness, not cultivating the rightness that had to be delivered from outside, from those who were not wrong-fat, but were right-slim. 

What we were repressing was connection with our innate defence mechanisms at work and thinking about and analyzing our emotional, intellectual and psychological responses to them. This has left an eerie silence within virtually all fat people. Something missing.

Like coming to a place where the road should be, but it runs out and there's just a hint of what should be there, but somehow obscure..........

Weak

Skin aka, Deborah Dyer undoubtedly one of the most talented singers I've ever heard (this isn't even the best performance I've heard from her) and check this out. The respect is evident. She's so good, even though I'm not a fan of the oeuvre of her band Skunk Anansie, I still like hearing her voice.

Yet, there's something about the lyric.

"Weak as I am. Am I too much for you?"

All is uh-gain leading to review the supposed weakness of the word "acceptance," as in, "fat acceptance." I can be quite nit picky about terms, yet I've never had any real problem with it. Liberationist at heart, I've never been keen on "equality" as the be all and end all of anything. I view it as at best a guide, not an aim.

So I feel like the kind of person who might find acceptance insipid somehow, but I just don't. I think that's because I don't really see the direction of fat acceptance as fronting to slim people. Or in performing, proving anything for them.

I don't believe fat hating is a genuine on face value urge. Hate comes from being threatened, its not supposed to be a contrivance of social engineering facilitation. The causes provoking it are heartfelt yes, but that's not what we are getting or being told. The action of it is the highest grade of BS there is.

It makes me cringe.  If we weren't so self conscious ourselves, we'd see just how utterly reprehensible and absurd it is. Which many of us of course, don't want. We protect our love affair with thin privilege, as we complain about it.

My FA is not for slim people sorry. Though they're welcome as always to take what they want-honestly. But it's not specifically shaped for their sensibilities and they need to stop pouting about that.

The priority is enlightening (ha!) fat people young and old alike.

All this means that even if I did feel weak, I'd want room to feel it and still count myself as human-and be counted as such. The right to feel weak, to be weak, because you have been weakened by forces that may or may not be within your influence. This ability to feel feeling honestly something so often undermined in fat people. I want it.

Certainly way more than I want the tight resentful approval of those trying to persuade me to submerge myself into where they've excluded me from and where I frankly don't particularly want to be as much as all that.

You might say, it's either more toward one or the other. Either, outside- changing the minds of others to change your own. Or inside out, changing your own mind which forces others to make a decision about their response.

I don't know if either is superior, just that I know which one makes most sense to me and feels right.

The need to project strength though understandable isn't my priority, not for it's own sake. Having been beat up and drained for so long, people want to be fierce, but we forget, we've survived, amazingly well. I'm not entirely sure how or why, but don't underestimate how unexpected that is, for everyone.

How strong it is.

Fat people staying honest and true to honouring ourselves would be a mighty force indeed. Not only that, our truths are for everyone and can be used by them. Not when our actions are guided by pandering though.

Our weakness is in thinking we need to impress others more than we need to impress ourselves.

Urban Revelation

I have my own feelings about both the use of the concept of privilege as central to understanding fat people's situation. Either way, Big Liberty has written a new version, it starts;

The state of receiving unearned social status, notoriety, workplace and academic merit, attention from prospective dating partners, media attention, and other perks from being perceived as 'thin.' Can also encompass greater access to healthcare, likelihood of attaining gainful employ, association with positive traits like being a good parent, person, or lover, accommodation in public and private transportation, and the ability to immigrate to New Zealand (check: there's a BMI limit) -- by virtue of being 'thin.'

 The first definition by someone called *thinniswill begins thus;

The concept where overweight and obese Tumblr users (usually white women, but not limited to race, gender, or sex) whine about how being fat is equal to the years of oppression similar to racism. More accurately, an ongoing game of sour grapes, wherein those too lazy to change themselves will instead blame society for the fact that they're missing out on all the best parts of life. 

Yeah, having as rarefied an intellect as this no doubt. And can I just say how much I enjoy the use of race as a way of trying to induce shame fat? Black People exist, for that kind of use.

Well, I suppose it makes a change from the Holocaust.

I couldn't fail to notice the definitions of thinspiration, first;

1.)Thin + Inspiration.

a.)A person's thinspiration is usually an Image or Photograph, but can be many other things like: Lyrics, Poems, Quotes, Sayings, etc..

b.)An inspiration to stay thin.

And second;

something that mostly anorexics and bulimics use. Is usually in the form of a picture in which ana and mia people look to to gain inspiration to continue starving themselves in order to reach an ideal that they will never be able to get to.
common thinspirations:

There are three more. They are all by different people. The closest thing to an insulting word or term I could find amongst them was, emaciated. And that could be debatable.

Here's anorexia and here's 'obesity', excuse the comparison, but it just goes to make the point that it doesn't make any difference whether you are "mentally ill" or not, if you are slim. [I couldn't resist adding fat, post edit, I think you know what to expect, enjoy!]

The latter is commented upon, a soulless wasteland of nothing but what the definer wishes to say, basically a cheap crack. The first one is the voice of those concerned, you can tell. They can challenge even dominant views and that still makes sense, it's still feels worthy of consideration.

They are never disqualified from being.  From first person testimony of their own. Not having to regurgitate the hostile and hateful as if that is how they feel.

I think that about sums up the privilege accorded slim people. Fat people are looked upon, lazily defined as caricature. And no, that isn't an irony at all.

Slim people just ARE.

* Oh, did I just make up my own version of something?

Intoxication is the cornerstone of addiction

The term addiction is being thrown at fat people (isn't everything). No problemo though, right? All one has to do is say, "I am not an addict." Laters, ta ta, bye.

As simple as that.

But no. The politics people put onto fatness complicates "no", unnecessarily- in ways that are as psychologically draining as they are boring as hell.

I'm one of those strange people who actually has some (basic) grasp of what addiction really is. I was lost in waffling as usual, 'til the other day when I had a sudden light bulb moment. I realised that the key to explaining addiction might not be pleasure (the cause of my waffling) but intoxication, d'oh!

Intoxication is the cornerstone of addiction.

For now, forget everything about that term (work with me) but the third definition;

Poisoning by a drug or toxic substance

The point about ingesting these chemicals is they can poison you. Your body has ways of trying to prevent that from happening. Opiates, like heroin especially can relax your muscles to the point of paralysis-including such as your heart for instance- so your functioning literally comes to a halt. Our bodies naturally produce opiate like substances, in order to aid our functioning. For example to stop the working of your body from hurting. i.e. heart beat, lungs inhaling and exhaling, even joints and muscles contracting and stretching.

Your body has inbuilt protection against a potentially lethal intake of opiates, chiefly, to reduce its own production of said chemicals (obviously not infallible, but its doing what it can.)
I'm pretty sure this is the basis of some forms of chronic pain syndrome, where people are in permanent pain, but doctors can find no specific injury or reason why.

So, an intake of opiates leads to a reduction in the amount of those pleasure chemicals generated. This is what addicts speak of when they talk about how great the first time is and how its never as great again. That first time is either before the body reads and starts to react efficiently to what's going on. Once all this is experienced, it's quicker off the mark next time. This is what users call the/a"downer."

After the drugs ingested are processed by the body and the effect wears off, production can adjust back up to normal, or thereabouts.

When drug use becomes a regular enough pattern, that ability to restore normality is what can become compromised. It can wear out and function at so low a level that the person can no longer function properly without that intake. The internal production is no longer adequate.

This atrophy of function is the physiological basis of addiction.

It varies in people according to susceptibility. Genuine physiological addiction, that is when the body finds it hard or even cannot seem to recover its function to a tolerable level, is quite rare amongst drug users.

What less rare is what is really a form of emotional dependence. When factors other than physiological dependence weld people to drug use. That can be more powerful than chemical dependence.

Puny Accusation

I still remember when I first started commenting on the internet. I was on a certain leftist blog.  Having one of my sadly numerous desolate sub-conversations with a smug middle class man. During which, he asserted laziness was a character flaw.

I responded that I did not view it this way.

End of conversation.

Apparently, if I was too out of it not to know the profound truth he uttered, when I heard it. We could hardly continue our futile 'exchange'.

This part of the internet has been strange for me. I expected to find connection with like minds. It has not been so-for varying reasons-in the main.

So I was glad to see someone else knows this.

Laziness, that great cloud stalking fat people under the puny caricature of 'obese', is itself a lazy accusation. In whomever this quality is found, it is usually some kind of mental protest. Sometimes its the early stages of a kind of melancholia, or even depression.

We can see a form of it manifesting in the rigid adherence to the calorie/expenditure model as the be all and end all of weight regulation. It's devotees want it to be it, hence they lack an overwhelming drive to go on and fill in the gaps.

Expectation is the key to this form of indolence. They feel it has already been done, when in fact, it hasn't.

Communication didn't have to be this hard. Some just want it to be.

Design

Humans are not designed to be fat, apparently, yet can be and are. We are apparently designed to weight loss diet successfully and in the main, cannot.

Go figure.

Social Enforcers

I'm sure you've seen or heard of this video of Jennifer Livingston a presenter of a morning show in Lacrosse Wisconsin.

She received this e-mail from a viewer headed "community responsibility;

Hi Jennifer,

It's unusual that I see your morning show, but I did so for a very short time today. I was surprised indeed to witness that your physical condition hasn't improved for many years. Surely you don't consider yourself a suitable example for this community's young people, girls in particular. Obesity is one of the worst choices a person can make and one of the most dangerous habits to maintain. I leave you this note hoping that you'll reconsider your responsibility as a local public personality to present and promote a healthy lifestyle.

What a prince eh?

Undoubtedly crashingly impertinent, invasive and just down right c-rude, but you know what? Once the initial impact disperses, it's hard to feel this is just an individual. If you've paid any attention over the years to the way people we trust with our lives have abused their influence over us.

It feels very much like what it is, the relatively well mannered utterings of a sockpuppet drone. A mere extension of the authority that has propelled this effort.

It's about time people woke up to just how chronically supine they sound droning on about people's dis-easiness, that they themselves are enforcing with their mechanical outpourings. In fact, when one can bypass hurt, they sound just like we did when we were falling hook line and sinker for this script-inside our own heads-there's is our old voice back at us.

Its all distraction.
 
I have yet to hear one person dealing in it who isn't diminished by that. It's like an advert for how little self respect we have in general. The real embarrassment is how much of a hold those who have access to white coats can have over us.

Everyone who's commented thus far, seems to have taken the lead from Ms Livingston, filing it under freelance "bullying". Being the current affairs professional she is, she cleverly linked it to some anti bullying month. But lets face it, this is a concerted and contrived campaign against fat people directed by those with authority.

The desire to avoid that seems puzzling to me, but perhaps it is me who's out of tune.

I need to repeat, its taken a lot to get people to this point. It was not an overnight thing and that was with a standing start of an extensive history of ridiculing fat people.

I can't stand the way the very thing that should be getting some very sharp scrutiny in all this, authority and our relationship with it. Our betters must remain benign or the sky will fall down. So, not too much chance of examining what we can learn from all this. 

Pater must remain intact. That means of course we have to point fingers at each other, which means well, we are just doing the same as each other aren't we?

Fat people are thieves because....we bad. Fat haters are bullies apropos of nothing because they are bad. Oh, sorry wait, is that fat people who are bad or the others carry out their orders? Is it fat people who are mentally suspect, or the "bullies"? Oh I know, the public's bad, we're all bad.

Authority's ((((((goooooood)))))).

It chose the means by which people were supposed to make change, whilst doing nothing to halt the changes in the environment going in the opposite direction; let alone acknowledge that the valiant efforts of those they dumped on, had demonstrated the intrinsic unfeasibility of their dictates, anyway.

Whilst I do not stint on pointing the finger at individuals and their decision to liberate behaviour they know to be wrong, under the protection of this permission given from our supposed betters. Because we should learn from this not to be such tools, any of us.

It makes me uncomfortable to hear this filed under "bullying". A little part of me feels like ignoring this. It connects, gaining a traction that relieves from the almost permanent state of headdesking that is the usual reward for speaking about fat affairs.

I certainly have felt the insistence on making this solely about fat people was a mistake. I remember once crossing swords, when I said being excluded from health care was not simply about being fat, it was about being on the medico's shit list.

That approach would have connected too.

Turning this into an individual matter, ignoring the hate campaign orchestrated against fat people is like insisting on seeing sexual assaults in terms of the evil or sick who lurk amongst us, removing these acts from their context in sex/ gender power relations.

I don't say everything has to be or can operate always at the deepest depths. Nor do I claim to be particularly deep myself. But this feels way too shallow and in the end, rather self defeating.

Often people attempt to silence fat people by insisting the imposed submerging of ones humanity to that of an object-its like smoking/booze/drugs-is an apt way to run a "health campaign" one that claims the "cure" is already in existence.

And concerns itself solely in stating how bad the disease of being human is.

Is this within the remit of healers?

Everyone knows the way fat people are being treated is wrong, they know.  They want not to know. As little time as I have for centring fat people's consciousness around the notion of "thin privilege", I can't help noting the concept is hugely unpopular.

Even though it has been stated that fatness is a default disadvantage, that can only be remedied by slimming down. Yet, when fat people assert it in this form, suddenly we are told being fat isn't a disadvantage.

In other words, they themselves feel it is more socially enforced, than an actual deficit.

You only have to look at the extraordinary capacity of human beings to adapt to their circumstances to sense what a contrivance it is to place mere fatness as in some way, outside that.

And er, what's with this making "fat" an insult? The man referred to her "obesity", and gave us an object lesson in the sheer absurdity of that term. It turns first person into third. From "I am Jennifer" to "Jennifer is obesity".

He did not call her fat. 

All that his message conveys, flows from the stupidity of naming a condition after the whole person. If you excised the ideal weight and named 'obesity' as starting from there, it might work.

But it doesn't, it makes the whole person disease.

It's bad enough when people turn sexuality, or gender, into disease. But most people can at least conceptualize a person is more than that, though the taint created by the bad feeling tends to overshadow it.

This is presumably why our heroine decided she was "more than a number on a scale", reminds me of "more than a woman."

We are not more than our weight, that's the point. What we all are is more than the meanings being assigned to weight, everyone is, including those fighting to continue to be favoured. 

And as for us being"better than this"? Please, we aren't! This is who we are, desperate peculiar individuals looking for any advantage we can get, even punking people we love, admire respect and depend on.

Even whilst we lose something that is really precious.

I'm all for the human spirit, but let's not get ahead of ourselves. We have all fallen for this crap like the proverbial sack of potatoes, whether fat people not defending ourselves worth a damn, allowing every boundary of decency to be crossed. And others stunning their conscience, indulging themselves every bit as much as they describe.

We'll be better than this, when we take a good hard look at why we need to behave this way. The forces that drive us in these directions and how we can learn from all this.

*Post Edit

Identity

To quote the witty clever Marianne Elliot-Said aka Poly Styrene (check out the full lyrics -scroll down to "identity"T/W for mention of extreme self harm/suicide);

"Identity is the crisis can't you see?"

I was taken aback when I started to hear people say, fat is an identity. I can't say I felt it. To me being fat doesn't really mean diddly in essence, that's the point. It has been defined and distorted by those who want their weight to define them.

Fatness has been defined as an extension of that, in service to them-by them and their needs, contrived and otherwise. Ironically, I'd discovered just how meaningless slimness was to me when I diverted from my duty to play the 'obese' role.

After a while, I couldn't actually remember what I was supposed to be slim for. It's like the emotional memory had gone.

This is one of the few occasions when perhaps sidelining thinness or slimness would not be apt. Always when it comes to repression of others, is the repression of oneself. The drive is subconscious.

When the receptacles for this stop playing their assigned role, the dominant ones can be the ones who may find themselves a bit lost.

The underlying mystery is why the desire for this extent of assertion in the first place?  What makes certain groups so aggressive in their need for this? Do you find that as unnerving to contemplate as I do?

The peculiar thing about slim, perhaps really thin people is they have spontaneously, without to my knowledge any meetings or conferences to have decided they must issue forth this collective identity.

That it is inherently superior to fatness. Why would it be so necessary to prove? Why so fraught if its that obvious?

A small chapter of the fattening of society as a whole is told through the story of vanity sizing.  

“So many women tie their self-esteem to the size on the tag.” 

For "so many" read, slim women. These women have been reported to have stopped buying clothes on occasion when they can no longer fit into the size they feel best befits their identity.That they feel they are.

This feeling once coagulated around size 10 for a few generations. It had a meaningful cultural resonance, possibly until women's shape started to change (thicker waist). It was not so much about slimness that was a given. It was the size women were supposed to be.

Anything greater, unless you were tall or "pleasingly plump" was, well a bit awkward. Going up to unspeakable in the 'plus' or fat sizes.

That is why it is such a cheek that some people even manage to try laying this at the door for vanity of fat people. They barely bothered to make clothes for fat people, why would they wish to obscure how fat we were?

Perhaps as the fattening has now reached a critical mass (sorry, couldn't resist) the vanity has moved to fatter people, who used to be slim.

And perhaps in many of their minds, still are.

What is fascinating about this erm, psycho-sociology, is fat people simply do not care nearly as much. In that sense, it's not so much that we don't identify a fat group and being grouped in it. In our desperation to be reassigned, we were blocked from bonding properly with our own bodies, en masse.

We were taught to see them as temporary. Only time and the failure of the experiment has forced reality to be acknowledged, finally.

We neither have the drive, nor don't own the idea of what fat/ness is or is supposed to be.

That has been given to us. We are literally a figment of slimmer people's imagination. Funnily enough, it is slim people who recognize themselves-and we too-as individuals above all else and fat people are seen and still too often see ourselves as many people, with one psyche.

I don't mean what Americans call a "hive mind" I mean, our default is as one archetype. The closest that comes to mind is the way White People are always individuals, yet recognizably a group or tribe it is Black People who seem to merge. Especially to non Black People.

I still remember witnessing a discussion where a White Person expressed the sentiment that, it was frustrating when Black People did not agree.

Annoying though it was, I knew what the person meant, scary isn't it? At the same time, I marvelled at how it simply could not be applied to White People.