Internal

I suppose my version of self acceptance has always been more internal. It took me a long time to notice just how out of step this is with the mainstream view of things. I sincerely did not know that for others, fat acceptance is about advancing it on the outside.

This will then feed back to us internally.

So mine is more from the inside out, others from the outside in. I think both are important. Though a lot of people see my view as negative, actually there is a lot of negativity in the other version too. Fat acceptance seems to work best for me, when fat people just get on and change the things we need to change.

The funny thing about fat acceptance is like a lot of other people I recognize the relative triviality of * being fat. It simply isn't as demanding as being Black, or gay or being a woman, overall. I don't even have to think about it, you build up an empirical sense of things through time. The contrast is immediate.

Even though the openness with which people are prejudiced is hard, the worst thing is the ubiquity, there sheer unmitigated hegemony of the view against fat people. It is actually the only one that is really acknowledged.

There is a contrivance to being fat because of this that isn't there when it comes to race, sex or sexuality. Those operate on more powerful themes and have built up a subterranean history that has become all consuming and subconscious. It's difficult to conceive of post those ways of seeing.

Whereas most fat people have some memory of being seen as human beings. It's not that there wasn't bullying, but it wasn't given a spurious credence by the medical science establishment. Nor was it as hyped by those around us and the media into being the de facto way you must see fat people.

Before people could make up their minds if they wished to be an arsehole. After energetic promotion of hate, it liberated the capacity for hatefulness in us all. Including fat people towards ourselves.

* correction