Sunday 1 December 2013

Your thin or slim body is no insult to mine

See, this is the kind of thing that gets fat people into even more unnecessary trouble than we already have. In short, a Norweigan health 'n' fitness trainer-who happens to be the girlfriend of footballer-posted a selfie of her abdomen four days after giving birth. She is thin and it is flat.

What do I think?

People's bodies are not statements of meaning.

Positive objectification is still, objectification.

People's bodies are not against your own.

Nub: Bodies are not talking to your dumb arse.

If you think so, that's likely because you see weight solely in terms of calories in calories out. This means that if a body is fat, its overate. If a body is thin, its underate. The two only diverge if you're the type that cannot sustain an underlying thesis-which is-bodies = calories.

Luckily, I know this isn't true. From observation of others, even more than personal experience, though that has been instructive enough.

Therefore I know that some women's bodies appear largely unadjusted by pregnancy. This is relative of course. This woman Caroline Berg Eriksen's life is exercise and fitness. The women I've known were just living their lives, yet, their stomachs flattened themselves. Presumably, on the face of it, they're even more "lucky" than her?!

It's not unheard of for a (thin/slim) woman to double her weight in one pregnancy, yet others already fat, put on nothing or a fraction of the (previously) acceptable 21 pounds.

I personally know of a few women who left the maternity ward-after a couple of days, in the clothes they wore before they were pregnant/were showing. I know women who lost weight after having children, one quite dramatically, she used to be fat and became thin, not slim thinnnn. I've seen women beat up by pregnancy, age 10 years, look like they've had the life sucked out of them. Ended up thin of hair. Oh, that's just visuals.

It's turned inside out and out of their minds, never to really recover them. Trust me, "luck", is way more than appearance.

I've no sympathy for the whining "because I've hated myself since I was twelve". That is not the voice of those trying to reclaim their humanity. That's the voice of hustling the body hierarchy. People like that can have it.

For years, now I've watched as mostly slim to plump women have insisted on turning thin women's bodies into some kind of insult against them. Framing them grotesquely as being the cause of "eating disorders"-anorexia. Using that as a crude way at undermining the currency of thin, they themselves largely supported by desiring to be thin themselves. Happy to buy into the abuse of fat ones which they also turn into an insult that bites them on the arse if they fatten a tad too much.

I used to wonder why thinz never seem to tell them baldly to stop riding them like this. To the extent that I began to wonder if they perhaps didn't care in some way. To my astonishment, it was when fat acceptance revived on the nets, that the missing critique was dumped on us. Yes, apparently this mis-use of slim bodies came from fat people hating thinz!!! That was ironic given some many fat, myself included actually identified more with the plight of thinz and not with the women misusing them/their bodies. After all, we know how that feels even better than they do.

I realized, they're playing some kind of tag team on this. Snooze. 

Since then, fat acceptance often via "body positivity", has been lumbered with this crude attempt to undermine the false value accorded to women who are less than slim. Especially with the endless squawking about this unconvincing  "real women" meme that travels purely on the currency of the halo effect of class, race and slimness.

I will say this again fat people cannot solve slimmer people's petty positioning, hatreds and resentments. We've got enough on thanks. And if thinz aren't going to take it up with those dealing this, directly, naming and shaming exactly who's up to this, expect them to keep doing it.  

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