Thin and Slim People's Internecine Body Politics

I wonder what you make of the increasing and crude use made of fat people's self acceptance to shield thin bodies or anorexic people from attention that's coming from either other thin people and/or slim people. First an example of attention given to slim bodies. 

Check out the words of this headline, "stop demonising thin women like Bella Hadid-the body positive movement doesn't just apply to plus size women" by Jacqueline Hooten.

The whole point of "body positive" was that it about any bodies targeted for negative attention, for example disabled bodies. It exists precisely to de-centre fat activism. What for instance is "plus-size"? It's plus Jacqueline Hooten, Bella Hadid size, is what it is. The play on innocence also attempts to hide slim people's aggression towards thin bodies by cynically invoking the old stereotype that fat women are inherently jealous of thin/ner women.

Let's go back in time

Back to western teens sprouted in the post WW2 era. In their youth, women like Twiggy expressed the physical ideal for many of that generation. Many sought to be that size, regardless. This proved to be a historical turning point in the western body aesthetic, one that's continued more or less to the present day. In spite of an increasing challenge from the failed "weight management" strategy.

A couple of decades or so ago, anorexic activists-white coat professionals/academics, people who had previously had anorexia/ currently had it-often these overlapped -decided anorexics needed to be saved from anorexia via the public's personal intervention.

It was made to seem obvious when a person had this condition. Emphasis was made of what appears to be a determined refusal of an anorexic to accept they have the condition-when it has got a hold of them. These activists trained real reticence out of people, insisting they bore a burden of responsibility if they didn't confront anorexics vigorously-to save their lives. Anorexia then was defined and diagnosed by low-weight.

This automatically made any woman who looked like they might be wasting from a target. I only found out through the fatsphere that many who had anorexia weren't thin. This was often and still is rejected by many who insist you can only be anorexic if you are of low weight regardless of your behaviour or even symptoms.

No doubt the fact that proto-anorexia is the prescription -now to be enforced by whipping your stomach out-for 'obesity' is part of that reluctance.

Though official channels have shifted diagnostic criteria away from weight, the damage was done.  Later on, slim women began to seize the opportunity to hide their long gestated resentment of thinness behind a veneer of amateur diagnosis. This is the source of a lot of the heat thin bodies get. A lot of slim women feel so close to being thin and have often tried to be but haven't managed it.

Maybe there's a sense that if thin women are pressured to gain weight and become at least slim that will make slim women feel better about not being more twig(gy) , Naomi, Kate, Lupita, Bella or whomever -like. Like vanity sizing, its hard to see how much of the impetus for this can come from jealous fat women, given it wouldn't make much difference whether a person is thin or slim.

I'm not saying fat women never stray into in this nonsense. It's still policy of many official/medical agencies to blame anorexia on thin bodies. Most fat people still have a conditioned and unquestioned belief that whatever slim women say is the rules of how to be. Whatever slim women say, is what's to be said. If slim women, shout at thin bodies, that's what you're supposed to do.

I've already busted those using anorexia to confidently attack thin bodies, I know that hasn't been ignored, yet the main, driving force behind this has.

Slim women need to learn to deal with mea culpa and re-think their attitudes without continually dragging fat women into things that are little to nothing to do with us.

Plus size models like Ashley Graham and Tess Holliday are credited for empowering a new generation of women to embrace their curves whilst challenging the notion of an ‘ideal body’. But somewhere along the way thin women have become the enemy and that’s not okay

If I was either of those two, I'd not take kindly to any suggestion that I was in some way responsible for the cynical and brazen attacks on thin people's bodies.  And what about this,

In September, The Women’s Equality Party launched the “No Size Fits All Campaign” aimed at tackling the fashion industry’s influence on body image. The campaign calls for a change in the law to ban fashion models with a BMI below 18.5. While the campaign’s aims appear laudable, by failing to define an upper BMI limit the WEP are effectively looking to legalise the demonisation of “thin”.

WTH, "failing to define an upper BMI limit"? Wow, if these women can't see a bus to throw fat women under, they go to the bus garage.  There is no equivalence between someone wasting away from anorexia, effectively dying from starvation and/or someone being forced to starve so they can work and someone who's merely fat, however fat.

Anorexia starts with wilful actions that are able, in a minority of people, to outstrip the natural in-built defences our bodies have against anorexia nervosa. It's not so much about weight as its about an unusual reaction to the stimulus of self-inflicted starvation.

The problem here is with the diagnostic attitude the women's equality party has picked up, and its inability to distinguish between the merely thin and those who are actually anorexic. Those involved in that field also need to say more about this sort of thing or they may find that the mis-use of fat people will give everybody more problems than they bargained for.

I don't mindlessly fall in line with anorexia activists when they are bullshitting. Conflating fat bodies with anorexic bodies is really not a good move. When it comes to advancing the cause of their own self-denuded sense of superiority, fat phobes rarely put anyones health first.