Recently, thanks mostly in part to my fantastic Tumblr crew,
I’ve been on a body love and body acceptance kick. Having a good-sized
background in media, I’ve been through many a discussion on how both men and
women are portrayed in the media compared to everyday life. Of course, making
my opinion known on the internet has come at the price of an onslaught of anonymous
hate-messages filling up my inbox. It’s with this post that I’m going to
address the big ones, not out of spite, but because I feel like these are the
most common things women are told when they come out and love their bodies.
You loving your body
is just you trying to validate the fact you’re fat and live an unhealthy,
sedentary lifestyle and are too lazy to change it.
False. Yes, I could be healthier,
I could forego the coffee with cream every morning and cut out all the “junk
food” that I love, but I don’t. I balance that with healthy options and plenty
of exercise.
There’s a huge dysmorphic
mentality about a “fat” person and their ability to be healthy. It seems that
everyone and their dog want to be concerned with your health when you decide
that as a fat person you’re going to love your body. There is barely a
connection between size and health, except in absolute extreme cases. People
honestly don’t realize that you can be fat AND healthy, at the same time!
(Blasphemous, I know.)
Healthy does not equal thin.
Perfect examples are the Olympic weight lifters and shot putters as pictured
below.
Sarah Robles - Olympic Weight Lifter
A perfect medley of Olympic body types.
These are not people that live sedentary,
lazy lives. They are athletes! I’m not promoting unhealthy lifestyles by loving
my body. I’m promoting the fact that ANYONE can be healthy. You can’t fat-shame
someone into believing their unhealthy because they jiggle a little more than
society deems acceptable.
People like you,
accepting yourself as fat are contributing to the obesity epidemic.
Ha! Yes, I agree there is an
obesity epidemic currently and we can all strive to be healthier, regardless of
body type but loving your body DOES NOT promote obesity.
Obesity
is measured through the BMI (Body Mass Index) chart that charts what your
weight should be based on height and corresponding weight. Every height has a
weight-range that indicates healthy, overweight and obese weights. The greatest
part of that, is at 5’6 my top “healthy” weight should be 120-150lbs. At my healthiest,
with daily workouts, modified diet, and three-times weekly horseback riding
lessons I was not in this “healthy” weight. Meaning, that I will live the rest
of my life either overweight or obese according to this chart, no matter how “healthy”
I am. I believe that we need to look at a more complex way of measuring health
and obesity than just this, because there are plenty, PLENTY of healthy obese and
overweight people who happen to not be 6’8 to justify their weight.
People out there
think you’re sexy, stop complaining
Why thank you, I’m glad
there are people out there that think I look good, I think I look good. Saying
that, I’m not an object. I’m not spouting body-positivity so that boys/girls
can look at me and think I’m sexy, I’m doing it so that I can hopefully empower
women and men to love their bodies, despite their shape and what society deems
of it.
Being
positive about your body image isn’t about looking for people who think you’re
gorgeous enough to sleep with or have sex. This is not what this is about. I’m
not looking for people to want to be with me based solely on the fact that I
think I look great.
You fat people out
there are shaming skinny women into hating their bodies for not having curves
I agree
that this is happening, and I DO NOT agree with it. The purpose of (and I can
only speak for myself) body positivity is loving your body in WHATEVER shape
that it comes in. Tall, short, thin, fat, straight or curvy. Body shaming as a
whole needs to end, in saying that, to be considered a plus-sized women it’s my
experience that you have to fight more to be allowed to love your body. Society
is more accepting of “thin”, pretty women; curvy is starting to come back into
the swing of things, but media and advertising still stresses that to be
desired by “the perfect” man, you need to be thin.
To be
big and confident you need to fight twice as hard and face all of the advertising
that just isn’t targeted to you. Who doesn’t read a magazine and love the
clothes that are shown in there? Too bad as a bigger person you know none of it
is being made for you.
Body-shaming
is a practice that society needs to stop. People are not meant to be all the
same. We’re human, we’re unique, we’re not all modeled after the one “ideal”
image.
I support and love
curvy women, but only the hot and pretty ones that are all confident in
themselves
This is why so many fat
women have such low self-esteem, there’s even a set of guidelines that you need
to meet to be considered beautiful when you are bigger. People do have a personal preference as to what they think
constitutes attractive, I agree 100% that one person can have the choice to not
find people 100% attractive all the time. It all comes down to personal taste,
BUT, do not make yourself “body-positive” if you’re going to only accept the
bigger women you think should be allowed to love themselves. If you’re abiding
by that thought process you are only feeding into exactly what society on a
whole is doing.
Check
your thinking, see who it affects and don’t label yourself as body-positive
unless you truly are body positive.
You’re only body
positive because you’re fat.
I am
fat, and if I wasn’t I would still be saying the exact same thing. Instead of
being picked on in school for being thin, I was made fun of for being fat. That’s
the background and the experience that I bring to the discussion, but I know
people who are on the other end of the ridicule as well. I’m not bod-positive
because I want people to accept me, I’m body positive because I know how a
negative body image affects people of any size. You can call my fat and stupid
and a lazy-ass if you would like, but I will continue to state my thoughts
about body-shame.
Nobody
should ever have to feel bad about the way they look and someone’s personal
health should not be a strangers concern solely based on the way that their
body is shaped. To give context, I was messaged by a man in the US who “lifts
weights and does cardio everyday” therefore “is an expert on what being healthy
looks like”, enough of an expert to know that I’m fat and super unhealthy masquerading
around as confident when I should just be ashamed. I know I’m not the only one
who is verbally attacked by people like this and to all of them I say:
A) You are not my doctor, you have never had access to my
medical records or health records. You do not know how healthy I am or am not. Your
“concern” is misplaced ignorance that exists to validate your own personal
body-image issues. Anyone who is confident in themselves is confident
regardless of what other people look like. True confidence comes from not
needing to bring other people down because they don’t look like you.
B) You are not an expert on health because you work out
every day. I also work out every day and I am no more an expert than the next
person who works out daily. Your fitness schedule does not dictate your ability
to tell me what I am.
C) I am fat. Thank you for pointing that out, I’m also
healthy and confident. Human beings are
complex and multi-faceted with layers. To quote a rather wise ogre, “Layers. Onions have layers. Ogres have layers.
Onions have layers. You get it? We both have layers” Swap out ogres for humans
and there ya go! (Shrek, 2001)
D) Cinderella, the only person masquerading
confidence is the man who justifies his health and good looks on the fact that
he isn’t fat.
No comments:
Post a Comment