Fat and Health: A Rant

In the comments to my last post, Patsy complains about the healthism seen in institutional fat acceptance and I at least partly agree with her. While, I don't have a problem with encouraging a fat person to be healthy, we cannot do so with a language so infested with fat bigotry. The reality is "eating right", "staying active", "being healthy", are all terminology that has been used as thinly veiled fat hatred and we cannot hope to create a world where fat people are free to be healthy without confronting the ways these terms have been warped and corrupted to fit an anti-fat agenda.

Fact is, I think most fat people are a lot healthier than they give themselves credit for and what problems may exist have FAR less to do with our lifestyles than with a fat-negative culture which stigmatizes our very existance. You can promote an authenticly healthy lifestyle within fat acceptance, but the reality out there is that most who are pushing for that are active opponents of fat acceptance who are preying on some fat activists fears of being labeled as anti-health so as to promote their own anti-fat agenda. They've gnawing around the edges of fat acceptance, destroying it bit by bit rather than the broad strokes their allies seek. Persuit of weight loss has been an intensely destructive force on the health of fat people for decades. It must end. We cannot protect the health and well-being of fat people, of all people, without confronting a system which is frighteningly unproven and dangerously harmful. Health at any size should mean something. ANY being the word that so many are eager to diminish and ignore, but it is the most important word. No one should be abandoned because they are "too fat". Outreach to a broader fat community should never come at the expense of people deemed unfashionably fat.

Unfortunetly, its even worse than this. Not only does institutional fat acceptance not put up much of fight against this war of inches, they've actively sought to appease far more agressive fat bigots. The eagerness exhibited by NAAFA and Big Fat Blog to reach out to a violent fat hate group founded on a bitter and personal hatred of fat acceptance and fat activists was outrageous. Naturally, the hate group faded into nothingness very rapidly, making the stain left on fat acceptance from its embrace of a group which harbored murderous fantasies towards fat activists all the more pronounced. I have trouble fighting for a movement that is so intrinsicly linked to such so-called crusaders who'd happily acceptance violent death threats from people who want the movement destroyed but who will bully and censor people who believe in the movement just to curry favor with those hate mongers. I have no trust in institutional fat acceptance. Its proven itself completely undeserving of any faith.