I'm eternally puzzled at the drive to carve out some kind of fat positive weight loss niche. The explicitly contradictory nature of that never seems to really dissuade people from trying to insist on its possibility. I think it says a lot about how fat acceptance has not exactly been suppressed in our culture, so much as co-opted. Years of diet companies and professional fat baiters mimicking fat acceptance in an effort to disenfranchise it has evidently convinced a lot of people that weight-loss culture and fat acceptance aren't mutually exclusive.
Well, they are. Get used to it.
At which point we always here the righteous cries of inclusivity. Its always a curiously one-sided inclusivity, though. "Weight Loss Culture compromised by redefining FA to be fat negative, so the least FA can do is compromise by redefining fat acceptance to be fat negative."
Or some othr Weight Loss Culture talking point will take sway. "I don't hate my fat! I'm totally accepting of my body. Its just that the way it is right now is unacceptable so I need to change it. In a totally accepting way, though."
Nope, sorry. Doesn't work that way. If you're trying to lose weight, you're not being fat accepting. End of story.
Now, I'm not talking about having moments where you wished you weighed less. Given how overwhelming weight loss culture is, its impossible to avoid having moments of doubt, self-loathing, etc. Believe me, no one is that perfect. Myself included. The key point though is that perfection is only the goal in so far as its the theoretically ideal to progress towards. We don't have to expect to get there to not try to get there. Yet, that remains a top point raised to encourage people to give up fat acceptance. This notion that FA will not tolerate any lapses in positivity. Its just not the case.
Fat Acceptance will continue to be about, ya know, accepting fat. And that which is not accepting of fat will continue not being Fat Acceptance. Efforts to reconcile mutually exclusive ideals not withstanding, since, well, they won't withstand the fact that you can't reconcile mutually exclusive ideals.
