#Not to be gay... But my god. Ladies... Who are fat/chubby... My god... My whole fucking hell oh my lord

[mrfoox]

Me everytime Oliver mentions Agnes (his bestfriend): god, is she single?

Oliver: yes but she's straight

Me: damn it all to hell

[stargirl-and-potts]

Well, I went into Thor: Love and Thunder with my bets hedged. But I loved it. It was kind, it was funny, it was visually delightful, it was anti-cynical, it was surprisingly gay, it had great music, it kept the whole theater laughing. (Significant spoilers below!)

The disappointing part: two fat jokes. One about Thor hiding his emotional vulnerability behind his dad bod, which, no. Even if the dad bod had not been hot, which it was, it deserved more respect than that stupid line. And one moment where the unspoken punchline was clearly supposed to be that the community theater actress playing Hela was fat. (I will not forgive making Melissa McCarthy the joke, ever.)

The flipside: some of the kid heroes are chubby and it's not played as funny, there’s a fat physics student talking to Jane Foster who’s treated with respect, and one (only one, boo) of the god Zeus' perfect (male and female!) consorts is mid-sized instead of waifish.

The emotional core of it: it opens with a scene of visceral despair, centered around climate change and the loss of a traditional territory's ability to sustain life, moves to fury toward the callousness and cruelty of the uncaring gods/thinly veiled colonizing elite (who could have saved them, but instead enjoy feasting while watching people die for them, and naively believe that there will always be more people to die for them), and doesn't walk back the impact of that. It shows the divine court as remote, silly, self-absorbed and lacking the spine to admit the consequences coming, and even the villain as sidetracked by despair and saveable by love, while the gods who sit back and feast on the people's pain remain unredeemed.

The only thing shown more important than that pain is the hope they needed to keep risking love and courage for the sake of their own hearts and the kids' future. And the point is not that loss isn't coming, but that even if loss and death and destruction come and the gods don't care, love was worthwhile anyway. If we're going down with our loves and our kids, we're going down fighting.

I'm not surprised it's annoyed and baffled critics. It's oddly anti-imperial for a famously imperial franchise; it's noticeably unAmerican in its sense of humor and ethical perspective and emotional rhythm. Instead of centering around the glories of isolated genius and tragic heroism, it centers around getting its heroes to betray their gods and their dignity for family, pancakes, awkward vulnerability and community hall meetings. It leaves us with domesticity instead of stealing it away. It lets its monsters bleed gold and shadows instead of bathing us in gore. It was reverent toward goodness and irreverent to glory.

The one criticism I’ve heard that I felt personally was: not enough breathing room! Things piled on top of each other in the plot. We needed more time to let the jokes and the catharses and the terrors and triumphs land.

More joys:

Korg has two dads! He successfully therapizes Valkyrie into the beginnings of grief catharsis, and Thor into vulnerability and parenthood! And he marries a nice guy named Dwayne, onscreen!

Valkyrie's voice, Valkyrie's braids, Valkyrie's bare arms, Valkyrie in a suit, Valkyrie stealing Zeus' thunderbolt and kissing the hand of one of his lady consorts with a smolder I will never forget and then blasting off into the sky on a damn rainbow. Valkyrie talking to Korg about the woman she was in love with. Valkyrie telling Thor they're both into Jane.

Jane's bare arms. I repeat, Jane's arms. The muscles. Good lord.

A Māori atua with a moko kauae facial tattoo in the court of the gods! (And while some of the gods were selfish and some were silly, none of the gods who were meant to be laughed at were the tribal ones.)

Zeus played by Russell Crowe with an absolutely atrocious vaguely Greek (???) accent and perfect ringlet curls.

Zeus' male consorts being into Thor! Thor being into Star-Lord! Korg being into Thor! Nobody being embarrassed by this!

The screaming goats. The panflaps! The jealousy between Thor's sentient weaponry! Mjölnir's makeover! The gorgeous landscapes and architecture and worlds-between-worlds. The music.

In conclusion, it was all about love and I adored it.

[airagorncharda]

About My Blog:

Name: Nate Age: 29 (I’m bad at updating this, I was born in 1990) Pronouns: he/him/his.

It’s been ages since I’ve updated any sort of info about myself or my blog, oops.

Dfab nb trans guy, genderfluid. On the aro/ace spectrum. Queer. Gay. Neuroatypical (ADHD among other things; possibly dyslexia or else it’s just my ADHD that makes reading The Worst). I have chronic pain. I’m chubby. 

Privilege: I’m white, I grew up with financial security while I lived with my parents, I live in a liberal area of New England in the USA, I am able-bodied, I can pass as neurotypical. If I make false assumptions or fuck up because of any of these things please call me on it. I will do my utmost not to make this necessary, and to listen if it should ever be necessary.

I blog about social justice, social issues, whatever fandom I’m currently hyperfixated on, DnD, and plenty of other stuff.

My views have evolved since I started blogging, so if you go far enough back in my blog you’ll find posts that I no longer agree with.

I use my “likes” as storage for things I want to respond to later, or save to my computer when I’m on the mobile app, or research more thoroughly before reblogging when I have time/attention, etc. Do not assume I agree with everything in my likes. View my likes with caution.

I’m a writer and an illustrator, and am a Personal Care Assistant to a really cool lady. I play a lot of DnD and I love my dnd group. I’ve been in a relationship with one of my best friends since we were 15. We are engaged, live together, play video games and DnD, and have cats.

I post my thoughts here. I post my art here. These are my cats. This is my face.

I am not always right. I am still learning.

Do not cite me as an expert or trust my implicitly. I am happy to give my thoughts on and discuss any issue, and I do try to research my points before I make them, but I am not an authority.

My ask box is always open. I will respond privately if you ask me to. If I respond publicly I will tag it with your URL so you can find it easily (unless you ask me not to). I tag all asks with “ask” and all anons with “ask” and “anon”. If you send me an ask and I don’t respond it might be because Tumblr ate it, and I never received it, or because I have ADHD and sometimes I forget to respond to things. In either case feel free to send the ask again. I do not consider this rude.

—

I am careful to always tag for things like racism, transphobia, ableism, etc., as well as death, blood, horror cops, spiders, etc., so people can blacklist them.

I am usually happy to add to this list if you have a phobia or trigger and need me to, just ask. If for some reason I’m uncomfortable tagging a particular subject, I will not be offended if you unfollow me (I’ll also just NEVER be offended by that; you do you)

Some navigation help for my blog:

current events - this tag is reserved for whatever the most recent important (and awful) thing happens to be.

Disney’s Frozen - this tag is referencing all of the problems with that movie (the first one), including general discussion about the sexism in how women are animated. It accidentally became my “misogyny in animation” tag, sorry!

Statistics - this tag is for all posts with specific statistics about social injustice.

real talk - this tag is for short posts that I feel most clearly and succinctly summarize issues of social injustice.

Boost - any post that involves petitions, fund raisers, sales, or other things I want people to not only see but interact with.

Fandoms:

I’ve been in fandom for a long time. I’m here to have fun, and am not comfortable with the current online purity culture of throwing shame at people who enjoy harmless things that you don’t. Fandom is not always about what we wish was real or canon; sometimes it’s about the opposite of that on purpose. 

I’m a polyshipper and a multishipper, though I definitely have OTPs and sometimes don’t enjoy seeing those pairs with other people. This is personal preference, and not a judgment on others. 

I try to stay out of fandom discourse and mainly reblog art I like. Occasionally, though, I do reblog criticism of fandom specific bigotry. 

Just because I reblog stuff from a particular fandom doesn’t mean I necessarily like everything about the piece of media, where/who it came from, or the direction it went. I value fandom because of the power to make the stories we’re given into the stories we wish we’d been given, AND the power to turn stories we love into whatever we’re vibing with at the moment.

Harry Potter was a formative fandom for me, so despite hating JKR I will still engage with fanworks related to it. I tag anything Harry Potter with “hp”. I tag everything relating to JKR with “fuck you JKR”.

Anything related to Tolkien’s Middle Earth stories is tagged “lotr”, anything about the MCU is tagged “Avengers”, and anything related to Avatar the Last Airbender is tagged “Atla”. 

I tag anything from the Tales of series with “Tale of” as well as their individual game titles. Anything from MOST Fire Emblem games gets lumped together under “Fire Emblem” but Three Houses is “fe3h”. Similarly, Most Final Fantasy games get “Final Fantasy” while 14 gets “ffxiv”.

Other media I particularly love off the top of my head (and their associated tags), or at least that I often reblog about, includes: Critical Role (and CR2), Phoenix Wright, She Ra (tag: “shera”), Saiyuki, Yu Yu Hakusho (tag: “yyh”), Undertale, The Good Place. Mad Max, Naruto, Miraculous Ladybug (tag: “miraculous”), Legend of Zelda (tag: “zelda”)

Personal tags:

My favorite meta (good meta makes the world go ‘round)

My favorite things on this whole damn site (I love this)

Stuff that’s purely positive (decency, and wholesome)

Things that remind me of my friend group (me and mine and ours)

Mron (things that remind me of and inspire me to work on my sci-fi story about androids)

Embalar (things that remind me of and inspire me to work on the fantasy story/video game/dnd homebrew setting I’m actively working on)

The Fog (things that remind me of and inspire me to work on my fairy tale story, which includes mermaids)

recipes

lifehacks

poetry

art refs (specific tags for: costume design, character design, god design, monster design, creature design, hands, feet, muscles, anatomy, facial expressions, hair, body types, clothes, dresses, fat art, etc., and specific tags for mythical creatures: mermaids, centaurs, vampires, demons, dragons, gryphons, sphinxes, harpies, etc.)

art (specific tags for: sculpture, painting, illustration, music, art history, installation art)

books, games, shows, and movies I wish existed (tumblr books)

furniture, appliances, and house stuff that I would love to have the money to have (want)

pretty jewelry that I want but would never wear because I don’t wear jewelry (for my dragon hoard)

–Nate

[wandringaesthetic]

I found out in early February that I was pregnant, and about a month later that I was pregnant with twins.

I’ve always been on the fence about having children at all. I find the assumption that every woman wants to weird and uncomfortable. I find the fawning way people react to babies nauseating and out of proportion. They just??? Cry and poop??? And the general idea of pregnancy so flies in the face of reality: “It’s such a beautiful time in a woman’s life!” You’re going to be nauseous and gassy and fat and exhausted and have hemorrhoids and heartburn and generally all the symptoms of supporting an 8 pound parasite. You can have hernias and tears and incontinence and infection from delivery, not to mention all the stuff that can be wrong with the baby.

(Probably my feelings on this have something to do with my gender identity being slightly off-kilter, but that’s a whole other autobiographical essay.)

I am also just contrary enough that if my parents were encouraging me to have babies I would have said no. No. Absolutely not. Don’t fucking tell me what to do.

I like children, though, from about the time they learn to talk up. They’re fun and curious and make way more sense than adults. And raising a child is one of the biggest chances the average person has to shape the future.

Still, I could do without it. I could die peacefully without ever reproducing. Not sure that I could say the same if I never write a novel, say.

But my husband wanted to be a dad, and I love him, so that pushed me off the fence. He wasn’t pushy about it. He left it up to me. And if we were going to.... I’m 30 years old. I’m happily married. I’m as financially stable as I’m ever going to be. It was time, especially if we wanted to keep the possibility of having more than one open. But I also knew I was never consciously going to be able to pee on an ovulation strip and say “let’s make a baby” so I went off birth control some time in August, let what would happen, happen. And there was no way I was going to go to any heroic measures--or any measures at all, really--if it didn’t. I would have taken it as a sign that I shouldn’t, seen it as fate taking the decision out of hands.

(Partially this is because I trust chance more than I trust myself, but that’s also a whole other autobiographical essay)

So, pregnancy! A surprise but not a shock. Then twins. More surprising. Twins do NOT run in my family. Well, wanted to have two maximum, so knock ‘em both out at once. A little alarming. But my husband and I could scramble to handle and afford it, with a lot of help and hand-me-downs from some friends who have year and a half old twins.

I went to the doctor yesterday for an end of first trimester screen and one of them didn’t have a heartbeat. From its size, it looked like it had stopped having a heartbeat at about 9 weeks.

I’m a nurse. I’ve never had any interest in OBGYN (I am too fucking gay to be looking at genitals and breasts of women of child bearing age on the regular, besides my general ambivalence towards babies), but I took the classes. I know the stuff that can go wrong. I was saying to my husband the night before that in 30% of multiple pregnancies, one of them doesn’t make it to term, that it wasn’t the worst thing that could happen. That it’s usually a chromosomal abnormality, that if they weren’t going to survive in the womb they weren’t going to survive outside of it. That if it happens in the first trimester, the other baby is usually fine.

Part of how I cope with things is to consider every likely outcome before it happens and just... accept it. Plan what I would do as much as I can and accept it. I thought about this possibility. I thought about the possibility of miscarriage when I thought there was just one. On some level, I thought I would be relieved, seen it as a reprieve until I’m more ready, until we have a house. I’m pro-choice. I don’t think the little 2 cm fetus had any kind of consciousness. I was on the fence about reproducing at all. I’m not a very emotional person. I didn’t think I would be upset.

But I was.

I said something to the doctor about knowing that it happens. I got the time for my next appointment. I forgot to pay my copay. I walked out to my car, called my husband to let him know what happened, sat there for a long while....

Cried.

I hate crying. Partially because I fancy myself tough, partially because any time anyone tries to comfort me when I’m crying it just makes me cry harder, partially because it is physically miserable for me. I get a headache that lasts all day and my face and eyes are red and blotchy for at least half an hour afterwards. 

I propped my car door open so I could breathe. I cried some more.

A middle-aged lady appeared at my elbow. Well-dressed, thin, hair bleached in streaks, silver cross around her neck. Every suburban mom. A part of me screamed oh no. A part of me recognized her as every well-meaning adult from my childhood.

She crouched by my car door and put one hand on my knee and one hand on my shin. I don’t remember what she said to me, exactly. I told her I was okay, that I had gotten some bad news. She said something about fighting that led me to believe she thought I or someone I loved was sick, so I explained to her what happened, because it wasn’t as bad as all that. I said “Thanks for noticing me,” because even if I kind of wished she’d go away, I also appreciated that she cared.

She’d said she’d been waiting for an appointment, that she’d been noticing other people more because she’d gotten her own bad news recently. (I wish I had asked about that--we were outside the Women’s Pavilion and I know they do some breast cancer treatment--but I wasn’t in much shape to comfort someone else).

She asked if she could pray for me, which didn’t thrill me, but I let her because I didn’t want to say “fuck your god” to this well-meaning stranger. We hugged in the parking lot as she prayed and I cried and somewhere before the “in Jesus’ name” she called me “this sweet girl” which made me want to laugh because I am thirty and I was half a foot taller than her.

I gathered myself together as quickly as I could after that and went to dry out in the parking lot of Bandito Burrito. I ate. I went back to work.

My grandmother had two miscarriages and one still birth before having my dad. My dad says, on her deathbed, she was talking about those lost babies. I think it bothered him, because, well, what about your three sons who are alive and well, mom? But from what I’ve heard from hospice nurses, it’s a common phenomena, talking about or even cradling the dead babe. Maybe their little souls are touching them from the other side as they start to cross over. More likely, our society places such exaggerated importance on motherhood that they always feel the loss of this thing that never happened.

Over 24 hours later, I can’t say that I feel any grief about it at all, but for a moment there...

My earliest memory is of going to a football game with my parents. I was 2 years old. I remember the crowd of people and the cold fall air. I remember my dad toting me around. I remember him buying me a red balloon. Of course my dumb, chubby toddler hands let go of the balloon. I watched it float away. I cried. I kept looking up in the night sky for it long after it was visible.

Maybe this is the first thing I remember because it’s the first bad thing that happened to me that my parents couldn’t fix. I probably wouldn’t have asked for the balloon before I saw it, but for a moment it was mine, big and beautiful and bouncy.

I imagined a little girl or boy and their twin who would be their best friend. I wouldn’t have asked for them, but for a little while they were mine. Now they are gone. Out of reach. Out of sight. Away.

[ouraidengray4]

Is the Body-Positivity Movement Going Too Far?

In 2010, Linda Bacon, Ph.D., published Health at Every Size, which promoted the idea that everyone should have respect regardless of their weight. Bacon also started a group of the same name to give people resources to stop dieting and find professionals that agree with the idea that fat doesn’t always mean unhealthy. From there, the body-positivity—or fat-positivity—movement grew and began to reduce the stigma of being heavy. People are finally hearing the message that everyone should love their body, no matter what the media or diet industry might say.

You might also like READ

Well, doesn’t that sound lovely? What a wonderful world, where overweight people would be seen as ordinary folks, instead of lazy, stupid failures with no self-control. But things don’t stay nice for long. At least, not if the internet is involved.

Some members of the body-positive movement have started to promote some pretty extreme concepts. Like when Everyday Feminism wrote, "Let’s make something clear: Having a goal for intentional fat loss is not body positive." Or when Ashley Graham lost some weight and received comments like, "I am no longer a fan of yours. You betrayed a lot of people!" as reported by CNN. Or when body-positive blogger Ragen Chastain said, "There is not a single study where more than a tiny fraction of people have succeeded at weight loss long term, and there is no study that shows that people who lose weight live longer or become healthier. Prescribing weight loss for health is like prescribing learning to fly for knee pain." And don’t forget Salon, with its piece comparing weight loss to gay conversion therapy, which... no.

This is why we can’t have nice things.

But how can body positivity be bad?

First of all, the basic ideals of body positivity are not bad: People should not be mistreated because of their weight, and we should never feel pressured to get our bodies to fit some model ideal of "thinness." That’s clearly not possible—or remotely healthy—for most people. And we should all learn to love ourselves, whether we’re a size 4 or size 24.

But it’s not that easy. In fact, for some people, like myself, the body-positivity movement only makes things more complicated: Fat people now get the privilege of being judged by others for being too big while simultaneously being preached at that they should just love themselves, muffin-top and all.

"I find body positivity an unrealistic expectation," says Kimberly Hershenson, LMSW, a therapist with years of experience treating eating disorders and weight issues. "People in general struggle to ‘love their bodies.’ Someone who has struggled with body image issues cannot suddenly change from body-hatred to loving the way they look."

Hershenson advises her clients to focus on things outside of their body to find self-love. Instead of trying to suddenly love the body you’ve always hated, she suggests thinking of your body as a neutral. You don’t have to love or hate it—it’s just a body, and the self is so much more than just its outer packaging.

Outside of the unrealistic expectation to simply start "loving yourself at any size," some body-positivity activists insist that weight has nothing to do with your health. Sadly, this isn’t true. As Aditi G Jha, M.D., of JustDoc.com says, "Central obesity is the number one factor associated with diabetes, hypertension, and infertility, in their respective orders."

Psychologist Deb Thompson, Ph.D., adds, "Obesity is clearly recognized by world and national health organizations as a leading risk factor for disease and death. The body-positivity movement's denial of science is troubling."

Also, for most people, being heavier really does not feel better. As a lucky lady who gained a ton of weight over the course of a year, I felt the difference: I got winded easily, my body ached more, and I started developing plantar fasciitis. Though I’m still big, I’ve lost about 30 pounds so far, and it feels better.

So the body-positivity movement isn't wrong, exactly...

Sure, there are some extreme people who are making the movement look like a bunch of jags. For example, it’s beyond unfortunate that Chastain and Salon both compare fatphobia with homophobia. I’m not saying it’s easy being a fat person, but gay panic has caused a lot more harm throughout history. At the height of homophobia, gay men were labeled as mentally ill, pedophiles, or both. People were jailed and castrated just for being gay. Sure, fat people might get called names and crappy looks from people on the train, but few people have been literally murdered just for being fat.

My hatred of the anti-gay/anti-fat correlation aside, most of the body-positivity movement isn’t wrong. Even though statements like "weight loss is not body positive" sound extreme—they have a point.

True body positivity means you can do whatever you want with your body as long as you do it with love. Some people do need to lose weight for their health, and I don’t think there’s anything wrong with that. Others want to lose weight to look better—and that’s their right. If you aren’t obsessed with losing weight, then I don’t think it’s a problem.

But dieting culture is a problem for a lot of people.

Let’s take a little journey through my fatness, to illustrate the unfortunate effects of our dieting culture.

Personally, I was always chubby, and I never felt bad about it—until junior high. I wasn’t made fun of or criticized for my weight. In fact, if I ever said, "Oh, well I’m so fat," I’d hear an instant chorus of "Oh, my God. Don’t say that! No, don’t think that about yourself."

Though I wasn’t allowed to say fat, that didn’t stop every other girl I knew from commenting on her appearance. Once we hit 14, a part of every lunch period was devoted to each girl talking about how fat she was—these were all thin girls, by the way. So, I thought, If they think they’re fat, they must think I’m some monster! This began my wonderful journey of hating my body that continues to this very day.

You might hope that all this "I’m so fat" talk would disappear after high school, but it’s still going strong. About half the time I hang out with a group of women, we get into a whole "my [insert body part here] is so horrible" conversation. Of course, I can’t actually join in on the contest of who hates themselves more because if I talk about feeling fat, people just sadly look away, a faint, "well..." passing through their lips.

Now I truly am fat, and people—friends—act like it’s the saddest thing I could ever be. Friends who don’t even realize they’re acting this way and would never purposely say anything to make me feel bad. Even if they’d never consciously judge a fat person negatively, they’re responding to a little, internal voice that says, "Yeah, but if she just tried a little harder..."

We’ve been trained to think of "fat" as "bad," and you can’t reverse a lifetime of thinking in a couple of years’ worth of blog posts.

So when people talk about body positivity and dieting, it’s understandable why people in the BP movement get upset. Blogger and YouTuber FatGirlFlow discusses her history with eating disorders, doctors who continually told her to lose weight, and how dieting to be "healthy" nearly killed her. Eventually, she found the body-positivity movement, which "saved her life."

So although it sounds extreme to say that dieting and weight loss are not part of body positivity, I think there’s some truth to that statement. That doesn’t mean you can’t lose weight or want to lose weight and still think positively of yourself. Individuals should do whatever they want.

But there should also be some space out there on the internet for women not to have to hear about dieting, because when you say you need to diet, that makes girls like me feel like we need to diet. When body-positive activists like FatGirlFlow say "keep dieting out of body positivity," they aren’t telling you not to lose weight—they just need a break from hearing that weight loss will always be the answer.

Does body positivity promote obesity?

Think about it: Can a couple of bloggers and a Dove ad really make thin women binge on Häagen-Dazs and gain 40 pounds? This movement isn’t nearly big enough to really make people feel good about being obese, and it’s certainly not going to convince people that fat is the new black.

Sure, some of the claims that obesity has no link to health are misleading. But the truth is that the science around health and obesity is far from clear.

"Yes, weight can affect your health, and there has been research to show that there may be some correlation," says Zach Cordell, registered dietitian nutritionist. "However, in the scientific community, we know that correlation is not causation. Just because obesity and diabetes rates have risen in tandem doesn't prove that they are connected. You could also draw that correlation between the availability of organic foods and diabetes. Does that mean that because more organic food is available, more people have diabetes? No, it is just a correlation."

Cordell says that obesity and diabetes have quite a few links, but that a person’s behavior is more predictive of disease than their size. Yes, many obese people eat poorly or don’t exercise. But that’s not always the case. Some overweight people don’t eat junk food all the time and are still heavy. And there are quite a few thin folks who frequent the McDonald’s drive-thru. Though obesity is a symptom of unhealthy behavior, it’s not necessarily the cause of all disease.

Then, take a look a nutritional information. Doctors’ recommendations change drastically every ten years or so (remember when Snackwells would save us all?). Now, this isn’t a bad thing: It’s good that science is always evolving. But it’s frustrating when you’re told to eat a bunch of eggs, then five years later, you hear that all those omelets will probably give you a heart attack.

Even now, you can read material written by Joel Fuhrman, M.D., and be convinced that his almost no-fat, vegan diet is the only way to get thin and healthy—and he’s got the scientific studies to prove it! Then, you read The Obesity Code by Jason Fung, M.D., and learn that the amount of fat you eat has exactly no correlation to weight gain. In his opinion, insulin is primarily to blame for weight gain, so you should intermittently fast and eat a diet high in fat and low in carbs—and he’s got the scientific studies to prove it!

Now, I’m not a doctor, but the studies for each of those diets seem equally valid, even though they’re diametrically opposed. Cordell agrees that either of those diets, or anything in-between, can work for people. Cordell says that it doesn’t really matter what the results of all the new studies are—you have to choose a way of eating that works for you and that you can keep up for the rest of your life. Almost any diet can prove some kind of weight loss, but those studies don’t reveal the fact that to keep the weight off, you have to eat healthily forever.

And weight loss isn’t always the answer.

I know from experience that weight is not the primary factor of healthiness. When I was 275 pounds, all my bloodwork was good: low blood pressure, low cholesterol, good everything. Now, I didn’t feel good at that weight, but I was technically fine.

We’ve been trained to think of "fat" as "bad," and you can’t reverse a lifetime of thinking in a couple of years of blog posts.

But when you’re heavy, the first thing a doctor tells you is "lose weight." This has happened to me—when I weighed a lot less—and to many others. When I last went to the doctor, she said, "Eat 1,200 calories a day. You can eat up to 1,500, but try to keep it closer to 1,200."

Now, this is bad for a few reasons: One, I’m a fat lady in her 30s. Do you think I’ve never tried dieting before? Have I lived under some fat-blocking rock for the last three decades and suddenly emerged as my unpleasantly plump self? No. I’ve tried lots of diets, my friend.

Also, if you have a bad history with obsession and weight, there’s no better way to trigger that than having a doctor tell you to starve yourself. (Also, this doctor was my same weight and said how she "felt sorry for Harvey Weinstein" after all the allegations came out. Just to paint a clearer picture of my hell.)

My little story is just one of many, but if the body-positive movement can help bigger people not get immediately brushed off by every doctor, that would be a huge victory in and of itself. I’m not saying doctors shouldn’t mention weight. But when weight loss is the only answer they give, that’s a problem.

Also, doctors should always approach weight with empathy: Ask the patient if they have a history of eating disorders. Ask them why they want to lose weight and why they’ve had trouble in the past. Then work with them to find an eating plan that the patient might actually stick to.

People can be overweight and healthy. Chastain just completed the Life Time Tri, a mini-triathlon. Now, can people be obese and healthy? I don’t know. But what’s better? Someone who’s able to live an active life at a heavy weight or someone slightly smaller who devotes all their mental energy to dieting? I know there are shades between those extremes, but believe me, if you’re trying to go from obese to a normal BMI, it’s very hard to keep obsession from kicking in.

I’ve had mixed feelings about the body-positivity movement, but I’ve become more positive for body positivity than I would have thought. To me, they’re asking that we end the cycle of obsessing over our bodies. Sure, some proponents of this movement go too far and claim that people who lose weight are traitors. But most advocate just appreciating yourself as you are, and that means being OK with wanting to lose weight or being OK with staying heavy.

Still, there aren’t a lot of winners here. Most people are stuck in this weird limbo between fatphobia and body positivity. Model Ashley Graham got criticized for losing weight but also got crap for "promoting obesity" when she was on the cover of Sports Illustrated. People who try to slim down get lots of positive attention when they start to lose, but if they lose too much, the folks around them start saying things like, "Are you sick?" or "You’re getting too skinny. It’s not healthy." You can never win.

And you want to know the really sad thing? When I see people like FatGirlFlow and Ragen Chastain, a part of me applauds them for their self-acceptance. But also? A little voice always says, "Yeah, but if she just tried a little harder…"

Amber Petty is a freelance writer in Los Angeles. If you like easy crafts and Simpsons gifs, check out her blog, Half-Assed Crafts.

from Greatist RSS http://ift.tt/2ndPE0Z Is the Body-Positivity Movement Going Too Far? Greatist RSS from HEALTH BUZZ http://ift.tt/2DEiheL

[foursprouthealth-blog]

Is the Body-Positivity Movement Going Too Far?

New Post has been published on http://foursprout.com/health/is-the-body-positivity-movement-going-too-far/

Is the Body-Positivity Movement Going Too Far?

In 2010, Linda Bacon, Ph.D., published Health at Every Size, which promoted the idea that everyone should have respect regardless of their weight. Bacon also started a group of the same name to give people resources to stop dieting and find professionals that agree with the idea that fat doesn’t always mean unhealthy. From there, the body-positivity—or fat-positivity—movement grew and began to reduce the stigma of being heavy. People are finally hearing the message that everyone should love their body, no matter what the media or diet industry might say.

You might also like

displayTitle READ

Well, doesn’t that sound lovely? What a wonderful world, where overweight people would be seen as ordinary folks, instead of lazy, stupid failures with no self-control. But things don’t stay nice for long. At least, not if the internet is involved.

Some members of the body-positive movement have started to promote some pretty extreme concepts. Like when Everyday Feminism wrote, “Let’s make something clear: Having a goal for intentional fat loss is not body positive.” Or when Ashley Graham lost some weight and received comments like, “I am no longer a fan of yours. You betrayed a lot of people!” as reported by CNN. Or when body-positive blogger Ragen Chastain said, “There is not a single study where more than a tiny fraction of people have succeeded at weight loss long term, and there is no study that shows that people who lose weight live longer or become healthier. Prescribing weight loss for health is like prescribing learning to fly for knee pain.” And don’t forget Salon, with its piece comparing weight loss to gay conversion therapy, which… no.

This is why we can’t have nice things.

But how can body positivity be bad?

First of all, the basic ideals of body positivity are not bad: People should not be mistreated because of their weight, and we should never feel pressured to get our bodies to fit some model ideal of “thinness.” That’s clearly not possible—or remotely healthy—for most people. And we should all learn to love ourselves, whether we’re a size 4 or size 24.

But it’s not that easy. In fact, for some people, like myself, the body-positivity movement only makes things more complicated: Fat people now get the privilege of being judged by others for being too big while simultaneously being preached at that they should just love themselves, muffin-top and all.

“I find body positivity an unrealistic expectation,” says Kimberly Hershenson, LMSW, a therapist with years of experience treating eating disorders and weight issues. “People in general struggle to ‘love their bodies.’ Someone who has struggled with body image issues cannot suddenly change from body-hatred to loving the way they look.”

Hershenson advises her clients to focus on things outside of their body to find self-love. Instead of trying to suddenly love the body you’ve always hated, she suggests thinking of your body as a neutral. You don’t have to love or hate it—it’s just a body, and the self is so much more than just its outer packaging.

Outside of the unrealistic expectation to simply start “loving yourself at any size,” some body-positivity activists insist that weight has nothing to do with your health. Sadly, this isn’t true. As Aditi G Jha, M.D., of JustDoc.com says, “Central obesity is the number one factor associated with diabetes, hypertension, and infertility, in their respective orders.”

Psychologist Deb Thompson, Ph.D., adds, “Obesity is clearly recognized by world and national health organizations as a leading risk factor for disease and death. The body-positivity movement’s denial of science is troubling.”

Also, for most people, being heavier really does not feel better. As a lucky lady who gained a ton of weight over the course of a year, I felt the difference: I got winded easily, my body ached more, and I started developing plantar fasciitis. Though I’m still big, I’ve lost about 30 pounds so far, and it feels better.

So the body-positivity movement isn’t wrong, exactly…

Sure, there are some extreme people who are making the movement look like a bunch of jags. For example, it’s beyond unfortunate that Chastain and Salon both compare fatphobia with homophobia. I’m not saying it’s easy being a fat person, but gay panic has caused a lot more harm throughout history. At the height of homophobia, gay men were labeled as mentally ill, pedophiles, or both. People were jailed and castrated just for being gay. Sure, fat people might get called names and crappy looks from people on the train, but few people have been literally murdered just for being fat.

My hatred of the anti-gay/anti-fat correlation aside, most of the body-positivity movement isn’t wrong. Even though statements like “weight loss is not body positive” sound extreme—they have a point.

True body positivity means you can do whatever you want with your body as long as you do it with love. Some people do need to lose weight for their health, and I don’t think there’s anything wrong with that. Others want to lose weight to look better—and that’s their right. If you aren’t obsessed with losing weight, then I don’t think it’s a problem.

But dieting culture is a problem for a lot of people.

Let’s take a little journey through my fatness, to illustrate the unfortunate effects of our dieting culture.

Personally, I was always chubby, and I never felt bad about it—until junior high. I wasn’t made fun of or criticized for my weight. In fact, if I ever said, “Oh, well I’m so fat,” I’d hear an instant chorus of “Oh, my God. Don’t say that! No, don’t think that about yourself.”

Though I wasn’t allowed to say fat, that didn’t stop every other girl I knew from commenting on her appearance. Once we hit 14, a part of every lunch period was devoted to each girl talking about how fat she was—these were all thin girls, by the way. So, I thought, If they think they’re fat, they must think I’m some monster! This began my wonderful journey of hating my body that continues to this very day.

You might hope that all this “I’m so fat” talk would disappear after high school, but it’s still going strong. About half the time I hang out with a group of women, we get into a whole “my [insert body part here] is so horrible” conversation. Of course, I can’t actually join in on the contest of who hates themselves more because if I talk about feeling fat, people just sadly look away, a faint, “well…” passing through their lips.

Now I truly am fat, and people—friends—act like it’s the saddest thing I could ever be. Friends who don’t even realize they’re acting this way and would never purposely say anything to make me feel bad. Even if they’d never consciously judge a fat person negatively, they’re responding to a little, internal voice that says, “Yeah, but if she just tried a little harder…”

We’ve been trained to think of “fat” as “bad,” and you can’t reverse a lifetime of thinking in a couple of years’ worth of blog posts.

So when people talk about body positivity and dieting, it’s understandable why people in the BP movement get upset. Blogger and YouTuber FatGirlFlow discusses her history with eating disorders, doctors who continually told her to lose weight, and how dieting to be “healthy” nearly killed her. Eventually, she found the body-positivity movement, which “saved her life.”

So although it sounds extreme to say that dieting and weight loss are not part of body positivity, I think there’s some truth to that statement. That doesn’t mean you can’t lose weight or want to lose weight and still think positively of yourself. Individuals should do whatever they want.

But there should also be some space out there on the internet for women not to have to hear about dieting, because when you say you need to diet, that makes girls like me feel like we need to diet. When body-positive activists like FatGirlFlow say “keep dieting out of body positivity,” they aren’t telling you not to lose weight—they just need a break from hearing that weight loss will always be the answer.

Does body positivity promote obesity?

Think about it: Can a couple of bloggers and a Dove ad really make thin women binge on Häagen-Dazs and gain 40 pounds? This movement isn’t nearly big enough to really make people feel good about being obese, and it’s certainly not going to convince people that fat is the new black.

Sure, some of the claims that obesity has no link to health are misleading. But the truth is that the science around health and obesity is far from clear.

“Yes, weight can affect your health, and there has been research to show that there may be some correlation,” says Zach Cordell, registered dietitian nutritionist. “However, in the scientific community, we know that correlation is not causation. Just because obesity and diabetes rates have risen in tandem doesn’t prove that they are connected. You could also draw that correlation between the availability of organic foods and diabetes. Does that mean that because more organic food is available, more people have diabetes? No, it is just a correlation.”

Cordell says that obesity and diabetes have quite a few links, but that a person’s behavior is more predictive of disease than their size. Yes, many obese people eat poorly or don’t exercise. But that’s not always the case. Some overweight people don’t eat junk food all the time and are still heavy. And there are quite a few thin folks who frequent the McDonald’s drive-thru. Though obesity is a symptom of unhealthy behavior, it’s not necessarily the cause of all disease.

Then, take a look a nutritional information. Doctors’ recommendations change drastically every ten years or so (remember when Snackwells would save us all?). Now, this isn’t a bad thing: It’s good that science is always evolving. But it’s frustrating when you’re told to eat a bunch of eggs, then five years later, you hear that all those omelets will probably give you a heart attack.

Even now, you can read material written by Joel Fuhrman, M.D., and be convinced that his almost no-fat, vegan diet is the only way to get thin and healthy—and he’s got the scientific studies to prove it! Then, you read The Obesity Code by Jason Fung, M.D., and learn that the amount of fat you eat has exactly no correlation to weight gain. In his opinion, insulin is primarily to blame for weight gain, so you should intermittently fast and eat a diet high in fat and low in carbs—and he’s got the scientific studies to prove it!

Now, I’m not a doctor, but the studies for each of those diets seem equally valid, even though they’re diametrically opposed. Cordell agrees that either of those diets, or anything in-between, can work for people. Cordell says that it doesn’t really matter what the results of all the new studies are—you have to choose a way of eating that works for you and that you can keep up for the rest of your life. Almost any diet can prove some kind of weight loss, but those studies don’t reveal the fact that to keep the weight off, you have to eat healthily forever.

And weight loss isn’t always the answer.

I know from experience that weight is not the primary factor of healthiness. When I was 275 pounds, all my bloodwork was good: low blood pressure, low cholesterol, good everything. Now, I didn’t feel good at that weight, but I was technically fine.

We’ve been trained to think of “fat” as “bad,” and you can’t reverse a lifetime of thinking in a couple of years of blog posts.

But when you’re heavy, the first thing a doctor tells you is “lose weight.” This has happened to me—when I weighed a lot less—and to many others. When I last went to the doctor, she said, “Eat 1,200 calories a day. You can eat up to 1,500, but try to keep it closer to 1,200.”

Now, this is bad for a few reasons: One, I’m a fat lady in her 30s. Do you think I’ve never tried dieting before? Have I lived under some fat-blocking rock for the last three decades and suddenly emerged as my unpleasantly plump self? No. I’ve tried lots of diets, my friend.

Also, if you have a bad history with obsession and weight, there’s no better way to trigger that than having a doctor tell you to starve yourself. (Also, this doctor was my same weight and said how she “felt sorry for Harvey Weinstein” after all the allegations came out. Just to paint a clearer picture of my hell.)

My little story is just one of many, but if the body-positive movement can help bigger people not get immediately brushed off by every doctor, that would be a huge victory in and of itself. I’m not saying doctors shouldn’t mention weight. But when weight loss is the only answer they give, that’s a problem.

Also, doctors should always approach weight with empathy: Ask the patient if they have a history of eating disorders. Ask them why they want to lose weight and why they’ve had trouble in the past. Then work with them to find an eating plan that the patient might actually stick to.

People can be overweight and healthy. Chastain just completed the Life Time Tri, a mini-triathlon. Now, can people be obese and healthy? I don’t know. But what’s better? Someone who’s able to live an active life at a heavy weight or someone slightly smaller who devotes all their mental energy to dieting? I know there are shades between those extremes, but believe me, if you’re trying to go from obese to a normal BMI, it’s very hard to keep obsession from kicking in.

I’ve had mixed feelings about the body-positivity movement, but I’ve become more positive for body positivity than I would have thought. To me, they’re asking that we end the cycle of obsessing over our bodies. Sure, some proponents of this movement go too far and claim that people who lose weight are traitors. But most advocate just appreciating yourself as you are, and that means being OK with wanting to lose weight or being OK with staying heavy.

Still, there aren’t a lot of winners here. Most people are stuck in this weird limbo between fatphobia and body positivity. Model Ashley Graham got criticized for losing weight but also got crap for “promoting obesity” when she was on the cover of Sports Illustrated. People who try to slim down get lots of positive attention when they start to lose, but if they lose too much, the folks around them start saying things like, “Are you sick?” or “You’re getting too skinny. It’s not healthy.” You can never win.

And you want to know the really sad thing? When I see people like FatGirlFlow and Ragen Chastain, a part of me applauds them for their self-acceptance. But also? A little voice always says, “Yeah, but if she just tried a little harder…”

Amber Petty is a freelance writer in Los Angeles. If you like easy crafts and Simpsons gifs, check out her blog, Half-Assed Crafts.

[foursprout-blog]

Is the Body-Positivity Movement Going Too Far?

New Post has been published on http://foursprout.com/health/is-the-body-positivity-movement-going-too-far/

Is the Body-Positivity Movement Going Too Far?

In 2010, Linda Bacon, Ph.D., published Health at Every Size, which promoted the idea that everyone should have respect regardless of their weight. Bacon also started a group of the same name to give people resources to stop dieting and find professionals that agree with the idea that fat doesn’t always mean unhealthy. From there, the body-positivity—or fat-positivity—movement grew and began to reduce the stigma of being heavy. People are finally hearing the message that everyone should love their body, no matter what the media or diet industry might say.

You might also like

displayTitle READ

Well, doesn’t that sound lovely? What a wonderful world, where overweight people would be seen as ordinary folks, instead of lazy, stupid failures with no self-control. But things don’t stay nice for long. At least, not if the internet is involved.

Some members of the body-positive movement have started to promote some pretty extreme concepts. Like when Everyday Feminism wrote, “Let’s make something clear: Having a goal for intentional fat loss is not body positive.” Or when Ashley Graham lost some weight and received comments like, “I am no longer a fan of yours. You betrayed a lot of people!” as reported by CNN. Or when body-positive blogger Ragen Chastain said, “There is not a single study where more than a tiny fraction of people have succeeded at weight loss long term, and there is no study that shows that people who lose weight live longer or become healthier. Prescribing weight loss for health is like prescribing learning to fly for knee pain.” And don’t forget Salon, with its piece comparing weight loss to gay conversion therapy, which… no.

This is why we can’t have nice things.

But how can body positivity be bad?

First of all, the basic ideals of body positivity are not bad: People should not be mistreated because of their weight, and we should never feel pressured to get our bodies to fit some model ideal of “thinness.” That’s clearly not possible—or remotely healthy—for most people. And we should all learn to love ourselves, whether we’re a size 4 or size 24.

But it’s not that easy. In fact, for some people, like myself, the body-positivity movement only makes things more complicated: Fat people now get the privilege of being judged by others for being too big while simultaneously being preached at that they should just love themselves, muffin-top and all.

“I find body positivity an unrealistic expectation,” says Kimberly Hershenson, LMSW, a therapist with years of experience treating eating disorders and weight issues. “People in general struggle to ‘love their bodies.’ Someone who has struggled with body image issues cannot suddenly change from body-hatred to loving the way they look.”

Hershenson advises her clients to focus on things outside of their body to find self-love. Instead of trying to suddenly love the body you’ve always hated, she suggests thinking of your body as a neutral. You don’t have to love or hate it—it’s just a body, and the self is so much more than just its outer packaging.

Outside of the unrealistic expectation to simply start “loving yourself at any size,” some body-positivity activists insist that weight has nothing to do with your health. Sadly, this isn’t true. As Aditi G Jha, M.D., of JustDoc.com says, “Central obesity is the number one factor associated with diabetes, hypertension, and infertility, in their respective orders.”

Psychologist Deb Thompson, Ph.D., adds, “Obesity is clearly recognized by world and national health organizations as a leading risk factor for disease and death. The body-positivity movement’s denial of science is troubling.”

Also, for most people, being heavier really does not feel better. As a lucky lady who gained a ton of weight over the course of a year, I felt the difference: I got winded easily, my body ached more, and I started developing plantar fasciitis. Though I’m still big, I’ve lost about 30 pounds so far, and it feels better.

So the body-positivity movement isn’t wrong, exactly…

Sure, there are some extreme people who are making the movement look like a bunch of jags. For example, it’s beyond unfortunate that Chastain and Salon both compare fatphobia with homophobia. I’m not saying it’s easy being a fat person, but gay panic has caused a lot more harm throughout history. At the height of homophobia, gay men were labeled as mentally ill, pedophiles, or both. People were jailed and castrated just for being gay. Sure, fat people might get called names and crappy looks from people on the train, but few people have been literally murdered just for being fat.

My hatred of the anti-gay/anti-fat correlation aside, most of the body-positivity movement isn’t wrong. Even though statements like “weight loss is not body positive” sound extreme—they have a point.

True body positivity means you can do whatever you want with your body as long as you do it with love. Some people do need to lose weight for their health, and I don’t think there’s anything wrong with that. Others want to lose weight to look better—and that’s their right. If you aren’t obsessed with losing weight, then I don’t think it’s a problem.

But dieting culture is a problem for a lot of people.

Let’s take a little journey through my fatness, to illustrate the unfortunate effects of our dieting culture.

Personally, I was always chubby, and I never felt bad about it—until junior high. I wasn’t made fun of or criticized for my weight. In fact, if I ever said, “Oh, well I’m so fat,” I’d hear an instant chorus of “Oh, my God. Don’t say that! No, don’t think that about yourself.”

Though I wasn’t allowed to say fat, that didn’t stop every other girl I knew from commenting on her appearance. Once we hit 14, a part of every lunch period was devoted to each girl talking about how fat she was—these were all thin girls, by the way. So, I thought, If they think they’re fat, they must think I’m some monster! This began my wonderful journey of hating my body that continues to this very day.

You might hope that all this “I’m so fat” talk would disappear after high school, but it’s still going strong. About half the time I hang out with a group of women, we get into a whole “my [insert body part here] is so horrible” conversation. Of course, I can’t actually join in on the contest of who hates themselves more because if I talk about feeling fat, people just sadly look away, a faint, “well…” passing through their lips.

Now I truly am fat, and people—friends—act like it’s the saddest thing I could ever be. Friends who don’t even realize they’re acting this way and would never purposely say anything to make me feel bad. Even if they’d never consciously judge a fat person negatively, they’re responding to a little, internal voice that says, “Yeah, but if she just tried a little harder…”

We’ve been trained to think of “fat” as “bad,” and you can’t reverse a lifetime of thinking in a couple of years’ worth of blog posts.

So when people talk about body positivity and dieting, it’s understandable why people in the BP movement get upset. Blogger and YouTuber FatGirlFlow discusses her history with eating disorders, doctors who continually told her to lose weight, and how dieting to be “healthy” nearly killed her. Eventually, she found the body-positivity movement, which “saved her life.”

So although it sounds extreme to say that dieting and weight loss are not part of body positivity, I think there’s some truth to that statement. That doesn’t mean you can’t lose weight or want to lose weight and still think positively of yourself. Individuals should do whatever they want.

But there should also be some space out there on the internet for women not to have to hear about dieting, because when you say you need to diet, that makes girls like me feel like we need to diet. When body-positive activists like FatGirlFlow say “keep dieting out of body positivity,” they aren’t telling you not to lose weight—they just need a break from hearing that weight loss will always be the answer.

Does body positivity promote obesity?

Think about it: Can a couple of bloggers and a Dove ad really make thin women binge on Häagen-Dazs and gain 40 pounds? This movement isn’t nearly big enough to really make people feel good about being obese, and it’s certainly not going to convince people that fat is the new black.

Sure, some of the claims that obesity has no link to health are misleading. But the truth is that the science around health and obesity is far from clear.

“Yes, weight can affect your health, and there has been research to show that there may be some correlation,” says Zach Cordell, registered dietitian nutritionist. “However, in the scientific community, we know that correlation is not causation. Just because obesity and diabetes rates have risen in tandem doesn’t prove that they are connected. You could also draw that correlation between the availability of organic foods and diabetes. Does that mean that because more organic food is available, more people have diabetes? No, it is just a correlation.”

Cordell says that obesity and diabetes have quite a few links, but that a person’s behavior is more predictive of disease than their size. Yes, many obese people eat poorly or don’t exercise. But that’s not always the case. Some overweight people don’t eat junk food all the time and are still heavy. And there are quite a few thin folks who frequent the McDonald’s drive-thru. Though obesity is a symptom of unhealthy behavior, it’s not necessarily the cause of all disease.

Then, take a look a nutritional information. Doctors’ recommendations change drastically every ten years or so (remember when Snackwells would save us all?). Now, this isn’t a bad thing: It’s good that science is always evolving. But it’s frustrating when you’re told to eat a bunch of eggs, then five years later, you hear that all those omelets will probably give you a heart attack.

Even now, you can read material written by Joel Fuhrman, M.D., and be convinced that his almost no-fat, vegan diet is the only way to get thin and healthy—and he’s got the scientific studies to prove it! Then, you read The Obesity Code by Jason Fung, M.D., and learn that the amount of fat you eat has exactly no correlation to weight gain. In his opinion, insulin is primarily to blame for weight gain, so you should intermittently fast and eat a diet high in fat and low in carbs—and he’s got the scientific studies to prove it!

Now, I’m not a doctor, but the studies for each of those diets seem equally valid, even though they’re diametrically opposed. Cordell agrees that either of those diets, or anything in-between, can work for people. Cordell says that it doesn’t really matter what the results of all the new studies are—you have to choose a way of eating that works for you and that you can keep up for the rest of your life. Almost any diet can prove some kind of weight loss, but those studies don’t reveal the fact that to keep the weight off, you have to eat healthily forever.

And weight loss isn’t always the answer.

I know from experience that weight is not the primary factor of healthiness. When I was 275 pounds, all my bloodwork was good: low blood pressure, low cholesterol, good everything. Now, I didn’t feel good at that weight, but I was technically fine.

We’ve been trained to think of “fat” as “bad,” and you can’t reverse a lifetime of thinking in a couple of years of blog posts.

But when you’re heavy, the first thing a doctor tells you is “lose weight.” This has happened to me—when I weighed a lot less—and to many others. When I last went to the doctor, she said, “Eat 1,200 calories a day. You can eat up to 1,500, but try to keep it closer to 1,200.”

Now, this is bad for a few reasons: One, I’m a fat lady in her 30s. Do you think I’ve never tried dieting before? Have I lived under some fat-blocking rock for the last three decades and suddenly emerged as my unpleasantly plump self? No. I’ve tried lots of diets, my friend.

Also, if you have a bad history with obsession and weight, there’s no better way to trigger that than having a doctor tell you to starve yourself. (Also, this doctor was my same weight and said how she “felt sorry for Harvey Weinstein” after all the allegations came out. Just to paint a clearer picture of my hell.)

My little story is just one of many, but if the body-positive movement can help bigger people not get immediately brushed off by every doctor, that would be a huge victory in and of itself. I’m not saying doctors shouldn’t mention weight. But when weight loss is the only answer they give, that’s a problem.

Also, doctors should always approach weight with empathy: Ask the patient if they have a history of eating disorders. Ask them why they want to lose weight and why they’ve had trouble in the past. Then work with them to find an eating plan that the patient might actually stick to.

People can be overweight and healthy. Chastain just completed the Life Time Tri, a mini-triathlon. Now, can people be obese and healthy? I don’t know. But what’s better? Someone who’s able to live an active life at a heavy weight or someone slightly smaller who devotes all their mental energy to dieting? I know there are shades between those extremes, but believe me, if you’re trying to go from obese to a normal BMI, it’s very hard to keep obsession from kicking in.

I’ve had mixed feelings about the body-positivity movement, but I’ve become more positive for body positivity than I would have thought. To me, they’re asking that we end the cycle of obsessing over our bodies. Sure, some proponents of this movement go too far and claim that people who lose weight are traitors. But most advocate just appreciating yourself as you are, and that means being OK with wanting to lose weight or being OK with staying heavy.

Still, there aren’t a lot of winners here. Most people are stuck in this weird limbo between fatphobia and body positivity. Model Ashley Graham got criticized for losing weight but also got crap for “promoting obesity” when she was on the cover of Sports Illustrated. People who try to slim down get lots of positive attention when they start to lose, but if they lose too much, the folks around them start saying things like, “Are you sick?” or “You’re getting too skinny. It’s not healthy.” You can never win.

And you want to know the really sad thing? When I see people like FatGirlFlow and Ragen Chastain, a part of me applauds them for their self-acceptance. But also? A little voice always says, “Yeah, but if she just tried a little harder…”

Amber Petty is a freelance writer in Los Angeles. If you like easy crafts and Simpsons gifs, check out her blog, Half-Assed Crafts.