Fat acceptance?

end of the road

davet82 wrote: »

I would agree with the basics of what you are saying but I really do believe this artist and his fat appreciation day is doing these women no favours

i agree.

davet82 wrote: »

i can only imagine him exploiting them by telling them how great they look and they should embrace who they are, despite it killing them in the end, a little melodramatic i know!

well maybe it isn't melodramatic, you could be right, he maybe exploiting them, i suppose only he will know that for sure.

Esoteric_

I'm all for acceptance of everyone, regardless of shape or size. I used to be morbidly obese two years ago, but I changed that and I'm a healthy weight/size now, if a bit chubby still, at a size 14.

These women aren't simply obese or overweight, though. Their BMI would class them as 'super morbidly obese.' That's not something you can accept and embrace. That sort of body weight inevitably will have serious health implications.

If you're healthy and happy, then sure, love yourself and accept yourself. But when you're endangering your life, a line has to be drawn.

Madam_X

Czarcasm wrote: »

the women in those particular photos represent a completely exaggerated distortion of the female form. They appeal to a very niche subset of society that are more commonly known as "fat feeders". The photos in my mind appear to be less about "fat acceptance" and more about just going for sheer shock factor.

I could appreciate the intention if the "artist" truly had the intention of art for art's sake in mind, but taking advantage of these women to garner attention for themselves, disguised as social commentary, strikes me as nothing but reprehensible and irresponsible attention seeking.

Freak shows were also a popular pastime in the Victorian era, and to my mind that's all this publicity stunt is- a freak show.

I agree - but nobody forced the women to do it either; I wonder why they agreed to it.
It's not that these women shouldn't love themselves - but the state of their health is not something to be happy with. I think the fact they are this weight in the first place would indicate they don't have a whole lot of love for themselves anyway though.
The "Accept your size" mantra refers to women who don't have perfect bodies, who are a small bit overweight, etc. This goes way, way, WAY beyond that.

NegativeCreep

Those photos made me Asexual.

Morag

/looks at self, looks at pictures in the link

There's fat and there's morbidly obese, if these ladies are just fat, I am never using that adjective about myself ever again.

Esoteric_

Morag wrote: »

/looks at self, looks at pictures in the link

There's fat and there's morbidly obese, if these ladies are just fat, I am never using that adjective about myself ever again.

As bad as it sounds, those pictures make me wonder why I feel self conscious about my own body. I don't have any overhang, let alone the massive amounts of it that those women have.

Howard the Duck

"Your Mom is fat, She's so fat she has type two diabetes and everybody is very worried about her"

This isn't fat acceptance this is glamourising obesity. Because of the health issues i don't think obesity should ever be accepted, but by that i don't mean the obese should be mocked or made fun of , They should be helped to try and lose weight and given support by medical professionals.
Obesity is a disease that damages your body and can lead to death, so that is why obese people should be helped.
This isn't a fat or skinny issue it's a health issue.

Czarcasm

Madam_X wrote: »

I agree - but nobody forced the women to do it either; I wonder why they agreed to it.
It's not that these women shouldn't love themselves - but the state of their health is not something to be happy with. I think the fact they are this weight in the first place would indicate they don't have a whole lot of love for themselves anyway though.
The "Accept your size" mantra refers to women who don't have perfect bodies, who are a small bit overweight, etc. This goes way, way, WAY beyond that.

That's probably the easiest question to answer, and doesn't take a genius either, (because I sure as hell ain't one!)-

They, like most people, base their self worth on their appearance, and they gravitate (no pun intended) to that which reinforces their condition as a positive image. They see their appearance as unique, as something which makes them special. We can see it as harmful, unhealthy, etc, but to these women the only thing that matters to them is that they are desirable.

New York as we know, is a vast melting pot of different cultures and ideals, and that's why it's easier for these women to find acceptance a lot easier than they would say in South Beach in Miami. Quite frankly I'm surprised it's taken the media this long to pick up on it as they've been have these clubs in London (another good melting pot example) for years where SSBBW's can come and let their hair down and feel validated by the group mentality.

This group mentality (whether rightly or wrongly in our minds) reinforces the idea in these womens minds that they are indeed desirable and this increases their confidence and reinforces the illusion that the "outside world" should be made aware of their existence, because their core group has "normalised" this ideal.

And so it is quite easy for the artist to find a thousand SSBBW's if he had wanted who were willing to disrobe and "show it all off" as it were. Because they ARE proud of what they are, after years of being told how fabulous they look.

The best example I can think of to illustrate this phenomenon is the talent show "The X Factor". How many times have we seen contestants come out with the line "everybody I know tells me I'm an incredible singer", only then to open their mouth and be howled and booed off the stage, leaving them in a state of complete confusion. Their delusion was reinforced by their core circle, but as soon as they introduce themselves to a wider audience, they introduce themselves to criticism that doesn't take any account of them as a person or the fact that they have no concept of just how bad they might be.

I have met plenty of highly articulate and intelligent women who would classify themselves as BBW (and not the typically perceived delusional idiot we all know and love to hate on facebook!), and they do not seek the attention of the media or to shove it in people's faces. For them it is just a label used as the easiest way to describe themselves. They are under no illusion that they are overweight or that their BMI sure as hell is not 22-25, but for them they are comfortable in their own skin, and do not seek to change people's attitudes towards them. They are all too aware that in a majority white western culture media- they are considered unhealthy and obese. But the difference with these women is they do not base their self worth on their appearance. They are high functioning individuals that are accountants, solicitors, university lecturers, but to name a few off the top of my head!

Not every woman bases her self worth on their appearance, but those women are harder to find because they don't get as much exposure in the media as those that do. One example I can think of is Marilyn Monroe- she had a genius level IQ, but is more well known for her ditzy blonde bombshell persona and her physical attributes than her intellect, because it's a lot harder to quantify something we can not see than it is to quantify something physical that hits us and colors our judgement before we even talk to the person!

Nonoperational

We should accept people for what they are, ya I can buy that. But obesity is something which is spiralling out of control. You can sugar-coat it anyway you want but the point is people become obese by eating too much and not doing enough exercise. I'm not talking about people with a few extra pounds, I'm talking about obese people. I think it's so wrong to hear people say they are happy with their body etc and they have BMIs over 35. It's utter laziness and a lack of personal responsibility.

end of the road

Nonoperational wrote: »

obesity is something which is spiralling out of control. You can sugar-coat it anyway you want but the point is people become obese by eating too much and not doing enough exercise. I'm not talking about people with a few extra pounds, I'm talking about obese people.

which is why we must get the experts into schools and start educating people from a young age about it and its effects, this must happen sooner rather then later and is of upmost importants.

Nonoperational wrote: »

I think it's so wrong to hear people say they are happy with their body etc and they have BMIs over 35.

maybe, but at the end of the day no matter what we think if they say their happy then their happy (even if their not) we may see that their not but until they realise that themselves theirs nothing we can really do.

Czarcasm

Nonoperational wrote: »

We should accept people for what they are, ya I can buy that. But obesity is something which is spiralling out of control. You can sugar-coat it anyway you want but the point is people become obese by eating too much and not doing enough exercise. I'm not talking about people with a few extra pounds, I'm talking about obese people. I think it's so wrong to hear people say they are happy with their body etc and they have BMIs over 35. It's utter laziness and a lack of personal responsibility.

Welcome to time immemorial. Seriously! Obesity is nothing new, and it's not spiralling out of control either. I would venture that it's at the same levels it's always been at, despite "statistics" that might suggest otherwise. It's just that nowadays, the media has made our world smaller and given exposure to concepts we would never even have contemplated, let alone considered existed.

The fact that these photos appeared in a red-top rag just before Christmas, a time when most of us allow ourselves to over-indulge a little, might be no small coincidence either! Maybe that's just the cynic in me, but I wouldn't be surprised if in the New Year when we're all thinking about diets and so on, the same newspaper will run a story in it's women's pull-out section on the "new, bet you've never seen this before, it's real dangerous, m'kay!" phenomenon of "thinspirational" women and the pro-ana subculture.

Don't worry, not all women are going to think it's become acceptable to have your ribs jutting out or your emaciated skin clinging to your bones (I believe it was Kate Moss who pioneered the "heroin chic" look in the early 90's, and look at her now as the face of rimmel cosmetics, looking far fuller and healthier!), nor are all women going to think parading yourself as the Michelin man's sister is somehow ever going to become acceptable in western society. Gok Wan did try to use rotund women in his fashion feature programmes but as soon as he realised tv audiences did not want to watch rotund women get naked, he went back to using waif like models in his programmes.

This is just another opportunity for the Sun toilet paper to exercise it's thinly disguised but painfully obvious faux moral outrage, while at the same time fighting tooth and nail to keep the archaic "tradition" that is page 3. This to me just shows how hypocritical they are, and how they too are less interested in social commentary and more interested in making money by selling to people's insecurities, and for the other posters that mentioned the likes of vogue and cosmo, designers and fashion houses that recently decided to dismiss size zero models in favor of their healthier looking counterparts- lets see how long that lasts shall we? Even supermodels like Tyra Banks and singers like Beyonce "thunder thighs" Knowles have not been immune from criticism in the past, from the same media that now holds Adele and Kim "botox buttocks" Kardashian up as role models for women to aspire to!

Pottler

Just looks like "really unhealthy" acceptance. Better off if it was strongly discouraged rather than accepted. What quality of life could you have being that heavy?

Morag

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Venus_of_Willendorf

beks101

Ihatecuddles wrote: »

The world is just as disgusted by size 0 ....I don't keep my nose in runway magazines and I don't care about high fashion, so I see a lot less of the size 0 models, but I do know the world wants it to change and there's so many campaigns to get it done. ALso, campaigns for more plus size models. Ralph Lauren and vogue both using them instead of size 0 recently.

This is the official line, Dove's infamous 'real women', but have you ever tried losing a crap load of weight and gauging the reactions? I did it through a pretty bad emotional time that led to an eating disorder and I never got so many compliments in my life. I look 'fantastic' apparently, with all my ribs on show and my hollow cheeks and lack of womanly curves.

It was either that or the deathly stares from other women who were less concerned and more intimidated by my sudden skinniness - and a hostility I had never felt before from other females. I certainly didn't feel socially accepted - but not because I was 'disgusting'; because I was a 'threat'. People wanted diet tips, they wanted to know my 'secret'. It was massively difficult to say the least, as you can imagine where my head already was throughout the whole ordeal.

I don't see the need to comment or herald or insult the bodies of other females for a myriad of reasons, most of all because of how personal body image is and how you can never know what kind of torment somebody is suffering in coming to terms with their own figure.

I don't agree with this bullsh1t. I don't agree with the exploitation of women's bodies in order to move a few magazines off a shelf, but it happens, that's the world we live in, and if we're going to have to deal with 'scary skinny' pics of Posh Spice every week with her bones protruding through her Chanel dress, then why not balance it out with the other side? Why not show a few dangerously morbidly overweight women parading about in their underwear, it's equally as unhealthy, they're equally as bad an example as their skeletal sisters, we may as well make it an equal opportunities thing.

Cheerful Spring

I've never been too bothered about a girl been overweight. I've been told i am really good looking lad, i can get skinny girls too. I overlook the fact she is bit overweight if i am attracted to her and she has good banter.

I have though got remarks from some of my mates about been with an overweight girl (noobs) Sex , i have also found is lot more fun with a girl who's slightly overweight. I've never been with someone who looks obese though, i don't find that attractive really, but i'm not ignorant to girl like if i notice shes interested and keen to get to know me.

Handsome Bob

listermint wrote: »

People are different but when you go to extremes (either end of that spectrum) its not right and its indefensible to allow people to believe it to be 'ok' or to lead a normal life.

The difference though is that one end of the extreme is laughed at and made fun of, while the other is not.

Just look at the first 2 pages alone, plenty of jokes. If this was about pro-anorexia, I doubt you'd have many people making "skeletor's bird" jokes.

Anyway, back on topic, I wasn't aware of this fat acceptance "movement". Seems like a load of bollocks, it's unnecessary to put the issue on a pedestal like this.

Roadtrippin

I agree that people that have reached a body weight that would be classified as morbidly obese need to be helped to change that. But I also agree with a lot of comments here that say this change needs to start from the inside. Who knows what kind of situation got an obese person to that weight in the first place? Bullying someone into losing weight never works so it really all starts by understanding the internal reasons for an external symptom...

beks101 wrote: »

but have you ever tried losing a crap load of weight and gauging the reactions? I did it through a pretty bad emotional time that led to an eating disorder and I never got so many compliments in my life.
[...]
People wanted diet tips, they wanted to know my 'secret'.

This is were it gets interesting. I do think either extreme of the spectrum is not that accepted by society but I also have noticed that weight loss (no matter how it was achieved) seems to be universally applauded and not always is it a good thing.
A lot of my female friends have quite unhealthy eating habits, if you ask me (e.g. coffees & salad is all one of them eats all day), yet because it helps them maintain their size 6-8 it's acceptable.
Another friend of mine lost loads of weight in a healthier way - going to the gym. However, now this has turned into an absolute obsession and he won't stop until he has a six pack... Although he is already at a very healthy weight and if he loses any more he will look like an unattractive twig.
I believe this kind of obsessive behaviour when it comes to eating and weight is being encouraged by people's reaction to weight loss without asking questions how... The amount of health problems some people are facing in the future for not eating enough will be just as bad as people that eat too much so let's not encourage anorexic eating habits or obsessive calorie counting either.

CuriousG

Anorexic people are JUST as sick as overweight people, couldn't stand to look like either of them to be honest.

This is disgusting though, and no one should be happy with looking like that.

I also disagree with people saying only fat people get made fun of, it could not be further from the truth. I know a few people, that were bullied throughout school for 'not eating' and being 'too skinny'. That wasn't the case, it was just how they were built, they eat like any normal person, just happen to have a smaller frame and still got bullied for it day in and day out in an age where 'curves are in'.

Madam_X

Czarcasm wrote: »

Obesity is nothing new, and it's not spiralling out of control either. I would venture that it's at the same levels it's always been at, despite "statistics" that might suggest otherwise.

I dunno. Surely instances of it have increased since 50 years ago? Life is more sedentary, there's more junkfood available, portions have increased. Gastric band surgery is more commonplace now because people are reaching such massive weights its the only answer. Is that really the way it's always been...?

GreeBo

chops018 wrote: »

Why did I click that link. I almost vomited. Also it's ironic the hideousness of those photo's yet they feel the need to blur they're yoohoo's.

I was thinking to myself why on earth are they blurring anything...?
I seriously doubt you can see anything without a head torch, a team of miners and a serious supply of canaries.

woodoo

If you were to have sex with one of them you have to roll them in flour and search for the damp spot /dom dom tish/

Czarcasm

Madam_X wrote: »

I dunno. Surely instances of it have increased since 50 years ago? Life is more sedentary, there's more junkfood available, portions have increased. Gastric band surgery is more commonplace now because people are reaching such massive weights its the only answer. Is that really the way it's always been...?

Instances of obesity portrayed in the media are on the rise certainly, but that's only because the media have become far more pervasive in our daily lives. Most people here would remember when Sally Jesse Raphael back in the 80's used have oversized babies and supersized adults on her show while at the same time Bob Geldof was organising Live Aid to feed the starving population in Africa.

That's going back about 25 years, I'd imagine going back 50, even 100 years, it'd be pretty much the same thing- instances of obesity, but generally speaking I'd imagine people for the most part, were a fairly healthy size.

There has always been sedentary lifestyles differences between social classes, and usually the more affluent you were, the more sedentary your lifestyle. Junk food has always been available, just in previous times when they ate cake, they didn't consider it junk food, not at least according to a qoute often attributed to Marie Antoinette who when told of french citizens starving, was said to have uttered the immortal line "Let them eat cake!".

She didn't by the way, but it is lesser attributed to Marie Therese, wife of Louis 16th 100 years earlier.

Gastric band surgery is only becoming more commonplace now because it is becoming more widely accepted as a means of weight loss. I would venture that give it another 20 years and gastric band surgery will be as commonplace as breast implants and liposuction. I understand there are certain conditions that need to be met right now in order to qualify for gastric band surgery, but when you see the likes of Sharon Osborne and Fern Britton getting it, it just goes to show you that the affluent classes again lead an advantageous lifestyle. This again, is nothing new.

I would put forward the idea that educating people about what they put in their bodies and continuing to offer sustainable alternatives, promoting a healthy lifestyle is the only answer to obesity, but as much education as you provide, some people are still unwilling to listen. They make a choice to buy cheaper, less nutritious food because it is more widely available to them and making an effort to source more nutritious food and lead a healthy lifestyle is just "too much work" for a minority of the population in western society who only think short term.

This doesn't mean we should baste everybody with the same brush though, and just goes to show that obesity levels are pretty much the same as they always were, just that a combination of research and media attention highlights the issue every so often, before we go back to not giving a fiddlers, and I would think that we will continue to have the same levels of obesity in 100 years time again and people saying it wasn't like this 100 years ago.

Madam_X

I can't accept that there was the same number of morbidly obese people one hundred years ago as there is today. No way can that be true. Yeh the majority of people are a healthy weight, but obesity is still a public health problem.

lostpas5235

Spock likes Big Girls.

http://www.rmichelson.com/artist_pages/nimoy/pages/MaxBeaut.htm

token101

Yossi said: “I wanted to show that beauty isn’t owned by skinny people alone.
“To this end the project had to be provocative, but at the same time reassuring, so I focussed on their fullness and femininity as a form of protest against discrimination.

****ing hell. Reminds of this. Whoever is telling them they should accept being that size is killing them. How the **** do they maintain that kind of size?

IM0

pic 2 and 5 would get a nice tapping and spooning, possibly repeatedly too.
frankly skinny women are nearly as bad [but in the other direction]
I wish girls would realise that looking like a boy is not attractive. women are supposed to be curvy [aka fat/phat] its natural and what makes them ..ya know.. women!

its the novely factor that would do it for me about those two pics, but in reality they are obese, so my comments are more about the notion that women think they need to be superskinny and have no ass ect, well alot do anyway.

its all about proportion though people. proportion is king.

Czarcasm

Madam_X wrote: »

I can't accept that there was the same number of morbidly obese people one hundred years ago as there is today. No way can that be true. Yeh the majority of people are a healthy weight, but obesity is still a public health problem.

I'll be honest, I don't have exact figures, but the concept of obesity is not a new phenomenon in and of itself. There's a good read here if you wanted to while away half an hour or so to read it, but I'll pluck out the most relevant part as it relates to just how far back the phenomenon goes at least-

In the evolutionary history of humankind, bodily fat seems to have served nature’s purpose by outfitting the species with a built-in mechanism for storing its own food reserves. During prehistoric times, when the burden of disease was that of pestilence and famine, natural selection rewarded the “thrifty” genotypes of those who could store the greatest amount of fat from the least amount of the then erratically available foods and to release it as frugally as possible over the long run.

This ability to store surplus fat from the least possible amount of food intake may have made the difference between life and death, not only for the individual but also—more importantly—for the species. Those who could store fat easily had an evolutionary advantage in the harsh environment of early hunters and gatherers.

The esthetic value and cultural significance attached to obesity is reflected in the mysterious nude female figurines of Stone Age Europe, dating back to more than 20,000 years ago, considered to be matriarchal icons of fertility or the mother goddess. The best known of these earliest representations of the human form is the one discovered in Willendorf, Australia in 1908. Commonly known as the Venus of Willendorf, its squat body, bulbous contours, pendulous breasts, and prominent belly are as esthetically a factual rendering of gross obesity as can be.

(The bolding was my own emphasis)

Now certainly I am not arguing that obesity isn't a public health problem, of course it is, and always has been, just that nowadays in modern times, with more research being done, more awareness has been created. Some would maintain that there is still not enough awareness being created because people are still becoming obese.

The fact is that most people nowadays through sheer common sense alone, are aware of the dangers of obesity and all it's associated health issues. BUT, they CHOOSE to ignore the evidence, because it suits them to do so, and no amount of educating them is going to make them change what is for them a personal choice.

I'm not saying for one minute I approve of obesity, of course I don't, but it's a hard one for me because simply speaking in terms of sexuality and attractiveness, I DO find a larger female more sexually attractive than a slim female. I know all too well the dangers of obesity and not for one minute would I encourage any woman to actually put ON weight, but also I would not see it as my place to tell them they need to lose weight either. I would leave it to them as their personal choice.

If however an obese woman chose to lose weight, then I would encourage and support that decision 100%, much as it might be against my own natural desires, I'd sooner have that person a healthy weight and have them around for another 20 years, than have them die of heart disease or one of obesity's many other health complications. In other words I'm saying that while I may not find them sexually attractive any more, to me they are in essence still somewhat the same person. I say "somewhat", because like it or not, losing weight can change a person's personality and attitude the very same way as gaining weight can affect their personality and attitude.

In conclusion, obesity is without doubt a public health issue, but unfortunately it is not taken seriously enough to be able to come up with an attractive and viable alternative as there is no one complete solution to what is in effect a far more complicated issue than just encouraging a healthy diet and exercise "and the problem of obesity will disappear in a few generations". It's not that simple. There are many factors and causes that need to be considered, and that's probably a discussion for a whole other thread.

SueBoom

Wow, when I first came into this thread I thought it was just going to about supporting having curves, puppy fat etc. But those pictures... Oh no... How those people are even living is beyond me. Unhealthy living and being obese to a point where it's a disability should not be supported. Hells no.

Sunnyisland

Fat acceptance


For the next two weeks yes.

Roadtrippin

Interesting article in the Independent today on the results of a new study claiming that being overweight lowers death risk rather than increase it:

http://www.independent.ie/health/health-news/recipe-for-a-long-life-overweight-people-have-lower-death-risk-3340366.html

'Being overweight can extend life rather than shorten it, according to a major new study that runs counter to widespread medical assumptions and years of warnings about the fatal implications of our expanding waistlines.'

Food for thought...