Acceptance Is Not Giving Up: Elizabeth from Spilt Milk
Every now and then, an extraordinary person comes into your life. One of those people for me is Elizabeth from Spilt Milk. I think Elizabeth is one of the most gorgeous souls I have ever met. She is kind, compassionate, forgiving, thoughtful and brave. I am incredibly proud (and blessed) that she is a friend! It also helps a bit that our 2yo’s are in love with each other!! I think anyone who met Elizabeth would leave the room going like this 
(like I always do when we get together).
Recently Elizabeth wrote this piece about what Fat Acceptance means to her, and I loved it so much I asked her if she would mind if I shared it with you.
Enjoy. I certainly did.
Acceptance Is Not Giving Up.
Creators and consumers of ‘mainstream’ discourses about body image and health (I’d include websites like Mamamia in this category) evidently have a hard time grappling with the concept of Fat Acceptance. It’s Fat, but it’s Acceptance. Acceptance, of Fat? What’s with that?
Given that the notion that fat=unhealthy has become so pervasive that it’s taken on the aura of a kind of foundational belief, it’s not hard to see why questioning that orthodoxy would create some discomfort. Confronting people with new information or new perspectives on old information invites defensiveness. It seems to me that arguing against ‘facts’ with ‘moar FACTS!’ appears to do this even more rapidly and spectacularly: it’s easier to dismiss FA activists as radicals with a dangerous agenda than to accept that what science indicates about health and weight is still full of shades of grey (and that consequently what we learn through the media is even more murky, obscured as it is by various economic and ideological biases). I’m not saying therefore that we should stop with the facts or the science. Just that many people go on maintaining their beliefs even in the face of contrary evidence largely because they want to (flat earth, anyone?), and when it comes to notions like calories in/calories out=weight or obesity=pandemic that will kill us all, it’s not going to be any different. Maybe Linda Bacon and other HAES proponents convince me largely because I want them to: it’s in my interest, as a fat person who would like to avoid a state of constant fear and loathing, to take a closer look at the science. To look at my body and think about how it behaves and what is best for it, and to draw different conclusions to those drawn by, say, the average long-term participant in an expensive diet programme. I don’t have all the answers but what I do have is a positive outlook; a focus on inclusiveness and individuality rather than misguided versions of ‘perfection’; a belief that exercise is integral to good health; a desire to enjoy eating, and life.
Contrary to what some critics of Fat Acceptance assert, the movement is not about claiming that there are no links at all between weight and health (rather, that correlations are commonly grossly exaggerated and misunderstood, and that promoting mainly weight loss measures as a ‘solution’ at the expense of a more positive approach to health and well-being is actively harmful.) Despite the fact that almost all the FA blogs I read include some reference to the increased well-being that can be found through enjoyment of movement and eating competence, there still remains a misconception that Fat Acceptance is only about being ‘unhealthy’ and celebrating that. Granted, one difference that FA blogs have from many mainstream discussions is a refusal to celebrate ‘health’ as some kind of virtue and to rank the ‘healthy’ above the ‘fat, lazy, bad, gluttonous, unhealthy masses’. I think that’s a positive thing, but it’s a feature of Fat Acceptance that many seem particularly challenged by in this current climate of policing bodies on ‘health’ grounds. Very often, responses I receive on Twitter or face-to-face reflect this: whenever I say something about size discrimination, I am guaranteed at least one response like “But don’t you realise fat is unhealthy?” Apparently, even though they may show in-principle support to any moves to end size discrimination, people simply must remind me that we Deathfatz are going to die sometime soon and that we shouldn’t be happy about our bodies. It’s almost as if when I say ‘it is wrong to prejudge or mistreat someone because of her size’ it doesn’t come out like that at all, but rather is translated to some variation of ‘I want everyone to be as fat as possible because I think it’s better and healthier to be extremely fat than to be any other size whatsoever and give me half a chance I’m going to make everyone really really fat and terrifying like me, ROARRR!’ Or perhaps it’s just that, you know, people don’t have a good grasp of the issues.
The result of assumptions being made about Fat Acceptance is a huge bucketload of skepticism (skepticism is actually a good thing, where it is applied in equal measure to arguments from the obesity-is-death side) or, more worryingly, outright ridicule and rejection. I think the cause of some of the unease people feel about Fat Acceptance is actually a misunderstanding of the aims of the movement: because the dominant paradigm is that thin is better and the result of that is a society obsessed with attaining and maintaining thinness, it appears to logically follow that a movement trying to subvert that would say the opposite. But we don’t. FA activists know that it’s impossible (and completely stupid) to try to ‘end’ thinness, or to promote fatness as an ideal for everyone. Rather, we wish to strip away any notion that there is a particular body type that is inherently superior. What Fat Acceptance does is for all people, not just fatties. Fat Acceptance makes all bodies acceptable, honours diversity, and calls for an end to body-shaming. That goes for skinny bodies too, whether they are considered ‘healthy’ or not.
Believing that thinness is the sole path to good health, and that it’s an expression of some kind of virtue (restraint, perhaps), also makes it difficult to accept that Fat Acceptance is a positive and optimistic movement. Viewing Fat Acceptance as merely the opposite of weight-loss promotion, through a prism of fat=unhealthy thinking, leads to the conclusion that FA is about giving up. Some feel that it’s about laziness, or cynicism, or despondency. Believing that fat bodies are inherently bad or unhealthy or ugly closes one’s mind off to Fat Acceptance. To a closed mind, the movement seems to be a matter of looking at one’s body and deciding what it can’t do (be thin) and therefore accepting a lesser quality of life based on a negative view of one’s own capabilities and status.
What a terrible misconception that is.
Most of us with fat bodies have had fat bodies for much of our lives. Most of us have struggled, in various ways and at various stages, through attempts to get thin. Most of us know more about self-loathing than we can even express.
Fat Acceptance is about rejecting that self-loathing and embracing a kinder relationship with ourselves and with other people. When we accept our fatness, we accept ourselves as we actually are in the world rather than waiting to attain some external validation that we are as we ‘should’ be. We are able to see our bodies for what they can do and not only for what they can’t do. And quite often, that new acceptance is translated into increased activity levels as it increasingly becomes okay to swim at the pool whilst fat, or walk the dog whilst fat, or play team sport and either not be very good or actually be brilliant, whilst fat. It is a terrible fact that many fat people experience the greatest ridicule whilst engaging in activity: fat bodies are so unacceptable that visibility is actively discouraged through teasing or disapproval or undisguised hostility — this is what the mainstream view of fat and health has led us to and it doesn’t enhance quality of life, let me tell you. We can only end all this sanctioned body-shaming through accepting that humans are diverse, complex, and that we have the right to respect, regardless of size. As I’ve written many times before, perpetuating fear about ‘obesity’ has negative, rather than the intended positive, health consequences.
There is nothing about the Fat Acceptance movement that could accurately be equated with giving up. Rather, I’d argue that the surest way to ensure a drop in quality of life is to wholeheartedly embrace diet culture and the habit of self-loathing so heavily promoted by aspects of the popular media. Allowing the pursuit of unattainable ‘perfection’ to get in the way of living happily and healthily in the now, regardless of your size and shape, is not positive or good for you. It’s also not about health. I choose to reject that negativity in favour of a much better relationship with my body. My body, today, is good enough to go to the gym or wear a new dress or dance or have sex or play on the floor with my kid or to run up the stairs at work, even if I jiggle and even if I sweat and get out of breath. (Thin people sweat and get out of breath, too, although it’s apparently only disgusting or humorous when fat people do.) My body, today, is worth taking care of and will still be next week or next year, whether I lose weight or not.
What really ends, when we embrace Fat Acceptance, is not the pursuit of a better quality of life but rather the waiting to be good enough for life. What’s so radical or terrifying or unhealthy or dangerous about that?
Themocracy
What’s so radical or terrifying or unhealthy or dangerous about that?
This is one of the things that so many of us simply cannot get our heads around, whether we like it or not, we are just not going to get away with the mere acknowlegement of reality and have everyone see just how sensible and normal that is.
How our need to do that is no different from other humans. None of us really want to accept the possible depths to which fat people restoring their self respect to that which we were all born with, upsets so many apple carts and the reverberations just keep going.
I find myself periodically saying to myself, over and over, it’s just fat, it’s just fat, but other peoples responses suggest not.
It’s said that the first person to climb Mount Olympus said, when he descended, that he didn’t see any sign of deities up there, and was murdered for imparting this bit of actual information. People don’t WANT to know. They don’t want to see us break the stereotype by, for example, exercising.
Fat acceptance (or rather, the distorted ideas of what it is) terrifies people. They have a great desire to make us an “other”, the evil that they desperately strive not to be. Anti-fat is today’s religion. It has its priests and saints and altars and worship services. It has its promises of redemption and special foods and gobs of pity for the fallen sinners as long as they confess they’re fallen. It has its punishments, from ostracism to operations, for the unrepentant.
THIS is what we’re fighting. This is why fat hate settles very comfortably into a psychological niche. As far as many people are concerned, we’re speaking Martian.
It’s kind of scary that ‘being healthy’ is now all so tangled up in marketing and money led science etc that no one really understands what that is…
I’m just now, at 37, beginning to even want to try and understand….
Thanks for a great post that has really got me thinking.
[...] Acceptance Is Not Giving Up: Elizabeth from Spilt Milk | DISCOURSE [...]
After a lifetime spent trying to be one size or the other I suddenly realised recently that things are never going to be the same ever again. I am going to get old & die no matter what weight I am.
I teach pilates and yoga. These are forms of exercise that if done mindfully can help us to accept and celebrate what our bodies can do. The teachers are all ages, shapes and sizes. So are the students. There are no mirrors in the studio that I teach in. Each of them has their own journey and we are there to help them block out what they think the mirror is telling them.
There is only one that I tell students – learn about your body, how it works, how it functions and respect it. Nourish it – eat properly & regularly & treat it kindly inside your head.
[...] This post was mentioned on Twitter by CaveatCalcei and Elizabeth@Spilt Milk, Dr Samantha Thomas. Dr Samantha Thomas said: Acceptance is not giving up. Read what @mymilkspilt has to say on Fat Acceptance. http://tinyurl.com/247kf8u [...]