Before I begin, a note, as I suspect this piece is going to be controversial: This post is about my personal relationship to the Health at Every Size (HAES) philosophy, in which I delve into some of the issues I have with it. It is not an attack on HAES as a whole or those […]
Category: size
My Fat Body is Not Your Fetish
I’m fat. Most of the days I’m pretty okay with that. It seems to be the state my body prefers; only by going on severe calorie restriction and excessive exercise regimens can I get thinner, and as soon as I relax a little, my weight rebounds. I’ve hit a set point where my body stays […]
Is Fat Hate a New Editorial Policy, NPR?
The United States is a country that hates fat people. It invests untold amounts of dollars in fatphobic hate campaigns targeting the general public, shaming fat people, attempting to institute sin taxes on various ‘bad’ foods, and so much more. When it comes to fat, and bodies, it’s clear that regulatory officials have gone off […]
Do You Care About My Health, or Just Think I’m Gross? Be Honest.
Hi. I’m fat. I’m what most people call an in-betweenie—I have a heavy build, I wear plus sizes, my stomach poofs out, I have folds of fat along my back, I have chubby arms and legs. I can still buy clothes off the rack at a lot of stores, though. Don’t rush to tell me […]
Fat As Metaphor: Don’t Do That, Everyone Will Know You’re Fat!
The prevailing social attitude about fatness is that it’s disgusting and gross, something people should be ashamed of and cover up in order to prevent anyone else from being subjected to the horrors of seeing a fat person out in the wild. People believe that fatness is foul and they are entitled not to see […]
Christian Rhetoric in Food Policing
When people claim we are a secular society, I always laugh, because I don’t really know how else to respond. Christian attitudes and worldviews are very much wrapped up in Western thought, and they’re impossible to evade, whether you’re talking about ‘atoning’ for a mistake or exclaiming ‘oh my G-d’ when something shocking happens. Christianity […]
Healthism and Food
One of the most commonly expressed forms of healthism comes up at the table, where people feel absolutely free to comment on what other people are eating, with additional suggestions on what they should or should not be eating. Whether it’s legislators attempting to pass soda bans or people at dinner who feel like it’s […]
Calories: Units of Energy. So Stop Calling Them ‘Empty.’
The phrase ’empty calories’ has always irked me, and it seems to be cropping up everywhere around me lately, like people got a memo that I didn’t see mandating its use at least four times a day. It’s a meaningless phrase that has become fraught with meaning, used as an indictment of some types of […]
Fashion, ‘The Rules,’ and Hiding Your Body
So many of the rules of fashion for non-normative bodies seem to boil down to a mandate to hide your body. Concealment is the order of the day, and it’s presented as the mode, chic thing to do; if you expose your body, if you admit you have a body, you are not fashionable. It’s […]
Who REALLY Takes Up Space On Airplanes?
I do a fair amount of traveling. Not as much as some folks, but I have clocked a respectable number of flying hours (see also: airport hours) in my day, and thus, I’ve had a chance to observe a broad spectrum of human behaviours on aircraft. In these heady days of institutionalised fat hatred, where […]