Great Christina offers some really thought-provoking insights into issues of body weight and physical attractiveness

"What kind of movement claims to be about empowerment... but disavows people for making their own choices about their bodies?"

-- Greta Christina, in an AlterNet essay, "Caught Between Fat and Thin: The Pounds Come Off, But the Label Stays"

by Ken

For all the drivel one can find online, there are writers scattered about who are offering genuinely thoughtful comment on subjects of real importance to most of us. In this category I place Greta Christina, who tackles some of the most delicate personal issues. Now she's written for AlterNet a piece that I recommend without reservation to anyone who's concerned with issues of body weight and image and society's ideas of physical attractiveness or mere acceptability: "Caught Between Fat and Thin: The Pounds Come Off, But the Label Stays."

Greta has written a good deal about her struggle with her weight, having been "for years . . . an ardent advocate of the fat acceptance movement":

I actively resisted the idea that there was any point whatsoever to losing weight. I believed that medical statistics on the health effects of obesity were exaggerated at best, part of the cultural conspiracy to make women hate their bodies at worst. I was convinced that I could be just as healthy at 200 pounds (and with the eating and exercise habits that kept me at 200 pounds) as I would be with less weight. And I was convinced that losing weight never, ever worked... or at least, that it worked so rarely it wasn't worth trying--if there was even any reason for trying.

And then a knee that was already bad began getting worse, and she decided that, given a choice between losing mobility and losing weight, the weight would have to go."

She is, by the way, unhesitating in describing herself as "fat," even now when she isn't. ("I'm always going to be a fat woman. Don't get me wrong. At five foot three and 135 pounds, I am not, by any useful definition of the word, fat. But I have been fat.")

I still see the world as a fat person. My perceptions of myself, and of society, and of how society views fatness and bodies and health, have been profoundly shaped by my years of being fat in ways that are never going to change. And while I have huge disagreements with the fat acceptance movement -- especially with its more extreme denialist edges -- I still think many of its ideas are important, and perceptive, and entirely fair. I am still very much shaped by FA, and I would like to think of myself as an ally of the movement, and even as a member of it.

It's just that some of its members don't feel the same way about me, or about other fat people who choose to lose weight.

She remains, she explains, "hyper-conscious of anti-fat hostility, contempt, and discrimination."

When I hear mocking or insulting comments about fat people, I stand up for them. When I see rigid, internally contradictory, impossible- to-attain standards of physical beauty promoted in pop culture, I rant about it ad nauseum. When I hear about fat people being discriminated against in employment and medicine and so on, I get seriously ticked off. When folks call fat people "lazy slobs" and say that "as a society we should not look up to successful people who are fat. We should tell them we admire their acting or philanthropy, but look down on them for being lazy" (direct quotes from comments on my Facebook page, btw), I smack them down with every weapon in my rhetorical arsenal.

Paradoxically, she says, her long experience with fat acceptance has "actually given me essential tools for weight management." For one thing, she accepts that her body is "never going to be the culture's ideal."

For years, I projected all my body anxiety onto my weight. If I was unhappy with how I looked or felt, I assumed it was because I was fat. Period. And when I was in process of losing weight, even though I was healthier and happier with my body than I'd been in years, I was still very focused on trying to change, to reach my goal weight, to make my body different. Now that my weight is where I want it... I have to accept this body. With my thin hair, my veiny hands, my droopy breasts, my funky loose skin from the weight loss, my chronic middle- aged- lady health problems. I have to accept this body, and live with it, and love it.

She has, she says, "the understanding that the cultural ideal of physical beauty is not just insanely rigid and narrow, but internally contradictory and literally unattainable's now able to control her weight," and she understands that most everyone, "even fashion models and movie stars, is insecure about their bodies and their attractiveness." She explains how she has made peace with those notions, and how different it is to maintain control of her weight strictly for the sake of her health and physical well-being.

At the same time, she has been unpleasantly surprised by the degree of venom she receives from her former FA allies.

When I first started blogging about my weight loss, I was met with a faceful of extremist denialism, concern trolling, and outright hostility from many FA advocates, in both blog comments and private emails. The health benefits of successful weight loss were denied. The extremist attitudes of many FA activists were denied. Connections between weight and health were denied, and medical researchers publicizing these connections were called "crusaders." I was told that all diets fail everyone. I was told that there was no way my weight loss would work in the long run; that I might succeed in losing the weight initially, but would almost certainly fail to keep it off over time.

All of that and a good deal more. And her attackers seemed at all concerned with the health concern, her steadily declining mobility, that finally drove her to try to lose the weight. That --

was met with a callous, trivializing dismissal that I still find shocking. Many FA advocates were passionately concerned about the quality of life I might lose if I counted calories or stopped eating chocolate bars every day. But when it came to the quality of life I might lose if I could no longer dance, climb hills, climb stairs, take long walks, walk at all? Eh. Whatever.

"What kind of movement claims to be about empowerment," she asks, "but disavows people for making their own choices about their bodies?" Along the way she offers a wealth of insights and surprises on the subject, arriving at the basic understanding:

I think we need a movement that advocates for treating people with dignity, equality, and respect, regardless of their size; a movement that resists the impossible cultural ideals of beauty; a movement that encourages fat people to love themselves and take care of themselves, regardless of whether they lose weight; a movement that speaks out for fat people's right to make their own choices about their bodies and their health.

But it needs to accept that not everyone is going to make the same choices. If the fat acceptance movement is going to advocate for fat people who don't choose to lose weight, it needs to be every bit as supportive of fat people who do.

Highly recommended.

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