[My main Tumblr can be found over at myasphyxiatedmind]
If you want your ask replied to privately, just put '****' before you start typing.
My name is: Michelle, but most people call me Dark online.
My gender-pronouns are: They/them/their.
I am: 26 years old, a feminist, liberal, an atheist, an omnivore, and an ISFJ.
The Feminist: Intersectional, body positive, pro-choice, and sex positive.
My privileged identities include: Female assigned at birth (trans* privilege), white, able-bodied, allistic (?), dyadic, monogamous.
My non-privileged/oppressed identities include: Gender-fluid, fat, gray-a, neuroatypical, and gay.
I have: Obsessive Compulsive Disorder, Generalized Anxiety Disorder, and Major Depressive Disorder.
I like: Pets & animals, animal welfare, pet care & pet care education, ~*SCIENCE!*~, anatomy & physiology, roleplaying, anime/manga, computer & video games, rock & metal music.
Catching Elephant is a theme by Andy Taylor
Thin privilege is being so terrified, at a size 14/16, of being fat-shamed by your GP that you delay going to see him for a symptom that could indicate a serious illness OR be caused by your weight gain OR mean nothing.
I ended up going to see my new GP after months and he found out it was nothing serious. He made no comment about my weight whatsoever. I’ve had more than one bad experience with the medical establishment in the past, but I’ll learn to trust him more.
This is Thin Privilege: Thin privilege is the attitude that your weight should be taken into...
Thin privilege is the attitude that your weight should be taken into account with regard to every action in your life, whether you have a thin or a fat body.
Example: I was recently promoted at work. A major promotion. I will be doing less work on the floor, and more in the office. Upon telling a friend, her reaction was that I would likely put on weight unless I exercised to compensate for my more sedentary role.
Never mind the benefits to my career. That my boss recognises my hard work and has given me more responsibility. Oh no. The important thing is that despite this exciting and challenging phase of my career, in an industry that I enjoy, that I maintain a socially acceptable weight.
Because it is. What we consider “healthy” is not the same as what is considered healthy in other cultures, nor what was considered healthy at other times in history. Hell, our own definition has changed considerably just since I was born. (This is also how we can tell that things like gender and childhood are socially constructed.) And we know that much of what the public considers healthy right now does not actually give the benefits people think it does (such as the fact that people “overweight” and “obese” by the BMI chart actually live longer than people it lists as “normal” weight). How would you not consider that a social construct? “Healthy” in our culture is constructed from a lot of false ideas and false assumptions about people’s bodies. This isn’t just a HAES idea. (Indeed, there are a lot of parts of the popular idea of “health” that HAES subscribes to.) If you read the actual medical and scientific literature that’s out there, you’ll find all kinds of things that contradict our idea of health.
And, of course, the popular idea of health leaves out a lot of people, especially people with disabilities, and makes it something they can never attain, but are told they should strive for constantly.
-MG
rebloggable by request
Woah woah woah.
Yes, the definition of WHAT IS HEALTHY FOR YOU is a “social construct,” but what is healthy for your BODY is a construct based off research, experimental results.
Other cultures may have differing opinions on what’s healthy /for someone/, but they absolutely cannot dispute science and what is physically healthy. What bloodletting healthy? Were lobotomies? Trepanation? You can’t just DEFINE what is good for you physically — in that case, why don’t we just throw all medical research that’s ever been done away.
Okay, so, to be clear: what you’re SAYING (I hope) is referring to the /idea of what is healthy/, not what is ACTUALLY, medicinally, healthy.
Is gastric bypass surgery healthy?
Weight loss diets, especially yo-yo dieting?
Consuming large amounts of fake sugar?
Over-exercise to the point of repetitive stress injury, in the name of weight loss?
Spending a quarter-time job on dieting and exercising in combination with a stressful full time job, family, and other obligations?
Putting kids on diets?
Diagnosis #1 of all fat patients being fatness, and Treatment #1 to lose weight, regardless of their complaint, regardless even of whether weight gain was caused by an underlying factor?
Being told to lose weight during pregnancy if you’re over a certain BMI?
Being labeled as high-risk and oftentimes banned from every birthing practice except surgery because you’re over a certain BMI?
Because these (and many more) are all things that are currently considered ‘healthy’ by modern medical ‘science.’
Our collective scientific handle on what is ‘healthy’ is not anywhere near accurate. It’s largely skewed by political considerations like the vast amount of funding available for anti-obesity research, and the agendas of certain politicians who want to link unhealthy lifestyles with whatever kind of lifestyle they personally oppose, moral panics like the obesity epidemic, commercial interests, and private biases.
If what we know about medical science was the size of a frisbee, half of that frisbee would be under dispute, and what we do NOT know would be the size of the entire fucking planet.
I know people who buy into the cult of healthism are prone to buy into this ridiculous worship of current medical science, but please, PLEASE, think a little more critically first.
-ArteToLife
I think healthcare providers should treat the patient in front of them for the healthcare issue that they have using evidence based medicine and informed consent . I would hope that healthcare providers who don’t have what they need to properly treat fat people would be on the forefront of activism to get the tools that they need to help their patients, not trying to hide their fat bigotry in talk about whose fault fat people’s healthcare issues are or how they could treat them if their bodies were smaller.
When you go to the doctor I suggest that you interrupt conversations about whose fault something is and instead ask that your doctor focus on providing you with evidence-based healthcare for the issue that you are presenting with. Some phrases that I find helpful at the doctor are:
• Do thin people get this health issue? Can I get the treatment protocol that they get?
• Can you help me understand how suggesting that I should be blamed for [my health issue] is part of your plant to help me get better? or I disagree that suggesting that I should be blamed for my health issue will help us to treat it so let’s please move on.
• Can we please skip over who is to blame and focus on how we’re going to treat this issue?
• Can you give me the name of a study of a weight loss intervention where the majority of people have lost the amount of weight that you are recommending that I lose and kept it off for the long term, as well as a study that shows that doing so would have long term positive effects on my health?
• Studies from Yale have shown that over 50% of doctors have some prejudice against people of size – do you consider yourself part of that group of doctors?
Regardless, if you go for healthcare you deserve to get care for your health, not suggestions of fault and lectures.
Healthcare, Fault, and Fat People - Dances with Fat (via redefiningbodyimage)
U.S. Has Poorer Health, Higher HIV Rates Compared With Wealthy Nations
When compared with other industrialized nations, Americans have a lower life expectancy, as well as increased rates of injury and disease, USA Today reports. A major report from the National Research Council and Institute of Medicine has conducted a dynamic anlysis of health benchmarks among 17 industrialized nations, including the United States, Australia, Canada, Japan and much of Western Europe.
Despite spending more per capita on health care than any other nation, the United States ranked as the worst in nine major health areas, including: HIV/AIDS prevalence, infant mortality and low birth weight, drug-related deaths, injuries and homicides, teenage pregnancies and sexually transmitted infections, obesity and diabetes, heart disease, chronic lung disease, and disability.
The United States has the highest HIV prevalence among ages 15 to 49. For the past two decades, the country has also maintained the highest rates of adolescent pregnancies. America does, however, fare well in reducing deaths from strokes and cancer, as well as in controlling blood pressure and cholesterol levels. Nearly two thirds of the drag on life expectancy in the United States is a consequence of deaths before the age of 50.
In a release, Steven H. Woolf, a professor of family medicine at Virginia Commonwealth University in Richmond and chair of the panel that authored report, said, “We were struck by the gravity of these findings. Americans are dying and suffering at rates that we know are unnecessary because people in other high-income countries are living longer lives and enjoying better health. What concerns our panel is why, for decades, we have been slipping behind.”To read the USA Today Report, click here.
For a PDF of the National Research Council and Institute of Medicine report, click here.
US flu epidemic worsens, 29 children dead
A flu epidemic gripping the United States is more severe than usual, striking the elderly especially hard, health authorities said Friday as they also announced 29 child victims.
With the nation only about halfway through the season, complications are likely to worsen for those who caught the flu, said Tom Frieden, chief of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.
“We expect to see both the number and rates of hospitalization and deaths to rise further,” Frieden told reporters.
The CDC said 30 states and New York City are reporting high influenza rates, up from 24 states last week. And more than 5,000 people have required hospitalization to treat their flu symptoms. New York has declared a state of emergency over the crisis.
Widespread geographic flu activity was also reported in 48 states for the week ending January 12, up from 47 states the previous week.
Nationwide, influenza rates dropped slightly to 4.6 percent, down from 4.8 percent the previous week.
There is no national reporting system for flu-related deaths among adults, but the CDC said that 8.3 percent of deaths reported through the 122 Cities Mortality Reporting System were due to pneumonia and influenza.
That exceeds the epidemic threshold of 7.2 percent. The rate of flu- and pneumonia-linked deaths the week before was 7.3 percent.
Nine children died last week alone, bringing the total to 29 since the season began in early December. The flu kills an average of about a hundred children in the United States each year. The toll was 34 in 2011-2012.
Can we please bury this progressive myth that the reason poorer people are fatter is because they’re eating more ‘unhealthy’ foods than thinner, richer people?
It smacks of healthist elitism and doesn’t take into account the many other more compelling reasons poorer people are fatter. The fat wage gap, for instance, or stress from being fucking oppressed and poor.
Can we stop trying to find ‘lifestyle’ reasons for fatness in progressive FA circles? The ‘food desert’ argument for fatness, usually coupled with the ‘no time/money for the gym’ argument still put the onus of fatness on people’s personal choices and overall lifestyle, it’s just apologizing for those choices. It’s still worshipping at the Eat Less (Better) Move More! altar.
I’m also really fucking tired of rich elitists forming ‘theories’ of why poor communities are such-and-such. It’s so condescending. That’s a general point, not really a specific point related to fat oppression or thin privilege.
-artetolife
Hey, guess what else? The idea that poor people are fatter is itself a myth.
THANK YOU! Fucking awesome. I haven’t seen this. Folks, take note.
Thin privilege is not worrying that you’ll be given the wrong order because of concern trolling. I overheard a girl who works at Starbucks admit that when someone is overweight, she’ll give them nonfat or soy milk in their drinks and considers this a moral thing to do because they’re so unhealthy and don’t need the extra calories. Thin privilege is thinking its acceptable to control what other people eat and actually scam them by not giving them what they pay for. Not to mention the fact that soy allergies are extremely common and you could actually endanger someone by purposely giving them the wrong order.
Your health does not determine how much respect you receive
No matter how big or how small your body is,
and no matter how healthy you are, or how unhealthy you are,
you deserve respect.
Your body is your own, and no one should ever make you feel *less than* for not meeting up to their visual and health standards.Being healthy does not make you more deserving of respect, just as being unhealthy does not make you less deserving of respect.
If two people run up a flight of stairs, and one is out of air, who do you respect? BOTH.
If three people go from point A to point B, and one drove while another walked, and another used a wheelchair, who deserves respect? All of them.
The examples could go on forever, but the message is, no matter what your body looks like outside, or what’s going on inside, your body is yours, it’s perfect, and you are deserving of respect.
rebloggable by request
You sort of answered the question yourself, and I’ll explain why.
My definition of dieting is the act of willfully restricting yourself with the sole intention of weight loss. It’s usually put under some guise of “but I need to be HEALTHIER!” But what people usually mean by that is “my body will be smaller, so I will feel better about myself.”
This is problematic because we live in a culture that thinks losing weight automatically makes you healthier, which isn’t the case.
Diet-talk can be incredibly triggering for people (like me!) who have been told all their lives (by parents, even!) that if I went on a diet, changed what I ate, “got healthier,” etc. that someone would be able to finally love me. Which, again, reinforces the idea that fat people are inherently unlovable.
Diet-talk also reinforces ideas about “good” foods and “bad” foods which is terrible! It’s not to say that all foods are created equal, but it implies that some foods are universally healthy - and that is not the case.
Ultimately, diet-talk assumes that all bodies are created equally. That if everyone did _______ they would all end up being thin and healthy and self-fulfilling. But everyone can’t be thin. And everyone can’t be healthy. And diets aren’t a proper measure of worth.
And all of that is different than making different food choices in order to feel stronger, to feel that you have more endurance, to feel more flexible, etc. There’s nothing wrong with wanting to feel as though you’re nourishing your body. (Because bodies are awesome and self-care can definitely happen through food and exercise!)
When people hear “I don’t support diets” they think I’m saying “eat cheeseburgers and sit on the couch all day long.” Which isn’t what I’m saying. (But if you wanna do that, go ahead. Your body. Your choice.) What I amsaying is that there is no such thing as universally healthy. What I am saying is that it’s impossible for every person to be healthy all of the time. What I amsaying is that we live in a culture where dieting is fucking everywhere, and it hurts people like me who have been told that their abusers would stop hurting them if only they would go on a diet.
At the end of the day, as long as people aren’t hurting anyone, they should do whatever they want with their bodies. Losing weight is not counter-productive to fat politics. But intentionally losing weight solely because you’ve bought into the idea that smaller bodies are better bodies and going around telling everyone how great your diet is and how they can be just like you!!!111 is most definitely counter-productive to fat politics.
I hope that helps. :)
