After a long weekend, and 1,273 comments later, it looks like The Great “Hello, I’m Fat” War of 2011 going on over at our sister wife blog Slog is finally (and thankfully!) coming to an end. Last night Savage posted his own manifesto in response to Lindy’s manifesto—and if you have no idea what’s going on and want to catch up, my Cliff Notes manifesto to all this weekend’s shenanigans resides here.
Anyway, here’s a clip from Savage’s extremely long (for a blog post anyway) response to Lindy’s blog post—NOW WITH OPEN COMMENTS!
Look, Lindy, I hear you. You don’t like my posts about obesity. You don’t think they’re helpful. They’re not necessarily meant to be helpful. You seem to assume that I post in the hope that fat people will read my posts and drop the weight. That’s not my motivation; neither is shaming fat people. I’m interested in the obesity epidemic and I’m following the news about it and I assume other people are too and I’m posting about it and I’m ticked off about some aspects of it (including, yes, the vitriol that has been aimed at me over the years). And, yes, I believe that people should be fit—fit, not skinny; active, not sticks—not because Fat Is Gross, but because healthy—which doesn’t always translate to skinny—is better than non-healthy. it’s pretty much the same reason why I think people shouldn’t smoke or fuck strangers without protection or play on railroad tracks or smoke meth or vote Republican.
I am not, however, responsible for your shame (RIP). You arrived at my posts with your shame, my posts didn’t create it, and you managed to conquer your shame despite my posts. Good for you. (No snark intended in that “good for you.” Seriously, Lindy, good for you.) If you don’t want to read my posts about this subject—about any subject—just skip ’em.
Naturally, this is a bit out of context—there’s much, much more here if you have the time and tenacity to read it. (Now can we finally get back to arguing whether or not Alison Hallett is an “art criminal”?)
Dan just offer to get her a membership to a gym or pay her by the pound to lose the weight, that is obviously what this big loser is angling for…
I have been reminded all over again what a bottomless pit it is to discuss body image issues in public at all. Can’t talk about them critically, can’t talk about them supportively, there tends to be no neutral ground to speak of.
Lots and lots of the people I encountered on Slog and Metafilter did a very familiar number: going on and on about how fine they were with their big, beautiful bodies and then spending the next paragraph attacking those fancy, skinny shitheads who think they’re better than me, and need to go die. It’s really stupid.
So as it happens, you need to take a case-by-case approach on this -different bodies need and are capable of different things- but even that won’t always fly: someone somewhere is always going to be waiting to register their offense, even if you’ve said entirely neutral things.
And econoline; you’re a fucking sack. Knock it off.
Yawn.
The Fat Acceptance crowd is delusional and reactionary. Dan Savage is a professional asshole. Lindy West is a funny fat lady. Thin people are sexier and get laid more often. Why is this an argument?
Dan probably should’ve just stayed in his “undisclosed location” out of range of any modern technology for another week or two.
What I’ve really learned from these threads: Seattle is a horrible place and should be avoided.
Bang on the nose, Fruit Cup.
Aw, Seattle’s fun. Slog kinda sucks, though.
The real question is “What kind of art criminal is Allison Hallett?” Forger? International art thief? Jazz musician (like the one who stole Justin Bieber’s Grammy and should die in a hole)?
FUCK FAT PRIDE. Skinny people are hotter, that’s a fact. Obesitity kills, that’s a fact. People who defend ‘fat pride’ ARE as Graham said delusional. end…
I’m keenly interested in whether or not Allison can’t stand Elvis Costello. As far as I’m concerned, the only art crime she’s guilty of is getting his music stuck in my head whenever I read her name.
But speaking of fat, I’ve been waiting for some savvy internet person to link a YouTube of Mel Brooks performing at Caesars Palace in History of the World Pt. 1, purely for Dan Savages benefit.
@Rich Bachelor, Seattle is fun “to visit.”
Yeah, I think so. There’s a reason I don’t live there, though. Well, lots of reasons…
Listen. While I’m not totally on board with the Fat Acceptance movement, I AM TOTALLY in favor of the Health At Every Size one. Shaming people (Espesh women) into losing weight or conforming to a certain aesthetic ideal is clearly creating more problems than solutions. Making people hate themselves only makes things worse and leads to depression, eating disorders, and sometimes, yes…suicide. So let’s just knock it off with the fat hate speech and stop making people feel worthless as human beings just because they may be overweight. IT IS NOT HELPING ASSHOLES.
@ kiala – ummm, you mean:
IT IS NOT HELPING, ASSHOLES.
right?
@Kiala: I agree that the Health At Every Size concept is vastly superior to the traditional dieting idea (even though they are essentially the same thing, but just described differently); however the Fat Acceptance Movement has completely co-opted HAES idea. It is incredibally difficult to have discussions on this topic with many people due to the amount of emotion tied up in the whole thing. I really look at the vast majority of this problem to be linked to general sexism. You rarely hear the vitriol about fat men as you do in regards to fat women.
But I think we can all agree that Dan Savage’s writing persona is that of being a complete asshole (apparently he’s a really nice guy in person).
What’s fun to visit in Seattle? The Space Needle? Designer clothing stores? Hills?
Kiala, I respect you. I think you’re witty and extraordinarily funny (also, grats on getting tweeted by @Feliciaday – so jealous). And you’re right; health at every size is the common sense approach to respecting others. Which I don’t think is dissimilar from what Dan (and a lot of other commenters) have said in their posts. But, and all for obvious reasons I won’t bother to re-state; the internet is a wasteland. Expecting anonymous people to be courteous, show basic respect to others, or formulate reasonable arguments/assessments is an improbable expectation. There will always be a person who pushes back, even if only to hear their own voice (or, well, keystrokes).
So what does this mean in the context of your post? I think the first, best lesson of learning the internet should be: don’t take the trolls seriously. No one individual commenter can/should be able to give you self esteem and no one individual commenter can/should be able to take it away: except for yourself. Each person is responsible for their own happiness and their own self interest. Letting others shame you out of this triumph is a crime. If Lindsy had a salient point in her original post, to me, this was it.
@fruitcup I mostly get up in arms about people commenting on Btown in an inflammatory manner about this particular issue. Btown is MAH TOWN. Also thank you for your nice comment.
Also Felicia is a friend of mine! She is the best.
@eric Nope. I worry about the mental health of everyone’s asshole too.
@Kiala (and everyone else looking for insight on being healthy at varying sizes) did you read this awesome interview with the new surgeon general about how exercise should be fun and dancing is better than most medicine? READ: http://www.nytimes.com/2011/01/09/magazine…
@smirk I kind of love her.
@graham What I do like about the fat acceptance thing is that a person HAS to feel like their body is worth taking care of before they can even begin to start taking care of themselves. As for it being emotionally charged, well DUH. Our society makes overweight people feel worthless, disgusting and sub human. Not to mention that being very overweight is rarely about eating too much food and not exercising. Those are just the symptoms. So yeah…it’s gonna get emotional because fat people have been told their entire lives they are NOT WORTH A GODDAMN THING. How do you think they got there in the first place?
The other issue is how fat is too fat and that’s the worst part because it is mostly subjective and as you and I have talked about, BMI is a crock of pooh so what we end up with is a bunch of people deciding, based on preconceived biased notions of what a healthy body should look like,that someone is a pre-diabetic, MacDonald’s eating, layabout.
And don’t even get me started on the pressure for women to always look pretty and thin no matter what for the dooodz.
/rant I drank like nine cups of green tea today.
>and as you and I have talked about, BMI is a crock of pooh
It’s a crock in some limited circumstances, but applicable for the vast, vast majority of the human public.
> And don’t even get me started on the pressure for women to always look pretty and thin no matter what for the dooodz.
Isn’t this pressure by women/for women? What sane man would EVER bring up “you need to lose a few before you can be with me, honey” to any female?
@Smirk, great interview, thanks for linking.
@kiala: Since this seems to be the over-sharing hour, I’ll take my turn at something. As someone who’s gone through recovery, it’s pretty easy to not have to worry about my vices. Just don’t put that shit in my body. For people who have issues with over-eating, they still have to keep eating. It’s a biological neccesity. I don’t need to smoke crack or drink alcohol or gamble or whatever. But people still gots to eat.
And when I start complaining about my inability to keep weight on or the problems I have with lack of appetite tied to anxiety (maybe I should smoke pot?), people tell me to shut up. But we need to enter into the linked oppresions matrix and see how a lack of self-esteem and body-type-acceptance is keeping us all from being happy.
Rich Bachelor really nailed it: the fact that this conversation happened in this manner is indicative of how complicated our body image issues are as a culture. It’s become conflated into discussions about our national health, the economy, agribusiness, and the entertainment industry — we can’t reconcile all this shit. Your therapist is telling you to feel good about yourself but you’re reading People magazine in the lobby.
I think it’s more effective, as Graham pointed out, to recognize the problem fat acceptance/HAES represents is really sexism at large. Turning something so widespread and deeply ingrained in us into a binary debate in which a line is drawn and sides are taken is counterproductive. Most rational people can get behind “sexism is bad” and work together on it — from there we’ll be able to resolve a lot more than just OMG fatties.
@graham and cat and beard HUGZZZZZZZ
If Lindy West gets the right lawyer she will be the new editor of the Mercury. Did Savage forgot to run this past legal ?
This is as bad as when Portland allowed gay marriage without having legal look into the Oregon Divorce law first.
In honor of Lindy, I’ll only visit BBW sites for the rest of this month!
Who’s with me?! I’m looking at you WSH. I’ve seen your google search history.
@Rosy
I think you mean Lindy would be the new author of Savage Love.