Fat Acceptance

[talon]

http://www.reuters.com/article/idUSTRE6584WO20100609

"I've always been comfortable with myself," she said. "It was just everybody else that wasn't comfortable with me."

While I am not happy with her reason to become the fattest woman, I totally agree with her quote above.

I'm not happy with her reason because 1) I feel she's not as comfortable with herself as she says she is, 2) there's something a bit destructive in (not this article but others I've read about her) in her attitude towards weight in general, 3) she's not as healthy as she claims to be, not if she has diabetes and struggles to do normal daily tasks, 4) I know few fat people who are actively seeking to become fatter just for the sake of publicity, and 5) she's presenting herself as something abnormal - a fat person with a regular family.

I think it's that last one that annoys me the most. I know a lot of fat people (myself included) who have regular families. She's not the only one and that she's presenting herself as something unusual in that regard just riles me all up.

I don't want someone like her presenting herself as a "spokesperson" for fat people.

Go for the publicity, if that's what she wants, and best wishes to her on that, but how dare she claim she's representing the average fat person when she's not? I know very few fat people who are actively seeking to be fatter for any reason, and none at all that are doing it to seek fame and glory. Most of the fat people I know who are seeking fame and glory do so on their merits, not their weight. Honestly, it takes no talent to be fat, and to seek fame for physical attributes has always seemed a cop-out to me. It doesn't matter what the physical attribute is - weight, eye color, hair, fingernail length, whatever.

It also reminds me a lot of a woman I once knew because her daughter was friends with mine who actively sought to become handicapped so she could claim welfare benefits after her daughter was too old for her to claim them as a mother. She smoked heavily, deliberately gained weight, and engaged in destructive behaviors that led to her having diabetes, a weight disability, and eventually had several strokes and a heart attack or two (I didn't keep count). She got her wish to be disabled, but I don't think she's happy with what happened.

And the smoking? Never damaged her or her daughter. She gave up smoking because it didn't give her emphysema or lung cancer or anything like that. She was very disappointed and even considered suing the tobacco companies because she didn't suffer harm from 30 years of smoking 5 or 6 packs a day.

I don't like seeing people engage in self-destructive behavior, and I feel what Ms. Simpson is doing is similar to what my daughter's friend's mother did, only Ms. Simpson isn't as honest about it.

I don't consider Ms. Simpson's actions to be true fat acceptance. If she truly was comfortable with her weight, she'd let nature take its own sweet course and be happy at whatever weight she landed at and not be actively attempting to gain more, especially not to gain more in order to bust some world record or gain notoriety for it.

I am happy with my weight. It's been pretty steady for the last 20 years which means this is the weight my body likes. I am healthy, active, strong, and with great stamina. I know this because of volunteer work I do and the fact that I outlast and do more than much younger, thinner people do at the tasks we do.

My bad knees and wrist are not weight-related issues - the knees were injured in an auto accident and the injuries appear permanent a year and a half later, and the wrist was caused by a slip on ice last winter and there's nerve damage that can't be fixed. In both the knees and the wrist, my injuries would have occurred whether I was fat or thin, and in both cases the injuries would have been worse if I'd been thin. I'm pretty happy with my weight.

I don't think Ms. Simpson is happy with her weight.