fatbodypolitics:

shakethecobwebs:

Yeah.

One of the things we really have to work on is the narrative that you must love your body, no matter what. Because some people really can’t, and telling them that it’s their fault is another way of perpetuating self-hate. Not okay.

I really don’t find it helpful to shame someone for struggling with how they feel about their body but as someone who has made it a point to not have weight loss talk on her blog and continually gets told she is shaming people for not opening up the space to those discussions comments like the original one are frustrating. I wouldn’t say that the response was given would be something that I would give myself but the need for people to break apart the idea that thinness = better / healthier is really important to the political issues surrounding fat bodies. What I write is not about personal acceptance because that not only removes the space for people to feel how they want about their own body but also ignores the politics around being fat in our society.

Most body acceptance spaces are open to people discussing weight loss, the idea that feeling better about your body means you need to be thinner etc. When I close my space to not allow comments about weight loss or people conforming to the normative thinking around bodies (ie. Thinner = Healthier) I am creating a space for people who do not want to be surrounded by those messages. 

Also people miss the point of fat activism or politics if they are telling another person to not do what they want with their own body. I have no more right to tell a person to not lose weight than they do to tell me I need to lose weight. The issue is that by not opening up our spaces to weight loss talk it is read as us telling other people what to do, which is completely false. I could give two shits about what another person does with their body but if they want me to congratulate them on their weight loss it’s reinforcing fat stigma. If they want me to congratulate them on feeling better in their body? That is a totally different story.

Yesss to all of the above.