WHAT WE'RE ABOUT
We are constantly redefining our own perspectives, and therefore tend to write a lot about our personal experiences. Many followers and contributors are living with anorexia, bulimia, body dysmorphic disorder, depression, and a variety of other body image disorders or mental illnesses, so please be respectful and remember that health applies differently to everyone. Any and all potentially triggering content will be prefaced with a trigger warning.
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We are not health professionals. Any and all advice provided on this blog is supported only by our own research, studies, and personal experiences; nothing more.
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I received the following question from toboldlygothere:
I’ve been following your blog as part of a personal study because I hadn’t really developed my opinion yet on the whole “body image/fat shaming” subject. I think I have finally reached a conclusion and I wanted to get your opinion.
I think advocating any body type as superior to any other is the wrong approach. People should advocate healthy diets (diet meant as what one eats on a daily basis, not an altered eating habit) and an active lifestyle. Whatever body someone has after that should be regarded as healthy and wonderful. I also think that what someone finds physically attractive is unique and personal and no one should be criticized for having a preference for the big, the small, the tall, the short etc. It’s wrong to shame someone just because they find larger people attractive and it’s wrong to call someone an asshole just because they don’t find fat people attractive.
That being said, I do think it’s very important to be healthy. This is an optimization of mental and physical health. If being perfectly physically fit causes you stress or anxiety, the balance is off. Likewise, being blissfully happy with your ass on the couch and your head stuck in a cookie dough tub (even if you’re skinny) is also a poor balance. The balance point is different for everyone, and I think everyone knows when it feels right.
First of all, thank you for following!
I agree that advocating one body type over another should never be encouraged. All bodies are good bodies! That is my favorite thing to say.
It is all well and good to encourage healthy and active lifestyles - but it is important to acknowledge that health and fitness do not have universal definitions. They apply to everyone differently, as people live different lives and experience different medical/mental conditions that make it hard for them to live up to certain universally accepted definitions of health/fitness.
It is also important to acknowledge that your personal level of health and experience with fitness should not be expected out of everyone. What works for you may not work for someone else. We should respect everyone’s ability to asses and define their own bodies, health, and levels of fitness.
So yes, definitely - the balance is different for everyone and it’s up to you to know what feels right. Being “fit and healthy” is a great thing to aspire to, but the result and the path to being “fit and healthy” is not set in stone - it is super malleable. There are so many things to take into account.
It is also important to consider and question why we put so much emphasis on the moral value of being “healthy” - not everyone wants to be “healthy” in the same way that is societally accepted. Not everyone is capable of reaching that pristine level of health, and that doesn’t make them any less virtuous or worthy of love and respect than those who are capable of reaching those levels.
(There is also a great post by a friend of mine that I reblogged ages ago and love to refer to whenever this topic comes up. Check it.)
For some people, mental health takes precedence over physical health. For some people, sitting on the couch with a tub of cookie dough is a form of self-care. Why should we deny anyone that happiness? At the end of the day, it is THEIR body and THEIR choice, and that needs to be respected.
Some people don’t get to choose. I didn’t get to choose the hand I was dealt. I don’t have the luxury of being able to work out every day, thanks to various mental/physical conditions that make it hard to be as active as I’d like to be. Instead of being hard on myself for not sticking to a work-out regime, I have to stay satisfied with the level of activity I can handle, and trust that I am doing the best I can in the body I have. That’s all anyone can do.
okay, so the way i see it we’re indoctrinated to believe that health is a virtue, but what does that even really mean? and what does it mean for people with chronic illness or life-long disabilities?
why do we put any kind of moral value on one’s health? that’s what i disagree with. i don’t think that we can flat out state “health is a virtue” without looking at where that idea came from and how it effects people today. like—by saying health is a virtue are we saying that there’s something morally wrong with me because i have mental health problems (depression, anxiety)? or that my mom was morally wrong when she had a hip that hurt her all the time, and now that it’s made of metal and she’s “healthy” she’s somehow more virtuous? or that there’s something morally wrong with people who discover at 21 that they have a gluten allergy and that’s why they’ve felt ill for a year and a half? what about babies with congenital diseases? are they somehow less “virtuous” or good because of it? and doesn’t that seem a little ridiculous? and what’s “moral” about choosing to eat a carrot instead of an apple fritter? why should morality or virtue even enter into our conversation surrounding health in that way?
i think “virtue” is also an interesting thing to look at because historically it referenced women’s virginity, mainly. and it was something you either had or you’d lost. once it was gone, it was gone. all very patriarchal, ensuring you’d know who everyone’s father was so you could make sure they get the correct inheritance and are given just the right amount of respect in society. there are also some really absurd religious underpinnings of a lot of ideas of health as virtuous—even so much that for many centuries if you were ill the church thought that it was punishment from god, or that you had a touch of the devil in you, etc. etc. (this book is really interesting in terms of health and religion and the changes—or not—between the 1400s and the 1980s AIDS crisis.)
i have to admit, this was one aspect of fat positivity it was very difficult for me to wrap my mind around. i remember thinking, “well, but doesn’t everyone want to be healthy?” and the answer is no. no, not everyone wants to be healthy. and there are many people who do want to be healthy and their body just precludes them from ever having “health” as a real possibility. but some people do choose to not make health their highest priority. not everyone thinks that it’s worth it to not eat what they want just to increase the possibility that they’ll live for a really long time. some people want to enjoy life while they’re here, and not drag it out in an endless montage of bran eating and aerobics.
and others LOVE eating bran and doing aerobics! (or at least they love what it does for their body. i don’t think i know anyone who actually enjoys eating bran…except maybe my dad. he’s kind of a bran fanatic.)
you say you “respect everyone’s right to their lifestyle, healthy or unhealthy” and i really believe that you believe that, but this question kind of belies that respect. which is totally understandable! because we are taught endlessly to equate health with goodness. to think of health as a virtue. as something we should always be seeking. the truth is—we are all going to die. some slowly, some quickly, some in accidents, some from decade-long diseases, some supposedly because of “lifestyle choices” and some in ways that their lifestyle choices can’t even begin to explain (those rare people who discover they have late stage lung disease despite never having smoked a day in their life? are they instantly less virtuous?).
however it happens, we’re all going to die. many of us will develop some kind of illness or health issue before we die. in fact, i think it’s safe to say we all will. and i think the idea of health as a virtue is sold on immortality-lite. like—it may not be the fountain of youth, but if you eat this probiotic yogurt you’ll live longer! and if you exercise at least three days a week you’ll live longer! and most of us are afraid of death. so we see these things as good things. and then there are those of us who are trying (and possibly in therapy, ha!) to actively accept that we are all going to die, and along with that make decisions about how we live our lives while we’re here. and that may or may not include “making healthy choices.”
when i was going through my own process of understanding the relationship between health and goodness, i thought “okay, so not everyone wants to be or can be healthy. but doesn’t some transcendent idea of ‘health’ exist out there, and if people could somehow magically change their lives so that they could be healthy, wouldn’t they? because health is good?”
then i read some disability theory.
and really thought about that. and realized that not only was that question totally useless for being so hypothetical, but that it was a way to actively make people who aren’t “healthy” (so…all of us, sooner or later) feel really bad about that, feel like there’s something “wrong” with them and their bodies, feel like there’s some standard that they’re failing to live up to. and i don’t think that’s right or okay. i care more about the people living in various states of health or illness everyday than i do about whether or not health really equates to goodness.
plus—health is murky. “health” on one hand is something that needs the stamp of validation of medical professionals, of people working in a flawed field that’s always evolving but never fast enough. it’s a field that is SO SO SO SO SO rigidly set in sexist, cissexist, racist, classist, etc. ideologies that it’s really difficult to separate those out from good old fashioned “making people feel good and live as long as they’d like to.” then there’s health in terms of how good you feel, how attuned you are to your body. and who are we to say that it’s not healthy for me to have an apple fritter and a cup of chai on the train on the way to school every morning because that’s not healthy? it makes me feel good. it gives me enough energy to get through the first half of the day. it’s good for my soul to eat my apple fritter while i try to see the skyline from the train as it goes south and east and south. why isn’t that health?
if you’re really really interested in this i would suggest reading gendering disability. it made me think about so many things in a new and critical and more well-rounded way.
i’m not saying it’s not okay for individual people to highly value their own health and do things to actively maintain it as much as they can. i’m just saying that when we equate health to virtue or goodness we’re ignoring a lot of the complexities in people’s lives and also the structures that are underlying those ideas. having blanket-statement beliefs about health as a virtue actively contributes to the hurt in a lot of people’s lives.
This was a response to a question on miss redheadbouquet’s blog that really clarifies and articulates a lot of my own opinions on the subject. Everything touched upon here is SO, SO important - I just had to share it.