[2Wycked]

Contrary to popular belief, the fat acceptance has been around in the United States for some time, first being birthed in the 1960's, when many, many discrete groups began to organize around identity politics. The movement is a strong mix of narcissism and female-centrism.

A Brief History Of The Movement

Let's briefly review the movement. Like I have previously said, the first documented fat acceptance acceptance event happened in New York City in 1967. The participants dubbed it a "fat-in" at a restaurant and consumed many, many pints of ice cream. Later that same summer, the first nation-wide movement, which eventually become the National Association For The Advancement Of Fat People (NAAFA). This time period is generally referred to first-wave fat acceptance.

For a brief period of time, moving lockstep with other identity political groups, a militant arm of the movement coalesced into the "Fat Underground," a radical feminist-allied movement whose rallying cry was, "a diet is a cure that doesn't work, for a disease that doesn't exist." The movement never gained much steam as they called for violence against perceived fatphobia.

Accordingly, as American's waistlines expanded, the movement gained ground. This time period has been called second-wave fat acceptance, as Americans needed explanations for their decreasing physical attractiveness & increasingly poor health. Mainstream outlets began to run some sympathetic literature, mostly just viciously attacking the medical establishment & perceived fatphobia of the media at large.

Fat acceptance is currently thought to be the in third wave, which coincides with the birth of the Internet & blogging. Tumblr, online feminist webzines & Wordpress have been credited with advancing the cause.

A Review Of Their Claims



The most accurate summary of fat acceptance dogma here.

Let's review some of their more insistent claims. First, and foremost, is the concept that dieting & exercise don't work. Given the multiplicity of posts on this forum about this subject, I will not talk about the veracity of the claim, just about the psychology presented. The claim that exercise & diet don't work is just so absurdly wrong it begs a reason why they cling to it. Part of this is the inability to accept responsibility for their weight gain - for example, it wouldn't matter if I ate Papa John's wings for dinner or a chicken caesar salad my weight gain or loss would not be affected.

This is a bizarre claim, as it has been conclusively proven that diet does affect health. Not going to link to these studies, as just about everybody is aware of what deficiencies of certain vitamins or food groups can do to a human's body. They are striving to decouple health and body mass, but they focus only on the heftier issue of being overweight. Fat acceptance advocates fold issues of anorexia and related underweight issues into their purview, while ignoring the psychology presented.

If people that are underweight are subject to untoward psychology, why aren't overweight people? They are not just seeking to decouple weight and health issues but to destroy the gamut of human weight. They want people to either considered healthy or underweight. It shows off neatly the psychology: it is all about them. Remember, if you believe in it, it is for you.

Take this study that is often bandied about in fat circles about the failure of dieting. A top comment on the article gets it right:

Quote:

Why aren't we looking at those who successfully lose the weight and keep it off for 2 or more years?

Of course, the commenter is right. We should be looking for the success stories and understanding why they succeeded in the wake of other's failing. What the commenter doesn't understand is narcissism.

Take game-denialists. They desperately need stories of failure of so-called game adherents to fuel their psychology. They don't want to hear stories of men pulling themselves up-by-their-bootstraps, they want to hear about some guy tripping over himself tying his boots while he relied on a technique given to him by a fraud.

That is the simple psychology of fat acceptance-activists and their denial of the science of dieting. Remember, if you are reading it, it is for you. Unable to bear hearing about successful dieting approaches, personal stories about weight loss or just seeing the photos of the so-called "weight privileged," they demand media conform to their perceptions of their value.

The study cited does not consider narcissism as a reason for the failure - or just general inability to change. So people can't keep the weight off for long periods of time? Sounds like a personal problem to me, not the diet's problem.

Babies are born being able to select physically attractive faces from those that are not. This damning evidence for the fat-acceptance movement, as fat faces are rarely considered attractive because fat is unattractive and, most importantly, alters attractive features. A healthy man with a strong jaw becomes an unhealthy man with a weak chin when he is fat.

Another serious issue is the insistence that fat people, as a discrete class, need to be consulted on public health policy that affects fat people. This is a curious claim, as it tries to democratize what is, essentially, a dogmatic movement based on narcissism. Any fat person who deviates from the dogma is not included in the movement.

Most importantly, here, is the notion that being a member of a class somehow confers a level of perception that non-members cannot access. This is classic narcissistic armor and it is wholly untrue. This approach is most used to defend feminist claims of male privilege, it is also used to defend claims of racism and homophobia. Being a member of a discrete class does little beyond signify you belong to said class. Like anything else in life, what you do with that is determined by you. You may have great insights to provide, you may not. In your thoughts and ideas people will judge you for you have to offer.

Which feeds into the next point, is the fear of being judged that fat acceptance-activists wish to counter. Instead of encouraging positive traits in fat people (that aren't related to you looking in the mirror and declaring yourself awesome), the main thrust is to change wider society so that they never have to confront their own issues. This never works for anybody. At the end of the day, you always have to close your eyes with no psychology to consider but your own.

Finally, a point is made that all humans deserve bodily autonomy. They consider decisions on being fat as relating to personal autonomy. That is terrible approach, as it brings in the age-old liberal adage, "your autonomy ends where my feelings begin." If you get fat, you will get medical issues and not just affect the appropriation of my tax dollars, but you will affect my life personally as you could have been a woman I married, but you are either too fat to be interesting or dead. You can have been my doctor, but you decided to major in Fat Studies and now is a professional fat-ass.

The serious issue with "your autonomy ends where my feelings begin" approach is that there is rarely an action one can take that does not affect somebody else. I am not sure there are any actions of consequence that be undertaken that will not affect at least one person. Exercising autonomy often implicates limiting other's options - to pretend otherwise is ludicrous. The marrying of autonomy and personal preference is just plain ridiculous.

Mutable Versus Immutable Characteristics

My response: You choose to fat, you didn't chose to be black.

Still, note any fat guys on the panel? If you watching it, it is for you - fat men are not the target demographic.

Meme Roth messed this up, as she played right into the black woman's frame. After Meme said, "Did you really say that?" the black woman immediately retorts - in a very condescending voice - to "Calm down."

What Meme experienced was transference. The black woman, with Meme's consent, transferred her anger onto Meme, allowing Meme to express her anger that she doesn't want to admit. The black woman eventually accuses Meme of projection. It isn't ironic, because this black woman needs to drag in race to shore up her nonexistent argument that fat people face the same discrimination that black people do.

If Meme was more in control, she would have dismissed the black woman's claim by dismissively saying, "That is blatantly false," with the intent and hope that the said woman responds, revealing her intense anger.

The overarching issue with fat acceptance is the fact that a fat person is that way because of their actions.

To be sure, many children are raised to believe their unhealthy eating habits are okay. Still, it is their responsibility to change. Information about healthy eating isn't just accessible, but taught in schools.

It is supremely intellectually dishonest to pretend fatness and blackness are exchangeable when considering "oppression." People don't decide to be black, but they do decide if they are fat. Just because you are too weak & lazy to change doesn't mean society should change to accommodate said personal deficiencies. The aforementioned article lumps hate-speech in with characterizations of fat people as lazy, gluttonous, etc. It speaks to narcissism because if a narcissist can't get worship, they will fall back on hatred.

Can't appreciate my body for all of its glory? You must hate it!

It is supremely childish to make such arguments. Often times, people are just indifferent towards you. They don't think about you at all. Like the one woman who took multiple photos of her fat body in public, she focused on the looks directed at her, but she ignored the fact that most people just didn't care about her.

The truth is that this movement needs to be deconstructed and this lone post by me isn't enough. The constant insistence on "being fierce" is clearly narcissistic, but the ever-present insistence that they are "happy" is telling.

They are not happy. They need you to believe they are happy in order to delude themselves that they are happy.

More to come on this movement.

[LeBeau]

One of my favourite perspectives on this:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fat_accepta...#Criticism

Quote:

Dr Arya Sharma, a Canadian obesity specialist, has accused fat acceptance advocates of using bad science tactics – of the kind previously used by the tobacco industry to promote denial of the health risks of smoking – to suggest that there is no such thing as an obesity epidemic, or that being overweight is completely health neutral.

The more I see of this "healthy at any size" bullshit, denying of evolutionary biology, etc. the more I think of an effective and attention getting way to position criticism against feminists:

"When it comes to science, Feminism is the new Creationism"

[bacon]

As usual great write up 2Wycked

I was talking to a friend about women a couple weeks ago and since he has never been exposed to the writings of the manosphere and some of the terminology I introduced him to the idea of the female hamster. Funny enough the first example I used explain the female hamster was the fat acceptance movement. Explaining how fat women can delude themselves to thinking being fat is beautiful/healthy etc when any honest/non delusional person knows differently was like a eureka moment for him in getting the hamster anology and naturally from that example I expanded into other areas of the female hamster in action. As 2wycked pointed out the fact that his fat acceptance movement is almost entirely female driven is just evidence of the hamster in full effect.

[aphelion]

Excellent post. Had no idea that the FA movement started all the way back in '67, and I can see how narcissism plays a big part in the psychology. I don't think I had a label on it before.

[TheKantian]

I think a key point for fat apologists is the equivocation of the word 'diet'. My understanding is medical health professionals take the word 'diet' to refer to the year long daily habits of eating whereas fat apologists take it to be a short term thing, e.g. The 24 hour Hollywood diet.

So it follows naturally under medical guidelines that an alteration in a diet will produce changes, but a fat apologist takes that as merely saying, "Eat a little less now and then go back to normal." For fat apologists it's always about justifying the now.

[Vronsky]

A female friend of mine always struggled with her weight, trying different diets and doing chronic cardio, with little to show for it. This was in contrast to other areas of her life, like education, career and hobbies, where she exerted discipline and consistence.
She was making some noise about fat acceptance until she discovered paleo and the weight slid off her. It's been over 2 years and she still managed to keep the weight off, with little effort as she likes this diet and finds it sustainable (unlike low-fat/low-calorie diets she tried in the past). She admits that she was prepared to buy into fat acceptance because she was at the end of her rope and was prepared to give up and "accept" her weight as it was. Thankfully, she did not and she even introduced paleo to me and our social circle after we couldn't ignore the changes she went through.
You'll see more girls leave "fat acceptance" when more sustainable ways of eating that enable optimal BMI gain mainstream coverage, as I notice it's slowly happening.

[MikeCF]

Why don't you have a blog bro?

Your posts are gonna get lost in the forum archives.

[lurker]

I'm glad you decided to go this route, as it's been on my mind lately:

http://logicate.wordpress.com/2013/07/11...ng-part-i/
http://logicate.wordpress.com/2013/07/14...g-part-ii/
http://logicate.wordpress.com/2013/07/17...-part-iii/

Would you mind reading Part II and giving some thoughts on the last fallacy discussed? I want to further the discussion of issue compensation as a narcissistic coping mechanism, and I'd like to hear from people who have a real in-depth understanding of what narcissism is and means.

[Gmac]

(07-20-2013 05:28 PM)MikeCF Wrote:  

Why don't you have a blog bro?

Your posts are gonna get lost in the forum archives.

I have to agree. It's about time to start publishing your work.

[lurker]

(07-20-2013 04:42 PM)TheKantian Wrote:  

I think a key point for fat apologists is the equivocation of the word 'diet'. My understanding is medical health professionals take the word 'diet' to refer to the year long daily habits of eating whereas fat apologists take it to be a short term thing, e.g. The 24 hour Hollywood diet.

So it follows naturally under medical guidelines that an alteration in a diet will produce changes, but a fat apologist takes that as merely saying, "Eat a little less now and then go back to normal." For fat apologists it's always about justifying the now.

This is a key fallacy that underlies a large portion - no pun intended - of the fat apologist movement, and your message needs to be distilled to a catchy talking point. I suggest the following:

"You don't go on a diet. You have a diet. And if your diet doesn't work, you change your diet."

[Dusty]

The bottom line about the fat acceptance movement: they don't want to stop eating tons of bad shit, and they are too lazy to get off their fat asses and work out regularly. So they rationalize.

[placer]

One thing to keep in mind when looking at fat acceptance is that, once upon a time, fat women were considered attractive (look at 19th century nude paintings, for example). I once read in David M. Buss' The Evolution of Desire that how fat a woman should be (or not be) to be considered sexy is culturally dependent, but that a waist-to-hip ratio of 70% was considered ideal for women, regardless of culture.

[Ensam]

(07-21-2013 09:51 PM)placer Wrote:  

One thing to keep in mind when looking at fat acceptance is that, once upon a time, fat women were considered attractive (look at 19th century nude paintings, for example). I once read in David M. Buss' The Evolution of Desire that how fat a woman should be (or not be) to be considered sexy is culturally dependent, but that a waist-to-hip ratio of 70% was considered ideal for women, regardless of culture.

Yeah, but this:


is what the ideal was. Clearly fat, but a chick with that physique today would probably be considered average (at least on OKC).

[zwyjibo]

(07-21-2013 10:32 PM)Ensam Wrote:  

(07-21-2013 09:51 PM)placer Wrote:  

One thing to keep in mind when looking at fat acceptance is that, once upon a time, fat women were considered attractive (look at 19th century nude paintings, for example). I once read in David M. Buss' The Evolution of Desire that how fat a woman should be (or not be) to be considered sexy is culturally dependent, but that a waist-to-hip ratio of 70% was considered ideal for women, regardless of culture.

Yeah, but this:


is what the ideal was. Clearly fat, but a chick with that physique today would probably be considered average (at least on OKC).

The whole "Reubenesque women were ideal" meme seems like post hoc rationalization to me. Sure, the upper classes were overweight and celebrated on that, but celebration of station in society is not the same as creating images of what is physically appealing. During the Renaissance, artists created depictions of their patrons in order to appease them. This just reflects who was in charge, with whom favor was desired, and not what the artist subjectively felt was beautiful.

But, more to the point: Religion would never allow the creation and display of works that were *actually* stimulating. In addition to appeasing the power structure, Reubenesque figures were sufficiently un-enticing to be fit for mass consumption. Anyone who created something that stirred any real desire would have been excommunicated or worse.

H/T Roissy for promulgating this idea several years ago.

[Ensam]

(07-21-2013 10:41 PM)jdevoy Wrote:  

The whole "Reubenesque women were ideal" meme seems like post hoc rationalization to me. Sure, the upper classes were overweight and celebrated on that, but celebration of station in society is not the same as creating images of what is physically appealing. During the Renaissance, artists created depictions of their patrons in order to appease them. This just reflects who was in charge, with whom favor was desired, and not what the artist subjectively felt was beautiful.

But, more to the point: Religion would never allow the creation and display of works that were *actually* stimulating. In addition to appeasing the power structure, Reubenesque figures were sufficiently un-enticing to be fit for mass consumption. Anyone who created something that stirred any real desire would have been excommunicated or worse.

H/T Roissy for promulgating this idea several years ago.

Those are all great points. I have my doubts that the proportions that we find attractive today are really that different from what was attractive just 400 years ago. The point I was trying to make is that most of the chicks who claim that bigger women used to be the ideal are much larger than the actual women Ruben painted.

[Dusty]

[soup]

not enough pixels on my screen to view that kaiju

[soup]

(07-21-2013 08:01 PM)Gmac Wrote:  

(07-20-2013 05:28 PM)MikeCF Wrote:  

Why don't you have a blog bro?

Your posts are gonna get lost in the forum archives.

I have to agree. It's about time to start publishing your work.

He probably hasn't yet because there is less pressure here and he already has a built in audience.

Once he gets enough attention here, it might make sense to start directing people to his blog.

[LeBeau]

(07-20-2013 10:08 AM)LeBeau Wrote:  

One of my favourite perspectives on this:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fat_accepta...#Criticism

Quote:

Dr Arya Sharma, a Canadian obesity specialist, has accused fat acceptance advocates of using bad science tactics – of the kind previously used by the tobacco industry to promote denial of the health risks of smoking – to suggest that there is no such thing as an obesity epidemic, or that being overweight is completely health neutral.

The more I see of this "healthy at any size" bullshit, denying of evolutionary biology, etc. the more I think of an effective and attention getting way to position criticism against feminists:

"When it comes to science, Feminism is the new Creationism"

So I plug the "Feminism is the new Creationism" quote into Google, curious to see if the forum is one of the top links.

Turns out someone beat me to it, but at least he used it for a decent rebuttal article:

http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424...60054.html

And another search turns up a criticism of the above NYT article.

And the author, to no one's surprise anymore, is a male PHD candidate with a beard:

http://thebubblechamber.org/2013/01/woul...chologist/

[LeBeau]

(07-21-2013 11:53 PM)soup Wrote:  

not enough pixels on my screen to view that kaiju

Saw Pacific Rim last week, well played Soup

Maybe they're saving her for the sequel?

I heard the plot has something to do with a food crisis...

[Handsome Creepy Eel]

Lindy West would be a category 5 kaiju for sure Great reference!

p.s. also, "men preferred fat women in previous centuries" is just a myth. First of all, the plump-women painters are just a small fraction of all painters. Second, their "plump" woman would be just average today. Third, the unattractiveness might have been intentional. Fourth, this woman is not fat:

[w00t]

Quote:

the first nation-wide movement, which eventually become the National Association For The Advancement Of Fat People (NAAFA)

Sometimes I think this is just satire is this shit for real??