Friday 28 November 2008

Weight shouldn't be an issue for feminists, but is

I have to admit I had some fun reading this. Of course the writer is rightly outraged at Germaine Greer's claim that thinness should preclude you from being a feminist icon, not a feminist, a woman or a sentient being, merely a feministicon.

If Greer's views on slimness are vexatious her views on fat have had a varied trajectory. She isn't alone, Joan Smith has lots to say on the matter, apparently originally inspired by her father, a smoker Because as we know, being a smoker is just like being a fat person, anyhow it's nice to know that this has inspired an intense sense of duty in Joan to warn fat people of their impending doom if they don't stop smoking food.

These days, obesity is anything but a joke, but a feeling that fat people are funny and pathetic persists, not least because severe weight problems are unevenly distributed in terms of class. In gatherings of affluent, health-conscious people, I hardly ever see obese individuals, but bus stations and cut-price supermarkets are full of them. I am struck by their evident physical discomfort and embarrassment, as they try to fit themselves into seats and spaces designed for healthy people.

Nice, classism Joan! And then, appropos of nothing:
...there's nothing funny about three-year-olds who are so fat they can't breathe.

Thanks, for the tip, next time I see a fat non breathing three year old, I'll remeber not to find it funny.

Feminism has a lot to work out when it comes to weight, fat or thin, when Greer was slim or the memory of slimness was still her internal body image picture, we all have one we carry around that we think of ourselves as, until we correct it with the vision of how we really look, she had a problem with fatness, now it seems that picture is sufficiently frayed enough around the edges, that she now instinctively feels it's time to start on the slender, that's how personal weight is. It goes beyond ethics beliefs and rationality in fact.


This is turning out to be a real lost opportunity for feminism.
As for Cheryl Cole, I find it hard to forget that she this, she was subsequently convicted

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