Tuesday 21 December 2010

FA 101

Fat acceptance 101 is perplexing. FA has always seemed to be slight at times embarrassingly so, philosophically speaking. It follows well aired ideas of equality etc., I have never cared one jot about that, my feeling is our protest is reasonable so if we feel there's something to complain about, that is likely to be correct.

We certainly need to be heard, apart from anything we've followed orders.

Even if something seems trivial and a lot of people care about it, by that fact it ceases to be trivial.

What excites as opposed to exercises is that it falls along a network of differing conjunctions and themes which reflects the uses people make of the obesity persona. It looked like a microcosm of so many aspects of how society regulates itself in a way that is not so obvious from other angles. A lot of them are surprising unpredictable, fascinating.

Crusade BS is the surface is dull as ditch water when it isn't mind numbing or laughably appalling. What some groups in society can get away with is truly breathtaking-again.

Take the way that it has become a vehicle for a strange voyeuristic at times rather lascivious observing of the bodies of (fat) children, with women joining in at times. Pouring over fat children's bodies commenting on every detail in a most unwholesome tone. How ironic in the midst of the often mentally dead farrago surrounding sexualisation of children.

There was a  study that uncovered the possibility that fat girls were more likely to have under age and (unprotected) sex than slimmer categories. What mainstream comment ignored is the effect of this invasive attention on their bodies.

Teaching them to see rather than feel and exist in their own bodies, on the contrary, prioritising weight loss can cause a numbing and estrangement from their own bodies and/or selves. Coupled with sometimes being ahead developmentally whilst not necessarily mentally and you have the potential for exploitation.

Down grading of one's sense of self worth is not good either and fodder for them that prey on those who are insecure and unsure.

I'm digressing point is, why would you need FA explained to you I thought? It's difficult to know what there is to explain, surely its harder not to get than not? Let's stop stigmatizing fatness, or treat fat people as any others, apply the same rules to them as anyone else.

People know this full well, and they've literally decided to suspend disbelief about ascribing the obesity persona to fat people. They always claim we are forcing them to mess with us, because we are talking about good people having trouble owning their wilful conscious badness.
 
Rather like you do when you fuse your favourite TV character with the actor playing the role. Drawn to the character as some point the player becomes the role, the character you can find you forget the actors name.

This is similar to what has happened with fat people, everyone knows we are the same variety of people as them, in essence yet they at some point decided or agreed to go along with the fiction that we are "the obese", the cyphers for what that's come to represent and now they can't remember that they are doing this themselves.

It's all so real.

You cannot imagine how odd that looks from this end. It's tolerable until you add a superiority of people who because they have the mainstream guff down pat, have to be imbued with the assumption that fatz are stupid (yes even though they are themselves) and they need things eck-splained to them. If you're starry eyed asking people to teach you about something, try a bit of humility i.e. acknowledge and respect your own ignorance. Or don't and forget about it. And hold your credulity about fat people until you can grasp what is being said.

Questioning is not the problem, it's the assumption that you're right-because you are imbued with the mainstream, and people in FA must be wrong, because you've dumped the stereotype of fat people on them-to get it off yourself.

Really, don't sell yourself so cheaply.

I finally understand that the best way to understand a fat acceptance101 is a list of pointers to help people to stem the course of their own suspended disbelief. Whilst they continue with it.

Maybe that can work!

Perhaps people are desperate for FA to be so convincing that they are forced to abandon their nonsense, other than that, they will continue.

So me thinking, why not just stop pretending and see if that makes it all better? Isn't going to cut it.

No comments:

Post a Comment