Thursday 14 April 2016

Bodies Must Not be Made Obscene

Do not pathologize bodies. Pathologizing bodies, pathologizes people. Size is not a diagnosis nor the absence of one. Over and again rinse repeat.

The advance of this body politicking where the let's face it envy of those who do not feel they're slim or thin enough is barely hidden behind concern-trolling oneupmanship of calling thin people, "unhealthily thin."

Save any thin tears though. This is aided and abetted by the insistence that weight is a choice, this easily slides into one you need to answer for. If you insist that is so for fat people, then you define it as being so for anybody thin or otherwise. The surprise for thin people was that they thought it had been agreed this was only for fat people.

But an idea this dominant-one made to explain everything about weight- is bound to spread, resentments and jealousies drive it to be "weaponised."

I expected this experience to put off most thin people. Apart from an admirable minority nope. Most of them keep on with this 'obese' is bad, failing to see the noose they're making for their own bodies.

Encore un peu, the fashion industry is peopled by certain classes. Any implied or actual worship of thinness or anorexia has its basis in said classes. They are the producers and the disseminates of both, required slimness and anorexia as the route to achieve it.

Ergo, pointing to the rag trade/advertising and its more glamourous workers as causative of middle/upper class mayhem is a way of evading this reflection of avoiding social (class) and often personal commitment to the thinspo ideal.

The desire is to salvage this standard whilst wanting to appear to distance oneself from it real life consequences. A bit like when we're told we must strive endlessly to "lose weight" but not to go to extremes.

The brutality of supporting something associated with harming the daughters of such groups is worth pointing out, especially when no one seems to have any trouble with the idea that working class people are carelessly killing their children with fatness.

A lot of apocryphal ob-related accusations are just confessionals bursting forth. The infamous "promoting obesity" springs back to mind.

This whole currency of thin is pretty ruthless, trying to turn certain bodies into obscenities is part of that mess. The Muslim world is supposed to be so inexplicable in its cloaking of the female body. What then is expected of thin and fat bodied people, apart from cover up and wear baggy clothes? Or presumably go into hiding until they fatten up/slim down?

Bodies are not the cause of anorexia or other hunger/eating disorders, but even if they were, that's got to be a matter for the afflicted person concerned. Even children must learn to live with different bodies. No one should feel they have to be protected from their personal response to other people's bodies, as if it is the fault of those bodies.

It's another example of the extraordinary extent to which slimstream can externalise its personal dramas, whilst claiming ob is where that behaviour is epitomised. Not so.

It's preposterous-and always has been-for the educated middle/upper classes to claim that they cannot explain to their daughters [and sons] that it is not up to them to attain the body of a (thin) model.That their duty to their body's and therefore their own needs supercedes any urge to impersonate others. That these models are often picked precisely for their genetic attributes.

That is what fashion pays them for. 

Admittedly, that's a whole lot harder if you insist on teaching them that weight is pure choice. And that proto-anorexia is "healthy weight loss." Why then shouldn't modelling [or looking like one] also be a choice for an achievement-orientated, social currency trading bourgiebot?

Tell them it is not a good idea for anyone, including them, to try achieve this artificially-at least until there's a way to reverse weight that is benign.

How's that harder than putting your whole family on a life sentence slimming and exercise regime?

As it is, I see nothing wrong with the models on show here, all waving their hands in the air like they just don't care, whilst being thin. Some people still genuinely are [no names]. They're hardly portraying the picture of youth expiring for want of energy.

They seem to be around that post-puberty, thinner than they maybe later stage.

Let them be

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