I’ve been aware of the “Fat Acceptance” (FA) movement for some time now…on occasion, I’ve dropped in to look around on sites like BigFatBlog or Fatshionista.  Sometimes it feels like visiting another planet — I have a hard time getting into these people’s heads.  But believe it or not — I’m sympathetic to some of the points FA activists make, especially as they pertain to women’s self/body image. 

Let’s face it: it’s virtually impossible to be a woman in Western society, without internalizing images of female beauty that are impossible for real women to live up to.  It starts early in life, with “Barbie” and all those Disney princesses, who — when scaled to human height — would have wasp-sized waists and 38 DD chests (that never sag or bounce).  Success and beauty are intertwined in our fairy tales: only “the fairest of them all” gets to live “happily ever after” with Prince Charming.  It never lets up, either: over the years, women absorb those subliminal messages about thinness = glamour = success at the movies, on TV, and, of course, in those ubiquitous fashion magazines.

That’s fantasy. In reality, hormones and genetics make women more prone to adding fat — and not just in the “pectoral” area, either.  The distance most women have to travel to resemble their fashionably emaciated role models is simply too great: many develop eating disorders as a consequence, or constantly beat up on themselves as they ride a roller coaster up and down the scale — convinced that each diet failure represents moral weakness and lack of character.

Is it any wonder that some women just give up?  Doesn’t surprise me one bit.

The FA movement takes surrender one step further, however.  The Adipositivity Project is a case in point.  The site mission is to promote “size acceptance” and “widen definitions of physical beauty.”  This is a good thing, in principle.  Even thin women struggle to conform to fashion mag standards via liposuction, extreme diets, drugs, breast implants, etc.  But it’s like chasing a rainbow: the media sets the bar so high, that even the models/actresses posing for the pics can’t reach it, and the Photoshop artists have to step in.  That’s sick to the nth power, and FA activists are right to condemn it.

The problem I have with the fat acceptance philosophy, though, lies in its knee-jerk rejection of physical self-improvement and perverse celebration of obesity. Efforts to lose fat are frequently derided as evidence of self-loathing and caving in to societal pressures. FA activists insist fat people are genetically programmed to be fat, thus, any efforts to be unfat are unhealthy (both physically and psychologically) and doomed to failure.

I don’t buy it.  For all the blathering about genetics — human beings weren’t meant to be fat.  What many don’t understand, is that “genetic” doesn’t always imply “inevitable.” What we casually call “genetics” is actually a complex interplay of genes AND environment.  It’s true that we have “thrifty genes” (with some more thrifty than others).  Our tendency to store fat is an adaptation to an uncertain food supply: humans evolved to survive in the face of periodic scarcity.  Early humans were also always on the move: they walked, ran, lifted, carried, climbed, danced, fought.  And hunted: they had to work for their food.  Thus, our remote ancestors may have gained fat at times, but it would have been difficult — if not virtually impossible — to become obese.  Now that food isn’t scarce, however, we don’t have to rely on our reserves.  We don’t have to move very much either: thanks to technology, we sit comfortably — and passively — throughout the day.  In such an environment, our genes work against us to store excess fat in our bodies.

Our modern environment is clearly obesegenic: but that doesn’t mean we must give up and give into it.  An abundance of food means that we also have choices about what, how much and when to eat.  We don’t need to embrace the food industry in the process of rejecting the diet industry. Nor do we need to kill ourselves in the gym to be fit, strong and physically capable.

In other words, it’s not a choice between two extremes — with obesity on the one hand, and futile starvation, pills, surgery, and exhausting exercise on the other.  There’s a middle ground that leaves room for both self acceptance AND self-improvement.

So let’s hear it for a wider definition of physical beauty: I don’t care for the bony look, either. But the Adipositivity Project’s definition is a bit too wide. It’s a fallacy to think that every woman will be able to reach body fat levels in the mid-to-low teens, but we can all be fitter, leaner and healthier. Self acceptance – not Fat Acceptance – is the goal.

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