no boys allowed in the room!!!!

unnecessarily trying to humiliate/degrade you sure as hell isn't required for an accurate blood test.

Damn straight.

And I'm happy to get on the scale for a valid medical reason, fyi. If a nurse explains why (other than "but I need to know"), no problem! I'm not afraid of my weight. I just think it's nonsense that an adult who is not at the doctor for something weight-related needs to be weighed as a matter of course. You can tell I'm fat by looking at me (I'm practically Tongan, it turns out), you know?

It's a little bit of me taking the power back at the doc's too.

Here I will share a childhood anecdote: my mother has always been a little slim thing, and while looking back at pics of myself, I was anything but fat but somehow it got decided that I was. Anyway, she took me to the doc once and the nurse, who my mom knew b/c small town and my mom is a nurse, weighed me and then looked at my mom and said, "Well, I guess she gets her weight from her father."

Here is a representative photo of me at the time:

http://farm4.staticflickr.com/3240/3151636735_94542acb56.jpg

The point being, this shit runs so fucking deep, y'all. Like way down into the bottom of our brains.

Yes, yes it does.

ha yes i have a similar story - when i was about 10 my mother came back from a vacation (with my two younger siblings - i was left to shuffle between relatives for 4 weeks) and told me i had gotten too fat for the clothes she had bought me. i wasn't a skinny but i had TOTALLY AVERAGE body-chub, like any other 10yo kid.

nb my mother is and always has been a big, big lady.

and i think i've told the story here before about how, 5 or 6 years later when the baby fat melted off, she ~~accused me~~ of having an eating disorder, in much the same tone/language you'd accuse someone of committing a crime.

and while i'm here: lol @ that stupid BMI quackery - ytth went for a yearly physical and the dr pulled out the old BMI schtick and told him he was unhealthily overweight, that he needed to lose an incredible amount of weight IMMEDIATELY blah blah blah he was heading towards heart disease and diabetes blah blah blah. all this despite the fact that he has legs of solid steel and is vegan. sure enough, when his blood work came back it was perfect.

y'know one thing I am thankful for is that my parents have generally not made a big deal about my weight

(although my dad is not always super tactful and made me totally mad one time when he was told to stop drinking by the doctor, which he did not but he did cut down, and while still eating an unhealthy diet he lost several pounds due to less booze, and was then all like, well, it is easy to lose weight! you must be eating ~secret pies~ if you are not losing weight

this was at a time when I was counting out every last calorie, and he was very insistent that I was clearly adding it up wrong because he was now the world's leading authority on weight loss - tbh I probably was fudging the figures a bit, it was just the sudden authority thing which pissed me off)

omg justine, my baby fat turned to womanly curves and one night at dinner, my stepmother explained to my father, my younger step bro, and me about how I was clearly bulimic and should stop trying to hide all the binging and purging she was sure I was doing. (tbf, she was a completely fucked up person and I didn't live with them, so while this was pretty par for the course with her, it didn't have the same kind of long-ranging impact as it would if I had the misfortune to live with her.)

xp I bet you weren't fudging the figures at all. The narrative of "fat* people have no idea what they are actually eating" is the tip of the iceberg of gaslighting bullshit that goes on about our weight and our appetites.

*Or dieting or overweight or whatever would have been applicable (I like fat, but I know it's not for everyone).

I'm clearly feeling very militant about fat politics today. Sorry if I'm being to IN YOUR FACE about it. I will chill out!

TOO

arg

no i like it! stay in our faces.

my friend stopped drinking a ton of alcohol--her ex is probably a functional alcoholic, so when they broke up, she thought she would lose all this weight, no problem, and it didn't happen for her.

i too, thought i would see some difference once i stopped drinking every gd night, and no discernible physical change, except for the fact that i *felt* healthier

yeah my mum was truly awesome at helping me adopt healthy eating habits and a positive attitude towards food... the "you're too fat" + "you have a creepy eating disorder" + "here's a double helping of the foods you find most revolting" + "you WILL stay at the table until you've eaten everything on your plate, even if that means you literally sit there till 10pm" = AWESOME YAY FOOD YAY BODY IMAGE

like, i never actually had an eating disorder, even though i did become a dumpy teenager at around 13. at 17 i just went through a typical hormonal bump/growth/whatever and i lost 30 lbs over a really short space of time, i didn't consciously do anything to make it happen.

I get really upset about the Terror of Childhood Obesity because of stuff like that. Kids sizes change as they grow. Kids get chubby, then hit growth spurts, or start to develop. Putting a kid on a diet when a kid needs calories and nutrition to grow is damaging physically and mentally. I mean, sure, get out and move (and build safe playgrounds and get kids asthma medication and move shitty factories out of poor neighborhoods) and make sure healthy food choices are readily available and ketchup is not a vegetable and food deserts are terrible. But "oh no kids are FAT and that is the true problem!" is just misguided and awful. Stop stigmatizing fat (and thus fat kids) and focus on actual health.

A lot of this comes from my personal experience, obviously, of being not particularly fat but still being tagged as The Fat Kid and just being emotionally ground down about it so that by the time my mom was like, "Hey, how about a mega fad diet for my fourth grade daughter?" I was not only excited but really good at starving myself because I was a terrible fat person who didn't deserve food.

For me, food restriction and dieting is self harm. As in, I get in a bad place emotionally for whatever reason and something flips my self-loathing switch and I immediately start planning on how hardcore I'm going to diet and how much food I'm going to deny myself.

of being not particularly fat but still being tagged as The Fat Kid

Proud to say I have overcome this to grow into the Fattest Woman in the World, however.

I hardly even knew what diets were when I was a teen. But I did worry about my non-existent belly and srsly didn't wear a bikini until I was 18 and even then only once or twice. Now you can't get me out of a bikini, tummy or no tummy. And yet I sort of mourn not ruling the beach/park/backyard in my teens and early 20s, haha... We are who we are and who we see ourselves to be...

My best/oldest friend is quite fat and has gone through unrelated health problems (hernia due to shitty c-section repair, for one) and the treatment from doctors made me want to punch someone. Interestingly, when we were growing up, she wasn't 'the fat one' and I wasn't 'the thin one' because neither of us identified w that - she called me 'straight-As since birth' and I called her 'hollywood gossip encyclopedia' - lol. I think she's just really good at rolling her eyes and surviving the prejudice. Even her (often superficial, alcoholic) mom couldn't get it through her head when my friend got married 9 years ago that it was real love (and remains so) - made me realize even more so that judgment/prejudice has v little to do with the person being judged and everything to do with the one who's judging (and the culture, multifold as it is, that breeds that).

That bbc BMI thing is awful!! holy eff. I'm below average but I don't even know what that means - they seem to give it so much context but it's all bullshit (and racist/sexist/classist?) context so meaningless. Tho I do think Senegal is a rad country regardless of my personal body fat percentage's association with it.

I get really upset about the Terror of Childhood Obesity because of stuff like that. Kids sizes change as they grow. Kids get chubby, then hit growth spurts, or start to develop. Putting a kid on a diet when a kid needs calories and nutrition to grow is damaging physically and mentally. I mean, sure, get out and move (and build safe playgrounds and get kids asthma medication and move shitty factories out of poor neighborhoods) and make sure healthy food choices are readily available and ketchup is not a vegetable and food deserts are terrible. But "oh no kids are FAT and that is the true problem!" is just misguided and awful. Stop stigmatizing fat (and thus fat kids) and focus on actual health.

― carl agatha, Tuesday, July 17, 2012 5:44 PM (1 hour ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

Yeah, this is tricky. I work in a research institute and a lot of the research that goes on there revolves around obesity in children and what that means for their future health as adults. I have very mixed feelings about it.

God, I could talk about this shit forever. I won't but I could. I really hate the fact that when I try to lose weight but don't I feel like a complete fucking failure at life. It's how I'm feeling now and it's awful but this shit is instilled so deep in my brain that it's near impossible to overcome ime.

my mom (who i am pretty sure would be Tongan-associated according to the BBC) went through a phase with one of her sisters (who is thin), where her sister would regularly include dieting tips clipped out of magazines and newspapers along with the letters and New Yorker cartoons she'd send my mom in the mail every couple weeks. needless to say, my mother did not appreciate this, and after five or six months of this, retaliated by sending her sister a packet of photos of Ethiopian famine victims cut out of magazines, with an undoubtedly passive-aggressive post-it note attached to them. Soon after, the diet tips stopped arriving.

That is awesome, kudos to your mom.

my aunt just could not understand why my mom would be offended by being sent all those helpful diet tips

i was just re-watching the trailer for LCD Soundsystem: Shut-up and Play the Hits and was thinking, wow, James Murphy is not a super attractive man but i've never thought about that when i think about him, just because i really like his music, he's major, it doesn't matter, i mean, he makes fun of his looks in his songs even. anyway, of course this made me think about women in music - and the arts and everything re: talent really - and the "need" to also be attractive as well talented. :/

i have way more issues about my face than i do about my body, i also realize.

I'm with you on all the rest but I just gised James Murphy and he is totally attractive? So...idgi?

But I only like beat-up looking British Isles types. Preferably heavily and horribly tattooed. I can't understand why I have so much trouble with boyfriends....

Yeah, I've had a thing for James Murphy from the jump.

And the long-time hots for Frank Black if we're going to speak to type here.

However, this - "this made me think about women in music - and the arts and everything re: talent really - and the "need" to also be attractive as well talented" - is a really important point.

I know it happens everywhere but I remember reading a Metafilter (I know, I know) thread about MIA and within like FIVE posts it wasn't about the music but about her looks. And not even about how she is pretty but about whether she is pretty. That happens here sometimes, too, and it drives me nuts bc I like to think that ILX is better than that.

i do not have a thing for james murphy, obv!

nor frank black
shudder

Hello and welcome to my life for the past 20+ years (and if anything it feels like it's got worse since I was young in the 90s, and not better.)

x-post to carl agatha

yeah, and just personally it's just something i'm tired of worrying about - i mean, i love dressing up and putting on make-up and looking good, but i don't the time i've spent in this life worry about if i'm pretty enough not just to date so-and-so or whatevs but to actually do a thing or be a part of something or just put myself and my talents out there more. and that just needs to stop.
xps

truly, i think all people whom i like are beautiful
even james murphy ;) but really, i like his music, i like him, doesn't matter what he looks like, and the same for most people i like or whose talents i admire

it's just hard to shake the sociocultural looks-judgment baggage sometimes

No, it's just the endless men act / women appear dichotomy and how, if a guy is super-talented by not physically perfect, his talent actually makes him seem more attractive. But if a woman is a musician, it is only and ever all about what she looks like and never about her talent, and it doesn't even matter if she is physically perfect, it will become this dissection of how even that is not enough. And it's just dispiriting bullshit.

I don't think James Murphy is attractive, but I don't like his music either.

I like some of his music and I think he' pretty hot tbh.

Carl did you have the hots for Matt Pinfield?

See, it just makes me so annoyed and angry and diverted but it's like I can't even make myself ~just not react~ to it. And every time I swear I won't get involved in these discussions again, up it comes like a bad smell and I scratch, then I get beaten up for bringing it up again because, jesus christ, woman, can't you just STFU and not put your sexism-oar in yet again, but it's like... no, not until people stop doing and saying the endless sexist tropes that keep popping up like a whack-a-mole.

Hate myself for responding. Going to look at Thom Yorke's belly now.

Should really just ban myself from this thread tbh.

Woah, woah, woah! WCC nobody beat you up about anything! You were totally on point. I just googled the other dude and thought he was hot. Also since I'm not a musician I have not experienced this personally and didn't have anything to add.

That was an x-post to myself, sorry you were in the middle of those two posts, ENBB.

well, it's a feeling to feel and to figure out through thinking and talking about it. i don't always feel down about this issue, especially when i realize that my friends and social circle and general loves in life have little to do with mainstream 'appreciations'/judgments of beauty.
xp

lol OK, sorry. I was a little confused!

ultimately, i'm not into "blame society" thinking, though i used to think more like that years ago, but it doesn't help me live my life and love myself; it just distracts me from living

what's going on in how sexism plays out does aggravate and bother me, for sure, obviously since i'm bringing one of the annoyances up itt, but once i talk it out and shake the tentacles of untruth of me, things feel better. constant reminder to do in the face of bombardment though.

WCC you are OTM, and I also feel like it's got worse, but maybe I was just more oblivious. Or maybe back then there was actually a music press, whereas now there are blogs and youtube comments and horrible smug sexist dudes who've bought a domain name and even the printed music press (what little remains) is all Middle-Aged Man Bands For Middle-Aged Men* with barely a woman in sight inside or may as well just be Hello magazine

but even the zines and the local music press and the free-in-guitar-shop rags of the early/mid 90s I don't remember being quite as bad as things which seem to be perfectly standard these days

* sorry to be ageist but you know what I mean, Press Releases About The Forgettable New Albums By Classic Dudes From The Seventies Monthly. I am quite happy to listen to all the middle-aged musicians!

men act / women appear

This is the awesomely succinct crux of it. Starts with pink baby onesies for girls that say "pretty pretty princess" and blue baby onesies for boys that say "little slugger" and just gets shittier from there.

Oh, Matt Pinfield never did it for me. I loved 120 Minutes but I don't think I liked his TV personality?

I've been thinking of challenging myself more to love & appreciate & feel good about "ugly"/"interesting" instead of always pretty PRETTY PREEEEETTTTTY. When I'm not dating anyone right that minute it's a lot easier to be on board with ugly/interesting. When I start to care about being found attractive by someone, though, somehow my brain melts and I start shorting myself of what I deserve.

Also I can no longer hear the word "pretty" without thinking of the Katie Makkai monologue which I would say is the best goddamn thing you could possibly think of.