Quick wonder

[ailbhe]

So why is anti-thin-people rhetoric more acceptable than anti-fat-people rhetoric now? I come from a family of thin people (I, at size 8 UK/Irish sizing, was The Fat One. When I was born, the nurses admired my fine, powerful thighs). Why do people assume that thin people are anorexic? Isn't that just as bad as assuming that fat people overeat?

Comments

[glitzfrau.livejournal.com]

Because our society has developed very restrictive ideas about what a "normal", "healthy" body looks like? And because selling prescriptions about body shape and diet - put more bluntly, selling fear - is always profitable?

Also, I think, perhaps because our diet, lifestyle and body shape - at least in the West - has changed so dramatically in the last fifty years that we are profoundly uncertain about what constitutes health and normality. We are mostly much taller and bigger than our grandparents, and have longer life expectancy, yet are riddled with strange disorders for which they had no name. It's unsettling.

[megamole.livejournal.com]

It is?

[geekling.livejournal.com]

Probably because anti-thin-people rethoric is with today's beauty ideals seen as pure jealousy.
Which isn't quite as bad as the anti-fat-people rethoric which is seen as just being downright mean.

[megpie71.livejournal.com]

It varies in acceptability. At the moment, fat people are speaking up and making the point that they're very much discriminated against. We live big in a small world, and it is difficult. Fat people can (with some legitimacy) claim to be the underdogs. Whereas thin people (no matter what reason they have for being thin, be it terminal illness or just a very good metabolism) are expected to be envied. Therefore, comments from thin people about problems *they* have buying clothes that fit etc tend to be written off as "being modest".

For my own 5c worth, I don't think it's fun at either end of the spectrum. I know it's hard enough at my end, where at least I can go to specialist clothing shops, and find something that I like, which fits me and which doesn't make me look about ninety-two. It must be worse if you're a naturally thin person, and you're condemned to shopping in the kid's section even when you're in your forties. Sadly, society is a bit too body-conscious to want to stop classifying people into their appropriate groups by body shape and size. Roll on the revolution...

[bopeepsheep.livejournal.com]

I don't know if it's more acceptable to everyone but yes, there does seem to be some element of it more visible than anti-fat. I suppose it could be because if the average woman is three stone or more overweight she's obese but not scary, if the average woman is three stone underweight she's dangerously thin (11 stone good, 5 stone bad). To a generation warned repeatedly about anorexia (see: any magazine aimed at teenagers or young women) Thin is potentially Wrong (as well as Deeply Glamorous at the same time. Such is the nature of fashion). Fat is also Wrong but not in the same You Will Be Ill And Die way, that's more of a long term thing with Fat. And there's probably a famine/starvation kneejerk reaction going on with Thin too, hence 'eat something' comments, it's an urge to nurture coming out inappropriately, perhaps. Seeing other people Thin can make not-so-Thin people guilty, too. And the first defence is offence, for too many people.

[umlj.livejournal.com]

Is there a particular trigger to your comment?

Anyway, if I got a pound coin for every time someone makes a 'joke' along the lines of "eat more" (often enough with a plate of pasta in front of me), I'd have a very heavy purse indeed.
That kind of joke doesn't happen towards "overweight" people as far as I can observe. Probably because there some ...vulnerability... is commonly realised.

I think there is a lack of sensitivity to the fact that "thin" people aren't necessarily so by active choice. People (particularly those who are dieting) assume that you are thin because you have dieted even more than they do...

It's weird. But I still think that life is a bit more difficult for the obese than for the very thin in general.

[xiphias.livejournal.com]

It's a subcultural backlasah. It's a tough balancing act to try to be accepting of something without being dismissive of its opposite.

As people -- geeks, mainly -- attempt to become more fat-acceptant, it's real easy to slip, and become anti-thin.

Anti-thin rhetoric isn't more acceptible generally -- just within the segment of the geek community which has been really trying to stop being anti-fat, and overshooting.

[browngirl.livejournal.com]

It is?

I mean, it's not any less wrong than anti-fat rhetoric, but the last time I walked down the street eating ice cream was years ago for a reason.

One day people will stop getting on others' cases for their weight, no matter what, and what a lovely day that will be.

[calieber.livejournal.com]

In all probability, people assume thin people are trying to look like magazine covers and if you're fat, you're your own woman.

Also, now that it's widely recognized that it's wrong to say mean things about fat women, people think that saying mean thing about thin women is ok because it shows solidarity with fat women.

I've been eating and eating with no concern at all for my health, and went from 160 lbs to 155, at six feet tall.

[kightp.livejournal.com]

I think they're flip sides of the same old coin: An unrealistic, market-driven, fetishized view of women's bodies. (And yes, women in particular; very little of this rhetoric, especially the anti-thin sort, is directed at men.

It all boils down to something (IMO broken) in a culture that makes people think it's OK to denigrate other people for the shape and size of their bodies.

[firecat]

In my experience, anti-fat rhetoric is still plenty acceptable in society at large, although these days it is directed somewhat less at individual fat people and somewhat more at "there's an obesity epidemic! we're all going to drop dead of fat! We have to DOOOOO something!" which still comes across as threateningly anti-fat-people (and anti-me) to me.

Some anti-thin rhetoric has always been about jealousy that thin people are conventionally attractive. But IMO an increase in anti-thin rhetoric means that a few people have figured out "Oh no, the constant barrage of weight loss messages causes some people to become anorexic," and then they wrongly decide that the way to solve this is to believe that they can personally diagnose anorexia in individual people on the basis of appearance, and helpfully inform those people of the diagnosis because they're Only Trying To Help.

I think this comes from the same helpful impulse that cause people to tell you how to take care of your pregnancy and how to raise your child and so forth.

None of that is acceptable to me.

[micheinnz.livejournal.com]

It's not acceptable to me! And yes, assuming that thin people are anorexic _is_ as bad as assuming fat people overeat.

I think people sometimes make those kinds of comments around fat people to show some kind of fellowship, but it doesn't work with me... being fat doesn't mean I resent thin people their thinness, nor do I want to put them down for it.

[kiya]

I think the idea that third parties have a legitimate interest in controlling other people's bodies is a wicked difficult sense of entitlement for a culture to give up on. It strikes me as being more likely that which things are subject to pressure will shift than the impulse to pressure will go away.

Also, since one body type is pushed as "mainstream", in some eyes it doesn't have the protections that a minority group would have. And objections to same will be met by some variant of, "Oh yeah, it's so horrible to be seen as desireable by everyone, can't you accept the burden of one little joke" or some such.

-- signed, one of those many people who is "not a real woman" because she's not reubenesque