Sunday, April 25, 2010

Plus Size/Fat Acceptance?

This may be one of the few posts that ever combines the two topics of this blog. As a big girl with a thing for fashion, I've come across my fair share of sites devoted to so called "fat acceptance" and the resuting backlash against it. Sites such as adipositivity.com say that women (well, people in general, though you can imagine this is aimed at almost exclusively women) should be able to be considered beautiful no matter how large they are. The counter to this is people claiming that if women are allowed to feel beautiful when they are not healthy, they will not be motivated to lose weight.

I sort of see both sizes of the arguement. The probem is that many times, neither side of the arguement differentiates between healthy-big (the size 20 endurance runner [and yes, they do exist]) and obese-big (the size 20 carb-holic who can't walk up a flight of stairs). I know people who fall in the latter category and are completely satisfied with their bodies because of the extreme fat-acceptance movement. I'm not saying if you're overweight you are not allowed to be happy or pretty or satisfied with yourself in general, in fact I really hope you are all of those thing. But everone should always want to be bettering themselves. Being satisfied with an unhealthy body doesn't seem right to me. (For years I did nothing about my unhealthy body, but that doesn't mean I was satisfied with it).

On the other hand, everyone is precious, and everyone has gifts and talents to be appreciated no matter their current struggles. While some people struggle with outward things such as weight, other issues are not so obvious, and trust me, everyone has them. Why should someone who needs to drop 50 lbs be considered any less beautiful than someone who needs to drop 50 grudges?

In the middle of all this is plus size models, many of which are in no way "plus size" at all (size 6 or 8). Logically, these girls should just be "models" and 5'10" 115lb girls should be the unusual ones. There are a lot of times I think I would love to be a pus size model, since I love fashion and photography. But I don't know if I could handle the controversy surrounding the industry.

All I really know, is that this chick is fracking HOT (one of the few truly "plus size" models Tara Lynn in a shoot for French Vogue):

I wonder if she can do muscle ups on those rings...

I just read over this again and I was totally babbling. But I can't figure out how to organzie my thoughts about this topic.

3 comments:

  1. I must say that this is probably one of the most coherant and organized discussions of the topic I've seen. I've always said that numbers don't mean anything to me and that I'll never desire to lose "weight"- just, perhaps if I need to, "fat." It should be all about being healthy. there are some very skinny people that are very very unhealthy and there are some big people that are very very healthy. You have actually hit the nail right on the head. Good job.

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  2. to me, it's not about numbers. i know when i look at someone if they appear attractive or not without consulting a BMI chart. healthy is what's attractive, no matter what the numbers say. but it would be very difficult to promote good health by calling unhealthy people (stick-thin or overweight) "beautiful."

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  3. I think you did a good job of expressing yourself. But by the way, that admitedly beautiful girl is very likely to break her ankle with those shoes.

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