Did you watch the Golden Globes this year? Were you moved by Mo’Nique’s emotional speech? Were you caught up in the “issue” of her leg hair?

Wait…what?!!

Yes, that’s right, because there are those who insist on anally analyzing every aspect of women’s bodies (especially those on red carpets) NYDailyNews.com went ahead with a story titled, “Mo’Nique: least superficial actress ever? Before Golden Globes most moving speech, flaunts leg hair”.

Yeesh.

Here’s a bit of the article…and make sure to watch out for some of my favourite bits, like…

“And if she was at all embarrassed by her shaggy state…”

“..she picked up the skirt of her long gown on the red carpet, exposing the issue.”

“A long dress covers a multitude of personal appearance sins…”

(more inside…)

Just the title makes me feel nauseated, now that I know what it refers to.

I was alerted to this horrifying product last week by Amy Sedgwick, aka @UterusLover (profiled here on Shameless by D. Cole). “My New Pink Button” is a “beauty product” designed to be used on the female genitals to temporarily dye the inner labia to turn them pink.

Yes, really.

From the FAQ section of the product’s website:

Q. “I used to be so “Pink” and healthy looking on my inside Labia Lip area. Now I am losing that fresh look. Is there anything I can do”?
A. Yes, now there is a solution! “My New Pink Button” is a Cosmetic Dye especially for the woman’s genital area, to help restore that healthy vibrant Rosy color. Until now there has never been a solution for restoring natural pigment. This is a concern with many women and more than you can even imagine, and a frequent question that Physicians are asked. Check out the blogs on the Internet. You are not alone! This is a common problem and we now have a simple and safe solution, restoring sexual confidence to Women everywhere!

[I want to get snarky all over the site for its random use of capital letters (Rosy colour! Women everywhere!), but that’s beside the point.]

I’m sure I don’t even have to point out the problems with this product, but I’ll throw out a few and you can have at it in comments:

• the idea that only very young-looking genitals are appealing
• the acknowledgement that pigment changes are common, but insisting it’s still a problem to be fixed
• the fact that no equivalent “problem” for men is suggested
• the racism inherent in privileging certain skin shades
• um, putting chemical dye on your labia …

I used to be a hardcore New Year’s resolver, and my resolutions always centred around weight loss (with occasional token other resolutions thrown in: “stop biting nails” was a classic). When I was 17, my entire resolution, written on a piece of paper and sealed in an envelope was simply a three-digit number: my goal weight.

For the past two years, I have refused to make any resolutions at all, but I think I’m now far enough removed from my dieting mentality to make a few. I challenge anyone who is the resolution-making type to make a few of your own that focus on what you can do for yourself and others, not what you see in the mirror or on the scale.

Mine?
1. Train to run 10km.
2. Continue to improve my relationship with food and eat joyfully.
3. Re-connect with at least three friends I’ve lost touch with.
4. Read up on a few new social issues.
5. Be gentle with and kind to myself.

(Hi, everyone! Cate has kindly asked me to stay on as a permanent blogger after my guest-blogging stint in November. Pleased to be on board!)

This is an actual question asked by an Pennsylvania medical association in this article, which goes on to calculate Santa’s yearly caloric intake for cookies consumed in the state.

“Thanks to the magic of Christmas, [Santa] can avoid putting on that much weight,” said medical society spokesman Chuck Moran. But most people aren’t so fortunate, and will put on one pound for every 3,500 calories consumed but not burned.

(more inside…)

Many thanks to Shameless for inviting me to guest-blog this month. I hope that I’ve helped you to learn a bit more about a new topic, and perhaps inspired you to do a little more thinking about why so many of us believe that fat is bad.

Questioning commonly-held perceptions, and even changing your attitude, is only one step. I’ve found that it’s a lot easier to accept others’ bodies than it is to accept my own. I can look at a fat woman and think she’s beautiful, but look at myself and criticize my flabby stomach. I can understand that my body size is not a direct reflection of my health status, but feel like I “need” to work out more than others to “make up” for my size. I can know that diets don’t work, but be tempted to try again anyway. I can know that I’m actually barely over the size of the average North American woman, but still feel unacceptably fat.

Accepting yourself doesn’t just happen overnight, and it requires constant effort. If you’re able to find a support system, you’re much more likely to have more good days than bad. Whether it be friends who respect that your body is not a topic for discussion, a hobby or activity you love, or a bunch of resources to fall back on when you can’t remember why you’re allowed to trust your body and eat what you like, find something to support you. Some of the resources I turn to regularly include:

The Fat Nutritionist (a Toronto-based nutrition student who studies, practices and teaches intuitive eating and Health at Every Size)
Kate Harding’s Shapely Prose, the blog that introduced me to fat acceptance
Fatshionista, a plus-size fashion and size acceptance community

If you taking nothing else from learning a bit about size acceptance, I hope you’ll be willing to consider that everyone, regardless of their body size, is deserving of respect and autonomy regarding what they do with their bodies. That includes yourself. Cheers!

Something that often gets lost in the “healthy fat person/unhealthy fat person” discussion (see my previous post) is a discussion about who gets to decide what “healthy” behaviours are, and who has and does not have the ability to practice those behaviours.

The cost of “healthy living” is prohibitive for a great many people. A diet rich in fresh produce, whole grains, lean meats or alternatives, etc., is quite expensive. For many, the choice between a box of white pasta or a package of brown rice isn’t based on nutrition value, but on cost. Fresh fruits and vegetables, particularly out of season, when prices skyrocket? Forget it. Cheap and filling are the important factors. For someone who can’t afford to buy “healthier” foods, I’d argue that the decision to buy what they can to feed themselves to the best of their ability is the healthy choice.

As for the recommended levels of exercise: a gym membership? Not accessible to all. But you don’t need a gym membership to work out – you can run around the block. Sure, if you don’t have to go home after working overtime in order to care for your child. You get the picture. It’s not a coincidence that obesity is often associated with poverty, and thinness with affluence. It is a privilege to have the time and money to invest in practicing “healthy” behaviours.

Another issue that is often overlooked in the “healthy living” paradigm is disability, whether visible or invisible, physical or mental. It isn’t possible for everyone to run several miles per week. While those with visible physical disabilities might sometimes (but by no means always) be given a free pass against judgment for not performing the prescribed behaviours, those with invisible disabilities like fibromyalgia, chronic diseases, or metal disabilities that mean their healthy behaviours are different are often ignored. Chronic pain might make jogging or weight lifting impossible. Depression might mean that different activities are more or less pleasurable. For those with visible physical disabilities, prescribed activities might take on a clinical angle and be boring or unsatisfying.

Why not allow everyone, regardless of ability, to choose to (or choose not to) participate in activities that are enjoyable? When particular behaviours are lauded as “good” – and who hasn’t met someone who hates going to the gym, but does it because they’re being “good”? – then other behaviours automatically lower in value, even if they’re very enjoyable, beneficial, and accessible. Personally, I think that keeping an eye on your mental health is just as valuable, if not more valuable, than paying attention to the physical. Skipping a run to push a child on a swing and then read a book together isn’t going to burn too many calories, but who says it’s worth less? If you are unable to perform high-intensity cardio at all, should that mean you are worth less? If you also happen to be fat, some people might think so.

Thanks to a comment from Steve on my last post, I was inspired to write some posts on some of the intersections between size acceptance/fat acceptance and race/culture, class and (dis)ability.

First, I want to acknowledge my position of privilege as an educated, able-bodied middle-class, white woman, born in Canada, of white, upper-middle-class parents also born in Canada. I can discuss these issues from the position of an ally trying to inform herself as much as possible, but I cannot and will not try to speak for people in groups of which I’m not a part. I also acknowledge that I can’t come close to understanding all the issues, and would love to hear from others who’d like to add their perspectives.

Something almost guaranteed to get my back up when discussing size and body image is an assertion that it’s “easier” or “harder” for someone of a certain race to have a larger or smaller body size. As an example, there’s a notion that refuses to die that says black women are exempt from worrying about their weight and that fatness is more accepted among black people, because black men prefer women larger. I have three major issues with this:

1) How can anyone know what all black men prefer in terms of body shape and size, and who says they prefer women at all?
2) Even if it were true: what, black women exist purely as attractive objects for black men? If black men like them “bigger,” they have nothing to worry about? Who says that what black men think about their bodies is black women’s primary concern? The inherent racism (not to mention sexism) in assuming that black men have the only valid opinion about black women’s bodies is appalling.
3) It’s just not true.

See, to look “acceptable” in our society is to look as close to the ideal as possible, and that ideal is not only thin; it is white, tall, perhaps blonde-haired (straight or just wavy, of course) and blue-eyed. Whether some or even many black men prefer larger women is completely irrelevant; white-dominated society at large is telling black women that they must look as close to the white ideal as possible in order to be considered attractive. This applies to all women of colour; black women are just an example.

While individual cultures may have particular body size stereotypes (Asian women are thinner, Hispanic women have larger hips, etc.), it’s important to recognize that these are not universal ideals within cultural groups, and that women of colour are under enormous pressure by virtue of their colour to strive to look as white as possible. Women of colour don’t get a free pass on the body ideal thing. In fact, pressure to conform to an ideal body type only increases, the further from the “ideal” you are. A really great rundown on this topic from a woman of colour (another Julia, not me) can be found at Fatshionista here.

Class and (dis)ability next time.

I probably don’t need to tell you that size acceptance / fat acceptance (SA/FA) has lots of opponents. One would think it’s hard to argue that feeling good about yourself is a bad thing, but I’ve encountered a surprising (and disappointing) number of people who think that fat people having high self-esteem is dangerous – they might actually dare to stay fat! The horror!

These people are often of the opinion that fat is gross, and that’s all there is to it. This belief is impossible to counter, since personal aesthetics are just that – personal. But why do other people get to decide whether how you look is acceptable or not? As I explained in my last post, SA/FA makes the very important “personal autonomy” argument: the way your body looks is no one’s business but your own. You do not owe it to anyone to be attractive to them.

The other main argument made by opponents to SA/FA is that fat is unhealthy. Kate Harding at Shapely Prose provides a fabulous overview, complete with links, explaining why this correlation just isn’t as black-and-white as people think. The main points I’m going to discuss from her list are that 1) fat is not an accurate indicator of the way people treat their bodies or their state of health, and 2) diets don’t work.

People are built differently, and weight is largely genetic (within a range). There is a popular assumption that fat people must spend their time munching on donuts and watching TV while their asses grow bigger. In fact, there are fat athletes, fat vegans, fat health fanatics … you get the picture. Of course, there are also fat people who eat poorly and don’t exercise. Fat people are constantly advised to eat more healthfully, eat less, and exercise more, no matter what their current behaviours or health measurables (blood sugar, blood pressure, etc.) are.

Conversely, everyone knows someone who subsists primarily on junk food, is a couch potato, and is thin. These people are considered “lucky.” Why aren’t they constantly told to eat better and exercise? Because they’re thin. Too many health professionals and members of the general population use the Body Mass Index (BMI) as the be-all, end-all of health determination, even though the BMI was never intended to be such a rigid guide and is generally accepted to be badly flawed. For a visual representation of how bizarre the BMI standards are, check out Kate’s BMI Project.

Even if fat were in itself a health concern, there’s a pretty major obstacle to overcoming it: no one has figured out a safe, long-term method of making a fat person thin. There’s also some pretty strong evidence that yo-yo dieting, or weight cycling, is more harmful than maintaining a consistent higher weight. It’s often said that 95% of diets fail over a five-year period. As a former chronic yo-yo dieter, I can attest to this first-hand. I never maintained weight loss for longer than a year at a time, sometimes even gaining weight while still dieting (I point this out to combat the argument that I must have simply stopped practicing “good behaviours” and let the weight come back on. Not so much). Since giving up dieting, my weight has settled within ten pounds of what I weighed before my first diet. Coincidence … ?

I’d like to start my month-long series on size acceptance with a general overview of some of the terms and concepts I’ll be building discussions on.

One of the main issues in the movement is actually what to call it. While I have settled on the term “size acceptance,” many folks in the movement use “fat acceptance” to describe what they do. This term works because most of the negative stereotypes and body-bashing these people seek to refute are about fat people. Some other activists choose the term “size acceptance” to reflect the fact that people of all shapes and sizes are affected by stereotypes, lazy science, expectations, eating disorders, etc. I take this approach because I think that society’s standards for acceptable body size and shape harm everyone, but I don’t quarrel with the term “fat acceptance” one bit. It’s true that fat people experience a different kind of discrimination and pressure, and that in general, Western society demonizes fat.

One of the most prominent alternatives to the “thinner is better” paradigm is a concept called Health at Every Size (HAES). The idea is simply that health can be measured in so many ways that are completely separate from weight, and that one can be fat and healthy. Or thin and healthy. Or disabled and healthy. Or with a chronic illness and healthy. “Health” can be defined differently for everyone! Practicing HAES means respecting diversity of sizes and shapes, eating for pleasure as well as trying a diversity of nutritious food, and enjoying whatever types of movement your body is capable of and make you feel good. Doesn’t that sound nicer than counting calories and punishing your body with exercise you feel you have to do? Trust me, having experienced both: it is way nicer.

Finally, a major part of size acceptance is the concept of body autonomy. Some people, when they first hear about the movement, think that it means we’re telling everyone to eat only junk food, never exercise, and be fat. Setting aside the fact that not everyone who eats a lot of junk food and lives a sedentary lifestyle is fat (more on the connections between fat and health in a future post), the assertion is ridiculous. The whole concept of size acceptance is rooted in accepting your size, be it fat, thin, or anything in between. By extension, this also means accepting others’ sizes and respecting their bodies and the ways they choose to use them. You do not owe it to anyone else, and they do not owe it to you, to fit a certain size or personal aesthetic. Your body is no one’s business but your own.

Next up: debunking some of the myths about body size and health.