Monday, October 29, 2007

First Impressions

The most difficult part of discovering the fat acceptance movement -- and of accepting it, once it's discovered -- is letting go of the belief that you can lose weight. Of the belief that someday, if you just tried hard enough, you could be skinnier. It's never worked so far, but that must be because you've never tried hard enough, or really applied yourself, or stuck to whatever diet you were trying. You didn't want it enough, but next time, it would be different. Next time, you could end up just as pretty as your mother says you could be, if you just lost 10 lbs, or 50 lbs, or 100.
And finding out the cold, hard, facts, that diets don't work -- no, seriously, they don't work. At all. No, not even if you try really, really hard. -- can take the wind out of you just as easily as it can be a breath of fresh air.
It's hard because it takes away that hope of being normal, of fitting in, of being socially acceptable, of being
pretty. But what fat acceptance gives you to replace that hope is the idea that instead of laboring to change ourselves, we can work to change society instead, so that fat can be normal, and acceptable (that's the acceptance in "fat acceptance") and pretty. Is it about 6 billion times harder to try and change society instead of trying to change yourself? Hell yeah. But as history shows us, it is actually possible, while science has already shown us that permanent weight loss just isn't.

1 comment:

Queen B said...

Depressing or liberating, depending on how you look at it. My husband truly believes I'm beautiful... but it's much harder for ME to believe that. It comes from within, first, I think... then radiates outward...