A Repository of Really Good Points

[opinionatedopalite]

Examining ‘Good Fatty’ Archetypes We Depend On (Part 2)

There’s been a lot of talk lately about what it means to be a quote-unquote “good fatty.” In short, it describes a fat person who at least believes in the socially constructed viewpoint that their number one goal in life should be losing weight.

But upon closer inspection, it’s clear that there are a few “good fatty” archetypes that we, as a society, depend on – all with their own unique purposes in the patriarchal machine.

[opinionatedopalite]

Examining ‘Good Fatty’ Archetypes We Depend On (Part 1)

There’s been a lot of talk lately about what it means to be a quote-unquote “good fatty.” In short, it describes a fat person who at least believes in the socially constructed viewpoint that their number one goal in life should be losing weight.

But upon closer inspection, it’s clear that there are a few “good fatty” archetypes that we, as a society, depend on – all with their own unique purposes in the patriarchal machine.

[opinionatedopalite]

...how fucked up is society??

Back then people were supposed to gain weight?

Today people are supposed to lose weight??

How about everyone just mind their own business and stop deciding how bodies should look like?

It’s still the same old thing, only one body type that everyone is supposed to aspire to. Times will have really changed when advertising and the media stop objectifying and comparing women’s bodies to each other.

(Jamie Q.)

Never idolize a picture

[opinionatedopalite]

This is about “beauty stereotype”, body size, visible belly outline and whatnot you guys:

This woman here was considered the sexiest woman in the world. She was considered just perfect.

Do you see a thigh gap? Do you see a flat stomach? Slim arms? Slender body? I don’t.

Because, guess what, these things don’t mean shit.

(some articles for you if interested: 1; 2)

[jkson]

[opinionatedopalite]

(I really really hope this is fake but sadly wouldn’t be surprised if it weren’t)

The language says it all.

“I want a slim son”

This person could have sad “I want my son to be slim”, “I don’t want my son to be fat”, “I don’t want my son to be unhealthy” or even “I care about my son’s health” (Which still couldn’t be more wrong because FAT≠≠≠UNHEALTHY and THIN≠≠≠HEALTHY and uhm what about FEEDING YOUR BABY)

This person said “I want a slim son”. I WANT. As if the son is something that they have, and want him to be a certain way. As if the son is an accessory to them, and they want him to look a certain way.

FAT PHOBIA is REAL. Fat phobia threatens LIVES.

[the-glitter-clit]

[puddles-of-moonlight]

WHY IS THIS SO HARD TO UNDERSTAND

[chelsea-eve69-deactivated201509]

So for all you feminists out their who think that all men should die, remember, you are not a feminist.

[basilsilos]

reblogging for the last comment

[republicangarbage-blog]

Yes

[xtheycallmeslimshadyx]

Legit question, I’m not trying to hate on feminists or anything. Why is it called feminist if they’re for equality?

[aphony-cree]

That’s a very good question and thank you for asking so politely. 

The word feminism was coined by Charles Fourier in 1837, a French philosopher who advocated for the emancipation of women because he believed society treated women as slaves. We weren’t allowed to vote, own anything, or work a real job. Women were ruled by their fathers/household patriarch until they married at which time they’d be under the rule of their husband. If a woman did not belong to male household she was shunned by society and had very little means to make money, most of them unsavory. You know the idiom “rule of thumb”? That comes from a running joke that started in the 1600s, and was still around in Fourier’s time, that said it was okay for a man to beat a woman with a stick as long as it wasn’t any thicker than his thumb. 

The point of the word feminist, and the feminist movement, has never been to say that women are better than men. The point is that women and things associated with women have been given a lesser place in society and we want to bring those things up to a place of equality. The focus is on the feminine because that’s what’s being pushed down. However, focusing on the feminine does not mean we’re focusing only women. Men are belittled and called “less of a man” anytime they portray a trait that is associated with femininity. If women and the feminine were equal to men and masculinity then that wouldn’t happen. Feminism is about raising up things associated with females to have an equal place in society as the things associated with males. It’s called feminism, not equalism, because the focus is on raising up not tearing down. Equalism would suggest that male things need to come down to a lower level so that female things can meet it in the middle. That’s not the point. The point is to raise up the feminine so that it’s on the same playing field that the masculine is already on. We don’t want men to lower themselves, we just want them to make room for us.

[sinmenon]

We don’t want men to lower themselves, we just want them to make room for us.

We don’t want men to lower themselves, we just want them to make room for us.

We don’t want men to lower themselves, we just want them to make room for us.

We don’t want men to lower themselves, we just want them to make room for us.

[opinionatedopalite]

(Instead of focusing on “smashing the patriarchy” and being exclusive in the process, let’s focus on empowering the matriarchy and be inclusive in the process)

[opinionatedopalite]

via Shahira on Twitter

The words we use to describe ourselves and our lives do have a huge impact on how we actually feel about these things! Our vocabulary is important!

“Lazy ends the conversation and promotes self hate”

[deceptivelips]

read it, then read it again

[opinionatedopalite]

All discussion about fat, fitness and health has to END with this.

To the next person that want to say anything on the lines of

“Fat is bad for your health”

AND/OR

“Thin people work their ass off because they care about their appearance\health” THEREFORE “You are a fat lazy ass bitch”

DON’T.

[opinionatedopalite]

via @bodypositivememes on IG

This kid has been taught to fear fat before he’s even been taught to spell.

BAD BODY IMAGE AND FAT HATE IS TAUGHT!

[opinionatedopalite]

@damnthediets

😔It breaks my heart to think at such a young age many boys and girls, feel pressure to change themselves - that they’re not good enough as is. The focus at this young age, or any age at that matter, should be of playing, laughing, exploring, loving, crying, learning meaningful lessons and mistakes, and not about restricting calories, punishing ourselves with exercise, starving ourselves for weight loss and comparing ourselves to photoshopped, posed and unrealistic photos in the media/social media. Our bodies care about survival, not vanity. They want to be healthy of course but getting to a very low body fat % doesn’t determine Health; it often times results in lack of..

Our bodies are vessels provided to us so we can experience all these luxuries of life - they aren’t meant to be starved, depleted, controlled and despised. .

We think we’ll finally be “happy” if we can just look like the “ideal body” of our modern world..yet when we finally arrive to this goal, we’re still unhappy, if not even less happy, because nothings good enough. We now have Body dysmorphia amongst other physical and mental issues that developed along deprivation road.. Happiness, feeling beautiful, confident and fit, is not dictated by our bodies appearance - that’s the facade. It comes as a feeling, from living our life with intuitive movement, balanced eating, sleep, water, sun, relaxation, supportive relationships, playfulness, and more.. Some of us had to hit rock bottom within our egotism and had our health stolen from us when trying to be superior and self righteous in our healthy lifestyles, in order to appreciate what true Health and fitness feels like after Recovery. .

Moral of the story: it’s vital to continue creating a new and truly healthful model of health, fitness and self acceptance for the future generations to aspire towards. . And to keep exposing the downfalls of the dysfunctional hidden realities of extreme diets, exercise abuse and unsustainable body ideals of today. . Thank you for being brave and a prime inspiration to us all to all who are tagged! ✊️🙏 and anyone who shares their voice in the community ♥️

[sicklesium-moved-deactivated201]

i dont get offended at white people jokes even though im white because: 

i can recognize white people as a whole have systemically oppressed POC in america, which is where i live 

most people when they make white people jokes only mean the shitty white people and i am not a shitty white person 

im not a pissbaby

[opinionatedopalite]

I’m white, and white people jokes don’t offend me for exactly the above reasons. But I STILL understand how black\asian\etc. jokes are offensive. I understand I’m privileged.

[half-of-me-is-ocean-half-is-sky]

Cake or collar bones dry thinning hair??

Pizza or a thigh gapdry peeling skin?? Ice cream or hip bonesdull eyes?? Food or a nice bodydeath?? Think before you eatencourage others to throw their lives away by posting your pro-ana shit all over the internet where vulnerable naive teenagers can read and imitate your illness that you don’t even possess.

[opinionatedopalite]

This is what I mean when I say you simply cannot NOT be depressed. (Doodle by Cartoonfeminist)

[thisisthinprivilege]

I work at a daycare with infants.

One of our baby girls is fat, in the 99th percentile for her age. She is super cute and sweet. Lately, she has been sick with various breathing issues, so she has been reluctant to take her bottles. Normally, she’ll take 4 ounces of formula at lunch and 8 ounces in the afternoon. Today, I was lucky to get to her take 5 all day.

There was a substitute covering a lunch break in my classroom today. We emphasized to her that we need to keep trying to get the baby to drink her bottle until she finished it. She said, “Why are you guys so worried about taking her bottle?”

My coworker replied, “That’s where all her nutrients are. She needs the nutrients and the water.”

To which the substitute replied, “But she’s so fat. She doesn’t need it.”

Thin privilege is a small, pretty baby getting better childcare because the caretaker doesn’t think she’s too fat to be allowed to eat.

[thecrazygeek-rant]

This reminds me of a cousin of mine who ended up with her kids being taken away from her by social services for a number of reasons but mostly for nearly killing her baby daughter. How?

By starving her. She insisted that her baby was ‘too fat’ and had an aim to remove any and all ‘chubbyness’ so her baby would be thin. She’d already been warned by her doctor about the baby not getting enough food, but insisted she knew best.

After several months of this her baby passed out cold one day and was rushed into hospital where the doctors found her to have severe malnutrition, a low body temperature and low pulse rate. They asked my cousin what she’d been feeding her daughter and she said “one bottle of skimmed milk a day. I don’t want her growing up fat.”

Even after nearly killing her daughter my cousin maintained her view that fat = bad and ended up with all her kids taken from her because she was starving them and neglecting them.

When your fatphobia leads you to starving your own children then you’ve got serious problems.

(Note. She still, to this day, maintains the view that she was right and the doctors were wrong. “They just want fat kids so they can keep employed treating them for all those diseases that being fat causes.” = her actual words.)

[sinthiasweet]

My mom had me dieting with her when I was eleven. She had me eating less than 600 calories a day because she was worried I was going to “get huge.” She even grounded me once because she found out my friends were bringing me lunches! I ended up passing out, going to the ER, and getting two IVs at once BC I was so goddamn dehydrated. Soooooo surprised they didn’t call child services… And looking back, this was the root of my anorexia. I’m nearly 22 and still fighting it. Please don’t starve your fucking children.

[viergacht]

For fucks sake babies are SUPPOSED to be fat, what is wrong with people? It’s just stored energy, and growing children need stored energy - an 11 year old is just about to hit some major growing years. Damn. 

[fattyatomicmutant-deactivated20]

Fatphobia

Is

Real

and it kills

[mexicanxthighs-deactivated20190]

This is no joke. people will literally starve their own babies cause they don’t want them getting fat. A parent brought in their six month old baby who was having breathing issues and kept getting sick. the parent was asked if the baby was eating regularly and the parent straight up told the doctor that they only feed the baby once a day. ONCE A DAY. A FUCKING BABY. they even had the nerve to say because they didn’t want the baby to get fat. people like this are real. they would rather have a dead baby than a fat one.

[bigfatscience]

My youngest son is a very big boy and has been since he was born. When he was 10 months old I took him for his well-baby check and vaccinations. The nurse noted his weight and said, quite casually, “He is in the 99th percentile for weight so he is at risk for obesity. You may want to keep an eye on that.” I said, “He is exclusively breastfed. He refuses to eat any solids yet.” What did she expect me to do? What would it mean to “keep an eye on” an exclusively breastfed baby’s weight? 

She backed off saying, ‘Well he looks fine!” – proving once again that weight bias is not truly about health – But I know many other parents who are not as informed as I am about weight science and size diversity would react to this interaction by policing their child’s food intake, if not as an infant, then when he was an older child. This is exactly the type of seemingly-inconsequential interaction that starts the ball rolling on a lifetime of dieting, disordered eating, negative body image, and weight-based abuse for too many fat people.

Years later when he was five, another doctor measured his weight and height and commented that he is off the charts on both, but “at least he is in proportion.” And if he was not “in proportion,” I am sure I would have been advised once again to “watch his weight.” 

I no longer allow healthcare providers to weight my children unless it is absolutely medically necessary. They are unable to control their weight talk, which is a known harm for children.

We need to completely eliminate weight talk from medicine, especially when it comes to children. Even the smallest exposure can have terrible consequences.

[loverofbrownsugar]

Wtf…

[mainstreamqueen-deactivated2020]

A friend from college had been going to the doctor because she was having trouble breathing. She was told to lose weight. Over the course of several years, she went back to the doctors time and time again, telling them that she’d been sticking to the diet but because of her breathing problems she had been unable to even walk for more than 20 minutes at a time. The doctor got her into an exercise programme and told her that she just needed to really try to lose weight because that was clearly the reason for her breathing problems. By the time they found the tumour on her lungs, it was inoperable. She only lived three months after diagnosis. She was 25. She’d had the tumour for over five years. The doctor was so focused on the fact that my friend was “fat”, that they refused to look for any underlying cause. They killed her.

[thisisthinprivilege]

Weight-first treatment KILLS. Fatphobia KILLS.

[lady-yomi-deactivated20171102]

I have 2 scary stories to share about fatphobic doctors & parents harming their childs/patients’ health:

1. The 4 years old daughter of a friend of mine came to our house to spend the weekend. She gave me a letter from her mom that said that the child was in a glutenfree diet because she was getting ‘awfully fat’ when eating cookies or bread (my celiac ass; who gets dhiarrea and loses a scary amount of weight whenever I eat something with gluten was like ’???’).

You can bet that I went to the supermarket with the kid and told her ‘go & take whatever you feel like eating’ and the poor child came back smiling with her arms full of biscuits and cupcakes.

She didn’t got sick (as a celiac would get) and told me later that she hated the diet her mother made her follow; because her cousins didn’t had to pass through that.

And what’s the scariest thing about this story? Her mother was a NURSE. A fucking nurse who didn’t have a clue of the harm that she was doing to her daughter’s body!

2. My little sister started to feel fatigued and dizzy at 9 years old. She felt nauseated at the sight of food and had abdominal pain that increased with physical activity.

Mom got her to the ER and the doctor dismissed it saying: ‘she’s fat and probably is feeling ill after eating too much burgers, get her to make some exercise and she will be better in no time’.My mom didn’t felt ok with the diagnosis and took my sister with a second doctor who also told her that ‘the child was just fat’.

My sister’s skin was starting to get yellow as the days passed and the abdominal pain was getting awful so my mom (heaven bless her!) got her to the ER for the third time:

SHE HAD STAGE 4 HEPATITIS AND WAS ABOUT TO DIE.

She survived after a long and painful recovery who involved being in bed for a whole year (remember that we’re speaking of a 9 years old child). Luckily they saved her liver and she didn’t went through a transplant… but let this sink:

If it weren’t for my mother, fatphobia would have killed her. Fatphobia kills kids and teenagers, fatphobia kills inocent people everyday. It treats human beings as lesser than others and hurts them in their most vulnerable times.

It’s a real shame that we all have so much stories to share about this issue. A REAL SHAME.