Greta Christina's fat positive manifesto

[ciphergoth]

I froze the discussion here because I thought it deserved a top-level post of its own, rather than being under a general discussion of Greta Christina. A few weeks ago she posted a very interesting series of articles on the fat-positive movement and her own beliefs; I'd be very interested to read more about what people think of them.

"I was frankly shocked at how callous most of the fat-positive advocates were about my bad knee. I was shocked at how quick they were to ignore or dismiss it. They were passionately concerned about the quality of life I might lose if I counted calories or stopped eating chocolate bars every day. But when it came to the quality of life I might lose if I could no longer dance, climb hills, climb stairs, take long walks, walk at all? Eh. Whatever. I should try exercise or physical therapy or something. Oh, I'd tried those things already? Well, whatever."

• The Fat-Positive Diet
• The Fat-Positive Skeptic
• An Open Letter to the Fat-Positive Movement

Comments

[valkyriekaren.livejournal.com]

I'm going to come over all Ben Goldacre here (ooh matron) and suggest that it's probably a bit more complicated than that. Maybe for some people it's easier to go 'cold turkey' and say, "I'm never going to have a cigarette/drink alcohol/eat a Curly Wurly again!", and for others it's easier to cut down gradually and allow oneself the occasional indulgence balanced against other, healthier/safer behaviours?

And actually, if what we're talking about is harm reduction, isn't it still good for people to cut down to 'every once in a while' even if they never get to the point of completely cutting out?

Food, I think, is more difficult to break the 'addiction' to than many drugs, because you need to eat to live - it's policing what you eat that's the difficult part (and let's not get into all the misinformation and misdirection about what's 'good food').

[djm4]

Aside: I got a slight kick out of quoting 'I think you'll find it's a bit more complicated than that' back at Ben Goldacre at the Lib Dem fringe event on keeping libel laws out of science. I was, basically, agreeing with him, though, so I hope he forgave me - at any rate, I didn't spot any tweets about 'the annoying smug git with the beard who quotes my own catchphrases back at me'.