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

[djm4]

Good idea, and it deserves a better (and more measured) response than the somewhat snarky one I gave on the previous post, but I don't honestly know when I'll find time to write one. Not in the next couple of weeks, certainly.

[wildeabandon.livejournal.com]

I'm largely in agreement. The vast majority of what the fat-positive movement stands for should be uncontroversial, but to quote your response to the third post:

"I agree that unless you are an expert - and by expert, I mean on the level where your research is published in peer-reviewed journals - you are crazy to bet against the scientific consensus."

I haven't done enough reading of the literature to be confident in what the scientific consensus is, and to what extent it is scare-stories in the media, but I've certainly seen more papers arguing that there is a negative correlation link between weight (above a certain level, obviously) and a variety of health measures than I've seen arguing the opposite.

[purplerabbits.livejournal.com]

Hmm. I find "The Fat-Positive Diet" kinda depressing because it's so exactly where I was a few years ago, including the unintended boost you get from people telling you you look better, the mixed messages you get, the everything.

And I am now heavier than I have ever been. Which might mean I can't participate in a debate like this as objectively as I feel it deserves.

I think her Fat Positive Manifesto is *almost* right and that her depiction of the Fat Positive message she's been getting is neccessarily cherry picked and a reaction to a range of annoying comments she is bound to have recieved. I'm not sure any real person believes all of that, so it's in danger of being a bit of a straw man argument.

I wish I knew what to think about the science, I really do, but I don't know of *anyone* who is doing a balanced job on this.

[djm4]

I'm utterly in agreement with the paragraph you quote here, by the way, whatever else I might think.

[altamira16.livejournal.com]

I think that people shouldn't be mean to fat people just because they are fat, but I think the whole notion of a fat-positive movement really depressing.

[djpsyche.livejournal.com]

But thinking, "I can never have another donut again as long as I live" would make this intolerable. Thinking, "I can have a donut today if I have a light dinner" makes this do-able.

And this is the nutshell of my argument of why Quitting Smoking Is Harder Than Dieting.

[lizw.livejournal.com]

Okay, some quick comments because we're ridiculously busy at work and that's all I have time for:

The Fat-Positive Diet uses the wrong definition of success, in my view. A 10% one-year "success" rate is already appalling - a drug or surgical intervention with this rate of success and the same physical mental health side effects as dieting would not be licensed - but the rate drops to 2% after another year. Statistics beyond that don't exist, because it's not even possible to recruit a large enough pool of "successful" dieters to do that study. My source for this is Paul Campos in The Obesity Myth.

The Fat-Positive Skeptic and the Open Letter are wrong about the science, and for that I repeat my suggestion to wildeabandon earlier in this thread. I would also add that even if I am wrong (and so is Paul Campos, and so is Sandy Swarcz) on (a) whether or not being fat is unhealthy and (b) whether or not diets "work", there is still AFAIK not a shred of evidence as to (c) whether someone for whom a diet has "worked" thereby acquires the same health benefits that someone who maintains the same weight, BMI etc without dieting ex hypothesi enjoys (and, given the problem with recruiting "successful" dieters, it is difficult to see any such evidence emerging any time soon.)

I do feel sympathy for her knee pain, having had similar problems myself in the past (at a much lower weight than I am now), and she is of course entitled to take whatever gambles she wishes to try to resolve it - just as she is entitled to try homeopathy, reiki, animal sacrifice or anything else that does no harm to anyone else. Perhaps the sense of taking charge of the problem will even produce a placebo effect that will do her some good, and I'm all in favour of that where medicine can't come up with anything better. But I believe it will be just that - a placebo, and one bought at the price of considerably more health risks than drinking water that may or may not have come into contact with a minuscule drop of herbal extract at some point in its history.

Edited for clarification of my view on placebos.

[wildeabandon.livejournal.com]

One thing that came to mind yesterday is that the question "is fat bad for your health" and the question "is fat worse for your health than dieting" are two very different questions, but both the anti-fat and fat-postive sides tend to conflate the two.