What is With the Haters?
Fat acceptance advocates’ positions have sparked criticism and mockery.
This is a very accurate statement in the Wikipedia entry for fat acceptance movement. I recently approved a comment on this blog that was hateful and derogatory towards fat people. I don’t approve of the comment, but I had said from the outset that I was going to publish all comments that were relevant to the Kimkins controversy. The comment made me curious about the two extremes of fat acceptance and fat hatred. When I went to the Wikipedia article for the Fat Acceptance Movement, it was immediately obvious that it had been vandalized.
You can see a screenshot HERE. There is some obscene language.
November 24th, 2007 at 3:17 pm
Not sure where the hate is coming from….but it sure is there!! Possibly it fear….fear that you too can become that fat person!!
Even when you read an article about weight loss, obesity, etc the comments are loaded with hate and anger!! We’re really living in a very intolerant world!
November 24th, 2007 at 11:44 pm
You can’t expect much from people who are fat-phobic. After all, they think that if they don’t watch every bite they eat and exercise like hamsters on speed, they might get fat and they are scared to death of that happening. What they don’t realize is that there is no way to make a naturally thin person permanently fat, just like you can’t make a naturally fat person permanently thin. But to have to give up those biases goes against all the lies they’ve been told and believed all their lives. It’s not that fat people want to stay fat, but there is no way for the majority of us to get thin and stay thin. If there was, we would definitely be thin, there is no way that anyone wants to be told they are stupid, smelly, ugly, and totally worthless just because they can’t meet an unattainable thin ideal.
It’s to the benefit of the pharmaceutical and beauty industry to keep women focused on their supposed imperfections so they can keep selling cures for those imperfections. It doesn’t matter how many of those supposed imperfections you fix, they will tell you there are more, in order to keep selling and selling and selling. When billions of dollars are at stake, there is no way that acceptance of body diversity is going to become a reality without a battle.
November 25th, 2007 at 8:10 am
Thanks for your comments. I didn’t really get a chance to fully explore this topic with my post. Hours after I wrote it, I noticed that the offensive stuff on the wiki had reverted back to normalcy.
The discussion page for the entry is pretty educational.
November 26th, 2007 at 2:31 pm
My blog is just a bunch of essays on whatever the heck I chose to write about, so far none of which has included any reference to me being a big girl (other than the title being Musings of a Fat Chick). I was stunned, however, by the amount of hateful comments I got, from those on both sides of the fat acceptance / fat hate fence. Sad. I don’t publish them, though - I have always said, “This is all about what I think… And I’ll censor at will!”
Still, its distressing to have so much prejudice and hate directed at me.