Absolutes II

"We affirm that we can be healthy at any size." And I affirm that we can be ill at any size, as well. I love the HAES concept, but, as others have worried, I do not want to make it another righteous, moralising lash; I do not want to divide us into good fat people and bad fat people. I do not do that crap with smokers or exercise addicts or anorexics or binge eaters or folks who do all of the above, either. I do not do those things, but I procrastinate, slouch, bite my nails and have not taken Jesus as my personal saviour. I sleep with a married man. (Okay, so he's married to me, but I slept with him before that. So there.)

Oh, yeah, and another thing from this heathen hellbound hussy: that is a very nice list, Paul'n'all.

I like these a lot. At first, I thought, I'd like some anti-diet statement in there but really, it's another issue. Connected in the popular consciousness and probably in most of our life experience, but really, one doesn't have to be fat for dieting or diet drugs or liposuction or WLS to be life-threatening, health-harming, and so on. And if you ARE fat, these tortures are every bit as health-damaging as if you are thin. Anti-dieting is a passion of mine, and if that's important to me, I should go start my own blog, right? :D Great stuff.

That's a good point, Skeptyk. It's almost like, "We affirm that we can *be* any size. Healthy or not." Because health, for the most part, is really a crap-shoot. You can do certain things to reduce your overall risk, but reducing risk never guarantees anything. And if someone chooses not to compromise the quality of their life so that they can participate in every risk-reducing activity out there, it's no one else's business. Health is personal. It really irks me when people make the argument that fat people are a drain on healthcare. Yeah? People with, say, cancer, are also a drain on healthcare, but that's *what it's there for.* No one purposely tries to make themselves sick, despite how it may look at times, and people who get sick have the right to treatment, no matter what. Some people like to believe that fat people are so lazy and gluttonous that we'd readily toss our health out the window just so we can continue eating nonstop and laying in bed. Ah, no. I don't think so. Fat people just have the right to be fat, no questions asked.

... and that's exactly where the part about not needing to justify our sizes comes in. Yay!

"It really irks me when people make the argument that fat people are a drain on healthcare." Me, too. I also grind my teeth over "fat people cost us money in healthcare." Oh yeah? Who has ever paid for my health care but me? If there's some government fund for medical care for fat people, please do direct me to it, for I'll certainly use it. It would be more logical to say that "people who have children cost money in health care" or "people who jog cost money in health care"

Excellent list, but I am with Skeptyk on the HAES line. I'm not sure how to word it correctly, but MichMurphy comes pretty close to the concept.

I would take out the "will" in the first and fourth one. It brings what we are doing into the present. I still have an issue with the fourth one. First, it's slightly negative in tone and it brings in attributions that people don't necessarily feel about us, even if some people do. Second, it is implied in the first one. Third, it conflicts with the last one. Some of us *are* lazy, and I don't want to ague with someone about it being OK at my size to be lazy. For the fifth one, how about, "We promote healthy at any size."

Cool! I agree that we shouldn't need to be healthy and I deeply resent the focus on my health in fat hating rhetoric. Having said that it is something we need to talk about because it is part of the rhetoric. Also I think the notion of health at any size includes the idea that health is not a steady state but rather something that is specific to the individual. I like the idea of taking out the words will.

Well, you can't actually be healthy at *any* size-I can't be healthy at 85 lbs., for example (wanders off to pick more nits)

Yeah, I wasn't at my best at 95#. -Qit

Hmmm, maybe that's why it's HAES and not HAAS. The point being that no matter what your current size is, or how you got there, it's best to treat yourself with kindness and good care, and that others should do the same. I contend that the words we use are very important, and it's not nit-picky to present a clear vision of ourselves.

It depends on how you define health. If I was just given a diagnosis of cancer and given a year to live but I feel fine today, am I healthy? I think of health as a process. I'm as healthy as I can be today. And I've known people who were extremely thin by nature. One woman I knew may have been pretty close to 85 pounds but she felt fine. She may have had problems associated with her weight. I may have problems associated with my weight. But it isn't useful to make note of health problems associated with weight unless there's been a sudden change. Sudden weight gain, or loss is something to talk about. Someone who is 85 pounds because they suffer an eating disorder has a heath issue. HAES is about the process of health and part of that process is to define heath in terms of the whole story of person's life not just their weight. Even if they are 85 pounds.

Hmmm... I've had so much experience with having one foot in the grave and not feeling that bad-Like the _Bring Out Your Dead_ skit..."I'm getting better!" "No, you're not. You'll be stone dead in a moment". A recent study of dialysis patients showed that they are surprisingly happy with their lives,even with terminal illness http://www.rxpgnews.com/medicalnews/health/mental/article_338.shtml (Cue "Always Look on the Bright Side of Life")

That Health-ism thing is kind of a damned-if-you-do and damned-if-you-don't thing. On the one hand, we certainly get "sick" (no pun intended) of constantly being assumed or depicted to be unhealthy heart attacks waiting to happen, one foot in the grave, yada yada yada. On the other hand, it certainly is true that some people (of ANY size) are NOT "healthy" -- people (of all sizes, including fat people) DO sometimes suffer from illnesses, injuries, disabilities, etc., etc., and we certainly don't want to marginalize fat people with disabilities just because they are NOT "healthy" fat people. It kind of reminds me of the problems straight people have responding to the suggestion that perhaps they are gay. On the one hand, if you're not gay, you're not gay, and you don't want to give the MIS-impression that you are. On the other hand, its also tempting to respond, "And so what if I am? Are you interested?" particularly for straight people who don't want to support homophobia in any form. I feel like that with the "health" issue and fatness. Yes, I happen to be "healthy," at least for now. But so what if I weren't??? Would that make me less "worthy" of the respect due ALL people of ALL sizes?

"An assumption should not be made that the state of being fat correlates positively with illness" is kind of a mouthful...

I thought "can be" instead of "are" pretty much got the point across for me. It seems to me like health is the #1 excuse for discrimination, and if we take that excuse away, they'll be left to confront the prejudice underneath the excuses. That's probably idealistic of me, and part of me thinks that "if you answer the question, that implies they have the right to ask it", but I do think it's an important point to make -- that a lot of people (fat, thin, and otherwise) truly don't know. Because I didn't know fat doesn't necessarily equal unhealthy, I spent a lot of time starving myself trying to be healthy (!!). People might not agree with it, but if they never hear a dissenting idea about it they're never going to get to make the distinction for themselves.