Fat Shaming/Fat Acceptance Movement

[Phytomancer]

holy cow this thread got out of hand.

sorry that drug on, but it's something that really irks me. these straw men that people prop up in these arguments are silly. i know it's rough being the default setting and playing on easy mode, but please do not make it worse by telling people whose struggles and lives you couldn't fathom that they have it easy. it makes us look bad, and according to you how one person of a certain race acts is how they all should be judged.

 

I understand the sentiment, and I think the pain is shared among minorities, but I don't think we should tell the majorities to screw off just because they have not experienced the hardship in the minority ways. That can be less fruitful. We need allies to battle the racism shitstorm.

 

 

i'm sorry that i, presumably, (i'm the one bashing MRA, which i had to look up,) have chased you out of the thread. i think it's a worthy topic and body image/acceptance does go a lot deeper than your weight. i really liked some of the comments and insight added by people like machete, hitlionsoul, phytomancer, and stillwaters. i think it's good and healthy as long as we talk about the subject, no need to single anyone out or go after certain people.

 

i know i snowballed right into an overlong angry sounding rant, but those are just my opinions and no one has to live by them, i think they add to this but if it's all crazy talk then i'm sure we move to another thread, but this one has been off the tracks for a while now.

 

Yay, my name!

 

To lighten up, here is my favorite, short, Asian, celebs without six-pack abs and kevlar pec... still rocking the suit.

 

[Machete]

 

Here's Chip in action, I guess:

[Eleanorsbee]

vegetarians are the worst offenders 

 

If you go to any restaurant you can get a vegetarian option .... but can you get a stake if you go to a Vegetarian restaurant ???? .... can you  ???? ....... is blatant CARNIVOREISM 

[Noname123]

I think it's time for someone to start another thread on oppression/privilege w/e. Keeps getting derailed from the original topic, I agree with JMitch, people are coming back to read on the topic and it's disappointing that it's just coming back to people at each others throats over something that doesn't relate to the starting thread. I'm likely unsubbing as well. 

[Phytomancer]

 

While I think that pointing fingers can't solve an problems...

 

However, I insist that beauty standards are inseparable with race issue. Say, this video... you'll see that even in non-white country, white men are still considered an ideal beauty. (Ligthened skins in South Asia. High nose bridge and larger eyes in East Asia. Minority white models in South Africa...)

 

And oh, they didn't even study 'Asian' male face for attractiveness; just black, white, and mixed. So yep, I can't help but feeling invisible in such a standard like this.

 

Also, races aside, the bodies are a little unrealistic to upkeep for an average person.

[Machete]

Here's a special cultural case:

 

 

[Waldo]

"being white is great, if it was an option at the beginning of the year i would renew white every time. being a white man is playing life on easy mode."

Eh give it a generation or two, and views on this topic will be dramatically different, especially that male part. Our education system is heavily slanted toward the way females learn and is growing ever more so with the progression of education the last couple decades. Black and hispanic female HS graduates are a good bit more likely to go to college than a white male HS graduate.

http://www.pewresearch.org/fact-tank/2014/03/06/womens-college-enrollment-gains-leave-men-behind/

[Phytomancer]

Eh give it a generation or two, and views on this topic will be dramatically different, especially that male part. Our education system is heavily slanted toward the way females learn and is growing ever more so with the progression of education the last couple decades. Black and hispanic female HS graduates are a good bit more likely to go to college than a white male HS graduate.

http://www.pewresearch.org/fact-tank/2014/03/06/womens-college-enrollment-gains-leave-men-behind/

 

That's quite an informative article. It shows the growth of females enrolling colleges more. What I wonder, though, is the percentage of people who apply and get in.

 

In my very humble opinion, this might stem from the fact that the society requires minorities (esp women) to get college degrees for jobs... while men just need to look like they are drug-free to get some okay employment. But I am quite biased in the topic. 

 

But hey, that's a bit less about body image and more about education. Somewhat slightly more important topic. 

[Waldo]

In my very humble opinion, this might stem from the fact that the society requires minorities (esp women) to get college degrees for jobs... while men just need to look like they are drug-free to get some okay employment. But I am quite biased in the topic.

I don't know about that. There is a lot of exaggeration out there when it comes to employment, employers first and foremost are looking to make a profit.

If that whole women make 0.XX to every dollar men make for the same work were actually true (and not illegal....), why on earth would any for profit company actually hire a man? Staff up with lower paid women and profit more.

Unemployment is higher among men than women. This is a long term trend that is greatly exaggerated during economic downturns, the most recent one showing a huge gap, where male unemployment was a full 2% greater than female unemployment.

http://www.deptofnumbers.com/unemployment/demographics/

[weakogre]

for clarification here is Louis CK's bit, NSFW language in the video:

 

https://youtu.be/qg48ZZ2wYfM

 

i will agree with you that some of the cents to dollar arguments have been debunked with child leave and not returning to work among other things, but i do hate statistics. they're spun so many different ways and often need better context. i will also say Adam Carolla had a bit about how if women did the same work as men for less money the last male would be a CEO the day before he replaced himself with a woman so the company could earn more money.

 

i would say that the male learning (if college is slanted towards female learning) would be the trades, which are still available and high paying.

 

on education i think the conversation turns towards social stigma than statistics. from 1970-1980 women saw a tremendous jump then a steady incline, but a lot of that comes from women older than 24 and the totals are affected somewhat by all women's private colleges. saying women are dominating colleges doesn't really hold up to well, considering this in the last 40 years and from there to the beginning of time it was male dominated.

[Waldo]

saying women are dominating colleges doesn't really hold up to well, considering this in the last 40 years and from there to the beginning of time it was male dominated.

What happened in the past is irrelevant. Todays male HS students don't "owe" it to the girls for the way things were more than a half century ago.

[weakogre]

What happened in the past is irrelevant. Todays male HS students don't "owe" it to the girls for the way things were more than a half century ago.

 

you're on your own if you just want to say nothing before today ever matters. shouldn't we try to make it better than we had it for the next group of people?

 

and where is the owing? how about they not mistreat or belittle other high school students? how about they treat a girl who is interested in hard science as a person instead of chastising her or telling her that she shouldn't do something because she's a girl and that's a boy thing?

 

that doesn't seem to ridiculous does it? i mean this site is called "nerd fitness" it's filled (presumably) with nerds, who because of social changes are not physically assaulted as much as they may have been those 40 years ago i was talking about earlier. now they're working to make our future better and more than before because they now get support and encouragement.

 

now let me cut you off because i'm going to go out on a limb and say you want to turn this into a participation ribbon display conversation, it's not. this is about the board being leveled. so if you are a nerd, realize you benefited from the shift as well, so why not let others benefit to. and maybe one day we won't have to have these silly conversations where a group who have had every advantage there is complains about another group making progress, even though the new group isn't near the privilege of the first.

[Gainsdalf the Whey]

and where is the owing? how about they not mistreat or belittle other high school students? how about they treat a girl who is interested in hard science as a person instead of chastising her or telling her that she shouldn't do something because she's a girl and that's a boy thing?

 

Where are you from that you have ever seen this happen? Being someone involved in "hard science" myself (almost done a master's degree in engineering), I have never ever seen a girl interested in science chastised because of it. Quite the opposite actually, the girls in my classes in both high school and college were probably encouraged by administators and people in those fields to go down that path more because "there's not enough girls in science/engineering (males are more predisposed to be interested in the later field)", and of course all the boys in the class were always down for more girls to come around so it wasn't such a sausage fest. I've never seen anything but encouragement for women to pursue the sciences.

[Trewest]

I had an interesting conversation with a guy friend. I'm not a tiny woman, and even when I cut down on the body fat, I'm still built big. I tend to refer to myself as a tank, or a diesel engine; I'm not fast but once I get going it takes a lot to stop me.  

 

My friend pointed out to me that that is not a bad thing. And then he used physics to try and explain it to me, but I'll summarize it here to the main point 'an object in motion tends to stay in motion' and it takes a force of equal and opposite value to stop momentum. So although I call myself a tank, my friend says instead I should think of myself as a force of nature; glaciers, tsunamis, hurricanes, mudslides, earthquakes. All of them astonishingly powerful and impossible to stop. And he says I should add myself to that list too

[Machete]

Where are you from that you have ever seen this happen? Being someone involved in "hard science" myself (almost done a master's degree in engineering), I have never ever seen a girl interested in science chastised because of it. Quite the opposite actually, the girls in my classes in both high school and college were probably encouraged by administators and people in those fields to go down that path more because "there's not enough girls in science/engineering (males are more predisposed to be interested in the later field)", and of course all the boys in the class were always down for more girls to come around so it wasn't such a sausage fest. I've never seen anything but encouragement for women to pursue the sciences.

 

The Deep South, I believe.

[Phytomancer]

My brother, a scientist in Japan, said that: in the conferences he was in, people patronized female scientists too much because they are good enough to come this far and imitate men... Men got to improve their skills and receive constructive criticism while women just get 'oh, you're so great, honey. Next.'

 

So yup. Sexism exists in modern days.

[Machete]

My brother, a scientist in Japan, said that: in the conferences he was in, people patronized female scientists too much because they are good enough to come this far and imitate men... Men got to improve their skills and receive constructive criticism while women just get 'oh, you're so great, honey. Next.'

 

So yup. Sexism exists in modern days.

 

My friend is a microbiologist from Eastern Europe, also working in Japan. She does not seem to be having much fun with it.

[dijos]

sooo...Fat shaming?

[Noname123]

Caught up again on the thread. My two cents on the current flavor of the week on this thread. As a woman: 

 

Discrimination exists- I haven't had anything TOO bad happen, but esp. in a corporate setting I get the 'Oh would you mind getting me a coffee sweetheart' type deal in meetings I participate in (I look a little younger than I actually am so that could be an ageism factor too). It sucks. But it's not something that will change anytime soon despite whatever random laws you throw at these people. So now I'm working doubly hard to prove that my Masters is more than an excuse to have a pretty frame in my office. 

 

As much as this behavior sucks, I want to be equal. I don't want quotas, I don't want a leg up. I want to be treated as a person not a woman by my employer. So that means that in school and in colleges I think race and gender need to be taken off applications completely. Look at who has the best package and the best intellect (aka, not who can afford the best schools, but who actually has the best brain). For jobs, look at the skills not at skin color or sex.  When I achieve something I want it because I did it, not because there's some underlying law helping me get it. 

 

Equal is equal. Let people find the best possible jobs and opportunities for themselves based on their capabilities, not by trying to make the playing field 'even' with laws made by some random legislators who probably don't even abide by those rules themselves in their daily lives. 

[Noname123]

sooo...Fat shaming?

Gave up on this topic on this thread a while ago  

[insanity]

The Deep South, I believe.

*Looks around*

 

Can't say I've seen any... and I went to a school that teaches mainly STEM subjects for a total of 6 years.

 

 

 

Equal is equal. Let people find the best possible jobs and opportunities for themselves based on their capabilities, not by trying to make the playing field 'even' with laws made by some random legislators who probably don't even abide by those rules themselves in their daily lives. 

+1... This... *begins slow clap*....

[Waldo]

you're on your own if you just want to say nothing before today ever matters. shouldn't we try to make it better than we had it for the next group of people?

 

and where is the owing? how about they not mistreat or belittle other high school students? how about they treat a girl who is interested in hard science as a person instead of chastising her or telling her that she shouldn't do something because she's a girl and that's a boy thing?

 

that doesn't seem to ridiculous does it? i mean this site is called "nerd fitness" it's filled (presumably) with nerds, who because of social changes are not physically assaulted as much as they may have been those 40 years ago i was talking about earlier. now they're working to make our future better and more than before because they now get support and encouragement.

 

now let me cut you off because i'm going to go out on a limb and say you want to turn this into a participation ribbon display conversation, it's not. this is about the board being leveled. so if you are a nerd, realize you benefited from the shift as well, so why not let others benefit to. and maybe one day we won't have to have these silly conversations where a group who have had every advantage there is complains about another group making progress, even though the new group isn't near the privilege of the first.

What on earth?

You refuted my point that women are currently dominating in colleges vs. men and its trending even further that way, by saying that men dominated colleges from 40 years ago to infinity. How is what happened 40+ years ago even relevant to the point that women are currently dominating in colleges and it is trending even more strongly that way? The only way that would be remotely relevant is if todays boys owe it to the girls to dominate since the situation was different for their grandparents and before.

Honestly you are just arguing with the voices on your shoulders here. How women are treated in science, how is that even relevant to any points whatsoever? And then you bring nerds into this, and bullying. Dafuq, the disconnected streams of outrage you are bouncing between make zero cohesive point between them.

To say any group is particularly advantaged just isn't true anymore, and hasn't been for quite some time. White women are the closest thing to an advantaged group as there is. Each group has its pros and cons, though black men are probably the most disadvantaged.

[weakogre]

What on earth?

*snip*

 

i think this isn't really going anywhere. if you can't see how the points connect then there's nothing more to discuss. and saying no one is advantaged as a white male is laughably unaware.

 

to phyto and machete, women in engineering, especially on the field work side in america are looked at through a vastly different lens than any male counterpart and are dismissed and treated with contempt, in my experience. best case they're patronized, worst case they're basically intimidated into lesser work. of course this is not an end all be all sweeping thing, but that's what i've witnessed and the women that do succeed and elevate do it in the face of a lot of stuff male engineers wouldn't dream of. 

 

that's what i tried to say originally (along with louis ck), white male is the definition of benefit of the doubt in almost all things. you think there's no advantage to being you because you've never not been you and most the people you know are like you. imagine going into an interview where everyone you see in the company, and almost all the other applicants are a different race than you, do you believe in your heart of hearts that you're given a fair shake? i bet a lot of white people would blame it on racism (or reverse racism, whatever they want to use) if they didn't get the job, but when they're the one who is in the majority and looks like everyone else, they were more qualified.

 

but the good news is more people you meet and the more places you go your eyes open up a little more and you start to get a better picture. and with the internet and social media the world is shrinking. it's getting harder to stay in the bubble that breeds racism/sexism/etc.

 

as for this thread, i'm going to leave it up with trewest who attempted to get it back on track. i think we can all see how people feel about race/sex/sexuality discrimination (broken down by context clues leads to very unsurprising results), but i've said my peace about fat shaming/acceptance and i'd like to hear more from other people.

 

i will not be trying to explain discrimination to straight white men who say it doesn't exist, a fight i'm sure a lot more people than myself have given up on.

[Phytomancer]

sooo...Fat shaming?

 

Okay, one last try.

I think most of the think of Fat Shaming has been said early on in the thread, but this is a rehash.

 

1. Some people think that Fat Shaming is a good way to motivate people to lose weight. (Scientifically proven fault)

 

2. Some people think that Fat Acceptance lead people to obesity and unhealthy behaviors (Nobody dared make this study and get published)

 

3. Most people are somewhat in-between. That is, they think that accepting some curve and softness around the edge is fine, but forcefeeding them like a goose for fuo gras are dingbat. They think urging friends and family to eat healthy and exercise is nice, but calling them names like Jabba the Hutt is hurtful-- dingbat. 

 

4. Some people started pulling off Nick Cage contest. Then some dingbat (me) started talking about their issues about other kinds of acceptance, especially in term of attractiveness: being a short man, being an Asian man, etc.

 

4.5. The race gate opened. The respectful discussion started. The temperature was about July in Venezuela.

 

5. Some people bravely pulled back from it and started talking about the acceptance in term of their skin color (being dark, paled, etc.)

 

5.5. Race discussion intensified. The temperature was about Satan's armpit. 

 

6. People ran away (they should.) The discussion went slightly back to body acceptance.

 

6.5. Gender discussion started. The heat was about-- I don't know, I run out of parables. English ain't my first language.

 

But all in all, we can talk about body acceptance in genders too.

 

Why do men need to feel like 'real men?' Like, real men have chest, real men have guts, beards, MPB, I don't know. They have to look a certain way, shapen a certain way, and dress a certain way to be called a man? Esp. in the western countries, this seem to be the case...

 

Same goes with woman, but more intensely. Why are women forced to paint their faces to look 'professional'? Why impractical shoes and skirts? Why do some people need to say-- real women have curves, cellulite, greys? I mean-- real women are people who identify themselves as women, right?

 

I think the sexism thread is very interesting to discuss, but we got men and women only threads for that.

 

If you are to continue on this it is fine by me. I enjoy it anyway as long as it is respectful.  

[Waldo]

women in engineering, especially on the field work side in america are looked at through a vastly different lens than any male counterpart and are dismissed and treated with contempt, in my experience. best case they're patronized, worst case they're basically intimidated into lesser work. of course this is not an end all be all sweeping thing, but that's what i've witnessed and the women that do succeed and elevate do it in the face of a lot of stuff male engineers wouldn't dream of.

This has not been the case at all in my experience. Women engineers, both in the field and in the office, are treated like equals.

Now there does have to be a degree of badassery to any field engineer, man or woman, because you always need to hold the upper hand in the power struggle with superintendents, who are pretty much the alpha's alpha. Weak individuals, whether man or woman, do not thrive in this environment. You certainly don't want to mess with the female field engineers I work with. But that is just the nature of field engineer work (at least for construction), it is not a job suited for weak individuals.