THE FATOSPHERE!!!
Posted on February 22, 2008
Hi Gang
My friend Susan passed this on to me and I thought it was great and so here
I am, passing it on to you too!!
Have a read if you will!!!
Hugs always
Wendy
A growing crop of “bloggers calling for fat acceptace” is giving rise to “a virtual soapbox known as the ‘fatosphere,’” reports Roni Caryn Rabin in The New York Times (1/22/08). These bloggers — who include both women and men — “challenge just about everything conventional medical wisdom has to day about obesity … The message from the fatosphere is not just that big is beautiful. Many of the bloggers dismiss the ‘obesity epidemic’ as hysteria. They argue that Americans are not that much larger than they used to be and that being fat in and of itself is not necessarily bad for you.”
Kate Harding, whose blog is called Shapley Prose, starts by attacking the premise that being fat is a choice. “No fat acceptance advocate is saying you should sit around and wildly overeat,” she acknowledges. “What we’re saying is that exercise and a balanced diet do not make everyone thin.” Others point to evidence that overweight people can be healthier than thin people. For example, “recent studies on heart patients and dialysis patients have also reported higher survival rates among heavier patients, suggesting that the link between body size and health may be more complex than generally acknowledged.”
Others point to study of people over 60 that “found that being fit has more bearing on longevity than simply being thin.” But the main argument “is that being fat is not a result of moral failure or a character flaw, or of gluttony, sloth or a lack of willpower,” and that it may have more to do with genetics than anything else. “We accept that some people are short,” says Rachel Richardson, whose blog is called The F-Word. “Yet we seem to think all people should be thin — it just doesn’t make sense.” There’s also a certain feminist streak at work, although at least one blogger, Red No. 3, specializes in the male perspective, and says: “See, I don’t have a problem with fat … My body is simply adorned, and I’ll take that.”
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