More and more shops are beginning to sell 'plus size' clothing. More and more 'plus size' women are being outspoken about embracing their bodies which society tells us are unhealthy and unlovable. These issues have been widely discussed in the media recently, a lot of the conclusions by people have been very negative but I think people need to have a more balanced view.
The term 'plus size' - is it offensive?
There are two sides to this. Some people think the term should be embraced and is not offensive but a way to distinguish between sizes in fashion. Others believe the term suggests that people who are considered to be in this category are not normal. The term could be taken to mean that people have a surplus of something and who should be allowed to define what normal is?
Personally, I would not have an issue with the term if there was not so much discrimination. By this, I mean that being 'plus size' is equated with being unhealthy and abnormal. It is this idea of excessiveness that society refuses to accept. The truth is that, for most people, it is not just a distinguishing of groups of sizes. It is often used as a way to shame people into losing weight.
What sizes are covered by the term 'plus size'?
This has always been an issue. While some shops consider a size 12 to be 'plus size,' it does not start until a size 18 for others. Again, this raises the issue of who is allowed to decide what should be considered outside of the norm. People come in many shapes and sizes, there is no way to really decide who should have to look for clothes in the 'plus size' section.
I have been 17lbs overweight and at that point, in some shops, I was considered to be 'plus size.' I was not obese but overweight. Where do we draw the line with this? Why does it even matter?
Being plus size means you are unhealthy
It is really damaging to continuously link weight and health together. You can be considered to be overweight and still have perfect health, you can be unhealthy at a 'normal' weight etc. Although there can be a link between weight and general health, it is not the only contributing factor and people need to acknowledge this.
Selling plus size clothing encourages obesity
There are many causes of obesity. There are vast reasons why people struggle to lose weight. It is very common for someone who is obese to fail to lose weight despite their best efforts, why should they be made to feel bad? Seeing the possibility of being able to buy clothes if you were bigger will not necessarily encourage you to eat more food and put on weight. The sale of plus size clothing just says that we know that some people are bigger than others and also need to buy clothes like the rest of society.
Some may argue that selling plus size clothing in shops will deter already obese people from losing weight. Erm, do people realise that these people have not been walking around naked until now? There will always be sale of this clothing as long as there is a demand for it. You never hear people complaining about the availability of size 4 clothing for adults and this can be equally damaging on the other end of the scale. Besides, plus size clothing is often more expensive anyway so people are having to pay for being obesity in many ways.
Being 'plus size' is not something to be ashamed of. Being 'plus size' does not mean someone is unhealthy. Everyone is different shapes and sizes and that is why the body is so amazing. As long as we need to wear clothing everyday then shops will need to cater to all body types! Do you expect obese people to stay at home until they are a size which is acceptable to society? While obesity is not something to necessarily be celebrated, it is something which needs to be accepted as a part of modern society. The world does not cater to obese people, the world shames them every single day and they have to live with that. If shops selling clothing in their size makes their lives a little easier then so be it, they already have to deal with discrimination and being shamed by society every single day.
Showing posts with label body image. Show all posts
Showing posts with label body image. Show all posts
Saturday, 25 April 2015
Monday, 10 November 2014
Skinny shaming...?
I've heard a lot recently about the idea of 'skinny shaming' and I felt like I needed to comment. First of all, I do not think it is acceptable to shame anyone for their body type. I am all about body positivity. It is never okay to make someone feel bad about their body. That is why this is a difficult topic to approach.
When Nicki Minaj released 'Anaconda' and Meghan Trainor came out with 'All About That Bass,' skinny girls everywhere got angry. Lyrics that explicitly put down skinny women and celebrated bigger women annoyed people. I get that.
But, fat women do have a much harder time being accepted in society. I have been skinny and fat. When skinny, I was always told by friends that I looked good. When fat, I am told about diets and workout routines that I could try. Nobody stared at me when I was eating in public when I was skinny but they do now. With clear disgust. People are often explicitly and openly repulsed by a fat woman, it's not so common with a skinny woman.
So while women are shamed for their bodies all the time, fat or thin, we have to acknowledge that the discrimination is not on the same level. I wish I did not have to talk about this, I wish that we lived in a world where people looked beyond body shapes but unfortunately, that's not the case. Quite frankly, it annoys me to hear skinny women saying 'oh but we experience the disgust too!' Yes, sometimes you do however, your body type is in magazines and on movie screens all of the time and society as a whole accepts it as normal and okay. Whereas, fat women are mostly viewed in a negative way. While you, as a skinny woman, may have experienced individual cases of body shaming, fat women experience it on a much larger and deeper scale.
Fat women are rarely seen as beautiful by society so if some artists are going to bring out songs celebrating them then let them have it!
Ultimately, we all need to know and accept that body shaming is never okay. In order to do this we have to acknowledge that 'skinny shaming' and 'fat shaming' are very different things.
When Nicki Minaj released 'Anaconda' and Meghan Trainor came out with 'All About That Bass,' skinny girls everywhere got angry. Lyrics that explicitly put down skinny women and celebrated bigger women annoyed people. I get that.
But, fat women do have a much harder time being accepted in society. I have been skinny and fat. When skinny, I was always told by friends that I looked good. When fat, I am told about diets and workout routines that I could try. Nobody stared at me when I was eating in public when I was skinny but they do now. With clear disgust. People are often explicitly and openly repulsed by a fat woman, it's not so common with a skinny woman.
So while women are shamed for their bodies all the time, fat or thin, we have to acknowledge that the discrimination is not on the same level. I wish I did not have to talk about this, I wish that we lived in a world where people looked beyond body shapes but unfortunately, that's not the case. Quite frankly, it annoys me to hear skinny women saying 'oh but we experience the disgust too!' Yes, sometimes you do however, your body type is in magazines and on movie screens all of the time and society as a whole accepts it as normal and okay. Whereas, fat women are mostly viewed in a negative way. While you, as a skinny woman, may have experienced individual cases of body shaming, fat women experience it on a much larger and deeper scale.
Fat women are rarely seen as beautiful by society so if some artists are going to bring out songs celebrating them then let them have it!
Ultimately, we all need to know and accept that body shaming is never okay. In order to do this we have to acknowledge that 'skinny shaming' and 'fat shaming' are very different things.
Monday, 1 September 2014
Katie Hopkins Fat Shaming
The woman who seems to have no emotional understanding of other people is back. Katie Hopkins has become well known for her constant offensive remarks about various issues. The latest is one which I cannot ignore. So what has she done?
Well, she's put on weight purely to show people how 'easy' it is to lose it. She's be known to make comments about things like this before, she is clearly disgusted by fat people. Hopkins is set to make a tv show about her simple path back to her formerly slim body for 2015.
"My project was to prove that all the excuses for being fat are nonsense — and it is proving that."
As someone who is in recovery from an eating disorder, I feel like I am in a good position to say that losing weight is not easy. When she has to do it, I hope she realises what a struggle can be. But then again, she'll probably be able to afford a dietician and a trainer to help her through. Most of us do not get that luxury. Most people have to try and lose weight alone.
Being fat is not just about eating too much. There can be severe emotional issues behind someone's weight gain. There can also be health problems and disorders which cause someone to gain weight. Hopkins has repeatedly said how miserable putting on this weight has made her, she fails to understand how people can be fat and happy.
I have news for you Katie Hopkins - just because everyone is not your idea of a perfect weight does not mean that they should be unhappy. It does not mean that they even want to lose weight. It's possible to be overweight and healthy. Weight is no indication of health or happiness or success.
Being overweight does not mean you are lazy. Losing weight is really difficult for some people and easier for others. Do you know why? Because all our bodies are different. They work in different ways, we have different metabolisms and need different vitamins. There is no one solid way that works for people wanting to lose weight. So all this 'experiment' is going to show is that it is easy for Katie Hopkins to lose weight, no more than that.
Besides, I do not care if this woman (who is making money from being controversial) thinks that fat people must want to lose weight. Being happy with who you are is much more important than being thin just because society tells you it is more attractive.
Well, she's put on weight purely to show people how 'easy' it is to lose it. She's be known to make comments about things like this before, she is clearly disgusted by fat people. Hopkins is set to make a tv show about her simple path back to her formerly slim body for 2015.
"My project was to prove that all the excuses for being fat are nonsense — and it is proving that."
As someone who is in recovery from an eating disorder, I feel like I am in a good position to say that losing weight is not easy. When she has to do it, I hope she realises what a struggle can be. But then again, she'll probably be able to afford a dietician and a trainer to help her through. Most of us do not get that luxury. Most people have to try and lose weight alone.
Being fat is not just about eating too much. There can be severe emotional issues behind someone's weight gain. There can also be health problems and disorders which cause someone to gain weight. Hopkins has repeatedly said how miserable putting on this weight has made her, she fails to understand how people can be fat and happy.
I have news for you Katie Hopkins - just because everyone is not your idea of a perfect weight does not mean that they should be unhappy. It does not mean that they even want to lose weight. It's possible to be overweight and healthy. Weight is no indication of health or happiness or success.
Being overweight does not mean you are lazy. Losing weight is really difficult for some people and easier for others. Do you know why? Because all our bodies are different. They work in different ways, we have different metabolisms and need different vitamins. There is no one solid way that works for people wanting to lose weight. So all this 'experiment' is going to show is that it is easy for Katie Hopkins to lose weight, no more than that.
Besides, I do not care if this woman (who is making money from being controversial) thinks that fat people must want to lose weight. Being happy with who you are is much more important than being thin just because society tells you it is more attractive.
Sunday, 8 June 2014
Fitspo: is it really healthy?
Fitspo is a term used to describe fitness inspiration, throughout the internet it has gradually replaced thinspo. Thinspo or thinspiration is essentially using pictures of very skinny, sometimes emaciated people (usually women) in order to motivate others to get thin. Its links are with the dark world of pro anorexia websites. When people became aware of it, many of them were rightly disgusted and found it very disturbing. Then along came fitspo, an attempt to use quotes and images to inspire people to eat healthily and work out.
Widely found on websites such as tumblr, pinterest and instagram, the people who follow this see it as a healthy alternative to thinspo. But, I am not sure it's as healthy as all these people seem to think. One quick tumblr search and it shows a bunch of pictures of women deemed 'healthy' yet I notice that they're all relatively skinny and like with thinspo, a lot seem photoshopped! Many of these women seem obsessed with their 'healthy' diets and workout regimes. Surely this obsession is not healthy...
As I go through pages dedicated to fitspo, I notice that many insist that it's okay to eat some cake or a piece of chocolate occasionally. This leads me to think that they really are trying to do this the healthy way. But the fact that they are encouraging people to eat what they deem healthy 90% of the time and workout almost every day does not sit right with me.
What makes me more uncomfortable is that a lot of these pages are run by people who claim that fitspo helped them recover from their eating disorder. Well, I would argue that exercising so much and eating so healthily is actually putting them in danger of perhaps just developing a different type of eating disorder - orthorexia. This is an extreme fixation with avoiding foods deemed unhealthy by the person. This whole concept of fitspo just seems very dangerous to me.
Looking at some of the food diaries that people post, along with their exercise routines, quickly highlights that these people are not consuming enough energy compared with what they are exerting. This is probably why many of the pictures are not just women with lots of muscles but actually very small women. I know that you cannot tell if someone is healthy by looking at a photo but it all seems dangerously similar to thinspo.
Basically, I want this all to stop. I want people to stop telling others what they should be eating, how often they should be working out. I want all this 'motivating people to do this and that' to stop. This obsession with bodies, whether it is getting thin or getting fit, has to stop. The key similarity with thinspo and fitspo is that clearly these people are striving to make themselves look good. It is not healthy to be so fixated on what you look like, everyone needs to remember that they are more than a body, so much more. Rather than using sites like tumblr to motivate others to change their bodies, we should be using them to promote self care and body love!
Widely found on websites such as tumblr, pinterest and instagram, the people who follow this see it as a healthy alternative to thinspo. But, I am not sure it's as healthy as all these people seem to think. One quick tumblr search and it shows a bunch of pictures of women deemed 'healthy' yet I notice that they're all relatively skinny and like with thinspo, a lot seem photoshopped! Many of these women seem obsessed with their 'healthy' diets and workout regimes. Surely this obsession is not healthy...
As I go through pages dedicated to fitspo, I notice that many insist that it's okay to eat some cake or a piece of chocolate occasionally. This leads me to think that they really are trying to do this the healthy way. But the fact that they are encouraging people to eat what they deem healthy 90% of the time and workout almost every day does not sit right with me.
What makes me more uncomfortable is that a lot of these pages are run by people who claim that fitspo helped them recover from their eating disorder. Well, I would argue that exercising so much and eating so healthily is actually putting them in danger of perhaps just developing a different type of eating disorder - orthorexia. This is an extreme fixation with avoiding foods deemed unhealthy by the person. This whole concept of fitspo just seems very dangerous to me.
Looking at some of the food diaries that people post, along with their exercise routines, quickly highlights that these people are not consuming enough energy compared with what they are exerting. This is probably why many of the pictures are not just women with lots of muscles but actually very small women. I know that you cannot tell if someone is healthy by looking at a photo but it all seems dangerously similar to thinspo.
Basically, I want this all to stop. I want people to stop telling others what they should be eating, how often they should be working out. I want all this 'motivating people to do this and that' to stop. This obsession with bodies, whether it is getting thin or getting fit, has to stop. The key similarity with thinspo and fitspo is that clearly these people are striving to make themselves look good. It is not healthy to be so fixated on what you look like, everyone needs to remember that they are more than a body, so much more. Rather than using sites like tumblr to motivate others to change their bodies, we should be using them to promote self care and body love!
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