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This has nothing particularly to do with anything that happened on DU, but rather, with a pattern I've observed all my life but which has gotten much worse in recent years.
I am of average height, but I have a small frame and my BMI is 17.8. I couldn't be a model in Europe, I guess. Evidently, the assumption is that people with a BMI under 18 are sick in some way. And some undoubtedly are. You'll never see me defending an eating disorder or arguing that someone with a metabolic disease should refuse treatment because it could make her (sorry guys, this post is primarily about women -- there are fewer forces out there bashing you for your bodies) reach average weight. However, not every thin person is unhealthy. I'm one of those uncommon people who can eat whatever I want, however much, and maybe put on a pound or two for the 24 hours immediately following a very heavy meal, but never keep it on. I have had blood work done and have nothing wrong metabolically, except for a tendency toward hypoglycemia because I seem to process carbs very, very efficiently. Whatever the reason for it, it's not causing health problems. Evidently, this is how I am supposed to look.
However, that doesn't stop pop-medical literature from using the heavily flawed BMI to claim that a sub-18 number is "unhealthy" and puts one at an increased risk for all manner of problems, some even going so far as to claim that the underweight are at a higher risk than anyone of having problems, even the obese. This particular pile of crap is all over pop-med websites, a blatant misreading of a study conducted a few years back that looked at longevity of people and determined a correlation with weight. The scientists recognized that being underweight itself was not necessarily causing other health problems, but rather the reverse, and then eliminated various factors from the sample. Smoking was the big one; it can cause artificial thinness, but the weight is not the cause of early death! Other causes that the scientists removed from the sample were cases where there was a pre-existing disease known to cause weight loss (or gain), and those suffering from starvation. When the sample was culled down to remove factors that introduced skew, the results were quite different. They found that being thin did not by itself have any of the risks of obesity and did not lower lifespan. Completely contrary to what is being pushed on unscientific pop-med sites.
Another trend is the push to minimize, to make ugly insinuations about, and even to dehumanize perfectly healthy women. "Real women have curves," I hear. In a similar vein, increasingly I find myself and others like me referred to as "skinny girls," implying that we are not full women. I read about the backlash against thinness, and how it is supposedly always psychologically unhealthy for a woman to desire that, how it is a sign that she is self-loathing and has given in to a sexist culture if she stays thin, because hey, the pop-med consensus is that being thin is bad for you.
It has become rude and unacceptable to tell someone to lose weight, but perfectly OK for chance acquaintances to comment about a thin person, or even say--with no evidence--that that person must have an eating disorder. Why is either all right, unless it comes from a doctor? I've even read about thin women being accosted by complete strangers who grab their wrists and comment about how they "need to fatten up." Anyone who pinched a large woman on the ass and made a remark about it would hopefully get knocked cold. They'd deserve to, at any rate. Why is it OK to violate someone's personal space?
It only becomes acceptable to do this sort of crap if a group is gradually becoming dehumanized. There was a time in the not-so-distant past when the aforementioned ass-pinching was not that uncommon, or unacceptable. Overweight women had been dehumanized. But you don't right a wrong with another wrong.
I'm told that men secretly think thinness is ugly. If this is being pushed, then undoubtedly men are, or soon will be, conditioned to actually think that. I've been told by friends that my "problem finding men" is that I'm "too thin" (funny, I know damn well that the "problem" is some lingering psychological issues from a bad childhood). And I'm bi, so I notice the other side too: In their quest for self-esteem, some "curvier" women have taken a common step of a person who has been victimized, and decided that they must put someone else below them in order to feel better. And with pop-health sites claiming that being underweight is just as bad or worse than being obese, thin women are a ready target. Thus all the judgmental types of comments I described. Women can often be more overtly cruel to each other than men can.
This ugliness started with seemingly good intentions, to make normal weight women accept what they look like and to boost the self-esteem of overweight women. As a feminist, I think that's great, that it is sexist and evil for cultural forces to prescribe a "perfect female body," and that all healthy women should accept their bodies as they are. Key word: all. Defending the self-worth of normal and overweight women does not require taking a collective dump on healthy thin women. I hold no ill will against any person on account of their weight. I have problems with people based on their behavior.
And, finally, just in case anyone thought that this was all a rant apropos of nothing, or a mere hypothetical problem that doesn't really happen, I'd like to mention that the attitudes I have complained about have severely affected my self image. Being told that I must have a major health problem, that I am unattractive to men and women, that I'm a mere "skinny girl" instead of a thin woman, that the only "real women" are those heavier than I, that I have to accept people poking on me to feel my bones, and that I must hate my "real body" (i.e., an imaginary body that is of average weight) or I wouldn't look like this... for YEARS... until recently the combined effect had been a fulfillment of some of these attitudes. Damn right I hated my real body, felt that I was unattractive, spent time and energy fretting over whether I had a metabolic problem, and saw myself as a mere "girl" -- when I wasn't questioning whether I was perhaps transgendered, and NOT really a woman, because of internalizing all this.
NO MORE. They can sell, but I'm not buying it anymore. I urge other healthy and thin women to reject it as well.
There are some men and women who prefer average-sized women. Others like thin women. Some like larger women. Neither group is inherently sexist or (in the case of the lesbians and bi women) self-loathing. It all depends on whether their individual preference is real, or influenced by a sexist media and culture.
Can't we just fight sexism, and the real perpetrators thereof, instead of fighting women? Can't we just accept the great natural diversity of shape in the human body, instead of marginalizing any particular shape? I'd sure like to.
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