Kira Cochrane

See here for a fablous column piece from Kira Cochrane who has started writing a regular anti-diet industry, weightloss coloum for the Guardian.

I've really enjoyed she has written so far, but its this latest piece that has really struck a chord with me because she's writing about complications between losing weight and feminism, having been criticised by some readers for dieting.

Kira makes a couple of good points, the first being that by criticising a woman's decision to lose weight is just another way in which women are deined any ownership of their bodies:

"...On the other, the idea that a woman is somehow betraying her entire sex by making a personal decision to lose weight underlines just how much women's individual bodies are still treated as public property, to be picked apart and pilloried, whether because they're considered too fat, too thin..."

Secondly she points out the danger in the path that many overweight/obese women choose - to ignore their bodies altogether:

"...She had had a lifetime of abuse, and, like many women in that situation, decided to ignore her body; to devote herself to the life of the mind. She gradually grew fatter and fatter and fatter (as anyone who has been fat will know, once you're on the slippery slope, it's very easy to keep sliding) until one day the unbearable pain caused by her weight led her to check into hospital for a gastric bypass. While under anaesthetic, she had a heart attack and died.

Hearing about her story at a time when I, too, was taking a completely hands-off approach to my body, I realised that I could quite easily find myself in the same position..."

As I have said nearly 50 million times before feminism, weight and weightloss are complicated issues.  To ignore our bodies and health on one hand is stupid but on the other it seems the BMI is being used as a tool of abuse by the health professions to bully the overweight/obese, doctors feel it their right to make sweeping generalisations about peoples health soley based on the BMI which is also f**king stupid.

Comments

[Bri]

Interesting column you refer to and it is food for thought (pun intended!).

I do wonder thought does being fat automatically mean we are ignoring our bodies and our health? It seems to me that if we believe that is the case, then we are still being brainwashed by the diet industry. There are many studies that show that excess adipose tissue is not the health risk that popular media would like us to think it is, or that many fat haters would like us to think it is. The correlation (not causation)increases only when we starting talking about extremely high weights, way above what the BMI designates as overweight and obese.

[curvy_goddess]

I suspect that not all overweight/obese people are ignoring their weight, I certainly used to as a coping mechanism and know a few other overweight/obese friends who have also ignored their excess weight, for different reasons to mine ie they didn't care or were just too busy to have time to think about it.

Fat Acceptance blogs seem to suggest that if you are overweight/obese you shouldn't ignore your body but embrace it by eating well and still being active.

I guess how people address/feel about their weight varies from person to person...