Sometimes I
feel like I live in a bubble of body positivity. I almost never experience
harassment or concern trolling for my weight. I'm pretty sure it's not just
because my friends are awesome, but also because the people in my life are
generally pretty good and aren't rude. Also, I haven't been down Hindley Street
on a Saturday night in a while, haha.
Tonight I
was absolutely stunned to open up Facebook and see that a friend had commented
on a post about Tess Holliday. This post was written by someone I don't know -
but a quick stalk told me we have 14 mutual friends. Don't you find it totally
weird when that happens? Like, how can I not know you if we have 14 mutual
friends? During my teenage years I attended a really big church, so I think
that's where the connection is.
She wrote
the following:
I'm not
convinced with all this 'self love' stuff with Tess Holliday. Don't get me
wrong, I'm absolutely supporting ALL self love and self confidence but a part
of 'self love' is 'self respect' and this girl is NOT respecting herself. In a
day and age where we know know so much about health and nutrition (let alone
being in an obesity epidemic) she's blantently showing no respect to her health
or her followers. Not meaning to offend anyone but majority of her supporters
and followers are probably overweight themselves and looking for some excuse as
to why they don't have to face their own demons. Everyone's beautiful, but not
everyone respects themselves and to me...that's not a beautiful trait. If Tess
Holliday REALLY wanted to do something positive with her body image, she'd call
out to all her followers and start a life transformation! Because the
universe/god gave us one body and how disrespectful to let ourselves get to
this point! All the supporters are just basically saying to the PLUS PLUS PLUS
size model 'oh Tess it's okay your disgustingly obese, but so am I so we can
take comfort in each other and tell each other we're perfect the way we are so
we don't need to face the harsh reality of nutrition and exercise'.
If you
really love yourself, you'd focus on your health. Would you feed your children
disgusting foods and let them ignore exercise until they were this obese? I
doubt it, because you love them.
Tess does
not love herself. She loves that people are saying it's 'okay' to be fat. End
of story.
The friend
who commented had written, "I 100% agree. She's not curvy. She's unhealthy and
obese. She's the cover girl of what not to love which is an unhealthy attitude
to looking after your body. If she loved herself she wouldn't destroy
herself."
I was happily wrapped up
in bed, the TV on, a nice cold drink nearby and I could hear Jeff in the
shower. I was feeling happy, content.
And then the bubble
popped.
I just sat there, phone
in hand, stunned. 20 likes. Her post had 20 fucking likes and one share. A chill crept up my spine.
I began to read through
the rest of the comments. I was thankful that two people stepped in to offer up
their disagreement but her response was not one of contrition.
I think you girls have
missed the point a little bit...as I mentioned in my post - I'm all for self
love and there is no way that I'm saying one person is better than another. All
I'm saying is - self love is more than words and makeup... due to medication
and diet (diet being something that could change if YOU wanted) im not talking
about just food or even Tess's husband or child. Often that's a classic 'mum'
thing to when they start a family...gain weight because they are giving most of
their love and energy to their family and therefor they themselves miss out on
the 'love'. I don't have a perfect body! And that me not loving myself
completely. But I'm am always encouraging healthy diet and lifestyle to my
friends and family. Tess isn't. She is obese and date I say much larger than a
size 22. Sorry but it's rather disgusting.
Another wrote, "To be honest I have A LOT of friends who are over weight
making really bad food choices. A vegan cake is still very bad for them, just
because it is vegan doesn't mean it is healthy!!"
I'm sure you get the point,
but the thread became this space where a group of women spewed forth their
disgust over fat bodies and unhealthy lifestyles. As the comments unraveled, I felt like Bridget Jones when she's talking to Rebecca - the social jellyfish. "Being with Rebecca is like swimming in holiday sea full of jellyfish: one minute all lovely, next minute lashed as if from nowhere."
Like seriously, what is wrong with people?
I knew I wouldn't be able to sleep until I'd had my say, so I stayed up and wrote a carefully worded response - stealing snippets from The Militant Baker and Gabifresh. No one will see it until morning. I wonder what the reaction will be. I don't think I care.
I think sometimes I take it for granted that I've lived and breathed body positivity for a few years now. I've read the canon of BoPo books (Health At Every Size, etc). I've educated myself and surrounded myself with the right people and blogs. So when this kind of vitriol comes out of nowhere, seemingly, and from people that are in my circle, I balk.
There's nothing worse, nothing more smug, than people on their healthy high horse.
I was at work last week and someone had left a library book on the desk. It was a non-fiction book on smoking and its history. The page I opened up to said,
Adolf Hitler launched the first anti-smoking campaign in the world. Magazines and newspapers were filled with warnings of the dangers of cigarettes. One magazine asked, "Brother national socialist, do you know that our Fuhrer is against smoking and thinks that every German is responisible to the whole people for all his deeds and emissions and does not have the right to damage his body with drugs?"
So there you have it. Living proof that you can be healthy and have "concerns" for how other people are damaging their bodies, and still be the world's biggest asshole.
