Letters to the Editor
-
What?
To the degree that this black fat preference is simply a determination to pooh-pooh anything "white," blacks need to grow up. If it's simply ignorance, well, now we know and when you know better you're supposed to do better. Sorry, brothers, but just as I learned to reject "hard bodies" that are the result of steroids, y'all need to reject "lard bodies" that are, at least in part, the result of slow suicide to please you.
Ok, now I'm supposed to only like black women's shape because I'm trying to reject white peoples preference? That is one of the most ignorant things I've ever heard. A grown black man cannot simply like a certain shape for the shape? What the hell does steroids have to do with a big ass? If you really went to the gym as you said, than you'd know that many, many black women work out but the ass is still there. Hell, look at Serena Williams and as she says:
"If I lost 20lbs, I'm still going to have these knockers - forgive me - and I'm still going to have this ass. It's just the way it is. I'm the same size and the same weight I was five years ago."
Guess What Debra, there's a pretty good percentage of healthy black women who just happen to have big beautiful behinds.
-
What Is Thin, Anyway?
It seems as if our understanding of the concept of "thin" is being adjusted upward. I see plenty of teenagers and 20-somethings who look soft, round, and out of shape, but who probably consider themselves thin - and I guess they are, relatively speaking.
The 50's and 60's weren't long ago at all, but have you tried fitting into anything "vintage" recently? At a modern size 8, I can't find any of those stylish cocktail dresses from 40 or 50 years ago that will fit me. This tells me that we have gotten a bit larger between the end of WWII and today.
While I think that imposing rigid ideals is certainly dangerous, on the other hand, I think we may be "accepting" ourselves into a huge health crisis if the definition of "thin" keeps inching upward.
-
Tired of being a walking set of measurements
The subject line says it all. I am _so tired_ of the constant critique of body types. You can't win! The numbers of obese women in this country are substantial, and the resultant messages are (1) everyone needs to be on a diet as of yesterday and (2) who wants to be a stick figure, celebrate your curves! I am not overweight, but the omnipresence of these two messages affect everyone. I feel pressure to count calories and to join other women in picking apart our bodies ("I feel fat today! My thighs are too big!" "Your thighs, look at my stomach!"), and on top of it, embarassed that I lack those big curves, not having the luck to have that lovely waist to hip ratio black women are often blessed with. I am not 5'11, so I don't fit into the supermodel-esque crowd, either.
I am an average- height, normal BMI- having, healthy woman, and I hate that I am unable to walk around without feeling constantly critiqued, even though I know these messages are put out there for everyone indiscriminately. The other writers pointing out that abdominal fat, not 'booty' fat, is the most dangerous sort are absolutely correct. Can we please leave SOME women alone, just for the day, perhaps??
-
These aren't healthy women,
many are obese. It is not healthy to carry that kind of extra weight and graphically represents why obesity and it's related health issues has increased 400% within the previous 25 years.
-
This is absolutely terrible writing
Never mind the topic or anything else. From a writing quality standpoint, this is horrible. There is nothing here that backs up any arguments whatsoever.
I can't believe Salon published this. I can shoot countless holes in this based on some fundamentals from a Critical Writing course in my distant pass. Why did the editors let this go to print? Salon, you have let me down.
-
In Defense of Debra
The outcry of vitriol against Debra over what should be just common sense only strengthens my opinion that the obesity crisis has gotten out of control. Accusations that pointing out the very obvious, well documented, dangers of obesity is promoting eating disorders or is anti-woman is like saying that the suggestion to wash your hands after going to the toilet is promoting obsessive compulsive disorder. Will you listen to yourselves?!
I have a cousin who is eating herself to death, literally. She is my height (5'7"), and weighs 450 pounds. She is part of a "gang" called the Chubsters and calls herself a BBW (Big Beautiful Woman). She is now immobile and her fellow Chubster sisters bring her cartons of food. This is not feminism. This is not body love. Health is body love. Self respect is feminism. Please stop, stop, STOP justifying your bad behaviours in the guise of "empowerment". It's as bad as saying the war in Iraq is about "freedom".
Lay off Ms. Dickson. Stop shooting the messenger.
-
"I'm just ridiculing and humiliating you because I care so much about your HEALTH"
There is so much ignorance, misinformation, and hatred here that my head is literally spinning. It's hard to even know which part of Ms. Dickerson's "screed" against her black sisters (let alone all of womanhood) to address.
So I'll try to stick with TWO of the most egregious examples of willfull stupidity and simply wrong facts:
Type II Diabetes is a DISEASE. It's not a moral judgement that you are eating too much, or "punishment". Certainly poor diabetic control, in the form of poor diet or lack of exercise can worsen your disease, but it does not CAUSE diabetes in the first place. You have to be pre-disposed to diabetes to get it, and right now there is NO WAY to determine which people have this hereditary pre-dispostion (though you can make certain guesses if many of your family members develop it).
I notice that lofty proclaimations about who gets diabetes and for what reasons are shouting out of the imbecilic mouths of people who A. do not have the disease, B. have maybe heard a few "soundbites" about it on Fox Network and C. already have an internal hatred and bigotry towards fat people. THE MAJORITY OF FAT PEOPLE DO NOT HAVE DIABETES.
If you do NOT have a genetic pre-disposition for diabetes, you can eat yourself into stupefication, and not develop the disease. (I personally know of a man, in his 50s, who weighs over 600 lbs and is not diabetic at all.) On the other hand, once you clearly have diabetes, it cannot be "cured" by any type of diet and exercise -- only managed.
In addition, there are also age-related forms of diabetes. My 85 year old aunt has diabetes like this, and has lost part of her foot to it -- however, she is and has always been slender. Being slender your entire life is NO GUARANTEE you will not develop Type II Diabetes in your later years.
For once, I'd like to hear in Salon from an DIABETIC ENDOCRINOLOGIST, not some big mouth, self-hating black woman who likes to lecture other people about their lunches.
Secondly: As a young woman, I studied Fashion History at a university, with the goal of museum curatorship. So I know something about what clothing "used to be like" and how it has evolved. There is a lot of blather all the time about how you can "prove" women are heavier (no comment about MEN of course) because someone "can remember" that in the 70s a woman with a TWENTY SIX INCH WAIST used to be considered a "fat size 12".
This is nonsense, not the least because I was a teenager then and this is simply untrue. Since clothing started being manufactured (rather than all made by hand) in the late 19th century, there have never been ANY standards in this country for sizing -- each manufacturer pretty much just makes up his own. Clothing can vary dramatically in size from store to store, and from garment to garment within ONE store. Cheap clothes often run smaller than pricey clothes (smaller seam allowances, flimsier materials) but on the other hand, truly "designer" clothing runs even smaller than that (think Prada).
When you try on vintage clothing, you need to remember that women in the 40s or 50s wore girdles and even corsets -- and were willing to be VERY uncomfortable -- and that's why the waists are so small relative to modern clothing. I don't know about you, but I'd rather NOT wear a girdle and be comfy than suffer for beauty! (Not that styles don't change and come around again.) They also fit differently in the bust, because women used to wear those huge pointy bras. In addition, clothing used to be routinely altered to fit the individual (rare today, except for men's suits), so a dress marked "Size 8" may well have been taken in (or let out) for an individual woman.
Here's what IS true: Americans today, for all the flaws of our heatlh care system, are healthier and live longer than at any time in history. This is indisputable fact! Diabetes only SEEMS more common because (thank god) we are able to diagnose it EARLY and we have wonderful new treatments that really help to control it. It no longer is the absolute death sentence that it used to be, but a manageable chronic illness.
Any look at old photographs of real people will show you without a doubt that they were mostly about the same size as people are today -- the chief difference being that they didn't have to hate themselves for being normal. Lily Langtry, a famous beauty of the 1880s, weighed 200 lbs (a fact she was not remotely embarassed to admit, as it carried no shame then), and has a small (corseted) waist and big butt, very similar to "Buffy" featured here (who as many have already pointed out, is a beautiful woman with toned arms and legs, small natural waist and flat stomach).
Isn't time we stopped used A NUMBER ON A SCALE to determine our value as human beings????