Dear friends, what's wrong with this picture?

[darkemeralds]

I know there's something wrong with this, but I'm having trouble articulating exactly what it is, so I'm hoping some of the more savvy in my circle can help me figure it out, 'cause it's bugging me.

The full story is here--mostly in the comments.

The summary is this: in a move that gives provides medical and scientific backing, the Centers for Disease Control have declared their support for the Department of Transportation's recent and controversial "active transportation" initiative, which puts biking, walking, and mass transit on an equal footing with cars and highways in its planning efforts. The CDC's reason for supporting it is that walking and biking as transportation would be a good way for a lot of Americans to be more active, and that more activity would be better for Americans' overall health.

I'm fine with that part. Excited, even. It's good news for American cycling.

Then come the comments. "Jackattak" (a regular on that blog) at number 2 says: "Here's a good idea: Get your fat ass out of your car and get a bike, walk, jog, or skateboard to work" and goes on to bemoan his mother's morbid obesity (including her height, weight and age).

This bothered me, so I commented back requesting an end to that kind of name-calling, and said that active transportation wasn't magically going to solve the nation's obesity epidemic. I cited my own cycling and my own wide posterior in evidence, and I think I was groping towards pointing out the fallacy of his broad brushstrokes, but I don't think I got there and I wasn't really clear on what I wanted to say.

He posted back giving me (I'm pretty sure) permission to accept myself under certain circumstances. I, uh, may have thanked him for this with a wee bit of sarcasm.

Now I feel all inarticulate and icky. I know that I'm sick and tired of the "fat ass":"lazy" equation (stated or implied), I know I don't like being reduced to a single physical characteristic, and I'm sure that I've had it up to here with the bootstrap philosophy of the privileged. But I need a better set of answers, a clearer conclusion--if only just to repeat in my own mind.

I'm not going back into the fray or anything, and I don't want to score points off the guy, but I'd LOVE some clarification.

If anyone interested in these fat-related, privilege-related types of issues would care to read the comments (they're pretty short) and help me think this through, I'd be very grateful.

Comments

[panisdead]

I'm getting stuck on his assumptions that everybody who might benefit from more exercise could just spring for a bike or a skateboard, that everybody has a job that's close enough to their workplace to allow for skateboarding there, that nobody works two or three jobs or works night shift or has to run errands with their three small children and maybe can't ride a bike, that everyone has the time after their third job to exercise if they only had the willpower, that no one has physical or mental health concerns that are barriers to skateboarding, and yes, the ones you listed about fat=lazy and active transportation=magical cure-all. He's making so many assumptions it's hard to parse.

Possibly the issue is that he's not actually discussing the topic? I mean, he's not talking about the benefits of active transportation, a phenomenon which promotes exercise, he's talking about working out.

Argh, I don't know. Hopeful my thinking out loud will spark something for you.

[darkemeralds]

That's helpful, yes. I hadn't spotted all of his assumptions, but my "privilege" radar was pinging like mad.

Since the blog in question is devoted to bicycling and bike politics in Portland, the readership's special situation--and any privilege it represents--isn't generally relevant to the discussion, but it was today.

[kis]

I think there's a deep-seated notion (and lard-arsed way of thinking) that good must always be rewarded, and badness always punished - the 'by their fruits shall ye know them' kind of idea. The trouble with this is, people who are blessed with the 'rewards' believe they've somehow earned them. (Of course, some have, but lots haven't). It's not enough to be fortunate; they want to be righteous on top. (Although I wonder if the aggression directed towards the less fortunate might indicate there's a touch of cognitive dissonance going on).

As an endomorph who married into a family of ectomorphs, I know whereof I speak. They eat sugar and fat, consume three meals daily and snack. They don't do much in the way of exercise, and yet they're all thin - scrawny even. This, of course, entitles them to comment on the diets of rounder folk - even when they don't have a clue what those diets consist of.

[darkemeralds]

Thank you! Excellent point. It's one of the sub-themes of Restraint, and I'm surprised I didn't recognize it in real life: the difference between gifts and accomplishments. Of course, in Restraint I'm looking at the price some people pay for their unearned gifts, and not at their privileged views of 'lesser folk".

I've only recently managed to arrive at the belief that it's okay to be round, and my belief is not cell-deep (yet), so I think I just got stuck on the political incorrectness of judging other people by their body shape, and couldn't get beyond it to the levels of privilege the guy was parading about as a result of what's probably a) his natural thinness and b) his deep fear that he's gonna turn out like his mother.

And also the misogyny of a man publicly berating his mother in such a detailed way--well, it felt like being emotionally bludgeoned.

[nwhepcat]

This guy earns a "I hope you've cross-stitched this to give to your Mom for Mother's Day, assclown."

[darkemeralds]

That would be a really ugly piece of cross-stitch, wouldn't it?

You're quite right.

[sara]

I have long thought that it works better, when one is trying to persuade friends and relatives to use self-powered or public transit, to frame it not as "I'm superior to you because I'm on foot/my bike/the bus," but "I'm having a LOT more fun than you because I'm on foot/my bike/the bus."

I do understand being frustrated about a relative's unhealthy-habits-caused bad health, but...yeah, his approach isn't actually going to do anything constructive for his situation with his mother, or for promoting bike transit in Portland, or any of the other things he says he's in favor of.

[darkemeralds]

And even with the best will in the world, the chances that a woman who is 63 and very fat (as he describes his mother) will get on a bike are vanishingly small.

One of the hardest things to accept in growing older is that all the exciting new plans and programs that government and technology have in store won't fix the problems for oneself, or in time. Michelle Obama's and Jamie Oliver's very laudable food-revolution ideas, for instance, are not going to change the fact that I grew up on corn syrup and MSG. I take some small comfort in knowing that I'll be dead and therefore not a target for the judgment and contempt of the coming generation of slimmer, healthier, more wonderful people that these programs are aimed to create.

Every now and then, you get an outlier like this asswipe on the blog, and it ruins your whole day.

[tehomet]

Oh god, where do I start?

Obviously giving earth-friendly, health-friendly transport systems equal emphasis with regular ones is a good idea. But Jackattak is living up to his educationally-challenged username by his weak, fatphobic arguments. As panisdead said, his assumption that it's that simple is so indicative of his personal privilege.

I've complained before that as a fat woman, I'm berated if I don't exercise, and yet verbally and often physically assaulted when I do exercise. Assuming no one's going to run over and punch one for daring to walk past while committing the crime of being fat, as happens often, is any fat person going to be happy to cycle or walk to work if the workplace doesn't have showers? Obviously that applies to people who aren't fat too. It's not pleasant to have to work while being sweaty. But it's an infrastructural issue that just opening more cycle paths or whatever is not going to fully address.

What part does the climate have in this (i.e. rain puts people off, too much sun makes exercising incredibly draining, cold is difficult to deal with, ice is dangerous, and so on)?

If one has a bunch of kids or elders to drop off at day care or a relative's house or whatever, how exactly is one supposed to fit them on one's skateboard?

What about security concerns? That's a huge one. Plenty of people live in places where it's too bloody dangerous to go outside the door after dark, and sometimes during the day. That goes double if one is a certain race or a different 'class' or is female or any of a thousand other personal situations. I live in one of the richest areas of my entire country and I get in the neck on a regular basis. If I were living in a disadvantaged area, it would be much worse.

What if one is a wheelchair user or has some kind of physical challenge and physically can't make the effort to go x miles to his or her workplace? Even if one is able-bodied, there are limits. If one lives fifty miles from work, good luck cycling that twice per day, year round. What if one lives quite near work but has more than one job? There's only so many hours in the day. Finance plays a huge part in this, as only significantly rich people can really freely choose where to live.

So if one is able-bodied, lives in a temperate climate, doesn't have small kids or anyone else to look after, has a black belt in martial arts, a kevlar vest and/or a gun, is only working one job, and is rich, he or she can then get on his or her bike. Otherwise, it might be a little more difficult than Jackattak thinks.

Even the terms he uses cause my eyebrow to raise. I mean, 'morbid obesity' is not a term accepted by most body acceptance activists. They say that one's overall health has many ways to be measured and one can't say that over a certain weight, boom! one is automatically going to die. It's not that simple. A person can be fat and still be healthy. A person can be thin and still be unhealthy.

It annoys people because they want to believe that their obsessive calorie counting and their inherited genes and their ability to have enough time and money to attend a gym make them morally better people and safer from dying, but it's not actually true, unfortunately. In life, there are no guarantees. I wish I had an euro for every time someone condescendingly told me how unhealthy I was for being fat, while they smoked their twentieth cigarette of the day. Smoking is an appetite suppressant, as are most illegal drugs. All my family except me and my dad are thin. All my family except me and my dad smoke. Would I be healthier smoking? I personally don't think so.

My sister is thin mostly because she's nearly a foot taller than I and also when she was drinking and using drugs, she would sometimes not eat for days, because she'd rather spend the money on drink or drugs. Would I be healthier if I were thin because I'd spend most of my twenties and thirties shooting up? That's what my sister thinks. I personally disagree, which won't surprise you. :) Fat is a matter of appearances and I think it's unwise to judge by them.

IMHO, by saying 'morbid obesity', Jackattak is using an apparently PC, or at least commonly-used-by-the-medical-industry, expression as a figleaf to cover his hatred and revulsion for bodies he personally finds unacceptable. He should just say 'OMG disgusting!' and get it out of his system. Even 'obesity' is a questionable word. Fat is a characteristic, a simple descriptor, but obesity is presented as a disease, which is not wise as the science is unclear and scientists are as subject to fatphobia as the next bigot, e.g. fat has been proved to have protective effect on some people. It's better IMHO to just say 'fat' and not use a term with judgement loaded on it, just as one would describe a tall person or a short person as 'tall' or 'short' and not as 'over-vertebrae'd' or 'stunted.'

As your own experience shows, one can take regular exercise and it can improve one's health but have zero effect on one's actual appearance. (I have had the same experience too. I started walking daily back in November when I went on career break and while I feel better in myself, my size is the same. And I'm okay with that.)

What does 'overeating' even mean? Over what? It's like he means 'meeting more calories than one expends' but that's a outdated idea too, for anyone who knows anything about set points or even about individuality.

Since he asked, I don't think overeating (i.e. eating a lot, however one measures that) is as dangerous as alcoholism. I think having an eating disorder is, and his little story about someone eating a pint of ice-cream in under a minute (is that even physically possible?) sounds like maybe compulsive eating or something like that. If his mother does have an eating disorder, that's unfortunate but it's also the last thing that is going to be helped by having hatred unleashed on one or by getting one's 'fat ass' onto a skateboard or whatever the hell he was babbling on about.

The fact that he's sick of his mother being fat and he's sick of seeing fat people around? Wow, way to be a crap, intolerant son and a narrow-minded, 'the whole world must revolve around me and my aesthetic preferences' person. Should all the African-American people bleach themselves if he doesn't like looking at 'em? His viewpoint is totally ridiculous.

And is it even logical of him to say on one hand, 'If you exercise, that's FANTASTIC no matter what you look like. What you look like has no bearing on the situation as long as three things are present: 1) You're happy with the way you look.', then, practically in the same breath, 'I'm sick of [fat] and I'm sick of seeing [fat people] around'? Which is it? What is he suggesting here? Do all fat humans have to wear a doctor's certificate around their neck showing their reason for being 'legitimately' fat due to a medical condition and/or a personal trainer's note stating their verified daily exercise and calorie intake before he'll treat them as human beings? Maybe that certificate or note could be pinned on in the shape of a yellow star or coded in a tattoo on one's inner arm? Because that's shading towards the kind of illogical prejudice he is displaying, to be frank. He doesn't like a certain set of other people, so he is free to abuse them? I really can't get behind that.

Here's a link or two which you might find interesting: But don't you realise fat is unhealthy?!, and Fat versus fiction.

The awesome Twisty Faster puts it better than I can: "See, I was going to tie this all together with a big tirade on the bogus notion of health as a moral issue — how people are always yelling at you to quit smoking or quit eating or quit procrastinating when you should be packing or quit doing anything the doing of which is considered a moral failure, ostensibly out of their concern for your health, but in reality because 'health,' in accordance with some convoluted Christian doctrine embedded in the cultural subconscious, has become a kind of yardstick by which conformity within the social order is measured, and how shaming people who are insufficiently obsessed with their cholesterol puts these concern trolls in a morally superior position and creates an underclass of 'unhealthies' who have brought it on themselves through their blatant ingestion of Cheetos — but I'm too exhausted from all the delicious smoking. Let's just say that if you ran into me at the coffeeshop and suggested that my self-indulgent punk rocker lifestyle caused my breast cancer, you wouldn't be the first. The idea that you, through some assiduously applied, sanctimonious personal health program, can 'prevent' cancer, or death, or whatever, and that such practices should win you higher status in your tribe, is a fucking load of crap."

I admired your responses to the schmuck. They were much more measured and dignified than I would have been. I hope he doesn't irritate you for long. ♥

[darkemeralds]

This may be the best comment I've ever gotten on a post. I've spent at least two hours reading the blogs at your links and following further links (perfect timing, since I happen to have the day off). I've read Kate Harding and Jezebel before, but don't follow either blog regularly, and hadn't seen those posts. Twisty Faster was new to me, and she makes a fantastic point about the morality of health. I saw myself, not in her, but in the group of those with "assiduously applied, sanctimonious personal health programs" believing I can prevent death.

I'm so glad I posted this whole issue, because it's brought me tremendous food for thought in return.

I can't possibly do justice to all your points, but I'm thinking about them and assimilating them, and feeling very much better prepared to meet any future onslaughts (though you'd be quite right in pointing out that Jakattack's "onslaught" didn't really merit the energy I've given it). It's not about the onslaughts, it's about the integrity and clarity of my own thinking, so thank you very much!

[tehomet]

Thanks for your kind words. I really got my rant on when I was replying and I appreciate you being so gracious about it.

Twisty Faster was new to me, and she makes a fantastic point about the morality of health.

I love TF and IBTP in general. She's funny and her blog is incredibly educational to me, even as steeped in feminism as I (like to think I) am.

I saw myself, not in her, but in the group of those with "assiduously applied, sanctimonious personal health programs" believing I can prevent death.

Ooh, when I quoted TF, I didn't mean to criticise *you*. Far from it. Your efforts to improve your situation through healthy eating and exercise and things like Project Empty (which I was only recommending today, as it happens) have really inspired me. I think they make good sense in the here and now, and are simultaneously mindful, enjoyable and of benefit. In other words, there's nothing at all wrong as you know with an 'assiduously applied... personal health program,' just with being 'sancimonious' and thinking that it is a means of gaining status. When I quoted that passage of TF, I meant to say that Jackattak is the kind of person who thinks that being healthier or thinner than someone else makes him morally superior too, which is obviously the kind of idiocy that I don't think you would be capable of or dream of spouting in a million years.

Anyway. I'm sorry that I have again ranted on. I'm glad the links were of use. :)

[darkemeralds]

Oh, no! I didn't take the link as a criticism at all, and I'd like to think that the health, fitness and food blogging I do comes from a purely "this is cool and I'm loving it" perspective. But I found myself thinking that if I met the woman Twisty Faster describes herself to be, thoughts about the relationship between her (apparent) lifestyle and her health would have crossed my mind.

It was educational for me to read what she had to say about it, because it forced me to realize how deeply entrenched those ideas are in my brain. One is always one's own "average" when it comes to judgement, I think: "I may not be as perfect as so-and-so over there [skinny, beautiful, healthy, fit], but I'm not as bad as that person [smoker, drug-dependent, fatter than me, sedentary]" and therefore I am "just about right".

We all do it, I think. It's salutary to be made conscious of it.