Ragen Chastain

How are kids going to have any chance to develop a lifelong love of movement when we teach them that exercise is either punishment for having a body that is “too big” or something to be done in order to keep kids from looking like their larger classmates?

Weight Watchers announced on Monday that they are changing their name to WW to reflect their focus on wellness and health. This is BS.

You may remember Maria Kang from her fifteen minutes of fame a couple of years ago when she put some time and effort into looking like the cultural stereotype of beauty, had some success at that, then took a picture of herself wearing gym clothes with her three sons. Which is, of course, her prerogative and completely fine. But then she couldn't resist shaming people who made different choices (or made the same choices but had different outcomes) by adding the caption "What's Your Excuse?"

With celebrities suggesting that people eliminate entire food groups in the name of “cleansing” and/or “eating clean," Dr. Jessen comments: “I’ve had many, many patients, so many of them teenagers, convinced that their healthy lifestyle and their clean-eating regime was really helping them when actually all it was doing was helping them hide their increasingly disordered eating and to cover up an underlying eating disorder.”

Suggesting that there is some weigh at which we are no longer allowed to love our bodies is fat-shaming and oppressive. Suggesting that you should have to achieve some level of “health” to love yourself is healthist and oppressive.

The last thing pregnant folks need is the message that they can (and should) be able to work at the level of professional athletes and actors while they are dealing with the life-altering symptoms that happen when you are growing a fetus.

A "fat tax" is an additional fee that is charged to fat patrons by services like pedicurists, spas, even massage therapists. Sometimes it even goes beyond a tax to complete exclusion.

The point of fat acceptance is to be clear that people of all sizes have the right to exist without shame, stigma, bullying, and oppression.

Reinforcing an oppressive sexism system so that you can get what you want is an option, but perhaps not one to be quite so proud of.

As a fat woman on the internet I know, “Don’t read the comments. Never, ever read the comments.” But this time was different and it was awesome!