In a different thread, I was responding to LillyBBW about the cosmetic measures which have been sold on the back of prejudice, specifically in this case what African-descendants have fielded in that vein. She rightly stated that these things don't really fool anyone.
My reply as it stands has a subject line of "I Know Those Things Don't REALLY Do Anything". That is not the way I had written it originally. The way I wrote it originally was "I Know Those Things Don't REALLY Work".
Can you sense the difference? Something itched in my brain while I was forming my sentences for the body of the reply. It only took a few seconds to look back up and be aware of what I had done.
"Not to work" when used in this way insinuates that the inability to do something constitutes a failure. It elevates and ennobles a failure by staking a claim that the endeavor attempted had a good goal, and makes the unchanged state seem unfortunate. Only by a racist standard, in this case, can the inability to do what was attempted be seen as any kind of failure at all.
This then circles back to the struggle here. So often I've encountered the statement the "diets don't work". This statement has the same fatal flaw. As if, "Well here we are in this dismal situation of still having fat people around, because we tried to improve them by turning them into thin people but it didn't work." From this the ways to proceed are highly constrained. Either it becomes a contest of whether the assumed failure is on the part of the diet or the dieter, or you end up with the near-Orwellian rhetoric we've all seen of "Diets don't work, something else does".
The implied goal of dieting when it's applied to fat people is weight reduction. The insinuation is that this weight reduction is both necessary and sufficient for a number of things. To be sure, the statistics are claiming elevated risks of certain problems in heavier people, but many have said a number of times, how much these risks are inherent to high weight is a matter of fierce debate, as is therefore to what degree weight loss is either necessary or sufficient to address them.
I think the way more consistent with a fierce expression of fat-acceptance is to say "Weight Loss Doesn't Work". This still leaves the insinuation that there may indeed be some unfortunate issues to address in the current state, but shifts the insinuated goal to better health itself, without allowing weight reduction to remain implanted as an undisputed precondition to better health.
Is that too bold an assertion? Is it accurate? This would seem to be the core contention of HAES, that weight reduction itself is neither necessary nor sufficient for improving health, and that other measures are called for.
My reply as it stands has a subject line of "I Know Those Things Don't REALLY Do Anything". That is not the way I had written it originally. The way I wrote it originally was "I Know Those Things Don't REALLY Work".
Can you sense the difference? Something itched in my brain while I was forming my sentences for the body of the reply. It only took a few seconds to look back up and be aware of what I had done.
"Not to work" when used in this way insinuates that the inability to do something constitutes a failure. It elevates and ennobles a failure by staking a claim that the endeavor attempted had a good goal, and makes the unchanged state seem unfortunate. Only by a racist standard, in this case, can the inability to do what was attempted be seen as any kind of failure at all.
This then circles back to the struggle here. So often I've encountered the statement the "diets don't work". This statement has the same fatal flaw. As if, "Well here we are in this dismal situation of still having fat people around, because we tried to improve them by turning them into thin people but it didn't work." From this the ways to proceed are highly constrained. Either it becomes a contest of whether the assumed failure is on the part of the diet or the dieter, or you end up with the near-Orwellian rhetoric we've all seen of "Diets don't work, something else does".
The implied goal of dieting when it's applied to fat people is weight reduction. The insinuation is that this weight reduction is both necessary and sufficient for a number of things. To be sure, the statistics are claiming elevated risks of certain problems in heavier people, but many have said a number of times, how much these risks are inherent to high weight is a matter of fierce debate, as is therefore to what degree weight loss is either necessary or sufficient to address them.
I think the way more consistent with a fierce expression of fat-acceptance is to say "Weight Loss Doesn't Work". This still leaves the insinuation that there may indeed be some unfortunate issues to address in the current state, but shifts the insinuated goal to better health itself, without allowing weight reduction to remain implanted as an undisputed precondition to better health.
Is that too bold an assertion? Is it accurate? This would seem to be the core contention of HAES, that weight reduction itself is neither necessary nor sufficient for improving health, and that other measures are called for.
