"Such A Pretty Face!"
A more substantive post is on its way, but in the meantime, I wanted to highly recommend this post from Fatly Yours that talks about how trying to compliment a fat woman by saying that skinny women are “anorexic” or “disgusting” isn’t healthy either. It’s hard to know what part to quote so I’ll just quote a giant chunk of it:
As a lesbian, I find many thin women attractive. I also find many fat women attractive. It doesn’t seem to have that much to do with weight; it’s more about the looks of each individual. I used to try and like exclusively fat women, because it’s not fat acceptant to like thin women and everyone already likes them anyway. But then I realized three things:
1) fat acceptance has nothing to do with physical attraction;
2) everyone does not like thin women. There are lots of people who find both fat and thin
repulsive, and are proud to proclaim this;3) shock horror – thin women have body insecurities too.
So really, it hurts people when we say, “This woman is a stick insect”, or “I find people this skinny repulsive”. It’s never fun to hear that you, or people your size, are repulsive. You don’t have to find everyone attractive, but it shows poor judgement and lack of empathy to go around saying people are ugly or repulsive…
“I’d rather see a fat woman than a skinny one” is a straw man. It expresses the attitude that fat is bad, but skinny is even worse. It’s a misguided way to rebel against beauty ideals. It changes nothing. One woman is still called beautiful at the expense of another; the ideal is reversed to be anti-skinny, but it’s still exclusive. Here’s a revolutionary idea: if you find someone beautiful, why not just call her beautiful?
I definitely find women of all shapes and sizes beautiful, and I thought this post was very thought-provoking. What do you think?
Posted by mo pie
No matter what my size or shape, I wouldn’t want to hear that I was considered unnatural or repulsive, whether I was a size 00, a size 10, or a size 30.
I think it’s funny that, at least for me, getting involved with Fat Acceptance has made me MORE aware of people’s weights, shapes, and sizes rather than less aware of them. When I no longer thought of there being “good” weights and “bad” weights, I found that I was able to notice and appreciate the human form no matter what size it is. Silhouettes are beautiful whether you’re “perfectly” proportioned or have a big fat butt or a long slender neck or are shaped like an apple. I notice human shapes like I notice different flowers or buildings.
On a related note, I REALLY have to curb my staring habit sometimes, as it is bad manners. :)
Annie, my experience has been very similar! I have a hard time NOT looking at everyone around me, and finding the beauty and marvellous qualities in them. The human body is so amazing! The idea of “ugly” or “unattractive” no longer fits into how I see other people, most of the time, at least, not as far as their physical appearance is concerned. . (And I’m working on overcoming my biases everyday) I still find personality and behavior ugly, but that’s as it should be, as far as I’m concerned.
I am actually a horrible person. My sister lost a ton of weight on diet pills and then from mono. And so I started calling her “Skeletor.”
It was really mean, and I know that, but she’s always been the skinny one and I’ve always been the one who is “going to die of a heart attack.” Jealousy is a bad bad thing.
I, too, have noticed that the more I accept my own (size 22, pear-shaped) body, the more attractive I find other body types, as well. I notice what women are wearing and what flatters whom. A lot more people strike me as beautiful than ever did before. (And Annie: I find myself staring too long sometimes, too…)
Perhaps this is off topic, but my very slim (size 0) daughter often tells me she envies my butt and that it is “dead sexy”. So maybe she’s on the size acceptance track, too. Maybe I’m teaching her some good things… (to be clear – I said “envy”, but she is very confident and happy in her own skin, too).
As a recovering anorexic, I agree wholeheartedly that it isn’t much fun being told you look like crap.
Anywho, the body acceptance movement and Health at Any Size (and their associates) have been a boon to my recovery. No matter what the arbitrary “ideal,” my body is something to be cared for and respected. Thanks, everyone.
Lisa, I hope things continue to go well with your recovery. :) I’m glad to hear that the body acceptance movement has been able to give you support, because it’s done the same for me, at the opposite end of the spectrum.
I’ve had some of my “normal” weight friends, trying to impress me(or something) rag on skinny girls as being “Sooo ugly” and “vulgar”. They are then surprised when I, the largest among them, say, “You know, someone as thin as you’re talking? Probably already has their own body image problems, and being horrible people to them doesn’t solve a damn thing.”
There’s no call to treat human beings like mass-produced products. We are individually crafted, shaped to be unique, and have an inherent value in being living, thinking, feeling pieces of art. The beauty is augmented when the different shapes we all take- thin, fat, “normal”, tall, short, big-hipped, small-chested, thick-armed, bony-kneed- come together.
Up to a point, I agree with the original quote and say that, yeah, for me – it really does just depend on the person, regardless of what size they are. I used to actually have a genuine suspicion and ingrained mistrust of skinny women because I had quite a few experiences where I was picked on in school by girls who were far skinnier than myself (though, for the record, the number of guys who were guilty of messing with me was considerably larger).
Still, when I basically fell head over heels for this one actress, it really made me start thinking more about size and what I, personally, found attractive. As I mentioned, I had a sense of defensiveness and suspicion when it came to slender women, but with this actress in particular, she kinda gets a lot of the same shit I do all the time, but in reverse – because she’s naturally very slender and so people are constantly making cracks about how she should eat a burger, trying to start rumors that she’s a coke-head, etc. There’s no reason to think she’s anorexic or addicted to anything illegal (she’s said before, herself, that she doesn’t do drugs) and yet people are convinced she is, but there are just some people who cannot gain weight, even if they need to – because their bodies just aren’t wired to do it.
So these days, I am about size acceptance, but I hasten to note that it’s ALL sizes. I really do try to avoid making comments about people’s weight one way or the other – positive or negative. It’s just somewhere I refuse to go, because if I make a crack about someone being too skinny, then I feel like I’m just as bad as any of those assholes who’ve yelled out their car windows at me for being too fat.
On the one hand, hearing a comedienne like Mo’nique say ‘skinny bitches are EVIL’ used to make me laugh because it was coming from a fellow plus-sized gal who’d more than likely gone through a lot of the same stuff I had (or, at least, I got that impression), but at the same time, these days more than ever, I feel like it should just be ‘the evil bitches are evil and they’re evil because they won’t let people be who they are and just look how nature wanted them to look’.
So, thanks to Kate Moennig for opening my eyes and teaching me that as hard as it is on us, sometimes it’s just as hard on the ‘skinny bitches’.
I tend to like healthy looking women.
That can mean great teeth, glowing skin, great hair, nice complexion, big ass-small waist….
Fat or thin, I’ve loved tons of different women. I often notice I like women with an unusual feature.
For instance, in my opinion Debra Messing is one of the most beautiful women alive. But, she has two backs, and a huge nose. I didn’t even notice these things until someone pointed them out to me.
Women that absolutely do not turn my head at all are often ‘perfect’ women. The typical looks like everyone else kind of chick, and that in my opinion is the worst thing to say about someone else. Not memorable.
I agree with Fatly Yours. FA isn’t about sexual attraction. It’s about removing the negative moral stigma from weight and body fat.
Critics of skinny women who attach language like “vulgar” or “repulsive” to thin bodies are still making objects of those bodies.
Objectifying=negating the humanity of that human body.
As someone who has recently lost weight (and who is definitely NOT anorexic), I am really surprised by the change in how people treat you. In fact, the first reaction that I had was that my former boss at work told me “You lost weight! …You look sick.” Most people are really nice to me, but there are a few who consistently tell me that I need to gain the weight back. Fortunately, that is a personal choice, and I think I am healthier without it. So does my doctor.
Hey, There’smore, the way you define “healthy” really just sounds like code for “women I like.” There are plenty of women without any of those qualities–perhaps in particular “big ass small waist”–who both ARE and LOOK healthy. Maybe you don’t mean it this way, but you might want to be aware that there is a long, long, long history of telling women: “it’s not about your looks, dear, it’s about your health” when, really, it’s about your looks.
As a woman I don’t want to be rated like prize breeding cow, even if I come out on top for being the “right” shape, or healthy-looking, or whatever.
I don’t usually comment on the blogs that I read, but this post really resonated with a childhood experience of mine. As a child, I was very thin despite eating however much I wanted. Even now, although I’m no longer skinniest girl, I am the one at the college dining hall with 2, 3 plates full of food while my other girlfriends have a small salad or half a sandwich. And I’ve gotten a comment from a male friend that was something along the lines of, “I’m surprised you’re not huge yet from eating that much.”
What still bothers me to this day is are comments made to me by my peers and my teacher when I was in elementary school. My elementary school teacher actually had the nerve to ask me if I, a 7 year old child, was anorexic (presumably after seeing me eat my school lunch every day. Or did she just not pay attention?). I never considered myself anything other than normal, so I was absolutely mortified. To make matters worse, my classmates also noticed by body shape and took to calling me “toothpick.” These comments bothered me to no end. I (believe it or not) wished and prayed that I could “become fat.”
I think that what our society doesn’t accept is not necessarily fat people, but rather people who don’t fit the generic mold of what is considered good or normal. Comments that criticize someone for the shape of his/her body, be it big or small, leave scars and insecurities that do not go away. I wholeheartedly agree that just because “thin” is the frame of choice for fashion models it does not mean that all slender people are completely comfortable with themselves or that it is perfectly okay to say degrading things about their bodies.
To Elizabeth:
First of all you’re wrong. There are plenty of people that are healthy looking that just plain do not fit what *I* look for. As there are also people who do not fit my normal mold and I still think they are attractive. As I said, I look for someone healthy looking. Not someone with broken/yellowing teeth, broken out skin, dull lifeless hair, flabby (notice I am not saying fat or thin) etc.
This is MY taste and you don’t have to approve of MY taste or the way I explain it.
Although, I will clarify. In my opinion it doesn’t matter if they are fat, thin, brunette or blonde, tall or short, black or white, perfect or imperfect. It’s just a general ‘look’ about them.
Pulled together, clean and HEALTHY looking. If you are in poor health think about how it affects your body. If you are in GREAT health, think of how that affects your body.
If you want to disect my ‘small waist big ass’ comment think about this: I am a woman.
I am not a man trying to ‘rate’ you. I am personally saying that what I work on for my OWN body is also what I look for in others. Just like fat people often gravitate to other fat people, thin to thin, athletic to athletic, punk to punk etc.
And, unfortunately, every where you go you are being rated. Rated on what you say, how you look, how you’re dressed, who you’re with, etc.
So, you’ll have to get used to that in your own time apparently.
And, being a plus sized woman I am very aware of the long standing expectations of not only women but fat women and I don’t understand how anyone would feel the need to school anyone else on that struggle.
I know this thread is old now, but I wanted to respond because of the anger that seems to be evident in There’smore’s response to me.
I don’t care what your taste in women is. Really. You can like women with purple left toenails who only wear clothes on Thursdays, I really do not care. Nor should I: it’s none of my business. As for how you explain it, it’s true, I don’t have to approve of it and you don’t have to care whether I do or not.
But let me say this: I can’t know anything about you other than what you put on this page. Nor can anyone else who reads it. Whoever you are, and whatever your story is, your initial comment echoes words that are used (by women as well as by men) to keep women in their place in the beauty hierarchy. You may not have meant that–in fact you can even disagree with me that “most people” would see that in your comment. But you can’t tell me that your comment didn’t provoke that reaction in me. Maybe it’s just me, and it’s entirely your prerogative to not give a flying f*ck what I think. But this is a big world and the chances that I am the only one who would see your comment that way are, in my opinion, small. Of course, even if that’s true, it’s STILL your prerogative not to give a flying f*ck.
But three things: 1) women participate in the awful, damaging “rating” of other women as well as men–the patriarchy (for lack of a better word) is not held up exclusively by the menfolk, so the fact that you are a woman really changes nothing about what I have to say.
2) I am used to being rated, all the time, everywhere, believe me. But being used to something and accepting it as “OK” are two very different things. I try to do something about it even if my only tool is a teaspoon.
3) You said: And, being a plus sized woman I am very aware of the long standing expectations of not only women but fat women and I don’t understand how anyone would feel the need to school anyone else on that struggle
Well, the answer is I DON’T feel the need to school you on that struggle. I feel the need to tell you how your comment came across to me, knowing nothing about you. All I could comment on was your words on the screen, not your experiences or anything else about you. And, as far as I am concerned, your “awareness” was not effectively communicated by your words.