As you can see on the page about me, I'm fat.  Well, if we ever meet on the street sometime, let me save you some time, here are some things I already know and we don't have to discuss it.

• I am aware that I am fat.
• I have heard about every diet ever created (and been on most of them)
• I know what exercise is and where the local health club is (I was being told this back when they were called gyms).
• Doctors say fat causes heart disease, diabetes, cancer, impotency,  warts, and damn near everything that can go wrong with a person.
• There's a real rush in the freedom that comes with being fit and feeling better about myself after I lose the weight.
• I've been told that I'd look soooo much better after I lose weight.

I've heard it all before, so we can skip all that and get to something interesting.  If you want to talk about weighty issues, let me talk about fat-acceptance, which I advocate.

There's a lot that has been said about fat acceptance (and I'm about to add to it), but simply put, fat acceptance is the recognition that a person's weight has nothing to do with their moral character or their worth as a person.  I know that's a heretical position, because everything in this society screams that fat people are lazy slobs whose only interest is the next snack.  The only good thing about a fat person is that he or she still has the capability to become a person of value, i.e. a thin person.  Sounds really silly, doesn't it?  But that's what we're taught.

Does this mean fat acceptors want everyone to be fat?  Of course not.  The superiority of fat people is as ridiculous a notion as the inferiority of fat people.

Does this mean fat acceptors want to be fat?  Well...fat advocacy is a wide tent.  (How many of you thought about a fat person wearing the tent?  If so, I forgive you <grin>)  There are those who see nothing wrong with their shape.  There are others who find other aspects of their lives to be more important to them.  And there are others who are working hard at improving their eating and exercise habits.  And you know what?  They all know their lives better than anyone else, they are the ones who own those lives, and so the choice is theirs.

That should be straightforward, no?  Well, no.  There are a lot of people not willing to let fat people choose their own path.  The most obvious group are the jerks.  Those who consider it their right if not their duty to make life miserable for every fat person they know.  You can see an extreme level of this sort of jerkdom on display every day in the UseNet newsgroup soc.support.fat-acceptance (as well as a few people standing up to them).  Unfortunately, the only thing we can do is ignore them.

One interesting thing note:  Many of the nastiest jerks are people who used to be fat people.  They accuse fat acceptors of wanting to keep people fat.  Sometimes they are the most effective arguments against weight loss I've ever seen.

The jerks can be really annoying.  But they at least can be seen as what they are.  Even worse are those who are out to save us fat people from ourselves.  It can be friends, it can be relatives, it can be strangers who think they know a fat person's life better than the fat person does.  So they do their best to force the fat person to do what THEY want, because they know what's best.

You know, that's really condescending. As a fat person, who has encountered this, it really pisses me off.  Even when I understand that it really is done with love and without malice, it offends me.  It took me quite a few years to figure out how to tell people, but I've been much happier since then.  And most of my family and friends understood once I explained it.  I'm going to make my own decisions, and while I appreciate their support I have to take my own path

Part of the reason it took me a few years to figure out how to tell people, was because I was figuring it out myself.  Fat acceptance isn't just external, internally accepting it is even more important.  (Remember what you're thinking now)

For most of my life, I understood I was a good person in spite of my fat.  But as my major flaw, I went on every diet possible, trying to lose the weight.  And when the weight loss hit a plateau, or even horrors reversed, it meant I was a failure and everything negative I heard about fat slobs was ME.  And so things spiraled down.

One day, I found this newsgroup alt.support.big-folk, which HAD to be about weight loss because how else could you help a fat person?  But when I started reading it, I found out that being fat had nothing to do with being good or bad.  It can have an effect on my health, but it doesn't affect my worth.  And that's a HUGE difference.

Back when I said internally accepting fat was even more important, what were you thinking?  Did you thinking I was saying accept myself as fat as is I am?  Wrong!  Just the opposite.  I accept who I am, which is right-handed, blue-eyed, brown-haired, and fat fits in there somewhere on that level.  For my life, my lifestyle is unhealthy and eating better and exercising will be better for me as well as losing weight, but it's only a health issue, it doesn't define me.

And you know, now that I no longer am a failure for being fat, I'm a pretty cool guy, and life is really good.  Not perfect, there are still jerks about and there's still more I want to do.  And I'm finding it far easier to work on my health now that it's just health and it's not my measure as a person.

I'm not calling for legislation, I don't think a law could fix this and I'm very suspicious about adding it to anti-discrimination laws or including it under the ADA.  This fight has to be fought in the hearts of people.  To have people accept the idea that people have different sizes and to let them take responsibility for their own lives.  

And more importantly, if someone out there is struggling with a weight problem, let go.  Not give up, but don't let it define you.  If you need someone to talk to, email me, or check out the soc.support.fat-acceptance.moderated newsgroup (the moderated newsgroup was necessary to deal with the jerks).

Donald Brown