Wednesday, 7 January 2009
Fat acceptance - no issue
« no safety in numbers | Main | Cancer busters »I recently received anonymous feedback that I wanted to share with you and ask your advice. Since their email address was left blank, I am unable to respond to them which is unfortunate. Maybe they assumed I would be angry and send a rude message. Here's what they wrote:
Visitor name: Happy Fat Girl, MA
Summary: FAT IS BEAUTIFUL
Comment: I am a sociologist researching the stigma of obesity and a healthy beautiful fat woman. I resent you diet ad on my myspace, which encourages size acceptance. Just wanted to waste a click because that is how they charge!!! "Fat can be beautiful. Intolerance is ALWAYS ugly."
It is strange since I am not advertising on myspace so that would have been one thing I would have liked to follow up on, and of course, I'm not responsible for a publisher's poor ad placement technology which in this case has been proven difficient. But regardless of any of that, I was hoping to get a view from anyone who advocates fat acceptance whether this site is insulting or whether you believe this person had become upset only by the inappropriate ad placement. I ask because I care. comotivate is designed to help people not upset them so if there is something I can do to stay true to my vision, then I'll do it.
For the record, I have no issue with fat and applaud fat acceptance advocates for making their voice heard when society makes that difficult.
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Well I really wanted to reach out to this person and clarify if it was the ad placement or the site itself but I couldn't because they didn't leave their email address. It was a hit and run, which is a shame because maybe we both could have learned something.
I think this is an extremely difficult topic that obviously pushes the buttons of at least a few people. In looking at this comment, the words that stand out to me are: obesity, healthy, and diet.
In this instance, I don't think that the problem is with comotivate. I believe it's with the ad service, as you stated. Diet ads, one of the topics that stood out, often support unhealthy ways to lose weight and get thin, with an emphasis on getting thin and running around in a bikini. What should be the emphasis is being healthy and making healthy life choices.
The entire phrase, "stigma of obesity and a healthy beautiful fat woman." is very interesting to me. Obesity is a measure of body fat (BMI) and excessive body fat is bad. Often, when you make healthy choices and a person's total body fat decreases, his/her size decreases as well since fat, although it weighs less, takes up more space than muscle. In this instance, this issues of obese vs. fat may come down to individual perceptions. Even as such, it is unfortunate that being thin is so often directly to related to being healthy. There are health issues that are dependent on being thin as well.
I feel that the main issues here are the advocacy of using unhealthy means to be thin and the idea that thin must be healthy. Neither of these negative schools of thought are supported by comotivate, which I know since you made that clear in this post and I have spent time on the site and never seen either of these ideas.
These issues are ones of societal norms and so will take a lot of work to remedy. I don't think this is the job of comotivate since the site goal is to help individuals address aspects of their lives they choose, not for comotivate to tell them which aspects to address.
After a short essay, my answer to your questions is that the site is not insulting and this person has become upset as a result of poor ad placement.
Hi!
You just started following me on Twitter (MsCarolM), and I saw your tweet this morning. This is interesting. Several years ago, I was a member of NAAFA, and funny, up until recently, they still had my article on how to write effective complaint letters up on their website. I'm no longer involved with them, because I think their message is no longer about "acceptance" but about "fat pride" (in some cases to the extreme), and some of their members are a bit too "in your face" in their methods for me. The angry hit-and-run assault that you got is typical.
Now, however, I've been on a weight loss journey, and have successfully lost approximately 90-100 lbs from my heaviest weight, 67 of those during the past year since joining Weight Watchers (http://nonscalevictory.wordpress.com).
I don't think the issue is with comotivate. I also don't think the issue is with *most* people who are part of the size acceptance movement, who are pretty normal, level-headed and open to discussion. Some of the more extremist ones, however, equate any sort of weight loss as the work of the devil (okay, maybe not quite, but you get the idea).
As a lapsed MySpace user, I think the issue really is with MySpace, because they INUNDATE users with weight loss and dating service ads to the point where it gets extremely aggravating and annoying.
I think you just got some angry mis-directed backlash aimed in your direction.
1st - That's shooting the messenger and this person had no right. You are correct that having a site can sometimes lead to ads you'd not approve of but it's technology and mistakes are made.
2nd - Funny how they seemed to know how the ad thing worked quite well. Well enough to screw you over on a click but didn't have the same sense to think...
Maybe this ad is here because it picked up on some keyword and is irrelevant and the site owner is unaware. It is just an ad served up by a computer.
3rd - Intolerance is ugly but it seems they can tolerate their self image yet they will not tolerate your right to have a website that may show an ad they don't like.
The people who scream tolerance the loudest are in most cases the most intolerant people themselves.
Best not to reply to this person as they obviously haven't got a clue. Only enough to know how to take it out on a website owner.