I hate what Fats have done to Body Positivity (a story of rage) Okay, this week, I had the awesome chance to attend a seminar and discussion about what Body Positivity should actually mean. I ran into an acquaintance named Mary (not her real name, since I don't want to chance doxxing her in the least because she is a saint). Mary and I both work in the social services/therapy realm, but Mary does a lot of work with crime victim support services. Mary is a domestic violence survivor who, when she broke up with her ex, he decided to maim her, I guess, so no other man would ever want her. He attacked her with a knife and inflicted a bunch of cuts and wounds to her face, neck, etc. She has fairly extensive scarring including a major scar running fro one corner of her mouth to her temple. Serious stuff. She testified against her ex in court and now she works with crime victims to prep them for trials and how to handle themselves when facing their attackers. She also does work with DV shelters and stuff like that - like I said, basically a saint. So we both attended this panel. About half the room was made up of people with disabilities, infirmities, deformities, etc., and the other half were - you guessed right - fats. And it was adversarial almost from the get-go. The point was made about everyone having the RIGHT to feel good about themselves (in that nobody is going to try to prevent that) but that there is a difference between coming to accept things that have happened TO you and those things you have done to yourself. Fats lost it at that. Mary finally chose to speak and made what I thought was an excellent point. She said that she sees a lot of things now on TV, in ads, claiming to be "body positive." But how many of those ads include a person who most of us would recoil at? A burn victim? A person missing limbs? A person like her with heavy scarring or a person with a facial deformity? Almost none. In terms of publicity, "Body Positivity" has been almost totally co-opted by obesity promoters. She proceeded to point out that now, in America, about 2/3 of Americans are owerweight/obese - they are the majority and largely can set the agenda for the movement, whereas the disabled don't have that kind of power. Now, I can basically feel the air changing in the room and the convulsions in the air of a mass triggering happening. So Mary goes on, talking about how the current "BP" movement fails badly because it still promotes physical beauty as the standard. She said "I am not beautiful. I know that. Most people cringe when they first see me, and I don't blame them, because I do have clear evidence of trauma on my face. I don't hide it. I am not beautiful, and I do not care, because I have learned that physical beauty is a poor benchmark for assessing anyone's worth." (I recorded that on my phone because I want to listen to it again when I need something uplifting). "I want body positivity to be able celebrating what our bodies can endure and still survive, how to care for them best, make them flourish, make them thrive. I have learned to love my scars because I learned that only living tissue can scar - if you're dead, wounds do not heal. I have scars because I am living, and I consider that a blessing." At this point, the fatties erupt. They start clamoring, saying that one can totally be fat and healthy (we know that's bunk, of course), why shouldn't fat girls be able to feel "beautiful" etc. And then one of them accuses a woman who lives with scarring and facial disfigurement of basking in her "thin privilege" to talk down to them. And that's when I realized something - the fats HATE people like Mary, who thrive and embrace life despite challenges. Because she shames them - she shows them what a genuinely good life is. She has been victimized by a horrific experience and still presses forward, committed to helping others. She's a testament to how little their pleas to be found "beautiful" matter, because even if they ever fool somebody into think their outside is attractive, their souls, hearts and arteries are full of rot - so they lash out at the people body positivity was made for - and I for one am all for taking it back from them.