Meta-fat

There's some great stuff in the fatosphere lately.

JoGeek uses math to show that the "cost of obesity" is really the "cost of the war on obesity". Also, the "Quotes from the fatosphere" on her left sidebar is a wonderful distillation of wisdom from size positive blogging. And I'm not just saying that because I'm quoted :)

Dr. Stacey gives me a reason to like Penn & Teller as she reviews their Bullshit! episode about the O Epidemic, which they start off by saying it is, as you might have guessed, "Bullshit!" I will admit that I'm not completely impressed with every episode in the series, as they seem to have a clear agenda to begin with, and I disagree with a few of their episodes (like the one where they claim secondhand smoke isn't harmful--tell it to an asthmatic, boys--or their views on the environment and animal rights).

Vesta of Big Fat Delicious shows us how the Mississippi Bill's ridiculousness can be manipulated to make less insane but still crazy legislation seem to be a "compromise", by making it "for the children". In another post, she shows us a really idiotic list of ways to differentiate dieting from disordered eating.

Rachel at The F-Word has some good Valentine's Day advice. Strangely, it does not involve telling your significant other that he or she needs to lose weight--how can you show you care without pointing out your partner's adipose tissue and telling them to get rid of it? Thank god we have Rachel to set us straight!

Sandy at Junkfood Science spotlights a Swedish researcher who thinks that fighting obesity is misguided, considering that malnutrition is a greater burden on healthcare costs--a real, measurable one, not just a correlation--especially among the elderly. Hospital patients and people living in residential care facilities are most at risk, which generally means that the elderly are starving, many times starving to death. By "malnutrition", it is meant that people are not getting enough food to eat, not that they are eating too many white foods or liquid calories.

Sandy also made me choke on my iced tea with her suggestion that the correlation between heart attacks and the Superbowl means that we need to ban professional sports immediately. Before you get all wiggy over it, it's satire.

Harriet at Feed Me! reminds us that there are no bad foods, and, "The more we try to micromanage our metabolisms, the more badly we fuck them up." I've been looking for that statement all along, without realizing it. Thank you, Harriet.

Linsay at BABble takes on some common myths about Fat Acceptance, including "but you hate thin people" and "you just want to force everyone to find fat people attractive". I wish I'd thought of this post! Good on ya, Lindsay, for using logic and truth!

Hoyden About Town reminds us that having strong pelvic floor muscles to make women more sexually valuable is a good trade-off for malformed feet, stress fractures, and abnormally contracted leg muscles, so slide into those stiletto heels, ladies!

Finally, Exceptionally Fat points out that having a "good food, bad food" mindset can prevent people from ingesting the energy they need for getting through a long day. I love the way it was expressed, and it came right from a nutrition class!

There's probably plenty more good stuff out there (Shapely Prose, for example, has so many good entries that I just link to them and leave it at that), but I'm tired, and this is long enough. Enjoy!

Civil rights and the right to be civil

I just finished writing a note of thanks to a reader of this blog. In the note, I commented that it is the discourse which makes blogging so special to me. Once I filter out the trolls, receiving comments on a blog entry gives me new insight, fresh ideas, and sometimes even changes my opinions. It's awesome for a bunch of people to get together and hammer away at a topic until most angles have been explored, some solutions have been proposed, and a dozen or more people take away a changed consciousness from a single discussion. Because it's in text and sequential, no one's interrupting, no one's screaming, and those who are simply contributing vitriol or stirring up conflict can be removed and ignored.

Of course, there have to be certain ground rules for the discussion. For example, if you cannot agree with a core set of ideas before joining the discussion, then discourse will be meaningless when one side is merely screaming at the other for believing or not believing those ideas. In size positive discussions, for example, if someone comes into my blog and starts ranting that being fat makes people unattractive or unhealthy, that person will not be welcome to continue commenting here, because they are simply not able to overcome their prejudices and have a civil discussion. Essentially, if a person has not read and understood the material in Kate Harding's "But don't you know that fat is unhealthy?" article, then they do not possess the information necessary to meaningfully discuss the topic of fat and health. If a person cannot bring themselves to believe that there are people who do not find fat to be an unattractive trait, they also lack the necessary tools with which to comment on that subject in a size positive blog.

If a person really hates fat so much that they feel the need to troll and harrass fat acceptance blogs, then they are certainly welcome to go and create their own blog on that subject. I'll be more than happy to not harrass them and leave them comments. It is disingenuous to come in here, leave me snotty comments, and then complain that I've curtailed your freedom of speech, or that I'm afraid of discussion, when really, I'm just removing your incivility from my demesnes. You want to be an ass? Go do it in your own blog. You are more than free to spew your hatred there. This is my place, and I don't have to put up with concern trolls, fat haters, and petty bitching from anyone.

The art of the thank you note

When I was growing up, my family wasn't into writing thank you notes very much. I didn't pick up the habit as a child or adolescent, and I look back on the missed opportunities with regret. I agree with Miss Manners on the idea that a handwritten thank you note is one of the best ways of displaying appreciation.

Last year, I was married in early May, and we received gifts as well as assistance with putting the wedding together and making it happen. Even though handwriting gives me a lot of pain after a little while, I have to say that I enjoyed writing those notes, and I did my best to make them personalized instead of formulaic. We did have one silly mix-up when we sent BOTH notes that began "Dear Mom & Dad" to my own parents, leaving Brian's parents without one! The situation was eventually figured out and rectified, and my mom and dad were extremely amused (so were his, after we explained that we weren't uncouth ingrates).

Even though writing thank you notes can seem to be a chore, I have found that they are a great way to express feelings that might otherwise be embarrassing to state alone. It can be uncomfortable telling someone how much they mean to you, but when you are expressing gratitude to them for something, it is a lot easier because you have a context in which to do so.

I have also found that beautiful stationery can turn a "chore" into a delight. There's just something fun about writing a heartfelt note on pretty paper or beautiful little cards. I keep a variety of different types of stationery and cards on hand for letter writing and thank you notes. I don't spend a lot of money on stationery, however, because I can find cute stuff at the dollar store for very little cost, and I sometimes scour clearance racks at other stores to find delightful gems, such as this undersea-style card set I found at Barnes & Noble during their post-Christmas sale:


I used the undersea cards for my Xmas thank you notes, and they were an absolute pleasure to use. I can only hope that the recipients enjoyed them as much as I did.

I don't just write thank you notes in response to gifts, by the way. A week or so ago, I heard a public radio broadcast where a neurologist was strongly refuting the "fibromyalgia isn't real" doofuses. I noted the gentleman's name, realized that he was not just a neurologist, but also a professor of neurology at the local medical college (Albany Med). I looked up his address and wrote him a note expressing my gratitude for standing up for fibro sufferers, and for the work he has done for chronic pain sufferers in general, as I found in my research that he has actually been a huge boon to us with multiple papers published and by treating patients.

So whom would you like to thank today? Who needs a handwritten note to lift their spirits a bit? Have you written to a favorite teacher that inspired you? Can you think of a family member without whom you'd be much worse off? Are you grateful to a shop employee who treated you kindly? Get out your pen and let them know that they're appreciated!