Body shaming

There seems to be no end to the epidemic of body-shaming and anti-fat abuse. People feel entitled to criticise other people’s physical appearance as much as they like.

Men are less likely to be criticised than women, even men with huge beer bellies, which are very common in Northern Ireland.
 
But women are castigated for any number of supposed physical faults – being fat, being too thin, being ugly, being badly dressed, being dowdy, you name it.
 
Luckily I’ve never been criticised for being fat, as I’ve always been thin and if anything I’m underweight. Being constantly reprimanded for being fat must be infuriating.
 
There’s a general assumption that a woman is fat because she eats too much, though of course that’s not necessarily the case. But the critics don’t care about the actual causes, they just want to be viciously judgmental.
 
There’s also an assumption that a fat woman is less intelligent than a thin woman, which is equally absurd.
 
I admire those women who don’t care over-much how they’re seen by others and just carry on regardless. It takes a lot of determination and self-confidence when other people (mainly men but not always) are happily picking holes in you.

Fatphobia

A woman has admitted to agony aunt Philippa Perry that she finds her obese father "disgusting" and hates being around him. She says "How do I get through to him that he needs to address his weight?"

I have to admit that I'm mildly "fatphobic" myself, even though I know very well that a person's weight is often beyond their control because of medicines they're taking, or their genetics, or a hormonal aberration, or addictive food.

I like to think that all you need do to stay thin is to have a bit of self-control and not to eat too much, but of course it's not that simple.

Philippa Perry scolds the woman in question for being fatphobic and lacking compassion and empathy. She points out that 64% of the population are classed as overweight and that 64% is full of wonderful, funny, intelligent and kind people. She rejects the out-of-date idea that they're weak-willed gluttons.

Nevertheless I confess that as a thin person I sometimes find it hard to see past someone's size and focus on their personality. Very prejudiced of me I know but it's hard to shake off such an engrained habit.

I guess my mother had something to do with it, as she was herself rather fatphobic and would always make whispered remarks to me about someone's size.

I like to think that when I was growing up most people were thin, which proves that people can be thin if they really want to be. But my erratic memory is probably deceiving me once again.

Okay, I plead guilty, I'm not as right-on as I think I am.

Pic: Beth Ditto

Big fat scare

We're said to be in the midst of an obesity epidemic so unstoppable we're all going to get horrible fat-related diseases and die prematurely.

Except that an American health expert says it's all a pack of lies, actually there's no epidemic and we can all relax and give up the frantic dieting.

Professor Patrick Basham of Johns Hopkins University in Baltimore says there's no evidence that overweight and obesity are significantly increasing. He says that in 1997 the definition of overweight was changed and millions more people were suddenly classed as overweight - although their weight hadn't altered.

In fact the average adult weighs only a pound or two more than a generation ago, and some surveys suggest child obesity is actually declining.

Nor is it true, he says, that being overweight or modestly obese leads to premature death. The increased risk is tiny, as is the number of early deaths.

He claims statistics have been distorted and misread to imply that body-weight has become a widespread problem.

In particular, there's a false assumption that overweight children become overweight adults and overweight adults become obese. But this is not necessarily so.

Furthermore, he says the new obsession with dieting and weight monitoring to control this so-called problem itself leads to serious health risks, eating disorders and body-image hang-ups.

Instead of a campaign against obesity, what we really need is a campaign against thinness and pointless dieting.

His opinions are an astonishing contradiction of the conventional wisdom that assails us from all sides. Can he be right? I hope so. Then we can all calm down and leave our bodies alone.

Size two-zero, anyone?

PS (November 8): Medical researchers in the USA have concluded that a bit of fat actually does you good. Slight overweight in fact makes you 40% less likely then normal weight people to die of a whole range of diseases and risks including cancer, heart disease, emphysema, pneumonia and Alzheimers. In 2004 in the USA there were 100,000 fewer deaths among the overweight than if they had been of normal weight. The researchers were from the Centres for Disease Control and Prevention in Atlanta, Georgia.