firecat

Big Fat Carnival #3 is up here:
http://vegankid.solidaritydesign.net/2006/06/07/big-fat-carnival-3/

There were some good posts (especially from body impolitic).

I'm glad that there IS such a thing as a Big Fat Carnival, never mind a 3d one (and the 4th is already scheduled). I sure as hell wish I'd had access to ANY critical thought about fat and body size when I was younger. And overall there was a lot of good thought and a lot of good sharing of personal experience.

However, I should not have gone in to read the posts in an emotionally vulnerable mood. I kept getting upset at subtle hatred discomfort/ambivalence about (some kinds of) fat in the posts and less subtle healthism and fat hatred/discomfort/ambivalence in some of the comments.

Things I need to remember before the next time I read a roundup of such posts:

• The concept of "fat acceptance" covers a lot of ground, some of which I find, well, not accepting enough. But everyone has to start somewhere.
• Discussions of fat, body size, body image, eating, and so forth, even when they are presented in a context of acceptance, are not always comfortable for me and don't always conform to my fairly extreme politics on the subject.
• Not all bloggers moderate the contents of their posts and fat acceptance posts sometimes attract fat-hating and healthist comments.

Last night, I started a post discussing the specific parts I found uncomfortable, but I deleted it because I thought it was unfair of me to focus on the negative. I'm still mulling over whether I should make a post along those lines.