**Possible Triggering Content***
The body positivity movement started out as a campaign with good intentions. For years before anyone took a stand, even slightly overweight individuals were mocked, ridiculed, and discriminated against, but in the 60s, a group of fed-up residents in New York held a sit-in to promote fat acceptance. In the 70s, fat became a feminist issue, meaning female writers like Susie Orbach and later Geneen Roth were letting their followers know that body size is less about food and more about protection, power, hidden emotions, sexuality, and even politics. These concepts helped many people of all sizes feel more comfortable in their own skin and more at ease being themselves. It also helped a lot of them lose weight, once they better understood the root cause of their overeating.
At the time of this great fat-acceptance awakening, the movement wasn't outright ignoring men or lean individuals who supported the cause. In fact, many men were part of the crusade, but by 2012, with the founding of the actual Body Positive movement, there was a shift to celebrate specifically fat women and later fat women of color. All of this seemed like a necessary and even good outcome, a backlash to the years of suppression and discrimination fat women, especially fat African American women, had endured, but sometime after 2012, the entire body-positive movement jumped the shark.
In more recent years, advocates for body positivity have gone past the concept of acceptance into the arena of defiance, which sounds somewhat reasonable but not when it's more of a "I'll cut off my nose to spite my face" gesture. This also includes members of the movement excluding anyone who's not fat, even those who were formally fat because that just means those now thin creatures have sold out and must be shunned.
In the past, any form of eating that caused harm or was done out of sheer emotion such as spite, anger, sadness, or even joy was seen as an issue that needed to be addressed. Yes, accept yourself, but work on understanding what drives a potentially unhealthy or excessive behavior and try to modify it in order to move toward one that's healthier to truly honor your body and its needs. That was considered a healthy approach to understanding food and its effects on the human body. Eating to satisfy an emotional craving is OK, healthy to a degree even, if you're aware you're doing it and doing it within the realm of what's reasonable. Now, eating to excess or as a rebellion is celebrated. It truly has nothing to do with health anymore and is all about protest or pouting, really.
Before I move forward, I want to make it very, very clear that this post is not about how fat people aren't athletic or "shouldn't" eat as much or anything even close to that. Obviously, fat shaming can be as damaging as supporting eating in defiance. I'm 100 percent not here to shame anyone. The individuals who are promoting a healthy lifestyle no matter their size really are inspirational, and I fully support them and their efforts to reach others. I'm addressing more a concept of eating or overeating in response to "haters" or to anyone who makes a comment not fully in line with what an influencer wants to hear. That's unhealthy and tends towards disordered eating.
I always try to look at this from the opposite standpoint. What if, for example, I promoted compulsive exercise and restrictive eating, and then claimed I was content with my body. Then, if anyone called me out on putting my unhealthy habits on display, I told the world I was going to skip even more calories throughout the day. Imagine if my readers encouraged me, cheered me on, and claimed I was heroic for taking a stand against all these bullies. That's the Internet. You can find examples similar to this in any arena. The eating disorder world is rife with them.
The Internet has a way of making certain behaviors and even some extreme forms of mental illness seem acceptable, even when these disorders cause harm. Pretty much anyone can find support and the wrong kind of encouragement for destructive or self-destructive conduct. There are pro-ana groups, support for people who want to be over 500 lbs, and online communities that encourage participants to believe in group or gang stalking. There's actually a podcast episode on Sword and Scale about a man who was in such a group, believed he was being gang-stalked, got validation from other unwell individuals, and then ended up murdering several people because the Internet fed his paranoid delusions.
When it comes to echo chambers online, I look at the absurdities, lies, and misleading content some liberal running journalists have promoted, especially regarding both transgender athletes and DSD athletes, and feel disgusted I ever associated myself with both running and the left. It's funny how quiet most of them have been regarding Caster Semenya's recent comments about her testes. If you want to listen to a very good analysis of Caster's situation, one that's fair, respectful of her, and honest, The Real Science of Sport addressed the issue in this episode.
What I've noticed is that at some point, encouraging self-expression became supporting a new form of women's oppression. Women on the left, race directors, and anyone afraid of being canceled were so worried about hurting anyone's feelings, they didn't think or care that they were degrading women's sport by insisting biological men compete against them.
They also didn't think about how it would look to offer influencers, some who run 22+ minutes per mile, prime spots in the elite corral at major marathons. Hey, as long as they look good to their peers for supporting this mess, keep at it, right? Fortunately, I see that the majority of women on both sides are in agreement that biological men competing in women's sport is, indeed, unfair, and most people are like me in that they support anyone at all running a marathon but prefer elite corrals stay reserved for those running elite times. Honoring excellence does not mean disregarding everyone else.
At no point do I expect to see any of these so-called journalists or loud pundits on the left admit they might have been wrong or offer any new commentary. That's typically the way cowards operate: ignore any confrontation or even civil conversation, and keep the blinders on as much as possible.
In news closer to home, I was relieved to see that in a local election, a certain individual didn't get elected to city council. I specifically voted, just so that I could vote against Waylon Lewis. I didn't care who won seats in his stead; I just didn't want him in charge of or anywhere near any policies for this city.
One of the reasons I was so adamant that this individual not be voted into office is because I've heard and read too many off-putting stories about him. There have been rumors about his alleged abuse and mistreatment of women - I met a lady who worked for him and heard some shit - and blog posts detailing his online abuse of them. My own interactions with him are limited. I reached out to him once regarding an interview for a radio station and got an arrogant reply that made me decide to drop the whole thing. I had a feeling, one of those gut instincts that told me to stay away, and I'm relieved I did.
But the very concrete reason why I don't like the guy is because of the way he treated his older dog. I may have told this story once before, but for those who don't know it, I was walking to work one day and noticed he was ahead of me with his dog. The dog appeared to be old and wasn't walking fast. As I got closer, the unleashed dog veered slowly toward the street. Mr. Lewis, not aware I was behind him, growled, "GET BACK HERE,' and with a grand gesture, raising his hand up first, swung his whole arm down and grabbed the dog's collar and some of the scruff of his neck, and then yanked the dog toward the sidewalk. I let out a gasp so loud (I really was shocked) Mr. Lewis turned slightly and, I'm sure, noticed me, at which point he loosened his grip on the dog and acted like nothing had happened.
I kept thinking if this asshole does this in public, what must go on behind closed doors? But maybe it was just a bad moment. Who knows, but given the rumors, the outright accusations, and the incident with his dog, I simply can't find any reason to like the guy. Hooray that he didn't get the votes and is not on Boulder's city council. He lost, he lost hard.
Since I haven't been writing creatively much lately, I'm afraid it shows. But after a long layoff, I have to start somewhere. Maybe this post is a bit disjointed, but I felt compelled to write, something I haven't felt the urge to do in a while. On the other hand, I got this bizarre idea even more recently to write a book of short horror stories. The novel will have to continue waiting, even though I'm coming closer to formulating an interesting ending in my head. I'm just not there yet and have many thousands of words yet to write. God, I'm lazy when it comes to that.
As far as running, I haven't been doing a lot of it. Just when I have a fun, harder workout, my hamstring/butt tears again, and I have to back off for a while. So I'm doing a little jogging here and there and trying to accept it. Work is still hard, but my coworkers are incredible and very, very inspiring. At times I'm completely overwhelmed, but each day I make it to the closing hour is a victory. And, fortunately, there are some very competent people there to guide me.
