Fat...

...Is a feminist issue.

Head on over there to Dr. Laura's website and any number of the Right-Wing Wimmen's blog's if you don't believe it. Lots and lots about how women need to stay thin (Dr. Laura's big on this one) and if they don't, how do they expect their men to care about them?


(Have a look at Dr. Laura's photograph some day. Eating disorder? You make the call.)

And the Shiavo case, which I've been staying away from, is all about this -- a woman trying to stay skinny so her parents would love her. Starving for affection. Now she's exactly what they want: exactly what all Conservative want their women to be: wholly in their control, wholly something they can use.

Well, D.E.D. space and Lawyers, Guns & Money and Dr. B. are all covering this one already

http://lefarkins.blogspot.com/2005/03/taboo-that-kills.html

http://dedspace.blogspot.com/

http://bitchphd.blogspot.com/

but I thought I'd yap about it anyway.

Women need to stop caring what they weigh.

If women let other people -- male or female -- decide what their bodies should look like (especially if those other people have decided that that image is something impossible, for heaven's sake!), what their bodies should be like, they're letting them control something basic about them.

That's a major problem.

Women are also, by letting themselves be convinced that it's their own bodies that are at fault, that are the problem, letting themselves be distracted from the real issues.

So here are some things to remember:

(1) Weight is not the issue. Healthy lifestyle is the issue. Lots of studies to back this one up. Get some exercise and eat right and you'll be doing as well as you can, unless you get a terminal disease, let me add, which by the way you really have not much control over. Oh, not smoking is a good plan and staying away from those transfats, that'll probably help, but who knows why the big C hits some people. It just does. (I speak from experience here.)

(2) Being 10-60 pounds overweight has no effect on your health. Not kidding about this one. Look it up.

(3) Dieting, on the other hand, is so extremely destructive to your health, ai, you would not believe how bad it is for you. Dieting is what kills you. Not being overweight. Dieting. CUT THAT STUFF OUT.

(4) Furthermore, all that time you're spending worrying about what you're eating and whether you're eating too much and what you're going to eat next and what you're going to eat tomorrow and how much weight you're going to lose next week and how much you weigh now and how many calories were in your lunch and so on and on and on? Do you know what you could be doing with all that time and intellectual energy? Electing someone to office who wasn't Bush, just for starters. Solving the energy crisis, for another. Learning Hebrew. Writing a novel. Playing with your kids. Planting a garden. I don't know, whatever you want. Just stop wasting your time on diets! Good Lord! Life is short! Do something that matters!

All right, then.