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Well, yes, but….

For some, weight truly is the torture that never ends. On Planet Woman, even today, weight loss is still mainly cast as the life-giving sun, while weight gain is the foreboding death star that will kill your dreams. For some, it gets properly serious. The plus-size people who are made to feel grotesque on a daily basis. The anorexics whose deadly mental health condition is undermined and underfunded. The questions – the rage – around weight, diets and body image never stop. Why is a thin woman preferable to a fat one? Why is smaller better than bigger? Then you get Adele, a celebrity who decided to lose a shedload of weight, and there’s another pressing feminist question: whose business is it really?

The actual feminist question is who is it doing all the talking?

It not being the men:

Men Puzzled By Debate Over Bouncy Girls
23rd March 2010
MEN across Britain continue to be puzzled by the debate over the pros and cons of bouncy girls, it emerged last night.
…..
Martin Bishop, a remarkably ordinary human from Doncaster, said: “The girl with the hips, the magnificent knockers and the warm, happy face… or the arrogant, sulky angle-poise lamp who spends half her life in the bog?

“I’ll be honest, I don’t listen to women all that much but from what I can gather the debate is, essentially, about attractiveness and therefore it is reasonable to assume that I, as a man, am the one who is supposed to be attracted.

“We keep saying it until we are blue in the face – for the love of god, please gain some weight because we do not want to have sex with someone who looks like a 12 year-old boy.”

Ahhhh, yes, that’s right, it’s the wimmins doing the faffing over weight, isn’t it?

We can even draw into evidence that economists’ favourite, revealed preferences. Look at what people do, not what they say. Fat birds all over the country have children, as any potter into public spaces shows. Fat birds must, therefore, be getting porked as that’s what causes children. And if fat birds are getting porked by those capable of getting them pregnant then it can’t be the men rejecting fat birds, can it?

QED.

41 thoughts on “Well, yes, but….”

  1. It’s not a fight we want to involve ourselves in. Toxic. The only light at the end of this tunnel is Covid-19, and the realisation that fat people die. This gives politicians and medics cover to broach the subject (while we keep our head down). You’re not dead because you are black or brown (or white) – it’s due to the blubber.

  2. Looks like the Guardian is allowing alternating shifts of who gets the Megaphone – one day it is those demanding massive government control over food because of ‘obesity’, the next it is femininsts screaming that it is sexist to point out that fat women are unhealthy.

  3. it ain’t the porkin it’s the ‘prreciatin that’s valued. and it’s a zero sum gain coz to really appreciate this over here you also have to deprecate that over there. Hence it’ll always be hmmm contentious.

  4. The only light at the end of this tunnel is Covid-19, and the realisation that fat people die.

    I’m still waiting to see the mountains of dead porkers due to COVID-19. It’s just another scare story. Unless your wobbliness has given you heart disease and/or diabetes, or you are elderly, the chance of you carking it due to coronavirus is basically fuck all.

    Someone commenting on the Telegraph said the number of under-60s who’ve died of COVID-19 without known pre-existing health conditions is around 300. Over a few months that’s a rounding error. And let’s face it, if the virus was fatal to fatties the NHS would be down to its last few hundred nurses by now.

  5. As always there is an elision between the average, vaguely pudgy, woman and people so large they have orbiting planets.

    Most men don’t care about a bit of excess weight. Especially if it is as a result of enjoying life more.

    But genuinely large people are ugly. It isn’t natural and isn’t good for your health.

    Men prefer skinny women to the grossly obese. But not to the plump.

    Adele was tending to dangerously obese, so it’s good she lost weight. That’s different from a slightly overweight woman who enjoys a good meal.

  6. It’s also hypocritical because fat munters still prefer Steve Rogers to the fat bloke next door, so it’s OK when they do it.

  7. Barbara Ellen does say “on Planet Woman” – confessing that this is all part of the Feminist delusion.
    Different people will be different shapes when they are in good health: all of us need *some* fat, and women need more than men *need*; those of us with decent stomach muscles are thicker at the waist than those who are “weedy”, even without *excess* fat.
    Why cannot we treat individual people as individuals not as part of a category?
    Because that’s too much like hard work for the brain of a Grauniad journalist?

  8. As always there is an elision between the average, vaguely pudgy, woman and people so large they have orbiting planets.

    The ‘average, vaguely pudgy’ in the UK is a Size 16. In my world that’s fuckin ginormous.

  9. “Men prefer skinny women to the grossly obese. But not to the plump.”

    I’m not even sure it’s “the plump”. It’s slender, but without going skinny. That’s what the top women in porn and on page 3 looked like.

  10. “The plus-size people who are made to feel grotesque on a daily basis.”

    The reason they feel grotesque is that they’re grotesque.

    “…. we do not want to have sex with someone who looks like a 12 year-old boy.””

    Who runs the fashion industry? It ain’t straight men…..

    For all tha ladies who seem to have a problem with definitions; the difference between ‘curvy’ and ‘fat’:

    https://qph.fs.quoracdn.net/main-qimg-43d41bc2df19029c173a6d3e05e06592

  11. There’s nothing wrong with a bit of a gossip but, casting around, neutrality to her new body is tellingly scarce.

    Cast wider, love.

  12. Doc Bud–Steve Rogers is the alter ego of Captain America,

    I think Roue refers to the actor–Chris Evans –who plays him in the movies. The bastard is what I should have looked like . Though again he is a bog-standard obnoxious Hollywood leftist twat –so what the Lord giveth with one hand he taketh away with the other.

  13. It would be amusing if one consequence of CV-19 is that the NHS is forced to start lecturing its employees that they must reduce their weight, for their own good of course. Thats going to create some angst among the ‘angels’, being treated the same way they treat the rest of the public.

    I had to bite my tongue a while back when my GP told me I should lose some weight (to be fair she was right, I could have done with losing a stone) while she sat on the other side of the desk doing a passable blimp impression.

  14. Incidentally, it doesn’t help that all the medical advice given about losing weight is 180 degrees in the wrong direction. Cut out all fats and eat carbs instead being the official line. When doing that makes losing weight virtually impossible unless you have an iron will – carbs are incredibly addictive. Since deciding I needed to lose a few pounds I’ve cut out all the carbs I can, particularly sugar and grains. Everything else I eat as much as I like. My fridge is full of cheese and meat. And in the 2 months since I started this diet (though it isn’t a diet because if I want to eat something I do) I’ve lost half a stone. Without trying. It was noticeable that the urge to eat carbs was very high to start with, it almost was like breaking an addiction. But as time has passed that urge has waned, and while not zero is far far lower. The lockdown has actually helped – getting into a routine at home makes dietary changes a lot easier.

  15. Thanks, Mr Ecks. Films and actors isn’t my thing. In the days of Trivial Pursuit, when I got to the centre, the others would always ask me an entertainment question. The only Chris Evans I’ve heard of is not someone whose looks I’m jealous of.

  16. The anorexics whose deadly mental health condition …

    Mounting evidence suggests that anorexia is caused by an infectious agent, or possibly an immune overreaction to the infection.

  17. @MC – May 10, 2020 at 8:01 am

    Unless your wobbliness has given you heart disease and/or diabetes, or you are elderly, the chance of you carking it due to coronavirus is basically fuck all.

    Even then, the odds are far lower than the BBC and MSM would have you believe… Over on Hector Drummond’s (PBuH) blog, Christopher Bowyer has graphed the deaths “with” Covid split between those with underlying conditions and those without, using the NHS figures, and current up to the end of April:-

    Age bracket, With underlying conditions, Without same.

    80+, 9925, 372
    60-79, 7270, 433
    40-59, 1401, 184
    20-39, 117, 28
    0-19, 7, 3

    (Sorry about the formatting, or lack thereof!)

  18. “The anorexics whose deadly mental health condition”

    But surely if they say they are fat then they are? Who are we to indulge in hate speech and announce what our lying eyes are seeing?

  19. “if the virus was fatal to fatties the NHS would be down to its last few hundred nurses by now.“

    Harsh, but true.

  20. “Who runs the fashion industry? It ain’t straight men…..”

    It’s not about that. Fashion modelling is about the clothes. It’s trying to show buyers what the clothes are like on a hangar or a mannequin.

    Fashion is yeah, gay men, but it’s also women. Most of the buyers are women.

  21. @Andrew M: interesting, if only because I suspect that more illness is caused by infection than the medical trades think.

    (Frinstance, heart attacks in middle-aged men have declined so far and so fast that it looks just like the end of an epidemic.)

    Anyhoo, can you give me any links for your remark, please?

  22. 80+, 9925, 372
    60-79, 7270, 433
    40-59, 1401, 184
    20-39, 117, 28
    0-19, 7, 3

    Use the <code></code> tags for a monospaced layout, e.g.:

    for line in fileinput.input():
      line = line.strip()
      words = line.split()
      . . .

    Though I did need &nbsp; to get spaces in that Python example. HTML can be so annoying sometimes!

  23. ‘The anorexics whose deadly mental health condition is undermined and underfunded.’

    They don’t eat anything; they don’t need funding.

  24. ‘The plus-size people who are made to feel grotesque* on a daily basis.’

    ‘MADE TO’ ?!?! By whom*, you stupid liar?

    The Matriarchy* insists that they choose who/what are attractive to men. Heck, they don’t even need to be attractive you creeps!

    ‘It’s depressing that the singer’s new skinny look matters more to some* than her extraordinary voice’

    Begging the question fallacy. Who are these ‘some?’*

    ‘Why is a thin woman preferable to a fat one? Why is smaller better than bigger?’

    We men will pick based on what we choose; it has FA to do with what you think. Can the patriarchy decide what women must see in men? Can we decide that fitness in men doesn’t matter?

    The article isn’t actually about Adele. It’s Barbara Ellen exploiting current events to voice her insecurities. The article is about Barbara Ellen. The grotesque Barbara Ellen.

    *Barbara Ellen

  25. Tractor Gent

    “code” (can’t use the real thing obviously) seems to ignore where you put more than one space in.

  26. “People so large they have orbiting planets”

    Some I struggle to avoid have an entire solar system…

  27. Does PRE work?
    nope :(

    What about TT?
    nope :(

    Looks like code is the only option, though usefully it can be used inline.

  28. Dennis, The Beau Brummell of Central Ohio

    Pass judgment on Adele’s talent, not on how much she weighs

    Says the woman who looks like she had a head-on collision with a Max Factor truck.

    It never ceases to amuse me that feminists are always slathered in lipstick and makeup. Looks and weight shouldn’t matter, say the women who endlessly fuss over their weight and their makeup.

    What is also amusing about this is the assumption that Adele didn’t want to lose the weight… That it was the result of endless pressure from The Patriarchy (or whatever). Feminists seem to assume that any act by a woman has to stem from externalities… Because women are so completely helpless that they have no agency.

    And as noted, feminists also seem to believe that all men want tall, thin women, when in reality there is a robust demand amongst the male of the species for women of robust build. It’s bizarre, but for some reason feminists – women who make it a point to never listen to men – seem to think they know what men want in a woman.

  29. Attractive and Sexy are not quite the same thing, but leaving that aside for a moment.

    To find out accurately what men find sexy when they think no-one is looking, examine porn websites.

    On any general porn site with more than a couple of categories it is almost certain that “BBW” (Big Beautiful Women) will be one of them, and one of the most popular. Some sites with huge numbers of categories will have “Skinny” or “athletic”, but rarely and the categories are far less popular.
    It used to be said that women who wanted to be models but were considered too curvy for that field often went into porn, where being curvy was no disadvantage at all.
    Of course fashions change, any glance at porn pics of the 1950s will tell you that the average porn star, aimed firmly at the middle ground of men, was firmly in the very curvy category and would have had the BMI Nazis huffing and puffing.

    The major porn websites, of course, respond to demand and don’t give a damn for what they are “supposed” to supply. It’s clear that, given the choice, a large proportion, if not a significant majority, of men are sexually attracted to women who are significantly over the level of slenderness of a model or athlete.

  30. “Some I struggle to avoid have an entire solar system…”

    They’re difficult to avoid because they have their own gravitational field.

    “her extraordinary voice”

    This is one of those times where extraordinary isn’t necessarily a synonym for exceptional. If you’re looking for an example of an exceptional female singer you should try Floor Jansen.

  31. @ Dennis, who has less experience of life than I
    [Simply because he is quite a bit younger, but it seemed irresistible)
    A lot depends on how you define “feminist” – my wife describes herself as a “feminist” while being revolted by some of the comments on “Mumsnet” but not not slaher herself with lipstick and make-up; my mother was advocating equality while Germaine Greer was wearing braces on her teeth to make herself look more attractive but never went in for Greer’s nonsense – she wore lipstick just as men wore suits because it was expected as part of one’s respectable appearance. To get back to the topic, when my parents met, and until after they graduated, she weighed more than he did [I deduced that from a comment in my childhood that the Captain of OUABC wanted him to box at Featherweight at the same time as he was trying to get a Hockey Blue, so he missed both Blues] so slimness was clearly not a sine qua non – my wife is a sensible shape but when I first met her mother I had a warning that she might end up “broad in the beam” which was not enough to deter me. [Office work made both of us put on weight but determination, and exercise when we had the opportunity, has offset that]

  32. PF, jgh: yup. I had to use &nbsp; for spaces, even though <pre> should in theory allow multiple spaces inside the bracket.

  33. Dearieme
    Re: “@Andrew M: interesting, if only because I suspect that more illness is caused by infection than the medical trades think.
    (Frinstance, heart attacks in middle-aged men have declined so far and so fast that it looks just like the end of an epidemic.)”

    Way back in 1999, the following article appeared in The Atlantic by Judith Hooper on the emergence of infective agents as a potential cause of diverse medical conditions and diseases.. It’s an interesting read.
    https://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/1999/02/a-new-germ-theory/377430/

  34. You do know, don’t you, that thedailymash is a satirical website containing works of fiction? It even says so explicitly on their ‘about’ page: https://www.thedailymash.co.uk/about

    Though as they say there’s many a true word spoken in jest, and it does indeed seem that women’s idea of an attractive size for a woman is strangely smaller than men’s.

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