Blogthings Non Sequitur
This is what Blogthings has to say about my destiny:
You Are Destined to Be Thin |
 Even if you aren’t thin right now, you have great habits that will ensure you’re thin for most of your life.You have a great relationship with food and eating. Don’t change a thing. |
*cracks up laughing*
Are you serious, Blogthings? Okay, yeah, it’s not like this is a scientific test or anything. But it does show how deeply ingrained are some of our culture’s assumptions about the supposed connections between food and weight. Here are a few samples from the quiz — people who are “destined to be overweight”:
1. Have an uncontrollable doughnut lust. Sorry, Blogthings, but not all of us fattehs even like doughnuts. *raises hand*
2. “Solve [their] problems with food”. What the flying fornication does this even mean? How can any problem except hunger be “solved” with food? Do they really think people are this stupid? Guess what, I had a problem the other day: my car wouldn’t start. And yes, it made me feel upset. So by this reasoning, instead of doing what I did (get my roommate to come jump start my car) I should have immediately scarfed down two pizzas. ‘Cuz fatties like me solve every problem with food, right? *eye roll*
3. Have nothing better to do after dinner than sit around eating “junk” food.
4. Eat all the time, even when they’re not hungry.
5. Are so ravenous that they’ll even dig through the trash to find food. I thought this was more characteristic of really, really thin people (you know, the starving kind?) and the homeless.
6. Don’t like to eat around others. This one is probably true for a lot of us, but only because no matter how normally we actually eat, people will always assume that because we’re fat, we must be gorging ourselves, and that somehow this means we should be subject to vocal and humiliating public censure. You’d want to eat alone, too, if you got dirty looks and uninvited comments every time you fed yourself in public.
7. “Eat more than [they] should” or “eat crap” when they’re really hungry. So many things wrong with this. For one: who is to say how much another person “should” or “shouldn’t” eat, especially when they’re really hungry. Have you been inside their body? Do you know what they’re feeling at the moment? Do you know all the ins and outs, all the quirks of their individual biology? No! People are the experts when it comes to their own unique bodies. No one but you has the right to decide what or how much is appropriate for you to eat.
When I’m really hungry, I’m really going to eat whatever I damn well please — there is no “should” or “should not” involved. Stop trying to attach moral value to necessary human activities!
This quiz is a prime example of the kind of bullshit that happens when you assume that “normal” eating habits = thin. Nope — doesn’t work that way for all of us! The reverse doesn’t hold up under skeptical scrutiny either, by the way.
Bottomline: the size and shape of a person’s body does not automatically tell you anything about that person’s health or habits. So try not to assume things. Because when you assume things about my ass, you make an ass out of your own damn self. Something like that. 😉
Rubenescapades: Adventures in Curviness 