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Fat Studies In The UK Author Takes On Susie Orbach

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1.1.1.
07/11/09

In reply to Fat Studies In The UK Author Takes On Susie Orbach
I read a "Fat is a Feminist Issue" a long time ago. It was not a non-diet diet book. As I recall, it argued that women's obsession with body size was one way that society exerted control over women.

But it didn't say that being unhealthily obese was a good thing, either.

I still don't understand the conflation of unhealthy weight gain with self-acceptance and female liberation.

(Ducking now).
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tiredfairy
07/10/09

In reply to Fat Studies In The UK Author Takes On Susie Orbach
I haven't read the first book, but I have read Unbearable Weight...and I really can't see how it's a diet book pretending not to be. Its a breakdown of the body rhetoric we're faced with on a daily basis, from difference perspectives, covering everything from ED's to race, to the "real women have curves" idea.

If anything Orbach is a proponent of body acceptance in any and all forms. And what she tries to get at is that we're being sold "health" but what we're really being taught is self-hatred and obsessive body, weight, and food issues.
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nora charles
07/10/09

In reply to Fat Studies In The UK Author Takes On Susie Orbach
I haven't read Fat Is a Feminist Issue, so I won't weigh in on whether or not Corrina's complaints are valid . . . but I do think it's problematic, at the very least, to critique a book published in 1978 in the same way you would critique one that's being published today. Of course some of its arguments are outdated--it was published more than 30 years ago! The way women related to their bodies, and are expected to relate to their bodies has vastly changed since then. Bodies in general have vastly changed since then! The book is a product of its time, and of course some of the views and arguments that Orbach uses aren't going to be relevant to newer, contemporary movements and ideas.
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slowpoke.r
07/10/09

@nora charles: But Tormley also talks about Bodies by Orbach, which, if my memory of NPR interviews is at all accurate, was published sometime last fall. Tormley clearly states that she has the same problems with that book that she has with FIFI because Orbach hasn't changed anything about her theories but only some of her language. I haven't read either book, so I don't have an opinion on either the original works or on Tormley's criticism of them, but she is responding to newly published work as well as re-released and updated work by Orbach.
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Edited by slowpoke.r at 07/10/09 7:06 PM slowpoke.r was starred slowpoke.r was unstarred

nora charles
07/10/09

@slowpoke.r: Right--and I think that the criticism of Bodies is appropriate for that reason. (I wouldn't consider a re-issue of Fat Is a Feminist Issue with a new foreword "an updated work" though.) Her arguments would make much more sense to me if she primarily addressed the most recent works, rather than addressing the earliest work and just tacking on an addendum that the most recent one is "the same."
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thegogglesdonothing
07/10/09

In reply to Fat Studies In The UK Author Takes On Susie Orbach
I read a really interesting piece on the fat acceptance movement recently (it came out a bit ago) dealing with the hostility of people inside the movement toward fat people with eating disorders. The critique in the linked article made me think of it. http://bitchmagazine.org/article/big-trouble
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nora charles
07/10/09

@thegogglesdonothing:
I read that article too, and definitely found some truth in it. Obviously not every fat woman has an eating disorder (just as not every thin woman has an eating disorder!), but to shove them under the rug and pretend like they don't exist is doing a huge disservice both to the fat acceptance movement and to the women with eating disorders that they ignore.
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Vivelafat says Sweep the leg, Johnny.
07/10/09

@thegogglesdonothing: What I don't like about this article is that it seems to play into most people's biggest fear about the FA movement; that we want everyone to be fat and love it.
That is not the case. We want anyone who is fat to be treated the same as someone who is skinny. That's it. I think that there is enough trouble to get the media to report on FA at all that articles like this, while important in illuminating internal issues that the FA movement has to work on, do more harm than good.
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Rooo sez BISH PLZ
07/10/09

In reply to Fat Studies In The UK Author Takes On Susie Orbach
Heh. *ticking clock*
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thesciencegirl
07/10/09

@Rooo sez BISH PLZ: shhhhh.... don't disturb it.
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thesciencegirl
07/10/09

@thesciencegirl: lol. I read "ticking clock" as "ticking bomb"
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