In an interview with TV host Ferne Cotton, Beth Ditto said that she finds it "tiring" to defend her weight all the time.
What Ditto said is a little long, but it should be printed on billboards, distributed in pamphlets and shouted from the rooftops of the world:
I'm not an unhealthy person and I feel like one of the most tiring parts of being fat and being proud of it is…you do a lot of proving yourself all the time.
It's really interesting to me that people will look at a thin person and go, 'That's a healthy person.' I want to go, 'Come open my refrigerator and look and then let's talk about what you think is so bad.'
To be thin and to stay really thin, sometimes... some people literally do coke all the time. Some people smoke cigarettes instead of eating. That's crazy. But that's 'okay' because you look healthier.
Yes. Thank you. We've been worshipping at the altar of thin, mistaking it for health. Let's stop.
And yes, that is a dress from Beth Ditto's new line!
Beth Ditto - Ditto Slams Skinny 'Role Models' [Contact Music]
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Beth Ditto's Latest Collection For Evans Is Black & White & Awesome
DISCUSSION
I'm a 6'4 guy with a BMI right in the middle of the "healthy" range. So, I say this is someone as on the "outside" of this issue as there can possibly be. But, here are two things that I feel are important.
1) The discussion of weight always seems to become a binary conversation amongst the parties with the most invested in it. It's always either, "Being fat is just fine" or "being too thin is better than being too heavy." Isn't it completely acceptable to say that either end of the spectrum isn't ideal?
2) Going back to BMI, I think it's ridiculous that I can be 6'4 and 195 and be considered right at the cusp of being "healthy" but could drop to 155lbs and still be considered healthy. That seems absolutely absurd and, I think, speaks to the institutionalization of the "too thin is better than too fat" nonsense.