Feminists and nonconformists - where do your goals come from?

i had heard of the health at every size school of thought once or twice before but never knew it had its own acronym. (silly of me in todays fwiw, btw, brb, lol, world) So i looked it up and am saddened that their welcome paragraph begins with..."Face it. We have lost the war on obesity."

I have a serious health condition and my health/fitness goals are based on avoiding surgery.

kae612 wrote: »

It's hard to detangle my goals because of course I'd /like/ to be considered more attractive to others. Though that is also a scary thought, in some ways I feel like I've been "protected" from a lot of the negative attention many of my conventionally attractive friends have to deal with, like catcalling.

I actually think in some ways not wanting to care about what I looked like kept me from acknowledging my weight as a health concern until I realized I was actually obese and it was affecting my health and quality of life. I had seen "fat" as only an aesthetic issue that I /shouldn't/ care about, that I was ashamed to care about, instead of a health issue.

But my goals have nothing to do with just being skinny. My goals are to be healthier, be more active, and be less unhappy with my life and my choices. I don't really believe I ever will be thin, I don't buy magazines, and I have no interest in fad diets or "cleanses". I want to treat my body with respect, be comfortable in my embodied self rather than just thinking of myself as a brain in an unpleasant physical case. My goals are improved physical and mental well being. And if I daydream sometimes about turning heads and being cute, well, that's okay too.

This. All of this.

And a lot of other amazing things that people have said.

When I first heard of HAES I thought it was a great idea to encourage people to be healthier no matter what size they were. Obviously that's not the message HAES is really about.

Health is at the core of my goals. I don't idolize anyone else's body because it isn't possible to achieve someone else's body. I accept by body for what it is and what it does for me. I can still work on changing it as I accept it. The most important parts are about getting to a place where I am healthy enough to lower the risk of various medical ailments, so I can take care of myself, and be fit enough to take on whatever adventure strikes my fancy. Doing this in a healthy sustainable way seems like the most logical and kind way to achieve these goals.

My goals are my own and I believe that my feminist/nonconformist background makes it easier to stick to my goals. I have no problem saying no to friends who invite me to do endless hours of cardio because I want to focus on weights and my goals.

I intend on never fitting into someone else's mold because I am myself and I'm the only one.

I have been asked about this before actually since I am a feminist. There was definitely a time where my goals were more driven by society's standards but I feel like my goals have matured with me. I am trying to lose weight because I just don't feel healthy at this weight and I feel sluggish and tired all of the time. Everyone will have their own reasons for wanting to lose (or gain) weight. Hope this helps!

If I want to care how others think of me, it's my choice. If I don't, same thing. Try to be aware of how you think you are influenced and make conscious choices. These labels, in particular the idea of non-conformism as a cultural choice require obligate referential to a mainstream. You think being edgy is edgy when everyone is trying to do it?

Just be.

My goals are highly fitness motivated - being able to do things for a long time and having seen what unfit destroys life and ability to enjoy the outdoors weighs heavily in my decisions. But I also have aesthetic goals and yes, they are influenced by social canon and that is perfectly ok because I decide where I put the cursor.

Often enough, there is also the trap that rejecting personal goals of fitness or looks is actually a capitulation to minimum effort. I can't be that, so I'm not going to try at all. Fine, if that is where your personal journey takes you - but it seems that often enough that type of capitulation leads to an unhappy place.

As to HAES? They are somewhat right - there is a lot of false sense of concern that is thrown at the overweight and it seems to me often to very counterproductive. "oh, their poor knees" "oh, their diabetes" are just disdainful mouth cluckings about appearance - and loaded assumptions about health, activity, social standings, etc... Unfortunately, they've taken it too far, going from self acceptance to self deception. My health, at any weight, is mostly my business.

rabbitjb wrote: »

I'm a feminist

I want to look hot

Yep. That would describe me, too.

Of course, we're both aware that what looks "hot" is subjective, and we've come up with our own ideas of said hotness. (I think you and I have similar ideas of that, too, lol)

Are my goals and desires and personal aesthetic influenced by the larger culture, which is pretty sexist and patriarchal in a lot of ways? Heck yeah. I'm not a magician who can eliminate the impact of decades of media and social imagery and pressure on my own mind.

Does that make me a bad feminist? No. Feminism is about recognizing those places where we're still falling short as a society in providing equal opportunity and treatment for everyone, where there's room for improvement, and where we are placing unreasonable demands and pressures on others and ourselves. It's not about becoming flawless living embodiments of the version of ourselves who already lives in a perfectly egalitarian world (if we could even accurately conceive of and execute what that might look like for each of us).

It's pretty silly to blame the targets of various kinds of oppression for behaviors motivated by that oppression, even if that seems like the easiest way to tackle it. "Hey, stop acting so oppressed!" to an individual is a much easier, but lazier and less useful thing to say then "Hey, stop oppressing people" to a larger system that's actually doing it.

Looked at objectively, it's pretty silly that men can wear their body hair unaltered and women are considered shocking outliers if not outright disgusting in many settings if they don't remove it. That makes no objective sense. But it doesn't follow that a woman who bows to that pressure and shaves or waxes- whether because she feels external pressure from the social setting she moves in to do so or because she's totally internalized the idea that it IS gross to have body hair- is a "bad feminist."

If she goes around telling *other* women that they're disgusting for having body hair, that's some bad feminism. And it's probably worthwhile to each of us to confront and interrogate the gender-based expectations placed on us, even if we ultimately choose to comply with them. But making choices or having thoughts or feelings that conform to patriarchal ideals is not an inherently antifeminist thing, and blaming the targets of social control for being socially influenced is kind of a jerk move.

I have simply decided how I want to look and have gone for it. Some of my goals might be things that others find appealing and some of my goals may not. Just because a few of the things I personally find pleasing are also things many others like doesn't mean I'm "conforming" to others standards.

I'm more motivated by being able to DO things (keep up with my kids, be able to run a few miles, be able to go hiking without getting out of breath, be able to lift the things I need and want to, etc.) than the way I look, but I do want to look better also.

The other big issue is my health. Cardiovascular disease runs in my family. My dad just had a stroke at 49 and has lost a lot of use of his left foot and left hand. He just had a double bypass also, because his heart is a ticking time bomb of clogged and hardened arteries. My mom, at 49 also, is pre-diabetic, obese, has high blood pressure, and in need of a knee replacement due to damage from long-term obesity. My grandmother is obese, as are my uncles, aunts, and nearly everyone else, even my aunts and uncles who are in their early 40's, and they are all on cholesterol and BP medications, can't manage to walk very far without joint pain and/or difficulty breathing. My father's father had a quadruple bypass at 60-ish after a major heart attack. I don't want to be in that boat when I hit my 40's and 50's, etc. I plan on being active, strong, and full of life as long as I possibly can. I didn't grow up eating very healthy food, as my family was pretty poor and we couldn't really afford fresh vegetables and/or fruit, so a lot of the challenge for me is to retrain my palette to enjoy more vegetables and non-junk food.

I'm also a strong supporter of women's rights and equality for all and am most definitely a feminist.

emmycantbemeeko wrote: »

Are my goals and desires and personal aesthetic influenced by the larger culture, which is pretty sexist and patriarchal in a lot of ways? Heck yeah. I'm not a magician who can eliminate the impact of decades of media and social imagery and pressure on my own mind.

Does that make me a bad feminist? No. Feminism is about recognizing those places where we're still falling short as a society in providing equal opportunity and treatment for everyone, where there's room for improvement, and where we are placing unreasonable demands and pressures on others and ourselves. It's not about becoming flawless living embodiments of the version of ourselves who already lives in a perfectly egalitarian world (if we could even accurately conceive of and execute what that might look like for each of us).

It's pretty silly to blame the targets of various kinds of oppression for behaviors motivated by that oppression, even if that seems like the easiest way to tackle it. "Hey, stop acting so oppressed!" to an individual is a much easier, but lazier and less useful thing to say then "Hey, stop oppressing people" to a larger system that's actually doing it.

Looked at objectively, it's pretty silly that men can wear their body hair unaltered and women are considered shocking outliers if not outright disgusting in many settings if they don't remove it. That makes no objective sense. But it doesn't follow that a woman who bows to that pressure and shaves or waxes- whether because she feels external pressure from the social setting she moves in to do so or because she's totally internalized the idea that it IS gross to have body hair- is a "bad feminist."

If she goes around telling *other* women that they're disgusting for having body hair, that's some bad feminism. And it's probably worthwhile to each of us to confront and interrogate the gender-based expectations placed on us, even if we ultimately choose to comply with them. But making choices or having thoughts or feelings that conform to patriarchal ideals is not an inherently antifeminist thing, and blaming the targets of social control for being socially influenced is kind of a jerk move.

Fantastic answer.