I wasn’t critical of it at the time because actually, I think not getting enough sleep is pretty much bad for you in general anyway so it made sense.

I agree with your suspicion that not getting enough sleep is bad for you. Supposedly that’s when your body performs its healing and repair functions. Although I could be totally wrong about that. Anyway, I’m not sure if weight gain is one of the effects of lack of sleep, but I very strongly suspect that it is not good for your health to be chronically sleep-deprived. I think I have seen reports prior to this claiming that lack of sleep really does cause you to tend to gain weight… I have no idea if that is true or not, but I find it very interesting that far from freaking out and making it socially unacceptable not to sleep enough because otherwise THE OBESITY WILL DESTROY US ALL so you can’t take any chances, which seems to be society’s response to every other piece of advice based on “things fatties have in common that you should therefore avoid like the plague” (paraphrasing Kate), people have totally ignored this particular weight-related finding. I do not think this is coincidental.

This is one of the things that drives me the most nuts about the dieting mindset (so, the mindset of pretty much everyone except FA people). People will beat themselves up endlessly if they are unable to eat perfectly and work out every single day, even if they are on a stressful business trip or just pulled an all-nighter or have to squeeze in a workout at midnight after getting the kids to bed and cleaning the house. They are really fond of repeating how there is “no excuse” good enough not to do those things. But when it is suggested that maybe they should try and cut back on hours at the office so they can be less stressed or get more sleep (both of which I personally think are roughly as important as diet and exercise to your well-being, to say nothing of endangering other drivers on the road during your commute if you drive sleep-deprived, and other off-topic stuff) they’re always like “oh, tee-hee, I’m a workaholic, I thrive on pressure,” or “I couldn’t possibly work less, I just have to” or whatever. All of a sudden there is no willingness to even make an effort to change that detrimental component of their lifestyle. And then they try to tell me that their guilt and self-flagellation over imperfect diet and exercise routine are really 100% about health when their attitudes toward work and sleep tell us loud and clear that it is actually about this weird Puritanical need to deprive yourself… of food, of time spent not running like a hamster in a wheel or sitting at a desk making yourself miserable, or of sleep or fun. Whatever it is, as long as you are miserable and feel that you’re never quite good enough, you’re doing it right. This does not always coincide with what is actually healthy for you.

Now, I recognize that some people really do thrive on pressure and many others really do have absolutely no choice about how many hours they work or the need to work more than one job. And furthermore, people are free to conduct their lives however they want; I don’t really feel it’s anyone’s “moral obligation” to reduce stress (except possibly for the driving while sleep-deprived thing and other similar issues). I just find our society’s moralistic attitude about food and exercise on the one hand, and work and sleep on the other, really hypocritical and sneaky.

I think that what the media needs to be worried about when it comes to lack of sleep is inability to copy edit accurately without sufficient sleep.

And they need to make up their minds already as several members of the proseltariat have stated… fat people are lazy. Fat people didn’t sleep enough. Which one!?! ARrarghhrh

I’m sure plenty of people would be delighted to hear that their rampant discrimination and cruelty are discouraging intelligent, thoughtful, sane fat people from having kids, too.

Ugh. You are so right.

The truth is, though, you have to go to bat for your kids on so many issues. I’m actually least worried about this one, if I end up having them. Can I fight about fat? Oh, you fucking bet I can. But I’ll also probably have to fight for them to have decent schooling and safe places to play and be able to read what they want to, not to mention fighting with them over any number of things. That freaks me out a little. The fat fights? Those I’m ready for.

I’d LOVE it if they took a genuine, intellectually honest look at the causes of fatness — even if the results ultimately bummed me out. But it’s always just, “What do fat people have in common? Okay, DON’T DO THAT OR YOU’LL GET FAT!”

Yes, absolutely. No matter how small or special-case or inconsequential the study is, this is what you hear.

On the question of children, I am petrified of bringing up a fat child in our society. I have a hard time confronting or disagreeing with people, and if my future children are fat, I’m going to have to be doing that a LOT. My MIL will have to be told to back off making critical comments about their diet, their doctors will have to be told that we are not testing them for diabetes right now just because they are fat and no, I am not putting them on a diet and incidentally please never talk about diets in front of them again, and on and on. My three-year-old niece is very fat and her parents (who are just normal folks with normal fat phobias, not fat acceptance pioneers by any means) are getting besieged with these messages left and right (e.g. I’m not even sure she was two years old yet when they were told that “no food was good for her,” basically that she shouldn’t be eating. At least my BIL reamed the doctor over that one.) My niece has no chance in our society if I’m not even confident that someone with my rather unusual mindset can raise a fat kid who doesn’t hate him/herself, and I’m not sure of that at all at this point.

I am to a point in my life where I feel I can love my children regardless of size, and keep a lid on any remaining craziness I have about my body (of which I’m sure there is a lot) because I KNOW it affects them as you all are saying. But I won’t be able to protect them from the doctors who want them on a diabetic diet or the kids and teachers who constantly tell them they’re different and ugly and have one foot in the grave or maybe, in the not-so-distant future, even the government who will take them away from me unless I get them WLS at the age of 10. It is terrifying.

You DO think about that when you have kids, especially girls (lucky me, I ended up with 4!). You watch what you say to them VERY carefully. You know what your own mother/family said to you that made your own self-esteem go down the toilet, and you try like HELL not to do that to your own kids.

I can also say from experience, though, that while you try your damnedest to make sure your KIDS don’t have the same self-esteem issues that you have, it doesn’t necessarily change your own self-image. You tend to have a “do [feel] as I say, not as I do [feel about myself]” thing going on, even if you don’t realize it.

Basically, what I’m saying is that I always try to make sure that my girls hear things from me that will make them feel good about themselves, but on the other hand, it hasn’t stopped me from saying how fat, ugly, and worthless *I* am. Obviously, since I’ve found all of y’all, I’m trying really hard to work on that, but I can’t deny that I’ve said one thing to them and had another criteria entirely for myself.

Amen, Spacedcowgirl. I’d LOVE it if they took a genuine, intellectually honest look at the causes of fatness — even if the results ultimately bummed me out. But it’s always just, “What do fat people have in common? Okay, DON’T DO THAT OR YOU’LL GET FAT!” Just like Sprinklemouse said with the pink/yellow/off-white example (and she gets major points for the “Lisa Frank notebook” detail).

Speaking of you, Sprinklemouse, I TOTALLY hear you on this:

I want to make sure I love myself to pieces before I procreate. I don’t want my kids to see me grimacing at my reflection, or hear me lamenting my body and play monkey see, monkey do.

Exactly. My mother told me I was pretty way more often than she ever said anything negative about my body — the problem was, I didn’t believe her, because by the time I hit middle school, I knew that having any body fat whatsoever made you ugly. And I knew it in large part because she — and the rest of my family members — constantly lamented their own fatness, beat themselves up for eating too much and not exercising enough, went on various fad diets, etc.

I know my mom never, ever wanted us to hate ourselves or be hurt by fat-haters the way she had — the problem was, she thought the only solution to those problems was getting thin, not learning to love yourself as a fat person. Loving yourself as a fat person was not something any of us could grasp as an abstract concept in the house I grew up in, let alone as a practical project. If you were fat, you were not allowed to love yourself, period. It would only mean you were fooling yourself – and we may have been a bunch of fatties, but boy howdy, we were all far too clever for that.

Even now, I worry about not being a good enough body acceptance role model for any potential kids.