New York’s Fat Beach Day gives plus-size people a space to be themselves
theguardian.com
Jacob Riis Beach hosts the day of body positivity and fun, in the city at the heart of the fat acceptance movement
Fat Beach Day events are springing up across the US in an effort to fight back against fat-phobia, reclaim safe spaces for the community and honor plus-size culture. Today, one of these celebrations is being held to coincide with Pride month at Jacob Riis Beach in New York, a location deeply ensconced in the city’s activism space.
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I addressed this already. Many people barely have enough time to relax and de-stress from their horrible job possibly plus their horrible commute. Expecting everyone to be able to have the psychological fortitude to take the time to cook a meal regularly is asking a lot of a lot of people. Ingredients for cooking may be cheap. Energy for cooking is not a purchasable commodity.
They’re also compeltely ignoring food deserts
This can't be overstated enough. There are huge swathes of the USA where the only stores within half an hour are dollar general or gas station convenience stores. You literally can't eat healthy on those sources, and the nearest actual grocery store could be an hour or even more away.
Kinda hard to eat well when just getting the ingredients would take half a days time.
Hell, I'm in a city and if I didn't have a car my only options in walking distance are a convenience store and a couple fast food places. Nearest grocery store is a 12 minute drive or a 3 hour bus ride if the bus even shows up.
I'm just arguing that it's not BOTH cheap and easy. It's only one of those.
Also, don't cook every meal. I cook 10 portions at a time for my family every time I make dinner and put leftovers in the fridge (or freezer) which reduces the total time to cook per week quite significantly. It barely takes longer to cook 10 portions compared to 2 portions, which drops the per portion cook time down to single digit minutes.
If you think it is easy to have the mental and physical fortitude to cook, you are not working a job that grinds you into the dirt like so many others.
The biggest problem is the lack of planning. If you come home after working and don't know what you have or what you're going to make of course it's going to feel difficult.
So spend 15 minutes on the weekend making a plan for all your meals for the week. Do a single grocery shop for everything you need to reduce trips to the store.
The when you get home on Wednesday, you already know you're going to cook up some grilled cheese with soup (that's in your freezer from last week when you made 5 portions) and you can pull it together while you watch an episode of your favorite tv show on the tablet you prop up on your counter.
No, the biggest problem is, as I keep saying, the lack of energy. You can plan to do whatever you want before work. By the time work is over, you won't have the energy to do it. That's why I at my last job I got up at 5:30 am to exercise, because as tired as I was, I knew I wouldn't be able to do it after work no matter what sort of exercise I was planning to do.
If your job is so physically demanding as to make it impossible to stand, cut, and stir things, then why the fuck are you working out on top of that? Not to mention how much harder it should be to get fat in the first place...
You can eat ultra processed meals at that point, just don't have four potions of them per meal and you won't gain weight.
You seem to think mental weariness isn't a problem when it's a huge problem. Maybe your job doesn't wear your out psychologically. Many people can't say the same.
All of that can be true (and is) and it still doesn't mean you can't stop dinner before the fries are gone or cut your sandwich into pieces to eat and then don't eat them all.
If you're eating to destress you're choosing your psychological health over physical health and that's it's own problem to address.
And, again, body shaming causes stress, which will result in stress eating, which is why one day a year fat people can go to one of the eight public beaches in New York City without being body shamed is not a bad thing.
I didn't think anybody is arguing it's a bad thing to avoid / reduce body shaming. Instead, the argument is that overeating is not predestined and out of people's control and it's also not a blameless activity.
By all means go to the beach every day, and fuck anybody that says anything negative. Not everybody has to like the look of your skeleton or your furry suit or the look of you spilling out of your bathing suit though: that's preference not shame.
What people are arguing is that this one day a year shouldn't happen, while ignoring the issue that fat people, especially fat women, face a lot of body shaming when they're at the beach. Many fat women can tell you stories.
Also, on top of just random people giving them shit, they also have to deal with things like this when not even near a beach, which make them not want to go to the beach at all because of the shame being forced on them.
So, again, I think giving them one day a year on one beach in one city with eight beaches where they don't have to walk around in a bathing suit and getting shamed for it is a good thing.
Treating a fat person poorly is just not going to do anything about the obesity epidemic. I am seeing a bunch of posts here talking about reasons why people are fat and what they should do to not be fat, but they are fat right now even if they are now taking that advice and losing weight, so maybe a little compassion is needed.
All fine and good, and agreed on all fronts.
I still don't think it's a great perspective to normalize or justify obesity because people cope poorly with stress / only have access to fast food / really like French fries / have a back injury / etc. It's not (generally) an unchangeable destiny, and everyone at every moment is the caretaker of their own bodies.
I don't see any normalizing of obesity. I see a lot of empathy for people whose circumstances have led them to this point. I see a lot of explaining why someone may actively choose foregoing physical health for another reason.
You can support people who are in a position, even by "their own hand" without saying it's cool, or normal, or anything. You can give just a little back to these people, to hopefully help move them back towards an actual normal living without saying where they are now is good or healthy. That's what I'm seeing.
Sure you can. But there's a difference in being compassionate and saying "yeah I can see how you got where you are" and saying "corpos and your stressful job made you obese, you sweet child" which was the vibe I was getting.
I don't think I was normalizing or justifying it. I was saying that people are living in a country that actively encourages it and that is where things need to be attacked if we want to solve the issue, just like you're never going to end smoking while tobacco is still being sold.
Possible I misread your intent.