(no subject)

[serene]

It's a frequent complaint on my thyroid cancer listserv that people gain weight when their thyroid hormones (and consequently their metabolisms) go all wacky. Mostly, I just ignore that. But today, one of the women said something like (I'm paraphrasing) "Isn't it silly that in all this cancer stuff, the thing that's most upsetting to me is that I've gained ten pounds?"

I said:

To be honest, yes, that does seem a bit silly to me, but I'm constantly amazed at the number of people who will do things like wish they were sick so they can lose weight.

Someone else on the list said that wishing one is sick to lose weight is way different from being upset at gaining weight when one is sick. I said:

Speaking only for myself, I think they're two sides of the same coin, which is the ingrained weight-loss-is-always-good/weight-gain-is-always-bad indoctrination of this culture. If my body reacts to recovering from a serious illness, and a decreased metabolism, by packing on a few protective pounds (and that's what weight gain is for, biologically speaking -- protection), that's something to accept as an adaptive measure my body is taking, in my opinion, not to mourn or beat oneself up for.

(On a tangent, but it feels relevant to me: I lost far too many friends to AIDS in the '80s and '90s, and I remember a t-shirt that some of my friends wore -- "Get fat; stay alive don't die [thanks, pantryslut]". )

My "People aren't going to like me now" alarms are going off, but many, many people will tell this woman (and a few already have) that it's right and natural for her to be dismayed at a little weight gain, and I really didn't want that to be the only thing she heard, especially not after she expressed her own worry that it was silly/crazy to be worried about a thing like a few pounds when she's fighting cancer.

If you think I'm being an asshole to her, go ahead and tell me. I can take it.

Comments

[therealjae.livejournal.com]

I'm glad you said it, but I don't think you should have called it "silly." For one thing, it sounds dismissive. But more importantly, I don't think it's what you really mean. (Sad? Tragic?)

-J

[serenejournal.livejournal.com]

I think her word was "crazy". My "silly" was an attempt to soften that a little. What I really think is yes, it's insane.

[therealjae.livejournal.com]

Right, but that makes it sound like it's some individual quirk, when really it's a symptom of the sickness of our society. It's our society that's insane, not her.

-J

[pantryslut.livejournal.com]

Random note: are you sure it wasn't "get fat, don't die"? That was the slogan for the Diseased Pariah News (AIDS zine) food column. Though it's entirely possible there were multiple versions of the sentiment floating around out there.

[serenejournal.livejournal.com]

Oh, gosh, you're totally right. I've made a correction above, but I don't think I'll bother on the list, as it was tengential to my point. Thanks!

[wild-irises.livejournal.com]

I'm glad you said it.

[loracs.livejournal.com]

You're certainly not being an asshole to the original poster. I think you're supporting her. As you said, she'll have plenty of people telling her it's okay to feel bad about the weight gain, blah, blah, blah. Pointing out to her (and to others who might be lurking)the possibility that maybe, just maybe, cancer is the bigger issue here and gaining a few pounds is not the end of the world, is a valuable perspective.

[hel]

I dunno, the general undertone of the exchange reads to me as someone seeking validation for their feelings (that it is ok to be worried about whatever one is worried about, regardless of whatever there is to worry about. In her case, to be worried about her appearance even tho she's got the 'bigger' concern of cancer), and your response seems kind of invalidating. Yeah, it's insane that our society programs us to worry so much about weight, but it DOES. And your initial response reads to me like 'how stupid are you to worry about something so little when you SHOULD be worried about big scary cancer'. Which doesn't really strike me as supportive or helpful. I get the point you were trying to make, and I think it was a good point to make, but I think you made it pretty poorly. Yeah, people are going to tell her it's right and natural to be dismayed about weight gain, and I suspect (hope) others will tell her that different people worry about things, and maybe focusing on a minor thing in the face of a major thing is a decent coping method. I think your second comment to her was a lot more helpful than your first, cos your second says 'it's not silly of YOU, it's silly of society'. I think it should have included 'don't beat yourself up about the weight gain, but also don't beat yourself up for being worried about whatever is worrying you, even if it is "silly".'

[clever-doberman.livejournal.com]

You are so awesome and you did just fine. It is hard to respond perfectly in the face of the dominant cultural paradigm of fat self hate and you were out there in a sea of sharks on that score.

So plug your plug into the fat acceptance socket an recharge. You can also reach out to us for thyroid-itis support and we can try to hum a few bars.

[trixtah.livejournal.com]

Mmm, I think there is a difference between more or less shallowly obsessing about weight as weight, and focussing on changes to one's body due to illness and/or treatment. I agree that people who wish they could get sick to lose weight are idiots, but I don't think characterising this woman's concerns as coming from the same place is necessarily valid.

I would dislike it immensely if I gained 5 kilos (or more) because of an illness, or lost it, or lost my hair, or changed my skin tone, or anything that wasn't in my control. And I think it's quite natural for people to zero in on relatively "minor" changes in their bodies in an effort to keep their minds off potentially greater concerns. And if someone tried to shut me down for angsting about it a wee bit - surely that's part of the reason for these forums? - that would piss me off.

Basically, yes, it's boring when people go on about weight concerns, but the underlying motivation might be something quite other than "fat hatred" in this instance. It's not really possible to tell from the context you've given.

[serenejournal.livejournal.com]

She asked if it was silly, and I think it is. I'm dealing with the same stuff she is (and have gained twice the weight). I don't think expressing my opinion when asked is the same as shutting her down.

[trixtah.livejournal.com]

I don't actually think you did with your initial response - you did echo the language she used herself, and you were just offering your own opinion (which is obviously different to mine).

It's more your second argument asserting that "wishing one is sick to lose weight" vs "being upset at gaining weight when one is sick" are two sides of the same coin which seems problematic from my perspective.

[leback.livejournal.com]

I am inclined to agree with the person who said that the two things are way different. I think some of the same cultural evils that feed "I wish I were sick so I could lose weight" also feed "I'm upset that I've gained weight as a result of being sick," but I think there are a lot of less-evil things that feed into the latter without being particularly relevant to the former.

For one thing, I think *any* tangible manifestation of illness can become a focal point for a lot of the less-tangible anxieties and upsets that come with the illness itself, and can seem upsetting out of all proportion to its actual significance. Even if it's only ten pounds, the fact that one no longer has any clothes that fit comfortably can easily become a very concrete, every-day source of frustration. (And yeah, one can buy new clothes, but that takes time and money and energy, which are often already in short supply when one's sick.) So it could easily work out that that's the thing that one is constantly crying over, not because it's really more important than all the other ways in which one's life has been turned inside out, but because it's the one that one can wrap one's brain around well enough to just go ahead and cry over it. And while the added contribution of a fat-hating culture may mean that it plays out this way much more often when people gain weight than when they lose weight, my sense is that it sometimes goes both ways.

For another, having one's body change, even when it's a healthy and useful adaptation to changed circumstances, can itself be a distressing experience -- not because there's anything wrong with the new body (although again, the culture of fat-hating isn't helping anything here), but because it's not the one that one has been accustomed to living in and has learned how to use (and clothe, and carry, and whatever else). And I for one am pretty attached to my body, simply because it's mine and I've had a long relationship with it, and if all of a sudden it starts feeling like a stranger to me, I expect that's going to *hurt*, and I don't think that's silly. I think it's silly that I've absorbed cultural messages that mean it might hurt more if it changes due to weight gain than if it changes due to weight loss, but again, there's a lot else going on there, and I have seen people grieve illness-induced weight changes in both directions. One woman I used to know was a dancer, had been a dancer all her life, and when her weight changed due to a thyroid problem, she described her center of gravity having completely changed, so that in order to keep dancing, she would have basically had to unlearn all her old instincts and learn how to move all over again, and she was looking at *decades* of work that would have had to be undone and redone. Not the end of the world, and she didn't treat it as such, but upsetting -- I can only *imagine*. And I don't think that's silly, even if silly -- crazy, evil -- cultural messages are also feeding into it.

All that said, I don't think you're being an asshole, and I think it's good that you offered this woman a different way of looking at her weight gain. But I hope I would have approached it with more explicit compassion, and without the assumption (which I don't know that you were making, but it's one way of reading what you wrote) that all of what she's feeling is a straightforward manifestation of societal fat-hatred.

[vvvexation.livejournal.com]

I think *any* tangible manifestation of illness can become a focal point for a lot of the less-tangible anxieties and upsets that come with the illness itself, and can seem upsetting out of all proportion to its actual significance.

A few years after losing my mother, I spent a considerable span of time (actually, I'm still not quite done) grieving the fact that she'd not only died, but lost her gorgeous hair to chemotherapy first. I believed it upset me because it felt like adding insult to injury--especially since the chemo failed to save her anyway--but now that you point it out, I suspect it may well have also been simply an easier thing to focus on. So yes, I think you're right.

[leback.livejournal.com]

That sounds like hell to go through. I'm glad the grieving has lessened with time.

[boxofdelights]

Not at all.

[zeldajean.livejournal.com]

Asshole? You? Not at all :)

In fact, your constant discussion of this topic (as well as from a few other people on my flist, and likely yours also) has helped me to accept and deal with MY body image. I'm too heavy, I know that. I need to lose weight, I know that. My body is far beyond it's comfort zone (which is itself far beyond society's, but f that). I also know that a large amount of it was caused by a doctor not properly medicating me when I needed it, despite her diagnosing the condition. I know all of this, despite what I hear from society as a whole. That doesn't necessarily make it easy to accept. But y'all help more that I can express.

(I've also learned that it's ok not to look at the scale at the dr's office. And that it's ok that diets and I don't get along. And, most importantly, it is perfectly ok that I don't obsess about my weight.)

[nellorat.livejournal.com]

I don't know how full-up your friends' page is, but you might be interested in my LJ also, and I invite you to check in. I'm in my early 50s, fat accepting since the early 1980s, finally past a lot of post-dieting trauma (though never always past it) and trying to be healthy in a way that has nothing whatsoever to do with numbers on a scale. That's far from all I talk about, though--I live in a triad, teach, love sf/horror, keep pet rats, etc.

[zeldajean.livejournal.com]

added :) Feel free to do the same, although I'm generally not nearly as interesting. :)

[clever-doberman.livejournal.com]

when you spit in the wind, you can't always have perfect aim.

I feel like your responses to this woman's comments weren't just aimed at her, but at the others who are quick to commiserate at the don't-we-all-agree-weight-gain-sucks group think.

changes in weight can happen to anyone for a variety of reasons, and one is often not "in control" of it, regardless of one's health status. and if someone believes they can "control" their weight through diet, again whether ill or not, then it's important to impart some measure of sanity when one can.

[firecat]

I don't think you're being an asshole, and I think you made good and worthwhile points.

I have kind of a complex reaction to the first woman. I agree with your comment, and I also think it's pretty normal, in two senses that weight would become a focal point during health challenges:

"Normal" (as in "to be expected") because we hear messages constantly telling us that our weight stands for our health, so of course we internalize them and think about that when our health is compromised.

And also I believe it is a "normal" (as in "common") psychological defense mechanism to focus on something trivial (e.g. a few pounds) when something potentially overwhelming (e.g. cancer) is going on. Because sometimes a person might be able to get her mind around the trivial thing in a way she might not be able to get her mind around the bigger thing.

On the second comment, I agree that they're both sides of the same coin, and I also agree that they are somewhat different. Those can both be true -- each side of a coin does look different even though it's the same coin.

[ailbhe]

It depends on her headspace when she reads it. *I* would probably worry about gaining ten pounds that way and be grateful for people who pointed out it was lunacy. Even before I discovered FA. Her original comment sounds like she might be open to that.

This is something where she could have needed *either* answer, and didn't tell anyone which one.

[nellorat.livejournal.com]

I think it's good that you're a counter-voice.

As a separate discussion, I think your view of weight/adipose tissue as protective is too simple & too purely positive. If regulatory mechanisms are out of whack, the weight gain or loss that ensues definitely can be not for the overall good of the body. If you argue that weight-gain is by nature protective with someone knowledgeable, I think you'd lose, and why risk that?

Rather, I like your approach, implied in saying it's not something "to mourn or beat yourself up for," that mostly weight gain (or weight loss) isn't that bad or that good, it just is.

I'll also say that if she's been the same weight her whole life, getting used to the new weight can be a shock--wouldn't growing or shrinking two inches (as an adult) be? But society makes it not only a shock but a Big Bad Thing. IOW, she's not being silly, but society is. I think you more meant that, and I hope it did or will come through to the listserv.

[snippy]

I don't think you were being an asshole, but even if you were, what's wrong with that? Plenty of fat-haters are assholes and they don't even bother to wonder whether it's okay.

Sometimes I'm an asshole. Sometimes it's not even on purpose.

[custardfairy.livejournal.com]

My "People aren't going to like me now" alarms are going off
You have those too?! :)

I'm glad you spoke up. Even if the other messages got to her and stuck, at least you said something that maybe someone else will read and internalize a little.

[ptor.livejournal.com]

Hey, personally, I wouldn't be quick to dismiss anything you say about fat acceptance.

When cassidyrose and I were worrying about our baby's lack of weight gain, it really drove an idea home: Fat is the body's wealth.

It's insurance for sickness or lean times.

cancer and weightloss

[pir-anha.livejournal.com]

i don't think you were being an asshole, but i also don't think you handled it well in your first response to her. she didn't wish she was sick, and you made it really easy to infer that you meant her when you referred to "people". i'm with the person on the listserv who said those were different things. yeah, they might be part of the same set of messages, but they're still considerably different.

if you had just written the second response from "if my body" on, minus the AIDS bit, it would have sent a fat acceptance message without stomping over her feelings.

somebody else wrote about control -- yes, that too.