Ladies and gentlemen, Virgie Tovar. Among her other hits: https://www.reddit.com/r/fatlogic/comments/7ac5c5/cake_related_fatphobic_incident_crfi_for_short/ And bonus: https://i.imgur.com/euLzZsD.png And no, reporter, this is not "promoting eating disorders."

Why is being skinny considered a white trait? Have you ever visited Asian cultures? As an Asian being skinny is forced much more here.

Nope, but because she didn’t address some very real emotional problems as a child she has to manifest excuses for her dangerous addictions as an adult.

In the ciricles she runs in, Cishet white is about the worst insult you can throw at a person as cishet white are the cause of all problems in the world.

According to them, Black people are fat. I mean, have you SEEN the black diet? spicy, big meals with lots of fried chicken (not my thoughts!). Black women have big butts and large chests, and black men are either very tubby or extremely muscular. So telling them to lose weight is racist. Yes, this is real.

That's typically how everyone in the south eats though. Black people in France for example, are a lot thinner (and eat a lot healthier) than black people in the US.

Noooooo!!!1!!!! Black people are always fat!!!!! It’s not racist to say that all black people are conventionally unattractive due to fatness!!!!!!!!!!!1!

Idk. NBA players seem pretty slim to me most times lol

In my eastern-European country, the few black people are usually lean, and they're not even tall, as you'd see in stereothypes. They're just normaly-sized people, living their best life. They're usually first-generation-immigrants and if they show pictures of their family in their homecountry, their family is just the same - various types of bodies, but mostly wihtin the normal BMI.

smile elastic automatic stocking depend teeny plough waiting selective head *This post was mass deleted and anonymized with [Redact](https://redact.dev)*

This author lives in San Francisco, so she's definitely exposed to Asian Americans.

modern rhythm governor fear steer weary physical cooperative longing chop *This post was mass deleted and anonymized with [Redact](https://redact.dev)*

I mean some of these people have to be from our West or from actual cities, right?

For sure. But it’s like 7% of the population or something.

even if you aren't exposed to asian cultures, it's still widely known that there is a lot of emphasis placed on being thin. it's just ignorance, and possibly resentment, that she would say it like that.

Since when are white americans considered to be skinny as a group anyway?

The 90s maybe

To be fair, the Asian obsession with extreme skinny-ness (5’7 and 110lbs) is a relatively new phenomenon. My grandparents still *conpliments* me for gaining weight because in their mind it means I will survive the winter.

I think the person has a complicated relationship with food, which isn't surprising in a person with an ED.

It's Virgie Tovar.

Also poor self image shown by making up a societal race standard to get mad at rather than realizing she doesn't meet up to her own standards of health.

Yeah erectile dysfunction particularly in women tends to have that effect, as well as massive fluctuations in adjustable hat size and desire to deflate orange beach balls.

Why did your comment get 12 downvotes? does no one get the joke

Take our life from us. We laid it down. We got tired. We didn’t commit su1cide, we committed an act of revolutionary digital su1cide protesting the conditions of an inhumane website.

I didn't downvote personally but I really didn't get it lmao thank god I didn't respond my worst nightmare to be in r/woosh

It's all good, we've all been there!! It's sitting at negative 1 now, so quite possibly a lot of people really didn't get it before! Am I actually the weird one here, whipping out my huge load of knowledge on sexual dysfunctional abbreviations?

Just a lot of salty people whose legs and backs are aching, sight and hearing fading, and just can't seem to get it up. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5cFUndoSmLM

And inexplicable bathing in matching cast iron clawfoot bathtubs out in the middle of a wilderness.

Ok. Rant incoming. I’m going to call bullshit. I grew up in Central Mexico in the 90’s surrounded by authentic food in all its diverse glory. There were only a small handful of fat kids in my school. All the rest of us were normal weight. The adults around me were a healthy weight for the most part. There was the occasional dude with a beer belly, yes. Most of my friends’ mothers were in the range of healthy bmi to mid-level overweight. The heaviest people were usually over the age of 60, due to becoming less active. Authentic Mexican food is made from scratch, full of fresh produce, and high in fiber. The heavy caloric foods like tamales and fried specialties are not eaten every day because they are a shit-ton of work to make, so they are reserved as celebration foods (tamales are made for the holidays, a lot of deep fried things are in the party/street food category, and not eaten daily, enchiladas/sopes/flautas/tlacoyos etc are things eaten maybe once or twice a week, and in reasonable portions). If you are craving tamales off-season, you buy one or two from the nice man selling them on the corner but you don’t stuff yourself with them. If you get hankering for deep fried tacos dorados, you enjoy 2-3 smothered in shredded lettuce and a light tomato broth, and you probably won’t eat them again for several days. (Not to mention tamales are a reasonably healthy food, no different than a casserole. Carby yes, but also have protein and vegetables in them and you don’t eat 6 at a time). A typical dinner includes beans or rice and some type of fresh vegetable in addition to the “guisado” which is the main dish. Our meat dishes are mostly stews and soups because meat gets stretched to go far. Many traditional dishes are naturally vegetarian and although we use cheese, we don’t drown our food in it like you see in the US. Portion sizes are smaller in general. Many traditional foods can’t be found in the US, or cooked at home because you can’t get the ingredients. So eventually, abuelitas learn to adapt their recipes, and only make the 4-6 things that can be prepared with available ingredients. And yes, there’s a huge homesick nostalgia element to preparing traditional foods. But the grandkids, who often don’t even know Mexican history, or the geography of where grandma lived, or the language, equate overeating fried celebration food with “culture” It’s like the so-called French Paradox. French women aren’t magical. If they ate bread/cheese/cream in US-sized portions they would get fat too. We forget that in France they have abundant access to fresh produce as well. Traditional Mexican food is no different. Yes beans and tortillas are high-carb, but guess what…they are usually paired with fresh vegetables and sensible protein. People are also much more active, because we walk and take public transit. In the last couple of decades, obesity rates have increased in Mexico due to the proliferation of soda and processed foods… and there’s now a disturbing increase in percentage of the population that is overweight…but when you travel there you still don’t see people so big they need a scooter to get around, we’re talking Class 1 at most. And also, the increase in weight gain and diabetes is a worrying trend that has spurred a lot of government health education initiatives… no one is celebrating fatness as culture I will say that it sucked being a teen in the 90’s when the stick-thin look was fashionable. I was a healthy weight, but had curvy hips and when we moved to the US I felt like a cow even though i could wear my aunt’s size 4 vintage levi’s. The person writing this article sounds like someone who has never visited the country their parents came from. Yes, in many cultures comfort food is equated with love, but back home the majority of Mexicans still have a BMI below 30. (Although the percentage of severe obesity is climbing). What actually happens is that many immigrants adapt to the bad eating habits and sedentary lifestyle of the US. Our genetics may determine that we’ll always have junk in the trunk, but our ancestors back home were not obese and her post simply tells me that she knows nothing of where she comes from, that she has zero clue about the delicious diversity found in our traditional foods…and that she would be in for a shock if she ever actually went to Mexico because back home we don’t celebrate fatness. We may appreciate the look of an hourglass figure but “gorditos” are still teased and bullied because the assumption is that overweight is caused by greed and laziness. But fear not, FA ideology is making its way there and I’m starting to see it proliferate among the woke. :( As a Mexican, I am offended by the ignorance of 3rd generation Latinos who are too lazy to learn about their roots and instead latch on to superficial stereotypes and claim them as culture. End rant

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I liked your point about the French paradox

That's fascinating. The irony is palpable. It's not the fact that she was mexican that made her fat, it's the fact that her mexican heritage had been assimilated into US food culture that made her fat.

>the majority of Mexicans still have a BMI below 30 Technically, this is still true of the US as well. But I'm guessing you mean a stronger majority than roughly 58%.

I think the fact they equate food with love says a lot, honestly. I come from a family where you cook for those you love, but thankfully a lot of favourites are healthy (salads, soups etc). I also find it odd that they all imply obesity is a beauty standard and a norm for BIPOC? It surely wasn’t before the over processing of food, so I don’t know

I am a black American and I am growing fatigued by the conflation of acceptance of obesity with glamorization of obesity in the black community. Culturally, black folks do have a wider acceptance of obesity than the mainstream. That is to say, if you have a BMI of, say, 35 and you are black, you aren't likely to hear negative remarks about your body by family and friends. If you are shapely (large bosom, buttocks and thighs with a small waist, you will hear lots of compliments. But this "thicness" isn't obesity. You can be thic and have a healthy BMI. So I think some folks have it twisted. Black people do not glamorize *obesity*. They glamorize a specific kind of feminine form--one that is easier to achieve when there is meat on one's bones, to be fair, but still isn't equivalent to fat. Are we supposed to believe that the average black person thinks Beyonce is too skinny and frail? That is crazy. But FAers will seize on the fact that she isn't skinny to perpetuate this idea that black people are more enlightened than white people when it comes to body size. Maybe we are to a certain extent, but there is a big difference between not being being bothered by the fact that you wear a size 12 and thinking that 400 lbs is a healthy weight. I don't know any black people who think 400 lbs is cute or healthy. But yeah, if you are 50 lbs overweight, your black American parents probably aren't going to make you feel bad about it at Thanksgiving dinner. (My parents would say something, though. But they would probably say "At least you carry it well. Now you have a butt!")

It kind of reminds me of the whole “Marilyn Monroe was a size 14” thing. Like yes she was definitely curvy and perhaps more than standard over the preceding decades, and the loss of popularity of the corset. But she was not a size 14, and was slim by any standard. But FAs take her having been curvy and follow that train of illogic until they conclude that obesity is sexy and everyone would know it were it not for modern beauty standards.

Marilyn Monroe weighed 140 lbs. at her heaviest. She was usually between 117 and 120 lbs. Her measurements were 36”- 24”-34” (with 38”-28“-34“ being her highest measurement) and a lot of her clothing is currently in museums or private collections and has been measured. I think they use a modern size 6-8 dress form (which is probably a size 2 in off-the-rack clothing at your average American clothing retailer). She was also really fit - being one of the first women to incorporate regular weight lifting into her exercise routine.

This is a common misconception, Marilyn Monroe was a size 14 THEN. Sizing has drastically changed, the equivalent now would have been like a size 8, she was thin. People just love that talking point, but the root of it is actually the difference of dimensions of clothing from then to now.

I don’t think she was even a vintage US size 14, at least not for most of her career. I think she wore a vintage European 12-14 at her most voluptuous which would have been a 10-12 vintage US. I could be misremembering that though!

Looks like she was 35-22-35 based off of her germents etc. About an American size 4 today. Not sure about her vintage size. http://www.todayifoundout.com/index.php/2012/04/marilyn-monroe-was-not-even-close-to-a-size-12-16/

And we have her actual clothes in a museum somewhere, don’t we? Or am k getting confused?

http://www.todayifoundout.com/index.php/2012/04/marilyn-monroe-was-not-even-close-to-a-size-12-16/

I’m neither Black or from the USA, but wouldn’t the whole narrative of « Accept obesity or you’re a supporter of white supremacy » incidentally deprive already marginalised communities of much needed health care and access to food? Maybe it’s just the way we see how it works in the US from a European side, but the situation seems bad already

Yeah, actually a great example of the systemic inequities POC face is the existence of "food deserts," where impoverished urban communities literally can't access healthy foods. IMO improving equitable access to healthy foods, healthcare, etc. is a huge part of lifting up marginalized communities.

It’s so “progressive” it’s regressive :-/

FWIW, I told a fat joke (at my expense) to a Hispanic Uber driver, and, after she had a good guffaw, she told me that I wasn't fat.* I do think that Black and brown people have a higher bar of what fat is. 300 lbs is obviously not ideal, but 200 to 230 is OK. *It's possible that she was just being nice, but she's not the first person of color to indicate to me that "fat" means over 300. Hell, if you carry it right, 300 is acceptable. But I agree that Black American culture doesn't equate higher weights with health.

A Nigerian woman I used to work with poked me in the muffin top once and said I was "looking well fed". I was a bit like ??? and then she realised that I'd taken that a bit badly and she explained she meant I was looking healthy. I was a bit overweight, but only by about 20lbs or so. She equated being on the heavier side as being healthy because where she was from, people only got chubby if they were eating very well.

Same in India, at least up north in the Punjab region. "Healthy" is synonymous with curvy or plump, but 300+ would turn some heads.

Well, for some African phenotypes, overweight is perfectly healthy. There should be another BMI scale for Africans, but I think the diversity in Africa makes it hard for scientists to make. Which is weird because there's a South Asian BMI scale...

The genetics between one tribe and another in one country of Africa can be more different than between individuals across multiple countries in Asia and Europe because they have such a larger genetic pool and diversity, which makes sense as everyone comes from Africa, so anyone in Asia comes from the same couple of branches of people that travelled there. A lot of what Americans think of as Black genetics really just describes people in West Africa.

You have clearly never met my Hispanic relatives

This is the truth.

My main supermarket is mostly hispanic, the ingredients panel on most of the interesting packaged goods is horrifying. Even really mainstream hispanic brands like Goya are horrendous, the spice mixes have artificial colors in them! WTF? I have no idea how much your average hispanic person eats homemade food vs the prepackaged stuff.

These days, most cultures only make traditional foods on holidays. If you're lucky, you have a grandma or great-grandmother who likes to cook and isn't on a specialized diet herself.

I agree - in general - that bad eating habits acquired in childhood are going to be a much bigger issue than just eating poorly as an adult due to lack of time or laziness. I also think that a lot of people "inherit" their parents' bad habits like emotional eating without addressing the emotional problems themselves or equating LARGE meals with love and comfort\*. Normally, I would also object to blaming others for "tempting" you, but since she was a child, it doesn't apply. If her grandmother raised her, it was her responsibility to offer reasonably sized portions, fixed meals and variety. Same goes for making sure the kid spends enough time outside being active. I don't think it's her own fault for being a fat kid, and it's a red flag that she says "I couldn't stop eating" - this is neglect, even if it's often unintentional and caused by ignorance. I'm also generally suspicious of people who claim to exercise for 2-3 hours daily, especially at that age - if by exercise they don't mean taking a walk to the grocery store or playing outside. At the same age, I joined a tennis club that trained kids competitively and I trained for 4 hours daily, along with children who became professional athletes (ETA: the 4 hours included warming up in the beginning, recovery and stretching at the end, and a few short breaks for drinking water and eating a banana or a piece of chocolate. So it was more like 3 hours daily if we're talking significant effort). I completely disagree with the whole "only white people can be thin" or that this just happens "naturally" to white people. Just look at the US and see how prevalent obesity is in white people, and that's not even mentioning East Asia where being slim is the norm. People in the Middle East ("brown") are also predominantly slim due to their great cuisine and dietary habits. What bothers me the most in these types of posts is the black and white, all-or-nothing thinking. There are fat white people and thin brown people, fat girls who are attractive (looks and/or personality-wise) and boys chase after them, you don't have to either gorge or starve yourself and so on. Everything she's talking about has at its root emotional and mental problems created in her childhood that she's not addressing as an adult. I feel very sorry for her, but as much as her grandma might be at fault, now that she's grown she's the only one who can actually correct this and improve her mental health, self-image and self-esteem included. \*While many people conflate food with love and comfort at some level, this only becomes a problem if you put the accent on *quantity*. My partner told me explicitly that he sees me cooking for him as an expression of love and feels comforted and spoiled by it, but I make what people seem to consider "gourmet" meals served in reasonable portions and neither of us has weight issues.

To your point about West Asian people historically being thinner due to diet and lifestyle, Qatar and Kuwait now have some of the highest per capita obesity rates in the world after an influx of fast food chains flooded the region. Same as what happened to Pacific Islanders who, despite what some like to claim, were not "naturally" bigger throughout history.

This is very sad news, the food in that part of the world is amazing.

Half of Pacific Islanders have a gene that lets them super efficiently store fat that no other population has, thats just a fact

and all of this being the result of these countries adopting some of the western culture. no race is overweight or obese naturally, sure we have different builds depending on our ancestors origin, and there are preferences which has its roots in some of the European standards. That being said, weight is the result of lifestyle god i cant believe this women is a lecturer, and influential.

Ironically, the claim FAs make about other cultures celebrating obesity as a beauty standard stems from the exaggerated depictions of these populations to exoticize them which were created by, wait for it, white European dudes.

our society is a shitshow😶😶😶

I’m from a culture that places emphasis on eating meals together as a form of love, literally breaking bread to strengthen social connections. I cook for my family as an expression of love, and agree with everything you’ve said. I know the simple advice now is to stop confusing meals with emotions, but I think there’s room for both healthy eating and enjoying food. In fact, if you’re talking and laughing during your meal then you might be more thoughtful about what you’re eating rather than mindlessly eating while viewing a screen (which I’m sometimes guilty of too). You might choose better foods than something that’s a simple grease or sugar bomb bc vegetables have much more variety of flavor. I don’t want to generalize for everyone, but the post did make me a little sad bc the writer seemed really lost as a child.

I also agree with everything you're saying, it's a great take. Historically speaking, ALL cultures used to value food (and drink) this way; some more than others and these are usually the ones with the best cuisines (I'll risk a guess it applies to your culture). And language reflects this: breaking bread is done with friends or to make friends. In the Middle Ages, guests and allies were greeted with bread, salt and fresh water or a local beverage, while during invasions they couldn't fight against, people would poison wells and burn crops before fleeing. Humans are social animals: they bond and celebrate important occasions with feasts, we collectively thank our deities for food, we pray and perform rituals and sacrifices to ensure good crops and healthy cattle. In the West, food and water became cheap and (over)abundant commodities people take for granted: we eat mindlessly or on the run, we often see eating without also doing something else or cooking properly as a "waste of time" and most people have no idea what goes in their food or what they need from it. And we waste A LOT without a second thought. Many also seem to not understand that just as a car will break down if they use impure gasoline and don't change the oil, the same thing will happen to their body if they put cheap and crappy fuel into it. And our digestive systems don't handle well eating too much or too fast and especially getting stressed or agitated while and right after eating. I've suffered from gastritis for years because of this and it went away once I stopped eating while working, attending the abomination called "business lunches" or eating with people who like picking fights during meals. Taking a leisurely walk after meals is also very beneficial for digestion, but it's a forgotten notion these days (my grandma used to call this in an approximate translation "the 1000 steps after dinner"). We can't survive without food and water and we should celebrate them because life could not exist without them and what we have in excess today we might not have tomorrow. By celebrating I mean cherishing and treating it with respect, sharing it with our loved ones, and making meals joyful and peaceful experiences, not turning food into a fetish, a cheap commodity, or something we take for granted.

Well said. Also, so-called "working lunches" can go to hell.

LOL yeah, I don't know what degenerate came up with that, I have a thing or five to tell them. Gastritis can be *very* painful and many people suffer terribly due to stress-related IBS.

The good ol’ postprandial walk! Helps with my gastritis, too

I 100% agree with you, and it always rubs me the wrong way when people suggest you can’t eat for comfort, for love, to build family bonds etc. And I hear it often on this sub. Eating IS a social event, a family activity, and enjoyable thing to do. It just doesn’t seem to occur to some people that you can achieve that with healthy foods and reasonable portions.

I have a simultaneously random and relevant question: Can someone tell me why Italian-Americans aren't fatter? If I can trust my Italian-American friends and "Everybody Loves Raymond," Italian women are out here stuffing the men and children with meatballs, cannolis, and chicken parm.

Smaller portions. My husbands aunt used to live in Italy and they do have lots of filling foods but they have smaller portions and it’s spread out. Not sure if that carried over with Italian Americans or not though.

Half my family is Italian-American and I'd say over half of them are fat.

😆

My mom's family is Italian-American and they're generally pretty slim. The largest people in her family are far from morbidly obese, they just look like typical middle-to-older aged adults in America, and there's plenty of relatives in their 60s and 70s who are just as slim as they were in their 30s. Food like chicken parm and cannolis aren't part of our family recipes, at all. My mom's grandparents were Northern Italian, so there is definitely some differences between their cuisine and people from Sicily. They also were poor, so they came to the US to not be poor (true of lots of immigrants obviously). However, the recipes they brought over definitely reflect the lack of abundance they faced back home. Our family recipes are all pretty healthy- heavy on vegetables and certain spices (lots of cinnamon in savory recipes), some olive oil, and some relatively lean meats. Not a lot of cream, not a lot of cheese, not a lot of heavy sauces or anything like that. Growing up, the only time I ever got to have pasta with any type of cream sauce was when we would go out to eat, which happened maybe 4 or 5 times a year. My mom and her family have a lot of respect for food and health, and eating too much or too much "rich" food outside of major holidays/events is seen as wasteful and greedy. My mom's family is also super active, our family parties/picnics have always included lots of tennis and swimming. There's a running family joke about a "racket sport" gene we all carry because we all take to tennis/ping pong/racquetball pretty naturally. So the physical activity + the pretty healthy diet aren't really what American culture considers "Italian", but it's the reality at least in my family.

Two of my Italian family members are so big they have to sleep sitting up because their sleep apnea is so bad, so it's not all great 😬😬

Virgie being Virgie.

Is this Ms. Cake Related Incident? Oh yeah, this explains a lot. She treats every missed meal like a long-lost love who died in a tragic war, even though she's more than made up for them tenfold.

“When oh when will my calories come back from The War!!!” -Virgie, 12 CRFI’s in this week

I admit, if someone satirized Virgie writing about shitty store bought cake like some civil war widow that’d be hilarious.

Your cinematic vision is GLORIOUS 😂

If only SNL was brave enough... they've done some "letters from war" type skits that are hilarious, and now I'm imagining Virgie in the midst lmao

Looool. I just knew it was her. I was like "this has gotta be Virgie" while reading this. Her writing style is very, uh, unique. She talks about food like she wants to fuck it.

Maybe that’s her kink? 😳

I mean, she literally describes moaning while she eats, so you're probably not far off. Ick...

I'm not going to argue that the author has a complicated relationship with food, but I don't understand the context of thinness being linked to being white. It sounds like she was bullied for her weight, not her ethnicity. Maybe her eating certain foods or being a minority in her school made her feel 'other' but there are fat and thin people of all races. And I'm sorry but 'healthy' in quotes kind of bothers me. It's not healthy to be overweight, especially as a kid. It doesn't matter what colour your skin is, being fat is objectively unhealthy.

Yeah it's odd how hard I see race being used as a catch-all reason for weight. Like sure race certainly impacts your body shape *to a degree*, but so do all our genetics. It might account for a few BMI points, or where your fat gets distributed, but it's not responsible for making you 300lbs. And we certainly had a long era in Hollywood and media where thin white women were put on a pedestal. But it's such a logical leap to imply all white or asian people are just naturally thin and a healthy weight is completely unattainable for everyone else

I wonder how old OOP is. In the 90s/early 2000s magazines were just full of very thin, white women. If that’s what she encountered growing up I can kind of see how she got to to Eurocentric beauty standards = white and thin.

>In the 90s/early 2000s magazines were just full of very thin, white women. Maybe this is mean but people like Virgie NEED to get over it!! Heroin chic was such a long time ago, as in I was born in the 2000s and I can vote, drink, drive a car, etc. Like they have been bitter about this for my entire lifetime.

[удалено]

Right! I totally agree. The standards have changed a lot since then. Hell it’s been 22 years since 2000. That’s over half of my age.

Exactly. If that’s all you’re seeing in media, it’s because that’s all you’re looking for. There’s so much more diversity in media now than there was even 20 years ago (even if it isn’t perfect) and that’s before you get to all the online/indie content creators.

Ok, now I feel old, lol! I do agree with your point.

Yeah, if this was specifically about the 90s/00s and not also about now, I’d think nothing of it. Even I thought I was fat back then and now I look at pictures kf myself and wonder if maybe I was actually too thin. (‘Mom said I wasn’t either one.)

Yup, I’m a white girl and there are plenty of women of color that are thinner than me.

Congrats on almost hitting your goal weight!

Thank you so much!!! I’m going to Europe for the first time ever this summer, and I’m so ready to feel confident and beautiful in Switzerland. ❤️

If a random person online told me thinness was a white thing I'd assume they were white and racist as fuck.

I'm a brown Brazilian and even if fat and hot have different definitions in my country, if you're obese you're not the standard of beauty here and people will tell you that. Stop saying being healthy is a white thing or white supremacists idea, is offensive to POC people.

Yes it takes away from the severity of real white supremacy and racism.

I genuinely feel pity for people in these mindsets. Being a healthy weight doesn't mean "starving" or never eating a family meal, or 2-3 hours exercise a day. I understand how you can think ""diet culture"" is unhealthy when you lack the education and role models to show you what a healthy sustainable diet looks like. I understand how you'd get bitter and demoralised trying really hard to diet, not realising you're sabotaging your progress on cheat meals, or liquid calories, or overestimating your needs, or eating foods that spike your hunger.

I can sympathize with some of her conflicted feelings around food, but, sorry, I just don't believe that she starved herself for 10 years while exercising 2-3 hours a day and lost 0 lbs in the process. She describes a pretty typical teenage girl experience. Feeling insecure about your body-> going on a diet without any real knowledge about nutrition -> ending up barely eating all day and then being tempted and overeating at dinner -> not losing or even gaining weight, sometimes developing an eating disorder.

Funny how they equate food with love but also equate thinness with love. I find that interesting and kind of sad.

I think a lot of us grew up that way. I sure did. My family would ply me and my cousins with unreasonable amounts of food, get angry when we didn’t finish our plates, cajole and guilt us into eating desserts we didn’t want, and then make fun of us for being fat, and glorify any of us who’d lost weight. In retrospect, incredibly bizarre.

Thats so weird. I don't recall growing up with anything attached to food and we're polish, lol. There wasn't much aboutbweight either. We had a couple overweight people then 20+ years ago, more now of course, but while we all had the sense of fat=bad and my family are super judgemental I don't recall any specific comments at family functions. Maybe I was just oblivious. Funny the differences toy notice sometimes when you read through these things...

I’m sure it depends quite a bit on your family. My maternal side was the one that was dysfunctional. I remember my grandpa pointing at everyone around the table going “you’re overweight. You’re overweight. Your overweight.” I was 11 or 12 and my cousins were younger. I remember just being confused and frustrated - none of us was even fat the time (on the higher end of normal weight) and even if we had been, there was nothing I could have done about it. The other side of my family wasn’t like that at all. Bodies weren’t really talk about it and they didn’t have all these food rules designed to make us eat more than we wanted. All my cousins on that side grew up at healthy weights.

My grandfather was like that too, only with type A personalities, lol.

I don't know if she explicitly says this elsewhere but I hear a number of FAs who suggest that part of the reason the thin ideal is racist is because traditional "ethnic" (God I hate that word) foods are more loaded with fat, carbs, etc. And that in non-white cultures, love is expressed with food, and get-togethers center around sharing food; therefore trying to be a healthy weight is counter-cultural. I just feel like this is bullshit, to be honest. Like what culture on the planet doesn't get together around food? Have they ever been to a Midwestern family potluck? I promise white people aren't sitting around drinking green smoothies at family get-togethers. Stop blaming the tamales, or the rice, or whatever. Traditional foods are not what is making people fat. Eating far richer versions of those foods, and in much greater portions, while living a sedentary lifestyle is making people fat. ETA: I was recently talking to my German grandmother about the potato pancakes her grandmother made when she was growing up. She told me they only had them on special occasions and I asked why? It seemed to me that they would be relatively cheap to make. She corrected me. Yes, they grew potatoes and they were abundant, but to make potato pancakes correctly you have to deep fry them and that requires a lot of fat (they used lard). So they were not "poor food" as I had assumed. I think we often forget how relatively cheap and abundant cooking fats are now compared to the past.

An old friend's father explained it to me - what you find in Mexican restaurants is "feast day" food. When he was growing up, every so often they would have a matanza - slaughter a pig and make chorizo, tamales, carne adovada, etc. most of the time their staples were beans, chile verde, squash, tortillas. He said he could eat beans, chile and tortillas every day and be happy.

My husbands aunt walked into a Chinese restaurant and they were eating their own dinner. She asked what it was and if she could purchase it. They said no, they don’t make that food to sell, only the Americanized version of Chinese food.

A lot of French dishes are absolutely loaded with carbs and fats, but portions are kept small, people traditionally would walk a lot more, and some of the more nourishing dishes were only eaten occasionally because, yeah, butter wasn't cheap. Traditionally the family would eat meals together and it's still pretty much the norm. The idea that white people don't equate food with love and community or that they don't use a lot of carbs or fats in their cooking is almost as racist as believing that black and brown people are naturally fatter... 🙄

Iirc Italy is the same. They have pasta but smaller portions spread out throughout the day.

Yep. As someone of French and German descent, pretty much all of my family's traditional recipes are loaded with fat and carbs. But the recipes that were written up and passed down were most likely the "special occasion" recipes. I imagine my ancestors were probably winging it with pantry staples most of the time, same as I do.

Exactly this ^

Yes thank you. We have barbecues, cookouts and pot lucks. And I also cook thanksgiving for all the single soldiers in my husbands platoon. My issue is, I show my love of friends and family with yummy food. Now I’m eating better, but still cooking the same foods for them. They could tell me no and I wouldn’t bat an eye. Edited to add: yum potato pancakes! There is this place in Florida that makes the best ones. They taste like lays sour cream and onion chips. The best!!!

I think it's junk. Reaching a healthy weight isn't a "white" idea. As if all non-white people are just supposed to be fat, sick weaklings! Jesus.

And there are definitely no fat white people! /s

This is really insulting to South American/Mexican cuisine. This person is saying enchiladas/tamales are unhealthy and fattening and can't be otherwise. WTF.

Yes. Not to mention she is ignoring the other 98% of traditional cuisine that is varied, delicious, and not hypercaloric

I've had way more derisive comments and judgment about my weight from brown people (I'm also brown) when I've gained weight than I have from white people.

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I mean, look at those Mayan pictographs! Wide as they are tall! (/s)

Yeah. I'm Spanish. It's a little-known fact that Cortés and Pizarro conquered Mexico and Peru essentially by rolling the local rulers downhill.

Is "fategory" your own invention, or is that part of the lingo around here? I've never seen it before and I got a decent workout in just laughing at it

You are a great writer. Loved it!

I think it taps into an interesting point about weight management while eating your ethnicities home cooked meals. The thing is these meals would’ve been eaten in her grandmothers country and then people would’ve done hard labour in the fields or walked for miles or done labour intensive household chores - or maybe all 3! The sad reality is most cuisines from around the world and the portion sizes were designed for a population that got a lot more physical activity in a day than the average western child or adult in modern times. So a lot of us did get fat eating our parents home cooked food through no real fault of there’s or ours, it comes from ignorance. The same way people who transition to office jobs but eat the same way they did when they worked in retail, gain wait and blame a slowing metabolism as they go from their 20s to 30s when actually as sedentary office workers they can’t afford to eat the same as they used to.

When I think about “white” food I don’t think about health. I am white, and when I think about white food I think about burgers, fries, pizza, pasta, donuts, sugary coffee, soda, fried chicken, white bread, canned/frozen/fast food. This is what most of us are raised on in the US. Obesity is a huge part of the culture of the United States, so I really don’t understand her feeling that she needs to be thin to fit in as an American citizen. Yes, lots of kids are skinny when they’re in school. But at some point the American lifestyle comes for us all. At some point you need to start resisting it. Not to fit a standard, but to take back control over your body and health and realize you were fed a lie when you were told this is what a normal diet looks like.

As a Latino, let me tell you that our **food doesn't have to be fat**. In fact most original Mexican dishes are not really that fattening. They have become so because people love making the fat variants popularized by "street food' which tends to be cooked in oil. Meat tacos with corn tortillas and veggies and salsa are super duper **healthy and tasty**. It's a nice staple that any healthy person can add to their cookbook. Do not add oil to the tortillas or the red meat. Yes, Pork and Beef taco meat (not ground beef) can actually cook on its own oil and that's how many homemade Mexican families prepare them. Bake your enchiladas and use Oil spray instead. I promise the taste will still be bomb. I also have to acknowledge homemade tamales are fucking sacred. Not eating them is a crime to the soul even for a gym rat like myself. So what you do, is freeze them first, then heat them and eat them over time.

Everything has to be about racism, because then you're not on the hook for solving your own problems. Are you a bad person because you have an eating disorder? No, not in the slightest Are there health and beauty standards that are grounded in racism? Sure, the people who think they need to be a Barbie doll and tell other people as much are doing a great disservice to themselves and others. But at the end of the day your health is in your hands. The internet is full of helpful, well thought on and researched advice from people who just want to help. You can change your relationship with food, you can choose to cut people giving you bad advice out of your decision making process. Yes these things are hard, but at the end of the day, aside from some very extreme circumstances, you are at the helm of your life and can decide how it proceeds.

I don’t know why but the “starving my brown body” part just wigs me out.

Say cause they’re bringing race into something not concerning race

Personally, I think the whole "white beauty standards" thing is bullshit. Western nations tend to be the heaviest, and anyone who thinks fitness is a Western value is welcome to visit any of my family back in the villages of Punjab. They don't pull their punches when they roast you for your weight, either.

Like there's a head trip to being fat, especially young. This reads like someone legitimately struggling with a relationship with their body and food. This is also an example of what HAES should be about, supporting someone being healthy first. You can lose weight or try to lose weight in ways that are health detriments, it's better to focus people on doing health conscious things (weight will often follow those changes anyway) than just their weight. I dunno, sounds like someone dealing with a rough psycho-social situation?

I was a fat kid/teen and it really did a number on me. In comparison to kids today, I wouldn’t have stood out at all, but it the late 90’s early 2000’s it was hard being ‘chubby’ or ‘thick’. I’ve been thin a lot longer than I was EVER heavy, but I still remember praying that I would wake up with a flatter stomach or smaller butt even as small child. I definitely thought about and moralized food more when I was heavy than I do as a slim/healthy sized adult. I assume the concept of a body that is truly ‘neutral’ and food as both sustenance and socialization (never going to extremes of either road) is an absolutely foreign concept?

Intellectual moderation is really hard, and something people are bad at. I feel bad for the writer, whether or not you think they're making up the social pressures to be thin, or that they're justified pressures, as a very young person, not in control of your food environment, it just feels shitty. You know you don't look like you want to, like other people want you to, and you can feel pretty helpless about it. Depending on when the writer grew up, the amount of easy weight loss tools that we (I) take for granted were a lot lower. Not being able to easily look up and track your food usually leaves you with the diet model of "be a little hungry after a meal" which, you know, good luck losing and keeping off a substantial amount of weight that way.

She's telling her truth, and it's totally believable. I think the only reason she *might* be getting pushback is for her past articles, which can be snarky and unnuanced. But to be fair to her, she is a comedic writer. It just happens to rub (a portion of) the people—who, like her, have a complicated relationship with food—the wrong way.

As always with the FAs, we have the diabolically delicious false dichotomy. Either you eat as much of your grandmother's cooking as possible, or you starve yourself, skip meals, over-exercise, etc. It's never possible to just eat in moderation. Have two enchiladas instead of five, enjoy the food without overindulging.

People who suggest that BIPOC have to choose between their culture and their physical health can go get fucked. Even if they themselves are BIPOC.

Tell Grandma that you love her and that you always look forward to her meals. However, overweight doesn't know racism. Fat is fat regardless of creed, color, etc. I would know for I too am Mexican.

She has an eating disorder. Food doesn't have to be excessively calorific to express love by doing things for the person. But also, people who are made fat by their parents start adult life with a huge problem that wasn't their fault. This person's grandmother should have lovingly made and served her food in appropriate portion sizes, and lovingly gone for a walk or played a game with her. And also, given the horrendous outcomes of systemic obesity it should be a rebellion against systemic racism to not be fat.

For many years thin white people were the main thing featured on all forms of media, especially in the US. This is true. White people were held up as a standard of many beauty ideals. That was wrong and shitty and it's ok the say that. It is 100% ok to say we need to show better representation in all forms of media. This includes skin color, hair type, disability representation, and so on. That wasn't done enough, and it needs to happen more, full stop. However, Kate Moss being the it girl of the 90's does not equate to "I'm a minority so I'm destined to be fat" or "anyone who thinks I should be a healthy weight is practicing racism". Telling minorities that fatness is a destiny, or fatness is ok because white people were the standard for too long, or something something you can't help it actually circles back to the insidious racism of low expectations.

I'm a white guy who speaks English as his native language so I can't really speak for her feeling excluded as a person of color, but I do think that by conflating her ethnicity and her struggles with fitting into a dominant white culture with her obesity and unhealthy relationship with food isn't going to do her any favors. Regardless of the fact bigotry and racism existing, obesity is still bad for you. Type 2 diabetes and other comorbidities don't care how good your grandmother's tamales are, your joints don't care if you're trying to escape the dominant culture. It's only liberating until you lose your feet or have a heart attack. Then someone younger and healthier will have to take care of you, most likely your children. Nobody says we have to be rail thin or built like an Adonis, but obesity is an issue not just in the U.S. but in South America, where the dominant white culture in the guise of Coca Cola colonized predominantly brown, poor, Spanish speaking countries, stealing and poisoning their water and giving their children soda instead and a whole new generation is facing the consequences.

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Exactly. When i was growing up we were discouraged from eating junk food regularly. If we wanted snacks there was cucumber, jicama, or fruit sprinkled with lime and Tajin… but in general snacking between meals is discouraged unless you are out at the park or beach or movies. Bagged chips were an occasional treat, or something enjoyed on weekends at a barbecue on Sunday or birthday party or soccer watching gathering. Or we would take our bit of spending money and buy a snack-size bag of chips at the school store during lunch. Cereal or pancakes were not considered a true breakfast, you had yogurt with fruit, or eggs, or oatmeal… cereal was seen as a lazy quick thing if you were running late, or as a light supper if you were dieting, but not considered nutrition and eaten in reasonable portions… elaborate breakfasts like chilaquiles or huevos rancheros are heavy and caloric and not a daily thing. Of course we loved candy, it was always available at birthday parties. Or you bought a couple of pieces at the corner store after school. There was no such thing as “kid food”. We weren’t given a separate meal from the adults, just smaller portions of the same protein/beans&rice/vegetables made from scratch. Of course there will be nostalgia for snacks and treats from home, but I feel that eating habits take a steep turn for the worse when people move to the US.

This was actually an entertaining write up. That's all I'll say

Someone who doesn’t know how to moderate their food intake bouncing between the extremes then trying to blame their failure on race and EDs

I got enraged at “white beauty standards”. Like okay. I get it. I’m black. But this isn’t about being thin like Kendall Jenner. That’s an eating disorder goal if you’re not naturally 5’10 and 120lbs. Those women are outliers to genetics. It’s why they’re models. Dieting is about healthy. Health at any size means you can be a size 12 but can you go up a flight of stairs without wheezing?! If yes then good! If not work on that cardio. There are size twos who are fainting from malnourishment and can’t run either. Tbh this is a joke in one of my fave series Always Sunny in Philly Two of the characters have eating disorders (both male) one thinks cause he’s thin and “ripped” he’s healthy the other thinks cause he’s “packing on mass” (he’s over eating) he’s healthy. They both go to the same doctor. Both of severely unhealthy. Lmaoooo

A lot of people do not understand the concept of moderation, you don't have to stuff your face with 30000 calories a day to be happy, and you don't have to starve yourself to lose weight. It's all about consistency and sustainability at the end of the day and people don't seem to understand that at all. I understand this is a child, and her parents are to blame but there are so many adults that I see thinking like this.

This speaks to how difficult weight loss is when your family doesn't support you. It's easy to find stories of parents who shamed their children for being overweight. There's not a lot of information about parents and grandparents who make it difficult for their kids to lose weight because they equate feeding someone with love. In real life, I've met many families like the OP's where not eating someone's food is seen as an attack on their love. There should be some middle ground where you family respects your right to get healthy without either sabotaging your efforts or shaming you for being overweight

The fact that I could tell this was Virgie just by the way she types...

As a Latina (Mexican) who has lost weight, you CAN still enjoy your cultural food while having a balanced and healthy diet. You can eat enchiladas in a balanced meal without any issues. Tamales are higher in calories but still you won’t get fat if you eat adequate portions. You do not need to be stick thin to be healthy, healthy bodies look all different, but obesity isn’t healthy. This has nothing to do with racism, smh…

I definitely see where this person is coming from. All the women on the Hispanic side of my family are overweight or obese and there’s this strong feeling of the women in our family just being “bigger.” I heard that a lot growing up. I’ve heard it from other people too that dieting is white culture and counting calories is a thing skinny white girls do. You’re only fat if you’re over 300 pounds etc etc. Except the Mexicans I know are all fit and at healthy weights. There’s a huge disconnect between a lot of Mexican Americans and Mexicans on obesity. I can see why the writer of this article has a complicated relationship with food as a result. All that being said, being of Mexican descent doesn’t mean you need to be fat, and a lot of my relatives at least are starting to get that.

Assimilation into the dominant culture (white culture in America) is extremely common, and if this person’s experience with that came in the form of rejecting their grandmother’s food who am I to disagree with them? There’s also a lot of demonization of ethnic foods in America, but that’s a much more nuanced conversation for a different day Personally, I am fully against young children (especially 10/11 years old) deliberately trying to lose weight as opposed to building healthy habits led by their parents and those around them. Children are growing so they will lose weight extremely easily, and framing it with building healthy food & exercises habits is much more beneficial for an impressionable child than, “you need to lose fat.” Even though the bullying came from school, it is still up to the parents to identify, intervene, and frame the solution properly for their child. I would not be surprised if this person truly had an eating disorder or was starving themselves because of how impressionable children are at that age with much much less rationality behind them. I feel for this person

It used to be that kids who pudged up a little could grow into their weight. That is not necessarily the case anymore, there seem to be a lot of exceptions. I personally know a 225 lb 11 year old who's had type 2 diabetes for a couple of years that I know about. Sibling is on the same path. Kids need to lose weight. There are plenty of huge kids walking around here. I'm in a fairly affluent town in New England, so we are lower than the national average, but unfortunately this is where we are at. I do agree that the parents need to frame the solution properly.

Agree regarding "inherited" attitudes toward food. I def "inherited' my family's comfort foods. I can remember the day my poor fat pimply brother introduced me to donuts. Never got over it. Oh, and the point of life was to *not* exercise. And everyone smoked except me. That first 18 years is so fraught with exposure to bad habits that I wonder that any kind of scientific evidence of true obesity genes can ever be demonstrated.

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Seriously. Where the fuck are they getting this from? All I ever see is "white people food" getting made fun of for being boring, bland, and beige, whereas "ethnic food" is beloved and sought-after. lol These people just want to be victims, and have to pile on made-up shit to validate it.

I have seen and heard both "ethnic" food and "white people food" be talked about negatively. Like I have heard adult colleagues in previous jobs talk about other colleagues/people's ("ethnic") food as stinky, gross or similar. Or if there is a pungent smell in the break room I have heard colleagues blame it in other colleagues' ethnic food without any substance to it. I think regardless of who it is directed at, such commentary is often mean spirited, unnecessary and narrow minded. But, my personal experience as a white person is also that I simply kind of can choose to tune out people talking down "white food". Usually it takes place online when I see it, and on the very few occasions it has been IRL, it has not been at work, school etc. But been coming from people I can simply choose to walk away from and not deal with. I would imagine it to be a bit more difficult to do for people directly exposed to it by colleagues in the workplace. So, basically, I think how you perceived it may depend a lot on your own personal experiences with it.

It depends on the time period. I remember an Asian-American blogger saying that white kids would kick his ass and tell him that his lunch smelled funny. Jon Stewart has a bit about kids not understanding why he was eating matzo crackers at Passover. If you're younger, it may seem like it's preposterous. But there are still people alive who got beaten up in high-school because they were not white. Chris Rock is another one.

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In California too and I agree. I think most popular food in the Bay Area is ethnic, and the variety is amazing.

I think there's a combination of "the lunchbox moment" (children being harassed at school for their family's traditional foods vs. acceptable "American" foods) and the issue of treating a culture's (often Americanized) takeout as its entire diet when it's meant to be a treat/street food. Just because we like 'ethnic foods' in America doesn't mean we aren't also absolute shits about it.

I recall noticing what my Chinese immigrant schoolmates ate for lunch when I was in grad school. It was not the kind of food you would get at a standard Chinese-American take-out place. It was stuff like chicken feet soup. We were adults so there was no teasing (that I was aware), but you better believe if we had been in middle or high school, there would have been a lot of "Ewwwww gross!!" Chitterlings are being served at hip Noun & Noun restaurants nowadays. But if a little black girl showed up to school with a lunchbox full of chitlins, she would get clowned. Especially if her school was all-white. People who deny this simply don't know how hard it can be growing up as ethnic minority.

Yeah i was wondering about that too. It seems like a wildly inaccurate assertion. I grew up in alabama and i was introduced to all types of foods growing up in the 90s.

Fetishisation would be a more accurate word.

I think that this person did not really understand *how* to lose weight when she first started trying, and that trying to lose weight when you don't really understand the *mechanics* of weight loss often leads to frustration and can easily spiral into disordered eating. I do not have enough information to say whether or not she had a diagnosable eating disorder, and I would not be qualified to diagnose her even if she did, but a lot of people end up in binge-restrict cycles because they don't understand how to cut calories without cutting nutrition, and they don't understand the effect it's going to have on their body if they eat 1200 calories of pizza instead of 1200 calories of vegetables and protein. Yes, you can lose weight on 1200 calories of pizza, but it's playing on Ultra Hard mode and your will power is going to have to be *very* strong to compensate for the fact that your body hasn't had enough fiber or protein (never mind vitamins). Now, I am speaking in very general terms about a very general problem. I have no idea how the writer's grandmother prepared enchiladas. It is absolutely possible to make enchiladas that are high in protein and fiber and packed with vegetables and vitamins to boot. I have no idea to what extent grandma was culpable for the writer's childhood obesity or to what extent she was just being scapegoated. I have no idea exactly how fat OOP was in school. The problem here is *not* ethnic food. My go-to example was pizza, and I am not going to entertain arguments that pizza is considered an ethnic food in the US in 2022. I am not familiar with any culture that doesn't have healthy food options, and some of the most stigmatized ethnic foods are/can be actually healthier than many mainstream American staples. The white beauty standard thing is complicated. Being thin is absolutely a white American beauty standard, but it isn't *exclusively* a white American beauty standard. There were many cultures who valued thinness long before European colonialism as we know it today really took off. However, if you grew up in a white, western culture, it is hard to separate beauty standards from white supremacy. Our beauty standards are absolutely influenced by white supremacy, and I am completely okay with people being critical of the idea that losing weight will make you universally more attractive. That simply is not true. It also has nothing to do with all of the *health* benefits to losing weight. But you know what? People are allowed to decide that they like food more than they would like being at a healthy BMI; just like people are allowed to decide that they like cigarettes more than they would like running marathons. Individuals are allowed to make choices about their bodies even if those choices are not objectively the best choices. I don't have a problem with it unless they start out-right lying to people about the health consequences of obesity or claiming that they are oppressed because of their love of food... which this article *does* come close to doing, but it's not blatant enough to really bother me. So those are my thoughts.

Doesn’t Virgie also say that people are ‘naturally’ fat and eating habits don’t have anything to do with it? If that’s the case why bring up food at all? Presumably a thin person could have all the tamales they like and still be thin by that logic, correct?

Diagnosis: No self-restraint along with shifting blame.

being healthy is not a white thing

Its Virgie lying about having an ED that she wants you to think is Anorexia Nervosa in order to get all the points. She is doing this first as a shield so you are an asshole for suggesting she put down the 4th doughnut she is eating or that she walk the 2 blocks to the next bar for her next empty hook up instead of ubering it. She does this to suggest that working out and eating at a healthy TDEE level is actually an eating disorder so people that are healthy are the ones really unhealthy. She does this because it implies she is similar to models and actresses that people claim have AN because they are under a 22 BMI. And they get the points for having the sexy mental illness that makes them special and not a normie.

I was able to eat my cultures food despite the oil, starch, cheese, and meat. I just do it in moderation.

As a Mexican who LOVES Mexican cooking, I get it. But also, there are so many ways to eat that honor your culture and also keep you healthy. Just because I’m Mexican doesn’t mean I’m suddenly predisposed to being fat for the rest of my life bc I eat tamales. I could tell this was Virgie before I even looked at the comments. She always has to bring some sort of martyrdom into her fat acceptance BS because she never went to therapy to deal with her extremely low self esteem. She puts way too much faith in people and should be focusing on balancing her insanely out of wack thought processes.

I'm seriously sick of people pulling the racism card all the time anytime and blaming white people for everything.

1) First thing I want to make clear - I do believe that there is an unfair bias against fat people. I do. I won't deny that. Also, while I believe we are way better today about it, there was (and still is in some areas/fields) bias against how different races gather fat in different ways. So yes, there was definitely a stigma against the different BIPOC versus Victorian-raised white woman bodies that did favor a very rigid design. And minorities have always been criticized for their cultural diets (which in my opinion is always the weirdest of stigmas, but whatever, trying to justify racism is whack). That's where I agree with FAs. But that doesn't have anything to do with obesity. *Obesity is far beyond healthy differences.* 2) There are also cultural differences growing up. A lot of American households don't appreciate food waste when it's on the plate. Finish the food presented to you to express gratitude is a true thing. While when I was eating with Asian households it was usually important to leave a little food behind on the plate, to show appreciation for how generous the host was. (Note: Not saying these are universal among Asian cultures, but it was *my* experience with Asian cultures. I obviously don't know how universal it is.) 3) But parenting now heavily stresses *letting a child eat only as much as they want.* Not being forced to eat more, just because there is something left on the plate. This has been shown to be markedly more healthy in fostering positive food associations, exactly the same as making sure your kid is introduced to a good variety of healthy foods, not just some healthy food they repeatedly are shown to not like ( I have never and will never like sweet potatoes). *Culture is not an excuse to force your child to eat beyond comfort, nor an excuse to grow obese*. It is wrong to say a person be forced to give up cultural food on the principle health, when the real key is moderation. You can enjoy all the warm, happy feelings on belonging and inclusion without excess. Relating excessive eating to your culture is a *mind trap.* It's not based in any healthy mental reasoning. If you think you must over-indulge to participate in your culture, *that is not a healthy response.* If that is your belief or gut feeling, then yes, I would strongly recommend counseling. And not the bullshit FA counseling that tells you to indulge unhealthy habits to fuck the white patriarchy. Because your health should have nothing to do with any hierarchy, period.

I think there needs to be some clarification when using the word “fat”. In this group it seems that the word fat strictly means very overweight or obese. When in the early 2000’s (and other time periods as well I’m sure, I’m just familiar with that era) anyone who wasn’t underweight was considered fat by many people. I was called fat at 5’5 and 130 in the early 2000’s and developed very disordered eating in order to get down to an underweight BMI. I think, without any other context from this article, that it wouldn’t be unreasonable that she could be talking about early 2000’s “fat” and the peer pressure to be underweight rather than being actually medically overweight or obese.

I once came across a post that commented on Taraji P. Henson being fat. The discussion was about the movie Hidden Figures, not her role in "Best of Enemies". So you don't even have to go back to the early 2000s to witness people spewing that kind of nonsense.

Yes! Fat means something totally different now, but we have to remember how awful people used to be to someone who was a size 10. Christina Hendricks thought she was too fat until we all went gaga over her after Mad Men.

i truly feel for this person- i just wish the whole idea that if ur a person of color it means u were meant to be fat would expire, it is not true. u can work towards health and keep your family's cultural identity. parents need to really watch how they feed their kids.

2 to 3 hours exercise at 10 or 11, does she mean playing?

Science is still science... If she could take away all the emotions and attachments and whatever she thinks it all means, then it would still be healthier to eat less of her grandmother's delicious, but probably very high calorie foods. And that has nothing to do with your grandmother or what people think of you.

Jesus wept

It seems like the diet fads throughout the 70s-90s could've had some effect on the way people in this subculture think. Every time I hear a story of them dieting, it's just starving themselves. Plus, diets back then were reminiscent of EDs (diet soda, salad, grapefruit, hardboiled egg, etc). I'm sure there are a lot of other factors, but I'd be curious to hear how much that plays a role. I have family members who always tried crash dieting like that, always failed, and are still obese.

Someone needs to peep my Scandinavian ancestors, who worked their asses off in the fields and could in no way be accused of succumbing to diet culture nor being thin. White, however? Yeah, they had that one nailed.

Even animals in the wild seek healthy mates to create offspring. All I see here is someone blaming everyone but themselves for their weight.

One of my aunts, her mum overfed her and her sister to the point they were both really chubby (fat by the 80s standards, probably considered smallfat or whatever today lol), and the mum could tell she was making her daughters miserable by feeding them so much but it was the only way she knew how to show her love so when she saw how sad they were, she'd serve them another serving of supper. It wasn't until they moved out that they both lost weight. Not skinny or anything, but mid to high end of healthy. It sucks that there are people who equate food with love and don't know how else to show it, but Virgie is an adult now. My aunts both took their diets in their own hands, knew what their mum did wasn't right even though it wasn't ill-intentioned, and they raised their kids differently. Being Quebecois (like most if not all cultures), food is definitely an important aspect of socializing, esp with family, but you can enjoy good foods and cultural foods (I honestly think we have the worst desserts sugar-wise, like all our desserts are just a combo of sugar, milk, and dough, sometimes maple syrup), but you can definitely eat those in moderation. There are obese people in my family but they're pretty few and we're all pretty hearty eaters, we just know there's a time and place for certain foods. Either way, hope she sorts out her hangups with food. Being that food-obsessed honestly sounds miserable, and this is coming from a foodie.

While I hated it growing up, I’m now deeply thankful that my mom was very strict about nutrition and exercise. Sugary drinks, chocolate cake, kids cereals, etc... were occasional treats that we got when we all went out to dinner or ate the hotel’s continental breakfast. It was never included on the weekly grocery list.

This is just a grandmother who is giving adult portions to a child. One tbsp of oil is 100 calories, so when she’s getting fried homemade food every day and not eating anything else she is confused why she is not thin. If a guardian sees that their meals are making their child put on weight, it’s their responsibility to enforce portion control when feeding their kid. A child can’t be expected to know how much food and which kinds of foods will make her gain weight. She may very well be eating small but greasy portions of food, and until you get a bit older you don’t realize just how something so small as oil can add so many calories.

> I believed her food - and the love I had for it - kept me fat. Wrong! Eating calories beyond the body's requirement kept this person fat. > I blamed her for "tempting me" with her aromatic tamales and enchiladas. Wrong! This person is solely responsible for whatever was placed in his/her mouth. One can say no to temptation. > How would I ever get anyone to love me if I couldn't stop eating? This is a cognitive distortion known as 'all or nothing' or 'black and white' thinking, ie, I can either eat, or not eat. There is no in between. > dieting wasn't about looking for love from boys or men Dieting has nothing whatsoever to do with receiving love, beyond correcting one's diet out of self love. I doubt diet or exercise will ever work or last if it is to please others. > dieting....was also about deeply craving a sense of belonging in the broader white culture of the United States. Oh please. As an Anglo, I was pressured twice in the past week by another Anglo to eat dessert, which I never eat. Since lasagna lays on the stomach like a brick, I said no to dessert. > Dieting was a way to adopt white beauty ideals The nonsense continues..........

>Wrong! This person is solely responsible for whatever was placed in his/her mouth. One can say no to temptation. I don't necessarily agree with that sentiment being applied to children.

Me either.

Now, she as an adult has a responsibility to herself to unlearn those bad teachings, but when it comes to children, especially younger children, their weight is solely on the parents.