Wednesday, January 30, 2008

Fighting for Civility

In the midst of my news searches over the weekend, I apparently missed a complete gem of an editorial that's too good to pass up.

Lucinda Breeding of the Denton Record-Chronicle wrote a piece on Fat Acceptance this past Sunday that I plan to print off and add to my affirmations scrapbook. It's the first really good media response to the New York Times piece on the Fatosphere and if this woman isn't already in the FA movement, I sure hope we can convince her.

"It doesn’t take too much time spent lurking on the blogs to see why they liken their struggles to a fight for civil rights.
In fact, they are fighting for our civility."

How perfectly expressed! That really is the point behind everything the FA movement stands for...that fat people have the right to be treated as human beings. Isn't that the core of civility, to treat people with decency, as human beings instead of objects? We've made a lot of progress towards that goal since the rough beginnings of our culture, but we're certainly far from perfection.

That of course reminds me of Ghandi's quote when asked what he thought of Western Civilization: "I think it would be a very good idea."

"If you’re sedentary and fat, you’re a sinner. If you’re fat and manage two trips to the gym each week, you’re cheating. If you’re a triathlete and fat, you’re destroying your body. Not that the critics have degrees in theology or sports medicine."

Apparently in Denton, TX there's at least one paper willing to print an editorial calling the critics out on their own turf. Bravo!

This particular paragraph slams M. Roth by name and points out her hypocrisy. I'm starting to wonder if Meme isn't FA's best friend, if she's going to continue to make fat hatred look so frantic and ridiculous.

I'd be pretty surprised if Lucinda Breeding isn't a Shapeling in the making. She mentions in her editorial that she's been lurking around the Fatosphere since the NYT article came out. If this is an example of how she expresses herself, I hope she does more than lurk.

2 comments:

Anonymous said...

Great find!

worthyourweight

Anonymous said...

Great article. Thanks for sharing it.