Posted on 04/08/2017 12:41:35 AM PDT by grundle
Marge Swanson, a fat acceptance activist who helped pioneer the concept of thin privilege, is dead from a heart attack. She was 34 years old. Swanson championed the notion that weight and health have no inherent connection. She enjoyed dying her hair bright colors, wearing glasses and dating African American men.
“It’s not that I’m thin-phobic,” she once told an audience on a college campus. “It’s just that curvy women have been enslaved and victimized by capitalists for far too long and yeah, I’m upset.”
Swanson was born the middle of five children to a working class family in rural West Virginia. She was overweight as a child, and by her senior year of high school weighed over 350 pounds. She would later describe her teenage years as the most difficult period of her life.
“People can be so intolerant of others,” she later wrote. “My classmates were such judgmental, privileged assholes.”
In college, Swanson found acceptance among a group of intersectional feminists. “First I learned to love myself, and that helped me become a happier person. Then I learned about white supremacy and thin privilege, and I got pissed.”
After finishing college, Swanson moved into a studio apartment. She had trouble securing a full-time job due to “systemic ableism,” so she started a blog. Within a year, she had attracted a worldwide audience. Swanson became a big voice in the fat acceptance community, where she sought to raise awareness about the impact of fat phobia, which includes expressing concern over someone’s size (“concern trolling“) or associating obesity with health issues.
“I don’t want to compare struggles, but Harriet Tubman fought a similar battle,” Swanson once told a reporter. “Women in larger bodies are seriously underrepresented among athletes and models. Oppression and discrimination are the only logical reasons why this is occurring.”
Some doctors, who Swanson called “psychological terrorists,” affirmed her message of self-acceptance but warned about the practice of endorsing unhealthy body types amidst skyrocketing obesity rates. Additional concerns were raised about the fat acceptance movement’s use of dangerously unscientific or misrepresented concepts, like the belief that weight and health have no clear relationship. The promotion of obesity, some have said, is no different than advocating for anorexia.
“When people learn that I’m 412 pounds, they assume that means I’m inactive or unhealthy,” she wrote in her blog last year. “I’m actually one of the most health conscious people you’ll ever meet. The myth that obesity has any relationship to health is absolutely ridiculous.”
In 2015, Swanson was diagnosed with heart and gallbladder disease. The reality of her mortality, she claimed, only deepened her commitment to fight against weight related injustices.
“I may have a few bad cells, but my health has not been affected,” she told fans on her website. “Thin privilege is a far greater menace to health than having a few extra curves.”
I notice that she blamed her problems on capitalism. Too bad she did not leave the greedy fat pig world of capitalism for a communist country. If she had only gone to Cuba or Venezuela, to enjoy the equality and food rationing there, she would have gone down to a healthy 80lbs in no time! True, Venezuela sometimes still has the problem of a baker or a farmer who actually produces food, but these problems are rare nowadays and the authorities have finally learned to crack down on that sort of thing. Soon, no one will produce anything in Venezuela and at that point they willm have acheived ttue communism. But instead, this woman stayed in the U.S. and she died of complications from capitalism - it forced unequal portions of food on her and it broke her heart.
When you get hungry between meals drink water.
But we were just getting going!
I was “as-thin-as-a-rail” for most of my life and made fun of fat people at every turn. Then I started to put on weight - and still made fun of fat people. Then I reached obesity - and I continue to make fun of fat people as well as myself.
The point is to enjoy life to its fullest. For some, humor is one way to do it. To me, being an activist and casting my philosophy (in this case, about fat people) upon others, isn’t what I call enjoying life.
That lady was miserable and hated her image. While she may have found solace in attracting awareness to her philosophy about how fat people have been treated in society, it’s tragic that she couldn’t find the acceptance within - and of - herself.
Yeah, big fat bones
Swanson...
a TV dinner diet ???
That looks more like 400 lbs.
I don't know if she was privileged; but she was definitely projecting about the other parts.
BTW; Fat and dead at 34? Life is fair.
In misguided ideals of fairness our society not only condones but encourages delusional and self destructive behaviors as normal. It is not ending well for a lot of these self victimizing people.
That's because they can't run or jump, and look lousy in swimwear.
Delusional. Yes, some people aren’t totally unhealthy even if overweight but not many. How does one ignore extra weight on heart, joints, etc? Oh yes, intersectionalism, silly me. Must totally block out normal critical thinking, as does being obsessed with race.
You are so right.
where did she get the British accent in West Va
412lbs
"Husky" is the preferred parlance I believe.
This woman illustrates the mindset of the Left. It says they will hang on to an ideology which allows them to do whatever they want and oppose everything that says otherwise. Those truths from years of progress are replaced with the allegiance to self no matter how out of touch with reality or the lessons of history it is. It is secular humanism, the Left’s prevailing false religion, that denies God altogether and crowns man as king over himself and the measure of all things. This is the core of the totalitarian psyche.
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