41 people so far have "supported" my brother's facebook declaration.

[fflo]

He declared that he wants to be publicly shamed if he doesn't lose a whole buncha weight, starting NOW.  Has asked people to sign on.

Not only have I no impulse to speak to the matter; I have an impulse, on top of the "stay mum" impulse, to hide the whole affair from my further view.  I am a bad political proponent in this respect of the body acceptance I am practicing practicing and believe could improve the world, no shit that big, if it were to spread.  One could argue, I suppose, that I am being good at another kind of acceptance, letting it be, but this I don't accept, this focus on size and weight, this so-broadly-accepted certainty that he's embarking on something to be celebrated, whether he aims at it with this shame (piling onto his shame) thing or not.

Maybe it's not so much that I don't know how to begin to tell people who don't already have a clue what's so very wrong with the dealio.  Maybe it's more that I so don't want to get into that fight.  With those folks.  Or with many.  And this is where my shame enters, for there is a call, and I hear it, and I am not answering.

Comments

[peteralway.livejournal.com]

I assume your bro wasn't a fat kid, but gained weight as an adult?

I say this because as a fat kid, I got all the public fat-shaming I can stand when I was young, but I noticed that, sometime after college, it dropped way down to about two instances in the quarter century since I finished my masters degree at age 27. Evidently the relative freedom adult males have from that crap has led to the slogan that fat is a feminist issue.

At least that's the only explanation I have for your brother's lunacy.

[stormdog.livejournal.com]

If it's something that makes you more uncomfortable than your brother has a right to expect you to deal with on his behalf, I don't think there's any shame in not being a part of it. It sounds like he has plenty of people who will give him what he wants.

[fflo.livejournal.com]

Thanks. You misunderstand me a little, though, if I'm reading you right: I have no shame about not joining in, only about not speaking up in a fat acceptance HAES kinda way.