When people are introduced to radical concepts like fat acceptance, it makes sense that they will experience a fracturing of what they know to be true. This is cognitive dissonance. All your life you’ve absorbed photos of the conventional standards of beauty and spent a long time comparing your personal body to some generalised normative and acceptable body. This body is white, thin, young and able bodied. You might measure where you don’t meet that norm and you carry those “personal failings” around with you; you might also measure yourself against other women and criticise yourself and them equally, participating in a competition with no actual winner. At the same time you might be beginning to understand how this kind of activity serves to oppress you (and other people) while being confused about how to apply this knowledge to your own life.
Like Spilt Milk writes, “Acceptance is not giving up“. It’s easy to understand how it might feel that way, especially when you’ve been working hard to meet normative ideals and participate in the dominant discourse (by accepting and engaging in weight reducing activities as a normal thing). But let me tell you internets, I have experienced first hand how hard it is to challenge those ideals and question the dominant discourse. I have seen other people struggle with it in a quest to come to a place of peace, and it certainly doesn’t look like giving up to me.
(via definatalie)
definatalie.com Cognitive dissonance is a helluva bitch: