I recently watched a video from Fr Mike and Ascension about bodies and it sent me into a tailspin. Thank you so much for your work being fat and faithful and talking about those intersections. You are one of the voices I turn to to drown out the outside noise.
If you want a Catholic take on the goodness of bodies and how disability will still exist in heaven, check out my first book, Lovely: How I Learned to Embrace the Body God Gave Me. :)
Honestly, I don't remember. At some point I had written it down on a slip of paper and put it in my book suggestions box. I just happened to pull it out earlier this year.
Hear, hear! It is so insidious, this fat-hate. Baked into every fiber of our culture. It is a convenient way to control *especially* women, keeping us so busy fixating on our size and every aspect of our appearance, chasing after a fake standard of invented "beauty" that we don't notice our agency and personhood being stolen. Fuck. That.
The moralization of body size is real, and it has done serious harm to women's relationship with themselves long before any medication entered the conversation. What you're describing — the assumption that a larger body is a moral failing — is exactly the belief system that makes it so hard for women to trust themselves around food, movement, and their own needs. That part of your argument I hold with both hands.
You read me accurately. I work with women who are using GLP-1 medications, and I've seen what these drugs make possible for women who have spent decades in a body that felt like it was working against them — not because they failed morally, but because of exactly the physiological and psychological complexity you've written about so well. I don't think medication is the right path for every woman, and I share your concern about a medical system that pathologizes body size while ignoring the social and structural conditions that shape it. Where we likely differ is that I've sat across from too many women for whom this medication has been genuinely life-changing to argue against its existence. I hold both things at once — the critique of medicalization and the reality of individual women's lived experience. I don't think those have to be mutually exclusive.
I recently watched a video from Fr Mike and Ascension about bodies and it sent me into a tailspin. Thank you so much for your work being fat and faithful and talking about those intersections. You are one of the voices I turn to to drown out the outside noise.
If you want a Catholic take on the goodness of bodies and how disability will still exist in heaven, check out my first book, Lovely: How I Learned to Embrace the Body God Gave Me. :)
I read it earlier this year and loved it! That's how I found this Substack!
I love to hear that! How did you come across Lovely??
Honestly, I don't remember. At some point I had written it down on a slip of paper and put it in my book suggestions box. I just happened to pull it out earlier this year.
This is a really fun idea!
Hear, hear! It is so insidious, this fat-hate. Baked into every fiber of our culture. It is a convenient way to control *especially* women, keeping us so busy fixating on our size and every aspect of our appearance, chasing after a fake standard of invented "beauty" that we don't notice our agency and personhood being stolen. Fuck. That.
Yes! It’s such a control-oriented dogma.
The moralization of body size is real, and it has done serious harm to women's relationship with themselves long before any medication entered the conversation. What you're describing — the assumption that a larger body is a moral failing — is exactly the belief system that makes it so hard for women to trust themselves around food, movement, and their own needs. That part of your argument I hold with both hands.
Your comment leaves me to wonder that you do not agree with my take on the medicalization of fatness. Care to elaborate?
You read me accurately. I work with women who are using GLP-1 medications, and I've seen what these drugs make possible for women who have spent decades in a body that felt like it was working against them — not because they failed morally, but because of exactly the physiological and psychological complexity you've written about so well. I don't think medication is the right path for every woman, and I share your concern about a medical system that pathologizes body size while ignoring the social and structural conditions that shape it. Where we likely differ is that I've sat across from too many women for whom this medication has been genuinely life-changing to argue against its existence. I hold both things at once — the critique of medicalization and the reality of individual women's lived experience. I don't think those have to be mutually exclusive.