this post was submitted on 17 Nov 2025
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My Friends Would Rather Have Their Guts Cut Open Than Be Like Me - [an Essay(ish)] (theestablishment.co)
submitted 2 days ago by Wren@lemmy.today to c/womensstuff@piefed.blahaj.zone
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I stumbled across this while researching old feminist publications. I can't really explain why I liked it so much.

I don't agree with the author's perspective, but it's a point of view I'd never heard before, and she writes beautifully, with wit and humor and pain.

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[–] Tar_alcaran@sh.itjust.works 27 points 2 days ago (3 children)

Seldom have I seen someone miss the point THIS hard. Reading an essay by someone who feels bad that people are losing weight at her. She's feels good when someone fails to lose weight through diet, and gets especially mad at weight loss surgery because it works.

She went with her mother to support groups, not to support her mother, but for the free clothing. She feels morally superior at the end because she didn't try to ruin someone's post-surgery recovery.

The author near the end aaaaaalmost grasps that apart from vanity there might be other reasons for losing weight, but then immediately considers only the most superficial aspects. Maybe it's what others say about her?

For one brief moment she does actually realize that maybe people have their own reasons for wanting to lose weight. Diabetes, ruined knees. Those she accepts, but wanting to prevent it is not allowed, making that private choice is too much of an insult to the author.

[–] Taleya@aussie.zone 15 points 2 days ago (1 children)

Agreed. It's almost breathtaking. "I am happy with who i am i should get to be who i am but everyone else who doesn't like what i like for themselves is bad"

There is a lot of fatphobia, this is absolutely true, but the sheer self-centredness of the author buries that message utterly. For fuck's sake they literally open by taking their mother's concern over health issues and making it a slight at themselves.

HAES means be healthy no matter what your size, not "wheezing up stairs and prediabetic is healthy because i am built large"

[–] ZDL@lazysoci.al 9 points 2 days ago

There is a lot of fatphobia, this is absolutely true, but the sheer self-centredness of the author buries that message utterly.

This is why I stay faaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaar away from the "body positivity" crowd, despite actually agreeing with them.

There's a disturbing percentage of that crowd that is all about "positivity for me, but not for thee" and I've had more than a few run-ins with people who called me "skeletal" because ... I'm only 10% over my so-called "ideal" weight.

[–] dandelion@lemmy.blahaj.zone 3 points 2 days ago* (last edited 1 day ago)

tbh I think the article is likely intended to be problematic, challenging, self-oriented, etc. - it reminds me of other Millennial "feminist" voices, like Lena Dunham (who also writes and embodies characters that are self-absorbed, problematic, neurotic, and who have bodies that are outside what is considered acceptable - e.g. her recent TV show Too Much, or her show Girls)

that said, it does make it harder to tell where the irony ends and sincerity begins - but maybe that's OK, part of the point is about just hearing the woman shouting into the void, I think there is a kind of catharsis in this for other women who have been victimized (and maybe in the case of this article, who have given up or developed different ways of thinking)

[–] Wren@lemmy.today 4 points 2 days ago* (last edited 1 day ago) (1 children)

I took the whole thing as an honest emotional journey. She owns her feelings and learns that not everything is about her in the conclusion.

I wish I could find the essay she gives credit for changing her perspective, but it's since been taken down.