This is a great post.

Here’s how we solve the OMG SO MANY GIRLS IN YA problem: quit treating women like secondary appendages. Quit treating women’s art like it’s a niche, novelty creation only for girls. Quit teaching boys to fear the feminine, quit insisting that it’s a hardship for men to have to relate to anything that doesn’t specifically cater to them.

Anyone who’s not reading YA right now is missing the fuck out (no, I am not talking about Twilight). The best-plotted, best-written fiction in the world right now is being written there. There is no competition, not among literary fiction (which is mostly terrible), not among adult fiction, and not in sf or fantasy.

And wonderfully, it features any number of interesting, relatable and capable female characters.

No wonder it’s attracting so much hatred of late.

I’ve never cared for the music of Iggy Pop or The Stooges, but I do like what he does sometimes.

One time he came out on stage in a purple dress, and when an interviewer asked him about why he’d play a show wearing a dress, he said something like, “I don’t think there’s anything shameful about being a woman, so I liked the dress and I wore it.”

Right on.

When I looked at the odds of long-term weight loss being 10 to 1, I thought to myself, Shit, I beat longer odds than that my whole life. I can beat 10 to 1 odds in my frickin’ sleep.

Perhaps arrogant?

In my view, it ain’t arrogant if you actually do it.

Below, about losing weight, I don’t want to make it seem easier than it was.

It was not all that easy, especially at first. My comparisons are off, as my partner frequently reminds me. My definition of “easy” is far from other people’s, due to my background and proclivities.

Many times, my definition of “not that hard” amounts to “did not lose any limbs or major organs.”

Probably not what most people’s definition is, I am guessing.

But sometimes, even now, I am still hungry. The other day I was thinking about Kate Miller-Heidke’s music and then about the singer herself. Due to eating even less than normal I was quite hungry, so my thoughts drifted unconsciously in this direction: Hmm, Kate Miller-Heidke, she’s cool, I wonder what her favorite food is?

In other words if you can’t stand being hungry, you will probably not be able to lose weight. Me, I can stand about anything if I want to, so there’s that.

Though I disagree with some parts of this, in the main I think it is correct about the self-delusion and general harm done by this sort of thinking about obesity.

But their overriding problem is that the attempt to uncouple obesity and health/well-being/longevity has the same goal as that of global warming deniers: to convince you that the vast majority of evidence, as well as the medical and scientific consensus, is wrong.

As the piece points out (and with which I fully agree), it is wrong still to persecute and discriminate against obese people. But ignoring evidence that is really quite clear and tossing aside well-established medical knowledge is not the path to wisdom and is harmful to everyone, obese people included.

Study after study confirms that obese people have worse health outcomes, and also that they are beset with more chronic health problems, even if they don’t turn deadly.

Some anecdotes (yeah, anecdotes aren’t data, yada yada….).

At work, two extremely obese people broke their ankles on the stairs at around the same time. One was out for weeks; one was out for months. This is not a normal recuperation period for a mild ankle break, and it’s far less likely either break would’ve occurred at all if BMI had been in the normal range.

If I’d broken my ankle at work, I likely would’ve been back the next day, or more typical of me, in about 10 minutes. “Uh, yeah, I think I broke my ankle on the stairs, I’ll go to the hospital after I finish building this server.” That seems a lot easier when you aren’t packing an extra 250 pounds.

Second, I used to be straddling the line of obesity. Over three years ago, I lost 27% of my body weight. I now feel much healthier, can hike much further and my knees have gone from barely-working to fine. I also seem to get sick less and in general just have had a great improvement in personal well-being.

Yes, losing weight is hard and I am an outlier, but it wasn’t even as hard as I expected, so it can be done and is very much worth it.

Also, this comment about losing weight made me chuckle.

So yes, it’s possible to lose weight by constantly monitoring yourself and enforcing caloric deficits by eating less and doing more. It’s also really goddamn hard to do because your body thinks it’s dying and will fight against you.

I was a paratrooper in the US Army. Who gives a shit what my body thinks about anything? When something is tough here’s what I do: I fucking deal. What do other people do?

Yeah, I know, it makes me sound like an asshole. I’m really concerned about it. Sometimes, that is life; you just have to toughen up and do it.

Or not, as the case may be.