Breeding

Just when you’re about to give up the Internet as a time-suck (stupid, stupid YouTube puppies) and a haven for twisted minds, it gives us a window into just how useful it can be.

Last Monday, Denton celebrated the life and legacy of Martin Luther King Jr.

Every day, fans and purveyors of the “fatosphere” carry on their own revolution, and they see their work as related to civil rights. The day after Americans observed King’s legacy, The New York Times published a short article about the “fatosphere,” a strange and relatively quiet cyber-community. In the process, the newspaper gave the fatosphere’s visibility a bump.

The fatosphere is a virtual community for people — mostly women — who promote body acceptance, or fat acceptance, as some of them call it. They are led by a small band of bright and clever bloggers on sites with names like Shapely Prose (www.kateharding.net), Big Fat Deal (www.bfdblog.com) and The F-Word (www.the-f-word.org).

Kate Harding’s site is the busiest, with readers commenting on one or more blog posts a day. The F-Word (which refers to three “F” words: food, fat and feminism) concentrates on the complex relationship between disordered eating, diet mania and body image. Big Fat Deal calls itself a “gateway drug” to fat acceptance, mostly because weight loss and dieting aren’t verboten. Aspiring actress Joy Nash became a YouTube sensation with her video “Fat Rant,” a buoyant monologue about living life to its fullest no matter what you weigh.

The very existence of these blogs is heresy, according to followers of the health and fitness media. A visit to any of these blogs, or The New York Times article about them, will bring up hundreds of comments that insist that fat, in and of itself, is unhealthy. The women leading the charge on the blogs have been labeled dangerous, delusional and in denial because fat supposedly kills.

Fatosphere bloggers say the jury is out on all of that. They question whether America really is in the midst of an obesity epidemic. The bloggers and their supporters insist that fitness and fatness aren’t mutually exclusive. Check out their blog comments and you’ll see self-identified fat people ex­changing information about their exercise and dietary habits.

On just about all of the blogs, there seems to be a common belief that diets just don’t work. The members of this community say that they prefer to eat healthful food and exercise without chasing the far-off prize of slenderness. Not everyone is meant to be slim, they say, and healthful habits are available to all. None of the blogs deny there are health risks associated with obesity, but they say that risk is not the same thing as cause.

It doesn’t take too much time spent lurking on the blogs to see why they liken their struggles to a fight for civil rights.

In fact, they are fighting for our civility. Detractors of the fatosphere visit their sites to insist — in a loud and large chorus — that if you are overweight, diabetes, hypertension and high cholesterol are inevitable. If you are fat, these voices say, it will eventually kill you. Even if you do the “right” things, like eat healthfully and get plenty of exercise, fat is a sign that you’ve earned a blight.

Then come the pernicious voices that carry the “Meta Message” intended for fat people: Your body size is firmly within your control, and if you’re fat, you’re immoral and a drain on the health care system. You’re also lazy, gluttonous and ugly. If your children are fat, the message goes on, you’re committing child abuse. If you’re fat and decide to eat less and move more, the sinful, shameful pounds will melt away. If you restrict calories, go running and don’t lose weight, you’re lying about both or eating extra candy bars on the sly.

One particularly inspirational site shows the paradox that fit, fat Americans live in. A woman named Sarah launched a blog about being a triathlete and being big, www.fatgirlonabike.com. Af­ter a bit of exposure, her blog was rushed by critics who told her she was irresponsible (or crazy, or stupid) for “grinding her joints to a pulp.”

Who knew that fat Americans could be branded lazy by one part of the peanut gallery, and summarily demonized as stupid for being too active by another?

MeMe Roth, a pundit who’s concerned America is passing down fat to its children, told Joy Nash that her twice-a-week exercise regimen wasn’t enough. If you’re sedentary and fat, you’re a sinner. If you’re fat and manage two trips to the gym each week, you’re cheating. If you’re a triathlete and fat, you’re destroying your body. Not that the critics have degrees in theology or sports medicine.

They are seconded by the celebrity hounds who survey the bodies of The Beautiful People, then report gleefully back to us when they discover that Hayden Panettiere is a mere mortal without a studio lighting and airbrush.

One small slice of Denton has been campaigning for body acceptance for years. When Denton Civic Ballet was under the direction of Susan Marquis Fri­day, dancers of all shapes and sizes got training, encouragement and stage time. When the company became the now-defunct Denton Civic Dance Theatre, the same ethic applied. Dance was about beautiful bodies moving, but bodies moving beautifully.

Texas Woman’s University dance faculty didn’t discriminate, either. Years ago, the faculty invited Alexandra Beller to do some guest teaching. Beller was part of the body-positive trend that dancer-choreographer Bill T. Jones and Arnie Zane promoted years before Lane Bryant achieved mainstream success with its plus-size fashions.

Beller and her predecessors got people thinking about how the so-called picture of health has changed over the century. And art history is just one body of evidence that, yes, people with heft have been around for quite a while. Don’t believe it? Check out the baroque painting of nobleman Alessandro del Borro, painted by either Velasquez or Ber­nardo Strozzi, on http://men-in-full.livejournal.com.

The fatosphere will likely take a continued thrashing because it dares to challenge the assumption that media ideals have imposed: that there is one way to be healthy, and one slender size to prove you’ve embraced the dogma that thinness guarantees long, healthful life.

Body acceptance bloggers, and Denton’s dance and performing arts community, insist that participation is a matter of heart, not worthiness determined by body mass index charts.

I think they’re probably onto something. Civility and grace are extended exclusively to the beautiful in the most venal and morally corrupt circles. If you’re convinced that energy and passion are the property of people blessed with one kind of body type, do yourself a favor and catch a performance of Dancemakers at TWU. The body types are different, but the skill and zest are shared.

It takes all kinds to defy gravity and grab for beauty with both hands.