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by Reena Daruwalla, guest writer for Nancy Hayssen.com

To be perfectly truthful, I was somewhat ambivalent about the concept of size acceptance because for me what is implicit in the term ‘Size Acceptance’ is being obese, and more perniciously, being unhealthy and doing nothing about ill health by simply accepting it. But what has clarified my concepts on this subject is a visit to this site.

Size acceptance is not about accepting ill health or obesity. It is about respecting yourself, about recognizing that people of all sizes can be fit and it is about making healthy food choices and benefiting from them. With this accent on a goal of good health and positive self esteem, the size acceptance movement suddenly began to make a lot of sense to me.

Size acceptance.org is a site that seeks to fight against “SIZE DISCRIMINATION throughout the world by means of advocacy and visible, lawful actions.” I read about their efforts at quashing the outrageous Mississippi House Bill 282.

This bill was proposed by Representative W. T. Mayhall, Jr. and sought to “prohibit certain food establishments from serving food to any person who is obese.” Supposedly this bill would permit restaurants to refuse service to anyone with a Body Mass Index (BMI) of 30 or more. The bill also proposed that “the State Department of Health shall monitor the food establishments to which this section applies for compliance with the provisions of this section, and may revoke the permit of any food establishment that repeatedly violates the provisions of this section.”!

Thank goodness there are people who take up cudgels and agitate against such an obviously ridiculous and discriminatory laws.

Another shocking instance of state discrimination against people of a certain size is the instance of Kayla, the 13 year old who was removed from her parents’ custody simply because she weighed 250 pounds!

Certainly there is cause to agitate against the highhanded actions of an overbearing and arrogant system that purports to snatch a child from her home essentially because her parents did not take her to the gym! The mind boggles at this one! It is not as if the authorities take into custody all those children who have eating disorders oe low self esteem! Definitely a case of size discrimination here, and definitely worthy of censure!

What I like the about the concept of Size Acceptance is the emphasis on Healthy Body Esteem. I liked their tag line for the site that I visited, “Love your body, it’s the only one you have!” it is simple and it conveys so much, basically it conveys in a nutshell all that is good and positive about the size acceptance movement!