One of my recent posts generated some discussion around friends of mine. Ideally, that is what these posts are supposed to do. I write a lot from personal experience and quite frankly, my personal experiences are way too diverse for someone that is a homebody. One of my friend’s comments got me thinking about a particular subject. To be more precise, it got me thinking about a particular word: hope.
What is hope? Well in the dictionary it has the following definitions:

1. the feeling that what is wanted can be had or that events will turn out for the best.
2. a particular instance of this feeling.
3. grounds for this feeling in a particular instance.
4. a person or thing in which expectations are centered.
5. something that is desired for.

–verb (used with object)
6. to look forward to with desire and reasonable confidence.
7. to believe, desire, or trust.

–verb (used without object)
8. to feel that something desired may happen.
9. Archaic. to place trust; rely (usually followed by in ).

—Idiom
10. hope against hope, to continue to hope, although the outlook does not warrant it.

So now that we have working definitions, why am I focusing on hope? Well, I have heard this comment of a number of occasions and it begs to be asked of anyone in the fat acceptance (I specifically use “fat” instead of “size” as this is not a height based comment) movement: Have we given up hope?

Now this may send all sorts of red flags up in FA circles. But it is a criticism that the movement gets. I hear it all the time “The Fat Acceptance movement are people that are too lazy to lose the weight and have just given up hope,” or “People that are into Fat Acceptance have just given up on life.”
Harsh as these comments seem, do they have any validity? In the American culture, everyone seems challenged to improve themselves. Keeping a weight within a certain range (whether it is aesthetic or for medical reasons) is a measure of perceived success. For example, going up to a person as saying “you look particularly fat today” would be an insult, but “have you been losing weight?” may not be.
So I can see the point to a certain extent. If I stop losing weight, I have stopped striving to be my best and therefore have given up on myself and as a result, I have given up all hope of every being “normal” (whatever that means).
But then there is also the old adage, the definition of insanity is to try the same thing repeatedly and expect a different result. So are people who constantly trying to lose weight and not succeeding insane? That argument could be valid.
Personally, I think that in most cases, if a fat person, FA advocate or not, could be a “normal” size, they would choose to be. Not because of vanity, but so they can go into a business and sit in a normal chair, but clothes that fit without paying premium charges, or fly on an airplane without buying two seats. I mean, if you were deemed “abnormal” wouldn’t you want to be “normal”?
So once again, have we who advocate fat acceptance given up hope? As for me, no, I have not. I think that I just have a different type of hope. I hope that I will be accepted for who I am.