Woman Can't Have Kids After Gastric Bypass, Still Happy to Be Thin

[BainsBane]

This woman's story reveals an astounding level of pressure on women to conform to ideals of beauty, and then after becoming thin she struggles with the notion that she failed as woman because she can't have children--something caused by the surgery.

A woman named Jill Strasburg appeared on Oprah in 2005 to confront her fat-phobic father for being a giant garbagey dickweed rather insensitive about her weight. She was the youngest of his children, her father, Kirk, explained, and always the fattest. She was always chubby, always bigger. Childhood photos reveal a normal, seemingly happy kid—swimming, playing outside, not impeded by her extra pounds. Nonetheless, Kirk was ashamed of his daughter's size, and was proud to admit it on fucking national television. It is honestly shocking to watch.

Via HuffPo (and there's video at the link):

I just have this built-up hatred, like, 'What is wrong with you? Why don't you love me?'" Jill said, through tears.

Oprah posed the question to Kirk. "Is [Jill] good enough the way she is, if she never lost a pound? And gained 10 more?" Oprah asked. "Would that be okay with you?"

"No," Kirk answered. "It wouldn't."
DOOOOOOOOOD, THAT GUY. That fucking guy.

Jill, essentially blackmailed by her father, proceeds to lose 170 pounds via a gastric bypass surgery.

"I [had the surgery] because I wanted to feel good about myself," Jill told Oprah. "I wanted to lose the weight and I also wanted a relationship with my dad."
They return to Oprah for a follow-up. Jill explains that, via extensive therapy, she realized that her father did what he did (which, in case you forgot, was withhold love until she resorted to an invasive major surgery to become the conventionally "hot" daughter he thinks he creepily MUST HAVE) "out of love."

Yeah. 'Kay.

I am so, so happy that Jill is happy. But I think that the route to her happiness—rooted in inarguable emotional abuse, and bolstered and openly validated by our culture at large—is downright barbaric. People often treat body image advocacy as a frivolous concern based in laziness, in lack of accountability, in recreational victimhood. To those of us who actually understand what body positivity (or, god forbid, the dreaded fat acceptance) is all about, those objections are downright alien. The oppressive expectations placed on women's bodies—combined with the assumption that it is a woman's lifelong duty to starve, cut, and sweat her body into an "acceptable" shape—literally ruin women's lives. They keep us hungry and distracted, they riddle us with self-doubt and self-hate, and, not infrequently, they kill us.

http://jezebel.com/woman-cant-have-kids-after-gastric-bypass-still-happy-1513428193?utm_campaign=socialflow_jezebel_facebook&utm_source=jezebel_facebook&utm_medium=socialflow

[LiberalEsto]

1. A parent who fails to love their child unconditionally as a child

is a complete dismal failure as a parent.

[BainsBane]

2. How many people do you think have parents who love them unconditionally?

I don't. This father, however, is particularly bad. She says she had the surgery in part to be able to have a relationship with her father, which is sad.

[LiberalEsto]

3. Not enough people have them

I certainly didn't

[riqster]

5. I didn't have such parents, but my kids all have that love.

I learned from my youth and did better by my kids.

[bravenak]

4. Sad.

She needs to sever all ties with her father if she ever wants to be herself.

[gollygee]

6. Holy crap

I swear to God I would leave my husband if he said that to one of my girls. That is just plain and simply emotional abuse. And maybe coercing her into a physical trauma like surgery is a kind of physical abuse as well.

[Dark n Stormy Knight]

7. Men like that father should not have children.

[cinnabonbon]

8. His attitude is super disturbing

but sadly really common.

BainsbBane, have you seen this? It's a poem about women and the relationship with "thinness".

[redqueen]

9. Sounds just like my dad.

The second to last paragraph says it all.