I read an entry on someone's LJ where they were comparing people criticizing very thin women as being like criticizing fat women, and saying how one is as bad as the other. So it got me to thinking; I think she makes a very good point. Being fat myself, I don't begrudge or "blame" any woman for being average or very thin. Life is such, and bodies are different. Plus, I don't base my self-image very much on how I look, thankfully (though it would be disingenuous for me to say I never worry about being fat - mostly for health. Right now, I'm too lazy and it's too hot for me to care much).
However, that said - on a wider scale, let's not pretend society treats fat and very thin women equally badly - for one thing, consider that I used "fat" and "very thin," since you don't have to be "very fat" to be broadly condemned for being fat, period. Nobody sees a thin woman and assumes she sits around eating all day and never exercises. Very few people would assume she's lazy or smelly, either, just based on size.
Now, women who feel insecure for being fat - technically, it's their problem. There is nothing requiring them to feel that badly - except, of course, for how society does its damnedest to indoctrinate women, even now, into basing a healthy portion of their self-worth on how men view them. Some boys and men have no compunction about expressing their opinion on how girls and women look, often loudly and publicly (compare this to how likely it is for women to do this to them). I understand that men also objectify thin women, and that it's all sexual ownership entitlement - "hey baby, you look good, take my attention whether you want it or not" or "how dare you not look like the ideal woman and be fatter than I think is sexy!"
I was a fat child; I was teased mercilessly. Like a lot of chubby girls, I had a mother who gave me the whole "sticks and stones" speech when I was nine; fortunately, unlike a lot of girls, I listened to my mother and started ignoring it. Amazingly, it worked - the boys kept at it for a little while, but I shrugged it off or changed the subject when they'd start up, and after a while, they didn't do it anymore. Unfortunately, this doesn't change the real life- and pocketbook-affecting discrimination fat people get in the real world, such as being charged extra by some airlines, charged more for clothing (get real; it doesn't take THAT much more fabric to make a shirt for a fat woman, especially given the prices already being charged for the smaller clothing), or sometimes losing out on jobs that do not require a svelte frame to do the work.
(I never will forget my time staying with a Chinese family overseas for a few weeks. The woman was amazed at the normal amount of food I ate and how much I walked around, and how I still managed to be so fat. She remarked on it at one point - not unkindly - that she didn't know how I was that size with my habits (of course, like anyone else, I do occasionally splurge with friends, but it's not a way of life). Granted, I'm older and slower than I was 10 years ago, but still. The memory amuses me, but it's also telling.)
We're willing to accept that gay, bi, and trans people are born that way, for example; we're even largely willing to afford people respect based on religion, and that's a choice. But we still judge and treat based on body size, when it's not always able to be helped, and as disgusting as it is to discriminate against someone too thin or too fat, let's face facts: Outside individual judgments on women's appearance, we as a culture do not treat very thin females the same way we do the fat ones.
(I'm more than happy to entertain almost any discussion here, but honestly, this is my journal, and I don't need to read comments about "but some of that fat CAN be helped." That is not a helpful remark, nor is it breaking news; almost any of us fat women are very aware just how much of our body size could be helped by exercising harder or starving ourselves - and how much cannot. So don't say it.)
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