The “Women of #nzpol Twitter roundup” is brought to you in the interests of amplifying women’s voices in the political debate and also because:
I got the inside running on this one by catching five minutes of Breakfast on One’s interview with John Key:
The rest of the media weren’t far behind.
I just want to note the first sentence of the article Andrea Vance linked to:
More than 60 per cent of pregnant women gain more weight than is recommended, which has implications for a child’s weight later in life.
Not implications for health; implications for weight. We’re so wedded to the notion that being fat automatically means you’re unhealthy that we don’t even need to establish whether or not weight gain in pregnancy leads to health issues. It just must because ew, fatties.
Take it away, Twitter:
https://twitter.com/Dovil/status/655982421607755776
And back to me:
https://twitter.com/MorganHopes/status/655970896092377088
For many, many informed perspectives on what happens when you force fat people to go to the doctor, check out First Do No Harm.
This is a common tune for me, but I’m just going to repeat it: fatness does not equal poor health. Thinness does not equal good health. Correlating certain diseases with fatness does not mean fatness causes those diseases. Considering the incredibly fatphobic society we live in, it’s ludicrous not to consider the effects of stress, deprivation, and societally-applauded yo-yo dieting on the overall health of fat people, even IF fat people were inherently less healthy than thin people, which they’re not.
And when it comes to policing the every waking thought and action of pregnant people – including how much weight they gain during pregnancy – there really aren’t good grounds to be talking about “evidence-based approaches”.
Stop talking about weight. Stop judging people based on their weight. Stop buying into the weightloss industry’s propaganda. Because if you want to know the #1 reason why we’re not having national conversations about food access, living wages, family time, and health awareness? Maybe it’s something to do with the fact we keep saying it’s all fat people’s fault for not being able to put down the doughnuts.
And for god’s sake stop making pregnant people responsible for the welfare of our entire society.
Stephanie Rodgers 
I really appreciate this. When I was pregnant it was shocking the amount of monitoring I got, both when I sought it out and when I didn’t. I was pregnant with twins so WOW everyone had an opinion. Shudder. Now I’m at what everyone thinks is a “healthy” weight, but I have blood pressure issues that frighten my doctor (!) and are highly resistant to medication – though improving slowly. Put me next to someone who is heavier, who is almost certainly healthier (at least in bp terms) and what happens? Who gets criticized? And until I found my current good doctor, I had a hard time getting serious treatment from doctors, who didn’t really understand what I was doing (morally) wrong to have (morally wrong) blood pressure when I was not (morally wrongly) fat. Sheesh. Um, clearly I have some feelings about this issue.
Good feelings! Thanks for sharing them 🙂