Staff strikes see Sleeper halted
It’s trendy to attack stars who shed stones for ‘betraying’ curvy women. But SARAH VINE says she just won’t join the...
CALEDONIAN Sleeper services have been cancelled on Sunday and Monday due to a second round of strike action.
Rail, Maritime and Transport union members will walk out for 48 hours after the union said operator Serco had ‘point blank’ refused to engage in talks.
It accused the company of a lack of concern for staff and passenger safety and called for sufficient berths on trains for rest periods.
The union said it was prepared to negotiate and engage with arbitration service Acas but had been ‘stonewalled’ by Serco, leaving members with ‘no option but to continue with the programme of industrial action rather than compromise on staff and passenger safety’.
Ryan Flaherty, Serco managing director for the Caledonian Sleeper, said: ‘It remains deeply frustrating that this unjustified industrial action is going ahead. At all times, we have sought to address concerns raised in a constructive manner.’
actress and comedian rebel Wilson, who shot to fame as ‘Fat Amy’ in Pitch Perfect, has done an Adele. Both celebrities have transformed their appearance through weight loss — and in doing so have incurred the wrath of body positivity champions, who accuse them of betraying their bigger sisters.
In many ways, I can understand this. the pair were, in their different ways, poster girls for larger women, proof that not everyone needs to have a body like Kate Moss to make it.
they brought joy to millions of women such as myself, whose lifelong inability to fit into a size 10 has always felt like something of a failure.
In particular someone like Wilson, whose on-screen talent and sheer largerthan-life personality eclipsed that of her skinnier sisters, was i nspiring and uplifting, and rightly won her many fans.
that said, I cannot join the chorus of disapproval — the ‘ Fat Lash’ — in condemning either of them.
Not least because I know from personal experience how wonderful it is when, having spent so much of your life battling the bulge, you gain the upper hand.
And it’s really not about conforming or giving in to ‘fat shaming’, as some of Wilson’s critics would have you believe.
It’s about being who you want to be, feeling comfortable in your own skin, and not allowing your size to rule your life.
It’s about going clothes shopping and not ending up weeping in the changing cubicle because nothing fits; or finding yourself marooned in the grim plus-size section; or kidding yourself that the sizing must be out — and then going home and consoling yourself with a family-sized bar of chocolate.
Because the truth is that inside every defiant fat girl — and I should know, I used to be one — is a normal-sized person trying to get out.
someone who doesn’t get out of breath when they climb the stairs, whose knees don’t ache from carrying all that extra weight, whose thighs don’t chafe and who doesn’t secretly dread the notion of going to the beach or having their picture taken with 27 chins.
SOMEONE for whom getting dressed in the morning is not an eternal, depressing dance of self-loathing and recrimination, who doesn’t have to drape themselves in endless, shapeless black, but who can take pride in their appearance.
For me, losing the few extra stone that had dogged me for the best part of two decades has been a liberation. Because being seriously overweight is not about empowerment or body positivity at all.
It’s a physical and mental straitjacket that all of us, if we are honest, are better off without.
But perhaps more importantly, as Dawn French illustrates, it’s about personal choice. After successfully losing weight, the comedian revealed this week that she’s ‘ back to being an entire barrel’ again and refuses to dislike herself for it.
Women’s bodies are their own, and we have a right to choose what to do with them. And just as we shouldn’t judge a woman for being fat, we shouldn’t judge her for wanting to be slim either.