"I'm just worried about their health," you say to excuse anti-fat comments. To which I say: "Fuck you."
However fit your ass is, you are talking out it.
Health? Do you know what some people do to achieve and maintain a "healthy"-looking body? Taking diet pills and diuretics, vomiting after meals, starving themselves, smoking cigarettes to avoid weight gain, over-exercising, paying endless money for diet meals, or limiting their diet to the point of malnutrition, for starters.
But it isn't them you're judging when you nobly spout about health.
It's been reported that models, in order to feel full without ingesting any calories, spend weekends before shows or photoshoots eating tissue paper or cotton balls. (If you think some women won't take this as a "diet tip" to "fit into that dress" for "a big event", you are fooling yourself.) It would be possible for a person to achieve the look you think of as "healthy" eating nothing but Twinkies and rendered lard, as long as they ate little enough of them.
Perhaps most important, people, particularly women, spend their precious time and energy struggling towards an impossible ideal, and hating and punishing themselves for their failure to live up to it. And fail they will, because it is impossible. Not even models and movie stars look like models and movie stars.
There's a t-shirt that says, "Start a Revolution: Stop Hating Your Body." That slogan's about body image, but it's not just about body image: there are only so many hours in a day, only so many thoughts one can think at a time, only so many places a person can put their energy and money. I'm not saying that exercise or cooking healthy are inherently bad places to spend time. Both have their benefits, and can be rewarding in their own right -- for people who choose them freely and without self-loathing as the cudgel.
But women who have decided to make it the focus of their sixmonth to eliminate their "saddlebags" are not the women who are, at the same time, going out there and changing the world, because somebody has to. Then there are the women who feel they are unworthy to be seen and heard because of their appearance -- who have been silenced by the culture-wide chorus of fat-shaming. They only go out there and change the world when they get to where I started this diary: "fuck you." Some of them don't get there, or take years or decades to get there. What a waste of time, of talent, of opportunities. What a loss, for them and for all of us.
My title says fat-phobia kills. I meant that literally. 40% of people with anorexia never fully recover, and anorexia ends up killing a 20% of its victims. You think fear of "being fat" isn't a huge trigger for their extreme dieting?
That fear is not limited to those with eating disorders. Researcher Brené Brown has found that over ninety percent of women experience shame around their bodies (Brené Brown, I Thought It Was Just Me, p. 175). By pure numbers, the largest group of high school kids thinking about or attempting suicide isn't LGBT kids, kids with disabilities, or immigrant kids. (Percentage-wise it might be a different story.) The largest total number is... girls who believe they are overweight. And this starts young. Over eighty percent of ten-year-old girls have dieted at least once (ibid., p. 95).
"Oh no, wait," you think. "I didn't mean them."
You didn't mean little girls, or struggling teenagers. You didn't mean women with a little jiggle in their wiggle. You didn't mean nine out of every ten women you see. You only meant the obese. The real fatties. Possibly just the real fatties whose political views or actions you find repugnant.
Sorry, but it doesn't work like that. First of all, you can't use fat-shaming language just against one particular fat person, (e.g., Chris Christie or Rush Limbaugh), any more than you can use sexist language against just one woman, racist language against just one person of color, homophobic language against just one lesbian or gay person, or transphobic language against just one transgender person. You will hit innocent bystanders.
Fat-shaming is a toxic spray that hits everyone who hears or sees it, in a broader miasma of disgust, ridicule, condescension, and judgment. It doesn't just affect "really" fat people, or even people who are overweight at all; it hits everyone who thinks they might be, or is afraid of becoming so, or is ashamed that they used to be. Chances are, you're hitting yourself with this plume as well.
Second of all, what makes you think it's ok to target obese obese people for "being fat in public"? To concern troll a person for their size when they're talking about education, or the environment, or LGBT rights... or even when they're being an asshole on those topics? The larger somebody is, the less likely it is that they don't get shit for being fat all the fucking time. It's highly unlikely that they don't a) know they are large, and b) suffer from it, in ways that are not the direct result of the weight itself.
When you respond to any overweight/fat/fluffy person who's saying something or doing something in our world unrelated to their weight with comments about their weight -- even "well-intentioned" "concerns" for "their health," then you are fat-shaming them. You are telling them they are not worthy to participate in our public discourse as they are. You are, in effect, saying, "You do not deserve to partake in public life."
And because weight is at least slightly more shiftable than race, ethnicity, sexuality, or gender, people try to become deserving. Many will kill themselves trying to be worthy of being allowed to exist. If not literally, then figuratively. But sometimes quite literally.
If you're actually concerned about people's health and want to change lives for the better, you need look no further than Michelle Obama. Her initiatives really are focused on the health of individuals and communities. Her "Let's Move!" program is about being active, not about being a particular size. ("It's not what you look like when you're doing what you're doing, it's what you're doing when you're doing what you look like you're doing, express yourself.") Or, for that matter, about being the most talented or the most athletic person out there. ("We need body rockin', not perfection.") Her gardening and local food initiatives are about finding satisfaction and nourishment in fresh food, not about the deprivation and diminishment of dieting.
You could get involved by:
- helping to connect your local farmers and farmers' markets with food pantries and low-income people, and vice versa;
- lobbying to get healthy, local foods into schools, and to keep fast food companies out;
- raising a fuss if physical education gets put on the chopping block as an "extra";
- volunteering to coach sports or teach kids or adults healthy, affordable cooking
- telling your representative that you want the next Farm Bill to shift subsidies towards healthier foods;
- working with your zoning and planning boards to make sure that walking places and playing in green areas are actual possibilities in your community.
Of course, there are dozens of medical conditions that can cause weight gain and/or make exercise difficult. Fat-shamers often dismiss those as irrelevant excuses, but you can actually help by:
- donating to foundations funding medical research;
- joining the call to ban endocrine-disruptors (and other toxic chemicals) in food containers and in cleaning and personal care products, which may be contributing to making us both fat and sick;
- working with organizations that are fighting environmental injustice; (polluting industries, dirty coal plants, dumps, and incinerators are often sited in low income neighborhoods and/or communities of color, causing everything from asthma to cancer).
TL;DR, if you're actually concerned about the American people's health, as reflected in their weight, there are a pile of things you can do that can help.
Fat-shaming is not on the list.
© cai