Hear me out:
I wince every time I look in the comments section of a story
about Lizzo and her unwavering body positivity. I try not to look most times,
because I know how much hate will be shared there. It never fails; there is a
mass of people who are “concerned for her health” and make it a point to shame
her for existing. They’ll try to claim it doesn’t matter how well you eat or how
much you move, being fat isn’t healthy and they don’t want big bodies normalized…because
health?
It isn’t concern for health. It is fatphobia. And it isn’t
just aimed at celebrities. This is everyday life.
Fatphobia is that time my mom got chastised at her old workplace
for wearing the same type of outfit as her thinner co-workers and they did not.
It’s when my former co-worker always had something negative to say when her
assistant (a woman with PCOS, like me) ate literally anything. It’s every
time I went to see my doctor and she told me “calories in, calories out” when I’d
complain about my weight gain, knowing of my PCOS diagnosis and that I always
reported an activity to intake ration that would create a calorie deficit.
Ask anyone with a BMI over 25 their experience with doctors
(especially if they’re a woman) and you’ll quickly find out that every problem
they have has been blamed on weight. They could walk in with broken leg and be
told to lose weight so it doesn’t hurt. The medical field’s negligent blinders
to anything but weight as the culprit of all problems results in, not only
misdiagnosis and lack of trust in doctors, but also perpetuates fatphobia.
Yes, I knew fatphobia most of my life. I’d watch it disseminated
in media and in every day life. It was clear in the weight loss reality competitions
and overwhelming number of thin bodies being put on a pedestal that if fat did
exist, it was not wanted.
I didn’t know the extent of it, though, until our most
recent internet culture arose and the body-positivity movement began in its
current form. People of all walks of life, levels of education, and cultural
backgrounds have come out in droves to support body-positivity, and just as
many have come out to condemn it with vehemence and pure hate.
Their hate is blind. They do not care why you are fat, just
that you are and that it makes you worthless. They do not care that you’re okay
with it because they are not.
Medical professionals say that one must not have excess fat
to be healthy, even with emerging scientific research and a bevy of anecdotal evidence
to the contrary. Personal trainers, life coaches, small and large bodied people
of all sorts come out en masse to decry the amount of fat another person holds
on their body. The body of another person in this instance somehow impacts others
with no discernable reason why.
I have a theory on what this is; victim-blaming.
I’m not saying being overweight makes you a victim. That
makes being overweight sound like a bad thing and it just isn’t. Let’s make
that abundantly clear. But victim-blaming the closest human phenomenon to what
I believe is happening with fatphobia.
Victim-blaming occurs when people find reasons why the
victim brought the bad thing upon themselves. Why? Because, then, it allows the
onlooker to believe it couldn’t happen to them. “I don’t do X so Y won’t happen
to me. They did, and that’s why it happened to them.”
We see it most commonly when women are raped; “she was
dressed like that, so she brought it on herself.” This is problematic,
obviously, but people still do it. Courts still uphold this as if it’s a
legitimate argument for someone else’s behavior to be dictated by what another
person wears, says, drinks, etc.
In the same vein, the medical community and media have created
a culture where being overweight is bad and, thus, people do not want it to
happen to them. Enter the desire the believe it cannot happen to you. “If I eat
right and exercise, I can control my body weight and not become fat.”
Conversely, “I don’t eat right or exercise, therefore I am fat. But if I want
to change it I can.”
For many people this is probably true. If your body is meant
to be 130 pounds and you give it the nutrition and exercise it needs, it will
be 130 pounds as long as it is working properly. Less nutrition and more
activity will lead to a lower weight and less activity and excess nutrition
will lead to a higher weight.
If I am to believe Lizzo, which I do, that she’s perfectly
healthy and doesn’t have underlying health conditions, she may be right in
saying she’s just supposed to be bigger. Perhaps there are bodies that are
meant to be 180, 200, 250 pounds and no amount of exercise or reduced calories
or special diets will keep you far from it. No amount of muscle will burn away
the fat that covers it.
And that’s okay.
When the culture believes that this aforementioned body is
wrong, it doubles down on the notion that this couldn’t be true. They tell
themselves that there is no way that someone should just be “big.” If
that’s true, then at any point in time—any birthday, any metabolism change, any
hormone shift—their body could change and just want to be at that forbidden
weight.
These people will double-down again when they hear that your
medical condition causes your weight gain or difficulty losing weight.
You take pills that have documented weight gain as a common
side effect? They’ll either elect not to believe it (because, what if one day
they need to take the same medication) or tell you to stop the medication. It can’t
possibly be more life-saving than not being fat, they will rationalize.
You have multiple sclerosis, lupus, fibromyalgia, or any
other illness that causes extreme fatigue or just the actual inability to move?
They will say it’s all in your head and you are lazy. Because, why wouldn’t
you want to exercise that weight away? And, naturally, the weight must be
causing all the symptoms because it causes everything. At least, that’s what
the doctors say.
You have hypothyroidism, PCOS, or diabetes and it makes your
body actually not work like everyone else’s? “You must be eating too much,”
they cry. The idea that an illness will cause your body to ignore all your well-meaning
health behaviors and punish you for the slightest indulgence, like a slice of
cake or a few days of rest, must be a terrifying idea to those who haven’t faced
this. To defend themselves from the possibility that they might be so lacking
in control over their bodies one day should they suddenly be diagnosed with any
of these, they will shame and demean you for not taking control.
I recently left a social media group after I experienced
this.
I’d committed to Wicca in mid-2020 and connected to groups I
thought would have like-minded, sensitive, caring people. In Wicca, we believe
in a rede; “an it harm none, do what thou wilt.” To extend on this, what you
put out into the universe you get back times three. I assumed, I suppose
foolishly, that people of this belief would not commit fatphobia. Because what
is fatphobia if not deliberate harm?
I asked a very specific question looking for weight loss
spells, or spell elements, that don’t include making you eat less. I explained
that I didn’t need to eat less and that PCOS made me hold onto fat due to
insulin resistance. The first comment I got back explained to me that I wouldn’t
get anywhere with this unless I understood why I eat the way I do.
To me, this is discrimination and shaming, against the rules
of the group. I alerted an admin. I was told it was my fault because what I was
asking for doesn’t exist.
They obviously don’t know or understand the craft and they’re
certainly are no Wiccans, but the impact of their harm will reach them three-fold,
regardless. That knowledge does little to placate me. Even in what should be
the safest circles, fatphobia is found because it’s been ingrained into our
society as “right” and “healthy.” These people don’t even know the harm they do
because they believe it is not harm at all, but help.
In reality, it’s only there to help them be convinced they
could never be fat. Every time they are proven right by their body simply just
functioning the way it uniquely does, the belief solidifies even more.
We need two things for this cycle to end. One; the medical
community to change the narrative. Two; society to take responsibility for their
own feelings and fears rather than putting them on someone else.
Now I ask you at the end of this; how do you picture me?
What size am I? What weight am I? What judgements have you been making deliberately
or subconsciously?
You should know that I’m fine with me as I am. I do want to
lose a few pounds, not for fear of the body I’d have but for the desire to not
have to change my wardrobe yet again. Some items are getting tight and I’m really
not ready to spend all that money and time again. Plus, I’ve got some cute
stuff.