On the weekend, my girl Taarnagh posted a link on Facebook to a blog by a woman named Lindy West who writes for a publication run by Dan Savage, the sex advice columnist and originator of the "It Gets Better" movement aimed at gay youth who are being bullied. The blog, entitled, Hello, I Am Fat was an eloquent smackdown of what she perceives as Dan Savage's anti-fat bias. It triggered a tidal wave of comments and has subsequently gone viral. It's a great piece, I encourage you to read it. And thanks to Taar for bringing my attention to it. (Dan Savage posted a rebuttal yesterday evening which I thought was also worthwhile if slightly more long-winded and hyperbolic. After the storm of protest against him, I didn't blame him for the hyperbole.)So, where do y'all stand on this whole "fat acceptance" movement? I gotta admit, I'm pretty ambivalent. I don't accept my fat. Never have, and don't suppose I ever will. When I've lamented my weight to people in my life, most have responded with what I take to be sincere insistence that it is nowhere near as ugly to the world at large as it is to me. Point being, I don't feel unfairly discriminated against because of my weight. I don't opine for the world to accept fat people more readily. I opine for a method to accept myself more readily, sure. And I realize that weight loss isn't the golden ticket to happiness and self-acceptance. Or, some part of me does, since the few times I've been slim, it's had no bearing on my day-to-day happiness, except that I preen in front of mirrors instead of worry. Having said that, when I am fat, it adds significantly to my feelings of self-loathing, depression, lack of control, etc.
The obesity epidemic is troubling. On the other hand, the unrealistic standards of beauty perpetuated by the media and popular culture are also troubling. But as far as I'm concerned, the bullying, mean-spirited othering of people for any reason, whether it's because they are fat, gay, Republican, or just different ("you're weird" = one of my my all-time hated methods of marginalization) is the most troubling. Maybe if people were just less assy in general, there would be no need for a "fat acceptance" movement. I understand why fat people are angry about being "shamed". I shame myself all the time. I look at people who are fat and I shame them, in my head, as surely as I do myself. I don't say anything to them, or about them behind their backs (at least, not about their weight, heh), because the last thing I want is to contribute to that dialogue, or to be perceived by others as someone who thinks it's okay to make these hurtful comments. My feeling is, if someone is willing to make a comment like that to me about someone else, pretty much I can expect that they are making those comments about me, or thinking them about me, when I'm not around.
I don't think it's right to enable or encourage unhealthy behaviour. I recognize that for me, personally, at least some of my excess weight is a direct result of stuffing my body with an excess of salty and sugary carbs that have very little nutritional value. This is not a healthy behaviour, and I don't mean just physically. As I have talked about at length, my food and body issues are a manifestation of low self esteem and depression. On the other hand, I do think that my natural body type does veer towards a chubby silhouette. It's not like I was ever a skinny kid, and my mom was not one to over-feed me either. So maybe I am naturally meant to be a little higher than the curve as far as my weight is concerned, and I have been battling nature for so long that my bingeing (and the extra 25 pounds I put on this fall, for examp) is more about feelings of deprivation, rebelling against the internalized self-loathing, lack of self acceptance, etc, etc, etc. Whoa, irony.
Either way, as far as I'm concerned, "fat acceptance" is pretty much a distraction from the real issue at hand, which is self acceptance, and self awareness. I eat to distract myself from pain I don't want to feel, even though I understand that the end result of this action will inevitably be more pain. But this is the culture we live in: everything is purchased on credit, even taking on a debt of self-loathing to feel better in the moment.
I reject fat acceptance and instead choose to promote empathy and compassion for those who struggle to accept themselves and choose destructive behaviours to cope with the burden of sentience in a culture that has replaced the struggle to survive with the struggle to thrive.
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This is an interesting post. I'm doing one addressing similar themese with smoking on the FC blogs.
ReplyDeleteI grew up thin. I had a metabolism that wouldn't quit and I was a runner. This gives one a different set of perceptual issues—and a bunch of unhealthy dietary habits, since all is fair game, menuwise.
I hear you when you say the issue is promoting empathy and compassion, but how to do that with something that is so reviled in today's society? (It's funny, since in prior decades and eras, being overweight didn't have the same stigma. For example, being overweight was associated with the higher classes during the Renaissance, since the poor couldn't afford to be fat.) I think the fat acceptance movement is a pushback against today's society stigmatizing a class of people. I'm not sure where to draw the line between tolerance of that which is different and condoning that which is deemed to be unhealthy. I get that the "acceptance" movement is meant to raise consciousness of others that poking fun of the fat isn't cool, but the collateral damage might be that it might be distracting the real issues. I'm all for the former. The question is whether the issues are really being distracted from (with overweight people) or if it causes non-overweight people to tune out or form backlash opinions.
I agree with Taarnagh. There's so much about today's culture that's about guilt and shame, as if that's the normative mode to motivate people. There's a huge pressure to be "normal". Normal means fitting in, doing what's expected, putting on appearances, etc., etc., which need not be a bad thing, but when it echoes values you don't have or fosters antiquated ones, look out. It's almost as if society is constantly looking to put others down, not just to feel good about themselves, but to assert some order in people's minds. So, the "PC" police say you cannot say the N-word in polite society, so what about gay epithets. Oh, can't say something is gay as a derisive term, well, what about fat? Hmmm. Fat's out, well, what about crazies. It goes on and on.
ReplyDeleteThis blog post annoyed the hell out of me, but is illustrative. The post is about disagreeing with a feminist take on fat acceptance. Looking closely, the blogger is troubled by an overweight singer being a possible role model, an unhealthy role model. Somehow, a stance of being accepting of an overweight singer is tantamount to saying "fat is the new black". Huh? What? I get a sense that this person is educated, but I found her logic to be making a huge leap and telling of her own biases. All of this reminds me of the backlash of gays becoming vocal and hetero men feeling threatened by this. Somehow vocal gayness was being translated into gay is the new normal. Huh? What?
I'm just glad I'm a qat.
Continues grooming. ==3
Lola, man you type good for a cat. I got a notification that you posted a second comment around 4 a.m. and it's not here. Did you delete it? Anyway... thanks for weighing in. For sure, looking at this issue has caused me to take a closer look at my own deeply internalized anti-fat bias. I realize that I have a reaction against the "movement". It is easy to pretend the reaction has to do with rejecting the enabling of unhealthy lifestyle choices, but if I'm being brutally truthful, I know it's more about, as Lindy would say, "EEEEEWWWW, FAT!"
ReplyDeleteYou would think compassion and empathy would come easier for someone who has felt the cruel sting of being teased mercilessly from formative years on, from family members no less, with respect to my weight. Maybe it's the desperate desire for acceptance from these formative influences that has caused me to internalize that judgment and see the world, and myself, through that fucked up prism all my life.
Taar, I am in the same category as you - technically "obese", but still hanging on to my curves and not necessarily embodying that "round" version of fat that is so thoroughly rejected in our culture. I think this probably plays a role in my skepticism about the FA movement, because I haven't been marginalized and discriminated against and made to feel like a thing to be despised or worse, pitied. Even as I type that, there's a voice in my head saying, "I didn't let myself get that way" which is a bullshit response because hey, I let myself get this way, so it's not like the weakness, laziness, lack of moral fibre, lack of discipline and self-control and whatever other condemnations we want to heap on fat people aren't qualities I exhibit on a behavioural spectrum. And I know that I feel helpless and terrible about myself when I give in to those failings time and again.
As far as DEALING WITH IT is concerned, what this discussion has helped me with is unearthing some of my own deeply held prejudices, that are first and foremost aimed at myself, and then beyond me, to overweight people around me, because it's too painful to be here soaking up the contempt all on my own.
Practicing compassion and empathy has gotta start with oneself.
fucking hell - i just unwittingly deleted Taarnagh's comment.
ReplyDeleteI still have it in e-mail format. Here it is:
I wish I could figure out how I felt about the fat acceptance thing. In some ways it seems blind but I understand that they are FIGHTING A LOT OF STIGMA. Lindsay, you say you don't feel so much shame from the world at large as you do from yourself and I say the same is true for me. But I am, while technically obese, still very curvy and not round (as one stranger commenter put it). People who are round are stigmatized by the outside world. And if they are lucky enough to not get the cold shoulder of day to day individuals they may be unlucky enough to turn on the news and see their bodies with eyes blacked out, walking down the street while the news commentators lament the obesity epidemic in this country.
The education of the public that there is an epidemic has widely been, "oh my gawd we are the fattest nation in the world, just LOOK at all these fat people everywhere" There is very little in the public that talks with compassion and looks for holistic answers.
The "FA" movement reminds me of the gay rights movement in its infancy. It was all about, in your face, we are here, we are part of life, DEAL WITH IT. And while that can be off putting, it is, unfortunately, the only way to get attention at first, in many instances at least.