For a little while now, I've been reading heavily within the fatosphere. It started with Shapely Prose, and just branched out exponentially. Most of the time, I agree very wholeheartedly with what's being said on these blogs. I believe that food doesn't merit moral judgment. I believe fat itself doesn't merit moral judgment. I believe quite strongly that pretty much every fat person is just as fuckable and lovable as pretty much any thin person. As far as I'm concerned, fat v. thin has nothing to do with that, and personal preference has everything to do with it. I'm not saying everyone has to love fat people or want to sleep with fat people, but I'm saying that there are enough people who do both of those things to keep the world turning.
But there is one teensy tiny little thing that sometimes bothers me about fat blogs, and that's the strident assertion that it's okay to be fat, it totally is, we swear. You know, as long as you eat healthy and exercise. Almost all sites have some sort of wording like this: Fat isn't inherently bad. Even if you're not "healthy" you shouldn't be discriminated against for being fat. And clothing manufacturers should make clothes for all fat people regardless of why they're fat, because everyone deserves to feel good about what they're wearing. But you know, I'M a healthy fat person. I don't eat that much at all, and when I do, it's VEGETABLES. So suck it, fast food eating fatties, because I also EXERCISE EVERY DAY because I believe in HEALTH at any size. Yes, we all need to be "healthy", so if you're not, you're not the right kind of fattie.
I'm not saying it's universal, really. I'm just saying that there's a troubling commonality of this sort of implied opinion amongst many fat bloggers. A few keep Flogs (Food Logs) publicly on their sites, and I'm not making any judgments about that, but I will say that if I myself did that, it'd be to prove something, and that something would be that loook! I'm a better fattie than you because I eat better things. Quite a few talk very openly and copiously about exercise, whether it be going to exercise classes or running or biking or whatever (something that I'm intensely guilty of in this space), and spend a lot of time saying that it doesn't mean anything, and that they're still fat. And that they still believe that it's okay to be fat. You can be fat too!
I'm absolutely not saying that there's something wrong with doing these things. Of course in an ideal world we'd all eat healthily every meal every day, and we'd all get our 60 minutes of cardio or whatever in 5 times a week. We'd all be running along the lakefront or biking along it, or running on a treadmill pumping weights. Etc. And in some people's perfect world, this means we'd all be skinny. Now, in a fat blogger's world, we'd all look different, and be different sizes, and believe you me, that's an entirely better worldview than the former. I'd much rather live in a world that accepts that humans come in all different shapes, and that encouraged people to love themselves for who they are.
Except that it's hard to swallow this with the pill of exercise and vegetables. What I'm getting at is this: if you're trying to convince the world that being fat isn't so bad, maybe you should just take all qualifications out of it completely. Maybe you should say, "What you look like doesn't matter. Point blank." Instead of saying, "What you look like doesn't matter. Especially if you eat healthy and exercise." We're wrapping the fat acceptance movement in another unhealthy mantle when we imply that the only way you will REALLY be accepted as a fat person is if you do everything in your power to change it and whoops! nothing works. I've said it here myself. I'm 100% not exempt from this sort of thinking. I've completely bought into the idea that it's okay for me to be fat as long as I qualify it with a statement that reasserts that I've tried really hard to be skinny by eating right and exercising and that it doesn't work for me, so that's okay then.
But what if....what if it's just okay for me to be fat? What if you found out that I didn't exercise all that often, and that I didn't always eat healthy? Would you think less of me? What if I ate the same as always, and exercised the same as always, but stopped congratulating myself for it? How would I feel about myself? Worse, that's how. Because like it or not, we still associate those things with some moral superiority, and if you take away that moral superiority, all you are is fat, and in the United States right now, fat is wrong. Fat is ugly. Fat is not worthy.
Don't get me wrong. I'm in complete agreement with the idea that we need to radically rethink the way we look at our bodies. In general terms, this is exactly what the fatosphere wants. I want this. But the undertones, the unspoken words, the implications, they bother me. We're making fat people justify their fat, and that's no better than asking them not to be fat at all. Nobody should have to justify how much they weigh. Point blank. Super skinny girls shouldn't need to go on and on about how much junk food they eat, and fat girls shouldn't need to go on and on about how much vegetable matter they eat. How much each person eats is really no one else's business, unless the behavior veers into a fatal eating disorder. (People with eating disorders should be encouraged to seek help. They need it, and they should get it. But nobody should be accused of an eating disorder (skinny or fat) on the basis of their appearance. We just aren't in a position to know who is suffering from what, so we should refrain from commenting on it. Those closest to the people in danger will hopefully be able to make a difference in that person's life, but otherwise, I'm sick of reading gossip mags with anorexia scare articles. It's really none of my business, and I wouldn't want them judging me to be a binge eater by looking at me, now would I?)
I don't care anymore. What I mean to say is, I'm done judging myself to be a better fat person because I work harder at being a worthy fat person. I don't want to talk about my eating habits, or how much I exercise, because you shouldn't care either. Maybe I'll talk about a recipe once in a while (and boy oh boy, did I cook a doozy of a loser last night. Possible details in another post, when I've recovered from the smell.) or a fun restaurant. I still love food, you see, and I still consider it one of the great pleasures in my life. But no more of those posts detailing how good I am, asking you to love me the way I am because I tried, I really tried. This is me, and you either love me, or you don't. I've got to get on with the task of loving myself, and this whole moral morass of exercise and food wasn't helping me. It was actively hindering, actually. And I wonder how many other fat girls are out there, and feeling like I feel? Finding it hard to live up to the exercise/healthy eating expectation, and thus finding it hard to love their bodies? It'd be a shame to find out that there's a lot of us.
I love you because you are such a great writer. I started reading Shapely Prose when you linked to it here, and I browsed through the fatosphere. I had very close to the same reaction, though I never could have put it into words as well as you did.
I've been aware of the fat acceptance movement for a while and, as an average-sized girl with plenty of body issues, I am all for it. I've had and still have a lot of issues with my size and shape, and been on lots of diets and various stages of acceptance and rejection of what shape I'm in. Most of what is said in the fatosphere makes a lot of sense to me.
What fascinates me is that, in our culture, it's as if fat is the one thing we can all agree on to hate. When a coworker was talking about someone being just disgustingly fat, I called him out on it. I asked him why he felt like he could judge that person, why he kind of hated that person, seemingly for just being fat. He was not a little surprised, and we had an interesting conversation about body types and how size somehow turns into a moral barometer.
I thought we'd made some progress in our discussion until he followed up with something like: Oh, no. You are misunderstanding me, I don't have a problem with someone being bigger. It's when they stuff their face and sit around and are really grotesquely fat that it bothers me. So, basically, you know kinda fat is ok, but really fat is just gross.
I could never quite articulate it the way you just did. The problem is not a refusal to accept that people have different body types, it is the moral judgement that fat is bad, and the only way you can be an acceptable form of fat is if you have tried to be thin. Because we should all want to be thin.
Hell, if you are a woman, regardless of your size, just try to go a week without saying something disparaging about your body. Try to go a week without feeling guilty, or saying something guilty about what you are eating. When someone brings donuts into our office, not one woman (and very few men) simply say "Hey! Thanks! I love the chocolate ones!" and eats it. It is always "oh, I shouldn't" or "You're bad! I can't resist!" Because you can't just have a donut and enjoy it, you have to let everyone know that you don't normally eat those, and you know that you "shouldn't" because food is bad, and naturally you are bigger than you want to be, or you've been starving yourself to be where you are. No matter what your size, you are supposed to always be afraid of getting fat, or trying to be thinner.
Posted by: Rita | April 10, 2008 at 03:09 PM