Content Warning: Discussions of fatphobia, disordered eating, mention of suicide, and fat fetishization.
The path towards fat self-acceptance can be a very long journey, a lifetime even. Sometimes I look back at how I used to view my body, my fatness, and what I believed about it, and I feel like I’ve come so far. Other times it feels like the progress is non-existent or inconsequential. I’m currently on a self-acceptance upswing, feeling good about myself, where I am in my life, and how my body looks and feels. Like many people who grew up under the influence of parental criticism, and/or peer adjudication, I have spent most of my life judging my body based on other people’s opinions and ideals. It wasn’t until I made a conscious decision not to listen to those voices anymore, and instead find my own, that I started to actually see myself when I looked in the mirror. I’m happy to say that I’m currently quite comfortable and in love with my body and what I see.
“You’re not fat! You’re pretty!”
It never ceases to amaze me how quick people are to project their insecurities onto fat bodies. Fat is not a bad word! I wasn’t always comfortable using the term fat to describe myself because it was a term that had been weaponized and used so harshly against me. When I began to understand that fat is simply an adjective, a descriptor, and not a definition, it became easier to use it and disarm it. What’s fascinating is how fat and thin people alike respond to fat people calling themselves fat. To be clear I never use that term negatively, I use it as the descriptor that it is, for my own body. I live in a fat body, that’s a fact. My body is composed of many things: muscles, bones, water, as well as stores of subcutaneous fat. Using ‘fat’ as a neutral term is surprisingly challenging and upsetting for nonfat people. If I had a nickel for every time I’ve been told “You’re not fat, you’re pretty!”, I could retire early. What’s wild is that when they say that, they can’t hear what they’re actually saying. The cognitive dissonance is absolutely lost on them. I used to just say thank you and move along, but now I prefer to challenge that statement by pointing out that two things can be true at once: Beauty and fatness are not mutually exclusive.
Facing The Fear Of Fat Fetishization
An unpleasant side effect of being a confident fat person is being fetishized. I’ve had countless encounters online and in real life where someone expressed interest or attraction in me that had nothing to do with who I am or anything they knew about me. The attraction was to the size and shape of my body. Since fatphobia is so prevalent in our culture, lots of people think that fat people should settle for any attention they get and be glad for it. However, fetishization is dehumanizing no matter who it’s done to and for what reasons. The most insidious part of fat fetishization and the so-called “Chubby Chasers” who do it, is that so few of them would ever admit to their attraction to fat people. Not only is the fetishization of fat people dehumanizing and degrading, it’s often done in secret. In my opinion, fatphobes and Chubby Chasers are equally questionable, and I generally don’t have time or patience for either one.
Fat As A Moral Failing
Fatphobia and body negativity has gotten a lot of airplay in the last few years, and is being called out and recognized more now than ever. These are good things, but unfortunately fatphobia is rooted in fear and disgust, two feelings that can be hard to change without significant motivation. Simply put, there is nothing about our culture that incentivizes people against fatphobia. It has always been, and likely always will be, the low hanging fruit, because colonial patriarchies such as ours have very limited standards of beauty, which have led to an inflated sense of importance and value of thin bodies. Ask any fat person and they will tell you that the deck is decidedly stacked against us and if we don’t change our bodies to comply with cultural standards, we are seen as failures. Not just failures in terms of our bodies, the “failure” clouds all other successes. If you’re not a fat person and you’re reading this, you may be thinking, ‘Well why not just adapt and make it easier for yourself? What’s the big deal?’. This, to me, is an attitude that is indicative of the complete lack of empathy and understanding around body weight, metabolism, and social commentary.
Examining body acceptance, and lack thereof, is fruitless if it’s not done through a lens of intersectionality. When we talk about fatness, non-fat people are quick to say that fatness is simply thermodynamics, a simple equation of calories in and calories out. But ask any person living in a fat body and they will tell you how infinitely more nuanced and complex fatness is. Genetics are responsible for upwards of 80% of how our bodies are formed and how they metabolize energy and change over time. The remaining 20% of that equation is made up of socio-economics, family dynamics, trauma responses, disability, consequences of certain medications, access to healthy resources, access to education and guidance on health and wellness, mental health, Etc. Reducing fatness down to a simple choice, especially a choice that is deemed a moral one, is not only closed-minded, it’s incredibly archaic.
“But with everything we know about obesity …”
People love to express judgment and control over fat bodies by tossing fatphobic rhetoric at us. It almost always comes wrapped in a package of false concern, the worry that we are limiting our life expectancy by not being thin, as if the only example of health and longevity is skinniness. Not only are these statements and beliefs incredibly transparent and patronizing, they’re also laughably inaccurate. Being thin doesn’t mean you’re healthy, nor does it mean that you eat well, or exercise. Most of the time when people are thin, it’s because they’d be thin no matter what, because again: 80% genetics. Attaching morality to weight and body type is so bizarre and says so much about those who do it. Certainly there are self-loathing fat people who get in on the conversation and parrot the same rhetoric as the anti-fat folks, which is rather unfortunate. It’s always disappointing when you can see that the call is coming from inside the house. Furthermore, I just don’t know what fat folks think they’re going to achieve by sucking up to their oppressors. They clearly don’t actually care about whether or not someone is fat other than the fact that they are uncomfortable about it or disgusted by it. But why the discomfort? Why would something that has nothing to do with you make you so uncomfortable?
They Hate To See Us Happy
In short, when anti-fat people see fat people succeeding and living happy, healthy lives they project their own fear of fatness onto the situation, thereby revealing how they really feel. Regularly, almost daily, I see posts online and comments where people make statements about fat people and fatness that are beyond unacceptable. An extreme but common example is people saying they’d rather kill themselves than be fat, they’d rather be dead than gain weight, they’d rather die than be perceived as fat. Everyone’s entitled to an opinion, however, what this says to the fat people around the, or the people who perceive themselves as fat whether they are or not, is that their lives have no value because they are not thin. If someone is suggesting that they would rather die than be fat, I can only presume that they would rather I was dead because of my fatness. That may not be what they intended to communicate, but it’s what they’ve said.
I’ve been processing my experience in a fat body for my entire life. I was an active but chubby kid, an athletic but unmotivated teen, and through my 20s and 30s my weight, along with my body image, fluctuated wildly. Now at 42 and a half I’m quite content. I’ve had a physical every year for the last 6 years, and every year I’ve been given a clean bill of health and told to keep doing exactly what I’m doing. My body is not as strong or fast or capable as it could be, and if I want to improve those things, I can, and I will. But what I won’t be doing is making those changes because the world at large thinks there’s something wrong with the way that I look, or questions the validity of my existence based on the composition of my body.
It’s taken me a very long time to understand and internalize that no one owes the world thinness. We don’t owe the people around us beauty, or social ideals. We owe ourselves authenticity. We owe ourselves patience. We owe ourselves acceptance and love. This journey of self acceptance has been long, and it continues. There are good days, and bad days, days where I seem to forget everything I’ve learned and all the progress I’ve made. Other days I can so clearly see a future where fatphobia is not even a topic anymore. No matter where our culture is at on the topic of fatness and beauty and self-worth, I’m glad to be at a place in my life where more often than not I’m comfortable and at peace with myself. The road is long, there are twists and turns, ups and downs, but I’m proud of how my story is evolving, and how natural this self-acceptance has become. If you are on a similar journey, I wish you well, and I hope that my stream of consciousness and personal ramblings here are helpful. Fat is not a bad word. No one is ‘bad’ for being fat, and maybe the world just isn’t ready to accept our self-acceptance, and that’s fine. We are, and that’s literally all that matters.
